livestudioaudience | R4 Viewing Party - no crying til the end (if you can help it)

Nothing. Just letting you know I'm here.

[He slides into the next chair over and looks at something else.

For once, boredom isn't a part of Junpei's vocabulary. He can wait. He'll wait forever. Ardyn will talk or he won't. Someone will make tea or they won't. The important thing is that nobody's left alone right now.]

...thanks.

[He didn't say much after that, at first. A few minutes of staring at nothing and trying to push back a few dozen echoes of unfortunate memories followed instead, until Ardyn spoke up in the same exhausted voice.]

It's-...this should hardly be as troublesome as it is for me. Noctis has far more right to be affected by this than I do.

You know, you keep saying that, but it doesn't sound any more convincing with repetition.

Guilt isn't any less powerful than grief, Dad. And it's not a competition, anyway. The whole thing is fucked up enough to hold both of you, and more.

...Has anyone ever told you that you're a very difficult person to argue with?

It runs in the family.

[He shifts to face Ardyn properly instead of watch the microwave clock display slowly change.]

Is one of them worse than the other? For you.

[Unspoken but not unstated: I like Noctis well enough, but you're the one I'm here for, no matter what.]

Many things seem to, not the least of which are stubbornness and a sentimental streak quite a few miles wide.

[Ardyn sighed and ran a hand through his hair, a little steadier but still clearly shaken.]

...I don't know if either's worse. I was more involved with both of them than I want to admit to, in no way that was even remotely positive. However, I could have done without seeing Lunafreya dead a second time.

Yeah. I'm sure.

[Here's where, often, Junpei would start to say something about the case, about what they saw, to try to put the pieces together. But it's not the time, is it? And the mystery's already long-solved. They were all always already dead, and no puzzle can change their fate.

He watches his dad a moment longer, then admits, somewhat unsure:]

She was... younger than I thought she'd be. The way she acted. More like someone my age than I expected.

She became Oracle a bit younger than I presume would have been intended.

[what with the dead mother and all, thanks niflheim.]

Even had she not, the burden of a world's protection tends to force some to mature rather swiftly.

Yeah.

[So says the living proof. Junpei's not going to argue with that.]

But she still... got sentimental over a wedding dress. I guess, no matter what, some things don't change.

[In every history, there's a child dreaming of wearing a ring on her left hand.]

...

[Funny, really, how a political marriage made up as an excuse to get Noctis away from Insomnia could have actually ended up meaning something. Funny, how so much of their circumstances had been tangled in an immortal puppetmaster's strings--from a little clockwork soldier to an Oracle to even a king.]

[Funny, and yet Ardyn wasn't laughing about it all anymore.]

She always did seem the emotional type. Nothing at all like her brother.

[There's always someone's sister.]

Is she the older or younger one?

Younger--I think Ravus was somewhere around twenty-eight, but I never quite asked.

[Sigh.]

It's always the little sister.

[He's quiet again, though this time it's to think, not just to wait.]

It sounded like she wanted to talk to you.

[Instead of, you know. Shooting him right in the face.]

...I wish I could say that surprised me.

[Ardyn turned quiet himself, staring distantly at his right arm as if something about it was bothering him.]

...Do you? Want to talk with her.

[Junpei will throw down with the Oracle if Ardyn doesn't want to see her, he's not afraid, what's she gonna do, pray for him real hard?]

...I think so.

[His right hand curled into a losse fist before relaxing, like Ardyn was making sure it still worked before folding his arms.]

I owe her an apology, if nothing else. Both of them, but...particularly her.

...I think it'll be good for you, yeah. Talking to her, anyway.

[Junpei has not forgotten soft boy was not talked out of shooting his dad in the leg. He does not forget. He does not forgive.]

The last words we exchanged were...a bit complicated.

[Which was code for 'are fucking haunting me every day of my life'.]

So I think I'd like to try again, if she would allow it.

From what she said, she probably will. ...Especially if she's anything like Noct.

[Has he even taken that free punch yet?]

...

Have you ever heard of someone showing their own murderer sympathy?

[JunpeiLaughingAloneWithZeroEscape.jpg]

It's, uh, not typical.

No, no it isn't. And there's...something I've not told anyone. Before I do, I should explain one thing--as the Oracle, Lunafreya had the same healing power as myself without the...obvious drawback.

[Ardyn glanced off to the side, hesitant to say even that much.]

That was half the reason I killed her; in healing the Starscourge she was holding back an eternal night. But when I did, she- [For just a second his voice broke off, like even confessing to what had happened before Lunafreya died was some insurmountable task somehow.] ...That healing power activated, and I think she must have begun to realize what I was. I had just stabbed her, yet she looked directly at me with a smile and-

[That time his voice cracked, Ardyn putting his head in his hands and staring at the table. Why had things ever come to this and gone that far? Why did Lunafreya and Prompto of all people have to die while Ardyn survived when no one deserved or wanted it less? He took a slow, shaking breath and forced out the words that had repeated themselves over and over in his mind since the day he'd remembered them.]

'When the prophecy is fulfilled...all in thrall to darkness shall know peace.' That was the last thing she said to me.

[Junpei reaches over and puts his hand on Ardyn's shoulder, firm and warm. He's here, Dad. He's not going anywhere. His voice is even and sure.]

She sounds fucking insane.

She was exactly what I was once--what I wanted to be or should have been, at least.

So yes. 'Fucking insanity' comes with the territory of being a healer like that.

You should definitely talk, then. For both your sakes, not just yours. That's something no human being was ever meant to be.

[Teach Lunafreya Nox Fleuret to flip off the gods and walk backwards into hell, Dad.]

R4 Viewing Party - no crying til the end (if you can help it)

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