[Maybe this is why Ardyn was avoiding him, in some subconscious way. That some version of this conversation was bound to happen. And god damn it, since they didn't get it out in the morning, they're getting it out now.

Church slides his hands to frame Ardyn's cold face, to make sure there's no turning away from this, no hiding, not for either of them.]

I fucked up, okay? This whole thing, it's fucked up, and I've made some bad decisions, and I'm gonna own up to them. But this is where we are. Here is where we are. Like it or not, daemon or not, we give a shit about each other.

So listen to me for two seconds. It started out as a joke, but look where that got us--I'm the King's Shield, to the end of the line. You get that? The King's. Shield. If there wasn't a fraction of him left in you, somewhere, somehow, I wouldn't be doing this. I'm going to fight for him. I'm going to fight for you even if you don't want it, because I'm a soldier; I protect people. And I've been doing a shitty job of it so far because of all these circumstances that are completely out of our hands, but once upon a time, a man named Ardyn Lucis Caelum existed, and I refuse to believe that every last scrap of him is just gone. Maybe he's just part of this amalgamation that is you, that is just Ardyn, or maybe he's a flickering fucking spark, but he's there, and you're there, and I fight for the king.

Okay?

Just...tell me I'm making at least a little sense, because I think there's every possibility I sound almost a quarter fucking crazy as you feel.