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(they don't laugh at jokes) they laugh at tragedies
i. cid
“You couldn't just leave it well fuckin' alone, could'ja,” Cid asks, staring at the looming, tall ceiling of the royal garage with a taunt line to his lips.
He hasn't missed this, to be honest. He almost feared to discover he did, but the truth is he doesn't. Hammerhead's ceiling is the sky itself most of the time and he doesn't have to argue with anyone to get his way. He still argues anyway, because it's half the fun of honest work, but the fact it's a choice is weighty all on its own.
“He's taking Weskham and Clarus, and His Majesty's latest pet project,” Sylvia says, sitting on the floor right next to him, sheer silk skirts bunched up around her as she curled her legs up against her chest. “Someone needs to make sure they survive this madness.”
“And that someone outta be me, huh,” Cid snorts, looking unconvinced.
Between them, the boy sits, in awed, mystified silence, not really sure what to do but soak in the warmth bubbled up in that precise space between his shoulder and hers. The boy they made, when they were young and reckless and far too arrogant to ever hesitate. He's got her eyes and his nose, and even if he wanted to – he doesn't, because one doesn't love who he loves, the way he loves, and have the freedom to want such nonsense – he couldn't deny where he came from.
Anyone who knows them, him and her, and him and her, could see them in the boy, a mixture of the best and worst bits and pieces of themselves, and a few that he's learned are solely the boy's own.
Anyone wo knows them, even only knows of them, would know.
Would whisper.
Would scheme.
She could take it, if she wanted to. So could he, if he cared to. But the boy shouldn't have to, not for this. He's a good boy. Cid's done his best to make sure he is. Taught him letters and numbers and manners. How to grasp a wrench, how to shoot a gun, how to offer hospitality.
He's a good boy, their boy.
“I trust no one else,” Sylvia says, quiet and wry, self-deprecating at an old joke none of them will bring up. “He used to adore you, when he was a kid.”
“Yeah,” Cid laughs, tugging his hat over his face, “'cause I gave him spare keys to his Da's best rides and didn't rat him out when he scratched every single last one of 'em.”
“You wouldn't let me teach him how to drive,” Sylvia snorts, nose wrinkled, and he feels that urge to reach out and hold her face in his hands and call her Stella.
He's almost sure she would let him get at least a few kisses in before she stabbed him for it.
“That's cause then he'd have wrecked 'em, every single one of 'em,” Cid says instead, lips twitching upwards, lopsided. “You're a menace.”
“Behind the wheel?” She asks, dainty and almost demure, and he's reconsidering how much he minds getting a blade stuck between his ribs, licking his lips.
“Behind it, in front of it, around it,” Cid retorts, shaking his head. “You're very well rounded, when it comes to being a pain in one's neck.”
She laughs. It's vicious and sharp and the kind of laugh she never allows herself in public. He wants to craddle it in his hands and slip it into his jacket, hide it somewhere no one else might hear. The boy stares up at her, blue gray eyes wide and curious and oh. Oh, there it is.
There it is.
The moment they've been trying not to have, even while they have it.
“I need you to protect him,” Sylvia whispers reaching a hand to cradle the boy's head, fingers deadly kind, tilting his face up so she may kiss his forehead. Yet, what she says is: “We need a good King, Cid, and we don't have one. I need you to protect the closest thing to one we have.”
“And in return, what,” Cid shakes his head, “you mother your own son?”
Sylvia snorts his own best snort back at him. He's annoyed because it still makes him want to kiss her now as it did then.
“Of course not,” she says, factual and terrible like a stormy sea, and he wonders, not for the first time, if whoever coined the nickname had truly known her, or if the nickname had come from her, “but I'll keep him safe.”
Safe.
Safe means a whole lot different things, outside of Insomnia, but Cid chooses not to say that.
“I'll be good,” the boy says, a tiny whisper as he gives into temptation, slumping against her fully, drunk in the unknown and still too young to understand why one would regret that. “I'll be really good, Boss.”
Cid knows better than to fight a losing fight.
He's fought the ocean after all.
“Better be, lad,” he says, lips twitching, as he reaches down a hand to ruffle blond hair not quite his and not quite hers. “Wanna hear good things, yeah? When I see you next.”
The boy is not a boy. Not really. Hasn't been for years. But Cid is old enough to feel entitled to be sentimental about it, considering the look in the King's face when he'd seen him again, and the fact this goodbye tastes a lot... more than it rightfully should.
Dodging the same bullet twice is going to be something of a miracle.
ii. weskham
“Perhaps Sylva did wake up Leviathan after all,” Weskham jokes, lighthearted, voice soft and rolling, like the smooth glide of a hand brushing beloved hair, fingers loose and gentle. “And she just forgot to tell us.”
Regis is meant to laugh, of course. Weskham is witty and caustic and endlessly wry. He's seen to Regis, since Regis was four. He knows the ins and outs of his Prince's mind, the twisty corridors that lead to disaster and the careful rationality that inevitably derails into well-meant, poorly-thought kindness. Regis is kind and Regis is impulsive, and one day Regis will be King, and Weskham...
Weskham.
Will not.
Be there.
To tell him in tiny, sharp words that the time for kindness has passed. To sweeten the truths with a cup of coffee just the way he likes it. To stand beside him, voice in his ear and hand on his heart, head on his chest and hopes in his bed.
“That's not funny,” Regis says, short, sharp, awkward, because he doesn't know this yet, hasn't divined the truth in Weskham's smile, but he can almost smell the shape of it.
Regis holds him, face tucked in his place – under Weskham's chin has been his place since he was four, will likely never not be his place, unless Weskham...
“War seldom is, love,” Weskham says, one hand tracing along the fine sculpted edges of Regis' face, like he still needs one more touch to memorize them all, “but we still found a way, sometimes.”
“You're talking in past tense,” Regis points out, leaning into the touch, and then slowly, carefully, folding himself into place in the spaces around Weskham's body, soft and liquid like foam.
Outside the window, Altissa stands, because the city was built on a whim of water and tides, and it'll take the rage of the ocean or close to it, to really tear it down. But there's bullet holes in the plaster walls, bricks laid bare where mortar shells collapsed into flames. There's the ghost of the Empire, left behind like the salt in the air once the wave retreats, and the promise of a reckoning because one knows it'll roll back in. It will. It will.
Weskham looks at Regis, curled up on his side, scrupulously avoiding to upset his leg and the makeshift cast holding it in place. So tired and worn, his Prince, so far away from his crown and yet speeding up towards it at an untenable pace. Weskham looks at Regis, through Regis, to the boy and the man and the love of his life. The crown will bend his spine, he knows, attempt to crush his nature until all that remains is a hollowed out husk made sturdier for it. The court will bleed him dry, run him out of kindness and patience and softness, until all that's left is the shadows of cunning and the barebones of cruelty that echo in his voice his father's tone. The King is ruthless, that's why he's still King even if he's losing the war. Regis will learn this, Weskham knows, or he will not be King for long.
It doesn't have to be like that, of course, wouldn't be if Regis had someone to stand between his soul laid bare and the million thorns fashioned into a throne. Regis could have Weskham, thinks he will have Weskham, because Weskham has trained and worked for this, every day of his life since the day they took him to the King and the Prince, and he was told he'd been chosen for an honor too grand for words.
Too grand for bones, too, his own too frail and brittle to not crumble beneath it.
So Regis will have, instead, a Queen.
Weskham does not say this, though. Weskham does not say goodbye. He says, I love you, hushed and rushed, pressed against Regis' mouth, and pacifies his conscience by not uttering any outright lie.
iii. regis
“I didn't know,” Regis whispers, holding tight onto his father's withered hand, eyes wide and wet, voice shaking in his throat. “Father, I didn't know.”
And on his hand, on his finger, wrapped like molten steel and chaining down his soul, the Ring.
Mors smiles.
“Ah, you've put it on at last,” he says, voice low and rough, sowly oozing out his lungs like a miasma. “You understand, now.”
And Regis does.
He does.
He understands the weight of the Ring and the Crystal, the drain of the Wall, the endless, hopeless tumbling down the river of time, existing purely to occupy space, worthy to be part of the chain only to father the next link, stretching on and on and on, towards a goal that seems unyielding.
They've grown bitter, the Lucii.
They've grown angry and sad and indifferent to all.
Regis remembers his audience with the Kings of Yore, the select few whose voices remain clear and potent in his ears, that raise above the sea of shrieking and groaning, which all other Kings have melted into. Where his father will go to, soon, to be lost among them.
Unless he's chosen to ascend, instead. Unless he's given the armor and leaves behind a glaive. But what could Mors Lucis Caelum have left in him now, Regis thinks, that isn't pure scorn for the Crystal and the war and the whole bloody mess of it. What could his father hope to offer, or do, in his last moments, to remain in such a way?
Would he even want to, at this point?
To have a statue forged of that ghost, that armor, that promise of might and protection, placed somewhere in the city for people to forget the meaning of it. To be put to sleep inside stone and magic, and become part of a Wall no one can control anymore?
“Do not be sad,” Mors tells him, and Regis startles. “You stupid, stupid, sweet child,” he says, fingers holding tight onto Regis' hand. “Now you understand, why I couldn't let you have him. Why I couldn't afford to allow your happiness any more than I already had.”
Regis breathes.
Slow.
Thinks of Weskham, thinks of... thinks of many, many things he's devoted far too many hours to count, thinking about, things that were and are and will never be.
He almost asks, if Mors told Weskham to leave, before he realizes Weskham was always far too shrewd for him to keep up with. Weskham would loathe to make the King have to get involved.
And that realization, right there, sharp like a jolt of lightning striking his spine, it loosens the knot around his throat, the last bastion of bitter anger still clogging his lungs.
“I'll marry Aulea,” Regis promises, looking at his hands, holding onto his father's, and wondering if his fingers will one day be that frail, if he'll to be lying in bed, with his son holding his own, withered fingers, hating him less with each breath he took that could be his last. “I'll be King.”
I'll make you proud, he doesn't say, because he's tired of lying and making promises he can't hope to keep.
And where Mors is going, pride might not be a choice at all.
“Don't hate your blood,” Mors whispers, a ghost of his usual wryness pushing through, “even when it's the only thing you feel, don't hate your blood. Blood is the only thing we can trust, in the end. They'll use you, any way they can. They'll tear you apart and sanctify the pieces, build them altars and then pit them against each other. Blood will keep you whole. Have a son or a daughter, and love them. If you must trust someone, trust them. If you must love someone, love them. Everything else... everyone else, it's just not worth the heartbreak.”
Regis bows his head, pressing his forehead against his father's knuckles, bones hollow like a bird's.
“I am sorry,” he whispers, “I have not been a good son.”
Mors pulls his hand away, and Regis flinches, before he realizes what he's trying to do. He feels five, again, fussy and temperamental, demanding to follow his father everywhere, and then getting those long, sturdy fingers flicking against his forehead, sharp enough to startle, but never hard enough to hurt.
“I was never any good as a father, either,” Mors chuckles, low, awkward. “Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.”
If nothing else...
If nothing else, Regis swears he'll try.
iv. clarus
“We'll do better,” Anemone tells him, one arm wrapped around his, her head resting on his shoulder. “This time.”
It's the we, self-assured and firm, that makes his knees want to buckle under their own weight. They're a we, still. He almost thought they wouldn't be, not after... not after losing a child, the way they did, before they had really grasped the fact they were going to have one in the first place.
Clarus remembers the blood, pungent and dark, dying, clogging up his throat and making him want to hurl. He's not the kind of man who fusses about blood. He's a career soldier, bred and raised to be what he is, like a noble beast of burden, and the burden is the world. The King rules, and the Shield governs. That is how it's meant to be. That is how it's always been. He knows what his duty entails and he's been trained for it, prepared and groomed and ready to do what needs doing, always. He's killed for his King and his Kingdom. He's done every vile, terrible thing that needed doing, and he's always done it for the sake of the future.
But that horrible night, a night of screams and death and betrayal, that night Clarus had seen his wife in a bed of blood and realized there was something, after all, that he was not willing to give. It had been hard, afterwards. There had been anger and rage and vengeance. There had been things he hadn't been wholly willing to own up to, before, but that were part of who he was and he had to accept them as they were.
She was worse, to be honest, but it made a strange sort of sense to Clarus, since she was both the best and the worst of himself.
And now, this.
“Yes,” Clarus agrees, tilting his head to press his lips to her forehead, “we will.” He chuckles, wry and quiet, and closes his eyes as he slides his hand out of her arms, to wrap it around her shoulders and then drag it down, to the swell of the boy growing healthy and safe in her womb. “I'm having second thoughts.”
Anemone laughs, one of her hands curled over Clarus', fingers holding tight, the other wrapped around his back, like she actually needs him to keep herself upright.
“I know, I do too,” she snorts, and it's a lovely irreverent sound, and he's drunk on the fact she can laugh, she can sound like herself, even as they stand before the grave. “But I don't want him to grow up mourning. I don't want him to grow under the shadow of what a failure his parents really are. I want him to grow happy, proud to carry the name he will.”
“It feels like betrayal,” Clarus admits, fingers tightened around hers, staring down at the crisp, well-kept lines of the chunk of granite set up as a marker. “We failed him, and now we'll pretend he never existed in the first place. We must be the worst parents in the world.”
“Our son died,” Anemone says, licking her lips. “Our son was murdered. They stole him from my womb before I could even learn what his laughter sounded like. You told me that night, that I shouldn't punish myself in place of those who were actually guilty of it.” She swallows hard, and he wonders if she's remembering, the punishment for those who had been guilty, the slithering rats they had caught, afterwards, with favors and promises and terrible things that could never be taken back, just like death. “Gladio is not guilty. We've talked about this.”
“We have,” Clarus agrees, sighing, bone deep tired and ready to sink into the ground himself, to be done with the world at large. But still. “I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm saying I'm having second thoughts.”
Anemone bites her lip.
“When he's old enough, when it won't hurt him,” she says, and guides his hand to caress the swell of her belly, “we'll tell him.”
Clarus tries to imagine a moment where knowledge of that wouldn't hurt, and refuses to call out the lie.
“Alright.”
He does, after all, like to sleep at night. He even manages to, sometimes.
v. cor
Cor sits on the floor, Evan's legs hooked on his shoulders, pinning him against the side of the bed, and stares blankly at the mold peaking behind the old, faded wallpaper of the caravan.
“I'm going back,” he says, voice low, lips barely moving, while Evan slides the blade along his throat, shaving away the itchy beginnings of a beard trying to take hold along his throat. “To Insomnia. I... will go back.”
Evan stills for a moment, hunting knife's edge pressed against the base of his throat, and Cor has one of those fantastically morbid moments of his, where he imagines himself jerking his head sideways onto it, imagines blood bubbling up and making a mess out of things. There's no potions and magical cures, out here, nothing to stop the inevitable once you don't so much flirt with death so much as casually kiss the fucker square in the mouth.
“Does that mean I should use an actual razor for this?” Evan asks, leaning in to drop his chin atop Cor's hair, which is getting longer again, falling limply across his brow, but then he'd gone on a fourteen week expedition into the forest behind the Vesperpool, trying to track down a goddamn Treant, so of course he looks like an unkept wreck. “Oh, my, does that mean I actually get to see you clean shaven?”
“No,” Cor snorts, tilting his head back and letting his eyes slide close. “Fuck off.”
Because of course Evan doesn't tell him it'd be a terrible idea, going back to Insomnia. Evan doesn't tell him not to do things because, and this he'd made sure Cor understood, before he'd fallen into his bed, Evan thinks the world at large has already spent entirely too long telling Cor not to do things. It's stupid, how much his entire being twitches when he thinks about that.
“You might look your age for once, you know,” Evan says, teasing, “let me bask in my cradle robbing ways, Cor. What's the point of fucking the hot and young cute catch, if I don't get to feel like a creepy old man after we're done?”
But the knife goes back to scratching his throat, suds and soap wiped off as the sharp edge got rid of those tiny clusters of hair.
“Shut the hell up, Evan,” Cor whispers, hands folded limply on his thighs, fingers careful and consciously kept unclenched. “You're not that old.”
Evan laughs, that stuttery, choped off whistle of a laugh, air wheezing through his teeth and down his bad lung.
“Neither are you,” he says, because he's an asshole, and Cor would kiss him, probably, if he still didn't have a knife up his throat.
Kick him, too.
Maybe.
“You'll be forty one day,” Evan says, almost like a curse, and Cor knows he knows, how much that weights on him, to be reminded that immortal or not, he's still got an endless, shapeless road to walk, “and you'll feel ancient and tired and worn. And then some brat will poke your side and deflate a perfectly sensible sulk about how old and tired you are, and have the gall to say you're exaggerating.”
“Maybe I'll die first,” Cor muses, sighing when Evan moves on to carefully preserve the lines of his beard. “Ever thought of that?”
“Yes,” Evan snorts, weaving the knife along the curve of his cheek, in a way Cor's barely managed to handle with a straight razor, not half a foot of solid steel. But then, Evan's good with his hands. Really good. “But that'd be easy. You don't do easy.”
“Easy's boring,” Cor points out, eyes half closed. And then. “I'll write.”
“If you like,” Evan replies, patient and wry, “I'd be... glad to know, that you're doing alright.”
“I'll write,” Cor insists, rather than say something as... as final as goodbye, “and I'll visit, when I can.”
“Serving at the King's leisure,” Evan points out, voice even and damning and soft, and Cor resists the urge to turn around and crawl up to hide inside his arms, “I'm sure you'll have better things to do.”
He means it, though. He means to write and visit and not let Evan's slow, crooked smirk be the last memory of him.
Cor always means it, is the problem, that's why it always hurts when it goes to shit.
i. noctis
“Cor,” Regis says, fondly exasperated, once they're safe behind the thick oak doors, somewhere not even the nosiest, snottiest of Lords would dare chase after them, “let me hold my son.”
Cor, who is standing in the center of the room, holding the Prince to his chest and frowning at them with the same sullen glare that instantly jolts them back ten years and change. Cor huffs a sigh, squinting unsurely, and then passes along the boy into his father's arms with so much delicate concern it's hard to reconcile with the sudden outburst of memories of the screechy, feral brat that considered throwing himself face first at all problems a viable way to fish for a solution to them.
“He has his mother's eyes,” Weskham notes, standing as close to Regis as he can without bursting into angry, bitter tears.
“Got his father's nose, though,” Cid mutters snidely enough for all of them, hands stuck in his pockets, with an air of recalcitrant amusement that was purely, uniquely Cid. “Poor bastard.”
“The whole point,” Cor mutters, arms folded over his chest, drunk on the strange cocktail of refined misery in the air, “is that he's not a bastard.”
“Shut up, Cor,” Clarus sighs, shaking his head, because today... today has been a very tiring day, but they're all here, all of them, and that should be enough.
It should be enough.
“He's not wrong,” Regis muses, wry and pacifying, forever keeping the peace, if he's not the one to upset it in the first place. “Thank you for being here,” he adds, quieter, solemn, and all the unsaid is allowed to linger and weight in on the air, as Regis' smile turns wry, “thank you for letting me share this with you.”
They stand there, half a circle around the King and his son, and remind themselves of the days when they really were the closest to the King. That it mattered, that they were. It's quite a different world, the world they live in, when compared to the world they thought they would live in, by this point. There's raw, bloodied corners, and scars that cover oceans and don't make the best job of hiding them at all. There's lies and truths and uncertanties, rows and bickering and more than a few bloodthirsty spats.
It's unfair, in a way, but it's also very comforting.
“Long live the King,” Weskham says, with a smile and a low voice, and it weights, a lot, because it's him who says it.
And then.
“Long live the King!” They chorus out, toasting with drinks they don't have, soothing the ache in Regis' face, and politely saying nothing when he buries it into his son's head.
It's worthwhile, they decide, to be here. At least now. At least this time.
“Long live the King!”
Their King.