Chapter Text
Ardyn's knees hit the floor with a bang that shook a tapestry down from the wall. Noct raced over to rescue it--it was Ardyn's favorite, the one with the unicorn--and Ardyn stared at Etro with his face a ruin of black blood. Some of it dropped on his knees, and Etro clicked her tongue and sank down with him, taking his face in her hands.
Ardyn," she said, in a strange, lilting accent. "My most dutiful servant. My--" here she spoke words Noct couldn't understand, in the language Ardyn sang in, sometimes. It sounded almost sing-song even then, full of odd tones and ululations. A tear ran down the goddess' perfect cheek.
"Noctis," she said, when Noct was done wrestling with the tapestry. "I need you to help call the daemons home."
Noct stepped forward, suddenly unsure. "How?"
"Be happy to see them," the goddess said. "And watch for your Uncle. If he touches me, he is mine. You will need to turn him back."
But they were already touching, Noct wanted to say. He couldn't, though, because he was whirled away to that vast plain again, where he and the goddess stood side by side before an army of people and animals, weaving through the grass in confusion.
The goddess lifted her hands.
"Where are the daemons?" Noct asked.
"They are here," Etro said. "Call to them, Noctis. Make them feel welcome."
"Um." Noct raised a hand in a wave, spotting a group of small kids a few yards away. "Uh, hey! Hey, come here!"
One of the kids, a girl with a long braid down her back, looked at him. Noct tried for a smile. She smiled back, a little thinly, and walked towards him.
"Hey," Noct said. "I'm Noct."
"You aren't Etro?" she asked. Her voice had that same lilt as before. "Are you... The child version?"
"No," Noct said. "I'm just here to say hi, I guess. She wants you to go to her."
The girl blanched. "I don't know... Will it hurt?"
Noct shook his head. "Don't think so," he said. "She's nice. Really."
The girl shrugged, and her smile broadened just a little. "If you say so, it has to be true," she said, and took Noct's hand.
Then vanished, disappearing with a puff of air like a sigh. Noct looked at Etro, who was holding a man in her arms. She nodded at Noct, so he supposed that was alright. He ran for the other kids, feet thumping on the lush grass.
It took him a while to find Ardyn. Ardyn was sitting on a rock overlooking the crowd, hand on his chin, amber eyes thoughtful. He looked younger, somehow, with longer hair and more pink to his skin, and he glanced at Noct sidelong as Noct climbed onto the rock next to him.
"Hey," Noct said.
"Hey, yourself," said Ardyn.
The crowd began to thin. Some came to Noct, wandering his way in a bewildered sort of daze, and Noct took their hands and grinned and promised them that it'll be alright, promise, and they were sent off, one after another, all of them smiling. Ardyn watched him at it, looking a little lost, and said nothing.
Finally, there were only a handful of people left, speaking earnestly to Etro on the other side of the field.
"Has she taken you?" Ardyn asked at last. His voice was light, but there was an edge to it. "Are you hers, now?"
"Sort of?" Noct scooted closer. "Not yet, though. She says you're gonna live, first. When it's over, that's when I go to her."
"Noctis." Ardyn's face twisted up the way Noct's did when he was trying not to cry, just for a second. Then he let out a long, quivery sigh, and tried to smooth his expression out again. It didn't really work. "You can't sell yourself to a goddess for me."
"I didn't," Noct said. "We made a deal. And it's better than it was gonna be."
Ardyn buried his face in his hands. "Gods."
"It's fine," Noct said. He moved to sit against him, lying his head on Ardyn's shoulder. "We'll both live, this way. And I like her. She's sweet."
"The goddess of death," Ardyn said, raising a red face from his fingers. "Sweet."
"Yeah. You'll see. Uh, not right now, though," he said. "She said if you touch her, it's all over."
"Then I'll stay right here, then," Ardyn said. He turned, gathering Noct into his arms the way he used to when Noct was little, and kissed the side of Noct's temple. "This was horribly reckless of you," he said, "and I love you dearly, and you're grounded for seventeen years."
"Seven--!" Noct squirmed. "Wait a sec!"
"No arguing," Ardyn said. "I'm still your guardian, Noctis Lucis Caelum, and I--"
Noct blinked, and they were kneeling in Ardyn's rooms, surrounded by a carpet of shattered crystals.
"I..." Ardyn said, "am..."
One of the last straggling crystals fell from the ceiling, and Ardyn twisted, trying to drag Noct out of its way. It sliced his shoulder anyways, and Noct hissed, watching blood well up over his sleeve.
Almost unconsciously, Ardyn raised a hand to Noct's shoulder. Light rose to his fingers, and Noct felt a coolness rush over his skin, dashing away the pain. He lifted his sleeve and found the cut was gone, his skin unmarred.
"Uncle Ardyn," he said.
"Oh, gods," Ardyn said, and wrapped Noct in his arms again. He wept in broken, gasping sobs, and Noct held him through it, marveling at the lighter shade of his long, long hair.
Etro was gone. Or... maybe not. Noct thought of what she'd said in the temple, and wondered if maybe this change, this second chance Ardyn had at the life he should have been given, bore her mark. Maybe it did. Maybe she was still with them, watching in the walls, in the broken crystals, in the ever-changing spirit of the world itself.
"It's gonna be okay," Noct said, and realized, as he said it, that he was right. "Don't worry, Uncle Ardyn. It's all gonna be okay."
---
No one knew quite what to make of the last king of Lucis.
He'd been an unusual child, by all accounts. Strange, like his so-called uncle, with a fondness for old texts and a tendency to hum songs no one but Ardyn and a few fringe historians knew the words to. He had friends, certainly--Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis were all part of the ruling Council when Noct was crowned--but there was something about him that could be vaguely unnerving, something that no one could put their finger on.
He could be found fishing in the evenings, calmly accepting advice from his subjects and cursing darkly when he lost a lure. Some nights, he and his friends would sneak away from the tabloid photographers to catch a movie, or he and his uncle would be spotted walking the Citadel gardens together, talking softly.
His uncle caused the most alarm, in both the city and the outlying regions. When Noct was young, there came a night when no daemons rose with the moon, and supplicants from all over Lucis flocked to Insomnia to ask whether the king of light had done his duty and them. And Ardyn Izunia had met them, silver threading through his hair, and assured them that all was well.
When Noctis was forty, he shocked the country again by quietly dissolving the monarchy.
"Lucis is getting on fine," he said, when the camera crews descended. Gladiolus Amicitia stood at his back, nervously eyeing the reporters, but Noct only smiled at the cameras, faint and fond, and leaned his elbows on the podium.
"We'll survive this change," he said in a low voice, as he would to an old friend. "Just like we've survived everything else. Don't worry. It'll be okay."
He kept living in the Citadel, though his friends noticed that he kept stopping by the temple of Etro. They often found him speaking to Iris, who had taken up her duties as priestess with a cheeriness that distressed half the city, or sitting alone, looking up at the statue over the altar.
One night, when Noct was fifty-seven, he rose from his bed and padded down the moonlit hall, heading for the rooms where he'd been raised. He stopped at the door and lifted his hand to it, smiling when it pushed open without so much as a creak.
"Uncle?"
Ardyn sat in his study, long white hair tied back in a ribbon, hands hovering on the cover of a leatherbound book. He turned when Noct came to the doorway, and tilted his head.
"Time already, is it?" he asked.
"Yeah." Noct stepped forward, moving around piles of books and scrolls to drop to a knee at Ardyn's side. "Yeah, it's time."
Ardyn blinked, slowly, and pressed his lips together. "I suppose I had a good run."
"Longer than some," Noct said, and Ardyn chuckled.
"But it was good," Ardyn said. He lifted a hand to Noct's face. "Particularly towards the end."
"Guess so," Noct said. He leaned into his touch for a moment, then stood, holding out his hand. The study seemed to shift around him, walls giving way to a wide, starlit sky, but Noct's face was just as warm, just as kind, as it always had been.
Ardyn took his hand, and Noctis grinned.
"Want to see what's next?"