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thewrongexecution · 4 years

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thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

#In This Essay I Will but for real this time #but hell if that's stopped me before #ff7 remake #blatant speculation #ff7 remake spoilers #ff7 spoilers #ff13 spoilers #ff15 spoilers #I dip into spoiler territory on more but these ones get a deeper dive #also if any of y'all know how to get images screen-read-able please lemme know #the screenshots are to point out that the game itself does do these things #but I don't wanna content-lock anybody out of my bad garbage #also also if the wordcount didn't clue you in:#long post #posting this right now immediately listening

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onwesterlywinds · 5 years

Text

One Last Step

So still this broken melody And therewith shoulder thee One last step only leaving An empty hearth down by the sea

Content warning for suicide. | Contains spoilers through 5.0.

In the weeks before the Calamity, Ahtynwyb Eynskyfwyn often dreamt of a tempest of mythological proportions. In those dreams, the storm would bring itself to bear against the mighty cliffs of Quarterstone, upon which perched her grandparents' cabin. The seas would rise in a deafening pulse with waves fit to level any lesser artifice, breaking against the wall of stone and sending their spray up into the blustering sky.

And she would stand alone at the top of those cliffs and know, even in her dreams, that naught would ever be the same again.

II.

The Cabinet of Curiosities held a trove of books. Throughout her travels, throughout her journeys through ruins long forgotten and civilizations engulfed in war, she had wondered every now and again what works she would preserve if forced to do so - if the only remaining testaments to a culture were the things that she and others like her could carry on their backs and in their minds.

She had seen Doma's answer; Ala Mhigo's, too, was becoming clearer by the day. But the Crystarium's had taken her by surprise for the sheer breadth of it: thousands upon thousands of tomes encompassing the last vestiges of mankind. Each book contained not only knowledge, but the dreams of those who had carried it to safety and given it up for the betterment of all. Each book had been entrusted to the community and its future, free for any to peruse.

And after no more than a morning of taking stock of the catalog, Ahtyn left the library to explore the Crystal Exarch's private collection.

She scanned the topmost shelf in his study, her heart pounding in her ears, until she laid eyes upon a tome she'd spotted from afar earlier in the week. Though slightly shabbier around the edges, its pages far more yellowed than she had remembered, she could not have mistaken it for the world. Her feet carried her across the room in a daze. Once she lifted the book from on high, she massaged the intact spine; as she flipped through the volume leaf by leaf, she found not a single page missing.

No book in the Cabinet of Curiosities could mean as much to her as this one, for none of the books beyond this room had come from the Source. None of them had traveled across time and worlds in the very subject they depicted - the Crystal Tower - and not a single one had been her favorite companion as a child.

Her eyes filled with tears as they rested upon the opening lines:

Once upon a time, four young Warriors of Light journeyed forth to right the wrongs of Allag.

III.

It had been bound to happen sooner or later. Looking back, she had ignored all signs from the beginning that her first-ever adventuring party had not been meant to last. One of their number had an ego; another prioritized too many commitments back home; another found fault with everything the others did. Ahtynwyb, for her part, had spent too much of her time smoothing over the fissures emerging in their group with each passing day. Regardless of how or why they had gone their separate ways, the excuses for why they would never have been a team worthy of legend brought her no comfort.

And on a more practical note, her lack of a party left her that much further from entering the Binding Coil of Bahamut.

Though if she were in the Binding Coil, she thought, she wouldn't be able to see the stars over Silvertear. She could stare at that dusk sky forever, with its gathered clouds still purple-hued over the lake and the Crystal Tower shattering the horizon.

She would be inside that tower soon enough. That had to count for something.

"Ahtyn!"

Cid made to throw her some sort of bread but then, noticing the book in her hands, jogged it over to her instead. It was a flaky pastry the size of her face, wrapped in paper and filled with spiced vegetables and cheese. "Fresh from the Toll. Figured you could do with a pick-me-up after running around the lake all day."

"Thanks, Cid."

Either Cid hadn't yet seen her teary eyes, or he had enough grace not to comment on them. "What's that you're reading? Something of the Scions'?"

She shook her head. "No, I've had this one for a while. It was my grandpa's." She closed the pages on her index finger, the better for him to see the cover emblazoned with the very tower before them without losing her page. "Just some old stories. They're a little childish, but they've always been kinda nostalgic, you know?"

Cid let out a long, low whistle, then thumped her on the back a little harder than she had been expecting. "G'raha!"

From where he sat at the center of Saint Coinach's Find, the young man's ears perked up in the middle of his swig of ale; he jumped to his feet in a single fluid motion. "Y-Yes?"

"You said the key to the tower was in legends, yes? Something that the ancients wouldn't have thought to preserve via tomestones?" Cid beckoned G'raha over with a wave of his arm. "You're going to want to see this."

IV.

"Find what you were looking for, then, hero?"

She gave so great a start that she very nearly dropped her book. Emet-Selch leaned against the closed study door, examining a nearby desk and all the clutter the Exarch had left lying atop it. Ahtyn opened her mouth to tell him he wasn't supposed to be in there, then, given the nature of her own trespass, thought better of it.

"I did," she replied, cautious of the venom with which he spoke the word "hero." "And now I'm going to stay in here and read. Alone."

Emet-Selch cast a conspicuous glance at the tome's cover and heaved another of his sighs. "Hmph. How very tedious."

She pointedly ignored him and turned a page.

"And you say this book has been in your family for generations?" Rammbroes murmured. He rubbed the back of his bald head, a sure sign that he was deep in thought.

G'raha Tia turned the book over to reexamine the front cover, even holding it up to where the tower stood to their north. It was a perfect representation, down to the positioning of each crystalline turret. "Despite the fact that the Crystal Tower has not been seen in millennia," he said, echoing Ahtyn's thoughts perfectly. He returned the book to her, bequeathing it as gently as one would hand over a tool of one's trade. "Could your family be descended from survivors of the Allagan Empire, perhaps?"

She shrugged. "I guess there's that chance, but... we're farmers on one side, and pirates on the other."

"After thousands of years, one could never truly know where one's ancestors-"

"What I meant was," she interrupted, "I think if we were descended from Allagans, we'd have way more family stories to tell about how we single-handedly saved the world."

G'raha squinted at her, then at Rammbroes, who was chuckling somewhere over her shoulder. "She's described Roegadyn culture in a nutshell for you," Rammbroes specified.

VI.

"But how can you throw together two whole worlds without things getting smushed?" she had asked her grandfather once during the climax of one of his stories. "Wouldn’t that hurt a lot of people?"

"Sometimes," he replied. "But other times, it’s just what everyone needs. Ye know what the stories say happens when there’s nothin’ but light. Sooner or later, the darkness comes back, and then what’re ye left with? Ye’ve got to have some some darkness to balance out that light once in a while, aye. Because it’s not light that brings the heroes home at the end, Liveen - it’s balance."

VII.

"What is it that so captivates you about that book, then?" Emet-Selch asked some twenty-odd pages later. She had no idea if he'd ever left the study at all - but strangely, even after his constant pestering in the Rak'tika Greatwood, she found him something of a welcome presence. There was, after all, no danger of him revealing her.

"It reminds me of my grandpa. And of a lot of friends."

He let out a noise that might well have been a yawn. "How quaint."

"I thought you were supposed to be a big fan of stories like this one."

"This may surprise you, but omniscience is not among my many talents. I'm afraid I don't know the first thing about it."

"Sprawling epics, dramatic motivations, tragic flaws. I thought Solus ate that shit up." The mention of that name caused him to stop examining his gloves and start actually looking at her. "At least," she continued, with some smugness, "that was what I heard on the Prima Vista."

Emet-Selch's lips twitched into a brief smile as he let out a barely perceptible chuckle, leaning to rest against the nearest wall with folded arms. "So my grandson's suspicions were well-founded: you did meet with Jenomis after all."

"I have."

"He spoke truly. I never will say no to a well-constructed story - particularly not from a master of their medium, as Jenomis is. It's fitting that you were able to bear witness to one of his performances. I can only imagine his resultant works will be better served for your collaboration."

Her eyes were too busy tracing the next line of text-

For why would the hero have thought to look for the villain in her own shadow?

-to immediately register Emet-Selch's words. By the time she did, they took her somewhat aback. "...I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

VIII.

"Hey. Alphinaud."

The crunching footsteps to her right slowed but did not halt. The fulm-deep Coerthan snow made it difficult for them to traverse side by side, but despite lacking her long stride, weather-resistant armor from the Crystal Tower and overall affinity for the cold, Alphinaud had always preferred to keep an even pace with her on the road whenever possible.

"You okay?"

Alphinaud did not stop, even surpassing her on the wooded trail. He made some small noise to indicate he was paying attention but otherwise did not turn to look at her.

"Don't worry. It should start to warm up once we get closer to Mor Dhona, especially around the next hill."

He gave another noncommittal nod, though he shivered a bit through his tunic.

"I wanted to ask you something," she continued. She followed in his steps, mostly so as not to leave him behind - but also, if she had learned anything over the past few weeks, it was that eyes and ears truly were everywhere, and that a misplaced shout could be fatal. "While it's just the two of us." The understanding that Haurchefant would be too overbearing to take part in such a delicate conversation would have to go implied.

"G-Go on," said Alphinaud.

"What Ilberd said, back at the Observatorium, about the prisoners he'd taken into custody." She waited. "About how they would be thoroughly interrogated."

"Do you find fault with his methods? If so, allow me to raise your concerns with him. I imagine he would be amenable to finding an alternative method of..." He trailed off, presumably to search for an acceptable word.

"Gathering intelligence?"

"Precisely."

"You're well within your rights to ask him what his methods actually are, Alphinaud," she said. "And to tell him to stop, if he goes further than you'd like. But if he's one man operating alone, without your oversight-"

"Thank you, my friend," Alphinaud snapped, "but I would rather we speak of something else for the remainder of our journey."

They continued their trek back to Mor Dhona in utter silence.

IX.

The waves over Quarterstone had ebbed since the Calamity, but the ocean still reached a far greater height than she remembered from her youth. She would never get used to such a view, even less so now that her grandparents' house no longer stood: it had been drawn over the cliffs not even a year after their family had relocated to Moraby, its foundations too weathered to withstand the constant onslaught from a changed world.

Grehswys merely sipped at her wine, looking as much at the road on which they had traveled as she was at the horizon they'd memorized throughout their shared childhood. At length, she passed the bottle over to Ahtyn, and she took as long of a swig as she could get away with.

"There's one thing I've come to appreciate about adventurers," her sister said. "You've learned how to talk about shite like this. Most of you, at least."

"What do you mean?"

"You've met folk from all over the world, right?"

"Right."

"So you've had to describe this to them, if it ever came up. What it meant to you, that is, and what it meant to lose it."

Ahtyn racked her brain and was surprised to recall several such conversations: with the Leveilleur twins, with Mupal, with Sairsel, with a full bar at the Sandsea on at least a couple occasions. For something that she had thought of as some great weight, she had brought up the topic more than she'd thought. "I... I guess so. Yeah."

Grehswys shrugged. "That's what's so horrid about staying here. We all went through it, but... we just keep it bottled up. A story everyone knows but never tells."

The void was wearing on her in subtle ways. Or perhaps it was that the creatures she'd fought here had been stronger than any others she'd encountered throughout her adventures thus far.

But the Cloud of Darkness was fading with each passing second. Devoid of its summoned monsters, devoid of immediate purpose, the air in the void was beginning to grow stale - heavy. All around and above her lay a roaring expanse of abyss. It was dizzying to be so entrenched in the dark, save for a ripple of aurora to mark a semblance of light at the end of the tunnel, or a silver lining, or some other grandiose metaphor she didn't have the energy to engage with.

"Right," said Aoife Mahsa beside her, waving a hand in front of her own face. "So... what now."

Ahtyn took as deep of a breath as she could, though the burgeoning void was constricting her lungs with a sickly sweet sort of taste. "Find a way back to Hydaelyn," she said, and ran further toward the aurora. "I'll find G'raha and Nero!"

"Yes!" Aoife replied, bounding in front of her before she could protest. "WE find a way back to Hydaelyn, with G'raha and Nero! You're really on the ball, aye!"

"But Aoife-"

"Don't you 'but Aoife' me!" the bard scolded. "I'm not leaving you alone in here! Besides - if you got lost in the void, Cid and Baithin will each give me at least one lecture!"

Her eyes suddenly stung, and this time, she didn't have any light to blame it on. "Okay," she said, and stepped straight into the oblivion stretching out before them both. "So uh... dibs left void?"

XI.

Ahtyn knelt in the black sand to gather up the last of her belongings from the camp, the better to hide a sudden spike in her anxiety - the first distress she'd felt since wandering along the coast of Valnain more than a moon ago. With Ultima defeated and the Orbonne Monastery cleared of its haunts, Hrjt would have no cause to leave her home for the foreseeable future.

And Ahtyn had yet to overcome an inability to remain in touch.

Her movements stilled over her pack as she considered her impending return to the life of a solo traveler; then a slender finger tapped her twice on the shoulder. Ahtyn turned to find Hrjt's outstretched hand, and Eternal Wind clasped in it.

"You forgot this in my robes," Hrjt said.

There was such earnestness on her companion's face, without a hint of mischief or irony, that Ahtyn couldn't bite back her chuckle. "Okay, sorry. This isn't my strong suit."

"What isn't?"

"I should've just been direct. Hrjt, it's a gift."

"But-" The ends of Hrjt's ears twitched as she frowned. "Oh, no. I couldn't. You said this book was your favorite."

"It is! Which is why I think you should have it."

Hrjt gestured outward with her other hand - the one holding her staff - toward the remaining visible stretch of black coast. Through the heavy fog, Ahtyn could barely make out the dark tides forming a powerful rip current stretching far out into the Valnard Sea - and for once, the sight did not make her wistful for La Noscea.

"Ahtyn," said Hrjt, firmly. "This is how I live. I won't be able to keep it safe or dry with me."

"That's fine," she replied, even as the wind cast a fine spray across her cheek.

"You wouldn't wish to leave it to someone? A future child, or a pupil? Besides, what if I never have the chance to read it?"

"That's shite and you know it; you'll get at least four hundred more years than me."

"And what should happen if I'm instead captured by a voidsent and become lost to the lightless abyss forever?"

Recognizing her deadpan jest for what it was, Ahtyn grinned. "That's just depressing."

"There is, as you would say, a non-zero chance."

"Okay." Ahtyn held up both palms in surrender. "If you really aren't sure, I'll take it back."

She waited, unsure if she had been too pushy from the first. As Hrjt hesitated, her eyes gleamed with a sort of shyness Ahtyn had yet to see from her. "If you're sure... I'll keep it as safe as I am able. I promise."

"I'll visit you again soon," Ahtyn said, and meant it.

XII.

She could not reconcile the sight before her with the weeks of intimacy she had come to take for granted. The aether tugged at her senses; it sparked in the air like diamond dust as Ysayle Dangoulain made her descent against the sickly green sky. She fell faster than gravity, faster than flight. And yet time itself slowed as Ahtyn watched her from the airship, with Cid's hands pulling her back at the arms and the sounds of her own screams deafened in her ears.

She had never, never been able to reconcile the vibrant woman she'd come to know with the dead-eyed primal she had once fought, so long ago, when she'd still been convinced that doing so would bring about Eorzea's salvation. For all of Shiva's conjured majesty, she could convey none of her ideals except to those already devoted. They had had countless conversations during their Dravanian journeys; they had spoken in Ishgardian and Common and tongues long since lost to other mortals, sharing in the wonder of their blessing and burden, partaking together in the joys of being understood as equals. Shiva's summoner was far more wondrous bereft of her power. Ahtyn doubted, even now, that the same could be said of herself.

It was none of it fair. Ysayle was not meant to be the one to fall-

The hull of the Agrius froze, then shattered, then exploded - and soon the flames from the dreadnought's engine melted every last trace of ice. Ysayle's aether, too, was beyond her reach forever.

XIII.

"There are so many things I don't understand," said the young Minfilia, staring out across the hillside at the ribbons of Light pouring over Lyhe Ghiah. "But most of all, I've been wondering... how you manage to do it all on your own."

It was a question she'd been asked time and time again - only this time, she didn't wave away the girl's concerns. She didn't deflect with humility, insisting that the Scions had been at her side all the while or some such. Someday Minfilia would have to tread this same path, as her namesake had before her. Honesty would be the kindest possible gift.

"Well," she began, and the word hung in the air for a little while. "It helps that I've always been the type to want to save the world. Even when I was your age. Mostly I wanted someone, anyone, somewhere down the line, to know that someone tried to make things just a little bit better." She didn't say that when she was Minfilia's age, that desire had usually manifested as an abstract, foolhardy vision of self-sacrifice. "And when it's something you've grown up feeling, when it's that innate to you-" Twelve, and she thought she'd had it bad with merely a preference for books; from what Urianger had divulged, Minfilia had spent her childhood locked in a tower with only a name and a responsibility. "-it's usually less about finding the will to go on and more about... not burning yourself out, or spreading yourself too thin. I'd say that's the hardest part."

Minfilia nodded in the direction of her knees. "It must be difficult," she murmured. "Thancred's told me only a little of what you've done, but I... I can't begin to imagine it."

"It helps when you can be yourself in the day-to-day," she admitted. "Though of course, that's much easier said than done." It was why she had never come around to feeling comfortable in Ishgard: the more Edmont and Aymeric and all the rest came to revere her, the more she wondered if any of them had ever truly known her. "Aside from that, I try to vouch for others as often as I can. It relieves some of the pressure, it helps make some real allies, and... and sometimes it gives people another hero to focus on for a bit. Much as people don't want to hear it, it's not healthy to rest all your hopes and dreams on one person."

From beside her, Minfilia took in a deep, shuddering breath.

"D-Don't get me wrong," Ahtyn stammered. "I'm not saying I think everyone has to be strong enough to look after themselves. That's not a charitable way to think about things, and it doesn't account for all the people who haven't had a choice - like people from occupied territories." She was rambling now. "And there are some real advantages to having a single hero, like being able to take decisive action when it matters most. But I've seen it go wrong: once people get it in their heads that one person, one being can fix all of their problems, they'll go to all sorts of lengths to make it true."

She breathed in deeply, staring hard at the Light. "And honestly, I thought it would be different here in the First, when I heard people resented their Warriors of Light. I thought it'd mean they'd rely less on heroes and more on each other. But I still see it with the Exarch, and with you, and-"

She took one look at Minfilia's wide eyes and finally had the sense to curb her thoughts.

"I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to get so heavy, and none of this is your problem, and... and I don't know how much it makes sense. Long story short, it's just... it's something that gets me because it's..."

"...Because it's not fair," Minfilia finished.

XIV.

Ahtyn had come face to face with a siren before - the creatures that sang to sailors of their purported destinies. Once she had seen a captain walk into a siren's arms against the heeding of his crewmen, and the gory aftermath that had come of that scene had haunted her dreams for nearly a week. And as a song foretelling her own destiny rang out through the reaches of Azys Lla, she wished she could know its promises to be false.

The Goddess regarded her with heavy-lidded, dispassionate eyes.

It’s not light that brings the heroes home at the end, Liveen.

And then the scales tipped.

For a moment she was weightless. She fell through the golden air, watching Sophia grow ever further from her. When the others righted, she did not; with another lurch, with her own balance stymied, she tipped backward over the edge.

"AHTYN!"

A hand, small but strong, grabbed her at the wrist. It hoisted her, perhaps with the added strength of others, upwards and upwards until her feet regained their purchase on the platform and A'zaela Linh's worried face returned into view.

"Thanks!" she called. Sylvan Rain and Crimson Bull were holding off the primal in her momentary absence, pushing back against the Goddess' Daughter with their shoulders and no shortage of will to keep her from reaching Arae'sae and Nivelth. And still, for a moment, she merely stood. For the briefest of instants, the primal's call had granted her a vision clearer even than the Echo, though now it faded from her like water in her hands. She made to charge and then, in a terrifying second, realized she could not find her shield; only when A'zaela handed it back to her did she raise her sword to provoke the Goddess to face her again.

"How's that for judgment?!" she cried. "Now come and get me!"

XV.

No one spoke in the Ocular. Not even a plate of the Exarch's famous sandwiches could tempt them into conversation after their discoveries in the Qitana Ravel. For all their earlier bickering, Y'shtola and Thancred cast identical glowers of fatigue. Alisaie sat cleaning her rapier with single-minded dedication; Alphinaud paced from one end of the hall to the other. Urianger thumbed through a tome Ahtyn didn't recognize from the Exarch's private library. Minfilia pivoted her gaze from one Scion to the next, always folding and refolding her hands in her lap.

"Maybe this is hypocritical," Ahtyn said at length. "But I don't think this really changes anything."

They all turned to her.

It was wishful thinking, but if she had to continue to ponder in silence the possibility that she could be tempered, she would likely lose her mind.

"I agree," drawled Emet-Selch from out of nowhere behind her. "Listen to the hero. Continue your course." He took a bite of a sandwich and, presumably unsatisfied, set it back down onto the tray. Only Minfilia had the energy to glare at him.

"What I mean is," she continued aggressively, "if it's true that Hydaelyn is a primal, then anything we do to try to change or mitigate that fact could have serious consequences for the Source, if not other worlds."

Urianger nodded his agreement. "This matter requireth deliberations with our esteemed colleagues in the Source."

She opened her mouth to promise that she would raise the topic as soon as she could, but the Light suddenly heaved in her chest. The wave of nausea cut off any of the promises she might have made, any reassurances that the foundations of their worldview would remain intact.

XVI.

Even with the power surging around and through him, she held out a hand. She held out a hand as though doing so could undo all that he had schemed and dealt throughout the past half year, as though she could pull him from that precipice through her own sheer will.

Instead Ilberd Feare stared directly into her eyes, his eerie grin widening, as he stretched out the hands that held the eyes of Nidhogg and leaned further and further backward-

"COWARD!" Alphinaud screamed.

The Griffin gave one last tip of his head - a nod in her direction, it seemed - and she was seized with a horrific calm as he fell from Baelsar's Wall.

XVII.

The knock, quick and quiet, came upon her inn room door at nearly three in the morning. She staggered out of bed in a flash, halfway to grabbing her pauldrons. It could only be another Eulmoran attack, or some other initiative that required her urgent participation, and Captain Lyna would just have to get over her dishevelment. Then she threw open the door and found Alisaie in a robe and nightgown, carrying a pillow.

"May I borrow your floor?" Alisaie asked, conveying somewhat more consciousness than Ahtyn had expected, given the hour.

"Uh, yeah," she grumbled, albeit before she'd fully processed the question. "Of course."

Alisaie slipped inside, kicking off her slippers with enough force for them to land yalms apart. "It seems neither Alphinaud nor I can sleep. Only he insisted on making cocoa, and conversation-" Ahtyn could not determine from Alisaie's tone which of these she held in greater disdain. "-and I simply didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't remotely interested."

Despite the proposal she'd agreed to, Ahtyn shepherded Alisaie toward her bed and took the floor for herself. There was more than enough room for them to share the mattress; then again, she had experienced all too often Alisaie's sleep-kicking during their expeditions in Gyr Abania and the Far East, when she or Lyse would have to share accommodations with her. The sight of the smallest among them enjoying her own sleeping mat was one that had never failed to bring Gosetsu to fits of his boisterous laughter. One by one, the memories of their adventures flickered through her head, bringing with them the crushing realization of how much of Alisaie's life she had missed while they had been worlds apart.

With the both of them settled and the lights long extinguished, Ahtyn whispered, "How are you holding up, really?"

She had expected a groan of frustration, or a muttered curse. Instead, Alisaie rolled over and stared in the general direction of her voice. "As always, I'm worried for you. ...I suppose that's why I can't sleep."

XVIII.

Her first thought, exhausted as she was from the interdimensional battle with Shinryu and the mere sight of Zenos lying dead in a pool of his own blood, was that Lyse looked beautiful with her arm stretched aloft. Her second thought was that Lyse had an incredible singing voice, and so did Ashelia Riot, though the latter was leaning the entirety of her weight against her husband and trying to look inconspicuous while doing so.

And as she stared out from atop the ramparts of Cotter Tor, she had never been prouder to stand among a crowd. For once, for once, all was put to rights. She did not quite know how she had come to stand here, beside Arenvald and the pennant, with a throng of Ala Mhigans far below. Between her and those people - the people whom she had played her own part in protecting - there lay a drop of half a thousand fulms.

"Ahtyn!" Lyse clasped her from behind at the shoulders, giving her a little shake to pull her from her reverie. The others behind her had begun to disperse back into the royal palace. "We're regrouping back at Porta Praetoria. Unless you need a minute?"

She shook her head. Better to look into Lyse's eyes than to peer into that empty, dawn-hued sky; better to have Lyse's hands on her than to trust in her own feet not to take her over the edge.

XIX.

It was easiest to take hold of his hand, crystalline though it was. They both needed the fresh air, but there was little to be found, even on the tall cliffs of Kholusia: she could scarcely smell the sea over the tinny smog from the dwarven forges.

But the Exarch did not appear to mind. He recovered slowly but steadily from his moment of collapse, his breathing growing more and more regular the longer they shared their simple contact.

"Construction on the Talos is proceeding apace?" he asked.

She nodded. They lapsed then into an easy, comfortable silence, presiding together over the Light-strewn sky. Soon, if all went as planned, that Light would be gone - contained amongst the vast sea already rising within her.

"It still doesn't feel right to me," she said at last. "None of this does, without the wind."

The Exarch's face gave no movement that she could see, but she could sense the smile in his words. "Then if you have a moment yet to spare, I would ask you to indulge me with a tale from your people - Eternal Wind, wasn't it?" As he turned to her then, she could see his grin in full. "Perhaps it would put both our hearts at ease, given the impending juncture."

It did not matter that he could easily have known of her connection to that book through any of the Scions, or learned it from gazing through the rift to the Source.

She knew then who he was for certain.

Her grip on his hand had grown so tight that it had begun to ache against the crystal. "Thank you," she whispered. "For everything."

And then she burst into tears.

"Oh, no no no," G'raha Tia murmured. His hood visibly shifted as his ears went flat. He reached out with his free hand, his hand of flesh, as if to touch her shoulder; instead, his hand lingered somewhere above her pauldron. "I'm so sorry, my friend; I-I never meant to-"

"I just-" She was sobbing now, as hard as she had cried alone at the banks of Silvertear Lake after she and the rest of NOAH had said their farewells to him. "Whatever happens next - no matter how it all ends - I want you to know h-how much it means to me. All hundred years of it! Everything you've done, everything you've been through... gods!"

He did not confirm her praise. As she rested her head upon his shoulder, still weeping for him alone to see, he laid his own head against her - his lips brushing mutely against her temple.

XX.

Tucked three-quarters of the way into Eternal Wind lay a strip of dyed Dalmascan paper, with words written lengthwise upon it in a hasty scrawl:

For the Ironworks.

May her light guide our journey home.

Hrjt Brotin

XXI.

"My dear, beloved sapling," Feo Ul crooned.

But she was beyond such praises now. All the different parts of her lay fractured. Here, atop the watchtower and brimming with sacrifice, she was neither savior nor warrior nor woman. She could not be anything, let alone the one thing she needed to be. She could scarcely maintain her consciousness without focus, let alone a process of thought, let alone the weight of her disparate memories. She was fit for nothing save destruction, save an Ascian's machinations.

"You are lost - confused - and have precious little time to gather your wits."

Time was not what she needed. Oh, to rule from Lyhe Ghiah forever would be a wondrous dream, a blissful reprieve - and yet it would be an ending, and one she was unworthy of at that.

"Stand very, very still," said the king. "Think not of where you need to go, but where you are right now at this moment. At this time, in this place..."

Ahtyn breathed in deeply. She let Feo Ul's words flow over her, like a steady breeze to greet the waves of Light breaking over the ramparts of her body. A single tear slipped down her cheek; Feo Ul swiped it away with the point of a single finger. The gesture, surprising in its intimacy, provoked an unexpected chuckle.

"I'm still here," she whispered. "And I still have you." And the twins, and Ryne, and all the other Scions. Her family, Hrjt, every friend whom she had ever known and loved. G'raha. "I know what comes next. But I'm... I'm so afraid, right now. And it feels silly to be so afraid." What would happen to the Light if she burst from all the fear and sadness and guilt?

Feo Ul shook their head. "It isn't silly at all at all, my sapling. But as you set off for who knows where, making even more of a mess of that aether of yours - remember that you have withstood this before, and you will surely do so again." They laid their hands upon her cheeks, flitting close enough to touch their tiny forehead against hers. "And know too that for all the miseries you have endured, you give back joy in equal measure."

XXII.

[Let us debate today the topic of our colleague's newest collection.]

The tide of Light had carried her to the deepest reaches of the Tempest, to a place where shades treated her as one might treat a misbehaving child. She sat staring at her own feet in the Hall of Rhetoric, a means of grounding herself against the aether's pull.

The masked, robed figure sitting opposite her gave a grandiose gesture with his arms. [It is an outrage, and a danger to young ones such as our guest.]

[The work is certainly unconventional,] his identical partner agreed. [Yet a danger? It inflicts no pain, and it neither incites nor promotes harmful behaviors.]

[It serves as a call to action and is therefore inflammatory by its very nature and purpose. Its themes are like to instill ideals of nonconformity within the most impressionable.]

[My friend,] the masked figure beside Ahtyn said, [it sounds to me as though you oppose the mere idea of this work. Have you yet read it?]

[Er... no. I have not. But I have heard enough from those I trust to know that it challenges the very fabric of the society we all labor so hard to uphold.]

[And yet these trusted friends and many other noble souls have read it, and are presumably no less patriotic for having done so. It seems to me, therefore, that this work is but a touchstone for a broader debate: that of censorship, and if some individual ideas deserve to be curbed in order to better provide for the needs of all.]

[What's this work about?] Ahtyn asked. She could not follow the conversation, even as she recognized each and every one of the arguments they made.

The figure across from her held a finger to his lips but otherwise ignored her. [You know I am all in favor of creation as self-expression,] he insisted. [But creation necessitates responsibility. We employ the Bureau of Architects to ensure that a patent is not accessible to those of insufficient skill and understanding. There is no such way to determine whether ideas could or should be similarly judged to ensure that those of weaker wills do not take it upon themselves to... to act upon ideas which they do not fully understand.]

[You raise a valuable point, my friend,] the specter beside her acquiesced. [Perhaps we shall discuss this matter with Emet-Selch. He is ever impartial with moral quandaries such as this.]

With their final debate settled, with their purpose served, the two figures faded into peaceful obscurity.

XXIII.

"You truly don't remember."

The more the Light surged within her, the more she wanted to, even as she feared what else that remembrance might bring. Her ramparts already threatened to crumble amidst the Ascian's private hell; were they to fall now, were the Light to overtake her, she would be lost.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, girl."

The words filled her with rage, as they always had, but neither could she tie them to any particular memory - and so she stared up, trying to summon anything more than a growl of pain in her throat.

"Well, retorts never were your forte." Emet-Selch knelt, the better to grasp her chin and tilt her face up toward his, forcing eye contact. Beads of sweat borne from pain obscured her eyes, nearly blotting out her vision. "And neither was irony, apparently. That you of all people should forget."

A new crop of Light rose in her gut, burning like bile as she spat it out onto Emet-Selch's Garlean boots. "Tell me." For words meant as an order, they rang pathetic from her lips. "Tell me who I was." Who I am.

He rolled his eyes and stood, dragging her up only part of the way before releasing her to crumple once again onto the crystal floor. "You were full of potential, most of it wasted. Just as you are now." He swept an arm wide, across where she lay half-broken upon the cold aetheric surface. "You could have been something, had you applied yourself - had you cared one whit beyond your own stupid dreams! You could have saved all of us. But no!"

"What did I do?" For whatever great sin she had committed, she had no doubt that it contributed in no small way to these people's destruction.

Emet-Selch's arms fell; his shoulders slumped. "What did you do?" he repeated, incredulous.

When he turned, he turned to face her without a hint of mischief in his eyes - only a mad grief.

"You created stories. Long, long ago, you wove a tale about a hero's journey - and from that tale sprang every other legend of heroes and journeys these sundered worlds have ever known."

The next breath she drew in was painless, steadying. Filling.

Emet-Selch drew himself up to his full height, coughing into his fist before adopting an orator's pose. "'A hero leaves her home, with the knowledge that naught will ever be the same again. She is tested, time and again - by monsters, by enemies, by allies, by the great and irrevocable struggles taking place in the world and in herself. She endures an ordeal graver than any other, something she has worked towards perhaps without ever knowing it, and in so doing sacrifices a part of herself. And when she returns home, if she returns home, she is changed - not in the way she hoped but in the way she needed.'" He sneered down at her, at the Light pouring out from her. "Is this the glorious homecoming you always imagined, my dear? Is this the necessary change you so envisioned for yourself, at long last... Sappho?"

Over the Light, over even the humiliation and fear and regret, that name triggered within her an ancient knowing. She staggered to her feet. Cold, unfeeling aether burst from her spine like wings, like a Passage of Arms given form.

The others could not save her now, for there could be no saving her. For all her insistences, she was the only one. There could only be this end - her end.

"You could have saved them!" Emet-Selch screamed, even as she transformed further into the broken creature he had sought for his own ends. "It was not enough for us to beg to you, oh, no. You decided you alone wanted no part in creating our savior, our god. And so we were left to summon Zodiark without your guidance."

He laughed so loudly and for so long that the sound doubled him over, even as she found the will to stand tall. By the time he composed himself once more, his voice was as soft as death.

"But you were correct on one point," he seethed. "My world will have no need for heroes."

XXIV.

At the end of days, the world needed a hero. Amaurot had chosen Zodiark.

Against her fears, against her protestations, the ritual would be performed on the morrow.

She stared down at the burning city, at the end of days. She wished she could evoke pity or grief for her people. She wished she could summon anything but her own worthless guilt.

A stillness emanated from the horizon, the first vestiges of Zodiark's lightless dawn. She tore off her mask to greet it.

They had used her own words to justify it. At the end of days, a savior comes. Would that she had never written at all.

With that thought etched into her mind, Sappho stepped from Amaurot's tallest cliff.

XXV.

"This world is not yours to end." Ahtynwyb Eynskyfwyn, the Queen Light, drew her sword against the Dark. "This is our future. Our story."

"Very well," said Hades. "Let us proceed to your final judgment. The victor shall write the tale, and the vanquished become its villain!"

???

And when she sat down upon her bed, aching and purposeful and devoid of every last obligation but one, she opened up a spare notebook to its first page and wrote:

Once upon a time, a young Warrior of Light journeyed forth into a realm reborn.

I tell you someone will remember us in the future.

-Sappho, Sapphic Fragment 2

#Livvy Ahtynwyb

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xylianna · 7 years

Text

A Day in the Life of Ignis Amicitia

Years after the return of the Light, Ignis and Gladio spend a relaxing day with their loved ones.

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13036296

@ignisfluff

Ignis Fluff Week Day 7 Theme: Free Day

NSFW

I just hope this isn't too cheesy, but appropriately fluffy. My first stab at writing something post-Altissia, let alone post-game, and I wasn't entirely prepared for the feels.

No beta, sorry for my mistakes!

Ignis Scientia Amicitia still preferred to rise before the sun.

Perhaps he could no longer drink in the majestic sight of the star cresting the horizon, the way the sky lightened into a pastel blend of oranges and pinks before fading into the clearest blue. But he could feel the warmth on his face, and that was enough to have him starting the day content.

He had so much to be thankful for, after all, that most days it was easy to avoid dwelling on his loss of vision.

Nearly fifteen years had passed since the Dawn had emerged from the never-ending night. Not a day of those years went by without thoughts of the true King, his dear friend and heart-brother, a truly noble man who had given his very life for his kingdom in fulfillment of prophecy. Most days, it was easy to focus on the good memories. Young Noctis playing in the Citadel’s gardens. Teenage Noct staying up too late playing video games, thick as thieves with young Prompto. And Noctis as he was at end: fully grown, regal, powerful.

And, most of all… loved.

While it had been hard for all of them to move on, the days turned into months, the seasons continued their cycle, and years began to pass. Slowly, they all began to build new lives in this Crystal-less world.

As strange as it had seemed at first to be back in Insomnia, to dwell within a Citadel that held no Lucis Caelums, now Ignis couldn’t image even considering living anywhere else.

He and Gladio may no longer have the same roles they were defined by in their youth - no King meant no Shield, no Royal Advisor - but they did what they could to help the others pick up the pieces of the Lucian government, to keep the people safe and protected. To be fair, it was a much easier task with the Empire eradicated, the daemons gone, but not all people were inherently good, and there were definite issues to sort out.

However, much of their time was given to their loved ones. Given to each other.

If nothing else, their fateful road trip all those years ago had taught the hard lesson that all things were, ultimately, fleeting - and you never knew when your number would be up.

Ignis was drawn out of his early morning musings when he felt the strong arms of his husband wrap around his waist. “Morning, Iggy.”

“Gladio,” he replied softly, tipping his head to brush lips softly against the other man’s jawline.

They stood that way, lovingly entwined, until the sun finished climbing over the hills to shed its radiant light over Insomnia.

Gladio checked his watch. “They should be here in an hour.” Ignis could hear the grin in his partner’s voice. “Though with how Prompto drives, maybe sooner.”

Ignis chuckled. “Cindy keeps him in check, most the time. But, we should complete our preparations now, just in case.”

The two worked in tandem, Gladio tidying away a bit of clutter while Ignis put the finishing touches on the brunch he had largely pre-made for their group.

The first Saturday of each month, barring unavoidable conflict (which arose more often than any of them would like), their chosen family congregated for brunch, conversation, and just… togetherness.

Their group was a bit smaller, as a natural result of the years. Cid was no longer with them, and Cor the Immortal had failed to live up to his moniker two years ago. Aranea had sent word that she’d be absent this month, and Talcott would also be detained. In fact, many of their dear friends were unavailable on this bright, spring day.

But Prompto, Cindy, and their young daughter would be coming. And Iris would be there.

That was enough.

Ignis smiled as he worked, thinking of the young Argentum lass, a girl with hair as sunny as both her parents, he was told, with Prompto’s brilliant violet-blue eyes, and Cindy’s ready smile. Luciana was her name, and it was a name heavy with significance - the poor girl had so many namesakes, Ignis was relieved to know that with parents like hers, she’d never feel pressure to live up to the legends.

Noctis Lucis Caelum.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret.

Gentiana.

Muttering to himself in irritation at growing maudlin, Ignis swiped away the moisture that had gathered at his scarred eyes. Almost immediately he felt Gladio’s large hand lay gently on his shoulder.

“You okay?” Gladio asked gruffly. Ignis wasn’t the only one who got emotional on their monthly gathering days.

“Quite,” he replied, slanting a smile towards his love, before returning his attention to his preparations.

Rapid knocking at their door that one might think was from young Luciana - if one didn’t realize Prompto’s boundless energy hadn’t dampened much over the years - announced the arrival of their guests.

“Hey, y’all,” Cindy’s voice rang out cheerfully. “Lucy, honey, don’t run!”

“Uncle Gladio! Uncle Iggy!” The child’s voice was sprightly and brought a smile to both of her honorary uncles’ faces.

Ignis could hear the sounds of Gladio picking up the girl and swinging her around, the child’s giggles filling the air.

“Hey, big guy!” Ignis marked Prompto’s progress into their home by the sound of his voice, his footsteps. Such had become second-nature to him over the past decades. “Ooh, what’s cookin’, Igs?” Ignis felt his friend punch his shoulder playfully, as he presumably leaned in to check out the spread Ignis had prepared.

“Help me take it all to the table,” Ignis requested. While he and Prompto carried out the food, Gladio oversaw Luciana’s efforts to set the table, and Cindy enjoyed getting off her feet for a change. Iris arrived just as they were finishing, and after she and Gladio exchanged body-crushing hugs in a playful test of strength, she’d greeted her brother-in-law and the rest with more reasonable gestures of affection.

Soon they were all gathered around the large table Ignis had insisted upon, the immense piece of furniture filling their dining room, leaving just enough room for the numerous chairs lining all sides.

Ignis felt his heart fill with love for these people.

Prompto, the gunslinger turned mechanic, after he had finally won over Cindy after a years-long effort to court the woman. While he still mourned his best friend’s death, as did they all, Prompto had found a new joy in his family, and did everything he could to ensure their happiness.

Cindy herself had become a close friend over the years, her never-ending cheer and optimism a saving grace at times when it seemed to hard for him to go on after his King’s sacrifice. They had all mourned with her at Cid’s passing.

Luciana, the child he spoiled in lieu of having any of his own. The girl gave them all hope for the future, just by fact of her existence.

Iris, his sister-in-law with whom he had long since dropped the “in-law”. She was distinguishing herself as Commander of the Crownsguard, and was quick to defend her unit to any foolish enough to wonder in her presence what use was there for a Crownsguard without a crown to guard. An Amicitia to the core, she was the embodiment of honor. She was also quite the prankster, engaged in a years-long contest of hilarity with her brother.

Gladio. Six, what could he say about Gladio? He was, unquestionably, the love of Ignis’s life. His rock, his strength, his joy, his light.

They were two halves of one whole, Gladiolus and himself. They had known each other for so long, had their lives tied together in so many irrevocable ways long before binding themselves in matrimony, that the wedding almost seemed an afterthought.

If Ignis had one goal for what was left of his life, it was to start every day waking up next to Gladio. And end each night in his arms.

May the Astrals grant them many long, peaceful years.

No one could deny they had earned it.

When the meal was finished and the dishes cleared away, the group adjourned to the gardens. Gladio had turned out to have a surprisingly green thumb, and the one-time Shield had planted and maintained this particular section himself over the years, describing it in such vivid detail Ignis had a clear picture of it’s beauty in his mind’s eye.

Prompto and Lucy ran around, darting between the trees in a chasing game, the father shrieking in delight almost as often as his daughter. Ignis sat beside Gladio, their clasped hands resting on the soft grass as they spoke with Iris and Cindy.

For many, this might seem incredibly pedestrian. Boring, even.

For Ignis, a day like this was perfection.

After several enjoyable hours, it was time for the Argentums to head back to Hammerhead. As Cindy was fond of saying, the cars at the garage weren’t gonna fix themselves. With fond farewells, they took their leave of the Scientia-Amicitia household. Iris didn’t linger long after their departure. Since she also dwelt in the Citadel, they saw each other on a nearly daily basis, and with her rank came a plethora of responsibility.

When it was just the two of them lingering in the afterglow of warm companionship, Ignis turned sightless eyes in the direction of his husband. “Let’s go home,” he suggested, thumb straying from their handclasp to caress Gladio’s wrist suggestively.

“You got it,” Gladio agreed, hauling Ignis to his feet as an unintentional byproduct of rising to his own.

While Ignis hardly needed the other man’s guidance to find their quarters, he wasn’t unamenable to the help. One thing years of living without sight had taught him was that it was refreshing, at times, to let down his guard, relax his hyper-vigilance, and let someone trusted ensure he made it where he was going without incident.

Sometimes it was nice for the caretaker to be taken care of.

Gladio had barely gotten the door closed before Ignis pounced. Using the hand still held in his own, he spun his lover around and pinned him to the door, pressing his body against him urgently, his lips claiming Gladio’s in an impatient, needy kiss.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Gladio managed to say when Ignis turned his attention to nibbling down one side of the larger man’s neck. “But what brought this on?”

Ignis faltered slightly in his rhythm, and eased off just enough to breath a nearly inaudible response. “I’m just… happy.”

It was the truth. Days like this left him almost overwhelmingly joyous.

There had been great loss. Great sacrifice. Debts that could never be repaid.

But, by the Six, he was alive, Gladio was alive, and he knew their lost friends would rejoice in their living.

So he’d live, damn it.

He’d seize every day like it was his last, make the most of every moment, live life to it’s fullest with no regrets.

And right here, right now, there was nothing he wanted more than to make love to his husband until sleep claimed them both.

Ignis’s hands went to Gladio’s belt, undoing the clasp with practiced ease, reaching one slender hand within the other man’s pants to find him already half-hard. As Ignis stroked the smooth heat of Gladio’s cock, he felt it grow beneath his fingers, and a familiar smirk curled his lips where they worked over Gladio’s collarbone.

“Iggy,” Gladio moaned, one hand bracing against the wall for support, the other reaching to pull Ignis up for a rough kiss, more teeth and tongues than lips, as their mouths fought for dominance.

“Gladiolus,” Ignis’s impeccably accented voice purred his husband’s name as he continued to pump his hand over the other man’s length.

“Gods, Ignis…” Gladio’s head fell back to thud against the hardwood of the door. He moved one hand to tangle in Ignis’s hair, lushly soft beneath his calloused fingers, free from styling products today.

Right here. Right now.

Ignis released his hold on Gladio long enough to remove his pants, a pleased sound escaping from between his lips when he heard the rustling sounds of Gladio doing the same with his own.

“Prepare yourself for me, love,” Ignis instructed.

Gladio was quick to comply, Ignis inferred from his husband’s moans. He had intimate familiarity with the sounds Gladiolus made when fingering his own ass.

They were almost as delicious as those he made when Ignis did the job for him.

Ignis stroked a hand over his own shaft, though he hardly needed the touch - he was achingly hard, and he could tell he wouldn’t last long. But, Ignis couldn’t resist teasing himself just a bit, listening enraptured to the heaviness of Gladio’s breath, the way he’d gasp when he added another finger, the lewd moan that escaped Gladio after long moments, the throaty sound letting Ignis know his lover was ready for him.

“Turn around,” Ignis said, and he reached out a hand to stroke the smooth planes of Gladio’s back. Taking his cock in hand, Ignis brushed the head teasingly along Gladio’s asscrack, leaning forward to lick and kiss the side of his neck, making his way from shoulder to ear. “Are you ready, my love?”

“Oh, gods, yes…” Gladio said. “Now, Iggy. Now.”

Ignis penetrated him in one smooth motion, and they simultaneously called out each other’s names. After giving Gladio a moment to adjust to the sensation of being so completely filled, Ignis began to move. Slim hips rocked at a bruising pace as he continued to press kisses against the other man’s neck, occasionally punctuating the loving touches with sharp bites.

“Mine,” Ignis growled, though he feared his voice was breathier than anticipated. He was already so painfully close.

“Yeah,” Gladio agreed, reaching to fist his hand in Ignis’s now sweat-damp hair. “Mine.”

“Oh, fuck…” The pleasurable pain of fingers tight against his scalp pushed Ignis over the edge, and he came hard, his husband’s name on his lips. “Gladio!”

“That’s right,” Gladio said, voice low. “Don’t stop. Take me there with you, Iggy.” Gladio let go of Ignis’s hair and gripped his own cock, pumping in rhythm with Ignis’s thrusts. He pushed his hips back against Ignis, fucking himself on his lover’s cock as Ignis was lost in the aftermath of his orgasm. “Oh, fuck yeah…Ignis!” Gladio flattened the hand not wrapped around himself against the door for balance as he reached his peak, groaning loudly as he watched his orgasm splatter against the floor.

Ignis focused on his breathing, coming back to himself slowly, heart still pounding. He leaned against Gladio, and could feel how soaked their shirts were with sweat. After pulling out, he bonelessly slid to sit on the floor, smiling lazily when he felt Gladio sit beside him. When a though occurred to him, he laughed, the sound sharp and bright in the silence of the room.

Without Gladio even needing to ask, he explained, “Did we even think to lock that door?”

Gladio’s voice joined his in laughter then, and Ignis felt it was the perfect end to a wonderful day, sitting pressed to his husband’s side, both of them covered in the sweaty aftermath of amazingly passionate sex, lost in joyful laughter.

Just another wonderful day in the life of Ignis Amicitia.

#ignis fluff #ignisfluff #ignisfluffweek #gladnis

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