Chapter Text
Epilogue
“So. You are the Prince of Lucis,” Aster asks him.
Noct nods at them and their eyes swing around to Luna.
“And you’re the Princess of Tenebrae.”
Luna shrugs, “Technically the former Princess. Oracles give up titles when we take on our roles.”
Aster sits with their mouth agape, wordlessly looking back and forth between the two of them.
“What do I call you?” Aster breathes.
Luna laughs and tucks her hair behind her ear - blond again, like it should be. Noct smiles just looking at her.
“Luna is fine,” she promises.
“Lulu’s also good,” Noct chimes in, “I might steal that one myself.”
Aster shakes their head again, still looking stunned.
“Am I going to get in trouble?” they ask, tapping the side of their nose where Luna’s piercing still lives on her face, “Making you do that isn’t like treason or something?”
Luna laughs again.
“Firstly you didn’t make me, I wanted to do it. And secondly, no. Though my brother may glare at you if you ever meet and you have my full permission to simply ignore him.”
“Ravus doesn’t like it?” Noct asks.
They’ve not really talked about that yet, too busy adjusting to all the other things. The hand in his belongs to Luna not Lucy and that should be weird or Noct should feel upset that he was lied to for the past weeks but it’s just not. Lucy had felt safe and familiar from the moment they’d met because she was - she was his Luna then and always. A dark wig and an impressive amount of eyeshadow couldn’t change that.
“Ravus likes very little he doesn’t have control over,” Luna says in mock seriousness though Noct can sense the kernel of honesty there.
Maybe he and Ravus have more in common than Noct thought.
“You’re not coming back to work, are you?” Aster asks.
Luna reaches with her free hand to briefly grasp Aster’s.
“No,” she says simply and all three of them laugh.
“I guess you have Oracle things to do, huh?” Aster asks, “Are you going back to Tenebrae straight away?”
Luna glances at him then, a pretty blush staining her cheeks.
“Not immediately,” Luna says.
Not ever, if Noct got to choose.
But he doesn’t get to choose, doesn’t want to choose. Not when Luna’s spent so much of her life doing what others tell her to do, bowing to the slightest of whims and trapped in cages of differing sizes. She says she likes Insomnia - said it as Lucy and had restated it again since the disguise fell away. But that doesn’t mean that she wants to stay, stuck in a foreign city away from her home, a country recently liberated from tyranny and control.
Luna squeezes his hand, “We’ll have to see how things play out here.”
One niggling thought eats at the back of Noct’s brain, something his father had said a few months ago when he’d been letting Noct know he had options. There was no need for Noct to make a political match then, nothing to be done that could be helpful.
But now there is a political match to be made now, the match that’s been on television since Noctis was eight and he and Luna had first spent any time together.
It’s an obvious choice, the future King of Lucis and the Oracle.
They’ll probably try to force them into it now.
But Noct won’t let them.
He wants Luna, now and always, but what happens next is her choice.
Not Noct’s or Ravus’. Luna’s.
“And of course I’ll come right back,” Luna says, “Tenebrae is where I’m from but this is my home now.”
“You really mean that?” Noct blurts.
Luna looks at him, a quizzical little notch between her brows.
“You want me to go back?”
“Of course not,” Noct says, “No - I just -”
Heedless of Aster’s presence Luna leans in towards him and presses a kiss to his cheek.
“Noctis,” she says, somehow teasing with just his name.
“I didn’t realise you’d want to and I just want you to - to do whatever you want.”
Luna’s smile knocks him almost breathless.
Aster’s chair scrapes loudly as they stand.
“I’m going to make you two love birds coffee,” they say, “You guys have got a lot to talk about.”
Yeah, they do.