lifenet | istones: 8.26

Don't compare Tory to them. At least they talk to us and aren't cryptic bastards.

Really, now? Because I'd call him quite cryptic.

Why, did you know there is a whole system of caverns marked with warding runes? And surprise of surprises, it's caverns the Storyteller wouldn't go into. I wonder why that could be. Not only that, but it would seem the population fell to some dreadful disease that turned them all into crystal monsters.

[do you see where he's driving at gladio because he's just gonna keep talking.]

In fact, I've noticed a startling trend. Everywhere we've gone except for here seems to have some terrible disease or curse plaguing it. Meanwhile, the aboveground terrain under the Storyteller's jurisdiction has no sign of former inhabitants at all apart from a scant few ruins scattered among the islets.

Ask yourself--have they ever once told you why that might be so?

[And there's a long enough pause here that Gladio is clearly considering that information and not just snapping back and being defensive. Sorry Ardyn your rant might have had the opposite desired effect.]

No, they haven't told me but I also haven't asked. I wasn't here, I didn't know about most of that. But what I do know is that no one has really tried to talk to them.

I get that you hold deities to different standards or whatever but did you ever think that maybe there's painful fucking information that they don't want to relive for people that don't give a shit about them? We've talked, been talking, about plenty of shit and yeah the people that used to live here came up. Maybe I'll ask about more later but it pretty obviously hurts them and they miss the people that've been lost and I'm not going to demand they tell me shit for my curiosity.

Because they don't owe me shit.

Acting like you're entitled to every piece of their history just because you're stuck here just makes you an asshole.

It makes me cautious, fool. What reason have any of us to believe their word is the truth? You should know better than to forget that gods can easily lie to serve their own purposes.

Excuse me if I choose not to trust the word of one that sees fit to torture me by prolonging a story long since over for their own nebulous purposes. Or if I choose to desire the full story no matter how miserable it allegedly makes them, because why shouldn't they be just as miserable as everyone else dragged here for the purposes of their damned tales?

Demanding answers that they don't have to give you isn't caution.

Doubting what answers you get, though. Can't fault you for that, especially with... your history. [A slight hesitation there. Too much new information that he's still processing. A new layer of not quite pity but certainly rage on Ardyn's behalf.]

It's still not a generalization that you can make and be guaranteed to be right, though. That all deities are going to be lying manipulative fucks.

Have you asked...? If they can just... not let you come back? It's different, isn't it? For you. Because they're not the one doing it.

I've tried. Insisted the story they want so badly from me is over, and to my recollection they spouted some philosophical nonsense and shut that down.

...I'd hoped I might die in those caverns and it might actually work, but no. The only difference was that it took longer to reconstitute this form and I lost the Armiger for a while. Insult atop insult, and nothing more. I can't exactly starve to death or die of exposure, and even if I decided to go nowhere near a mana pool for however long it took, I'd surely just die and reform a few days later. There's no point in trying, even if I might like to do so however many times just to irritate our resident deity.

[Ardyn sighed after that brief show of uncharacteristic honesty, a scowl starting to color his voice.]

...It's quite convenient, isn't it? That all they send us out to do makes for such compelling stories. They want mine to continue so badly that they won't just let me die, and to phrase it bluntly I see no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt for that alone.

I'll see what I can do.

[Maybe because he has a little more sway with Tory, maybe because they can actually have a conversation without Ardyn's vitriol ruining his chances before he gets started. But, especially after this trainwreck with the flowers and how little he was able to do about it he at least has to talk to Tory. He can't just sit back and watch people suffer. It... It goes against everything he is.]

If that's... really what you want. No second chances just-

[Ignis will kill him if he finds out about this.]

What do you think the purpose of all that truly was? Did you think I ever once actually intended to emerge victorious over Noctis? If that was the goal I could have killed the four of you ten times over, gods know you were all foolish enough to give me the chance. I made my choice long before you or even your ancestors existed. Do not question me as though I would be yet uncertain, mortal child.

I don't want your help, or that of the Storyteller. You can't kill me, and they refuse to.

[It's still such a bizarre and foreign concept for him, thinking of... wanting to die so badly, of going through so much effort, so much pain and misery just for the relief of an end to it all. It, honestly, makes him a little sick to think of, he's spent his entire life having it drilled into his head that he does not matter, his life is forfeit for those more important.

The concept of death as a release and not a duty is just... so difficult for him to grasp.]

Maybe... Maybe there's something they can do. I don't know but I'm at least going to see what the options are.

[It's also easy to forget just how old Ardyn is until he talks like that and Gladio absolutely hates it. All the more reason for Ardyn to do it, really.]

I was only asking because things are different here. Can be different here, if you'd let them.

I've certainly heard that before. What your optimistic little flame's finally caught on to that you fail to understand is that I don't want things to be different. I've no desire to find another path or be so selflessly rescued from what you likely see as some horrible monster that overtook what used to be human.

The would-be king you saw in that dream is well past dead and buried. What you speak to now is all that's left, the wretched ash and embers left of the sky's burning light. Drop all half-baked ideas that there's anything to rescue or salvage, because Ardyn Lucis Caelum doesn't exist any longer.

[There's a long silence after that, maybe long enough that Ardyn thinks Gladio isn't going to answer.

But, what he does differently than Iggy in these kinds of situations is... he takes people's words at face value. Ignis has told him over and over that there's more to him there's a good man deep down that just needs to be led out, Ardyn himself had said the same on Monsun but it hadn't been meant as a challenge or to give hope.

He's miserable and he's tired... Gladio can get that.]

Okay.

No valiant rescue attempts. Promise.

...What, that’s it? No stubborn idiocy or foolish platitudes about life being worth living or anything like that?

You said yourself, you've had centuries to come to that decision. I'm not going to try to force things on you. If you don't think there's anything in this world worth fighting for then...

Then helping you rest seems like the best thing I can do.

[It's not in him to stop fighting, to give up on the things he loves. But he can't fault others for not being as suicidally dedicated to a cause. Especially someone who's been through as much shit as Ardyn has.]

...

I never said there was nothing worth it. Just that I don't care to be seen as someone in need of salvation, and that I won't change my mind.

Even if you were I'm no savior. That's Noct's job. All I can do is protect people... Even if that just means protecting their right to make their own decisions about the future. I could never do it, myself. Trained too well I guess.

But I'm not going to lecture you about how life and love is worth it. That's for you to decide, not me.

[There was a long silence, this time Ardyn not sounding as though he would answer.]

['You know those kings will not protect you.'
'I know--I am the protector.']

[But finally, after a couple of minutes that stretched far longer than they should have:]

...Perhaps there are things worth living for. Perhaps not. I wouldn't know, and I've long since lost the ability to care for the world or anything within it.

But this isn't living. This body itself is naught but a corpse made of shadow and animated by hatred given parasitic form, with neither breath in its throat or a heart in its chest. A wraith with no ability to sleep or even taste, so far as ordinary circumstances go. At least Gilgamesh in whatever undead form he held still retained his sanity, yet I'm denied even that and left well aware of it. And all of it nothing more than my thanks for acting as protector to a world ungrateful, who saw a better option in their precious Founder King and cast aside their sage as though any of them would have been alive without me.

...All I have left is my name and my resentment, and that is why I will neither answer to that epithet of the Draconian's making nor will I ever forgive anything and anyone who dares exist in the world that left me behind, the line descended from my ever-so-perfect blessed little brother who discarded me, or the traitorous lying Astrals which govern it.

I don't care whether the world deserved what I did to it or not. I don't regret it, and the blighted star got precisely as was written and precisely as it deserved.

Edited 2018-08-28 21:51 (UTC)

[Another silence, this one heavier as if Ardyn was only just catching up with the gravity of the entirely honest and increasingly bitter words that had left him.]

[That...was true, all of it. Never forgive, never forget, and destroy everything he had essentially built. But...but was it right? Was it what he wanted? Was it what Ardyn, spurned and furious, had wanted? Or was it what the Accursed wanted?]

[For not the first time, he was startlingly aware of some imperceptible and unclear line between his own anger and that which was fueled by daemonic fury, and Ardyn couldn't tell which side was which.]

[Then, at length came a voice that was still Ardyn's--yet all the mounting bitterness and mocking enjoyment of the planet's suffering and death had drained away like the black stain from a shattered inkwell. He just sounded...exhausted, quiet and worn out body and soul.]

...I don't want this anymore.

Edited (SORRY missed a line) 2018-08-28 21:50 (UTC)

Ardyn...

[He's quiet for a long moment, trying to decide what pieces of that diatribe are worth answering, how much of it is just the constant need to remind others of how he was wronged and what he's become is not his fault. And what parts of it are things that actually need answering, acknowledgment.

As much as he immediately wants to insist that it's not all he has left he's pretty sure that's also exactly what Ignis would do and trying to prove to him that he has so much more is doing nothing to convince him. Maybe nothing will convince him but shoving what should be obvious truths in his face is certainly not going to accomplish anything.

It's uncommon for Ardyn to let himself be anything close to vulnerable around others so hearing him sound just as tired and despairing as Gladio knows he is settles like a weight in his chest. And he answers just as softly, wishing there were something he could do.]

I know...

Nothing can fix the past so I won't pretend to be able to help there. And I can't blame you for not giving a shit about Lucis or Eos or anyone, really.

[A brief hesitation, a soft sigh.]

I just wish there was something I could do to help.

...you can't. There's no one who can--I'm simply stuck like this, a puppet of one divine force or another yet again, and there's no way out of it.

It's not fair.

[Half snarled under his breath and there's a dull thud as he slams a fist onto the workbench he's leaning against.]

I'm sorry. [Guess he'll just never be able to do right by any Lucis Caelum.]

Life is unfair.

[On Ardyn's side was the faint rustle of feathers and affectionate click of a chocobo's beak as Hresvelgr settled in next to him.]

The world is an indiscriminately cruel place, and it is ever the selfless who learn that lesson the hardest.

Isn't it just?

[Soft and bitter, something that he'd never have agreed with ten years ago. But the Night changed a lot of things.]

[Ardyn sighed, the sound halfway to a short and bitter laugh.]

...What are you even apologizing for? None of you make any sense.

[There's been so much truth telling and soul searching lately he just sighs and shrugs, even if Ardyn can't see it. What is the point in lying about any of it?]

For... not being able to live up to the legacy, I guess?

You want to be dead and I have no right to keep on living. [Not when his King is dead. Which hasn't technically happened yet for him but it had happened for Noct which came out to the same thing, in the end. A matter of hours between them at best.

Some part of him knows that it doesn't really make sense but... at the same time it makes so much sense.]

istones: 8.26

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cw: suicidal ideation

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2/3 i lied

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