#gilgamesh the king of life but can't stop his best friend from dying

[suitss]

rereading epic of gilgamesh and WOW im still such a HO for the themes of predestined rivalry with an undercurrent of romance and tragedy 

[charlottedabookworm]

What if in The Cruelest Cut there were 3 kids around King Ardyn, his son Nyx, his Shield son Prompto and his niece Hemera. Little Em silver and emeralds, an artist and a healer, the one who called Ardyn heart father. In the end Em was blocked in her rooms when Prom died and Nyx escapes. When she run to him to help can't do much so start to absorb the scourge. The last time Ardyn see her is when Somnus take Em using a hand to take her away and the other to slit his daughter throat.

*pats angst* this is nice angst, i like this angst

now, as everybody that has read my somnusson au can tell you, i can totally have somnus cold-heartedly killing his own child and i love me some angst so...

let’s say that Hemera was born when Somnus was young - just a stupid kid messing around with a friend and neither of them expected to get a kid out of it. and neither of them really wanted a kid - where just kids themselves - but since somnus was the higher rank (and also it makes sense for the LC to keep their bastards close because bloodline magic and that not being something that you want in the hands of your enemies) and ends up with a kid

a kid that he really doesn’t want and honestly isn’t mature enough to handle

enter, stage left: Ardyn. who already has two kids of his own, by this point (even if he and Cor still haven’t actually gotten around to the whole, actually getting together thing yet), and is more than happy to take in a third. cos Ardyn loves kids and he loves being a dad and this is his niece and Ardyn has always been possessive

(it’s a curse of their line, the way that they cling - far past the point of safety)

so, Ardyn and Cor raise Em alongside Nyx and Prom, and in public they are Uncle and Majesty and it’s obvious to all who look that it’s a political arrangement - the heir being raised alongside his Shield and his adviser - but in private? in private, they are her father’s, as much as they are Nyx and Prom’s

Ardyn and Cor have three kids and they love them all equally: Nyx, The Knight and King of Solheim; Prompto, Shield and protector; Hemera, Healer and Adviser. 

(Nyx, the big brother, always with a smirk and a giant soft spot for kids. Prom, the middle child, bad jokes and bright grins and a love of nature and a personality that brightens the room. Em, the youngest, always with paint-stained fingers and a smile even as she gets away with murder)

inseparable, the three of them, for nearly as long as they can remember - and they’re siblings, they argue and they fight and there are times that they cannot stand to be in the same house as one and other, but they love each other and they can’t imagine life in a world where it wasn’t the three of them

they can’t imagine it, but it happens anyway

Somnus happens anyway

Prompto is the first to fall, cut down unflinchingly by Gilgamesh. Em is there, just like Nyx is, as they watch their brother-shield be cut down by a man that they trusted but she is on the other side of the room, held back by Somnus (not father, never in her mind is Somnus ‘father’), and Cor screams for Nyx to take Ardyn and run, that he’ll by them time, that he’ll get Em, to go

Nyx does.

Nyx runs, their father over his shoulder, and Em watches as their faeder is cut down, trying to give them enough time to flee, and she does her best to hold Somnus back so that he cannot advance

Cor isn’t dead, not then, but he’s dying and there is nothing that Em can do - they locked her in her rooms and she’s under guard at all times and she tries but she can’t. The scourge has been weakening her, as well, drawing it off from their father wisp by wisp as she had been

(Ardyn had never let her take more than that, just enough to let him think and move and live, just enough to buy a little more time. Their father had always stopped, every time she tried to heal him more)

(”This is my burden to bear,” he had told her more than once, capturing her hands in a gentle grip and giving her a knowing smile. “So, allow me to bear it, darling daughter”)

And then they get the news that Ardyn has been recaptured and Em is taken to the cells by Somnus, paraded around by her ‘father’ to see what they had been brought to, taken to see her parents bloody and beaten and in chains and it hurts

But then he tells them all that Nyx is dead - that they’d tracked him down and the boy wouldn’t stop fighting and eventually he’d taken major injuries, his body couldn’t be recovered, wasn’t it such a shame?

That hurts even more and suddenly Em is the only one left and her parents are dying and she doesn’t know what to do

She’s alone, in a way that she’s never been

And, the thing is, it looks like Somnus is going to let Em live. Not as his heir, of course not, she’d spent far too much time alongside his corrupted brother for that, but she was his daughter and a healer and a princess besides and Somnus could use her, even just as a political pawn

It looks like Em is going to live.

(Ardyn and Cor, they cling to that hope. the hope that just one of their children might survive this)

and then it’s execution day and they chain Cor down and drag Ardyn to the cross and they nail him there and he screams and Em tries to help, tears herself out of the guards grasps and takes down a dozen more as she runs to her father, to help him, to heal him, to do something

but Somnus is one of their best fighters and he’s older and more experiences and he catches her and, well.

obviously the girl had been corrupted.

best to start afresh

Somnus Lucis Caelum doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even blink, as he draws the blade across his daughters throat even as Cor and Ardyn scream and yell and beg

Hemera Lucis Caelum dies and Somnus doesn’t nothing but scoff at the wasted potential

Em dies, like her brothers (brother, because one still lives, one always lives, and later Nyx will laugh and cry and rage at the irony of that) before her, like her parents would after her

Em dies

of course, she doesn’t stay that way

(enter: Bahamut)