★ // stay frosty royal milk tea

[scourgingstars]

Who: Ardyn + Ignis, featuring some assorted things later on
What: Replanting medicinal plants and chocobo snacks.
Where: Around the building and nearby
When: ~May 9th
Warnings: JRPG illness, again.

He's still a complete imbecile. Has he ever learned anything a day in his life?

[Ardyn complained as he was known to do in between emptying out the lockers of anything that looked like it would hold a plant; lunchboxes, mostly. He may or may not have acquired a couple of pots through questionable means, but it never hurt to be fully prepared. His own persistent cough had finally stopped over the new moon, but now that a few days had passed it was starting to return no matter how he hid it.]

When we inevitably run out of medical supplies because everyone's running about doing the most idiotic things possible, I don't want to hear a word of complaint from anyone. Unless we can come up with a case of bottled water or somesuch thing out of nowhere, I'll have absolutely no part of playing doctor.

Comments

[want_to_belong]

Don't you get tired being grumpy 100% of the time?

cw: casual suicidal ideation

[scourgingstars]

[Deadpan:]

My every waking moment is spent listening to the malevolence of countless literal daemons shrieking in my head--currently growing steadily louder as my powers apparently return--I have long since forgotten the very concept of positive human emotion, I am forced to live in unending torment despite being desperate for death just to end the torment that is my very existence, and looking at your face makes me equal parts nostalgic and furious in ways I can't even begin to describe.

But certainly, I'll make a note to smile a bit more.

[want_to_belong]

[Prompto could very much be a teenager, and was neither any sort of poet with his words or any sort of psychologist, but he wasn't stupid nor lacking in empathy. It was just frustrating sometimes dealing with Ardyn. But his expression turned somber and he swallowed down whatever pride he might have.]

...Sorry.

[Though he didn't completely believe it. No, Ardyn had times on the islands where he was much different. Prompto had seen it with his own eyes.

Which meant that was possible.

But there was one other weird thing that he furrowed his brows at.]

Why would my face make you nostalgic? Or mad?

[There were things he could think of but it was weird. It was rather hard for him to imagine the way things were before he was even born. And nostalgic was such an odd word to use.]

[scourgingstars]

[Possible, certainly. But that didn't mean Ardyn understood what he was in those calmer times, or that he could just revert to it at will. Healing from being an inhuman monster in body and soul alike was an agonizingly slow process; even if it all worked out, Ardyn would likely still come out of it a bitter, cruel person.]

[Still, it wasn't a lost cause. Not yet, no matter how little faith Ardyn had in the concept.]

[He took a slow breath and sighed, taking off his hat to run a scarred hand through ordinary red hair.]

...Some years ago--ah, how long was it? Around forty by now, perhaps forty-five. Ten less than that by your reckoning. That face, with a handful more years and too many sleepless nights added to it, belonged to the first human I'd seen in two thousand years.

[want_to_belong]

That was... Besithia?

[The name was practically foreign to him. He'd only come in contact with it for a brief time - barely longer than he'd come in contact with the man himself. Of course, Ardyn was there for all of that.

And he definitely didn't resemble Prompto by that point.]

He's the one who found you?

[scourgingstars]

Oh, who else but the nosy bastard with no sense of boundaries.

[pot, kettle.]

He went to Angelgard hoping for some manner of legend that could be weaponized. Suppose he got that much, technically.

[want_to_belong]

I didn't know.

[He'd found journals, but most were about his weird work with the MTs.]

Was he always that crazy?

[Though he was blunt and standoffish, he was also kind of curious. He never really got to know this person who was apparently his father-type of thing and he couldn't help but wonder a little bit.]

[scourgingstars]

Madness is a slow downward spiral. Even starting halfway from the top is practically sane compared to where one's liable to end.

Verstael was always mad to some degree. But I can safely say he grew notably more so as the years passed. I'd attribute it to one part broken moral compass and one part Starscourge infection, myself.

[want_to_belong]

But then, he was different?

[He didn't have too much to work with, trying to imagine what he was like in his mind. He sort of figured he looked like, well, himself and all the clones. Something like that, which was super weird in and of itself. But what did he act like?]

So why, uh, 'nostalgic'?

[That seemed almost positive, and in all this time he'd only had negative things to attribute to Besithia.]

[scourgingstars]

...

[A shrug.]

I had nowhere else to go and no one else from which to seek some frame of reference for the world past the laboratory. Perhaps I was almost attached, in the sort of way one might be 'attached' to an annoying dog following one's every step.

[want_to_belong]

What did you guys actually do?

[They didn't play King's Knight, that was for sure.]

Dogs are cute, though.

[scourgingstars]

I spent something like half a year recovering, went irrevocably insane, and then we built the line that eventually led to you. That's what.

[want_to_belong]

So you were... in one of those labs all that time?

[scourgingstars]

The entire time, no. Just those first six or seven months.

[want_to_belong]

Can't imagine spending that much time in a place like that. Creepy as hell.

[He was silent for a moment.]

...I really am sorry about calling you grumpy. I mean. You are. But you have some good reasons.

[scourgingstars]

Compared to where I'd been brought from? It was practically paradise.

[Not that Angelgard was a high bar to clear.]

...I simply don't know how else to be anymore. That's all it is.

[want_to_belong]

You can learn. I mean, I've seen it. So it's still exists in there... Maybe you just have to start with accepting having friends or something.

It's hard to not be depressed when you're alone all the time.

[He really. Wasn't super articulate. But he did at least know how it felt to be alone and unwanted.]

You like Iggy so, like, you at least made one good choice. I can't imagine anyone better to lean on.

[scourgingstars]

I've been alone for time longer than you can measure. One doesn't quite accept the alternative when it seems so impermanent.

[. . .]

He's...different, certainly.

[want_to_belong]

It's hard. But. It can happen. If Iggy and Noct and Gladio think so, then I believe them.

[scourgingstars]

...I'm much too far gone to change now.

[want_to_belong]

[For a bit it might seem like Prompto wasn't going to bother saying anything, but really, he was a little stunned in his response.]

Dude. I hate to break it to you, but you already have.

[scourgingstars]

...What?

[want_to_belong]

You went and got Gladio one of those sappy romance novels he reads. And you literally just told me you never let anyone access your armiger before. I dunno what you want to say about it all, but what you're doing is different.

[scourgingstars]

...

[Ardyn didn't seem to have much of an answer to that, and he definitely wasn't looking at Prompto now.]

That's not-...

[want_to_belong]

[He was actually feeling kind of sorry for Ardyn. After all they'd been through because of him it was hard to believe, but he did.

Biting his lip, he hesitantly put a hand on his shoulder.]

It's okay. Change is good.