#and no regis did not actually directly hand them over but consider this: my town | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theperidotshade · 6 years

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hamelin-born replied to your post “Part Three of Ardyn Saves Regis on a Whim (which really needs a title,...”

*quietly loses mind* YES THIS IS SO GOOD YESSSSSS...

This snippet was crammed full of various Crowning Moment of AWESOME moments. I just - gah.

Regis just - just taking in all the small things as they drive through the smoking shell of the city - HIS city. The cat, oh the CAT - I don't know why, but I just. Love that small detail?

And SOMNUS. Somnus, being utterly and totally IN SHOCK at Ardyn deciding to save Regis. In shock, and that - that instant regret, that 'what have I DONE' moment. Was - was Somnus reacting to what Ardyn said about how he loved his brother, so much, more then just about anything?

And Somnus - basically telling Regis to 'make things right'. And - 'our line's greatest folly'? that's - more or less an admission of guilt, of wrongdoing. That is Somnus, admitting that he was /wrong/.

I'm not sure if I want Ardyn to learn of that conversation, or never to learn.

And just. I love the increasing strain that Regis observes in Ardyn as the time goes by. It's just - so very human, for all that the man is decidedly NOT.

Reckless? ARDYN saying something's reckless. Well. That should say something about the entire enterprise.

And GAH. Exploding the dropships via Ullador! Driving /through/ the roadstop/barrier! Just. So many, many good things!

And YES to Regis' realization that 'immortal' is /literal/. And - Regis is a smart man; I'm sure he can think of so many, many ways in which immortality is a literal /curse/. In which - being unable to die is the literal worst thing imaginable.

I wonder - Regis noticed the 'black blood', but does he really GET that Ardyn's blood is /literally/ black?

Wait until Regis sees the Scourge!face. That's - going to be an interesting time.

And love all the little details about Ardyn's Ama! Does - does Regis realize that he's literally talking to another King of Lucis? (once a king or queen of Lucis, always a king or queen of Lucis...) Ardyn hadn't explicitly SAID as much, but - well.

And Regis is just. Giving all the right reactions to the revelations Ardyn is literally drowning him in. And his shock, his horror, it's - helping Ardyn, I think. A little. It's the first time he's told /anyone/ this story, and it's - getting a reaction that helps him.

It's just. Regis is slowly realizing that the thing with Noctis? The so-called 'Chosen King'? The Astrals have /done this before/. This is the /second/ time around, and the first time - well. The first time was no kinder then the most recent iteration. The /first/ Chosen King is sitting right next to him.

/*grins*/ Wait until Regis learns that basically it was Shiva et al who gave Ardyn the order to work with Niflheim for precisely these ends.

Wow, I don’t know what to say. *blushes*

I’m so glad you enjoyed it! This fic is enormously fun to write, and it makes me so happy others like it too.

The cat thing—okay, I have a bit of a story to tell about that, so I’m gonna put the rest of my reply under a cut.

Fair warning, it involves a natural disaster.

So, back in 2011, when I was still in high school, I lived in an area of the US that gets a lot of tornadoes. Like, three to four on average every spring and every fall.

March/April 2011 was an unusual spring, though, because an enormous supercell swept across all of the Southern US, including my hometown. Hundreds of tornadoes touched down in a single storm over the course of three days.

My town was...relatively untouched, although I do have trauma relating to that specific storm.

But the day after the storm passed over, I had to catch a flight to Massachusetts to visit colleges as a prospective student, and the airport I was flying out of was a couple hours away, in the center of the area worst-hit by the storm.

So my mom drove me out to meet my dad at the airport, and we were driving through absolute devastation. Like, buildings completely gone, debris and rubble everywhere, trees fallen on buildings and cars, standing water in places.

But I don’t remember a whole lot about the destruction itself, other than the horror and shock I felt.

What I remember instead are the little things. The handwritten ‘sold out’ signs in the windows of every gas station and convenience store. Branches drifting by in a flooded river. A dog trotting along the side of the road. People standing in their yards, looking at where their houses used to be, not doing anything but talking quietly. Just little, insignificant details that somehow managed to catch my eye.

That’s the feeling I was trying to capture in that scene with Regis—how the strangest things can draw your eye in the middle of all that destruction, and how they sort of seem dreamlike or unreal, but they’re going to be what you remember anyway.

And some of them make you feel better, in a way, because not everything is lost. There’s still life there.

That cat is going to be one of the things Regis clings to, going forward, because it was just so ordinary in a setting that was decidedly not, and that made it extraordinary.

As for Somnus, well. Hearing Ardyn say he loved him that much, seeing him accuse Bahamut of using them all, seeing Bahamut flee rather than give an answer—that really struck home to him that he’d made a horrific mistake. He gave up his brother for reasons that didn’t really exist the way he thought they did, and oh, how that hurts. And he can’t make it right—but maybe Regis can.

Ardyn is...probably not going to learn about that conversation for a very long time. Because Regis, now that he has some idea of what Somnus meant, knows that it has to come from Somnus to really mean anything. Which means two things: 1) it’s gonna have to wait for Ardyn to be in either the presence of the Ring or Somnus’ tom; and 2) it’s going to require more time than would really be readily available to them for a while.

I love writing Ardyn from Regis’ POV for exactly that reason: that I can use little cues to remind us all of just how human Ardyn is, despite his immortality and very, very dubious decisions.

Ardyn’s idea of ‘reckless’ is definitely a bit skewed, lol. Hence why he uses it only in connection to a stunt that 1) requires him to take his hands off the wheel, 2) involves MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS, and 3) had a significant chance of not working or being only partially effective.

And Regis doesn’t object to that one, mind, because he too likes MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS. And ramming through things that should not feasibly be rammed through.

They definitely feed each other’s destructive tendencies, self- or otherwise.

Yeeesss, Regis has Thoughts about this immortality thing. Especially since, mind, he just lost at least two close friends, which he...hasn’t fully processed yet.

The full mechanics of ‘Immortal Accursed’=‘Healer and King who took the Starscourge into himself’ have also not been fully processed yet, which will be fun (not).

Regis is going to come to that particular realization slowly. Right now, he knows intellectually that yeah, Ardyn was probably a King of Lucis, but the things that that means they have in common haven’t really occurred to him yet. It’s going to be things that become relevant in the days to come, as Regis, Cid, and Cor start salvaging what they can of Lucis. And, well, Ardyn’s there too, he’s not just going to sit around and do nothing.

Regis’ reaction is actually helping Ardyn, yeah. It’s—nice, to know that what happened to him is something other people consider wrong too. That not everyone will side with the Astrals as Somnus did.

And the parallels are really hitting Regis hard already, even if he’s refusing to think about it at the moment. The fact that Ardyn hasn’t actually referred to Noctis by name or title in this fic yet, you may or may not have noticed, is significant, because all the other players he has named when he’s referred to them. Noctis is perhaps the only one directly involved that Ardyn doesn’t resent—and yes, I’m including Luna in that, for reasons I’ll explore in later installments. (Basically, it has to do with the fact that of everyone involved, she is the one following his path—they aren’t necessarily good reasons, but emotions aren’t exactly logical).

And yeah, at some point Regis is going to have to confront the fact that his gods were gunning to destroy everything he holds dear. It’s—not gonna be pretty.

#hamelin-born #my fanfic #ffxv #Evil Astrals AU #in which Ardyn saves Regis on a whim #cw natural disaster #cw trauma

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