phantasmalrift | ★ // your friendly neighborhood assassin

★ // your friendly neighborhood assassin

Who: Ardyn + open
What: Someone missed the Assassin Festival and he's making up for it.
When: General period around Halloween because time is fake.
Where: Around the Station + Annex
Warnings: Reckless behavior on high places, but it's fine he can fly.

[There is a menace in Keystone.]

[Don't look up, because nearly anywhere you do a hooded figure in black is lurking. Possibly on top of the fridge or sitting on the top of a bookshelf in the library like he's fucking Spiderman or something. More alarmingly, he could be found perched on the edge of the viewing deck or casually walking on the railing of the Station's roof. It didn't look like he was unsteady or liable to trip--in fact he seemed pretty coordinated.]

[On occasion he'd remember to take the hood off--and sure enough it was clearly Ardyn, messy hair having gotten long enough to tie in a slightly uneven braid. At least he was clearly having fun, even if it probably looked like he was courting death by risking falling clear off the damn buildings.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...That’s your choice to make, not mine. But so long as you’re comfortable with the idea, I’d like to try the whole coexistence thing. We are, in fact, speaking without incident.

[Shrug.]

It's kind of your choice, too? On account of being a person involved in two people talking or not? I mean, I get what you're saying, but I also don't want to remind you of bad stuff maybe you'd rather put behind you.

[Ardyn shook his head, smiling faintly.]

Remembering all of that is...the only way I can pay for it anymore. I can’t let anyone kill me, and I can’t let myself carry on and forget what’s transpired. I’ve forgotten enough as it is.

...I don’t really mind, in other words.

...Okay. So... when I miss Noct, I can come here and talk about him, and all the stupid stuff he does? That's fine?

If you’d like. I’d not mind hearing it.

Will you tell me about your Noct, too?

Sure--I guess I could do that. You might not believe me, though.

That's okay, I don't really believe you about most things.

[Joke? Joke. The slight, uncertain tilt up at the corner of his mouth says he's trying, anyway.]

[He seemed to take it well enough, just laughing and shrugging his shoulders.]

He's a little older than you're likely thinking--from about ten years after your present. By the time I met him again, he was a terribly fearsome space pirate.

Edited 2018-12-06 20:52 (UTC)

[SNORT.]

What? Fearsome at what, getting distracted by cats?

You'd be amazed what he can accomplish when there isn't a body of water nearby to distract him.

...No, I wouldn't.

[Prompto's never not amazed by Noct, really. Noct can do anything.]

What was I doing? Was I first mate?

[Because surely, where there's Noct, there's Prompto.]

...

[internal screaming]

Oh--afraid not. Interdimensional kidnapping being a tricky sort of thing, we didn't encounter you until a while later.

...Uh...huh.

[...]

You know, I'm getting the sense that, like, there's a whole big iceberg of stuff I'm not gonna like, and maybe, if we talk about this, you should start at the beginning. And maybe not today. Because I don't know where to even start asking questions. Just tell me.

[He looks up.]

Is Noct okay?

[Everything Is Fine.]

He's safe, yes. I can promise you that much, for whatever my word's worth to you.

[Prompto searches Ardyn's face for a long, tense moment, then nods.]

Yeah. That's what matters.

[Noct is what matters. Prompto nods again, to himself, and shrugs.]

I can probably handle the rest as long as that's true. It just sounds like a long story, and, you know.

[He shrugs again, grander and less stiffly.]

My attention span is, like, ehhhhhh.

That's alright. It's...

[A sigh.]

...it's a lot. Hard to explain and harder to speak about. But we all came out of it alive, if not strictly alright.

Is it why you're like this now? All...

[He straightens from the railing to gesture at all of Ardyn with both hands.]

Niceified? Unvillainied?

'Human' would be a good term to simplify it.

[Ardyn took a slow breath and closed his eyes briefly, looking for the simplest way to put it.]

What I was...there was a human will in there, buried deep under the spite and darkness. After I'd been defeated by Noctis, that consciousness was put into this body--a manufactured human form.

[Not quite a clone, but the similarity hung unstated in the air.]

No Starscourge, no murderous insanity and megalomania. Not to say I'm the most stable, but...I've had a bit of time to even out.

[Ah, yeah. Prompto freezes at 'manufactured' and only gradually starts moving again, jerky as if he hasn't quite fully thawed.]

Oh.

[As if he can't make up his mind, he holds his elbows and then the railing, then starts kicking his toes against the roof behind him. Fidgeting's one way to get the willies out.]

Like... the way that guy did it. Putting his, um, consciousness. Into the thing. But he was still all messed up.

[Verstael Besithia. Prompto never did get the hang of his name, but his shadow's inescapable nonetheless. Shuddering, he returns his hands to his arms, rubs them to get warm.]

Do you think--there was a way to save him, too? He could've gotten better?

...Depends on who you ask.

[Ardyn frowned slightly, yellow eyes downcast as he went back to twisting his ring.]

Personally, I don't think there was much saving him. Even put into a different body...at his besthe was already an unstable person.

Oh.

[At least he stops squirming. The expression on his face is taut and complicated until he finally swallows and starts rocking on his feet.]

Zuzu and I--Izunia, I mean--we talked about souls a while ago. And we ended up talking about me, but what I was thinking about at first was the others. The other MTs.

[It's cold enough that his shirt has long sleeves today. Even so, when Prompto rubs at the back of his wrist, it's clear as day what he sees there.]

I guess I'm just wondering if... there was anything else we could've done for them. Besides kill them. [His voice drops.] ...There were so many.

[Ardyn was silent for a long moment--uncomfortably so, but still turning the concept over in his mind carefully. Church had called him worse than the Director, and having that acknowledged...felt right, somehow. Better to have the truth out in the open.]

[But it still did hurt, long after the fact. Being able to look back at the project in greater clarity, knowing just how abhorrent it all was and being able to care about that...]

Speaking as objectively as possible...no. Even were the older ones caught at the stage in which they remained human and still contained an ego, one would need an army of psychotherapists to even begin to let them truly develop individual identities. It was well past too late by then.

...And speaking as someone aware of how cold that sounds, I'm sorry.

[After a while, Prompto shakes his head.]

I don't know if it would've been worse to know there was a way and we just... didn't have time to pull it off for all of them. Or. Didn't care.

[He rubs at his face with both hands now, then runs his hands up through his hair, sighing.]

I guess that makes me kinda terrible, huh? That I want to put the people I live with first. But otherwise it's just way too much. There's too much to fix. There's too much to care about.

[With a swallow, he turns his eyes up to the sky.]

Are human beings really supposed to be this small?

...I don't know. [He curled a hand against his chest, blue stone in his ring briefly catching the light.]

This body is--...it's hard to explain. What I was before was something infinite and unending in every imaginable way. The concept of malice itself--sleepless, undying, and completely untouched by the world or time that passed within it. This body is so much smaller than that, confined by things like physical limitations and emotion.

[He leaned back slightly as he balanced on the railing, looking to the sky with a distant and unsure stare.]

There's so much--this human mind can barely contain memories, much less bear the weight of the sort of catastrophes that arise merely by being alive. And I already know too well what happens when one is too selfless--it's nothing good.

So I'm...the same way. I have to look after those I could never stand to lose. All else comes after that--selfish though it may seem, I don't think it a wrong way to live.

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