Work Text:
Optional Listening: Iridescent (Album Version) – Linkin Park
Noctis can't be sure how long he's been here, seeing as how the intensity of the blueish swirls of light never changes and his phone super doesn't work here. He'd taken his sweet time mourning Luna, fretting over Ignis, and lamenting his own fate, but crying gets tiring after a while and his own company just really isn't all that entertaining especially when he can't even sleep. Well, he can do something. It's not quite sleep though, a state of unaware awareness that does nothing but pass more nebulous time. He can admit it to himself. Noctis Lucis Caelum, King of Light, Chosen Sacrifice of the Astrals is bored.
Bored enough to be way too close to the ridiculous, floating, metal skyscraper called Bahamut.
He just sort of floated around. Not around in circles, just... Around. Once he had finished rumbling Noctis' bones right out of him with his awesome news about how Noctis was supposed to die for some reason he really, really didn't get, the Draconian had gone dormant. The Astral's mask-like visor was closed, wild sword wings held slack and close to his body, crazy metal tail lax and hanging past his giant sabatons, and arms wrapped around his pauldrons. He hadn't moved an inch since, and that was kinda saying a lot for something a few dozen stories tall. The only thing he did was breathe, very slowly and deeply, and Noctis sort of hated that he found the white noise calming. He also didn't get why Bahamut needed to breathe at all, why he needed to breathe for that matter, where exactly all this air was coming from, or why the air that shouldn't have been there to breathe was all the same temperature regardless of how close he got to the Astral. Once he had gotten over how ridiculously huge he was Noct had to admit.
Bahamut is boring.
“Seriously? This is all you've done for 2000 years?”
Oh. Whoops. That he's certain he could totally see inside the huge blue eye that's focused on him with laser precision if the light were just a bit brighter is not in the least bit unsettling. Nope. The giant eye has a twin now and all they do is blink at him oh, so slowly. Well, not quite. The unsettling is wearing off and now Noctis is grudgingly fascinated. He watches one eye (they're really far apart), and it's like seeing a giant diagram come to life. The eye focuses and refocuses on him and every adjustment shifts the iris and the shape of the pupil in a way the prince had only ever been able to see in his own eyes in the mirror. He can watch every fiber move. It's bizarre. Bahamut blinks again, ever so sluggishly, and his gaze loses focus as his massive head turns away. Noctis is confused at why all the cobalt armor doesn't make any more sound than feathers rustling against one another, but he's grateful all the same. The Astral takes a very deep breath, and sighs through his nose.
Redaction: Bahamut is awesome, and in the dictionary sense of the term.
“Has the Chosen discovered something to do here?” Huh. Smartass.
“No, the Chosen has not. This is boring,” he says while his bones vibrate. He's sure if the physics inside the Crystal were anything close to outside it he wouldn't have eardrums anymore.
“That it is,” and when Noctis' brain stops rattling inside his skull it informs him that the Astral has been in this blue hell for 2000 years, alone, with nothing to do but float. Well, if that just isn't depressing.
“So, I have a question.”
“This one will answer.” Slow blink.
“Just like that? Anything I ask.”
“As well as this one is able.” Huh. Better not waste the opportunity then. Specs would be disappointed. Noctis furrows his brow and vomits the first thing that comes to mind.
“Okay, so is the armor part of you, or just armor, or what exactly?” Specs will definitely be disappointed. All that potential. Wasted.
“There is no difference.”
“You're telling me that you could take this off if you wanted?”
It takes so long for the Draconian to respond that Noctis thinks he's not going to answer and rolls his eyes. When he does answer, its to so slowly, so painstakingly move his gauntleted hands off his shoulders and shift Noct's form further away. It makes the prince feel infinitely fragile, and he imagines that's not too terribly far from the truth. Noct is about to protest and demand his answer, but Bahamut is still moving and... oh. Huh. Newly unsettling. Great.
The Astral's helm hovers around his knees, safely far from Noctis. This is beyond his imagination. It's like looking into a mirror except nothing like it. The face looking down at him is expressionless and ageless and could be his brother. A huge, immortal, brother with much longer hair and a sharper jaw and less sharp nose. The mouth is a bit wider than his own, but the jaw is just as bare. Horns emerge through the black hair on the crown of his head, less dark than the matted strands and remarkably like the ones on his helm, just a touch smaller. He can just make out a delicately pointed ear poking out from the Astral's flattened locks that are equally dark as his own. The more he looks, the more differences he can find, but they don't make them look less related. The incongruity only makes the Draconian look less human. There's a fine shimmer of an indeterminate color dusting his cheekbones, and Noctis can only just tell that the shape of his jaw is wrong for dull, human teeth. When Bahamut opens his mouth to speak Noctis isn't surprised that they show past his pale, pink lips, peroxide white but somewhere between human and possibly canine dentition. Ignis would know. This seems odd, for a dragon, but then again he isn't really a dragon either. Well, not that anyone alive has ever seen a dragon in anything other than ancient paintings.
“Does this satisfy the Chosen's question?”
“Yes, it does. Partly,” the Astral's head actually tilts to one side. “What about the tail? Is that you in there, or is it like the crazy sword wings?” Bahamut blinks for what Noctis imagines is a minute but could have been a few hours. It occurs to him that maybe the Astral really doesn't know how to answer without taking off more armor. At that, he watches the Draconian's great blue gaze slide to one side. Huh.
“That question is... Difficult.”
“Okay, fine. I'll break it down a bit. Do you have an actual tail under the armor?”
“Yes,” and that raises just so many more questions. Noctis gets a notion and changes the second part of the question.
“Did you at some point have actual wings?”
Oh. Now it's getting really interesting. Bahamut blinks rather hard at that question and Noct thinks maybe that was actually a flinch. Touchy subject. The giant sighs. The answer comes out with more inflection and volume than Noctis has come to expect. The Astral had been whispering all this time. The prince is partially grateful, a little bit terrified, and starting to wonder how Nifflheim Syndrome works.
“The Chosen asks questions he knows the answers to.”
Now Noctis just feels bad. It doesn't really make sense especially since the Skyscraper kinda ruined everything for him. He's not sure what to say now. He has all the time in the world to think of something. He's notorious for being belligerently unobservant, but its really easy to read someone when they're so huge. There's a lot of hurt there, and Noct finds he doesn't want to prod at it anymore. He lets himself float around until he falls back into dormant half-sleep. Bahamut watches him for a while and then folds himself back up again, tail wrapped a full revolution around one armored leg. He doesn't put the helm back on.
It takes Noctis an embarrassingly long time, which is exactly two more conversations, to realize that Bahamut is removing a piece of armor between each little chat. The prince hasn't asked or prompted him, but now he can see that all of the Draconian's fingers and toes end in claws even if the ones on his very far away toes are duller by far. Noct isn't sure how the Astral fits the armor pieces over them, but he did say that the armor was more or less part of him. Noctis expected the claws to be black, maybe even the same pearlescent sheen on his cheekbones, but they're not. The prince only knows what to call it from overhearing girls in high school yammering on about nail salons. Altissian tips. Bahamut's claws are a deep pink from crescent to quick, then the same startling white as his teeth around the thick, catlike curve of them all the way to their very sharp ends. They're even glossy like Ignis' sometimes are after he takes particular care of them. He tried to do the same to Noctis once, but he couldn't stay awake for it. He'd never admitted to Ignis that he'd kind of liked it. Not for the manicure, just the attention. Noctis never allowed it again, but because he was too mad at himself for sleeping through it. Specs would tut at his ragged fingernails and sigh at his cuticles every time they had some worthless royal function to attend. Should have tossed Prompto at him. The gunner was his best friend, but the nail chewing was sorta gross. Prompto didn't manage to break the habit until after he accidentally stuck his fingers in his mouth when he had some mystery blood on his hands.
Noctis misses them desperately.
The Skyscraper takes that moment to yawn, and man that is a lot of teeth. Whatever for is anyone's guess, but there's no one else here to offer an opinion. Bahamut goes back to idly untangling his hair with his own claws, 2000 years of helmet hair to work through. The prince watches the dragon work until he gets his claws stuck in a particularly resilient knot. He lets himself laugh, but turns around anyway.
Noctis is bored again. Bahamut is boring again. He considers masturbation, but the damn Astral would watch and it's not like there's any privacy to be had. The urge is just as absent as any other anyway. Noct doesn't want to find out that it won't work. The flash of morbid curiosity that strikes is pure electricity.
“Do Astrals have sex?” Slowest. Blink. Ever.
“Okay, can Astrals have sex? Because Shiva has breasts in the paintings, but Titan sure didn't have a penis, and why would Shiva need breasts anyway?” Noctis really doesn't expect an answer for this one. He just lets his thoughts run until the Draconian's making some sort of sound he hasn't before. That's fun. He's laughing. It doesn't sound much like laughter, but that is definitely a smile. Too many teeth in it and the laughter sounds like Eos' largest rock tumbler, but it's there. Noctis is less convinced all the time that the Astrals are so untouchable.
“Our forms are not set.”
“You mean that you can change how you look.”
“Yes.”
“So you chose to look like a blue giant made of swords.”
“This is the form this one inhabited upon entering the Crystal.”
“You're stuck like this while you're in here?”
“Yes.”
Most of Bahamut's armor is missing by now, no longer floating idly but just gone. He's wearing clothes underneath, but the clothes look somewhere between modern clothing and ancient. Wrappings around his hands and feet made of something that looks like silk, but no socks or gloves. Smooth, skintight leggings under his now missing greaves, and a matching shirt with capped sleeves, all black covering tight musculature that only seems off if Noctis stares too long. His pale arms are mostly bare other than the wrappings he seems content to leave on and the occasional pearlescent sheen. The cobalt blue cuirass is gone, but the deep chestnut straps of a harness made out of some sort of leather with impossibly intricate tooling cross his chest above the rich, buttery yellow ribbing of his plackart. Noctis takes a split second to thank Gladio for all those seemingly useless lessons on outdated military technology. He can't see it now, but he knows that the harness holds Bahamut's impossible bladed wings to his back. The Draconian can maneuver and control them like they're made of flesh and bone, even the swords that only seem attached by magnetism or magic, but they're definitely not part of his body. The only parallel Noctis' mind provides is that they're a prosthesis and he doesn't fight himself anymore when that makes him sad. The fact that the wings, plackart, and cuisses with the attached tailpiece are the last pieces of armor remaining only reinforces that theory.
“Wait, so that means Astrals do have sex?” the rock tumbler turns a few more times.
“Of course.”
“I don't follow.”
“The mortal children of Eos were made in the image of the gods,” Hmm. Oh.
“You mean the children of Eos are the children of the gods,” Noctis feels like his eyes are going to pop right out of his head, but Bahamut just hums. This is a lot, but he can't stop now.
“But what about Ifrit? Didn't he rule Solheim? Were those people his decendants?”
“Not all.”
“So humans are all just the Astrals children?”
“Not only humans.”
“All mortals?”
“Not all,” he stops and his head turns to the side a bit. He's not looking at Noctis anymore. The prince is more confused than ever, but this kind of information is worth the headache.
“Who were yours? Your children?” Oh. No. He's not sure he wants to know anymore. The Draconian's eyes are glossy and angry. Noctis knows he has nothing to fear from the giant, but that doesn't stop the primal dread clenching his guts.
“The dragons.” Damn. That road ended eons ago. Noctis feels a little slow and a little callous, but he asks anyway.
“Any others?”
“The Chosen asks questions he knows the answers to.”
It's a while until Bahamut takes off the cuisses and plackart. Noctis watches and wonders if he's having this much trouble with it because it's that awkward or if he doesn't actually know how to take them off. Noct doesn't expect the wing harness to ever be removed. The tail isn't what he expects. He's not really sure what he expected. It's nearly the same deep blue as his armor on the top and as scaled and segmented as the armor. The underside isn't yellow though. It's pink. Not crazy florescent pink, but a deep blush the same color as the beds under his claws. Now Noctis wonders exactly where and how those scales go under his clothing, but maybe that's just going to have to remain a mystery, because the prince really rather doesn't want to know exactly what could possibly be going on with the dragon's equipment. Bahamut flicks his impossibly long tail back and forth a few times, and the end whips about hard enough to whistle, more flexible than Noctis imagined. The dragon looks up and blinks slowly at the prince.
“So, why would Ifrit create the Starscourge?”
“He did not,” Bahamut grinds that out with feeling. Noctis feels like this shouldn't be news. “The Scourge comes from the stars. Starscourge,” and now Noctis feels like someone has been lying to him. He really hates being lied to, but puts the brakes on the thoughts that bitterness brings. He fishes through what knowledge he remembers from high school, Luna, the Cosmogony, and whatever random quips Specs fired off at him in the past, but he still feels like he's missed something really obvious. Oh, duh.
“The meteor.”
“Yes.”
“But Titan caught the meteor.”
“Not in entirety.”
“What would be on a meteor that would kill people?”
“The afflicted do not die.”
“Wait, they don't?”
“The Chosen is familiar with daemons?”
“Why don't I already know all of this crap?”
“Somnus,” Hah?
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Somnus Lucis Caelum. Founder King. Brother to the Accursed Usurper.”
“What could the Mystic have to do with people not knowing all this stuff?”
“The Accursed was too tainted with the Starscourge to be allowed to pass into the soul of our star.”
“Why not? You never said.”
“You would have us allow our star's corruption?”
“I don't understand how one guy can be so messed up that he can't be allowed to die.”
“The Scourge is a parasite. We Astrals are bound to protect our star. The sickness seeks itself and consumes to replicate. If allowed to enter the Astral Realm, the parasite would feed and replicate and draw together to feed on the very soul of our star. This cannot be allowed.”
“Wait, so it's not Ardyn? It's the crap in him?”
“Yes.”
“What... What would happen if that happened? What would happen to Eos if the Starscourge got into the Astral Realm?”
“You have witnessed this.”
“What? No I haven't! That's crazy...”
The image pops into the fore of Noctis' mind unbidden, unwelcome, and suddenly oh, so fucking terrifying.
Lucis had been using the burning, charred, infected corpse of another world to make electricity.
“You still haven't explained why I have to die.”
“The Scourge the Accursed carries must be destroyed after his mortal form, yet before he can enter the Astral Realm his mortality must be restored.”
“Okay, and then?”
“This can only be achieved in this space.”
“Where are we really?”
“The soul of our star.”
“But you said Ardyn can't come here.”
“This is... Not precisely there.”
“So... Close enough for government work?”
“This one does not follow.”
“Well, I mean I am the Chosen King and all.”
The rock tumbler turns for a good while.
“So, if I'm still alive and in my mortal body, how am I here?” Noctis scratches at his jaw and swears there's a lot more hair there than he remembers. He feels like he's running out of time.
“The Ring of the Lucii grants the King the power of the Crystal to protect the soul of our star.”
“You're saying its the ring that allows me to be here?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do I have to die? Can't I just wear the ring and..”
“If only it were so, Chosen King. The accumulated power of the Lucii contained in the Ring is weapon against the Accursed. The accumulated power of Reflection, of our star, is weapon against the Starscourge. The wielder of the Ring must pass between to destroy the Scourge, then call upon the Lucii in the between to destroy the Accursed's taint.”
“But I'm here now. Why do I have to die to get back here?”
“Not here. This is not the right place.”
“Where is the right place?”
“The true entrance to the promised land lies in the heart of Lucis at the foot of the throne.”
“Damn. What do you mean by 'pass between'?”
“The power of Reflection is released with a sacrifice. The Holy light that restores the dawn.”
“So Ifrit wasn't evil?”
“No. He was heartbroken.”
“Then why did all of you fight the Astral War? Why is there a giant canyon you cut through the middle of Lucis?”
“He was mad with grief.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Have I not said?”
“I can't say that you did.”
“His children murdered each other.”
“... Why?”
“Avarice.”
“I don't understand. Everyone gets taught that Solheim fought Ifrit himself.”
“They did, but not before they killed their brothers and sisters.”
“But wasn't the Solheim empire the entire human world then?”
“Yes, tiny King.”
“Then who did they kill?”
“Was I not clear before?”
“Maybe? I'm still confused.”
“The Chosen asks...”
“I need to understand this. It's important.”
“Why?”
“You're crying.”
“Ah.”
“Who?”
“The dragons.”
“But you said they were your...”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Oh, fuck.
There's no more talking after that. Noctis idly scratches at his beard with one hand and his greasy, limp hair with the other. Bahamut has been very slowly and steadily replacing pieces of armor. Noct isn't sure where the pieces are coming from, and he certainly doesn't remember there being quite so many, but the Draconian handles him as if he's precious when he moves him away. Noctis lets the slow, steady breathing calm what he recognizes as the end of the road. Time to go. Time to die.
Noctis is at peace with it as he can be. He finds some small measure of comfort in the knowing. The absolute surety of his fate is all he has for now. He wonders how long its been, if any of the people he knew still live. He's not sure hope is worth the effort now.
He loves them desperately.
“Tiny king, it is time. The Ring waxes full,” the dragon rumbles above him, helm under one immense arm, intricate cobalt plates shifting over him with a sound that Noctis imagines feathers sound like rustling against one another. The Draconian's gaze, the whole of Eos' endless sky, rests on Noctis. Bahamut blinks, smooth and slow. Noctis answers with the same.
They wait for a time, undefined and immeasurable. Bahamut's gauntlet scoops Noctis up and forward, but his eyes are focused on his distant feet.
“Tiny King, there may yet be a way.”
When the King of Lucis opens his cobalt eyes on Angelguard, the grin on his face is so wide it could light up the world.