theairlock | the final week

Entry tags:

!round 2,
!week 8

the final week

[Eight weeks. Eight weeks of friendship and love, death and loss, hope and despair all muddled together in a cocktail that's too sweet on the tongue and leaves an acid-y pit in the stomach. With nine of them left (ten counting their dear but lone surviving host), things look darker than ever. Come Sunday morning the last of the Champions missing memories will be returned to them while they sleep. For some of them this will reveal answers, for others it might just be a fate worse than death. They could even be death.

But how does the song go? "It's always darkest before the dawn"?

There are no announcements from PAL this week. Not even morning and evening announcements.

Sunday Monday Tuesday

[ooc: Welcome to endgame, everyone! We're all very proud of you for making it all the way to the end. As you can see this is going to be a short IC week but we promise things will not be going down until this weekend (7/7-7/9). On Tuesday we'll be unveiling the OOC post for what to expect during the final investigation. There is no official AC this week, just a check-in and as mentioned above characters will be at their true canon points on Sunday morning.

Buckle up, kids, the ride's not over yet.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Alpha doesn't know shit. Whatever he knew went with Epsilon. Did he love? Did he love so hard and so fast and so deep that it made him fall apart, when the torture came? He'll never know.

But Church knows this, this elegy of light. Learned it here. Here. Where he's Church. His name is Church. And he loves this man. His best friend here isn't Tucker, long gone, but Junpei. Yuuri is like a sister. He didn't have a sister, unless you count Grif's. And he sure didn't have a boyfriend, present, here, accounted for. So there's that. A couple legs up from where he's from.

Maybe he's allowed to be selfish. Maybe selfishness wasn't something he'd ripped out of himself.

Part of him wants to scream out until his throat bleeds, but he doesn't. No. He's got this. He can get this. He can wrap his brain around it, now that the immediacy is fading off, that reality, however fucked up, is descending around him.

auroram videre potest

He kisses Ardyn on the cheek. Not distant, not far far away. He's here. He's here. He's so tired, but he's here.]

[-mane tempus expergiscendi.]

[Light after an endless night. A canticle for hope, for salvation and safety and everything Ardyn wanted for this broken group.]

[He'd stopped praying uncountable eras ago. But if he was one to ask anything of gods that cared nothing for the struggles of humanity, he would have pleaded for that melodic wish to come true once more. For dawn to break over them as it had broken over a ravaged planet.]

Welcome back.

[That even with a fractured spirit, he could help to save just a handful of equally breaking people.]

[Speaking seems still so far away and like a bad idea, that when he opens his mouth it'll just be a sound of agony. So he stays very quiet, hushed tones Ardyn has never heard from Church before.]

We're sure this is real, right?

Yes.

[There was no hesitation. Cloning, duplicated consciousness, anything else they had considered in the past weeks--it didn't matter. There was someone calling himself Tenmyouji Ardyn, someone who called himself Leonard Church, and both of them existed no matter in what capacity as far as the former was concerned]

All of this is real. All that's happened has meant something.

[It's all meant something. Good. Good. He relaxes fractionally in Ardyn's grip.]

Sorry. About this.

Don't. There's no need to apologize for this.

Nari was right.

[He'd admitted to her face that she might not be wrong, but it still hurts. Like swallowing his own glass shards.]

If you need to break, go ahead and do it--glass can be repaired and I'm stubborn enough to make sure it's put back together.

I broke--I broke so many times I don't even remember-- [It fractures itself to protect itself.] How can someone exist and not realize they're a fucking sieve?

[Ardyn hadn't moved in the slightest, letting Chruch cling to him while holding on just as securely.]

...We're here--this is real, right now. Focus on that, and tell me as much as you're able to.

[He doesn't know where to start. There's so much in so little time.

Church shifts, taking Ardyn's arm, his PIP, and scrolling through the profiles until it lands on his. It's still...

"You're a fucking idiot."

"That's not the reaction I expected."

It just seems like nonsense. Artificial intelligence. He knows better now, and hey, if Wash ever ends up in a murder mansion or something, maybe he'll apologize. Or beat the living shit out of him.]

Thought maybe I'd...be the exception.

...

[That wasn't enough to understand the full picture--not even close to it. The full implications were so far beyond anything that a sentence and a few listed statistics could explain as to be incomprehensible.]

[Species: Artificial intelligence.]

[But it was enough. Ardyn had been so caught up in learning his own profile was the truth that he hadn't stopped to consider the others in detail. Hadn't stopped to realize that the person in his arms was a personand an AI both at once, hadn't comprehended how much of a strain on one's sanity the mere concept alone must have been.]

[And oh, uncaring gods damn everything, he wanted to murder who or whatever had made things come crashing down so harshly.]

It's not just that I'm--

I mean it is, but there's... [more, there's so much more]

I know. That no one cares what I am, because I'm a person and I'm here and I'm one of you. But it matters. To me.

I didn't know. I didn't know I was parading around like a human with a history and a family and a girlfriend--like a parody of a human.

[But he'd--he'd been human, before, right? He'd seen his own face, had skin, could taste, could breathe, and then he died--

God, but if he was an AI all along, then whose body was it?]

If it's significant to you, then that's not something I can take away. And I don't...I don't know that there's anything I can say which would be of any help.

...But I can do for you the same that you've done for me. However long you need me to, any time it's necessary--I will be at your side. If you need reminding of who you are, then I will be there.

Just tell me what you need, and you'll have it--you saved me from breaking apart, and I plan to return the favor.

[There's a pang of guilt, but buried down beneath the memories. For a moment, he feels as though he's being a terrible Shield. That, lately, Ardyn's the one that's been pulling him back from the brink, not the other way around. Sure, he got rid of the potions, plans to stay, to stay with him, but that might not matter if Ardyn breaks apart and falls into the darkness of his memories.

But that's far and away inside him right now. Because there's more, and he has to figure out how to say it. Or indicate it. He presses his thumb over his own image, then clears the screen. This is him, this has to be him, but he could've looked like anything, like anyone at all. Piloting a meatsuit.

None of it is easy, none of it, it all hurts like stepping on glass.]

I can't--Ardyn, I wanted to give everyone a new home. I wanted them to come with me, and I know some of them didn't, but I want you to come with me, and--and I can't.

[He doesn't want to say it, because being dead meant something different then. Being dead meant being a ghost over a dead body but continued existence. This is...this isn't that.

It's no new revelation to anyone here to realize that they're dead, and he feels small and petty for it, but he's trying to impress on Ardyn the implication without having to say it.]

I can't take anyone home.

Then we'll find another one.

[He answered that immediately, catching Church's face in his hand and bringing him to look up again. Ardyn's eyes were sharp and burning with fury that had turned to determination, a refusal to accept any outcome that didn't end with everyone as safe and functional as was possible at this point.]

Who and whatever you are, you are alive right now. Living, breathing, human as I am. And I am never letting go of that. If every last person in this miserable facility needs to find somewhere to go, then we're going to find one--I don't care if it means returning to a planet purged of shadow and rebuilding it brick by gods-damned brick.

You and I and everyone here...we'll find somewhere. No matter how long it takes or how much work we put into it. And you'll be there with me no matter what you are right now.

[That he'd be willing to even go back to Eos at all is a testament to how much Church doesn't deserve Ardyn. They don't have to go back to anyone's homes or times, of course--they don't even know if that's possible, no matter what Junpei says. Maybe they'll get out and simply...find somewhere out there to live. Among people who would gladly watch them die for entertainment.

His hands play with the scarf around his neck, anxious.]

Pretty sure nobody back there's...going to want to see the walking apocalypse be their new carpenter.

[At least it's a joke, even if he doesn't look like he's got a shred of humor left in him. It's in there, somewhere.]

Dunno how it'd work with a dead man walking, to boot.

...I want you to make me a promise. I don't care that I don't even understand the reasons anymore, it's...

If something happens. To either one of us. Promise me you won't say goodbye.

You say that like I don't know how to hide. You really think Ardyn Lucis Caelum's face was seen in two millennia? No, I'm far too good for that.

[He answered with a slight joke of his own--as entirely factual as it was, there was the smallest note of humor to it. Fiery determination started to fade into a smile, tired but honest.]

Never. Whether something happens or even if it shouldn't, I will never say that. Wherever we go after this, we go together.

Good. I hate goodbyes. So maybe it's better I didn't get to say it to--to the others. To everyone who was with me. I hope they're going somewhere better.

I hope we're going somewhere better.

[It would be so much easier if that was it, wouldn't it? If that's all that he knew, that he was the computer the profile claimed all along and that he was dead. People have had worse revelations, especially the one right in front of him.

But that's not it, that's not everything, it's not--everything Wash told him. And the fragments. And that it was his choice, in the end, in a way, even if it was somewhat coerced.

He tries to work his mouth around the ideas, but nothing comes out at first. Present in the moment, the adrenaline, the sickness, faded off somewhere in the background radiation of this moment, but it's so much to take. "That's why Epsilon went insane; it was meant to. It was all the horrible experiences the Alpha needed to shed to survive." Maybe Nari was wrong, too. He'd seen some shit, been put through some shit, deliberately, just to break him down. He didn't need to be glass to break; if you have the right tools, you can break anything.

He tries again.]

I don't know how I am...what I am. I don't know how I'm this...seemingly whole, complete person. There's so much missing, but I never knew. ["Exhorted little fragments of purified, compartmentalized emotion. None of them were a full personality."] When I said...shit. When I said I've broken more times than--I was being literal. Not just an emotional breakdown, but a breaking down of emotion.

I've got holes in me. Not like the hole Tex left behind. I'm broken. Things are missing. My memories, for one thing.

[Maybe he should explain it to Junpei. Junpei might be a little better equipped to understand. He doesn't mean to--doesn't want to sound like he's whining about not being human when Ardyn had to live with that for ages. But it's so hard to put into actual words. Maybe it's too soon; maybe it'll sort itself out as the day goes on.]

[He listened without fully comprehending the concept; he could think of it in terms of himself, of Ardyn Lucis Caelum's light suffocated by blackened hate. There were sure to be things he'd lost and forgotten himself in day after day after day after year after decade after century--but this sounded different. Worse, perhaps, although measured on a different scale.]

[Only once Church had finished speaking and silence briefly settled in did Ardyn speak again, as though for once in his life he was actually hesitant about crossing some boundary whether physical or otherwise.]

Then you're in excellent company right now, aren't you?

We don't have to solve this right this instant, not with you so shaken by the issue at hand. And I won't pretend to understand the full situation or even know if there is a solution to it, or even if one would fix anything.

But I promised you that we're getting an 'after' once this is over, and I'll hold to that even if I have to tear it from the hands of impossibility itself. We're going somewhere better than this, broken and ragged and miserable as all of us are.

I feel--feel like you should know. What you've gotten yourself into. [But he runs a hand over his face and breathes, shaky. How does he go back to all of this knowing he'll never feel as whole as he did in that one terrible burning shining moment again?]

I got--gotta sort it out. Junpei might make sense of it. Just...need to sort it. Find the...words.

[He breathes for a few moments longer, and when the shakiness starts to subside, he drops his hand.]

You okay?

Worse than what you've gotten yourself into? [He laughed softly, exhausted but making the effort anyway.] I think I'm quite a difficult case to handle myself, in case you forgot.

[He caught Church's hand with his own, holding it tightly.]

Better off than you are. I can manage on my own until you've a handle on matters.

You shouldn't have to keep doing this. I'm supposed to protect you. I keep getting worse, like Nari said. Thought I was stronger than this.

So did I, Leonard. I got worse, and worse, and you pulled me out of that. All of you did. You grabbed me by my damn collar and forcibly dragged me out of a darkness I was losing everything in.

You've fought this whole time to keep us together. Let yourself rest, just for a little while, and we'll handle it until you can stand on your own.

...

[He wants to say I like how I know you're serious when you call me Leonard or maybe something like I'm a soldier, I keep fighting or what about I'm really tired, I think I'll rest.

He kisses Ardyn instead. That always seems like the best possible response.

Oh, and also:] Can you do that thing again? With the light and the--even if it's just to go back and sleep it off.

the final week

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