Chapter Text
Luna and Ravus found Ardyn in Noct's guest room the next morning, while Queen Sylva ran her hands over the spine of the sleeping prince. It was a delicate operation, even with magic, and Ardyn was surprised by the way Sylva used her power to strengthen Noct's bones and connect his nerves. Regis was there as well, holding Noct's hand, and when Lunafreya entered the room, he scarcely even gave her a second glance.
"Lunafreya," Ardyn said, in a low voice. "I'm afraid your mother is at work."
"Ravus and I would like to borrow you," Luna said. She was twisting her hands together, and Ardyn saw dirt under her nails, smudges of it on her knees and shoes. "Please."
"But of course," Ardyn said. He stood, making his quiet apologies to the room at large, and ducked through the door and into the hall. Ravus' jaw was set, his teeth grinding together, and he had his hand clenched on the hilt of an ornamental sword hanging from his belt. Luna glanced at him and waved a hand, but Ravus' brow only lowered sullenly.
"If you would come with us to the garden?" Luna asked, a little too brightly.
"Certainly," Ardyn said. Inwardly, he cringed. From his cursory glance the day before, the garden was the sunniest spot in the manor, and he'd found that even with his coat and hat to protect him, it wasn't exactly a pleasant place to linger. Still, he followed Ravus' marching step, and smiled warmly when Luna wove her arm in his.
"Noct talked about you last night," she said, as they passed down the ornate halls. "He already loves you, I think. And my mother said that King Regis was concerned that he was sinking into a pit, as it were, before the boat accident. He barely spoke to anyone. Mother even asked me to write him another letter to try and boost his spirits. But here he is, perfectly happy."
Ardyn raised his brows. He couldn't imagine Noct silent and withdrawn, unwilling to creep out of his shell for more than a cursory word or two.
"I would like to like you as well," Luna said. "I think we could be friends."
"That's very forthright of you," Ardyn said, deeply amused.
"Mother always says it does no good to be dishonest," Luna said. "Which is why, if we are to be friends, I need to tell you the truth."
They stepped into the circle of sylleblossoms at the heart of the private garden. Ravus stood off to the side, drumming his fingers on the pommel of his sword, and Luna dragged Ardyn into the light, her small hands firm in his.
"Ardyn," she said. "Do you know why the light hurts you?"
"Yes." Ardyn had suspected for some time, before Somnus had pushed the darkness out of him. It was only just within his control, simmering under his skin, a lifetime's worth of healing turned sour.
"What I'm about to say goes against everything my mentor told me," Luna said, and sat down in the blossoms. Ardyn sank with her, sitting back on his heels. "Ravus knows because he's my brother, but you will be the only soul in the world other than us who knows the whole truth. Even the first Oracle didn't know."
"And if you turn on her for it," Ravus said, in a voice that shook, "I'm prepared for the worst."
"Oh my," Ardyn said. "This is serious."
"Ardyn," Luna said. She took a short breath. "Grandfather. There's a reason that your magic is different from ours. We cure the Scourge--And you do too, of course--but you also take it into yourself. That shouldn't have happened. No one else in our line could do it."
She reached out to him, laying a hand on his knee.
"It wasn't by chance," she said.
Then she opened her mouth, and the last, desperate pillar of Ardyn's faith in the gods shattered.
Blackness spotted the sylleblossoms at his feet, and a wind bent their stalks, whirling around the garden walls.
"Haven't I sacrificed enough?" Ardyn asked. He dug his fingers in the earth, and his voice came out broken, cracking. "Have I not already given myself? My love, my daughter, the light of the sun--"
Out of the corner of his eye, Ravus drew his sword.
"Ardyn." Luna inched forward on her knees, hands out. "I only tell you this so you know why I--"
"They ask me to aid in the slaughter of a child?"
The wind picked up, whistling in his ears. Something lashed at the flowers to his right, leaving a scar in the garden, jagged as a lightning strike.
"Ardyn!" Luna's voice came from a great distance. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Ardyn had been cursed from birth, doomed to be the monster in another's story.
"Ardyn! I can heal you!"
Hands pressed Ardyn's chest, and he looked up into the eyes of a young woman with his own dark hair and twist to her mouth.
"Father," she said. Light bloomed from her fingertips, sinking into Ardyn's skin, and for a moment, all Ardyn knew was the blazing pain of magical fire searing through his skin. Then it was gone, and so was the girl, leaving just a small, terrified Luna kneeling in the rotting ruin of her garden, light fading around her.
"No one needs to die for you to be free," she said, and a tear rolled down her chin. "It'll take longer. The Scourge won't disappear all at once. But we're human, and we should have a right to decide--"
Ardyn gathered her up in his arms, and Luna let out a soft gasp, hands curling between them.
"Brave girl," he said, and Luna sucked in a harsh, shivery breath. "The gods don't deserve you."
Luna gulped in another breath, but it sounded more like a choking sob, and she pressed her forehead to Ardyn's shoulder. "I never said it all out loud before," she said. "But I... But I was with Noctis, last night, and we were playing p-piano, and I thought, gods, I thought if he died, I'd just--"
"Luna." Ravus rocked forward on his heels, hand still on his sword, as Luna wept into Ardyn's scarf.
"It's alright," Ardyn said, stroking Luna's hair. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have scared you."
"You didn't even meet your daughter," Luna sobbed. Ardyn looked at Ravus, who hurriedly dropped his sword and rushed to Luna's side.
"Come, Luna," he said. His face softened when he spoke to her, no longer that of a boy trying too hard to seem like a man, and he pushed her bangs out of her eyes. "Don't cry. You know you always come out on top. It's infuriating."
"Oh, hush," Luna said, laughing wetly.
"There's my favorite sister," Ravus said, and brushed a tear from her eye with a thumb.
It took some time for Luna to be even halfway presentable, but her mother, after exclaiming at her red face and dirty dress, agreed to let her in to see the queen. Sylva was resting in her parlor after her healing session with Noctis, and sat up with a jerk as Luna, Ravus, and Ardyn stepped into the room.
"Luna," she said, brushing wrinkles out of her gown. "Have you been crying?"
Luna's ears flushed pink.
"I believe Lunafreya has a proposition to make," Ardyn said. He bowed, extending an arm like a herald, and Luna giggled nervously. She looked to her mother, cleared her throat, and pressed her fingers to the red, baggy spots under her eyes.
"Mother," she said. "How would you like Grandpa Ardyn to stay with us forever?"
To say that the overturning of a prophecy took some convincing was a bit of an understatement. The manor of the Fleurets was thrown into a polite uproar as ancient texts were pulled, tests were done, and a shaking Luna summoned her divine messengers and made a case for Ardyn's slow, painful healing to the powers behind the throne.
Noctis found the whole affair ridiculous.
"Of course you'll be healed," he said, playing chess with Ardyn in the queen's sitting room. "If you're sick, you need a doctor. Just like me."
That, as Regis put it, turned out to be a hard argument to counter.
"Weird shit," Drautos said one morning, after Ardyn stumbled out from a healing with a splitting headache and a lance of pain in his side. He helped Ardyn walk to a bench under a shady alcove and summoned a bottle shaped like an octopus hugging a ship.
"Galahd's finest cold-brew," he said, passing it to Ardyn. "For shit situations."
"Why Drautos," Ardyn said, placing a hand on his chest. "You do care."
"Gods sakes," Drautos said. "Call me Titus."
"I will," Ardyn said, twisting off the cap. "Eventually."
Drautos sighed.
Noct delivered the verdict a few minutes later, swinging himself along by new arm braces. "Ardyn!" he shouted. "Uncle Ardyn!"
Ardyn froze in the act of lifting the bottle to his lips, and Drautos hid a smile behind his fist.
"Luna and Ravus are gonna live in Insomnia!" Noct cried. "We're gonna go to school together, and Luna's gonna live in the Citadel, and I can show her where the feral cats live and you can stay in the residential wing with us!" He stopped to take a breath, and looked at Ardyn warily. "You will live with us, right? I mean, you want to?"
Ardyn lowered the bottle and passed it to Titus. "Of course," he said. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Oh. Great!" Noct wiggled on his braces. "If you see Cor, don't tell him where I went, okay?"
Ardyn nodded, and Noct swung off, disappearing around the corner. After a minute, Cor came skidding into view, breathing hard, his collar undone.
"Noctis," he panted. "Please." Ardyn shrugged helplessly.
"Headed that way," Titus said.
"Thank the gods," Cor said, and went stumbling round the corner.
"Spoilsport," Ardyn whispered, and Titus laughed, slapping a hand on Ardyn's shoulder.
"And you're going to make my job five times worse," he said, and took a swig from the bottle. "But I guess I'll live."
They left Tenebrae at the end of the month, with two more passengers filing into the line of black cars than they'd originally planned for. Teresa gave Ardyn a spiced cake for the road, and Sylva passed him copies of her meticulously recorded family albums, with prints from portraits dating back to Aera's time. There were little notes next to each painting and photo, all written in Sylva's neat handwriting, and Ardyn accepted the albums with the kind of care normally afforded to infants and delicate machinery.
When he entered his own car, Ardyn found Regis and Noctis waiting for him, nestled together in the backseat with a chocobo-patterned blanket over their legs.
"Come on, Uncle Ardyn," Noct said, and extended his hand. "Let's go home."
Ardyn folded himself into the car. He took Noct's hand, and exchanged a small smile with Regis.
"Very well, dear nephew," Ardyn said. "You lead the way."
---
The years had been kind to the royal manor of Tenebrae. Bees hummed in the blossoms of its gardens, sunlight dappled the carved walls, and a flurry of activity was taking place under the trees, with flapping picnic blankets and scurrying staff and dogs prancing about underfoot.
And up above it all, in a small shrine built into the cliff, Ardyn Lucis Caelum braced himself on the wall.
He hadn't been so easily winded before, of course. Then again, over the years, he'd found that with Lunafreya's healing touch came a plethora of tiny aches, pains, and annoyances that seemed to multiply by the day. Noctis, who had to wear a knee brace himself these days, said that just proved he was alive. Ardyn supposed he couldn't complain.
Ardyn sighed heavily, pushed himself through the doorway, and sat down on the small, worn bench at the head of the shrine. It was too small for him, really, and it made his knees jut up to his chest, so he slid to the floor instead, legs crossed beneath him.
"Good morning, love," he said.
The portrait of Aera smiled down at him. There were lines at her eyes and mouth, and her hair was greying at the temples, but it was still the same smile as always. He'd known it since they were children, peeking through the latticed fence between their summer homes. He'd traced it with his fingers in their rare, lazy moments alone, felt it curve under his lips as she stood on her toes to kiss him.
"It's been some time since I've seen you," he said. "The dreams don't come so swiftly these days. But I know that's all they are. I don't need to hold onto a vision of you to find some light in the world. I know you won't mind."
He bent to light a stick of incense in the holder under her portrait. "Sylva is well," he said. "Stubborn as always, of course. She takes me to healings, sometimes, lets me play nurse while she does her work. You would be proud of Ravus. The first king in centuries. A bit spoiled, perhaps, but I admit I may have had a hand in that."
Smoke curled under the frame, twisting in the dull sunlight.
"Luna has her own Queensguard after all, working in the provinces. Noctis is taking to kingship like a cat to water, but he'll do well in the end. Regis can finally have a vacation, one day. And the little ones? Well..."
Outside, birds chattered in the bushes, rustling the leaves. Doors in the manor slammed open, and there was a shriek of laughter, high and breathless.
"We'll have seven," he said. Footsteps pattered up the path to the shrine, short and stumbling. "Two is trouble."
"Papa!" a voice called. Young, lightly accented, with the slight drawl of her father. "Papa, is that you up there?"
"Four is unlucky."
"Wait! Callie, wait for me!" There was a clattering of gravel, and the aggrieved sigh of all older siblings. Ardyn's lips quirked in a smile.
"Eight's too much," he said. A girl appeared at the door to the shrine, her long blonde hair falling about her face in an untidy mess, white lace flapping at her knees. Behind her, a round-faced, panting boy reached for her hand.
"Mum says Uncle Ignis finished making lunch," the girl said. "Dad sent us to fetch you."
Ardyn nodded, and slowly rose to his feet. He looked back at Aera, staring out at him from her simple portrait, and touched the frame.
"Seven will do," he whispered, and turned to take his grandchildren's hands, stepping out into a bright, sunny morning at the start of spring, smiling in the light of the sun.