airlockedmods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
airlockedmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
theairlock2017-06-11 02:14 pm
airlockedmods) wrote in theairlock2017-06-11 02:14 pm
Week 5
[As with the weeks before, life in the Fantasy Sweet returns to something resembling normalcy with shocking efficiency. The second floor rest area and Adventure Zone Death Orb Room are spotless again, the demon glitter has been vacuumed, the deflated orbs have been replaced. It's like none of it ever happened, like three more friends aren't dead and stored away in the guest house morgue.
There's a new floor to explore, their "reward" for a job well done.]
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
[ooc: Don't forget to to turn in your activity for week 4, submit your memory regains and put in your threads for the Benefactors!]
There's a new floor to explore, their "reward" for a job well done.]
[ooc: Don't forget to to turn in your activity for week 4, submit your memory regains and put in your threads for the Benefactors!]
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With that concern set aside and despite my limited sympathy, why don't you start?
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But he's too tired to suss out the specific intricate details of Ardyn's moods. So. Time to try and not be a fucking hypocrite and actually talk things out. Being on the other side of this sucks ass.]
There's...a very, very, very, very long story leading up to all the details. [About five seasons' worth of story.] That...that girl I talked about, Tex, the one I was gonna marry, and then didn't, and we were kind of exes? She's d-- [The word gets caught in his throat. At least he'd seen Junpei's body. If he'd been dead-dead, he at least would have the confirmation.]
She's...she got on a ship, and it exploded, so far as I know, she's kicked the bucket.
[Flippancy! That'll work!]
Other stuff happened, but that's...that's--that's kind of the long and short of it.
...She was gonna end the war. She was gonna damn well try.
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[He didn't sound remotely sincere, but considering how Ardyn looked, the lack of condescension in his voice may as well have been sympathy.] There's no chance of a best-case scenario, I take it.
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She didn't have any intention of--she said--
She doesn't say goodbye. Not ever. That doesn't happen. She hates goodbyes.
[He's quiet, then, thinking about the meaning. It hadn't stopped him then, not in the heat of the moment. Only made him try to get her back harder. Don't go. Please. Tex, you don't want to do this!]
Nobody could ever tell her what the fuck to do when her mind was made up.
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[Ardyn folded his arms, leaning back against the wall.]
If nothing else, it sounds unlikely she regretted the choice she'd made.
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It must sound like nothing to him, someone who's lived so long and lost so much. The whole story is long and convoluted and would probably sound like bullshit anyway. He's allowed to be upset that someone he loved fucked off in front of him, damn it.
But he's a friend, and a shield, and it's time to fucking hunker down and do his own job.]
You could probably give her a run for the stubbornness money, but yeah, she'd still beat you out in the end.
How fucked up is your life story now? [No point in sugar coating it; they both know.]
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[But why should he? What did that or anything else matter? What did the paltry trifles of any single person here matter to Ardyn, when he knew they would all drop any pretense of trusting him and turn on him in an instant.]
[If he couldn't even trust his original Shield, why should he trust this one?]
Junpei was right, you know. Humans are...revolting, selfish creatures.
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...They all call me by another name now, a title replacing 'Chosen King'.
'Accursed.'
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Izunia took over, Church. He stole everything from me and used what I was becoming to turn the entire world against me.
And the Astrals let him.
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I did exactly what the Draconian expected of me. I sacrificed myself wholeheartedly for the planet and all those on it, and for all my efforts I was cast out by the same gods that chose me in the first place.
What did they expect me to do?!
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What does a shield do when the king needs protected from something within than without?]
Gods are dicks. I don't think you'll find a single god in the history of any religion in any species in any time that doesn't have at least one story of dicketry about them.
Maybe you did exactly what they expected you to do, man. Maybe they meant for this to happen all this time.
Maybe you weren't ever supposed to end it. You said it yourself, you were healing people, taking it in you, biding your time. Until you knew how to get rid of it. Maybe it was never going to happen.
[And it sucks to even suggest that, but with everything he's said about the gods, and how, thousands of years later, there's someone new--all the little details, and a fantasy bullshit setting with jackass gods?
It sucks to suggest it, but he's not going to keep it to himself. Surely at some point Ardyn now, or Ardyn in memories he hasn't yet gotten, has to have thought the same.]
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[Was it possible what they really needed was an avatar of the Starscourge for someone to destroy?]
That can't be true. I was chosen to save the world. All the people I saved, their gratitude being turned to hatred and all of them turning on me...my brother, all of it--
[He sank to the floor with his back to the wall like what passed for legs in a human-shaped body of Starscourge had forgotten how to work.]
...I'll destroy them. If they wanted a monster to defeat, they'll have one.
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Who's to say that the gods didn't fuck over your brother, too? Divine intervention, only usually it's supposed to be a good thing. You don't have to be a monster.
[He says, to the monster that is a perfectly fine king of a man with a million afflictions and daemons swarming inside of him.]
You don't have to be what they think they made you.
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It doesn't matter whether they had a hand in Izunia's actions or not. I don't care about those who lived centuries ago while I wasn't even allowed to die. I care about getting vengeance on Bahamut and all the rest of them. The line of Lucis, the Crystal, and all it represents.
I'll burn Eos to ashes, if I haven't done so already.
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[The immediate answer is obvious: because they did this to me. 'This' being...basically damnation, he supposes. A walking, living damnation. But doesn't that get exhausting after a couple thousand years? Doesn't that get tiring and boring? Can't he do literally anything else with the rest of his life--possibly the rest of eternity?]
Is that you talking, or the thing inside you?
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It doesn't matter who or what I am. That's exactly what the entire planet deserves.
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These people don't remember you. They don't know your story. This kid that seems so chosen, does he deserve it? Did the Oracle deserve it, just for existing in a world that once, way back when, turned on you?
And when you're done burning the world to the ground, you're still going to be angry and miserable and hurt. Kind of a thing daemons do, in just about any story, too--feed on pain and negativity and everything awful in the world.
You deserve better than that.
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If I do this and win, then the Astrals lose the light of their precious Crystal along with the planet. And if I lose...then everything that I am will still be erased after two millennia.
What do I have to lose?
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Which is...the point.
Either he's dead and it won't matter anyway, or he gets revenge on the gods who literally won't be able to fuck over anyone else with the Crystal. What does he have to lose?]
Yourself.
Ardyn. There's enough of Lucis Caelum in there that it's bullshit to say you're just the Starscourge and nothing more. You are not just Izunia. Your feelings are there. They're just muted. You aren't gone.
And if you do this, there really won't be anything of you left.
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[He asked that a little more calmly, corruption gradually fading out of his eyes.]
You really think I want to live like this for a few thousand more years? I don't even want to remember how long it's already been. If there is any part of me still the savior you knew, do you really want him trapped in darkness for eternity?
If this is the only path I can take that might have an end, what reason is there that I shouldn't try and take the Crystal down with me?
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He is the king's shield. And he's terrified that the best way to save Ardyn is to let it end. If it's the only way to let him rest. He wouldn't be here if he couldn't die, but what happens when he leaves this place? Plague the fucking galaxy? Go back home and...continue to deteriorate?]
You could stay. Instead of going back. If there's any way to keep you from going back--go to someone else's world, or stay here, I don't--
[This is not the god damn conversation about death he needed this morning. He reaches out again, thinking that maybe, maybe he won't be pushed away now, hands gentle on his arms. He hopes they aren't shaking. He fears they might be.]
This isn't a good time. To think about this. We need to let it settle, sort it through. High emotions--even for you.
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[He didn't move to push Church away this time, the Starscourge having vanished from his face--whoever he was right now, it wasn't the Accursed.]
But I am about to do something very, very stupid that I have no reason to think will not backfire on me given what I now know.
...I'm going to trust you. Because looking at you right now, even I find it hard to believe you're going to turn on me.
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