He's never said the words aloud, though the ghost of that train of thought has followed him for longer than he cares to admit to; the boy now a man that has molded himself to other's expectations, based his own self-worth on the success of someone so much more important than himself is now faced with the ugly truth of his own purpose, and that is without Noctis … he doesn't have one. Without Noctis, he is little more than a child displaced from a home he's no longer sure he can properly remember, and without Noctis the world beyond the tips of his fingers holds very little interest. Very little purpose of its own without the one thing he'd been placed to watch over and care for.
( Ask any variant version of his past self if he would have ever thought to find himself in this sort of position, so willing to give up the one thing that stands between them and the purging of the Scourge and he might have laughed, might have dismissed the thought entirely. As if he would have betrayed his friends for the sake of one life above all others — ah, but there's the thing.
It doesn't feel like betrayal when it's him. )
Still, there is something in him that aches as he kneels before the king that time has forgotten, the one left behind; his eyes are trained on the ground beneath his knees, head bowed in a way that doesn't allow him to see the outward stretch of the other's hand, at least not immediately, and it takes him a moment longer to lift his gaze just enough to see the way the ring sits between joints. A light already dimmed by the Scourge, and the pit of his stomach seems to bottom out entirely, leave him hollow in a way that he's sure no one has ever felt before now. And yet —
"I swear," comes the roughened murmur of his voice before his tired-broken-numb brain can catch up with the movement of his mouth, lips little more than a thinned, sharp line that barely allows for words at all, let alone the sort of thing that he's sure will condemn him to the darkest part of the coldest hell. "Leave him, and I —"
He ignores the hand in front of him, gaze trained again on some neutral bit of ground beneath him, brows drawn. "And I am yours."
For him, he amends, and only to himself. Even if he must live in darkness. He will live.
no subject
( Ask any variant version of his past self if he would have ever thought to find himself in this sort of position, so willing to give up the one thing that stands between them and the purging of the Scourge and he might have laughed, might have dismissed the thought entirely. As if he would have betrayed his friends for the sake of one life above all others — ah, but there's the thing.
It doesn't feel like betrayal when it's him. )
Still, there is something in him that aches as he kneels before the king that time has forgotten, the one left behind; his eyes are trained on the ground beneath his knees, head bowed in a way that doesn't allow him to see the outward stretch of the other's hand, at least not immediately, and it takes him a moment longer to lift his gaze just enough to see the way the ring sits between joints. A light already dimmed by the Scourge, and the pit of his stomach seems to bottom out entirely, leave him hollow in a way that he's sure no one has ever felt before now.
And yet —
"I swear," comes the roughened murmur of his voice before his tired-broken-numb brain can catch up with the movement of his mouth, lips little more than a thinned, sharp line that barely allows for words at all, let alone the sort of thing that he's sure will condemn him to the darkest part of the coldest hell. "Leave him, and I —"
He ignores the hand in front of him, gaze trained again on some neutral bit of ground beneath him, brows drawn. "And I am yours."
For him, he amends, and only to himself. Even if he must live in darkness. He will live.