[ Yeah. Her brows pinch. Tenebrae also translates to darkness. Apparently this world was fuckin' obsessed with it, struggling against the crawl of the Starscourge, and against their own endless wars. Sounds like a shitty place, to Annie. As fucked up as her life in the Cartazonos Academy had been-- At least she wasn't some fucking pretty polly political toy, nor some mournful destined prince crushed under destiny's wheel.
She was just a star unburgeoned, a sleeping alien goddess walking drowsily through a lifetime.]
Sounds like a shit show. But, I mean, like. Was she a cool chick, or what?
[ She watches his face, watches his emotion with that stupid thing the psychic chicks called the 'third eye'. She doesn't think it's that stupid, she knows all about an extra-sensory awareness, she just forever feels the need to shit on psychics in her head. But she's watching, observing with an enormous stillness. For a moment there isn't that sense of many-suckered creeping, there is a breathless stillness from many eyes. Taking measure of a little king and his memories. ]
With all the bullshit... I feel like I was never really a kid and never really gonna be any kind of fuckin' adult either.
[ That's what she came here for: to talk arrested development, and in a way she sees that in what he describes about Lunafreya too. How did you ever really settle into the cradle of 'adulthood' when you always expected your life to be fuckin' short, cut off before it was really fully honed past its wild thorns and high potency. ]
[The answer is simple: you don't. You grin and bear it, and if you're Noctis, you grow up with a quiet resignation towards the very idea. You feel caught between a childhood you never had, and responsibilities you never asked for.
Or, if you're Lunafreya, you twist it into a motivation that propels you forward, day in and day out. At least, that's what Noctis believes. He had always wondered how she did it, and how she did it with grace. Even now, after his awakening (Walk tall, my friends), sometimes he feels as if he stumbles. Here, beyond Eos, even more so.]
So which one do you feel like now? I actually... [He hesitates.] It's probably not surprising to you, but I never felt all that "grown up". Sometimes I still feel like a little kid, and people used to tell me that all the time.
[ She shrugs, uncomfortable with the whole topic but if there was anyone she was kind of getting okay at being uncomfortable with, it was him. Why the fuck else would she keep come here to talk to him, letting him wind down her manic energy and wild imagination enough for her to eventually leave and maybe sleep quietly. ]
Feel like I died when everybody else did. But I didn't, so I just keep going for them, but I'm not really goin' anywhere. So, I dunno. Guess I feel like a dead twenty year old.
[ Right there on the cusp, maybe with a little more time could have started feeling like an 'adult' but not quite weened out of adolescence yet. ]
I had just started teaching. We graduated at twenty, all four of us. Sarah and I stayed to teach, but she fucked off before shit even got--
[ The girl's face is there, a mousy thing with raw lips and freckles, her empty body slumped over. No injuries, just took her soul somewhere else and left. The difference between living and inert tissue is so tiny-- ]
I thought maybe I was good at it and I'd keep doing that until I drank myself to death. I never expected to live real long. We didn't, mainly. Even before the shit with the aliens.
[It's an uncomfortable topic all around, but how easily Noctis unfolds everything within him, to be laid bare at another person's feet if just asked. With Annie, even more so.
A dead twenty year old. The description is simple, but the words leave an imprint even as she continues to speak. Had he felt that way, years ago? In all his frustration at forces pulling him in every direction, he stubbornly refused to move, overwhelmed and confused, angry at the gods, at the Prophecy he was supposed to adhere to. It hadn't been fair.
He had been given motivation since then. But on the station, did it matter? What purpose did he have to exist anymore? A dead twenty year old, indeed. Punctuated by images of a girl he doesn't recognize flittering through his mind.]
But now we're here. Think you can find a purpose in that? Something make you feel like it matters.
[ They've had this conversation before. She hadn't realized it was going to lead them back here, when she'd been chewing over the idea: the years lost in the depths. Somehow though, this is where everything goes for her, this dead end that stretches out into infinity. All the time and potential that evaporated from them as individuals, could they now make up for it as a community? She knows what Nyx thinks about it, his utter determination to fight for the future had been intoxicating as it had hit her in waves, invigorating where she was otherwise weary-- But that's not her, and it never was.
When has she ever been alive, rather than just pantomiming the humanity of those around her. She smiles bitterly. ]
Dunno. I can fake it, I can put everything I have in to it, cuz I don't play by halves, but that doesn't--
[ It doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean it matters. Doesn't mean her heart is behind it. It just means she's accepted a mission, and she'll accomplish it like she always does. ]
It's never enough, you know. There's no winning. You don't pass or fail at fuckin' life. But I don't know how to do the other shit, school was rigid and I needed that but without all the tests and rules and the guidelines--
[ They've talked about this too. She gives up with a helpless, expansive shrug that ends with her flopping backwards with a sullen arm thrown across her face. She's silent for a whole moment before murmuring, ]
Can I paint in here.
[ She means like on the walls, the ceiling, the floors. ]
[Retread conversations. It'll be a well-worn path at this rate, but Noctis doesn't feel the same sort of exasperation from looping the same thoughts around and around in his head. It's a habit of his -- maybe a bad one -- that he tries to keep at bay with varying levels of success. Around broodmates, this restraint twists itself outward and opposite into an echo chamber, and he unburdens them with the expediency of a man who trusts his broodmates. Who trusts Annie.
Trademark of his personality, sentimental fool that he can be.
He lets the silence linger, and answers without hesitation.]
Sure. [He knows that she means all over.] You take requests?
[ She answers in total deadpan. How many times had she been asked to paint fucking unicorns by a school full of girls... didn't help that Cartazonos itself was a different cognate for Unicorn.
She rolls over on to her side to give him an appraising look, lips pursed. ]
[But he straightens a bit, churning over in his mind his request. He settles on something silly, maybe, but unsurprising for Noctis to choose.]
A cactuar.
[He shares with her the image of the little thing, a green cactus-like creature that moved too fast and shot way too many needles. But, though he's unlikely to say so out loud, he thinks they're... cute.
[ She takes hold of the image he presents her, and turns it over like turning a crystal in the light. What a fucking ridiculous creature, was anything about his fantasy land not silly? She gives him an amused look, but yeah she could paint him some cactuars. Maybe a nice border of them around the edge of the room, dancing, chirping, emoting. Ugh, it's too cutesy but it seems about right for this loser, like another little boy's race cars and space ships. ]
[It is ridiculous. But Noctis is ridiculous, in a lot of ways. He's barely an adult, barely a teen. Still a kid, amused by little green cactuars and possessing a fondness for chocobos and cats alike.
An array of cactuars dancing around his room sounds amusing. A bit of levity and character in the cold and sterile reaches of space.]
Whatever. You're smiling, so don't pretend you don't think it's funny.
[ She wishes she felt that kind of innocent pleasure, for anything, but she'd definitely skipped that stage in her life. She'd been one of Sparrow's soldiers from the beginning, time other children had spent with toys, pets, family... She'd spent under observation, having reading and language and math shoved down her throat from as soon as she would start regurgitating it. No childhood to feel nostalgic for, just nostalgia for a stability that had been an illusion. Not even the memories make her feel particularly secure, she can see all the holes and cracks in retrospect.
Her hand reaches out slowly, wanting his back in kind. ]
Keep thinking about the cactus things, that's nice.
[ Whatever, it's fine to vicariously live through someone else, isn't it? ]
[He looks at her offered hand, and it's without much thought that he takes it. An almost absent-minded sort of touch, if it were not so obviously gentle.]
Sure... if you want.
[Noctis doesn't see anything wrong with Annie living vicariously through his memories, if that's what she asks of him. He's too eager to indulge a broodmate (mostly Annie), than to even consider if there would be any consequences to being so accommodating.
He closes his eyes for a moment, begins to think more about the cactuars. More than one, jumping around, darting here and there. He could barely keep up with them, even with his own warp strike. They'd run off beyond his reach, chittering as they do, mere moments later.
(There's also the memory of needles, so many of them, flying his way. That's less pleasant, but still comedic when he's not having to experience it in the moment; still, Noct focuses on that aspect less.)]
They're rare to find. [A fun fact, just so she knows.]
[ The tips of her fingers trace out the shape of his bones under his skin, thumb over the shape of a knuckle, the joint of the wrist. It's idle, like a cat kneading against the pleasant texture of a fabric. Her mind is on cactuars. ]
But, I mean, what the fuck are they? Are they plants?
They're monsters. [Probably not helpful, but... that's what they are.]
My friends and I... we would take up hunting tasks to help the local population. [Of course they did, because Noctis wanted to. Does this even come as a surprise anymore?
His thumb idly brushes over her skin as he tries to think of a place now. The grassy plains of Duscae. Cool and humid, under a great expanse of sky. How it seemed to stretch onwards, forever, and a pang of nostalgia unravels within him.]
[ Not a surprise at all after some of the stupid errands she's had him run, his stupid habit of wanting to help dumbasses like her and the rest of the turds on this Station.
She just settles herself comfortably in the periphery of his thoughts, like watching someone else's dream, it's an interesting detachment where she doesn't need to do any Annie things. Just shut up and listen and look, although shutting up is probably beyond her skillset. ]
Monster hunting sounds kinda fun.
[ What would she have been in Eos? A war orphan like Nyx probably, or was she thinking that because she'd gotten the full taste of the Glaive life when they'd been much too close. ]
[He grins, his eyes still closed. If she's just along for the ride, sitting somewhere in a neat little corner of his mind, then he can at least make it entertaining for her.]
Sometimes it was. [A flash of steel and adrenaline, the rush of fighting by the side of those you trusted to have your back, no matter what. The unbroken bond of camaraderie and all it implied.] Sometimes it wasn't. [The razor-sharp maws of far too many creatures, heralding too many close calls. The feeling of pushing back panic because you might've chosen a mark that was beyond your scope and skill. The shame of wondering if it would just be easier to turn tail and try again tomorrow.]
I can see you as hunter, though. [He imagines Annie with his Engine Blade in hand, tearing through coeurls and even running its point through the hindquarters of a behemoth. The poor behemoth.] You'd have liked it. That, or...
[What else? Chocobos, tall and fluffy feathered. Warking and kwehing and tilting their heads at newcomers, wanting to be fed.]
[ What would she have done, in the face of a beast too much for her? Probably just dived right in, and then she'd be another brave, and foolishly dead bounty hunter. Wasn't that the fun of that life though? Or maybe that's just her and her hunger for adrenaline, challenge. It'd be a nice life, if she didn't have anyone to answer to but herself. ]
Why'd they let their prince run around fighting monsters anyway, that sounds like a great way to lose the freakin' heir.
[ Not even really so much a dig at how capable he is, some of these critters looked nasty. ]
Why didn't they send you to play with chocobos instead? They look friendlier. They look like some kind of dinosaur.
[ Dinosaurs. Cactuars. Chocobos. Race cars. What a grownup prince. ]
I did play with chocobos. [Play. Wait. That doesn't sound very mature.] I mean, I raced them. And rented them to ride around Lucis. I dyed mine black.
[This is better. Really.]
But a lot of the people outside of the capital didn't even recognize me. I wasn't really ever in the public eye. [A shrug. He feels like lying down now, and scoots himself into a position where he can lie comfortably on his side.]
And Gladio, Ignis, Prompto... they couldn't boss me around. Not really. I wanted to help people. [Probably the only time Noctis throws his weight around is when he's stubborn enough to want to help the people around him.] So I did. And besides, if couldn't take down a few monsters, it wouldn't bode well for the whole "save the world" routine for later.
[ She scoots to make room for him, already herself sprawled out in here like she owns the place. It's nice in here, something that isn't hers so she feels some obligation not to turn it into a mess, not like her little nook further into the wing where she has clothes and books and cigarette butts literally everywhere. You can tell what she thinks of herself just looking at it. ]
You had to have a goth chocobo? C'mon, it's too cute for that to give you any street cred.
[ Maybe she'll paint some little black chocobos playing on the ceiling, so they could be counted like sheep when she was in here being restless. ]
Those things are cute, it's almost offensive how much. [ Not that cuteness works on her real well as a general strategy, but she could possibly see chocobo farming as a pleasant diversion for a fucked up old bitch who just needed something quiet to do with the rest of her miserable life. That's mainly what she thinks of herself: a mess in need of diversion, exactly what the tornado of a room suggests. ]
Monsters not so much. You plan to keep doing that when they let us loose?
It's not goth, it's- [He has to protest this, all right?] Black is the customary royal color of the Lucis Caelum line. I figured it was fitting, and a whole lot easier than actually trying to find a real black chocobo.
[But he agrees. They are cute. Noctis and his fondness for animals, something that'll be forever prevalent as long as he's alive and kicking.
He opens his eyes just enough to turn his head, looking at Annie questioningly. It doesn't take much effort, given how close they already are.]
[He supposes if their "mission" ever got in the way, he'd have to settle for it being on a lower rung of the priority ladder. Still, it'd be something familiar. Something that would make him feel useful, not just floating through the aether. Repurposing himself to help again.]
You could help if you wanted. Those kinds of jobs always pay.
[As if Noctis cares about being paid for it. As if it'd actually matter, moving from one pocket of the universe to another.]
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somnifacient) wrote2017-03-25 01:39 am
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She was just a star unburgeoned, a sleeping alien goddess walking drowsily through a lifetime.]
Sounds like a shit show. But, I mean, like. Was she a cool chick, or what?
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Yeah, you could say that. She was... [He turns to Annie, eyes distant with the look of someone trying to recall a memory in the finest detail.]
Caring. Strong-willed. [Maybe even a little stubborn.] She carried a lot of responsibilities on her shoulders, with more grace than I ever did.
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With all the bullshit... I feel like I was never really a kid and never really gonna be any kind of fuckin' adult either.
[ That's what she came here for: to talk arrested development, and in a way she sees that in what he describes about Lunafreya too. How did you ever really settle into the cradle of 'adulthood' when you always expected your life to be fuckin' short, cut off before it was really fully honed past its wild thorns and high potency. ]
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Or, if you're Lunafreya, you twist it into a motivation that propels you forward, day in and day out. At least, that's what Noctis believes. He had always wondered how she did it, and how she did it with grace. Even now, after his awakening (Walk tall, my friends), sometimes he feels as if he stumbles. Here, beyond Eos, even more so.]
So which one do you feel like now? I actually... [He hesitates.] It's probably not surprising to you, but I never felt all that "grown up". Sometimes I still feel like a little kid, and people used to tell me that all the time.
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Feel like I died when everybody else did. But I didn't, so I just keep going for them, but I'm not really goin' anywhere. So, I dunno. Guess I feel like a dead twenty year old.
[ Right there on the cusp, maybe with a little more time could have started feeling like an 'adult' but not quite weened out of adolescence yet. ]
I had just started teaching. We graduated at twenty, all four of us. Sarah and I stayed to teach, but she fucked off before shit even got--
[ The girl's face is there, a mousy thing with raw lips and freckles, her empty body slumped over. No injuries, just took her soul somewhere else and left. The difference between living and inert tissue is so tiny-- ]
I thought maybe I was good at it and I'd keep doing that until I drank myself to death. I never expected to live real long. We didn't, mainly. Even before the shit with the aliens.
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A dead twenty year old. The description is simple, but the words leave an imprint even as she continues to speak. Had he felt that way, years ago? In all his frustration at forces pulling him in every direction, he stubbornly refused to move, overwhelmed and confused, angry at the gods, at the Prophecy he was supposed to adhere to. It hadn't been fair.
He had been given motivation since then. But on the station, did it matter? What purpose did he have to exist anymore? A dead twenty year old, indeed. Punctuated by images of a girl he doesn't recognize flittering through his mind.]
But now we're here. Think you can find a purpose in that? Something make you feel like it matters.
[He's asking Annie, and he's asking himself.]
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When has she ever been alive, rather than just pantomiming the humanity of those around her. She smiles bitterly. ]
Dunno. I can fake it, I can put everything I have in to it, cuz I don't play by halves, but that doesn't--
[ It doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean it matters. Doesn't mean her heart is behind it. It just means she's accepted a mission, and she'll accomplish it like she always does. ]
It's never enough, you know. There's no winning. You don't pass or fail at fuckin' life. But I don't know how to do the other shit, school was rigid and I needed that but without all the tests and rules and the guidelines--
[ They've talked about this too. She gives up with a helpless, expansive shrug that ends with her flopping backwards with a sullen arm thrown across her face. She's silent for a whole moment before murmuring, ]
Can I paint in here.
[ She means like on the walls, the ceiling, the floors. ]
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Trademark of his personality, sentimental fool that he can be.
He lets the silence linger, and answers without hesitation.]
Sure. [He knows that she means all over.] You take requests?
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[ She answers in total deadpan. How many times had she been asked to paint fucking unicorns by a school full of girls... didn't help that Cartazonos itself was a different cognate for Unicorn.
She rolls over on to her side to give him an appraising look, lips pursed. ]
What'ya got in mind?
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[But he straightens a bit, churning over in his mind his request. He settles on something silly, maybe, but unsurprising for Noctis to choose.]
A cactuar.
[He shares with her the image of the little thing, a green cactus-like creature that moved too fast and shot way too many needles. But, though he's unlikely to say so out loud, he thinks they're... cute.
No unicorns, indeed.]
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You're ridiculous.
[ Laughing, fond. ]
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An array of cactuars dancing around his room sounds amusing. A bit of levity and character in the cold and sterile reaches of space.]
Whatever. You're smiling, so don't pretend you don't think it's funny.
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Her hand reaches out slowly, wanting his back in kind. ]
Keep thinking about the cactus things, that's nice.
[ Whatever, it's fine to vicariously live through someone else, isn't it? ]
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Sure... if you want.
[Noctis doesn't see anything wrong with Annie living vicariously through his memories, if that's what she asks of him. He's too eager to indulge a broodmate (mostly Annie), than to even consider if there would be any consequences to being so accommodating.
He closes his eyes for a moment, begins to think more about the cactuars. More than one, jumping around, darting here and there. He could barely keep up with them, even with his own warp strike. They'd run off beyond his reach, chittering as they do, mere moments later.
(There's also the memory of needles, so many of them, flying his way. That's less pleasant, but still comedic when he's not having to experience it in the moment; still, Noct focuses on that aspect less.)]
They're rare to find. [A fun fact, just so she knows.]
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But, I mean, what the fuck are they? Are they plants?
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My friends and I... we would take up hunting tasks to help the local population. [Of course they did, because Noctis wanted to. Does this even come as a surprise anymore?
His thumb idly brushes over her skin as he tries to think of a place now. The grassy plains of Duscae. Cool and humid, under a great expanse of sky. How it seemed to stretch onwards, forever, and a pang of nostalgia unravels within him.]
Last one I saw was here.
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[ Not a surprise at all after some of the stupid errands she's had him run, his stupid habit of wanting to help dumbasses like her and the rest of the turds on this Station.
She just settles herself comfortably in the periphery of his thoughts, like watching someone else's dream, it's an interesting detachment where she doesn't need to do any Annie things. Just shut up and listen and look, although shutting up is probably beyond her skillset. ]
Monster hunting sounds kinda fun.
[ What would she have been in Eos? A war orphan like Nyx probably, or was she thinking that because she'd gotten the full taste of the Glaive life when they'd been much too close. ]
Coulda done that.
[ With a whole stable of cactuars. ]
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Sometimes it was. [A flash of steel and adrenaline, the rush of fighting by the side of those you trusted to have your back, no matter what. The unbroken bond of camaraderie and all it implied.] Sometimes it wasn't. [The razor-sharp maws of far too many creatures, heralding too many close calls. The feeling of pushing back panic because you might've chosen a mark that was beyond your scope and skill. The shame of wondering if it would just be easier to turn tail and try again tomorrow.]
I can see you as hunter, though. [He imagines Annie with his Engine Blade in hand, tearing through coeurls and even running its point through the hindquarters of a behemoth. The poor behemoth.] You'd have liked it. That, or...
[What else? Chocobos, tall and fluffy feathered. Warking and kwehing and tilting their heads at newcomers, wanting to be fed.]
You could've raised chocobos for a living. Ha.
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Why'd they let their prince run around fighting monsters anyway, that sounds like a great way to lose the freakin' heir.
[ Not even really so much a dig at how capable he is, some of these critters looked nasty. ]
Why didn't they send you to play with chocobos instead? They look friendlier. They look like some kind of dinosaur.
[ Dinosaurs. Cactuars. Chocobos. Race cars. What a grownup prince. ]
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[This is better. Really.]
But a lot of the people outside of the capital didn't even recognize me. I wasn't really ever in the public eye. [A shrug. He feels like lying down now, and scoots himself into a position where he can lie comfortably on his side.]
And Gladio, Ignis, Prompto... they couldn't boss me around. Not really. I wanted to help people. [Probably the only time Noctis throws his weight around is when he's stubborn enough to want to help the people around him.] So I did. And besides, if couldn't take down a few monsters, it wouldn't bode well for the whole "save the world" routine for later.
no subject
You had to have a goth chocobo? C'mon, it's too cute for that to give you any street cred.
[ Maybe she'll paint some little black chocobos playing on the ceiling, so they could be counted like sheep when she was in here being restless. ]
Those things are cute, it's almost offensive how much. [ Not that cuteness works on her real well as a general strategy, but she could possibly see chocobo farming as a pleasant diversion for a fucked up old bitch who just needed something quiet to do with the rest of her miserable life. That's mainly what she thinks of herself: a mess in need of diversion, exactly what the tornado of a room suggests. ]
Monsters not so much. You plan to keep doing that when they let us loose?
[ And... what was she going to do about it? ]
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[But he agrees. They are cute. Noctis and his fondness for animals, something that'll be forever prevalent as long as he's alive and kicking.
He opens his eyes just enough to turn his head, looking at Annie questioningly. It doesn't take much effort, given how close they already are.]
Keep doing what? [Hunting? Helping?]
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Chasing down fucked up monsters to 'help' people.
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I could. Why wouldn't I?
[He supposes if their "mission" ever got in the way, he'd have to settle for it being on a lower rung of the priority ladder. Still, it'd be something familiar. Something that would make him feel useful, not just floating through the aether. Repurposing himself to help again.]
You could help if you wanted. Those kinds of jobs always pay.
[As if Noctis cares about being paid for it. As if it'd actually matter, moving from one pocket of the universe to another.]