#and because we all know i am the neediest person alive

[allylikethecat]

Chapters: 9/20 Fandom: The 1975 (Band) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: George Daniel/Matthew Healy Characters: George Daniel, Matthew Healy, Adam Hann, Ross Macdonald, Carly Holt Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Hurt/Comfort, Past Drug Addiction, Fertility Issues Summary:

He couldn’t be in heat. He couldn’t remember what he even was supposed to do if he was in heat. But he couldn’t be. It had been nine years, all of the blood tests, all of the wait and seeing, all the hormone shots had yielded the same results. He didn’t have a heat cycle anymore, and he would never have one again. He had damaged his body beyond repair.

Except apparently not because he was dripping more slick than he had produced even as a horny teenager and his uterus was screaming at him that it wanted a baby and he just felt so nauseous and empty and-

[forevercloudnine]

arkhamverse riddlebat ship meme

(Continuing with the questions that @heroes-etc​ picked out for me, this set being from this ship meme.)

3. who is more afraid about the other leaving them?

Edward, hands down. Arkhamverse Riddler is maybe the neediest take on the character I’ve ever seen. Which is saying something, because the panel from “Questions Multiply the Mystery” where he writhes around on the floor begging for attention is permanently burned into my mind. He also clearly doesn’t take rejection well, as evidenced by the graffiti in his cell shown in a promotional image for Arkham Asylum (2009). J'ai aimé, j'ai souffert, maintenant... je hais. “I loved, I suffered, now I hate.”

It didn’t make it into the game proper (too subtexty, maybe, given a general lack of non-Batman people this could be referring to), but from my perspective it might as well have, since I experienced all the games second hand by sitting on the couch next to my brother while he swore at the Riddler challenges. Anyway, if perceived rejection has you writing French poetry on your cell wall in what looks concerningly like bodily fluids, then you probably won’t deal well with the concept of actually being dumped.  

5. who is more likely to drunkenly confess?

Also Edward, given that he’s calling Bruce every five minutes. And if he’s not calling Bruce directly, he’s talking ABOUT Bruce in a public broadcast to all of Gotham. Eddie is the king of freudian slips sober, so one can only imagine what he would say in vino veritas. If he does get drunk, let’s hope for his sake that he opts to communicate through his private line to Batman rather than over every screen in Gotham.

6. who is more likely to push the other away (for any reason)?

Bruce, also hands down. Arkham Knight really goes out of its way to hammer in that Batman’s callous treatment of Riddler has wreaked havoc on Edward’s psyche, even if arguably Eddie had it coming. Riddler’s mole in the GCPD talks about this:

JT Walker: It used to be funny, you know [...] And then one day, it just wasn't funny anymore. It was pathetic. He stopped taking care of himself, got that crazy look in his eyes. I swear man, he's broken. You broke him.

Bruce’s subconscious gets a dig in on this topic via Joker hallucination. 

“Joker”: Good for you, Bats! Eddie doesn’t need help. No, no, no. Beat ‘em up. Lock ‘em up. That’s the best medicine. 

Even my brother, who would attempt to stab Arkhamverse Edward in the face War-of-Jokes-and-Riddles style if the games let him, felt guilty on Bruce’s behalf when Eddie started ranting about his photographic memory. 

Riddler: I can summon your sneering features at will. That is, when they don't burst unbidden into my brain [...] I can remember every time you've hurt me. Sometimes I wake up, Dark Knight, to the feel of your hands around my neck, your carbon fiber created fists smashing my solar plexus. 

I think because of this trait, one of the only ways this ship would work in Arkhamverse is if they came to an agreement during Arkham Origins (since Edward is... more or less... a vigilante in that game, albeit one that Bruce considers distasteful), well before their relationship gets to where it is in Arkham Asylum. The other way is if Bruce actually took the lesson Arkham Knight hammered over his head and tried to fix the damage done after faking his death. (In my mind there exists a many chaptered fanfic where after Batman “disappears” he moves to the second Batcave the games put under Arkham Asylum and takes on Joker’s “Eric Border” persona from the comics to become an orderly there. Whether it’s scarebat or riddlebat varies depending on my mood, but what’s consistent no matter what is that I have five WIPs on ao3 and I can’t write it until I finish at least one of them).  

7. who picks fights more often?

Obviously Arkhamverse Edward is the most irritating person who has ever lived, so he kind of wins by default. But Bruce definitely holds his own in instigating unnecessary conflict with loved ones in this continuity. I’ll cut him some slack during Arkham Knight because one could argue that he spends most of the game half-possessed by an evil clown ghost, but it’s not like he’s much better in ANY of the other games. The bit in Arkham City where he lies to Talia’s face about being willing to spend the rest of his life with her so that she’ll give him access to the Lazarus Pit — even though if he was just honest and asked for it she probably would have helped him anyway, given that she DIES protecting him in the climax — is probably the best example of how he will infuriate people who love him for no logical reason. It’s a symptom of the post traumatic hyper vigilance, probably.

So if Edward did get the closeness to Bruce that his subconsciousness seems to be gunning for, he could look forward to the physical violence and public humiliation being replaced with the same well-intentioned gaslighting and emotional manipulation Bruce gives everyone but Alfred in these games. Actually, is Alfred the only one who’s even aware that he’s alive after Arkham Knight? Bruce, please tell your kids that you aren’t a pile of ash in the crater that used to be Wayne Manor.

9. who is more likely to withhold their feelings for the other?

The obvious answer is Bruce, because he keeps his emotions locked in a lead box buried like twenty feet beneath the floor of the Batcave (probably along with a bunch of kryptonite, since Superman is flying around the Arkhamverse somewhere). But honestly Bruce doesn’t seem to have a problem getting it on with supervillains in this continuity. He and Talia chat pretty casually about a recent romantic rendezvous in Metropolis when they meet in Arkham City. His emotional distance from Selina in Arkham Knight seems less like him withholding his feelings from her, and more like him not being over Talia’s death (or Joker’s, which... the narrative certainly focuses on more than Talia’s...). 

So I think Edward would actually be more likely to withhold his feelings for Bruce. Even if Bruce approached him first, he’s too obsessed with the possibility of Bruce humiliating him to take any positive interaction (especially a romantic overture) at face value. 

Riddler: You left me battered and demeaned in Arkham City. I am the Riddler, Batman. I don't suffer humiliation. I pay it back.

He’s not really wrong, either. Batman does humiliate him in Arkham City (by misleading Edward into thinking he’d let him die, no less); it’s the same embarrassment Edward inflicts on his own victims, so it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it per se, but it’s definitely not Bruce taking the higher ground.

Sticking him in his own trap is pretty vindictive, and Riddler’s weird commentary about not letting Batman have bathroom breaks during his revenge trials in Arkham Knight hints that Cash and the other guards might have made his (clearly unlawful!) punishment even more humiliating than we see on screen.

Riddler: Rule the seventh. Bathroom breaks will be administered on a discretionary basis. Should we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in your arduous journey to self-realization and defeat, I expect you to hold it in. Rule the eighth. Any accidents resulting from my strict enforcement of the seventh rule are to be considered your fault entirely. 

So would Edward withhold his feelings for Batman? Yeah, probably. And it would probably take a lot of time and effort for Bruce to convince Edward that any feelings on his part weren’t just an attempt to humiliate Riddler further.     

[chickensinliterature]

From The Bill from My Father: A Memoir by Bernard Cooper

Light shot from the lens of the projector and burrowed through the room. It flickered over the furniture and gave the dark a restless depth. I watched dust motes whirl and collide in the beam, and this bright turmoil, this erosion of countless powdery grains, was proof of a fact I knew all along but hadn’t grasped until that moment: the world was being ground to bits. I was still transfixed when I heard my father tell me to snap out of it and pay attention to what was on the screen. 

In a wood-paneled office, a stout black woman sat across a desk from a white man, whose bony hands were folded atop an ink blotter. A pen holder slanted in his direction, and next to it a name plate identified him as a judge. His lips moved nonstop, but the film was silent and I couldn’t make out a word he was saying. All the while he stared into the camera with the unnatural expression of a person who’d been told to act natural and not stare into the camera. The woman paid respectful attention, leaning forward once or twice in a futile effort to interrupt. She clutched under one arm a leather-bound book that was either a Bible or a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. On the desk beside her lay an overstuffed purse. 

The judge was still yammering when the purse, without so much as a twitch of forewarning, stood up, wavered on two spindly legs, and walked toward him, though “walked toward him” suggests that the purse had a particular destination, whereas its halting progress was more along the lines of two steps forward, one step back. For a moment I wondered whether it was a marionette, though I couldn’t see strings, and besides, who in their right mind would make a marionette that looked like a staggering handbag? No, the purse’s senselessness hinted at the possibility that it once possessed sense and now was trying to get along without it. This was animal motion, too reflexive with muscle and nerve to be anything inanimate. 

The judge’s mouth stopped moving when the scruffy whatever-it-was lurched into his line of vision. He gave it a wary, sidelong glance, ready to react should something unexpected occur, which, considering what had occurred already, would have to be inconceivably strange. That’s when the camera slowly zoomed in, moving as if it, too, were an animal, a predator hunting its unsuspecting prey. It slid between the woman and the judge, intent on the mound in the middle of the desk. Feathers slowly came into focus. Wings bristled as the creature breathed.

“What is it?” I whispered. 

“Watch,” said my father. 

He had been a witness to the actual event, but because I didn’t know this yet, his Watch was like a magic command that caused what happened next to happen. A stump emerged from the thing’s right side, which until that point had looked identical to its left. The stump pivoted toward the camera and paused long enough to reveal its severed end. A tunnel of tendon and pearly bone led inside the creature’s body, the sight no less gruesome in black-and-white. The woman’s fingers descended into view, holding an eyedropper by its rubber bulb. She squeezed until a bead of clear liquid glistened at its tip, then angled it toward the cavity. The stump strained upward. 

The idea of watching the creature being fed made me speechless, queasy. How much closer would the camera zoom? What kind of contractions would swallowing involve? That blind, groping, hungry stump was the neediest thing I’d ever seen. Leaving the room was out of the question; my father would view my retreat as rudeness, or worse, as proof that I was a delicate boy unworthy of paternal wisdom. I couldn’t have fled anyway; sunk in the possessive depths of the couch, I could barely move. 

The droplet wobbled. 

“Sugar water,” said my father. 

Not until later that night, after unsuccessfully begging myself to please stop thinking about the gaping wound, did I realize that sugar water referred to the solution in the eyedropper. At the time, however, my father might as well have said spoon clock or hat bell for all the sense his comment made. 

The pendulous droplet fell into the stump. Then another and another. For all that creature knew it had started to rain, and the rain tasted sweet. As the woman doled out the final drops, words scrolled up the screen: 

There is hope for you too 

when you see how divine power 

keeps Lazarus alive! 

Mrs. Martha Green’s decapitated fowl 

lives to become 

THE MIRACLE CHICKEN! 

This 20th century wonder brings a possibility

of new life and new healing 

to an army of believers. 

It’s all TRUE! 

This movie is AUTHENTIC! 

The woman’s purse was a headless chicken. I might have uttered this fact aloud since it came as such a great, if short-lived, relief. My father had used the phrase “like a chicken with its head cut off” to describe all manner of frenzied activity, applying it to bad drivers and harried salespeople and even to my mother, who cooked dinner in a state that could be described either as motherly gusto or stifled rage. Every time I heard the expression, I pictured the figurative chicken running around a barnyard in circles and spurting a geyser of blood before dropping dead in the dust. Dropping dead forever, I should add, because it never occurred to me that a chicken might survive its execution, give hope to humans, and star in a film. Wasn’t a head indispensable? 

Dad towered beside the projector, his figure awash in flickering light. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. 

“There’s your old man,” he said, pointing to the screen. 

A crowd dressed in Sunday finery milled around the front lawn of a clapboard house. People stepped aside to let my father pass, a sea of hats parting before him. Mrs. Green trailed in his wake. She cradled Lazarus in her arms, careful not to let the bird be jostled and also not to hide it from view. Making his way through the crowd, Dad cast frequent backward glances to make sure Mrs. Green and her bird were behind him. Photographers jockeyed to get a good shot. Reporters frantically scrawled on their notepads. Men and women craned their necks, some letting children straddle their shoulders to get a better look. 

Mrs. Green refuses to hand Lazarus over to the S.P.C.A. despite a court order from Judge Stanley Moffatt. Her attorney, Edward S. Cooper, claims the bird is “an act of providence for the benefit of all mankind.” 

The throng of spectators, two or three people deep, waited behind a listing picket fence as my father escorted Mrs. Green into a yard overgrown with blooming hibiscus and bougainvillea. She seemed at home there, so I supposed the yard was hers. It may have been an effect of the grainy eight-millimeter film, but this ramshackle Eden glowed with an ancient, paper-thin light, as if the screen had turned to parchment. It wouldn’t have surprised me if one of the bushes had burst into flame and spoken in a holy baritone. 

My father carried his monogrammed briefcase by his side. He and Mrs. Green walked to a small table that had been set up on a patch of grass. They glanced nervously at the camera, humbled by the expectant crowd. Black and Caucasian faces looked on, soldiers in an army of believers. Mrs. Green gazed almost sorrowfully at the bundle in her arms. Hesitant to let it go, she inhaled a bracing, duty-bound breath, then gingerly lowered the chicken onto the table. Its feet dangled like scrawny tassels, and once his legs touched the table top, they buckled without a hint of resistance. 

I’d learned over the years to heed my father’s impatience as one would a storm warning, and watching him stand there on-screen, I recognized signs of impending anger as he glared at that motionless bird. A prominent vein bulged on his forehead. His grip on the briefcase tightened. I could almost hear him thinking, Of course this would happen. What did I expect? Just when things were going my way, fate sticks out its leg and trips me. He and Mrs. Green stood side by side and I thought I saw him nudge her with a silent ultimatum: Do anything you have to do, but get that goddamn poultry to move! You want people thinking this is some kind of hoax? I felt the weight of his briefcase in my hand, his hot collar encircling my neck, his heart thumping inside my chest. “What if it doesn’t move?” I asked. Meaning if it didn’t, would we both be ashamed? 

He looked worried in the movie but not in real life. He smiled faintly and crossed his arms. 

“That bird’s as alive as I am,” he said. 

Silent concern rippled through the crowd; a few people used their hats as fans or consulted hefty, gilt-edged Bibles. Mrs. Green patted her forehead with a hankie. The twentieth-century wonder looked about as wondrous as a feather duster. 

What were my father and Mrs. Green to do? They couldn’t rouse it by snapping their fingers or waving their hands in front of its face. Maybe they could communicate to the bird through touch, the way Annie Sullivan had tapped the word water on Helen Keller’s hand. Of course, it wouldn’t look good if my father and Mrs. Green started poking at the chicken; you can’t badger a miracle to happen and then expect people to marvel when it does. 

I gasped when the chicken sprang to its feet, wings thrashing the air. Feathers bristled when it stretched its stump. The camera pulled back as if rearing in fear and astonishment. People in the background flung up their arms in a mute hallelujah. Mrs. Green’s unbounded joy caught my father off guard; he swayed in her embrace, eyeing the chicken over her shoulder. Big letters bellowed from the screen: 

Cock-A-Doodle-Do! 

My father’s high, delighted laughter rose over the sound of the projector. 

“Is that chicken something?”

“Rooster, you mean?” 

“Chicken,” he corrected, annoyed that I might have missed the big finish, might have been distracted when water turned to wine. 

“Chickens don’t crow,” I told him. 

“What?” 

Tricky business, repeating a statement that belonged, I realized too late, in the “back talk” category. I scrambled to match oinks and tweets and moos with the appropriate animal, only to discover that the correspondences were more debatable than I’d realized. My rooster remark sounded arrogant now, and possibly untrue. “Do roosters crow?” I found myself asking. 

The projector lit my father’s face from below. His chin and brow were islands of light, his eye sockets deep, unreadable. “Supposing a chicken doesn’t crow,” he said. “Then this one’s more of a miracle.” 

                                                         * * * 

Remember the headless rooster?” I asked. 

My father leaned toward the microphone.

“Chicken,” he insisted, then sat back in his chair. 

“But the chicken supposedly crowed, Dad. And chickens—I’d stake my life on this—don’t crow. They cackle. Or cluck?” 

The querulousness in my voice, and the irritation in his, had been preserved for thirty years. 

“Look,” he said, “if the client says a chicken crowed, the chicken crowed. Mrs. Green heard it. So did half the people who were at the press conference that day. Maybe they were in a religious state. That kind of thing has never happened to me personally, so I wouldn’t know. All I know is that Mrs. Green buys the chicken from a local butcher, takes it home for dinner, puts a pot of water on the stove, and when she goes to pluck the thing, it stands up and starts strutting around the kitchen like this was just another day on the farm. She’s standing there gawking when a voice comes out of nowhere and tells her to name the bird Lazarus, and she hollers, ‘Praise the Lord.’” Here my father lifted his arthritic arms as high as he was able, the jumpsuit stretching taut across his belly. “She gets on the phone to call her friends, who call their friends, and so on, and pretty soon people are showing up at Mrs. Green’s house in droves, lining up just to get a look at the thing. Being your enterprising type, she starts charging admission. Can you blame her? She sees a brass ring and she grabs it. That’s America.”

Book “The Bill from My Father: A Memoir” by Bernard Cooper

Painting” “The Cock” by Chef and Artist Jacques Pepin

[randomfandomimagine]

Sunshine in the Moonlight. Chapter 21, Epilogue: The Big Day

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV

Pairing: Prompto x Alexandria (OC)

Previous Chapter - Chapter Index

Wattpad - AO3

Tagging list: @toranyx, @prince-of-wind, @ghadah1421

A/N: This is the last chapter, and I just wanna thank everyone who read, liked, reblogged and commented on the story. I really had so much fun writing it and developing the characters and just somehow interacting with that universe was amazing, so thank you for sharing this experience with me making it even more special :P Please enjoy reading the last of the story and let me know what you think about it! :3

“Alex? Xanders!” The familiarity of that voice was comforting. “Alex, p-please say something. Anything”

It was disturbing to sense so much pain and sadness in that otherwise upbeat voice. Why was he so heartbroken?

“What happened?” I uttered weakly, feeling like even separating my eyelids was tiring.

I opened my eyes, however, and was received with a comforting pair of blue eyes very close to me. But there were tears in them, they were drowned in fright and concern. Until my eyes locked with him and relief washed through them in the blink of an eye.

“Alex!! Oh, Gods!” A strangled noise came from Prom’s throat as he urgently held me against his chest, so tight that I could barely breathe. “I thought I lost you!”

Ignis’ familiar sigh sounded next to him. His trembling hand fell upon my shoulder.

“I would venture to say that you’re to give up your vitality in order to maintain the light” He said, even if his voice was low and slightly broken.

“Kid, you almost gave me a freaking heart attack” Gladio heavily sighed as well, taking a hand to his chest. “The scares you give me!”

I weakly smiled as Prompto helped me sit up against his torso. His arms wrapped around me stronger than ever, in the neediest embrace we exchanged so far. When he buried his face in my neck, I could have sworn he was sobbing. He was definitely shaking.

I looked up to the other figure worriedly looking down to me. Noctis. Alive.

“Is that the pri… king?” I extended a hand that he gently took. “That’s it, I did it”

“Yeah, you did it alright” He replied, almost reprimanding me. “Something stupid, that’s what you did!”

“I hate you so much for scaring me like this, Xanders…” Prompto whispered against my skin, forcing me to chuckle awkwardly as he hadn’t heard a word anyone else said.

“But I’m alive…” Honestly, I expected to reunite with Regis and Lady Lunafreya.

“It is still a sacrifice, Alexandria” Ignis stated, taking me by my free hand.

Specs tried to pull me up, but Prompto held tighter on to me, claiming me. He sniffled through his nose and pressed his face closer against me.

“Okay…” He gave in after a brief moment. “You can hug her, but then I get to hug her again”

Still resting my back against his chest while he uncovered his face from the crook of my neck, I lovingly caressed his cheek with the back of my hand.

I didn’t know for how long I was unconscious for, but I definitely scared them very badly.

Between Noctis and Ignis, I was pulled to my feet only when Prompto’s arms allowed them to. Once my legs had to hold up all my weight, I wobbled due to a sudden and strong dizzy spell.

Their hands on mine, as well as Gladio’s on my back, steadied me before Prompto could recover quickly enough to realize what was happening.

“I thought Prompto here was the only one that did stupid things” The big guy said with a grin.

“That is debatable” Ignis humored him, squeezing my hand before letting go of it.

“She got it from me” Prompto said in an emotional high-pitched voice, just recovered from his sobbing.

The three of them hugged me at once, making me feel welcome. Making me feel lucky that my sacrifice had paid off. That thanks to Regis I was spared with my life, even though paying a great price in spite of it all. I was exhausted beyond belief, a state that I assumed would accompany me for the rest of my life.

Too impatient to wait until I was relieved from their embrace, Prompto joined as the five of us met for a group hug.

Ardyn was gone. We were all alive and well. The light was restored to the world.

For once, we were allowed to be happy.

  The coronation ceremony made me jittery. It was a big occasion yet there was absolutely no reason for me to be restless or nervous. I wasn’t the one who would have everyone’s attention on them. Although it was my first day as an official Crownsguard, perhaps that explained it. Or should I say Crownsguard slash Kingsglaive? Because I was wearing the uniform of the latter.

I took a deep breath as I looked at my reflection in the mirror and adjusted my outfit. I wondered where Iggy had gone with the crown. Where was Prompto? And Gladio as well? I felt so vulnerable there alone!

A hand heavily patted my back, answering one of those questions. I saw Gladio’s reflection in the mirror as he positioned himself behind me and placed a hand over my shoulder.

“Nervous, princess?”

“Terrified, actually” I sighed, nibbling on my lip as I examined myself in search for anything in my appearance that I should fix. “Bet you’re restless too!”

“Not even one bit” He seemed cool as a cucumber. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

His playful and jokingly smug attitude got me to smile, breathing out and calming my nerves slightly.

“Here’s the prettiest girl in Eos!” Another person rushed into the room, winking an eye at me and hugging me from behind. “How ya doing, sweetie pie?”

I was endeared by one of the most recent nicknames Prom started calling me. He always came up with them, and each one was cuter.

Knowing cheesiness ensued with the pair of us, Gladio held his hands up in refusal and quickly got away from us. We sometimes took advantage of his reaction to our cutesy couple things to get a good laugh out of it.

“Trying not to panic”

“Don’t even worry” Prompto lively stood next to me, there where Gladio was a moment ago, and smiled at me from the reflection. “You’ll do great, baby”

His arms sneaked around my waist and pulled me against his side, a habit that he developed since I used to get too weak and tired to stand on my own sometimes. One of the disadvantages of putting the ring of the Lucii on that one time. Now that I was to use all my vitality to serve the kingdom just like Noct, I understood him more. I too wished to nap non stop as I felt extremely weak and tired. Yet even when it got to the point that I would unexpectedly faint, it was worth it in the end as it made the big day possible.

The moment I put the ring on felt like a lifetime ago, even if it happened around one month in the past.

Prompto caught me with my guard down when he kindly tickled my sides, causing me to sink to his side. Tickling me was his go-to technique to get me to smile when I was distraught, and it was quite an endearing gesture.

He chuckled as I turned around to be face to face with him.

“I can suddenly get one of my faltering moments and fall over, or even swoon!” I openly voiced my worries, trusting him entirely to do so.

“People know about them, so it’s fine” Prompto kissed me in the cheek to encourage me. “And besides, we’ll get you if that happens”

“Really?”

“Yeah, just walk calm and slow. You’ll be okay, cutiepie!”

 “I guess…” I tilted my head to the side, still not too convinced. “It’s just that they gave me such an important task… carry the crown, no less!”

“Yes, you’ve been given that honor because you made the coronation possible in the first place!” I blushed slightly at the praising. Surely, one of them would have done so for Noctis if I hadn’t.

“But what if do I fall, Prom?” I locked eyes with him, hoping their softness would provide me with serenity and comfort. Which they did, as usual.

“I won’t let you fall” His arms held me tightly as his lips gently met with mine.

“I believe you already have Prompto to help you…” Ignis’ voice interrupted our kiss. We urgently pulled away out of respect as soon as he announced his presence.

“H-Hey, Igster!” Prom cleared his throat, as he sometimes behaved around him awkwardly, as though Ignis was actually my older brother. He definitely could be overprotective as one. “Just… y’know… chatting with Xanders over here”

“Not quite what I heard from here” The man walked towards us, confident yet playful.

“I was just leaving anyway” Prompto was flustered by his presence and the fact that he caught us kissing. Wasn’t he adorable?

Indeed, my boyfriend hurriedly left the room to give us some time alone. Ignis surely had words of his own to dedicate me.

“He will never replace you, Iggy” I quickly told my best friend. “No one can”

“I certainly hope so, darling” He flashed me a sober and tiny smile.

Without saying anything else, he offered me something in his hands. A small red cushion with black ornaments, containing the official coronation crown. It wasn’t the usual Lucis crown, as this one resembled the more traditional circular and golden one. Noct would wear his actual kingly crown on a daily basis, the one like his father’s that only occupied one side of his head. The one displayed in the red cushion was solely for the coronation.

“It is time” Ignis encouraged me upon noticing I wasn’t taking it.

“Of course” Gingerly, I picked it up and carried it carefully.

I was to deliver the crown to the king in order to initiate the coronation ceremony. I had rehearsed my movements countless times. Upon delivering the crown, I would walk over to the side of the throne where my other three friends would be waiting for me. To represent the king’s personal bodyguards.

“I am so proud of you, Alexandria” Unexpectedly, Ignis left a fraternal kiss on my head that nearly made me drop the cushion and crown. “I always knew you would achieve great things, being the extraordinary young woman you are”

“I-Iggy…” I whined, in a way that reminded myself of Prompto. “Noct is the one to be complimented today, not me”

He let out a soft yet genuine chuckle that passed on to me as well.

“I suppose so, Alex”

“Psst!” A disheveled mop of blond hair stuck out at the door. “Guys, we’re up!”

Ignis solemnly nodded and walked over to the door, which Prompto held open for him. Then he fidgety came in and gave me the brightest smile to cheer me up.

“Nervous, sunshine?” I asked him, feeling like the crown weighted a lot in my hands even though it actually was quite light.

“A little” He coolly shrugged one shoulder. “But I’m more excited than anything”

“Me too” Too see Noct finally wearing his crown, owning what was rightfully his after such an arduous and long struggle… it was… exhilarating.

“For luck!” Prom lovingly smacked his lips in mine before running off the room, making me grin out of fondness and adoration.

Taking a deep breath, I pictured in my head the scene we had rehearsed. Gladio, the Shield, was to lead the way. After that followed Ignis, the royal advisor. Prompto was right behind, and I would followed after him. I nodded to myself, knowing I wouldn’t ruin such a special moment if my friends were there standing by me. Having my back.

The door was open, so I went through the threshold and immersed myself in the throne room where thousands of people stood expectantly. I could see Iris, and Talcott. Even Cid and Cindy!

I remembered Prom’s advice and walked slowly behind him, noticing how he subtly looked over his right shoulder to check on me. I had to conceal a smile because of that.

The throne at the other end of the room seemed to be so far away, especially to my weakened body, but we eventually got to the staircase that led to it. Like we had rehearsed, while my friends walked up the steps to stand next to the throne, I walked closer to Cor. The Marshall took the crown from me with a head nod and turned around to Noctis, who gracefully stood before everyone at the end of the stairs.

On cue, I walked the steps to meet with my friends and faced the crowd, holding my head up with dignity. And trying not to make too obvious how emotional I got when I saw Noct.

I occupied my established spot between Ignis and Prompto. The latter wrapped an arm around me again, taking advantage that we stood so close to each other that no one would notice. That day it wasn’t too bad, but I did feel quite faint and so I appreciated his thoughtful gesture. Ignis’ hand also found its way to the middle of my back and reassuringly rested there as well. And I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of a wink coming from Gladio. I felt safe as long as my friends stood by me. Protective as always.

Footsteps resonated against the entire throne room as Cor approached the king. He had been given the task to put the crown on the new king by Noct himself. After all, Cor ‘The Immortal’ had been a loyal servant to Regis before Noctis as well. And I could see the pride and joy in his eyes as he prepared to crown Noctis.

“I hereby pronounce you Noctis Lucis Caelum, king of Lucis” Cor proclaimed out loud, with a clear and grave voice that gave me chills.

I observed Noctis, beaming with pride.

Anyone can be a prince, it is nothing but an heir. A king on the other hand must earn his title, show his strength and morals. And Noct had done many great things to be called king.

“Long live the King!” Ignis initiated the chant, which people soon joined.

I could hear Gladio’s potent voice louder than anyone’s as he chanted those four words as well. His eyes were shining with fulfillment when I looked at him.

Prompto’s voice broke next to me as he fought with himself to get over the emotional cracks coming from his throat.

I just was overwhelmed with emotion as I chanted along with everyone, but stopped when his eyes fell on us. Noctis dedicated me that sweet but mischievous smirk I knew so well.

“Long live the king…” I whispered with happy tears in my eyes. “You will be a great one, King Noctis”

THE END