#but Ramuh - who is the one to send him back - purposely fucked that up cos he doesn't want his chosen dying

[charlottedabookworm]

and the crown it weighs heavy

“Well,” he drawled, blinking in the sudden bright light – sunlight, and Six but that wasn’t that a trip, when was the last time he’d seen the sun? – as he looked around, squinting to meet the shock-wide eyes of his younger self. “Shit.” This wasn’t Galahd. Not even close.

What the fuck had happened to putting him down somewhere quiet and unpopulated?

A courtyard in the Citadel in Insomnia wasn’t quiet.

He tilted his head back so that he could stare up at the cloudless sky. “This wasn’t the agreement, Old Man,” he muttered tiredly, not really expecting a response and not getting one. The sky remained clear and silent. Dickhead.

The plan had just gotten a lot more complicated, now that they knew he was here.

Peering slowly around the courtyard, he couldn’t help the slight smirk that formed on his face at the sight of so many of the glaives, all of whom were staring at him in surprise; and he pushed away the part of his mind that whispered about being surrounded by ghosts.

“What the hell, Nyx?” Crowe demanded angrily, and he could see the exact moment that people – those who had no idea who he was, what his braids meant – realised that her words were directed at him instead of his younger self.

Fuck. It didn’t surprise him that she was one of the few that recognised him, his little sister, even though it made everything so much more difficult. He should warp away now, before anything else happened, should disappear and complete the plan (such a pretty way to call him killing his way through Niflheim before sacrificing himself to the land in the hopes that it would be enough, that his little brother wouldn’t have to martyr himself for the world once more) before anything could happen to stop him.

But, Six, he’d missed her.

She looked so young, they all did.

He’d forgotten just how young they’d all been until now. Surely, surely, a couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt. He could spare a few moments to take in everything that he was fighting for, to firm his resolve, before he had to leave. He had that time.

(The words fell flat, even in his own mind, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave)

“The Old Man is a bastard,” he shrugged slightly, knowing that that would explain everything to those who from Galahd. “And call me Regulus. It’s good to see you again Crowe.”

‘Regulus’ - because it was more his name than Nyx was, these days, after so many years of trying desperately to hold the world together when the sun was gone, and his brother taken, Little King in the Darkness, his mother would be proud – sighed, suddenly completely exhausted.

Time travel was exhausting.

Being surrounded by the ghosts of everyone that he’d failed, far more so.

“You got old, Ulric.”

Regulus rolled his eyes at the glaive, unbothered by the insult – it was true after all, he looked at least a decade older than his physical age depending on the day and the weather – and unable to bring up the old feelings of betrayal and anger. Luche had made mistakes, they all had, but he’d done what he’d thought was right, what he’d thought necessary, and he’d had a long time to come to terms with that. Still, “I’m 42, Lazarus.”

Nyx sputtered, staring at him in horror. “What happened to us?!”

He winced. “Ah, I did something rather reckless.” Which was probably understating it a little, honestly.

Regulus had done many reckless things in his life, he could admit that – though nowhere near as many as Libs would attest to, because they had vastly different definitions of the word reckless – but that one was the worst of them all.

Not counting what he was currently doing, of course.

Libertus blanched, knowing him well despite the years that now stretched between them. “What did you do?”

“You know how you always told me that my habit of arguing with powerful beings who could kill me with a thought would end badly for me eventually? Well, you weren’t wrong.” Though the Lucii had definitely deserved it. “Magical backlash is a bitch.” That he’d survived was a miracle that he had his father to thank for, but the experience had aged and scarred him permanently. “A decade spent in complete darkness probably didn’t help either.” Or the stress of trying to keep everyone alive in a world without light. They’d all looked far older than they were, at the end.

“Nyx,” Libertus said sternly and fuck, but he missed his own Libs; the one who had been by his side through everything.

He missed his brother.

But his Libs had been needed back there, just in case this didn’t work, and this Libertus was so young and he didn’t really understand, and it hurt.

“It’s Regulus, please.” He said slowly, quietly but firmly. He turned to look them all in the eyes, one by one, until he was smiling sadly at the only one of them that could truly be called Nyx Ulric. “Nyx – isn’t who I am, not anymore. I haven’t been Nyx for a long time.”

Such a very long time.

He hadn’t realised just how much he’d changed, just how much he’d lost, until he was staring the man that he had once been in the face; hardly able to recognise how young and happy he’d been.

Nyx had been a glaive and a protector, broken by his experiences but not yet shattered, still hoping for an end to the war, still clinging to the idea of peace. Nyx Ulric hadn’t yet watched his second home fall, hadn’t watched his father and brother die, had been forced out of necessity to be King to all of those who lived in the Darkness.

Regulus wasn’t Nyx Ulric anymore. He was far too broken, too shattered, for that.

In the end, that was why he was here.

That was the point of this plan.

And, looking out at his – young, so young, Nyx could hardly remember being so young and yet it had only been a decade – friends, realisation struck him like lightning. He laughed, the sound hysterical, and tilted his head up to the sky with a bitter smirk. “So, that’s your plan. Well, it won’t work, Old Man. You can’t change my mind.”

A flash of lightning and Ramuh was there.

People, those not of Galahd, scrambled backwards – weapons drawn and then quickly dropped away from the Astral that had just appeared. Regulus just watched, laughter dying away, looking at the figure who just stared back at him, eyebrow raised like he was a child to be scolded.

He supposed, to the Astral that had half-raised him, Regulus was.

“You are my Chosen, Regulus of Clan Ulric, borne to my people, raised on my lands, you swore your life to myself and to my people before all else. Yet you ask that I not interfere, even when you plan to die.” Ramuh thundered, scowling.

Regulus didn’t flinch, even as everyone else did. “The oaths that I have sworn, the people that I must protect, they are why I do this. Why it is necessary.” He drew in a deep breath, not stopping to bask in the fact that he was able to breathe air that didn’t yet hold the distinctive tang of the scourge’s corruption, and he stood to his full height; shoulders back and head held high, looking Ramuh in the eyes. “My life, for all of theirs.” He said quietly. “That was the plan, Old Man.”

“Plans can change.”

And, no.

No.

The plan was all that Regulus was clinging onto, now. All he had to live for; his family dead or left behind, his people gone or unknowing. He would change the past and die and his people would live and that was how it had to be. That was all he had left.

He couldn’t…

“Ramuh, Old Man, Grandfather…” Regulus begged. “Please.”

“You call me grandfather and then you ask that I allow you to die, alone and unmourned, upon the completion of your self-imposed mission. Truly, you are the epitome of the cruelty of both of your lines.”

Now, he did flinch.

“I know.” Of course, he knew. “But there is no other way.”

Ramuh smiled at him gently, harshly, like he had when he was a child; lying to himself, unwilling to believe what was right in front of him. “If you believed that, my Chosen, then you would have already left.”