Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
— Responsibility —
Noctis Lucis Caelum wakes to the rumble of an Astral's voice.
Bahamut's eyes are piercing. The very gods want him to die. Noctis wonders in the back of his mind what he could have done to offend them so grievously.
"The light waxes full," the Astral says.
Maybe that is designed to mean something, and perhaps Luna could have understood it, but Noctis cannot imagine what its meaning is. He shakes himself free of the last threads of his slumber, his dreams of happier times. His stomach twists. He has not forgotten his purpose.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Noctis has always known his fate. He has seen his father, young and strong, bowed low by sustaining the Wall. A full life had never been possible. Still, a stirring dream had gripped his young imagination. Maybe not a full life, but a happy one. And hasn't he had some measure of happiness?
He breathes.
Noctis can feel again — stone against his back and a chill in the air. He takes a moment to squeeze his eyes closed, getting used to having the organs again. He feels different — when he raises a hand to his face, his fingers scratch against a beard and brush against hair that has grown longer by an inch or so.
If Noctis were not so tired, so resigned, he might have shuddered at the implications. How long has he lain within the Crystal? Weeks? Maybe even a few months, he thinks as he feels a deep-set ache in his left knee, the knee that had begun to act up in the last leg of their journey.
When he exits the ruins of a cell, he sees only a sort of dark fog, and he makes out the shape of a motorboat in the gloom. His first priority must be to see to his subjects — his friends, something selfish whispers — and then he knows his duty. He must find and destroy the avatar of the Scourge, the immortal known as Ardyn.
For all that he feels the burning of the Stars beneath his chest, a wealth of endless energy, Noctis only feels drained. As the spray of the chill water bites his face, Noctis imagines that this is what it felt like for his father. A moment of dark humor passes across his face. At least he will not suffer long, will not gray prematurely or need a cane to walk. His death will put an end to the Crystal's effects.
§
After harnessing the Crystal, the daemons at the dock seem to him like the mindless monsters in a fairy tale. The hero will not fall to them; he must face the dragon. It's somewhat laughable. He remembers a time when he had needed Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio to cover his back to even think about attacking one of these nightmares.
Now, the Chosen King dispatches the daemons with a casual ease.
The Star that burns in his chest tells him that midday has passed. While he slumbered, the night had fully overtaken the day. The rage that what is his has been harmed scalds like a physical manifestation of his emotions.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Did you rage? Are you still there?
Noctis traces the road signs, since all of the constellations have blinked out. It is only a few hours after he sets out before he comes into human contact. Noctis had almost feared that the Scourge had killed everyone else, that there were no Lucians left at all.
The shine of headlights down the road burns his eyes, and Noctis shields his face from them. Swinging to the side of the cracked pavement, the truck slows and out from its window pops a freckled face. The man looks simultaneously haunted and overjoyed. "Prince Noctis!" he greets.
He seems familiar. Noctis tries to drum up where he's seen the young man before.
"It's me, Talbott," the man says, and he doesn't even look disappointed that Noctis didn't recognize him. This is fortuitous, since Noctis can feel the breath whooshing out of his lungs. Everything else in his mind — his approaching death, Ardyn, the Astrals, his friends — falls to the wayside.
How long? he doesn't have to say, because Talbott is answering his unspoken question with a shy bob of his head.
"It has been ten years, Your Highness."
§
His Crownsguard shift restlessly as they ascend to the throne room. Partly this is due to the knowledge that Lucis is soon to be restored, an impatience that had burned for a decade. And yet, regret drags at their heels. They step closer to him in subconscious protection, and then retreat again. With each moment, they escort their King nearer to his damnation.
Noctis is nearly a statue in his stillness. His head is raised high, and his eyes are clear. He strides with purpose out of the elevator and raises a hand to firmly pushes open the door to his throne room. For all that the Citadel is in ruin, that Noctis will not live to see his kingdom rebuilt, this is his domain.
The rage that fills him at the sight of the desecration of his father's body, of Luna's broken white form, of the Glaive named Nyx — it slots away neatly beside all the cold anger against the creature that is part Ardyn, part Scourge. Even now, Noctis cannot claim to know exactly how much of a human mind that the Chancellor has retained, and how much sanity it might have after two thousand years without respite.
Ardyn lounges on the throne. "Are you here for the throne?" he murmurs, and a rumbling laugh comes from his mouth, but his frame does not shake with mirth. "It seats only one," he challenges softly. The man's eyes blaze with bloodlust, betraying the purpose behind his serpentine witticisms at last.
Noctis imagines that Ardyn may even want defeat at the Chosen King's hand — may want the release of death. After learning of his own Star-fated death, Noctis shared both confusion and understanding. How could someone want death, the death that comes so swiftly in the darkness like an assassin? But at the same time, perhaps the sweetness of death's embrace would put to an end the torture of the wait. Of trying to keep his traitorous body together until his duty was completed.
But for all of that, Ardyn had taken every close thing from him and tore it, bleeding, from his heart. Family, friends, and kingdom, all dashed like a petulant child with an unwanted toy into faded memories. Perhaps the man had wanted to motivate him into taking the Crystal's power, but there was no excuse for what he had done.
Ardyn would die. Noctis did not fool himself into thinking that it were only duty to his people pushing him forward, or filial obedience, nor even devotion to the Astrals. He was not as selfless as that. The depths of his rage seemed fathomless, and his maturation in the Crystal had only tempered it into a steel blade.
"Off my chair, jester," he commands. "The King sits there."
§
It is at the end of it all that Noctis takes his throne.
Noctis visage strains with composure of a king facing his end. His eyes crease from the strain of bearing the weight of the Crystal. His hands rest on the pommel of his sword.
"Trust me," he murmurs to the ghosts that haunted these halls and his blood.
His father drives his blade into his gut, and Noctis falls.
§
Crash!
Nyx Ulric pauses, tilting his head toward the alley. His paper bag crinkles as Nyx tightens his grip on his takeout. Then Nyx sighs and detours on his way home from a long day, already picturing the mocking expression on Crowe's face when she hears that he's gone and rescued a stray cat or dog.
Half buried in boxes and trash cans and half lying against the back stoop of the apartment building, there is a man clothed in the dark hues of the royals and the servants of the crown. His clothes — though of fine make — are dusty and torn. He lays a hand against the alley wall and tries to lever himself up, one shoulder slamming harshly against the brick as his arm fails him.
It's a drunkard, Nyx thinks, even as he sympathizes. Many of those who had lost people to the Empire had been unable to live on. They had not been given a purpose in the Glaive like Nyx had. And of them, many had fallen to drink to cure their loss.
This thought flies from his mind as the man stiffens and looks up to study him with mistrust. His features — facial structure, beard, silver-touched hair crowning a face that was young — screamed his liege King Regis. And yet it was not him.
Then the face, so like the King's visage, twists in renewed pain. The man curls inward once again, cupping his free hand around his chest.
Nyx's mind connects the prominent tear in the shirt with the injury, and his body runs forward without input as he sees the man start to slump toward the ground. His dinner falls to the alley floor as he bolsters the man's arm over his shoulder, peering down at the blood gushing from an angry stab wound, staining the man's fingers.
"We need to get you to a hospital," Nyx realizes.
The man groans, and his eyes clear as he stares up at the clear skies. His face seizes in pain, and he lazily follows the skyline to the pristine towers of the Citadel.
"No hospital," he murmurs, and if Nyx weren't holding him aloft he would have never heard the weak protest.
"Look, I don't know if you're supposed to be a decoy for the Empire or something, and I'm sure it's all classified, but you'll never get to debrief if you're dead," Nyx argues, because he doesn't want to take him somewhere against his will.
"Too da'gerous," the man slurs. His eyes are drooping, and he's still losing blood.
"Insomnia's Wall will keep the Empire out; you're safe," Nyx tries to sooth.
"For you," he says, and he falls limp.
At first, Nyx is too focused on not letting the man die to parse his meaning, but then he realizes. For a moment, he weighs the man's concern with his half-conscious, perhaps delirious state. Nyx doesn't understand how anyone could find themselves under attack in the very heart of Insomnia, and he wonders if the Empire's spies could find the man at the hospital. And then Nyx scoffs, because Insomnia has been secure for centuries.
And yet, Nyx wonders what sort of man could be trusted to play at being King, and he curses even as he schemes how to get the man unnoticed into his apartment. But first, the wound. Nyx's hand burns with fire, and he tastes hot bile in the back of his throat as he smells cooking meat.
§
Now, with the man resting on his bed and out of the shadows of the alleyway, Nyx admits that maybe body-double was too optimistic. The man's missing the crow's feet of Regis, and he couldn't fool a discerning audience for a moment. And yet, the resemblance is uncanny and the man is clothed like a royal.
Nyx drags his hand down his face and pours himself a glass of bourbon, sitting on the armchair he'd dragged to the bedside and preparing himself for a long night.
§
King Regis sighs at the relief in his weary bones. It is late, and he wishes that the illusion of health would last just a moment longer in this pleasant dream.
Regis' eyes slam open, and he gropes for his cane even as he limps out of his rooms and down the hallway, dressed in pajamas and followed by an increasingly worried guard. He slams open the door to the Crystal's chamber and he feels immediate fear despite the presence of the Lucian treasure.
The Crystal's powers are still there — Regis can feel his Arminger, and the Wall, and even the power lended to his subjects.
There is no drain.
Notes: This is the first post in what I think might literally be years. Best of wishes to this community, and thank you for all of the good memories! How have you guys been? Are any of you trying NaNoWriMo this year? Anyone catch the hidden sci-fi reference? - Celestia Craven