I know. The last thing I want is for anyone to die but the more I watch the more I just think... god, I just want them to get it over with already. We all know it's going to happen. But that's an awful thing to think.
[ She sighs and pulls over a chair so she can drop herself into a seat next to him. This feels like a sitting down kind of talk. ]
Maybe... I don't know. Do you think there's any chance that they waited so long to broadcast it because nothing actually happened? And ours was the more... exciting season?
Who knows. Maybe they're just that desperate for a breather season after we went and blew up one of their sets.
[ There's no conviction whatsoever in her words, though. She knows what's going to happen will come sooner or later and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. ]
I just-- I was hoping so badly we'd be able to change something now that we're out. Now that we're not just flying around blind on the Temerity. But it almost feels like we're back to square one.
... [He placed the Starscourge paperweight on the table rather than shove it back in the Armiger for now, leaning forward and brushing Yuuri's hair back from her eyes. Some things didn't change, and a lack of personal space was one of them.]
We're in a better position than we were, however incrementally. It's miles from the progress I'd hoped for, but it isn't back at the start just yet.
[ It's still strange to be on the receiving end of casual, comforting attention like this. She's so used to being the one doling it out that it takes her by surprise every time any of their little family does the same for her but she can't say she's complaining. She even manages a little smile. ]
It's... a step forward, isn't it? Better than nothing. And we're in a better position to work with it now than we were.
That's right. If nothing else, we've larger numbers and a marginally less pressuring position from which to plan our next move.
[Realizing the two of them could use a change of subject and a distraction, Ardyn frowned critically in a way that seemed less than serious, glancing over Yuuri for a second or two.]
[ There's a slight upturn to her tone at the end that makes it sound more like a question than an affirmation, but she does just as he asked and turns her chair around before settling back into it. ]
[She might have seen a couple floating white crystals that came with reaching into the Armiger out of the corner of her eye, followed by the light pull of careful hands gathering her hair together at the back of her neck.]
Your hair's quite a mess, and I could use something to do with my hands that isn't toying with a plague taken the form of a paperweight.
[ She's about to glance back with raised eyebrows and her lips parted to ask just what's going on. But then she feels his hands in her hair, praises and turns away again with a little smile.
If only Eos could see their Accursed now. ]
Well, I suppose I can't just walk around looking like a mess while I'm a guest in someone's house, can I?
[Noctis or any of the others might have thought him more likely to snap her neck than be running a brush from the Armiger through her hair. At one point, they would have been right.]
Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. I used to watch V-...a friend of mine do this every morning. I think I can still remember how it worked.
Oh, I'm not worried, I trust you. [ things no one on eos has said to ardyn millionlastnames in centuries ] If you could do much damage with just a brush then I think I'd be more impressed than anything.
[ She's quiet for a moment, hands folded in her lap. It's been a very long while since anyone's actually bothered to fuss over her hair on her behalf. Not since she was old enough to be able to do it herself. But Ruu was always happy to spend hours, if allowed, sat in front of her big sister while Yuuri swept a brush through her smooth blonde hair and she's suddenly hit with a sting of unexpected nostalgia and finds herself smiling a little sadly. ]
... when, um... when we're all settled again and... Ruu-chan is here. [ because she won't talk about that like it's an if. she trusts Junpei, believes in him with all her heart and if he says he's going to save Haruna Wakasa then Yuuri has no reason whatsoever to doubt him. ] She'd probably let you do whatever you liked with her hair. Brushing it for her was the only time I could ever get her to sit still.
You would be surprised what I can do with unconventional weaponry.
[His hands went still at the mention of Yuuri's sister, but only for a second or two. He didn't doubt there was some way to salvage the situation, considering the massive joke that was anything resembling a coherent timeline between them.]
[But it made him think, if only for that fleeting second, about someone else.]
...I suppose I could do that, if she wanted me to.
It wouldn't take much convincing, honestly. As soon as she realised you had a brush, she'd be up on the chair before you could blink.
[ It doesn't hurt as much to talk about her now. It stings but only in the way a skimmed knee does. It'll heal in time. So long as she doesn't pick too much at the wound. ]
She'd need a little time to adjust but I... I like to think she'd warm up to you all fast enough.
[Ardyn didn't answer at first, almost as if he hadn't quite heard her. Behind Yuuri's back, the smile that was so often on his face had evaporated like smoke.]
...The hesitant sort, hm? My brother was much the same himself, once.
[The answer left him before he could reconsider it, quiet and distant.]
She doesn't turn around to see the look on his face -- doesn't have to, not when she hears it in his tone. She's quiet herself for a long, long moment before she swallows enough to wet her dry throat and she feels brave enough to speak. ]
... were, um... were you much older than him? He was your younger brother, wasn't he?
[Ardyn had already talked about the subject with Junpei when he hadn't remembered the truth, and with Church when he had. He'd even shown the latter some approximation of his brother's face when they were trying those hardlight projectors.]
[(He'd needed to know if he remembered what his brother looked like, and he still wasn't certain he did.)]
[Was it easy to talk about, without dissolving into a complex mixture of hatred and spite and the repeated question of why with no answer? Of course not. Did he trust Yuuri and the others--his family--to know about it?]
...I was five years older. Not quite a tremendous difference.
Mmn. A lot less than me and Ruu-chan. For us it was about...
[ A pause, and a considering little hum. She doesn't really have to think that hard about it -- but she wants to give Ardyn a moment of quiet, a place for him to interject and tell her to stop if it turns out they're poking at a scar that isn't quite ready to stop aching yet. ]
About ten or eleven years, I think. I was only about eight or so when she was born. So she really ended up being the baby of the family.
[It would have bothered him more, he presumed, if he didn't have something idly keeping his hands busy as an excuse for the distantly distracted tone of voice.]
That is quite a bit farther apart.
[If it had been anyone but Yuuri.]
I assume our parents were often preoccupied with the kingdom itself, so more often than not I was the one keeping an eye on him. Not that it was difficult; Izunia hardly ever left my side when we were children, I can remember that much.
I know exactly what you mean. Our parents were always so busy that once I was old enough... it was pretty much up to me to take care of Ruu-chan while they weren't around. It wasn't like I minded or anything, I knew they couldn't help it. I just felt bad that it meant she had to stay with her big sister instead of Mom and Dad like I knew she wanted.
[ She's struck suddenly by the thought: how long had it been, when everything went to hell, since Ruu had seen her parents? Far longer than it had been since she'd seen her sister. The idea of it suddenly makes Yuuri feel like crying but she pushes it as far back down into her chest as she can. ]
... I talk to much about her -- Ruu-chan, I mean -- but I feel like... I never ask a lot about your brother. Is-- is it alright if I do? I know it can't be easy to talk about, but um...
... what was he like? I don't-- I can't really imagine him at all. To be honest, right now, when I picture him in my head he's just... you, but maybe a little more... I don't know. Severe?
[ definitely not like certain old crusty lucian kings we could mention hahaha am i right ]
I'm sure I'm picturing him all wrong and I've probably got the wrong sort of idea of who he was, too.
Hm...you aren't incredibly far off. Even as a child, Izunia was a bit too serious. I can remember trying to get him to relax somewhat, but it never quite worked. We'd always gotten along despite that--I taught him how to use all the powers available to the Lucis Caelum bloodline, and he was always eager to learn as much as he possibly could. Wherever I went, he was never farther away than my own shadow.
...We were inseparable, once.
[That carried a slightly forlorn note, Ardyn's hands faltering before picking back up in the same repetitive motion.]
We drifted apart as we grew older. After my coronation he became ever more the serious royal, concerned with Lucis above all else. Each time I came back to Insomnia, the brother I thought I'd known felt just a little colder. I think he found me irresponsible, too impulsive for the King of Light--the cost of my magic was something I never dared let him know, so I imagine that...he simply couldn't comprehend how difficult it was. Later I convinced myself that he was no more than a jealous would-be king, that he'd lived in my shadow for so long that he had been stained with darkness himself.
[A cold note of his own had crept into Ardyn's voice like a sudden frost, but he paused to collect his thoughts and sighed to himself.]
Things are somewhat hazy in places after that, for obvious reasons. What Izunia did to me...it went well beyond 'wanting to protect Lucis', even if I suspect that I was already a threat to the world regardless of the reasons why. Izunia Lucis Caelum III was a good person once, but that froze over and died off long before his elder brother did.
[ God. Just hearing all this makes her heart hurt. She can't imagine, doesn't want to imagine anything remotely similar happening with her and Ruu. And if all that had happened because Ardyn had simply been the man the gods had asked him to be -- a healer, a king -- then it put his own brother on the list of things that had been stolen. Just another life tossed away so the gods could have their accursed.
Without even noticing it, Yuuri's curled her hands into tight fists in her lap. ]
... You're really not doing much to discourage me from trying to fight a god, you know.
[ she says it in the kind of voice that suggests she's trying to sound flippant and like she's not deeply upset on his behalf and it's not really working. ]
You're not fighting Bahamut, my dear. He's a god the size of a building, you'd have trouble reaching him.
[Ardyn laughed hollowly, with a playfully light tug on a half-finished braid to discourage the idea.]
He resembled Noctis as he is now, or...I think that he did, to my best recollection. Hardly an exact copy, but the blue eyes are unmistakable. The most striking difference I can place is that Izunia had red hair instead of black--darker than mine, I think he took after our father.
[...]
It's...not 'funny', hardly at all. I hate him, even now. If I were ever to see him again, I'd be likely to kill him on the spot. Yet at the same time, I-...miss him, in some strange measure. I never found out what became of him after my exile; after he'd eradicated all mention of me from history. If he or my Shield ever thought of when I was still human, or if they even cared to remember.
...I don't know if my little brother died with regrets.
[ It makes Yuuri feel ill at ease to hear Ardyn talking like that. It's not fear exactly but a shade close to it, only a few hues different enough to change the tint. She would trust -- has already trusted -- Tenmyouji Ardyn with her life and everything besides it. But when he talks like that, she's reminded that the man she knows know wasn't always like this, there was a man called Ardyn Izunia who wore his face and had his voice but had nothing but spite and hate and black running through his veins.
She's not scared of him. She has no reason to be. But sometimes... just sometimes... ]
I don't think that's strange at all. I think...
[ God. She wishes she knew what to say. Yuuri feels like she never does. For a terrible moment, she finds herself longing for the relative emotional simplicity of a trial or the Sunday following and hates hates hates herself for even letting the thought cross her mind. Ardyn is so old and his problems are so cosmic that what could a girl like her, barely even an adult, do for him?
She can listen. She can let him know that he isn't alone. It won't solve the problem but maybe she needs to start learning that she can't solve every problem. ]
I think something like that... it's perfectly human, isn't it? He was your brother. You two grew up together and even if he-- ... even if things changed. I don't think it's strange for you to miss him. I'm sure he-- I'm sure they--
[ She runs out of words. Because she can't be sure of anything, can she?
Yuuri doesn't turn her head, not wanting to disturb his work, but she slides her hand out of her lap and reaches it back for him to take. ]
... I'm sorry. About... him. And all the rest of it.
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[ She sighs and pulls over a chair so she can drop herself into a seat next to him. This feels like a sitting down kind of talk. ]
Maybe... I don't know. Do you think there's any chance that they waited so long to broadcast it because nothing actually happened? And ours was the more... exciting season?
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[Ardyn sighed, slouching in his chair and crossing one leg over the other.]
Particularly so soon after a relatively successful season just ended.
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[ There's no conviction whatsoever in her words, though. She knows what's going to happen will come sooner or later and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. ]
I just-- I was hoping so badly we'd be able to change something now that we're out. Now that we're not just flying around blind on the Temerity. But it almost feels like we're back to square one.
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We're in a better position than we were, however incrementally. It's miles from the progress I'd hoped for, but it isn't back at the start just yet.
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It's... a step forward, isn't it? Better than nothing. And we're in a better position to work with it now than we were.
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[Realizing the two of them could use a change of subject and a distraction, Ardyn frowned critically in a way that seemed less than serious, glancing over Yuuri for a second or two.]
Turn your chair around for a moment, would you?
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[ There's a slight upturn to her tone at the end that makes it sound more like a question than an affirmation, but she does just as he asked and turns her chair around before settling back into it. ]
... do I want to ask why?
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[She might have seen a couple floating white crystals that came with reaching into the Armiger out of the corner of her eye, followed by the light pull of careful hands gathering her hair together at the back of her neck.]
Your hair's quite a mess, and I could use something to do with my hands that isn't toying with a plague taken the form of a paperweight.
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If only Eos could see their Accursed now. ]
Well, I suppose I can't just walk around looking like a mess while I'm a guest in someone's house, can I?
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[Noctis or any of the others might have thought him more likely to snap her neck than be running a brush from the Armiger through her hair. At one point, they would have been right.]
Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. I used to watch V-...a friend of mine do this every morning. I think I can still remember how it worked.
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[ She's quiet for a moment, hands folded in her lap. It's been a very long while since anyone's actually bothered to fuss over her hair on her behalf. Not since she was old enough to be able to do it herself. But Ruu was always happy to spend hours, if allowed, sat in front of her big sister while Yuuri swept a brush through her smooth blonde hair and she's suddenly hit with a sting of unexpected nostalgia and finds herself smiling a little sadly. ]
... when, um... when we're all settled again and... Ruu-chan is here. [ because she won't talk about that like it's an if. she trusts Junpei, believes in him with all her heart and if he says he's going to save Haruna Wakasa then Yuuri has no reason whatsoever to doubt him. ] She'd probably let you do whatever you liked with her hair. Brushing it for her was the only time I could ever get her to sit still.
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[His hands went still at the mention of Yuuri's sister, but only for a second or two. He didn't doubt there was some way to salvage the situation, considering the massive joke that was anything resembling a coherent timeline between them.]
[But it made him think, if only for that fleeting second, about someone else.]
...I suppose I could do that, if she wanted me to.
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[ It doesn't hurt as much to talk about her now. It stings but only in the way a skimmed knee does. It'll heal in time. So long as she doesn't pick too much at the wound. ]
She'd need a little time to adjust but I... I like to think she'd warm up to you all fast enough.
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...The hesitant sort, hm? My brother was much the same himself, once.
[The answer left him before he could reconsider it, quiet and distant.]
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She doesn't turn around to see the look on his face -- doesn't have to, not when she hears it in his tone. She's quiet herself for a long, long moment before she swallows enough to wet her dry throat and she feels brave enough to speak. ]
... were, um... were you much older than him? He was your younger brother, wasn't he?
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[(He'd needed to know if he remembered what his brother looked like, and he still wasn't certain he did.)]
[Was it easy to talk about, without dissolving into a complex mixture of hatred and spite and the repeated question of why with no answer? Of course not. Did he trust Yuuri and the others--his family--to know about it?]
...I was five years older. Not quite a tremendous difference.
[Of course he did.]
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[ A pause, and a considering little hum. She doesn't really have to think that hard about it -- but she wants to give Ardyn a moment of quiet, a place for him to interject and tell her to stop if it turns out they're poking at a scar that isn't quite ready to stop aching yet. ]
About ten or eleven years, I think. I was only about eight or so when she was born. So she really ended up being the baby of the family.
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That is quite a bit farther apart.
[If it had been anyone but Yuuri.]
I assume our parents were often preoccupied with the kingdom itself, so more often than not I was the one keeping an eye on him. Not that it was difficult; Izunia hardly ever left my side when we were children, I can remember that much.
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[ She's struck suddenly by the thought: how long had it been, when everything went to hell, since Ruu had seen her parents? Far longer than it had been since she'd seen her sister. The idea of it suddenly makes Yuuri feel like crying but she pushes it as far back down into her chest as she can. ]
... I talk to much about her -- Ruu-chan, I mean -- but I feel like... I never ask a lot about your brother. Is-- is it alright if I do? I know it can't be easy to talk about, but um...
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[His hands were still steady, focusing on carefully braiding Yuuri's hair.]
I can hardly promise to be able to recall any accurate responses, but you can.
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[ definitely not like certain old crusty lucian kings we could mention hahaha am i right ]
I'm sure I'm picturing him all wrong and I've probably got the wrong sort of idea of who he was, too.
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...We were inseparable, once.
[That carried a slightly forlorn note, Ardyn's hands faltering before picking back up in the same repetitive motion.]
We drifted apart as we grew older. After my coronation he became ever more the serious royal, concerned with Lucis above all else. Each time I came back to Insomnia, the brother I thought I'd known felt just a little colder. I think he found me irresponsible, too impulsive for the King of Light--the cost of my magic was something I never dared let him know, so I imagine that...he simply couldn't comprehend how difficult it was. Later I convinced myself that he was no more than a jealous would-be king, that he'd lived in my shadow for so long that he had been stained with darkness himself.
[A cold note of his own had crept into Ardyn's voice like a sudden frost, but he paused to collect his thoughts and sighed to himself.]
Things are somewhat hazy in places after that, for obvious reasons. What Izunia did to me...it went well beyond 'wanting to protect Lucis', even if I suspect that I was already a threat to the world regardless of the reasons why. Izunia Lucis Caelum III was a good person once, but that froze over and died off long before his elder brother did.
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Without even noticing it, Yuuri's curled her hands into tight fists in her lap. ]
... You're really not doing much to discourage me from trying to fight a god, you know.
[ she says it in the kind of voice that suggests she's trying to sound flippant and like she's not deeply upset on his behalf and it's not really working. ]
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[Ardyn laughed hollowly, with a playfully light tug on a half-finished braid to discourage the idea.]
He resembled Noctis as he is now, or...I think that he did, to my best recollection. Hardly an exact copy, but the blue eyes are unmistakable. The most striking difference I can place is that Izunia had red hair instead of black--darker than mine, I think he took after our father.
[...]
It's...not 'funny', hardly at all. I hate him, even now. If I were ever to see him again, I'd be likely to kill him on the spot. Yet at the same time, I-...miss him, in some strange measure. I never found out what became of him after my exile; after he'd eradicated all mention of me from history. If he or my Shield ever thought of when I was still human, or if they even cared to remember.
...I don't know if my little brother died with regrets.
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She's not scared of him. She has no reason to be. But sometimes... just sometimes... ]
I don't think that's strange at all. I think...
[ God. She wishes she knew what to say. Yuuri feels like she never does. For a terrible moment, she finds herself longing for the relative emotional simplicity of a trial or the Sunday following and hates hates hates herself for even letting the thought cross her mind. Ardyn is so old and his problems are so cosmic that what could a girl like her, barely even an adult, do for him?
She can listen. She can let him know that he isn't alone. It won't solve the problem but maybe she needs to start learning that she can't solve every problem. ]
I think something like that... it's perfectly human, isn't it? He was your brother. You two grew up together and even if he-- ... even if things changed. I don't think it's strange for you to miss him. I'm sure he-- I'm sure they--
[ She runs out of words. Because she can't be sure of anything, can she?
Yuuri doesn't turn her head, not wanting to disturb his work, but she slides her hand out of her lap and reaches it back for him to take. ]
... I'm sorry. About... him. And all the rest of it.
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