carbungle | IC Contact

[You asked for a recording, Noctis? It might have taken a bit--several false starts, a fair few substandard attempts, until finally a message would ping on his communicator, comprised only of an audio file deemed adequate enough. Playing it would result in exactly what he'd requested: a familiar voice, in far less dark tones.]

[Here goes nothing:]

Long ago, a terrible war was waged between kingdoms of east and west. On the front lines of this war fought a soldier named Draco; though he was the hero of the western army, he was a humble man with no wealth or title to speak of. Every day and night, he would think only of the woman he loved--Maria, the western kingdom's princess. Far away would Maria in turn think only of Draco, and pray for his return as she watched the stars from the castle's parapets.

One day news reached them--the war had ended and the western army fallen, with Draco presumed killed in battle. The castle had become territory of the east, and Maria forced to marry Ralse, the prince of the eastern kingdom. She looked to the stars to which she had so fervently prayed and felt a deep despair, so pained was she to know her vows were to be exchanged with a man she did not love.

The night of their betrothal saw a grand ball; however, survivors from the western army had banded together to lay siege to their kingdom's castle and overtake it. Having survived, Draco made a grand reappearance to challenge Ralse for Maria's hand. The two clashed swords as the western resistance claimed the castle, with Draco the superior of the two. Ralse yielded the victory to him, and the castle to its people. Maria flew to Draco's arms, grateful beyond measure that her love was returned to her and the eastern army driven from her castle.

Together they resolved that though their future was yet uncertain, their love was enduring; that they would live happily together, and face what came at each other's side.

thank you

i'll listen when i can

it's a good story.

is that from our world?

i think so

it's not one i heard here, but i don't know with certainty where i learned it from

must be pretty old. far as i know there's been no prince or king of lucis by that name.

[That would be the only eastern kingdom in a more modern era that he can think of.]

i'm sure the concept of kingdoms is even older than i am, so it could also just be a legend or a fairytale. i doubt i told it with the appropriate level of flair it might have called for, regardless.

you didn't need to add flair.

[He had flair. He had style and creepy swagger and attitude, oozing poisonous charisma with every syllable he spoke. He had smiles made of secrets and eyes that spoke of a million more stories than the words he uttered. He would have told that story very differently, would have pretended to smile at the happy ending, would have chosen it specifically to rub salt in the wound he left behind when he stole that ending from Noctis, from Luna. He didn't want flair.]

you told it like YOU, which is what i asked for

it's what i needed.

thank you

i'm glad it was, then. did it help you at all?

i think so

give me a little more time, but yeah, i think so

take whatever time you deem necessary. it's your quandary to sort out and your emotions under consideration far more than mine or any other's.

[....]

you're doing that thing again

which thing would that be?

acting like my feelings matter more than yours

i am not the one under whatever manner of extreme distress you have gone through, noctis. in this case, your recovery far outweighs anything else i might or might not be feeling.

besides that, i'm perfectly fine.

Edited 2020-04-17 06:44 (UTC)

this isn't a competition

i wasn't in a good state at the time but i felt you leave, that day

[felt, not heard. those were not footsteps, and that was a man in extreme distress in his own right.]

i'm sorry about that, i've tried to keep that contained but it doesn't always work like i would wish it to.

i won't claim i wasn't distressed myself, but that isn't your fault. no one got hurt, and i am neither upset nor any worse for wear. you saw what you thought was a threat and reacted accordingly. you did the right thing.

dad said the same thing. i don't agree though. and yeah no one got hurt but someone COULD have been. it's just luck that it was the two of you

[Attacking Ardyn would have caused no permanent damage, physically; he'd seen firsthand what sort of "death" the man could heal himself from, after leaving him a pile of shattered ice fragments on the train's floor. And his father creating the shield between them had prevented any harm to befall the two. What if it had been someone else? Anyone else? They'd have been left to the mercy of Noctis' memory, which at the time had been too fragmented to act sensibly, his Armiger ready to strike on command.]

i

i want to explain

you can say no

[There was silence on Ardyn's end, for about the length of time it would take to pull the cork out of a bottle of wine. Gods, if only this worked on him, because this wasn't the kind of talk he'd want to remember in the morning.]

[Whatever he was, whatever he could be--he knew he couldn't keep dancing around the subject forever. Asking the others would be out of the question, opening up any number of healing wounds. Having the information offered (from someone he actually trusted and not Verstael) was another matter entirely.]

[...He knew he was going to hate this, and double checked to make sure the door was locked in case he hated it more than could be contained.]

I'm still here.

Go ahead.

[He has some time to get into that wine, because Noct's response doesn't come immediately. He needs a few minutes to decide exactly where he wanted to take this. There's... a lot he's not prepared to say. Not yet. Not like this. Maybe not ever, considering he's aware that Ardyn doesn't want to know. But he hates leaving it all as an unknown, a mystery of why he said what he said, why he woke with fear in his eyes and turned his blades not just on Ardyn but on the father he knows and loves.]

i don't know what changed in altissia. up to that point he was helping us, even if he was weird about it. but during the rite for leviathan's blessing he showed up with a whole fleet of imperial ships. he

[luna, luna, luna--]

some people got hurt. i saw him, what he did. he wanted me to see him

["Oh, prince! Your bride awaits!"]

he followed us on the train to gralea. he knew i'd want to kill him after what happened, so when i saw him that's what i did

["Dude, are you seriously trying to kill me?"]

it wasn't him. he knows some kind of illusion magic, he can make other people look and sound like him. i didn't see it, i was just so angry

i almost killed prompto

["How long were you in the dark?"]

[Ardyn could venture a guess or two as to why he'd been helpful, given what Ignis had told him. But that was the last thing he wanted to dwell on or hypothesize about right now. There were far more important things to deal with. He wasn't sure where to start or how to address any of that, eventually coming up with:]

Was he alright? Prompto, I mean.

not really

he survived and he said he's fine but how could anyone be, after that?

i pushed him off a moving train, we had to leave him behind. the imperials took him to gralea and i know they hurt him.

[The state they found him in, strung up like a puppet in that miserable room, hurt and exhausted, surrounded by tools made to hurt. There's nothing alright about that, either.]

he used prompto as a way to get me to the capital. he didn't even have to, we were going there anyway. just

did it because he could. to hurt me

I already said that I can't possibly blame you for reacting as you did. Honestly, the more you say the more justified you sound.

I want to apologize, but I suspect you'll call it unnecessary. I rather fail to come up with much else of worth to even attempt to say.

i mean we can sit here and blame ourselves or NOT each other and apologize all day but it won't make either of us feel better about it, and that's not what i brought it up for

so yeah don't apologize

i just, idk. thought you deserved an explanation. lot of mind games happened lately, it was hard to know what was real and what wasn't.

and he told me next time we met he'd kill me so waking up to see you was kind of

yeah.

I understand.

I still don't think you were wrong to react as you did. At the very least, I don't want you to blame yourself for it.

no matter the reason, i don't want to think of it as right or acceptable that i tried to hurt my family. not ever.

[It wasn't okay with Prompto, and it's not okay now, either.]

audio, 4/14

text; a few hours later | 1/2

text; late on 4/16

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