[Ardyn broke off before even knowing where his answer would go, voice strained under the weight of knowing this idyllic kingdom was all a lie. Knowing what he was, what he would go back to, and that this sweet silence in his head was temporary at best. Out of the corner of his eye, wine-red hair gradually brightened to violet as the illusion of who he once was fell apart.]
You shouldn't...have to. No one person should bear the weight of all the world, I know that better than anyone apart from the Chosen himself.
[He brushed a gentle touch over the edges of scarring, marks burned in out of love and loyalty. Not to him--never to the false king but to the one he had been replaced by. Proof of a resolve to bear powers beyond his capacity, to do even what should have been impossible. The ring had killed two that night and would likely have claimed a third had it not fallen from the blood of the Oracle's hand.]
[...Yet here was one not yet even the full-fledged Glaive he would become, far from unscathed but left alive after being granted its power.]
[Ardyn had wondered briefly, as he left Altissia, how much of that was his brother's doing.]
It isn't right. None of this is, and it never was. So I can't...I can't ask you to do this. The healer, the should-have-been-Founder, the savior could never make such a selfish request of anyone.
[But it would take a miracle to salvage anything at that point. To bring the dawn, to keep the Chosen King alive, to protect the thing that didn't deserve protecting...]
[If anyone could do it, would it not be a man who already did the impossible and lived?]
But I-
[The words came out before Ardyn could pull them back, the false Chosen and would-be savior struggling with the shadow of his own selflessness.]
...placere adiuva me. No matter what I say, no matter how hard I push you away--that isn't me. It's anger and pain and my own childish bitterness, and I don't want it anymore.
no subject
[Ardyn broke off before even knowing where his answer would go, voice strained under the weight of knowing this idyllic kingdom was all a lie. Knowing what he was, what he would go back to, and that this sweet silence in his head was temporary at best. Out of the corner of his eye, wine-red hair gradually brightened to violet as the illusion of who he once was fell apart.]
You shouldn't...have to. No one person should bear the weight of all the world, I know that better than anyone apart from the Chosen himself.
[He brushed a gentle touch over the edges of scarring, marks burned in out of love and loyalty. Not to him--never to the false king but to the one he had been replaced by. Proof of a resolve to bear powers beyond his capacity, to do even what should have been impossible. The ring had killed two that night and would likely have claimed a third had it not fallen from the blood of the Oracle's hand.]
[...Yet here was one not yet even the full-fledged Glaive he would become, far from unscathed but left alive after being granted its power.]
[Ardyn had wondered briefly, as he left Altissia, how much of that was his brother's doing.]
It isn't right. None of this is, and it never was. So I can't...I can't ask you to do this. The healer, the should-have-been-Founder, the savior could never make such a selfish request of anyone.
[But it would take a miracle to salvage anything at that point. To bring the dawn, to keep the Chosen King alive, to protect the thing that didn't deserve protecting...]
[If anyone could do it, would it not be a man who already did the impossible and lived?]
But I-
[The words came out before Ardyn could pull them back, the false Chosen and would-be savior struggling with the shadow of his own selflessness.]
...placere adiuva me. No matter what I say, no matter how hard I push you away--that isn't me. It's anger and pain and my own childish bitterness, and I don't want it anymore.
Please...please find me again.