theairlock | It floats away, a small wish with tears and a little regret

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!round 2

It floats away, a small wish with tears and a little regret

[ After the entire trial, Clarith gets to work. If Rii-san won't make the memorials, she will, and if Rii-san does, she'll supervise. And then, she'll slip a letter under each door. ]

Please join me in the gardens for a funeral and then a wake in the first floor rest area.

- Sister Clarith

[ When people arrive, Clarith is waiting with her Levin Bible in hand. Afterward, they can all file into the rest area, where hopefully someone has made food! She's sure someone would have, but she wanted to just... Get the funeral done. ]

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I'm not so sure you didn't. If this truly was her rebellion and show of courage, I expect she might have been grateful to be given the strength for even that much.

[He answered evenly, like they were discussing nothing more serious than the weather.]

...Mostly the latter. I'm utterly furious right now, but there's no point to it. No direction, no target. There's something resembling human emotion beneath that, I think--which is why I'm here at all.

The rest is just...exhaustion.

...Thanks. For that. And being here. It must be getting annoying, dealing with my shit, but looks like you're just stuck with me, huh?

[He recognizes that maybe he's the one to draw out that semblance of emotion. That maybe there's just enough care, for him, to get him to leave Rhys behind, to follow him dutifully, to stand there in his own version of seething while the dining room gets fucked. To be here. With him.

He can't put a name to the feeling, but both relief and appreciation are at least mixed in there.]

I don't know how we can fight it if he changes everything at will. On a whim. Because he's decided he can't lose. We were so close.

...I won't pretend that I know either. We may have to get lucky and hope that his careless nature makes him falter. Or that eventually, he'll leave something unaccounted for and we'll be able to outpace him at whatever he's planning to alter next.

Next time, after he's helped manipulate more people into dying under impossible circumstances and overwhelming odds. It could be anyone next. And if somehow--if somehow we make sure everyone's together, nobody does anything stupid in the middle of the night, we're all accounted for, I'm sure he'll find something to fix that, too.

He's not infallible, merely believes he is. He's going to make a mistake, and we have to be prepared to capitalize on it whenever it may occur.

Right. Yeah. Like at the trial. He fucked up, and pretended like he fixed it, but. We gotta keep up on that.

So long as nobody dies doing it.

As long as we see giving up as not being a viable option, we have nothing to do but keep trying. No matter what may transpire or how dire things become.

He's wearing us down. One person at a time. [And obviously that includes Church.] After Junpei's fucking arm-- [There's a barely-there shudder, just enough to be felt.] After Kip?

I'm not giving up. Not...giving in. I can't, and I fucking won't. Maybe I'm like Nari; maybe I- [and here he laughs, a tired huff of air] -I care too much, and if that's what gets me in the end? Meh, better than a tank cannon, or a sword, or any other ways I've died.

Compassion is just as much a reason to carry on than spite, and you know I have the latter in abundance. A worse reason, perhaps...but we all know how I can't stand sympathy.

[There was the smallest note of a laugh to that, small enough that it was nearly impossible to know how derisive it was.]

...If he kills me, I think he and I both know who comes out better off in that exchange. So even if that does happen, I think I'm quite alright with knowing he lost even just that much.

Hey, that's what I told Angel. That if she couldn't find a positive reason to keep going on, spite is the great motivator. I didn't even use you as an example.

[And if they're just gonna talk about Ardyn dying casually:] I'm gonna burn this whole fucking building down if you die. Just so you know. Afterward, after's a different matter, but if you bite it here?

But if we get out of here, you're coming with me. Everyone can just pile into a fucking interdimensional time-ship, and we'll all fuck around in Blood Gulch. Half of us are dead or dying anyway, seems like.

A suitable farewell for the 'sky of burning light', if a bit ironic. [That time, the laugh was definitely a derisive one.]

You already know where I'm going when we leave here. You won't talk me out of that.

Yeah, I know.

But you could.

...What if you find out you already did you big scheme back home, and you're one of the sorry assholes who's actually, surprise, already dead?

...

[Ardyn went very, very quiet as he considered that.]

If that's the case and yet I'm still alive here...then the past two millennia will have been for absolutely nothing and I might just snap completely upon fully realizing I could be trapped living eternally with no end to it. I'll outlive every other person in this facility, likely including you.

So I sincerely hope that you're wrong.

We're gonna find something. Junpei and I, we'll be looking. Even if it's cracking PAL open and playing with some digital code. But, just consider for a second, if they would really put someone who literally couldn't die in a reality show about murder. Foregone conclusions. They're boring.

But outliving a ghost? I dunno, that sounds kinda like a challenge. [Here's a little laugh. It's not funny. They both know it's not funny. But it's off-color, gallows funny.]

I've no doubt he's some method in place rendering me something approaching mortal right now. But we've no reason to trust him enough to assume that will remain the case forever.

[He paused at Church's last few words, going quiet again. There was...something to that he couldn't name. Could the word 'nostalgia' be used for something that was scarcely even a couple weeks before? For the prideful claim of it would be a poor monarch who refused to meet such challenges, would it not and the feeling of a smile that had genuine elation and excitement behind it?]

[...Something about that ached in whatever part of him wasn't corrupted by spite, in the last remnants of Ardyn Lucis Caelum.]

[But that wasn't him anymore. And no matter what they said, Ardyn didn't expect that person to ever return. That week had just been the last gasp of a memory drowning under thousands and thousands of daemons' worth of blackened spite and the rage that wanted to burn a planet to nothing.]

[There was just Imperial Chancellor Ardyn Izunia now, and the thin shreds of sentiment that led him to where he was right now would no doubt be gone soon enough as well.]

We'll find out. We'll fight, and punch our way out of this fucked up shit, and some of us will at least be alive to see the end, and then we'll all find out together what the fuck is gonna happen with the rest of your life. We can't take anything for granted, but about the only thing that is predictable around here is to fucking dread Fridays going into 'em.

But we won't find out just yet, so sorry, sucker, but you've gotta stick it out with the rest of our stupid depressed asses.

...Nice backhand, by the way. With the ring and everything. Nothing like smacking a bitch to put him in his place.

At least it's useful for something.

[He cast a brief look to the ring on his hand before sighing and shaking his head. Still wearing it--still hesitant to even consider taking it off. How inconvenient. The bitterness and cold edges dropped from his expression briefly, that deep exhaustion winning out for the moment.]

...I'm so tired of this.

[He finally lifts his head to look at Ardyn properly, from the ring he'd so kissed on his hand to the weathered exhaustion on his face. Of course he wants to save Ardyn, and maybe saving means letting him go back home and going out however he may.

Not the first person he's lost. Not the last. Sucks all the same.

He reaches up to settle a hand in Ardyn's hair, to nudge his head a little closer and lean his in. It's not exactly bumping helmets, but it's arguably better.]

We need a distraction. I don't...I don't fucking know what. Even if just for a little while. C'mon, we should...maybe we should get out of here. [Because he's tired, too, of feeling all this, and he pulls himself away to get his sorry ass up, offering a hand to Ardyn. ~~To make it easier on his old man joints.~~]

[That distant ache came back at the memory of an utter disregard for personal space, making his hair even more of a disastrous mess than it already was.]

[...The sooner he could get rid of Ardyn Lucis Caelum, the better off he'd be for it. Anger was always so much easier than whatever this was.]

[Whatever he was now, Ardyn looked to Church's hand like he was weighing the benefits of taking it or just shoving it aside--and whoever he was decided on the former as he stood up.]

Let's at least not risk me throwing you across a dance studio as a form of distraction this time, shall we?

[Good man. Well, okay man. Vaguely half-decent-ish man, sometimes, on the rarest of occasions.]

You know that was fun, even if you won't admit it. Even in a sadistic way. You ever learned to ice skate? It's almost similar to that.

[Along the way he picks up one of the discarded chair legs and reels his arm back to chuck it. And...decides against it, setting it down gently on the table.]

...Yeah, I guess no throwing anyone or anything would be pretty preferable.

I'm afraid I didn't. But if it does help matters, I'm not going to launch you across a room just because I think it's funny.

...This time.

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It floats away, a small wish with tears and a little regret

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