[ Again, it's her expression that answers the question first before Yuuri herself does. Her frown softens a little and becomes just the faintest hint of a smile. Was he well, he asks and she thinks of the wonderful, idiot man she called her father surrounded by the family who'd decided they wanted him and weren't going to take no for an answer.
Was he well? ]
He was. The last I saw of him before I came here, he was happy. In fact, I, um--
[ She laughs and there's a little more warmth to it now, even under the embarrassment. ]
When I saw you on the beach, I was almost hoping that's who you were. It's selfish of me to want that, I know -- he's better off at home with everyone else, where he belongs but I... I miss him. I miss all of them very much.
[This time, there's no mistaking the way he reacts - the stick he's still toying with slides into the growing fire, Izunia's fingers going slack in uncontrolled relief.
Not even just well. Happy. Oh, Crystal and god both, a word he never thought he might hear in regards to his brother again.
He pulls his hand back, almost as an afterthought, as though to pretend that he had meant to drop the stick into the fire all along. These hands, in his brother's clothes - ]
There's nothing wrong with missing a person you might not ever see again.
[Happy. Oh, Astrals. Surely he does not deserve to hear such news.]
If he has truly found a home, after everything we've been through - [Let her think that that is a commonality of being Ardyn, instead of the other.] - then I am truly grateful to you, Miss Wakasa.
And it's that, somehow, among everything else that hits Yuuri in a way that feels well and truly wrong. All these disparate details have confused her, sure. And his reaction seems somehow disproportionate to her answer. But it's not until he says Miss Wakasa that her feelings coalesce into suspicion. The Ardyn she knows -- or at least, the man who'd woken up on the Fantasy Sweet, still thinking he was the Healer king -- had never once called her Miss Wakasa.
Because when he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum, he hadn't wanted that distance, had he? She's so sure she'd heard him say something like that -- that he didn't want Lucians to look at him and see a king first and a healer second, for fear they'd hesitate in approaching for his help. So she doesn't think that, even in an alien world with a stranger who knew him inside out, that he would default to formalities like that.
Maybe it's presumptuous of her, to assume she knows this man because he has Ardyn's name and face. But something is wrong here, and Yuuri spent eight weeks surviving by the skin of her teeth by sniffing out lies and contradictions. And this... this is suspicious, if nothing else. ]
... when you say everything you've been through... what do you mean exactly? [ she doesn't mean it to have the sting of an accusation, but when she says it so slowly and with a look like that on her face, it would be hard pressed to sound like anything but. ] Some of the things I know and some of the things you're saying... they don't match up. I wonder if we're getting our wires crossed somewhere.
[And Izunia was a king, but never a healer at all. Ardyn's healing magic was one of the only things that wasn't shared between them. It was the only thing he hadn't been able to imitate and had to excuse away -
That part of myself died with my brother which was, in its own way, true.
And now the girl is suspicious and hell, he hasn't had to make up similar excuses in centuries, he's distinctly out of practice.
At least he can manage a legitimate far-away, doesn't-really-want-to-talk-about-it look, even while his heart is still trying to scream its way out of his chest.]
The war, the plague, everything Izunia did... I imagine you can guess well enough. Though for all I know it was different for your Ardyn.
[ None of this is coming together in a way that makes sense. If there was a war and a plague but Ardyn is still himself and sane, then that must mean Izunia was the healer. But if Izunia was the healer then it doesn't make sense for him to have died -- if he was the one taking in the Starscourge then surely it would've been Izunia who became the Accursed Immortal. Maybe the strain was too great for him in a way it hadn't been for Ardyn and it had killed him... but no, that doesn't seem right either. Because it was never that Ardyn had survived what he'd become. He had simply been refused the right to die. ]
What... was it Izunia did, exactly?
[ Still suspicious. Still just barely toeing the line of an outright accusation of lies. ]
[Almost everything he's told her is the truth - almost everything. Just, a very different version of the truth than the one Ardyn himself would have told her.]
He saw a monster with his brother's face, and did everything he could to destroy it.
[...Would Ardyn have tried to laugh it off? Always so flippant -
Izunia tries, but there is still an undercurrent of miserable regret.]
Blades, fire, firing squad, sun exposure... I imagine you get the idea. Anything that could kill a daemon.
[ And there's the confusion again. Because this is starting to sound like the story she knows but it doesn't make sense. It can't make sense if that all still happened but Ardyn is here to tell the story.
... unless. Not unless... ]
But it didn't work, did it? None of it did. He couldn't be killed anymore because they wouldn't just let him die.
[ "Izunia is a dead man". A dead man who made a terrible, terrible mistake, who spent the rest of his life miserably trying to atone for it. ]
And when he wouldn't die... what did they do with him then?
Izunia was not the Chosen King, after all. And no power short of that could destroy what the gods called 'Accursed.'
[For his mistake, the gods demanded not only Izunia's soul, but the souls of all his descendants, onward and onward, until a boy named Noctis became the dawn.]
'Seal the daemon in Angelgard' - one of Izunia's advisors, I no longer remember which, even if the words are burned in my memory. So that was exactly what they did.
[ When Ardyn had talked of his brother, Yuuri had always pictured something like -- something a little more like Noctis. Maybe his face would've been more severe, his hair messier and that same ridiculous shade of purple or red or whatever it felt like being when the light hit it. Close enough to tell they were brothers, but not exactly a mirror image.
Maybe that's why it's taken her so long. Because if she'd known what face to look for, the pieces would've fallen into places more gradually but far quicker. Now, though, it all comes clattering together in one great rush.
She's a fool. It had never entered into her mind that he would arrive here -- he occupies the same space of her mind that Megu-nee does. Gone, not forgotten, but still gone and forever out of reach and there's nothing any of them can do about it. But what the hell does a world like this care for people who are supposed to be dead and gone?
And he is dead and gone. He has been for nearly two thousand years, not by any plague or scourge but by the simple passage of time, because this man isn't the Accursed Immortal he's-- ]
[And perhaps in another time, he would have been - still twins, even, but not so utterly the same. Not a man who lived out the greater part of his life under his brother's name, matching his fashions and mannerisms until it was impossible to tell where Izunia ended and 'Ardyn' began. Until he could barely remember his own preferences for how to act and what to wear -
The flinch at his name is revealing and obvious, to the point that even answering the question is a formality.]
I should count myself lucky that there was no one in the court who really knew Ardyn well enough to tell, if you've figured it out this quickly.
[He doesn't know how to feel. It is the first time he has been - the first time Izunia's name has been spoken in so many years. He almost wants to thank her, for seeing through it, for allowing him to take the cover off for the first time in so many long years.
Perhaps that's why fate has brought him here. A final chance to reveal all his secrets, a last will to the light of morning that parts the endless, deceiving night.]
I haven't thought of myself that way in very, very many years.
[ She'd made idle jokes to Ardyn, to the others, about what she'd do if she ever came face to face with any of the troublemakers from their worlds. She'd even said to Ardyn, hadn't she, with a grin on her face that she'd have words with Izunia should he ever be misfortunate enough to meet her. And now he's actually here, she doesn't know what to say. ]
... I... I don't...
[ I don't understand, she wants to say because there's so much here that makes no sense. He'd kept up the act this entire time and she'd been so fooled. They'd been happy to banish and kill him without any sort of cover up in the history she knows so why all the pretense, here?
And then under all the confusion and all the scattering of her thoughts, something surfaces and it's so bitter and angry that she can't even filter it before it comes out of her mouth. ]
Everything-- you already took everything else-- so you took his name, too?
[Those words - they're the deepest truth of his soul, spoken with a hint of underlying anger that's almost a more convincing Ardyn impression than anything he's done so far.]
Izunia was a fool who struck down his own brother in a moment of fear - oh, there were the executions, but the hand on the first blade was mine, and it was gripped in a panic when I saw him in the grip of the Scourge. I didn't ask questions, didn't ask if he had it under control - I only acted, to my eternal regret.
[The one time he didn't think things through.]
Ardyn was the one who deserved to be remembered, as king, as voice of the Crystal, as the Founder of Lucis. So I killed 'Izunia' myself to ensure that history, at least, gave my brother the credit he deserved.
[ She can't decide which is worse. The idea of him being forgotten and just thrown away like trash of course is awful. But there's something almost perverse about the idea of Izunia picking his name off his corpse like a vulture picking carrion and living that lie for the rest of his life. There would be children, she realizes with a start, who would grow up thinking that their father was Ardyn Lucis Caelum and would never have reason to believe that the man they loved was a liar.
She feels sick. ]
Don't you dare talk about what he deserved. As if you have any right--!
[ She's so angry that she's blindsided by it almost and she has to scramble to her feet so she can do something. She's filled with directionless fury and it has nowhere to go because as angry as she is, the logical part of her knows she can't put all the blame on Izunia, as convenient a scapegoat he is.
But it certainly feels nice to have a target for once. ]
So you lied for the rest of your life -- pretending you were him, like he could be replaced that easily! All the while, he was rotting away on that island and-- and you--
[ Anger renders her, for a moment at least, speechless. ]
[He deserves this, really. Deserves every word, deserves no absolution. But the idea that it was easy sparks a temper that he had almost forgotten he had.
It was never easy. Punishments aren't supposed to be.]
What do you suppose I should have done - given the people their true king, a fratricide who doomed his own brother to that darkness? What good would that have done? The line of Lucis would have ended then and there, and Ardyn -
[And then the anger comes crashing down, and his shoulders slump.]
Ardyn wouldn't have had the chance for salvation at all.
[ It isn't Izunia's fault. If it's anyone's fault it's the Astrals, all the gods who'd decided that the lives lost on the way to their Chosen King were a price worth paying. But she's been so helplessly angry for so long about all of it -- about Airlocked, and the Nonary Games and the Freelancer Project and Bahamut that it feels good to finally have something to vent at. ]
Don't you think if he deserved anything, he deserved that much? You talk about salvation but how was he supposed to be saved if no one even knew what was wrong?!
[ She's trying so hard to shut herself up and calm herself down but she can't. She knows how overblown and overwrought her anger must seem but -- well. If there's anything this family has in abundance it's spite and anger, isn't it? ]
...Bahamut himself told me there was nothing left. Just a daemon wearing my brother's skin, and I believed, because who would question the gods? I thought that my brother was gone by my hand, and only a daemon remained...
... I know I made unforgivable mistakes. That he still found happiness somewhere - being able to hear that is more than I deserve.
[He's tired, and old, and has a lot more practice beating himself up about the entire thing than Yuuri does. It's almost refreshing to have someone else do it.]
[ Bahamut. It all comes back to Bahamut, doesn't it?
Yuuri takes in a long slow breath and makes herself hold it, just long enough to calm herself down. There's nothing to be accomplished by yelling at a tired, sad old man who already knows the mistakes he's made. And besides that it's... surprisingly hard to keep up her anger when he looks so much like Ardyn. It feels like a cheap shot, but for all the things she can blame Izunia Lucis Caelum for, resemblance to his own twin is hardly one of them.
She sighs, just as long and slow as her breath in and her hands finally unclench. ]
... we're. We're doing what we can for him. We can't fix any of it or changed what happened but I...
[ She swallows hard and then pulls herself up to her full height, almost a little defiantly. ]
He's happy. It isn't perfect but... he had a home and a family and he's happy. I can promise you that much.
[The smile he gives her in return... Has also seen some shit.]
Ardyn and I came into adulthood in the last few years of the Astral War, dear girl, and that is just the tip of my iceberg. I assure you, I'm not going to capsize.
[He gestures at the fire, which has grown naturally during their more heated discussion and now offers some actual warmth.]
[ ... Ah, right, yes. It's probably better if she doesn't loom over him like that. With another of those sighs, Yuuri settles herself down next to the fire. She doesn't start speaking straight away -- she's fidgeting with the chain around her neck and the little black and white clover charm hanging from it, rolling it gently through her fingers like a worry stone. ]
... I said before that we met -- all of us back home -- we met when we woke up after being taken from the worlds where we belonged. We'd been brought to somewhere none of us recognized for some kind of show. To start with, there was twenty of us and--
[ She has to catch herself for a second because she hasn't actually called him Ardyn in so long that it's not the name she reaches for first. But that would raise even more questions than she's prepared to answer right now she she gives herself a moment to verbally backspace. ]
... and one of the people with us was Ardyn. And as far as he remembered... um, I think it was before everything had happened. He knew about the Starscourge but for him... it hadn't gotten as bad as it did. Not as far as he remembered.
That's how it was for all of us. We all woke up there with memories missing. I still don't know why or what the point of it was but what matters is that even though they'd brought him after you-- [ another pause. another verbal backspace. ] ... so long after it all happened, as far as he remembered he was still Ardyn Lucis Caelum.
[At some point while she's speaking, Izunia has picked up another twig to worry between his fingers again. No point in hiding the habit now, after all, and while he'd prefer a pen or dagger, it will do.
He's tense,because even if she hasn't gotten there yet, he can feel another shoe waiting to drop.]
It is.
Edited (lala phone tag typos) 2017-12-17 19:25 (UTC)
[ She swallows hard and nods. She doesn't know how much Izunia knows of what had become of his brother after their attempts to put him down and she doesn't have the context to be able to give him the full picture of what had happened to Lucis. But she has to try, at least. ]
When we started remembering things, most of it was jumbled and out of order. So when he started remembering some of the things he'd done to people I don't think he understood why. When we talked about it a little into the game I remember he said... he said he was afraid of what it meant he'd turned into.
[ Because he didn't know who or what Ardyn Izunia was. Not so long as he still had reason to believe he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum. ]
Especially since at the time they took him he was still... he still had that inside of him. And he didn't even know. He had to work it out for himself.
[ - Ah, there is the shoe, he thinks. The spinning twig in his hand goes briefly still, at the mention of Ardyn's continued infection, then flips so that Izunia can squeeze it in a fist.]
I... I suppose I can only hope it was less traumatic than the first time he discovered what the Scourge had done to him.
[Not that getting back memories of that would have been very pleasant, either, but Izunia can hope, for some few small things.]
Though I can scarce imagine... I know some of he things my brother did towards the end of his existence.
[Not life. You couldn't call that living. Izunia killed Ardyn, it's just that Ardyn persisted after, long after anyone should have.]
Not all, but... Enough, to get some idea of what he must have remembered.
... he remembered those first, I think. He remembered doing all that before he remembered the Starscourge and what you-- ... What happened because of it.
[ she swallows and wets her lips even though her mouth is suddenly dry. ]
But we did everything we could. We were so scared we'd lose him but we'd promised -- all of us had promised each other we'd stay together and that we'd have each others backs. And even with everything he'd done, none of us could just turn on him, after everything he'd done for us and everything we'd all been through together.
[ ... Ah. That's the part she's left out, isn't it? ]
Because it... It wasn't just playing with our memories and kidnapping us. Part of the show was... the whole point was seeing what it would take for us to kill each other. They'd trapped us and every week they'd give us things to try and motivate us into doing it like... Like money. Or changing the past or just being able to escape.
All we had to do was kill someone in there and get away with it.
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no subject
Was he well? ]
He was. The last I saw of him before I came here, he was happy. In fact, I, um--
[ She laughs and there's a little more warmth to it now, even under the embarrassment. ]
When I saw you on the beach, I was almost hoping that's who you were. It's selfish of me to want that, I know -- he's better off at home with everyone else, where he belongs but I... I miss him. I miss all of them very much.
no subject
Not even just well. Happy. Oh, Crystal and god both, a word he never thought he might hear in regards to his brother again.
He pulls his hand back, almost as an afterthought, as though to pretend that he had meant to drop the stick into the fire all along. These hands, in his brother's clothes - ]
There's nothing wrong with missing a person you might not ever see again.
[Happy. Oh, Astrals. Surely he does not deserve to hear such news.]
If he has truly found a home, after everything we've been through - [Let her think that that is a commonality of being Ardyn, instead of the other.] - then I am truly grateful to you, Miss Wakasa.
no subject
And it's that, somehow, among everything else that hits Yuuri in a way that feels well and truly wrong. All these disparate details have confused her, sure. And his reaction seems somehow disproportionate to her answer. But it's not until he says Miss Wakasa that her feelings coalesce into suspicion. The Ardyn she knows -- or at least, the man who'd woken up on the Fantasy Sweet, still thinking he was the Healer king -- had never once called her Miss Wakasa.
Because when he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum, he hadn't wanted that distance, had he? She's so sure she'd heard him say something like that -- that he didn't want Lucians to look at him and see a king first and a healer second, for fear they'd hesitate in approaching for his help. So she doesn't think that, even in an alien world with a stranger who knew him inside out, that he would default to formalities like that.
Maybe it's presumptuous of her, to assume she knows this man because he has Ardyn's name and face. But something is wrong here, and Yuuri spent eight weeks surviving by the skin of her teeth by sniffing out lies and contradictions. And this... this is suspicious, if nothing else. ]
... when you say everything you've been through... what do you mean exactly? [ she doesn't mean it to have the sting of an accusation, but when she says it so slowly and with a look like that on her face, it would be hard pressed to sound like anything but. ] Some of the things I know and some of the things you're saying... they don't match up. I wonder if we're getting our wires crossed somewhere.
no subject
That part of myself died with my brother which was, in its own way, true.
And now the girl is suspicious and hell, he hasn't had to make up similar excuses in centuries, he's distinctly out of practice.
At least he can manage a legitimate far-away, doesn't-really-want-to-talk-about-it look, even while his heart is still trying to scream its way out of his chest.]
The war, the plague, everything Izunia did... I imagine you can guess well enough. Though for all I know it was different for your Ardyn.
[Please let it have been different.]
no subject
[ None of this is coming together in a way that makes sense. If there was a war and a plague but Ardyn is still himself and sane, then that must mean Izunia was the healer. But if Izunia was the healer then it doesn't make sense for him to have died -- if he was the one taking in the Starscourge then surely it would've been Izunia who became the Accursed Immortal. Maybe the strain was too great for him in a way it hadn't been for Ardyn and it had killed him... but no, that doesn't seem right either. Because it was never that Ardyn had survived what he'd become. He had simply been refused the right to die. ]
What... was it Izunia did, exactly?
[ Still suspicious. Still just barely toeing the line of an outright accusation of lies. ]
no subject
He saw a monster with his brother's face, and did everything he could to destroy it.
[...Would Ardyn have tried to laugh it off? Always so flippant -
Izunia tries, but there is still an undercurrent of miserable regret.]
Blades, fire, firing squad, sun exposure... I imagine you get the idea. Anything that could kill a daemon.
no subject
... unless. Not unless... ]
But it didn't work, did it? None of it did. He couldn't be killed anymore because they wouldn't just let him die.
[ "Izunia is a dead man". A dead man who made a terrible, terrible mistake, who spent the rest of his life miserably trying to atone for it. ]
And when he wouldn't die... what did they do with him then?
no subject
Izunia was not the Chosen King, after all. And no power short of that could destroy what the gods called 'Accursed.'
[For his mistake, the gods demanded not only Izunia's soul, but the souls of all his descendants, onward and onward, until a boy named Noctis became the dawn.]
'Seal the daemon in Angelgard' - one of Izunia's advisors, I no longer remember which, even if the words are burned in my memory. So that was exactly what they did.
no subject
Maybe that's why it's taken her so long. Because if she'd known what face to look for, the pieces would've fallen into places more gradually but far quicker. Now, though, it all comes clattering together in one great rush.
She's a fool. It had never entered into her mind that he would arrive here -- he occupies the same space of her mind that Megu-nee does. Gone, not forgotten, but still gone and forever out of reach and there's nothing any of them can do about it. But what the hell does a world like this care for people who are supposed to be dead and gone?
And he is dead and gone. He has been for nearly two thousand years, not by any plague or scourge but by the simple passage of time, because this man isn't the Accursed Immortal he's-- ]
... Izunia.
[ -- Lucis Caelum. ]
You're Izunia, aren't you?
no subject
The flinch at his name is revealing and obvious, to the point that even answering the question is a formality.]
I should count myself lucky that there was no one in the court who really knew Ardyn well enough to tell, if you've figured it out this quickly.
[He doesn't know how to feel. It is the first time he has been - the first time Izunia's name has been spoken in so many years. He almost wants to thank her, for seeing through it, for allowing him to take the cover off for the first time in so many long years.
Perhaps that's why fate has brought him here. A final chance to reveal all his secrets, a last will to the light of morning that parts the endless, deceiving night.]
I haven't thought of myself that way in very, very many years.
no subject
... I... I don't...
[ I don't understand, she wants to say because there's so much here that makes no sense. He'd kept up the act this entire time and she'd been so fooled. They'd been happy to banish and kill him without any sort of cover up in the history she knows so why all the pretense, here?
And then under all the confusion and all the scattering of her thoughts, something surfaces and it's so bitter and angry that she can't even filter it before it comes out of her mouth. ]
Everything-- you already took everything else-- so you took his name, too?
no subject
[Those words - they're the deepest truth of his soul, spoken with a hint of underlying anger that's almost a more convincing Ardyn impression than anything he's done so far.]
Izunia was a fool who struck down his own brother in a moment of fear - oh, there were the executions, but the hand on the first blade was mine, and it was gripped in a panic when I saw him in the grip of the Scourge. I didn't ask questions, didn't ask if he had it under control - I only acted, to my eternal regret.
[The one time he didn't think things through.]
Ardyn was the one who deserved to be remembered, as king, as voice of the Crystal, as the Founder of Lucis. So I killed 'Izunia' myself to ensure that history, at least, gave my brother the credit he deserved.
no subject
She feels sick. ]
Don't you dare talk about what he deserved. As if you have any right--!
[ She's so angry that she's blindsided by it almost and she has to scramble to her feet so she can do something. She's filled with directionless fury and it has nowhere to go because as angry as she is, the logical part of her knows she can't put all the blame on Izunia, as convenient a scapegoat he is.
But it certainly feels nice to have a target for once. ]
So you lied for the rest of your life -- pretending you were him, like he could be replaced that easily! All the while, he was rotting away on that island and-- and you--
[ Anger renders her, for a moment at least, speechless. ]
no subject
[He deserves this, really. Deserves every word, deserves no absolution. But the idea that it was easy sparks a temper that he had almost forgotten he had.
It was never easy. Punishments aren't supposed to be.]
What do you suppose I should have done - given the people their true king, a fratricide who doomed his own brother to that darkness? What good would that have done? The line of Lucis would have ended then and there, and Ardyn -
[And then the anger comes crashing down, and his shoulders slump.]
Ardyn wouldn't have had the chance for salvation at all.
no subject
[ It isn't Izunia's fault. If it's anyone's fault it's the Astrals, all the gods who'd decided that the lives lost on the way to their Chosen King were a price worth paying. But she's been so helplessly angry for so long about all of it -- about Airlocked, and the Nonary Games and the Freelancer Project and Bahamut that it feels good to finally have something to vent at. ]
Don't you think if he deserved anything, he deserved that much? You talk about salvation but how was he supposed to be saved if no one even knew what was wrong?!
[ She's trying so hard to shut herself up and calm herself down but she can't. She knows how overblown and overwrought her anger must seem but -- well. If there's anything this family has in abundance it's spite and anger, isn't it? ]
no subject
[Bitter and pained and guilty and -]
...Bahamut himself told me there was nothing left. Just a daemon wearing my brother's skin, and I believed, because who would question the gods? I thought that my brother was gone by my hand, and only a daemon remained...
... I know I made unforgivable mistakes. That he still found happiness somewhere - being able to hear that is more than I deserve.
[He's tired, and old, and has a lot more practice beating himself up about the entire thing than Yuuri does. It's almost refreshing to have someone else do it.]
no subject
Yuuri takes in a long slow breath and makes herself hold it, just long enough to calm herself down. There's nothing to be accomplished by yelling at a tired, sad old man who already knows the mistakes he's made. And besides that it's... surprisingly hard to keep up her anger when he looks so much like Ardyn. It feels like a cheap shot, but for all the things she can blame Izunia Lucis Caelum for, resemblance to his own twin is hardly one of them.
She sighs, just as long and slow as her breath in and her hands finally unclench. ]
... we're. We're doing what we can for him. We can't fix any of it or changed what happened but I...
[ She swallows hard and then pulls herself up to her full height, almost a little defiantly. ]
He's happy. It isn't perfect but... he had a home and a family and he's happy. I can promise you that much.
no subject
[Only good news he's gotten in two thousand years, actually.
Slowly, something uncurls in him. He's... Lighter, in a way that's impossible to put a finger on. He's put down a burden for the first time.]
I have no real right to ask, but - please. Tell me everything.
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[ She gives him a strained sort of smile that just screams "I've seen some shit" ]
It's a very long story and it's... well, let's just say the parts I already told you are basically the tip of the iceberg.
no subject
Ardyn and I came into adulthood in the last few years of the Astral War, dear girl, and that is just the tip of my iceberg. I assure you, I'm not going to capsize.
[He gestures at the fire, which has grown naturally during their more heated discussion and now offers some actual warmth.]
Though it might be for the best if you sat down.
no subject
... I said before that we met -- all of us back home -- we met when we woke up after being taken from the worlds where we belonged. We'd been brought to somewhere none of us recognized for some kind of show. To start with, there was twenty of us and--
[ She has to catch herself for a second because she hasn't actually called him Ardyn in so long that it's not the name she reaches for first. But that would raise even more questions than she's prepared to answer right now she she gives herself a moment to verbally backspace. ]
... and one of the people with us was Ardyn. And as far as he remembered... um, I think it was before everything had happened. He knew about the Starscourge but for him... it hadn't gotten as bad as it did. Not as far as he remembered.
That's how it was for all of us. We all woke up there with memories missing. I still don't know why or what the point of it was but what matters is that even though they'd brought him after you-- [ another pause. another verbal backspace. ] ... so long after it all happened, as far as he remembered he was still Ardyn Lucis Caelum.
I--is this all making sense so far...?
no subject
He's tense,because even if she hasn't gotten there yet, he can feel another shoe waiting to drop.]
It is.
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When we started remembering things, most of it was jumbled and out of order. So when he started remembering some of the things he'd done to people I don't think he understood why. When we talked about it a little into the game I remember he said... he said he was afraid of what it meant he'd turned into.
[ Because he didn't know who or what Ardyn Izunia was. Not so long as he still had reason to believe he was Ardyn Lucis Caelum. ]
Especially since at the time they took him he was still... he still had that inside of him. And he didn't even know. He had to work it out for himself.
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I... I suppose I can only hope it was less traumatic than the first time he discovered what the Scourge had done to him.
[Not that getting back memories of that would have been very pleasant, either, but Izunia can hope, for some few small things.]
Though I can scarce imagine... I know some of he things my brother did towards the end of his existence.
[Not life. You couldn't call that living. Izunia killed Ardyn, it's just that Ardyn persisted after, long after anyone should have.]
Not all, but... Enough, to get some idea of what he must have remembered.
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[ she swallows and wets her lips even though her mouth is suddenly dry. ]
But we did everything we could. We were so scared we'd lose him but we'd promised -- all of us had promised each other we'd stay together and that we'd have each others backs. And even with everything he'd done, none of us could just turn on him, after everything he'd done for us and everything we'd all been through together.
[ ... Ah. That's the part she's left out, isn't it? ]
Because it... It wasn't just playing with our memories and kidnapping us. Part of the show was... the whole point was seeing what it would take for us to kill each other. They'd trapped us and every week they'd give us things to try and motivate us into doing it like... Like money. Or changing the past or just being able to escape.
All we had to do was kill someone in there and get away with it.
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yuuri are you sending him straight into ardyn's lap right now
she's doing her best you be nice to her
god NAO GET IN HERE
Re: god NAO GET IN HERE
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