Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dying, in the end, is just as painful as Noctis thought it'd be, sword splintering in his chest and metal cracking behind his back, the light so bright that it's blinding. He loses sense of his surroundings, his father's corpse on the floor and his father's specter at his shoulder. Loses sense of time and wonders if he'll wake again with a millennium gone and passed.

When he comes back to himself he is standing in front of an archway built of prisms, broken shards catching the bright lighting of the space and casting spectrums across the floor. Large fragments litter the bottom of the arch. As he watches they shimmer and rise, the archway rebuilding itself before his eyes.

His first realization is: it is a door.

His second realization is: it is locked.

Ardyn stands before it, weight canted to the side, impatiently blowing a tuft of hair out of his face.

"What–" Noctis begins, not even certain if it's shock or anger or numb curiosity threading through his voice, before he notices Gentiana at the doorway, standing as if she's been there all along.

She shakes her head at Ardyn, all serene beauty and chilling calm, her shattered cheek reforming into smooth and scarless skin.

"No."

The Glacian refuses, simple as that.

When Noctis approaches she tilts her head to him, eyes still closed. A frown creases across her brow. He remembers, she is the kindest of the Astrals, the one that favors humankind.

He is not sure what he expects.

He does not expect this.

She tells him: "I can't let you in, either."

The problem is. Well, the problem is that the Astrals are literally incapable of making a plan and sticking to it, or of making plans that will actually work, legends and prophecies be damned.

The problem is that, even after everything, the Starscourge still lurks throughout the land - cannot be eradicated without the power of a healer to contain it and the power of a king to destroy it, and the line of Oracles is gone, by Ardyn's own hand.

The problem is that, even with timeslips and time faults, the dead cannot be revived, that anyone who passes through Shiva's doors may never come out. The problem is that they, king and once-king, are not yet fully dead.

It was a miscalculation, Shiva had said, with an inclination of Gentiana's head, and that was as humble as he had ever seen her, as humble as any Astral may ever be.

The problem is that, even after a decade, Noctis is still the type of person to cling to the promise of an unreachable memory. The type of person who, after his father was killed and his home overrun, placed all his tragedies and regrets into the single goal of meeting with Luna in Altissia, like that would make everything better again.

Because it was better than the alternative. Because it was better than giving up.

In this, Noctis thinks, he and Ardyn may be the same. But he has never professed to truly understand the other man.

"Well, as they say, third time's the charm." Ardyn says, with a flippant shrug of his shoulder. As if Noctis hadn't just see him hurl a volley of Firaga at the royal throne as he cursed in ancient tongues.

In all likelihood, Ardyn would have summoned his Armiger and demolished the remains of the Citadel, if he still had the ability to. If that was not another thing the Astrals and Noctis, by proxy, have stripped him of. Like they were declawing a household cat, rather than prodding a monster in its open wounds.

Ardyn is, all things considered, taking this better than Noctis thinks he rightly should.

"Third time's the charm," Noctis echoes, like the first didn't end with Ardyn cast out of his kingdom and the second didn't end with them both turned away at Shiva's door. Rejection hurts, says a voice in Noctis's head, echoingly numb and thick with irony. He cannot tell if it is Ardyn's or his own.

Dawn is breaking in the distance, the cloud of living soot scattered from the atmosphere. The only tangible evidence of Noctis' death are the light streaming through the shattered Citadel window, the scorched cracks in the throne, and Luna's journal now resting in his hand. Both he and Ardyn still stand here. In the horizon, the shadows of daemons still prowl. The Ring of the Lucii remains whole and unblemished on his right hand, dim as if there were never any kings that spoke from it.

"Shall we get right to it then?" Ardyn asks, his voice a noxious concoction of sarcasm and amiability. "Standing around certainly isn't going to make us die any sooner."

There should be more to do here, Noctis thinks, standing in the broken shell of his home. But there is nothing to save and not even any bodies to bury, the floor frosted where Shiva has spirited the corpses away. He does not know if it was kindness or callousness which made her do such a thing, if she was hoping to keep a tentative peace between her ramshackle saviors. Maybe to the gods there is no difference.

"Do you even know what we're supposed to do?" Noctis asks, toeing at the frozen floor and grinding it until it cracks. He flips Luna's journal open. On the very last page there are only the scrawling words, Go West. They disappear as Noctis stares at them, like everything else the book is meant to represent.

Ardyn laughs and it is not a pleasant thing, makes Noctis' hair stand on end.

"Your Majesty," Ardyn says, with only a bit of audible insincerity. "You should know by now that the Astrals never tell you exactly what to do. That would be holding them accountable."

He smiles, and Noctis wonder how he manages that in this situation, wonders if he's mad.

"Considering the track record, we can only hope that this will be a journey of little consequence."

They murder each other thrice over before they reach the first haven.

To be precise, Noctis murders Ardyn twice for similarly flavored but ultimately distinct jabs over Prompto and Ignis and Gladiolus, I think they've gone and died and left you far behind - what kind of royal entourage is that? Ardyn murders him once, bitingly curious, Just to see if it would stick.

Dying again, Noctis finds, is just as unpleasant of an experience as the first time around, and Gentiana doesn't even meet him at the gate before sending him away.

His father's sword is still embedded in his chest when he revives. He manages to pull it out after two hard tugs, swinging the blade to flick off the blood before he vanishes it into the Armiger. The wound scars, different that the daemon healing that knits at Ardyn's skin, a clean silvered blemish just above his heart.

It is an exercise in futility wondering how spiteful Ardyn can get, so Noctis doesn't even bother.

"Fine, I get it, I won't kill you again."

Ardyn sketches a lopsided bow from where he's been standing, slightly to the side. He grins, tilting his head to the side like a cat.

"Now, now, you shouldn't go making promises you don't intend to keep."

Ten years was enough to transform blind animosity into a sort of clumsy empathy, and ten hours is enough to transform that into frustrated, wary exasperation. He remembers how Aranea deserted the empire for those reasons, wonders if he can justify it as a reason for deserting this man.

When they reach the haven Noctis breaks off before Ardyn can make a fuss about sleeping outdoors, sick of listening to Ardyn's snubs and of wondering which one of them will be the first to kill the other in his sleep. Ardyn is just taking a tentative step onto the plateau, glyphs flaring beneath his boots, as Noctis flips Luna's journal and drops heavily to the ground. There is a pen clipped to the binding, and as he writes the ink is slow to sink into the pages, lingering on the can and the heavy loops of the leave.

It would end badly. The journal finally answers, word flourishing like spilled blood. After a moment the words fade, and in their place new ones are written.

A conjecture, based on previous events.

"It's terribly rude of you to gossip behind my back," Ardyn calls from the other side of the haven, the one more sparsely lined with weakly glowing glyphs. But he makes no move to come over, the twenty feet between them a tangible measure of their cease-fire. They sleep on their backs with no tent and no blankets, the camping gear a burning mass in the midst of Insomnia. A little cold, Ardyn says, with wicked humor, won't kill us.

It is no better being privy to Ardyn's twisted inside jokes than to have been ignorant of them, Noctis finds, but despite it all he manages to fall asleep and wakes up only at first light.

In the morning they hunt daemons in nearby ruins – or at the very least try.

Noctis throws a dagger for Ardyn to catch and drive into the arachne's abdomen, but it shatters and disappears as soon as the hilt touches his hands. Ardyn pushes off awkwardly from the spider's back, too surprised to even phase away. It'd be simple for Ardyn to suspect Noctis had simply vanished the weapon into the aether, but he seems to take Noctis' open-faced surprise at face value, even if it doesn't calm his temper.

"I should have never let you kill me," Ardyn snarls afterward, a little singed from a Firaga detonated at close quarters. "Should have never let that Astral get her hands on me."

You shouldn't have, Noctis silently agrees, should not have done a lot of things. Noctis wonders what else Shiva may have stripped them of in that white spectral space, things they'll come to notice, things they'll never even realize they lost. She is benign, mostly, he thinks. But sometimes he comes to doubt.

At first Noctis just assumes it to be preventative measure, so he won't end up murdered by any more pieces of his Armiger, but in the next encounter he tries to throw a Thundaga and the orb remains cool and dead in his hands. It is, to put it in Ardyn's innocuously mild terms, an inconvenience.

They sit down and sift through the armory that night. Swords and lances and crossbows pulled from his Armiger shatter into silvered light when Ardyn touches them. Flasks of Firaga and Blizzaga and Thundaga which glow under the croon of Ardyn's ancient words are useless stones in Noctis's palms.

The Ring of the Lucii, dim and harmless, responds to neither of them.

"Clear division of labor," Ardyn says, in the same way he said, third time's the charm. "I dare say the Astrals are resorting to a random combination of variables, just to see what will stick."

Like we're any better, Noctis thinks to say, but the narrowing of his eyes and clenching of his hand makes him think Ardyn already agrees. The journal is loudly and conspicuously silent on the subject.

They stay at the same haven for days, every night bringing more of the same in terms of number and forms of daemons. Noctis suspects that their efforts aren't have any effect whatsoever. It's still a blow when he drives his blade into a daemonwall and it dies in a mist of darkness, only to coagulate and reform into a new creature just a hundred meters away.

"This isn't working," Noctis says, daemon blood on his cheek, and Ardyn's mouth twists into something unpleasant.

In high school biology they'd had an entire chapter about viruses, about host cells and infection and replication. Noctis had been a little bit disturbed by the subject but ultimately hadn't thought much of it, until now. The Starscourge is a sickness and it's mutating, and every time they kill it, it comes back a little bit stronger, a little bit faster.

But it's not as if they could just ignore the daemons, especially when a goblin tackles Noctis to the ground and makes an impressive attempt at gnawing off his shoulder. Eventually his entire body is going to be made of patchwork scars, which would put even Gladiolus to shame. Noctis flails with the goblin for a few minutes, hands prying at its jaws while Ardyn cocks his head unhelpfully from a distance.

"A little help?!" Noctis shouts, but Ardyn just calls back distractedly, "Only if you want to be caught up in the crossfire."

Noctis yells in frustration as he rolls, summoning a sword into his hand and piercing the goblin's limbs to the floor. It snarls and foams black froth trying to snap at his hands. Any ideas, Noctis starts to ask, backing away and trying to catch his breath. But Ardyn is already brushing past him, murmuring an unintelligible incantation that makes the goblin quiet to a pause. The other man takes the creature's face in his hands, almost gently, continuing to murmur in ancient tongues as he stoops to touch their foreheads together.

Until this moment there was a part of Noctis which had doubted it, but as he watches the goblin's form begin to glow. Its shape grows smaller and its limbs grow paler, shifting into the naked form of a child. The miasmic darkness slips from the form, but instead of drifting into the sky it condenses into black liquid, seeping into Ardyn's skin.

What did you do? Has an extremely obvious answer, embedded in age-old grudges and history scrubbed away with time, and Noctis at least knows better than to ask.

Are you ok? Has a slightly less obvious answer, but it seems useless trite and lacking, if better than nothing at all. Yet before Noctis can form the words Ardyn tilts his face to the side, pulling his hair out of his face, and retches in an extremely perfunctory manner. A black sludge puddles on the ground, seeping into the soil, but otherwise stays innocuously present.

"That never ceases to be disgusting," Ardyn scowls, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, but he says it in an almost wondering tone, like he was expecting it to be worse.

Noctis carefully approaches the now humanoid form of the goblin, crouching beside Ardyn to feel for a pulse, but the body is long cold and the human long gone.

"They're dead," Noctis confirms, unable to tell a gender let alone a national affiliation. They'll need a proper burial, in any case, even if the people who would have mourned them might be long gone.

"Well," Ardyn mutters, with a clear lack of interest. "It's not as if we could win them all."

Noctis dreams of the road, wind in his hair and sun on his face. Prompto sings high and off-key to the classics that blare from the radio. Where'd you learn to sing like that? Gladiolus laughs, but joins in not long after, deep baritone rounding out the music. Ignis sighs but Noctis can see his mouth quirking into a smile in the rear-view mirror. He cranks the music a little louder, to drown out what you two manage to pass off as a harmony.

Prompto croons hey hey pull over, and Noctis helps Ignis load up on Ebony while Prompto tries to talk to Cindy and screeches when, after a minute of bumbling silence, Gladiolus picks up the conversation in his stead.

Hey hey pull over and it's for pictures and refueling, never to draw out their weapons and prepare for a fight. There are no daemons prowling the horizon, no magitek soldiers raining from the sky.

Their destination is not Altissia because there is no politically-tainted engagement to attend to. The sky is high and the horizon is wide, and they have no destination at all.

Lunafreya writes, carried on Umbra's swift-footed back, a common coming and going because there is no need to pause between fleeing to write a message, no stilted awkwardness as Noctis tries to figure out something important enough to say. Nothing's important and everything's important, there so much they could possibly tell each other.

Sometimes it's Pryna who comes to deliver messages. Sometimes it's both Umbra and Pryna together, nipping playfully at each other's heels.

Luna writes, I saw a pier in the eastern edge of the Vesperpool I think you might like, and attaches a photo of fish scales against lake surface glittering in the sun.

She writes, Prompto's revealed that you've forgotten how to consume vegetables again. Is that another lesson we'll need to revisit?

She writes, I finally have a few weeks off.

Pick me up at the next stop.

Noctis's eyes are crusted when he opens them, salt clinging to his lashes and the corner of his eyes.

The fire has died but the coals still smolder weakly, the glyphs of the haven glowing most brightly in the intersection where Ardyn stands.

"Do you ever sleep?" Noctis asks, before his thoughts can catch up with him.

Without turning to face him Ardyn asks, "Do you ever not?

"As if a decade were not enough – I seem to spend an exorbitant amount of my time just waiting for you to wake up."

It is not an answer, and Noctis knows it, almost a shadow of the jibes the others used to make his way. Noctis lets it pass, lets the night wash back over him. The softness and the silence and the vastness of the stars – the night used to be a not so terrible thing. He used to prefer it over the day.

Once Ardyn realizes that Noctis is not going back to sleep he turns around, head tilted curiously and eyes in narrowed slits. "So regale me," he asks, "What sort of tales do chosen kings dream of?"

It's not as if Ardyn couldn't guess, not as if he couldn't spin a thousand scenarios of the same and twist them into some tragic horror. But it'd be worst to not answer, to let Ardyn draw his own conclusions.

"Possibilities," Noctis answers, not because he intentionally wants to be vague, but because he doesn't know a better way to explain it.

"Impossibilities," he corrects himself a moment later instead.

It is dark and he cannot make out Ardyn's expression, is thankful because that might mean Ardyn cannot make out his own.

"Ah," Ardyn says, turning away again. For a time Noctis expects that to be his only response, the coals growing dimmer and the chill working into his skin. Yet an answer comes, bright and careless, but for the length of time it took to form it.

"You grow out of such things, eventually."

The western Weaverwilds.

North of Longwythe Peak.

The border of the Nebulawood and Alstor Slough.

They follow Luna's journal like an uncoordinated hunter's board, each location bringing a new concentration of daemons, more scourge in Ardyn's pores and dirt on Noctis' hands. He is growing sick of burying bodies.

For all Noctis expects the man to bristle under the heavy-handed orders it is Ardyn who's ever impatient and ushering them on. "We'll never get anywhere with the pace you're setting," Ardyn protests. "You always did need a helpful push to get you anywhere of use."

Sometimes there are no legible messages, just the pages splashed like blood and scorched like Ifrit's flames. In some ways it makes Noctis grateful that the Astrals have lost their physical forms, that they are forced to keep their quarrels in other planes, so careless they can be of collateral damage.

He writes back, How much further? How many more? as if they'll give him an answer if he asks long enough. Yet but for that first night they have never answered him at all.

It was the Oracle's duty to commune with the Astrals, Noctis recalls. But it is not for this reason that he writes to Luna, hopefully, hopelessly. The pages eat up his ink, never gives any back in return. Without the whispers of kings the ring that she left him is lighter than it's ever been, but it hangs like a widower's ring.

He offers the book to Ardyn reluctantly, because he is familiar with the concept of unfairness, with the feeling of ignorance. Ardyn refuses with far less reluctance, warding it away like it's bad luck and laughing sourly in his face.

"I have no desire to deal with the Astrals and their inner feud," he says. "And if she ever answers back I have even less desire to deal with the Lady Lunafreya."

Noctis pulls back, a bit offended on Luna's behalf and the implication that he'd let them interact. The latter part rings false though, even in Noctis' own head, because he could never control Luna or protect Luna, dying for him and because of him.

"Of all the people to have graced my immortal life," Ardyn continues, "your bride-to-be was by far one of the existences I have felt the most acute anger against. That is quite impressive, considering how the last few centuries were an asymptotic plateau of rage."

"What did she even do to you?" Noctis bites, because Ardyn seems to take offense to Luna herself, not to the line of the Oracles or to any prophecy ever told. How, he does not understand, could a person hate someone like her?

"She promised me salvation as she was dying," Ardyn spits, and it is more angry than Noctis has ever seen him, more honest. "No better than the Astrals, making promises she had no power to keep."

Of course she couldn't, when you murdered her. Noctis thinks. She was dying anyway, you didn't have to kill her. But it is out of petulance rather than spite, a scab worn over by time and Luna's own Covenant-prescribed death.

It worries Noctis, slightly. That he will he stop feeling anger, feeling bitterness. That eventually he will he stop feeling anything at all.

He wonders if Ardyn ever worried about that too.

Eventually they make it to Lestallum, and though the streets are familiar, the people he would know on them are gone.

Even so, Noctis has a few moments of panic as he thinks to make Ardyn hide his face, but that just causes Ardyn to cross his arms and quirk his mouth. "Your royal entourage did not recognize me. Nor did the people of this state. And there are little remaining of Niflheim to do so. Ageless and changeless – not many knew my face."

Noctis remembers his own father keeping him out of the public eye. For his safety, for his duty, so he could grow up safely to die. It was not a terrible existence but it was a lonely one.

Noctis knows better than to make the comparison between them.

They find an old woman curled up in alley, jammed between the weapon stall and the sewer grating. She cringes when Noctis approaches her, trying to see if he can help. As she shudders the fabrics over her chest shift, and he realizes she is clasping a child, swathed in coarse cloth and shadows.

"Please," the old woman pleads, "please, don't. Don't reveal us. They'll throw us out, they'll throw us out, they'll feed us to the daemons."

The fabric slips and Noctis can make out the black shadows splotching the girl's face, the horn beginning to protrude from her right temple. The child is too young to be this old woman's own, too different in coloring and features for him to immediately think them related. But the old woman holds the child to her regardless, and asks them not to tell.

Heal her, reads Luna's journal, flipping open on a telltale breeze. But Ardyn doesn't even glance at the book as he pushes past him, doesn't stop when Noctis unthinkingly tries to catch his sleeve.

It's something Noctis has grown to known: for all his muddled motives and counterintuitive actions, there is something frighteningly single-minded about Ardyn. He is terrifyingly deliberate in his cruelty. His kindness must be even worse.

Ardyn, Noctis thinks, very distinctly, is no Oracle.

Every scourge taken is another closer to eradication, is another one closer to a long-sought death. Other people's prices must be little things to pay.

To be honest, Noctis expects something horrible to happen. To be honest, he expects that it'll end with the old woman screaming bloody murder or, more simply, also dead, murdered as a witness in her grief.

To be honest, he expects that it'll change little in the end, that he'll yell and rage and Ardyn will smile and shrug and they'll sweep it behind them even if it takes months or years or decades, because these are his people not-people and in the price of one against many he has no better way to save them.

Yet as Ardyn hums and presses his hand to the child's head, the shadow passes from the child's face, clamoring like hungry roots up Ardyn's arm and dyeing into his veins. The child remains behind, whole and breathing.

The woman sobs, wondering and confused, fumbling for long seconds as she reaches around the child's body to grasp at Ardyn's hands. When she catches them Ardyn's breath hitches and black liquid trails grotesquely from his eyes, pittering to the floor, like he's weeping. Around her shuddering breaths the woman cannot even manage to form the words of gratitude, does not seem to mind the daemonic tinge of his face. Ardyn's smile is flat and his hands are lax, not grasping back.

But the look in his eyes. Noctis is not sure what to make of the look in his eyes.

It's Ardyn who'd asked, Do you mind terribly a minor detour? I have something I need to pick up, and Noctis had followed without protest. He figures that they're probably over the stage of outright murdering each other, and suspicion is becoming a tiresome thing to wear.

"I suppose I may take you up on that suggestion to remain hooded," Ardyn tosses carelessly over his shoulder as he does his jilting hop-step, hop-step, down the cobbled rampway. "Considering that some may not take so well to a daemonic appearance."

It's putting it lightly, but Ardyn is a master of understatement. Noctis is trying to not let it bother him.

"Is that what you're planning on wearing then?" Noctis asks, rhetorically, as Ardyn comes to stop before a mound of thick fabric. It's too large to service as a cloak by far, to say nothing of how dirty it is.

Ardyn turns and smiles, secret and smug.

"It is rather," Ardyn says, twisting his hands in the cloth, "what I plan on driving."

He tears the canvas off with a flourish, like a magician's trick, a grand unveiling to reveal his disaster of a car. It looks just as it did all those years ago, parked in Lestallum's lot and gleaming in the sun.

"How is it," Noctis asks, a little slack-jawed despite it all, "that of all things, that has managed to survive it all?"

Admittedly, it is practically in pristine condition, and it is merely the outdated Niflheimian model and make to which Noctis and all his generations of Lucian-ingrained sensibilities takes offense to.

"Because it is mine," Ardyn answers breezily, slipping into the driver's seat. He smiles as the engine purrs to life. "And I take excellent care of my possessions."

Despite himself, the familiar roar of an engine and rocking of the car ride makes Noctis drowsy, makes him think of better days. He has never been poetic but the sunlight tints Ardyn's hair golden, brings out the amber of his eyes.

It is the warmth of the sun that makes him foolish, the almost comfortable silence makes him brave.

"What we're you thinking," Noctis asks, "back there with the old woman?"

He doesn't expect a response, but maybe the sun and the silence does things for Ardyn as well.

"Nothing of terrible consequence," Ardyn says, eyes casted to the mirror. "Just that it had been a long time, since someone had looked at me with those eyes."

Noctis is starting to learn: the more levity that Ardyn forces into the words, the more meaningful they are.

"After," Ardyn gestures vaguely, after. "Only a few tried to thank me. One or two tried to save me.

"The latter, I'm afraid, were not terribly successful."

He breaks off like a non-sequitur, like an afterthought, like the next phrase has nothing to do with anything at all.

"There is a pattern to these things. Everyone who has ever loved me thought better of it, eventually."

It is the lightest he's ever heard Ardyn say anything.

Noctis turns away, to give some semblance of privacy. In the distance he can see thunderclouds gathering, heavier than Ramuh's storms. His mouth tastes of static. Despite the sunlight, there is a chill in his bones.

It feels, he thinks, like an omen.

That night Noctis dreams that he is child and there is no wall and no kingdom and that his father is not dying with every breath he breathes. He wakes, jostled into awareness, by a body crashing into his own.

His chest is wet, and it takes him a moment to realize that it's not from the downpour, black blood spilling over him and warm breath shuddering in his ear. Through the fringe of Ardyn's hair Noctis can make out the stooped form of an iron giant, crushed glyphs beneath its fist.

Noctis warps them both away as more giants drag themselves from the ground, and as soon as they gain their footing Ardyn pushes away. Noctis launches himself forward, hurling great swords and spears at the monster's armor until it caves and cracks.

He forgets to pay attention to the other giants and almost gets hit by an incoming fist, but Ardyn pulls him away from the blow. It is completely unnecessary since neither of them can die, but in the ring of the metal impact Noctis hears the words, I take excellent care of my possessions.

He deals strike after strike, while Ardyn murmurs ancient spells behind him, not even needing elemancy to power his words. Salus in arduis, protegere, Noctis feels stronger with every phrase, and even if they were mortal he wouldn't have feared death.

In the aftermath, when the bodies are buried and Ardyn has finished being sick, Noctis sits beside him in the ruined haven. He doesn't know what to do with what is being offered to him; doesn't know if there's anything being offered at all. So Noctis asks, "What am I to you?"

Never an actual person or an enemy, he thinks. Perhaps only just a pawn, just a means to an end.

Years ago, Ardyn wouldn't have answered. Just days ago, he would have lied. And though he answers now that does not mean anything has changed for it.

But tonight Ardyn rasps – "You were a promise" – throat reknitting into wholeness, heart pumping black ichor through his veins.

"And now. Now you are but a broken one."

Chapter Text

The roll of the train tracks is almost soothing, the glass cool against Ardyn's cheek but growing warm through the contact of his skin. As Imperial Chancellor Ardyn had hardly ever taken the train, preferring automobiles and airships to the close quarters of public transportation. But there is hardly a public to transport anymore.

Niflheim was the origination of cars but in truth the country was forged for trains, and decades after its conductors are gone the trains still remain. It reminds Ardyn of a piece of fiction he once read, a clockwork town wound up so well that it ran years and years after its creator had died, mindless and soulless and useless, fulfilling a purpose that no one wanted it for.

The trains follow railways on autopilot, and he's reasonably sure that even with Noctis jostling at the controls they won't manage to crash. It's not like it'd delay them overly much in any case, but it's the principle of the matter, if nothing else.

He closes his eyes for a moment, uncomfortable with the heat radiating off his skin. But as soon as he has the thought he finds his face is freezing. "Ah," Ardyn murmurs, opening his eyes. "I was wondering when you would make another appearance."

She smells of frost and sulfur, the blue of her skin shimmering as she slips out of time. It must be harder for her to touch the physical world, now that her Oracles and kings have been broken. Shiva keeps her hand resting on his cheek as he straightens in the seat, smiling at him in a vague way that makes him think, worriedly, that she might kiss him.

"I never did apologize for that, did I?" Ardyn deflects as her corpse grows visible in the distance. He has positively no intention of apologizing at all.

Shiva smiles at him more deeply, the knowing twinkle of her eyes as irritating as it is troubling. She says, "We never apologized to you either."

"But you won't," he challenges, and she concedes, "But we won't."

He thinks, in a general sense, of how easy it is to love that which is beautiful and kind, and yet how he has only grown to hate them. Ardyn holds no love for her, holds even less trust of her, but there is still a part of him that wants to ask her, is this right?

This time, did I get it right?

He bites his tongue.

"We are all as circumstances made us," Shiva says, letting her hand fall to her side, like there weren't choices and damnation, like free will is but a word spun up of lies. Ardyn does not show any sign of anger, but he forgets to smile when he corrects, "We are as we have made us." Maybe this is her kindness, though, another one of her supposed gifts. Any other Astral, if they were here, would claim ad nauseam and ad infinitum, You've brought this upon yourself.

If he is lucky he will never have to deal with another one of them again, but he does not hold much stock with luck. He is too tired to play at this charade, in any case, and all the lot of them too proud.

"What are you here for, Glacian?"

Their last parting was hardly on the best of terms, and though she had kept assuring him that destroying her archway wouldn't do him any good, that didn't mean he hadn't bloody well tried. She loves humans for their tenacity and he plays human well enough.

"An assurance," she tells him, and as she speaks the mist curls from her lips and crystallizes in the air. "A covenant, if you'd have it. Whatever the result of this, it will be the last we ask of you." A covenant but not a Covenant, which makes it no better than a lie. The words of gods are heady things but he's no longer so gullible as that.

"But I imagine you still won't let me through that pretty door of yours?" He asks, resting his head back against the window, unable to tell if it is her mist which is causing the world to haze.

"It won't give you what you want," she states, passing a hand over his eyes.

"Who are you to claim to know what I want?" He would argue, but he feels feverish and disjointed. The blankness that her whispered incantation brings is almost welcome.

He wakes, what feels like mere heartbeats later, with Noctis' hand on his arm, so contrastingly warm it's almost burning. If he checked now he's sure he would find Noctis's handprint burned into his shoulder, like a brand. "Were you actually sleeping?" Noctis asks, seeming puzzled and a bit concerned despite himself, bending down to check Ardyn's eyes.

That kindness will be the death of him, Ardyn thinks, hazy and unhinged.

Perhaps he should have learned to be so kind.

By his count it is daemon one thousand fifty seven that does it, a higher number than the first time around.

The location is an inauspicious one, on the outskirts of Tenebrae, one side of the track teeming with daemons while the other remains stark and bare. The very lands of Tenebrae ward off the daemons, where Oracles were born and where they returned to die. The very hills are stained with them, their blood and their bones. But that is the other side of the tracks and it doesn't help them here.

Here, he's pinning down a daemon that thrashes against his hands, while Noctis is at his back warding off ten more.

Here, he's whispering words dredged out of memory, in a language that died long before he did. (Come now, come, let us be each other's prisons.)

Here, he's listening to the daemon scream as he absorbs it, like it's frightened to die, thinking: fear of death is a very human emotion, so maybe that makes it more human than him.

Here, something breaks. Something shatters. It might have been something inside him.

Suddenly he is screaming, and completely not here at all.

"Ardyn?!" Noctis yells, but Ardyn doesn't hear it, his attention focused inward, his awareness pinpointed to sensations.

He feels a bruise blooming across his cheek and it is a stranger's thought (mother/father/lover sorry i didn't mean to make you stop loving me) that becomes scourge trickling over his lip (i hated her so much my teeth bit through my flesh) becomes a gaping scar over his chest (it made me feel better to break his bones to see that even he could bleed)

(the daemons whisper scream: i was a bad person, a bad person, does it mean i deserved this?)

There are creatures crawling beneath his skin, there is sickness in his veins, and it feels (he feels) disgusting, disgusting. He is shattered limbs and coagulate blood, the sludge in his throat is suffocating. He retches and he chokes trying to expel the substance, but that only makes it worse.

"Stop. Stop." Commands a voice, fingertips pressing hard on his shoulder. "I'm telling you to stop." Stop- stop is such a very vague command. Stop retching stop screaming stop crying stop thinking. Stop being. Just stop.

"Would that I could," Ardyn gasps to two eons of memories, the weight of them crushing against his throat. The fingers press harder, more insistent, bursting his blackened veins and making them bruise.

Eventually the retching stops and the chill dies down, the voices drowning back into a murmur. Noctis is still telling him, "Stop, stop." But now it sounds almost pleading. The hands on his shoulders have gentled and turned into some charade of an embrace. Ardyn leans into them, with very little strength to do much else.

This, Ardyn thinks, too tired to care, is new.

In the end the Crystal he hung above the throne in Insomnia was but an illusion, crafted for the ambiance and dramatic effect. There could be a metaphor found in that, likely, and Ardyn would often love to partake, but the truth of the matter is that it was cumbersome and bothersome and the light of the Crystal had burned. He'd left it behind right where Noctis fell into it, and he hadn't expected to come back.

There is a metaphor in this now too, or at least some sort of cosmic joke, that he should make his way back to it like this, and that Noctis should be the one to bring him.

"The Crystal wards off daemons," Noctis insists. "It might be able to help."

(help, the daemons giggle, echoing in his head. help me help me)

Help, Ardyn thinks, is also such a vague term, so easy to twist up in meaning. But Noctis seems so very earnest that it is easier to let it pass. "You can sometimes be quite sweet," Ardyn croons, laughing. He tangles his hands over Noctis's shoulders and rests his chin upon Noctis' shoulder, sprawling as if the king wasn't the only thing keeping him on his feet. "I used to hate you for that."

(hate, the daemons sigh. hate me hate me)

Ardyn had hated Noctis for being kind and noble and selfish, the sort of person who never would have killed him if Ardyn had simply asked to die. That sort of personality was utterly boring and utterly frustrating. He'd lived years and years and in all that time Ardyn had encountered many just like him.

Zegnautus Keep feels a bit like nostalgia, him crooning in Noctis' ear as the other man ignores him, concentrating instead on the daemons before them. Noctis kills all of them, uncaring that they'll spawn again elsewhere, back at the train or on the next floor or just around the bend. Ardyn hangs from his shoulders between encounters, flicking spells at the smaller daemons lurking from the shadows. It doesn't seem worth the energy to try for anything more, and the daemons in his head mulishly agree. His thoughts keep on slipping from him, so Ardyn concentrates on Noctis instead.

Up close, Noctis' face is lined and stressed. He looks more weary than he did a month ago, than a year ago, than however long since the Astrals had set them on this hopeless, futile path. "You've grown old, Your Majesty," Ardyn tells him, thinks, he might hate him a little for that too.

But there are fewer daemons as they go on, as they grow close to the Crystal and the power that it bears. By the time they've reached the inner chamber, there are no daemons at all but his.

The Crystal is just as beautiful and horrible as it ever was. The light of it hurts even now, the intensity of it catching Ardyn unaware. Noctis snatches his arm as he stumbles back, and they pitch over as Ardyn overbalances. It would be, Ardyn thinks sluggishly, a horribly anticlimactic way to die– tripping into the Crystal and burning alive. He can't even find a proper metaphor to enjoy out of it, it just seems so stupidly wasteful. But Noctis manages to shift their weight and tuck him close, so they crash to the floor in a tangle of limbs instead of crashing into the Crystal.

The contact triggers something, the world bleaching out around them. The light burns, all encompassing, blinding him even though he's shut his eyes. It was like this before, when the Crystal rejected him, when the daemons spilled out of him, when Bahamut cast him out of the kingdom. Ardyn would have lost himself in the memories, but Noctis' hand is a solid presence on his arm, the Ring of the Lucii bright and burning. He thinks too of Bahamut's chains and Ifrit's flames, and how none of these things are really any different.

Ardyn had counted nineteen hundred blue moons before he escaped from the prison; he counts just as many heartbeats now before the burning lessens and the light dies away. The Crystal remains behind, dull and lusterless, the crack in its side giving the impression that it's been eaten from the inside out. It manages to stay whole for all of two seconds before cracks and splits, shattering on the ground.

In the midst of his ringing head Ardyn manages the collective thought: Oops.

"A-are you alright?" Noctis breathes shakily, the first to catch his breath. Ardyn takes a few moments more, wheezing around the tightness in his chest, the quietness in his head.

"I feel as if a bit of my soul has been eaten," he rasps, which makes Noctis look a little alarmed. He does not think the Crystal was particularly selective in its cleansing. "But otherwise I'm doing remarkably well." Noctis frantically pats him down, grabbing Ardyn's chin to check the dilation of his pupils before he seems satisfied, collapsing back ungracefully with a sigh of relief. "Oh good," Noctis breathes, "good." And the strange thing is that despite all he's ever done to the other man, Noctis sounds like he means it.

Ardyn cannot help but laugh at that, a little incredulous and pained. There is something inside him that itches, that hurts. That Noctis has somehow remained kind and noble and selfish, despite all of Ardyn's best laid plans, despite his worst intentions– it's something Ardyn could have never expected. He's lived centuries upon centuries, yet in all that time, Ardyn has never encountered someone quite like him.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Noctis asks, for the umpteenth time, surrounded now by very daemons he had earlier subdued. Like repeating it enough times will render the positive true.

"I am very decidedly not alright," Ardyn counters, ripping the Starscourge out of a daemon just to spite him. "But I have managed well enough regardless."

As his particular brand of un-luck would have it, they are not immediately smote on the spot upon leaving the inner chamber of Zegnautus Keep. That, Ardyn admits, would have been entirely too easy, but one would assume that the act of destroying the Crystal by minor accident would have angered the Astrals, or at the very least left them slightly miffed. Yet the Astrals are strangely and eerily calm about the entire thing, which has only happened never in all of the years Ardyn has existed. They are ever and always creatures who only how to overreact, but there are no swords raining down upon them and the ground does not even shudder. The only thing the journal deigns to say is, These things are but vessels.

It is a false display of mercy that leaves Ardyn unsettled; there must be fine-print hidden somewhere in the remaining blankness of the pages.

Part of the fact may simply be that the Astrals have little sway over the physical plane anymore. The Niflheimian army had been applaudingly successful in tearing the Astrals from their corporeal forms. Ardyn feels that he should give them accolades, if the entire country weren't already in ruins. What it has amounted to is that the Astrals can only manage to interact with the physical plane if they have multiple anchors to tether them; a slightly battered Covenant holder and their previous physical form at a minimum, and Shiva's corpse is fortuitously far in the distance.

It leaves nothing for an outlet but the daemons that surround them.

Ardyn manages to get through three floors before passing out- the next time only through two. This is how it proceeds through the tower, back through Niflheim, back to the relative refuge of Lucis. Each time Noctis asks with varying degrees of force and concern if he is alright, if they should take a break (stares at Ardyn with eyes, soft and sad and slightly awed and Ardyn thinks how long has it been since and answers perhaps only now). But never again does he tell Ardyn to stop.

Bahamut has truly made a king of the man, after all. Noctis wears his resignation like a crown.

It is a strange thing to wake up and to find someone there at his shoulder, even stranger that it should be his broken king. It is surreal. He loses track of time in the lapses.

Before, when he was alone, Ardyn measured time not as a forward passage of years but as a countdown. The thought of Noctis was his waypoint long before the boy was even born. Times was: the number of years until he and Noctis met, the decades until they clashed, the centuries until Noctis killed him.

He is still measuring time by Noctis, Ardyn finds. Time becomes something that he doesn't experiencing himself, but witnesses in others, and Noctis is stunningly consistent point of reference. The months he finds in the lines of Noctis' face, the years are in his scars.

There is a difference between them, him cursed with daemons' scourge and Noctis cursed with Shiva's blessing. Noctis's body is still a human's body, for all that it entails. It is merely Shiva turning him at the door that keeps him bound to the world, bound to this task. He ages and bleeds and is healed and he scars, cells growing older each time they regenerate. It is frightening and maddening, but somehow Noctis is still managing to find a way to die faster than him.

The Astrals can be quite an obstinate breed, unwilling to admit their faults. Perhaps Noctis' body will wither away and his bones will turn to dust, and still they wouldn't let him rest until Ardyn has finished crucifying himself on the Starscourge.

Despite how Noctis wears his pity as a blade and his compassion as a shield, even he must have a breaking point.

The exercise is a familiar one, even if (Ardyn can admit in the relative privacy of his own mind) the intention has changed ever slightly. Ardyn considers. He could stop. He could flee. He could leave Noctis to his fate.

One of these, he is sure, is the one that would be enough to make Noctis finally and truly hate him.

Ardyn wouldn't call himself one for attachment but he is pleased when they return to the parking lot and he sees his car is still in one piece. Noctis, he knows, takes this fondness for some proof of his humanity, and Ardyn isn't sure if he's more insulted that it takes such insignificant thing to humanize him, or by the fact that Noctis is trying to humanize him at all.

In truth, the vehicle is one of the sole things he has to his name. Possessions had seemed inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and they seem even more so now. Belongings age and they break and technological fads are ever changing; it's irksome to have every generation overturning the paradigm. Habits have become an issue, unsuspectingly made and difficult to break, and muscle memory is absolutely abhorrent. In any case the most precious things were never truly his to keep.

But it seems silly to explain that now.

It's a little hilarious, actually, to see how Noctis nigh hyperventilates when Ardyn deposits the car keys into his hand, hummingbird contractions as he asks, is this a sign that you're really dying? It's a joke, perhaps, but Ardyn has fallen out of the nuances. There are dark shadows pressing at the corners of his vision and a dull pressure building up behind his eyes and Ardyn would rather not wake up in the middle of a wreckage-- those are an absolute horror to get out of. It’s a relatively minor thing to hand over the keys.

They pull into Lestallum under the cover of night. The darkness has become safer to travel in, with the power generator running strong and the people free of scourge to run them. The more adventurous survivors have established more settlements further out, erecting lampposts that connect the safe holds like a string of fairy lights.

It reminds him of the words and Altissian acquaintance had once cried, maudlin and drunk. The world is made of cities and the spaces between them.

(Humanity is made of people and the spaces between them.)

As soon as they pull up Ardyn pulls his hood over his head, the billowing fabric of his coat enough to hide everything but the scruff of his chin. It's his eyes he needs to hide, for when they start dripping daemon blood. They may be the only ones capable of containing the scourge, but Ardyn does not hold much stock on that keeping the people of Lestallum from becoming hostile. He has found: the kindness of strangers extends no further than where their suspicion begins.

The kindness of friends extends little beyond that.

In prior visits Ardyn would walk down the streets in midday, cloak thrown across his face, because Lestallum believed that monsters only lurked in the dark and it was an easy enough belief to feed. The people recognized them even then, and the scourge-stricken would come trailing after Ardyn like street urchins, grubby hands upon his sleeves.

This time Ardyn sits heavily on a cobbled staircase and lets them come to him, Noctis standing over him like skittish guard dog. There are fewer of them than last time, growing fewer each time they come. Like any other sickness it is the very young and the very old most easily afflicted, though he supposes that, relatively, they're all very young to him.

"Now, now," Ardyn says, tutting after them like wayward children. "Just look at what you've managed to do to yourselves. One of these days you'll have to learn how to stay out of trouble." This stage of the scourge is easier to handle than others, so as he passes his hands above their face and pulls out the sickness, it's only at the third one that the icy sludge starts spreading through his chest, only at the fifth that his eyes start to bleed.

While he works the young boys crowd around Noctis, pushing and shoving each other forward, daring each to ask about his scars.

"That was...ah...a basilisk, maybe?" Noctis says, as the boys gesture at a starburst scar on his palm.

"That one was from a goblin."

He fidgets a bit under the attention as the boys grow more bold, asking him to roll up his sleeves and show off his chest. A few more children have begun crowding around, interested in the stories he has to tell.

"Come now," Ardyn calls as he finishes, Noctis shooting him a hopeful gaze. "You're telling the stories all wrong. You must give them the proper amount of embellishment, to properly capture the children's imagination." Noctis looks a bit put off but he lets Ardyn lift up his arm for the children's inspection. But the parents, Ardyn finds, are less prone to suspicion if they see their children are pleased.

"This one," Ardyn gestures, tracing the line of Noctis' palm, "was from a basilisk that towered over three stories tall. It could eaten any one of you in a single snap, with plenty of jaw to spare."

"This one," Ardyn says, clasping a hand on Noctis' shoulder, prodding him to make the stiff line of his shoulder relax, "was from goblin with nails and teeth as sharp as knives. It was not terribly strong but what it lacked in strength it made up in speed, and it took him pinning the creature down with seven swords before I could cleanse it."

"This one," Ardyn solemnly intones, laying a hand over Noctis' heart, "is from a most horrible daemon, one I cannot even begin to describe." He smiles vaguely at Noctis, an inside joke. This one he got from me.

In the end he manages to send the children on their way before Noctis is divested of the any more clothing, and Noctis sighs with exaggerated relief as he watches them leave.

"You really shouldn't have lied to those kids," Noctis says a moment later, collapsing to the floor beside him. Ardyn takes it as an opportunity to lean his entire weight on the other man, while raising his brow in disbelief. They were only minor exaggerations, and not even harmful ones at that. "What I mean is- you're not so horrible of a daemon," Noctis says, averting his eyes. "...there are times when I even think you're not too horrible of a person."

There is a small part of him that feels a strange mix of emotion, things that he has not had to parse out for years.

There is a larger part of him which only feels irritation.

"Very charming," Ardyn mutters dryly, letting his head become dead weight on Noctis' shoulder. It is fortuitous that Noctis continues to insist on wearing all black; it lets the black tears absorb harmlessly into his shoulder. The scrabbling in his chest does not dull even as they stay posed like that for several minutes. He is vexingly unsettled. There is one thought that gets caught, jostling in his head.

Ardyn thinks: he does not want an emotion as cheap as this.

The car breaks down halfway to Cape Caem. Ardyn votes to give it a proper sendoff by rolling it off a cliff, a democracy of one and majority wins. To be frank the car is becoming something of a relic. There become less reasons to travel great distances as the daemons grow sparse and the humans grow bold, calling him Healer and Savior and calling Noctis their King. It tastes of ill omens and bad memories. He takes it as a sign to leave.

For once the Astrals seem obliging and the journal fills up again with words, ushering them, Go south. Go south. Go to the sea. There is hardly a use for a car there. Noctis doesn't even like the car, but he looks vaguely scandalized as they dispose of it anyway. It's entertaining enough for Ardyn to not even pretend at being heartbroken over the entire thing.

"I thought you took pride in taking care your things," Noctis says, sounding slightly wounded, and there is a part of Ardyn that finds it hilarious. He didn't think he was any longer capable of doing anything to hurt the king.

"Well, it's hardly any use to me anymore. I relinquish all claims of ownership," Ardyn says, planting both hands on the trunk and breathing in deep before shoving it into the sea. The effort leaves him a little bit breathless and his arms throb unpleasantly. Noctis steadies Ardyn's shoulders to make sure he doesn't fall over too.

He blames it on Noctis anyway. Lethargy and nausea had left it more often than not that Noctis takes the wheel, as Ardyn alternates between being sun-sick and shivering, letting the staccato of demons wash over him like white static.

The car has become more Noctis' than anything, and it's become a habit to break Noctis' things.

He thinks of hands on his arms on his shoulders, brands on his chests, how it's become a habit to break himself too.

It's not a long boat ride to Altissia, all things considered, but the sun is too bright and the waves are too rough and Ardyn feels like he's going to be sick. No one's trying to cross the sea nowadays, and the only serviceable boat they'd been able to procure on this side of the continent had been a slightly rusted motorboat. If they couldn't even manage that he's sure the Astrals would have had some unreasonable expectation of them to build their own raft, or procure some genetically-enhanced Chocobos capable of swimming across the sea.

"...let's stop here," Noctis declares, a half hour into the trip, not even waiting for a response before he cuts off the motor. There is the distinctive sound of shattering as Noctis pulls something out of his Armiger, which is an unexpected sound to hear. When Ardyn glances over he blinks blearily, because Noctis appears to have a fishing rod in his hand.

"You jest, surely," Ardyn says, flashbacking to days upon days of waiting for the princeling to do something other than fishing at Galdin Quay.

"Shouldn't we check that there aren't any daemons to purge from the sea?" Noctis protests, almost convincingly, holding the fishing rod defensively over his chest. "We never encountered any while on a boat, but you never know." What kind of lure would even work on a daemon? Ardyn doesn't even question, just grunts and throws his hood over his head to take the reprieve that's offered.

In end Noctis doesn't catch any daemons but Ardyn's conjured enough fire and they've eaten enough fish for Ardyn to swear off them for weeks. Ardyn doesn't rightfully need to eat in any case and Noctis needs only little more than that to function. Noctis seems to realize this, and he begins releasing his catches back to the sea. "You're just catching the same fish over and over again," Ardyn mutters. "They've likely identified you as a harmless source of entertainment." He is feeling out of sorts, imagining aquatic creatures seeking out adrenaline rushes to get some sort of thrill out of life.

Ardyn can't pinpoint what the problem is, exactly. It's a little bit of everything. The hood over his head blocks out the worst of the sun, but the sea still shimmers and blinds at the darkened corners of his vision. The daemons clamor for attention like wayward children. The world smells of sea salt and metal. The walls of their small craft press in around him, and there is nothing but the ocean all around them. It reminds him of a prison.

Ardyn doesn't realize he's said it out loud until he feels fingers combing through his hair, taming the salt spun mess. "Sorry," Noctis says. There are many things that sorry could mean, only half of them even approaching satisfactory, and none for Noctis to give. "I might be stalling. Altissia's a bit like that for me too."

"Sorry," Ardyn echoes back ironically, surprisingly only half-insincere.

"Well." Noctis says, and stops, like he isn't sure how to continue. "It's not alright, just so we're clear." But his voice remains low and his fingers stay tangled in Ardyn's hair. Ardyn hums, leaning into the touch, and the memories are just shy of crushing, the demons just a whisper below deafening.

He thinks, it is a pity. It is a waste. It is just that some men were made to bow and some made to bleed, and Noctis was a man made to lose.

When they enter the main canal Ardyn is surprised to find that Altissia, despite everything, has fared the best of them all. He means that in the sense that it remains beautiful despite the destruction, the waters still shimmering and the walls still white and tall, despite how they crumble in the middle. The ruins are like a painting, the stillness of the city like all the people have simply stepped out of the frame.

They explore the city, but they find no creatures in the crumbled alcoves of buildings or the shadows of bridges. Even when night falls there are no daemons that venture into the city. The journal tells them, persistently and insistently, Look harder.

"That's not helpful," Noctis declares flatly.

"Luckily I have an idea of where to start," Ardyn sighs, and leads Noctis down to the deep interior of the former First Secretary's estate. He finds the painting there, just as he remembers it. The lady is a fair one, red lips and blush cheeks complemented by the scarlet of her skirts, though if memory serves the artist had been quite enamored and painted her prettier than she truly was. "My fair Lakshmi," Ardyn says, sketching a shallow bow. "The years have treated you well."

Noctis makes a questioning noise at that, even more so as Ardyn rises, tiptoed, to kiss her on the cheek. At the same time he slips his hand behind the frame and tumbles through a series of levers. It’s more of a show than the trick switch warrants, but he does it to see Noctis boggle when the picture frame swings open, revealing a tunnel hidden behind it. “Accordo was the land of diplomacy,” Ardyn explains. “And diplomacy means knowing what and where to hide.”

It is not the sort of diplomacy Noctis has ever learned, except for the way they have stolen through the Lucian continent without anyone being the wiser of what Ardyn is. Ardyn is used to keeping his own consul, but this is the first time in recent memory that Ardyn has been someone else's secret.

Ardyn throws a shock of lightning into the passageway for good measure before gesturing to Noctis after you, but Noctis hangs back, staring at the frame. "That painting was haunted, the last time we came," Noctis murmurs. "I kind of expected the rest of this city to be haunted too."

Noctis may not fully realize it, but it is. The last Oracle has dyed the land in her blood, has washed it with her bones, so the daemons creep ever deeper underground to escape the haunting of the Lady Lunafreya.

Without the daemons the tunnels under Altissia might have been beautiful, the same way that everything in the city is beautiful (by which at this point Ardyn means: uselessly). They are vast and tall, echoing of running water from underground canals, lit by the soft glow of phosphorescent algae and elemancy stones. With the daemons they are no less beautiful, but they become twisted and shadowed, uncompromisingly deep. The daemons that jump out of them look like wraiths and revenants, dripping sludge and smelling of mildew.

There are too many to completely cleanse the first night, or the second; or the fifth.

Between collapsing on the third night and waking up being carried on Noctis' back on the fourth night, Ardyn has a particularly inane revelation.

"I don't think you would have been able to fish up any daemons after all," Ardyn comments idly, twirling a strand of Noctis' hair. Noctis grunts in acknowledgement but doesn't say anything else, which isn't terribly much fun, but Ardyn can understand why Noctis doesn't want to be particularly talkative.

The infected, after all, are the waterlogged corpses, the ones that couldn't escape Leviathan's wrath, the ones that Noctis promised to protect but couldn't. The daemons here couldn't be fished up because don't know how to swim. They only know how to drown.

The problem is, Altissia is perhaps the only place in all the world where Noctis has more ghosts than him. Or it is not a problem, per say, because problem implies that it hinders their progress, implies that Ardyn, given the choice, would take any of it back. He wouldn't. Couldn't, because that would begin unraveling a thread which would end with him completely undone. But it is something that makes Noctis more quiet and withdrawn, makes the nights pass slow and the days pass long.

Ardyn admits to himself, he has a bad habit of trying to correct things through questionable means.

If he were trying to be kind, he would tour the cracked streets of Altissia, cloaked in the illusions of Noctis's family and his friends. He would layer the city with new memories, so thick that Noctis would hardly know there'd been anything else there at all. If he were trying to be cruel, there would be no illusions, and he would lead them both into the broken buildings, would let the golden light spill through the hotel window as he pulled the king onto the dusted bed.

He does none of these things.

It’s Noctis who pulls him under broken bridges and presses him against crumbled walls. It's Noctis who murmurs, "sorry, sorry" as he breathes kisses against Ardyn's throat. Ardyn bares his neck reflexively, thinking of feral creatures and putting them down. His thoughts run too-hot and too-slow, and he presses his hands to Noctis' chest, breathes in the salt of the sea.

"Why, now, if you apologize for this, you might just hurt my feelings."

Ardyn nudges Noctis away with his fingertips, grin slashed across his mouth and tone light upon his words. He means for it to come out like a joke. He may have messed up the execution though, for Noctis pulls back to look at him, brows furrowed and deep. Ardyn holds his gaze, refusing to look away.

"Then I won't be sorry," Noctis declares with solemn conviction, and leans forward to catch him on the mouth.

Noctis' finger catch has his clothes and the Ring of the Lucii burns impressions onto his skin. They tumble to the ground and Noctis lands, framing Ardyn with his arms, and Ardyn laughs without meaning to, coughs black bile when he laughs too much. It hurts and it aches and he feels more alive than he has in lifetimes, feels like any moment he’ll finally shudder out of his body and die. We are not made to last, Ardyn means to murmur, but Noctis' hands steal his breath and Noctis' mouth steals his words.

Ardyn thinks, and it is not a bitter thought: He is just lonely. He has lost so much and failed so much, he is only looking for a little thing left to save. And maybe this makes him a little less lonely, makes him feel a little bit saved.

"What am I to you?" Ardyn asks when he finally finds his voice, and it is the same question Noctis asked of him long ago, the same thousand griefs laid out before them like landmines.

"You are the thing of legends," Noctis breathes in answer, hot breath on his skin. "You are why legends come to be." And there is a part of Ardyn that will always be small and spiteful, that doesn't merely want to be a legend, that wants to be the greatest thing Noctis will ever lose.

How it ends is with a single phrase.

On a night like any other, Lunafreya's journal tells them, This one will be the last.

Ardyn's instinctive reaction is to accuse the journal of lying, which if fairly ridiculous because he has not stooped to arguing with inanimate objects; and in any case it's not a point he would want to argue. But it seems intangible and impossible, to quote the phrase too good to be true, if he thought it something other than what was rightfully and long past due.

Noctis seems doubtful as well at the news, though for reasons of his own. He hesitates, weight grounded in the heels of his feet as he stares down at the journal with trepidation, then turns to stare back down the twisted tunnels that lead to the innermost chamber below Altissia. Finally, he turns to stare at Ardyn.

"It feels like the air is being condensed too much to even breathe." Noctis mutters, palm digging into his chest. "…I've only felt like this in the presence of an Astral." It is something of an optical illusion. The deepest part of these tunnels have intricately engraved pillars which tower over them. They seem to dwarf the other man, threatening to crush them. Ardyn breaths in, chest aching and nerves shutter-sparked, and it is not so very different from usual. The mildew in the air makes his throat itch, the high vaulted walls of the tunnels make him almost claustrophobic. It's something he'll have to take Noctis' word for.

"That simply must mean we are near Leviathan's corpse--" Ardyn responds, following after Noctis as he turns the bend. And stops. She rises into view, back stooped against the ceiling, her silver scales drenched in black gore and the webbing of her fins torn and mangled. "--or that she never died at all."

Leviathan shrieks, dark liquid seeping from her eyes, and Ardyn finds himself surprised despite himself. He hadn't even thought of the possibility that the Astrals could be infected with the Starscourge.

Noctis' breath hitches, an aborted sound hissing past his teeth, and he pulls back reflexively, running back into Ardyn's chest. Unconsciously, Ardyn brings his hand up to shield Noctis' eyes, unbalanced from the sudden weight and running back into the wall.

Vile wretches! Accursed filth! Leviathan screeches. You dare to cast your dregs in my realm?! She's all coils and tension, angry that they've stumbled across the safe hold where she's come to lick her wounds, though these aren't the sort of wounds you can heal.

"No time for reminiscing," Ardyn grunts as he pushes Noctis to the side, using the leverage to roll himself away from the coming strike. Noctis finds his feet, summoning his Armiger in a flash of broken shards. Ardyn throws up a shield for protection as she bears down, shattering the ground below them in her wake.

From there it is a choreography, the steps familiar even if they've never performed this particular dance.

Ardyn lobs a Thundaga up high and Noctis warps forth in the distraction. Noctis gets in a score of hits before Leviathan reels up again, shrieking, skipping backwards to hook the crook of his fingers onto Ardyn's arm and performing a series of sidesteps to phase them both out of the danger. They push away from each other, hand to hand, and Noctis catches Ardyn's eyes, bright and frenzied, before he flits away.

Leviathan hurtles towards them, mouth agape, scourge dripping from her teeth. The Blizzaga that Ardyn hurls starbursts in her open jaws and spreads as hoar frost cracking over her scales. It gives Ardyn a moment to breathe as Noctis hurtles forward, trident raised in his hand, tear tracks freezing to his cheeks. Noctis drives the trident into Leviathan's throat-- then a sword-- then a lance-- then a dagger- leaving them embedded in her flesh, only to summon them in to his hand again as he continues his assault. The amalgamation of sludge and ice on Leviathan's cheek splinters then cracks, and she shrieks, tail whipping, catching Noctis on the side and throwing him into the far pillar. The intricate carvings crack and crumble, crashing to the ground around him.

Noctis staggers to his feet, too slow, Leviathan whipping off the weapons shallowly embedded in her scales and throwing the pointed blades flying straight back at his stooped form. Ardyn does a stuttered warp forward, breath catching in his throat as he phases into being before Noctis. The Armiger weapons shatter in a blaze of light just before they impale him, warded by the same magic that prevents him from wielding them.

The trident reforms in Noctis's hand, and this is the first misstep of the dance: Noctis hesitates.

Leviathan is hurtling forward once again, mindless in her pain and fury. Ardyn is staring down at Noctis, back turned to her, blocking her view. Noctis should use the opportunity to drive the trident through Ardyn's chest and catch Leviathan in the soft underpart of her mouth. For Ardyn it'd hurt but it'd heal and there isn't any reason not to, but just for a fraction of a moment Noctis hesitates.

It is too long.

Ardyn crashes into the wall from the force of Leviathan's charge. In the white out of pain, he hears a sickening crunch, and then silence interspersed with Leviathan's hisses and the drip of scourge onto the floor. When he blinks the sparks out his eyes he sees Noctis sprawled out a distance away, limbs twisted in awkward angles and blood pooling around his form. Lunafreya's journal lays open in front of him, blackened and torn.

This is the second misstep: Noctis does not get back up.

It should take no more than a second for the magic to spark over Noctis' broken limbs, for the bones to start realigning, but the breaths pass like lifetimes and the lifetimes break down into memories and the memory is a poignant thought, a cutting feeling. I am alone once again.

In the white static of his head, the revelation could only be labeled one thing. Unacceptable. Ardyn staggers to his feet, repeating it for Leviathan: "This is unacceptable."

He steps forward heavily, past Noctis' body, red aura flashing and kicking up and unworldly wind. The Armiger flashes into being around him in a blazing swirl, flickering in and out of existence. In the flurry the journals pages whip frantically through the words-- help her-- Save her-- Free Her-- KILL HER-- but he does not even glance at it.

"If I was as I once was," Ardyn whispers, dangerously calm, eyes trained on Leviathan's towering form. "I would leave you here to rot."

Ardyn raises a hand and drives the katana through her tail through sheer intent, the trident through her gossamer fin. She screams, black blood welling from her wounds and dripping where Noctis had struck her. "I would let the world stagnate and fester and relish in the misery that we all would share."

He rips the Starscourge from her flesh, digs it out of her bones, flays it from her skin, and tells her, very gently: "How fortunate for you, that I am not as I once was."

Her voice is garbled shrieks, not even words. She thrashes where she is pinned, long body careening against the walls and sending them crashing to the floor. Entire chunks of the wall crack and splinter, spider webbing across the ceiling after Leviathan has ceased in her struggles. Ardyn's knees buckle under him, and he stares at where Noctis has fallen because his body is too heavy to move. It is difficult to see in the dust and falling wreckage of the collapsing chamber, but he can almost imagine that sparks have begun sputtering weakly along Noctis' limbs, setting them back together like they're restringing a marionette.

Ardyn mouths something to Noctis, but there is not enough substance in it to form into words. In any case it is personal; it is not for the other to hear.

Ardyn wakes up to ice crusting his hair, lightning crackling over his tongue. The remains of Leviathan's altar raise in jagged peaks around them, a shield and a cage simultaneously. The sun is setting in the distance, liquid amber spilled across the sea where the sun touches in the horizon. Perhaps this is irony or karmic justice at play. There is no scourge remaining in all the land but for him, and he is wary of the darkness.

"I think you broke Altissia," Noctis coughs, a sticky sound that gets caught in his chest and nests in his throat. He's half buried in rubble but really not that far off. He's within reaching distance, if Ardyn could just manage to lift his arm.

"I think you broke yourself," Ardyn laughs, the sun fever warm on his skin while Noctis' body radiates a complete absence of heat. It is a laugh that is not particularly anything- not happy nor sad nor hysterical - just an exhalation of breath. Between the two of them and the broken city, Ardyn has run out of things he has the potential of healing.

"What about you?" Noctis asks, and Ardyn would hold that Noctis has always been the king of prophecy, has always held the potential of saving. But this would be untruthful. What Noctis is and what he has become has nothing to do with any prophecies at all.

People, Ardyn thinks, and the distance between them, and drags his arm across the floor to catch Noctis' hands. "You could break me too," Ardyn suggests, "to make it fair." The ring gleams dim and dull on Noctis's broken hand, more unassuming than it has a right be. Noctis frowns, but it is out of confusion rather than reluctance. He doesn't pull his hands away.

"The Ring of the Lucii," Ardyn clarifies,"was made to harness the Crystal's power. The Crystal held the light to destroy the Starscourge." Ardyn hums without meaning to, matching resonance with the newest shadow in his head. "Prior the Starscourge had simply been too vague of a target, too scattered and dispersed. I imagine it's not too much of an issue anymore."

"But…" Noctis murmurs, soft and dragging. It's only now that he starts to tug his hand away. "It doesn't respond to either of us." Ardyn closes his eyes and huffs. "It doesn't respond to either of us alone."

Ardyn doesn't need to open his eyes to see the flicker of understanding dawn in Noctis' eyes. But that is a bit misleading, implies that Noctis never before this moment thought of a resolution like this. It has been ever since the Crystal's last power was absorbed into the ring. Ever since Shiva turned them away at her door. Ever since the star was born and the Astrals came to be and prophecies began to be told. It was always going to end like this.

"Do you still want to kill me?" Ardyn asks, murmuring healing incantations as he slips the ring from Noctis's finger and turns Noctis' hand over to place it in his open palm. The ring burned away the scourge last time at Zegnautus Keep, and perhaps a little bit of his soul. It'll be more than just a little this time.

Noctis' eyes are dark and unreadable as he holds the ring in his hand, something that's not quite a frown on his face. They lay sprawled out beside each other, eye to eye, and the sun casts his face into shadows. "Do you still want to die?" Noctis asks in return. The look in his eye is a great imitation of regret, and there is a part of Ardyn which would fool himself to think that Noctis, too, is not as he once was.

Ardyn tucks his tongue around his response, unwilling to voice it all thoughtlessly. There is a yes and there is a sorry, and there is a confession. More than you'll ever know. But maybe Noctis does know some of it, as he holds Ardyn's weathered hand in his own, lying on the broken alter where in another lifetime he would have been wed.

Do you still want to die?

Ardyn bends his forehead so they're touching. He has grown clumsy with honesty, but this deserves at least that. Because this is a promise being kept. This is a vow, the first and the last and the best.

As Noctis slips the ring over his finger, he whispers, "I do".

(Dying, in the end, is more wonderful than he thought it'd be.)