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

[desperateprayer]

[ 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. ]

Comments

[scourgingstars]

...

[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.

[motherfucking_ghost]

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.]

[scourgingstars]

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.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

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.

[scourgingstars]

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.

[motherfucking_ghost]

[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.]

[scourgingstars]

[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?

[motherfucking_ghost]

[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.

[scourgingstars]

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.