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shih-coulda-had-it · 11 days ago

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solheimian immortal prompto!AU i was cooking back in May, because I was avoiding finals and getting too obsessed with a specific dynamic between prompto and ardyn. this is technically a fill for a prompt i found on the ffxv kinkmeme, but i think i'll keep it as a wip until i figure out where i'm going with it.

the prompt:

Prompto has been alive for a long, long time, he's seen many things, lived many lifespans, and now he's secluded himself from humanity (the heartbreak of outliving his friends is too much). Even though the herd of chocobos he protects and shepherds keeps him company, Prompto is very lonely. Then, one day, he hears a rumor of an immortal being sealed on an island. Not wanting to be alone anymore, Prompto sets off to free this being.

+ Prompto can be older or younger than Ardyn

++ Ardyn and Prompto trying to understand modern technologies with mixed results

+++ Prompto helping Ardyn with the immortal thing

++++ Prompto breeding and protecting a herd of chocobos.(all with names of course) He also sends some Wiz's way.

wc: 4.5k

For three decades, Prompto’s been dreaming of the dark. This isn’t necessarily a new development; Prompto thinks he’s been alive for several millennia by now, and the darkness is a recurring feature of life on Eos, always narrowly stamped out by a short-lived Chosen One.

These dreams are different, because they come with a stranger.

Hooks jammed into flesh, from his palms to his waist, chains held taut to where they’re welded to the walls. Hair hanging long and lank down his chest. He’s half-naked. Unaware of Prompto’s presence, fleeting as it is, but not so fortunate to be unconscious for his ordeal. He hallucinates other visions, at times pleading for an ending and at others just murmuring names. Gilgamesh. Aera. Somnus.

At first, Prompto only dreams of noise, of the stranger’s ragged, sobbing breaths. Then he takes a midday nap, and suddenly there is a shaft of thin light revealing a trapped man, forever undying.

It takes, shamefully, a week for Prompto to break. The consistency of the visions persuades him of their realness, but he’d cultivated his chocobos for a long time! He was attached to them! He had to offload all but one, and it absolutely broke his heart. Then he kept selling and buying chocobos for the next thirty years, because of course Prompto had to travel every mile on Eos before figuring out his undying stranger was trapped on Angelgard.

The world is pockmarked with hundreds of thousands of caves. Littered with ruins! And when one is scorned by the Astrals to the point of setting a disaster off every century, regardless of where Prompto’s holed up, well…

Prompto puts in a lot of legwork before he scores.

The keywords are Aera and Somnus. Having been out of polite society for more than, oh, what is it now… a century? Two? Bloodlines have been established, a ruling class instituted, and blessings from the gods distributed very showily to two distinct families. Prompto may be among the common folk, but even commoners recognize the houses of Nox Fleuret and Lucis Caelum as miracle workers.

But where, oh where, is the connection? Prompto turns up the charm and helps many rambling grannies and curmudgeonly old men in order to hear the history he missed out on.

A resurgence of the darkness. (They call it Starscourge now.) A wandering prince, known as the Healer. Too swift in his journeys to ever leave a name behind, but definitely either a Nox Fleuret or a Lucis Caelum.

They’ve stamped his name out of the texts, but not even royalty can exterminate living memory.

Prompto hears his fellow immortal’s name from the lips of a fading elder, a woman once cured of the Scourge after she made a pilgrimage to the capital, and had a lucky encounter. Prompto repairs the cracked gaps in her walls, seals them with pitch and tar to stop her from suffering a draft every night, and in return, she gives him a meal and gossip about Ardyn Lucis Caelum.

“He possessed a blessing and a curse,” she recalls in a reedy voice. “He was effective as a leech, when it came to healing the Scourge.”

“That’s specific,” Prompto observes through a mouthful of baked fish.

“I mean what I say. Oh, there was a pretty light show, and he led us to think that he was truly burning the sickness out… But what really happened was that he was taking the Scourge into himself. Like a leech.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, young man,” she says, “what leech can hold its fill? The Scourge overwhelmed the Healer, and when his body was revealed to be tainted, King Somnus took the throne and cast his brother to the deep.”

Prompto perks up. “The deep? Is that a metaphor?”

The old woman gives him a dry look. “We are a distance from the capital. ‘Tis easier to speak vaguely than to grasp at details stoppered at the court’s lips.”

Angelgard finally comes to mind after Prompto has exhausted nearly every other option.

It’s gods-touched. He usually pays attention to those locations and avoids them as much as possible, which is why he hasn’t visited Lucis’s crown jewel of a capital yet. When Solheim existed, they used to collect a score of criminal offenders and drag the lot of them to Angelgard for celestial judgment.

It would be a poetic note to stash a gods-touched man there. The Six are nothing but aware of their posterity.

To avoid attention, Prompto goes the long way round and hops island after island, and he stops asking after stories of Aera and Somnus. Instead, he spends time remembering how to sail tricky waters. He relearns the art of fishing and foraging from tide pools.

When Prompto is confident of his anonymity, he starts asking about the island.

Predictably, he’s warned away from the Umbral Isle. Not just because of the unmanageable conditions of the waves and Ramuh’s tempest. The kingdom of Lucis is invested in its untouchability, and woe to the soul who trespasses royal property. Supposedly, a fisherman confides in him, King Somnus Lucis Caelum ruled that not even royalty could walk those shores.

Prompto nods sagely when he hears this, and goes to prep his boat.

The conditions are nightmarish. Crossing the sea from the southern islands in a fishing boat results in a sunburnt Prompto who now looks forward to entering Angelgard and its miserable weather conditions. At night, he squints at the stars and consults his dismal memory, trying to remember when it’s the right time to slice past the riptides and avoid smashing his boat against the reefs.

He only just makes it. His gut instinct propels him forward, just as Ramuh’s tempest snarls awake, and Prompto spends his first hour on Angelgard swearing as he lugs the single escape route onto higher land.

“Come on!” he shouts at the sky, seeing the waves foam with fury while being pelted by icy cold drops of rain. “You couldn’t have given me a few hours?!”

Prompto crams one end of the boat under a ledge, and dumps several more rocks inside, in the hopes that he can prevent Ramuh from using one good gust to blow it away. After that, he takes a steel rod and jams it among a crop of boulders. That will hopefully draw lightning from his very flammable boat.

He throws a crude parting gesture to the wind, turns to fetch the oilskin sack in which he’s stuffed two dismantled guns, survival gear, and various sundries a half-naked immortal strung up for thirty years might like, and gets struck by lightning for his charm.

His muscles are still trembling with the regrowth of nerves when Prompto trips into the cell. It’s horribly embarrassing, as far as first impressions go, but the man strung up like a martyr isn’t even conscious enough to register how Prompto faceplants before his shackled feet. The sack of supplies remains thankfully closed.

Both of them wheeze in staggered, aching gasps, but only one of them manages to recover.

Prompto fumbles for the handheld gas lamp. It’s wrapped and cushioned by the spare clothes he’s brought for Ardyn. Blindly, he adjusts the water drip and snaps his thumb against the flint to ignite a small flame. First thing he sees are the tattered hems of pants. Then the heavy shackles around pale ankles.

He lifts his head to take in the whole picture. He can feel his eyes widen.

There will be no gentle way to release Ardyn; the flesh has sealed over the entry points, trapping him more thoroughly than any magical seal an Astral can conjure.

That’s where Prompto comes in, he supposes distantly. He gets to his feet and peers at his fellow immortal’s face, and he tentatively reaches up to tuck a long strand of hair behind an ear. Ardyn is unshaven, but it’s more stubble than anything substantial. He would’ve grown a tremendous beard if the Astrals hadn’t frozen him at this age.

The briefest touch causes Ardyn to stir. A whimper escapes him at the effort; he struggles to open his eyes.

“Shh,” Prompto whispers. It feels uncannily like trying to coax a feral chocobo to let him pet them. “Hey, hey. It’s alright. I’ve found you.”

“What…?” Ardyn manages. His voice is light with exhaustion, dehydration, and perhaps most prominently, confusion.

His eyes glow gold.

“I’m gonna get these out of you,” he says, just to fill the silence. Prompto attempts to inject as much joviality in his tone as possible, but he suspects Ardyn cares little for anything but the hand pressed against his face. “It’s gonna hurt. A lot. But if you’re anything like me, it’ll heal right up. Harm done, but harm gone, huh?”

Ardyn smothers his moan into Prompto’s palm, so Prompto taps into a well of apathy long-unused, and readies himself to yank each and every last chain from Ardyn’s body.

The quicker the better.

It turns out, the only thing that hits harder than Ardyn’s despairing pleas are his wordless cries of pain. He collapses onto Prompto after the last hook is worked out from his palm, and Prompto curses under his breath at the sudden deadweight. Frantically, Prompto checks the puncture wounds. No blood. That’s a good indicator.

“You with me?” Prompto asks, turning his head to the stairs. He doesn’t want to be in here any longer, but it’s not as though there’s any other convenient shelter from the storm.

There’s a breathless whine hummed into his neck. Just barely, Prompto can make out the words, “Out, out, please, out…”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Slowly, Prompto heaves Ardyn towards the entrance. He leaves behind the gas lamp. The journey is agonizingly slow, one step at a time, but they make steady progress. As a plus, Ardyn grows a little more cognizant the closer they reach open air.

Well. Cognizant is a relative term. He fades in and out, and his mutterings grow less pitiful and more angry.

“Somnus,” he hisses. “Somnus, the little wretch. I’ll tear him from that throne if it’s the last thing I do.” Out. In. “How could you kill her… oh, Aera, beloved…” Out. In. This time, Prompto tunes in to hear a weak, “Don’t touch me.”

“Good timing,” Prompto says brightly. He eases them down to sit at the first step, props Ardyn up against the wall. The weak light helps illuminate the finer details of the man’s appearance. “Hey, wait here, I’ve got a flask of water in the bag I dropped.”

He doesn’t wait for a nod. He doesn’t expect any expression of gratitude when he tromps back with his supplies (gas lamp included, can’t forget that), unscrews the cap, and helps Ardyn take his first sip before relinquishing the entire bottle and taking a seat across from him.

With that, so begins the introductions.

“Who are you,” Ardyn Lucis Caelum rasps. Prompto recognizes the signs of intimidation: narrowed eyes, bared teeth, raised voice. Prompto admits to himself that the front is impressive—pain isn’t really an opt-in, opt-out feature. He personally still yelps whenever he stubs his toe on a rock.

He blows out a breath and turns his eyes to the perpetual storm.

And lightly, Prompto tells the truth. “I’m what you could call… a bad first draft! The Six have to figure out what makes a good Chosen One, you know. I didn’t make the cut. But they couldn’t exactly, uh, sweep me away, so… Hello, immortal, I’m immortal too!”

His fellow immortal takes a moment to process Prompto’s absolute word vomit.

“What do you mean by bad,” the man finally says. “How can anything be worse than living like this?” And from his pores, black ichor seeps through, dripping its tainted substance down to the stone where it evaporates into miasma. It pools along the man’s eyes like tears and spills past his lips like bile.

Prompto grimaces. That’s pretty bad. He isn’t going to be the one to fight to claim pity points, because damn. That’s pretty fucking bad.

“I go by Prompto Argentum,” he starts, trying to feel out the explanation he’d like to give. “I was born, oh… before Solheim fell. I had enough time to learn how to fix an airship and to do magitek armor maintenance.”

The man blinks, hard. It’s to be expected. Prompto doesn’t look old; he’s as tall as he ever would have gotten, and his whipcord frame never wastes away, even when he hasn’t had a bite for a week. His hair is in stasis, as is the attempt to grow a beard—Prompto can’t even take a razor to his chin. It just grows back the same almost instantly. Perhaps it’s better than having a permanent baby face, but Prompto would have liked a more dignified stage of growth.

“That’s… old,” says the man.

“Very.”

“But you paid no price? You get to remain as hale as a young man may,” the bitter, incensed rage gives the man a sense of being feral, “and I have to suffer the Scourge? Oh, that is a joke for the gods! If they’d already had their undying vessel, what did they need me for?”

Prompto presses his hands together. He’s messing this up. First time ever that Prompto gets to meet a fellow immortal, even a baby one, and he’s getting on the man’s shit-list for the rest of eternity. “If it helps,” he offers, “they try to kill me every so often.”

There’s a befuddled silence.

“I was being raised to fight the darkness. That’s what Solheim really invested in, towards the end,” Prompto recalls. “You call it the Starscourge?”

“… Yes.”

“Yeah. We just called it as it is: darkness.”

“Solheim fell because it betrayed its god-king,” Ardyn says, as though reciting a lesson. “And the Astrals would not abide a civilization that defied their will. A two-fold war, I believe. One to stop Ifrit from burning the world, and the other to stop humanity from burning their gods.”

“That’s common knowledge?”

“Inasmuch as one seeks knowledge of a doomed society,” he says a little more modestly.

Prompto laughs. “Looking for an answer we missed?”

“Fresh eyes on a disaster bring new perspectives.”

He turns his head to meet Ardyn’s eyes. They glow a little, in spite of the dim light Angelgard permits. Some of what Ardyn believes of Solheim is true, but not everything was put to record. Those secrets, Prompto suspects he may have to hold close to the chest.

“You call yourself a ‘bad first draft.’ A child raised to fight the Starscourge, and one who evidently failed by the time I was given the privilege to try again. What method did the Six try to gift you, then?”

“Not the Six,” Prompto corrects. “Ifrit. He was closest to humanity, and he saw first-hand the effects of the darkness on his worshippers, so he sought a solution on his own.” He tilts his head, smiles when Ardyn mirrors the motion. “Before we were flesh, we were clay. So the stories go.”

Ardyn snorts. “A myth proven wrong many times over.”

“There’s some truth to every legend.” He thinks about speaking freely of his origins, but Prompto holds his tongue. There are some things which could stand not to come back into the world. Civilizations after Solheim are groping their way back out of a dark age: roads are finally being paved again, which Prompto deeply appreciates.

“So Ifrit chose you, specifically? Were you of a unique bloodline? Possessed of some wondrous ancestry?”

“Ha! Not even close.” He grins. “I was one of the many humble soldiers for Solheim. A man of no consequence, as they say. I was, oh, thirty years old when Ifrit called for sacrifices. No relationships to speak of, familial or romantic. I expect that’s why the Six relies on royal bloodlines for their work now—you guys are like, built to obsess over fate, duty, loyalty…

“Ifrit dipped me into the sacred flame,” he continues. “Baked me a little too long. I came out immortal, but cracked. The Scourge never found purchase because it kept… spilling out, I guess. By the time Ifrit realized he messed up, it was too late to reforge me. He tried, and Shiva tried, and then Bahamut tried to smite me off the face of Eos. Nothing worked.

“Solheim got impatient over the darkness and scorned Ifrit. Got to a point where the Astrals worried about their, uh, superior position. They razed my home to the ground, and I was left to collect the remains.” He tries to maintain a bright smile. “No airships left, unfortunately.”

The man stares at him, mutely. The Scourge recedes, as if it too is confused. How many daemons did he take, Prompto wonders. How many can this man hold before his knees buckle beneath the weight of them all?

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I heard that Ardyn Lucis Caelum wouldn’t die by his brother’s sword,” Prompto admits, because that is easier than the sentences: I dreamed of you. Did you dream of me? “Gossip said that your body was tainted by the Scourge you claimed to heal, and that you needed to be isolated for the good of the world. But you weren’t even a rumor in the western continent or the southern islands. So I figured you’d be here. I’m sorry I took so long.”

“You knew all that,” Ardyn croaks, “and you decided to unleash the monster?”

Prompto leans over and knocks his knuckles against the bulk of the man’s arm, adds a friendly grin. “I’m pretty confident you aren’t. Isolation isn’t going to do anything but let the Scourge pickle inside you. You deserve to at least try and figure out what’s going on.”

“‘Pickle’?”

“Don’t sound so insulted, I’m not a fancy royal guy!”

“You never thought to rise above your origins?”

“What’s the point of that? Courts come and go. I can’t even remember the names of Ifrit’s tributaries.” Maybe he should tell Ardyn that he hadn’t paid any sort of attention to the rise and fall of the Healer, and had in fact needed several seasons to learn the ways Eos had shifted Common’s vowel sounds around.

“Funds might help ease the pains of an immortal life,” Ardyn says flatly.

“I get by!”

“And what, pray tell, is your current occupation?”

Prompto beams. “Before going off to find you? I raised chocobos. While I was finding you? I picked up odd jobs. Fixing fences, filling potholes, hunting the odd coeurl or two.”

“Were you never tempted to steer the future?” It takes a second for Ardyn to remember something, which makes him go paler. “You are—thousands of years old. Your memories are clearly intact of a civilization so great it frightened the gods. And now you make a living doing the petty work of man. How have you not gone mad?”

“I dunno, I think I’ve gone a little chocobo crazy,” Prompto jokes, but he sobers. This is important, he can sense it. The issue is that Prompto, even with several millennia in his pocket, does not have a good answer.

“Are you even capable of magic?”

“Nope.”

Ardyn’s mouth drops. “Then what is the point of living for you?”

His heart aches with all the silly reasons Prompto has to keep walking forward. The sun still rises. The chocobos still sing. The wind still cools the sweat on my brow. Mortals come and go, their lives practically matchsticks to his eternally burning torch. But he cares for them and their small insignificant dramas, when he comes across their settlements.

All he has is a body that won’t fall apart, no matter what the gods try, no matter how much the Scourge scrambles to find purchase in his veins.

“I find things to appreciate,” he finally says. “It’d be a miserable life if I couldn’t look forward to tomorrow, but that hasn’t happened in a while.”

Gold eyes give him a look so droll, Prompto bursts out laughing again. And if his eyes haven’t deteriorated, he thinks he sees a strange curl to Ardyn’s lips as well.

“So I have been rescued by a genius of a simpleton,” he concludes. “One who cannot even give a fellow immortal any advice on how to defy the gods.”

Lightning strikes the steel rod. Prompto can spot it. He makes another crude gesture at the sky and startles when Ardyn barks a laugh, itself sounding shocked and rusty.

“Ah,” Ardyn says in between a raspy snicker, “I suppose that lesson will suffice. What is your plan for escaping this damned rock, my precious savior?”

He’s handsome, even when he’s disheveled. Prompto tucks this thought away where he will only think about it when he’s alone, and shrugs. He admits, “We need to wait out this storm. Angelgard’s waters are passable only a few days out of the year, and I misjudged the timing.”

“We’re trapped here for yet another year?”

“I’ve got a boat,” Prompto points out. “If you have any special magic powers to get us past the riptides, we can try to outrun the Fulgarian’s wrath. Otherwise. Very human limitations here.” Aside from the fortified constitution, increased speed and dexterity, enhanced eyes—all qualities seared into the make-up of Prompto’s being. Oh, and he can’t drown, but that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant to walk Leviathan’s domain.

Ardyn tips his head back against the wall. “Perhaps you didn’t hear while tending to your chocobos, but I was rather tidily rejected by the Crystal last I approached. And seeing as the Crystal stands in for the Six, logically, I would no longer have access to my magic.”

“Did you try?”

“Did I—?” Ardyn shuts his mouth. His mouth thins into a tight line.

“Hey, we all get a little performance anxiety sometimes,” Prompto says reassuringly, and Ardyn glares.

“I am trying to determine whether you yourself have ulterior motives in freeing me,” he replies. “You act a fool, but I have seen my fair share of conmen while traveling the land to heal the Starscourge. Why should I not take your boat and take my chances on the sea alone?”

“Have you sailed before?”

“I’m a quick learner,” Ardyn snaps.

“Alright, alright,” Prompto says, and he flattens his hands on his knees, tries to give the impression that he’s non-lethal. Innocent as a chocobo chick, that’s him. “I wanted to free you because no one deserved that kind of fate. I’m not offering anything but a way out. I’d like to get you to the southern islands, at least, because heading straight for Lucis’s coastline is asking for a fight. I’ll do a few odd jobs, get you the funds for your own way forward.”

“And then we part ways?”

“If that’s how it goes,” Prompto allows himself to say flippantly. “I’m just happy to know there’s another immortal out in the world, yeah? Maybe by the end of this, we can arrange like, an annual meeting. Just to check in with each other.”

Ardyn closes his eyes and breathes. He says, “A moment to rest. I will endeavor to try using magic after.”

“We’re not in a hurry.”

Prompto judges the angle of the rain and decides that it’s safe enough to try and light a hand-warmer. From the oilskin sack he pulls out a beaten iron pan, three stubby legs protruding from the bottom. He arranges three palm-sized slats of wood in a triangle, and takes a knife to a dry block of wood, collecting the shavings for tinder.

Lighting the whole arrangement is the work of a second with the gas lamp. Soon they have a merry little fire crackling away between them, providing all the sound to fill a silence Prompto is resigned to leave alone.

He hopes Ardyn won’t hate him. That would really suck, for Prompto to finally know someone as unkillable as he is, and they end up spending eternity on Eos at each other’s throats.

“You really are without magic,” Ardyn mutters. His eyes are half-lidded, and he has a hand hovering over the flickering flames. “That was deeply painful to sit through.”

“Would you use magic for something as small as this?” Prompto teases. “I thought magic was for big stuff. Death-defying stuff, even.”

Ardyn huffs. With a flick of his wrist, he turns the hand over the flames so the palm faces up, and he wiggles his fingers to move the three lively spheres of fire in a circle. Prompto is immediately enthralled, perking up and wanting to clap his hands like a child.

“Neat!” he tells Ardyn happily. “Oh, man, that is so amazing to see! Is it a one-time ignition, or do you have to keep feeding it magic to keep it going? Wow!”

That strange curl to Ardyn’s mouth. He seems to be constantly reevaluating his notes on Prompto. ‘Genius of a simpleton’ hurts, but it’s a little too true to deny. “The initial drain is more substantial than what it costs to maintain,” he informs Prompto. “Fire such as this longs to be freed. Trapping it in my hand makes it hungry, and it needs to be constantly on the move in order to prevent extinguishment.”

“Huh. I didn’t think magic fire had feelings.”

“Not quite feelings. Just traits.”

He’s struck by a thought. “Uh, just so you know, this little fire,” Prompto gestures to the iron pan, “doesn’t need any supernatural help. If you add all that to the wood, the fuel’s gonna go poof.”

“Ah, we can’t have that.” Ardyn contemplates his handful of flames and then suddenly, viciously, heaves the spell up the stairs into his former prison. Those three little spheres blossom into a generous explosion, one which shakes their staircase.

Prompto has to bat the iron pan into staying in place, and swears when he singes his fingers against the hot metal. “Yikes!”

Ardyn’s head jerks. “What? What’s happened?”

He shakes his hand out, and the burns fade away like nothing ever happened. A light touch of pain, and nothing more. “Ah, tiny hurt. Never did learn to not touch hot metal.”

Ardyn ogles Prompto. “You can still hurt? Even though you claim to be a broken vessel?”

“The brokenness is related to the darkness,” Prompto says. “Hey, are you feeling better already? Do you want to change clothes, get your hair re-tied? Clothes might be a little big, but that’s what the extra sashes are for.”

“You’re very generous.”

“I’ve had a long time to plan. You want ‘em?”

He heaves a sigh. “Oh, very well. If you insist. Are you also hiding a bar of soap in that bag of mystery goods? Judging by your face, I suppose not.”

“I had a long time to plan, but limited space?” Prompto tries with a winning smile. He digs into his bag and pulls out the clothes and a metal comb. “Here you go.”

“Keep the comb,” says Ardyn, accepting the folded stretches of fabric. Carefully, he rises to his feet. “I would rather risk de-tangling my hair after I have had access to a bath.” He staggers a few stairs upwards; Prompto turns his back to Ardyn, thinks ruefully that now would be the time for Ardyn to stab a suspicious character, and keeps carving curls of wood for the fire.

#ffxv #prompto argentum #ardyn izunia #i mean this extremely seriously: this is promdyn. this is all just promdyn fodder.#shih.txt #d-december #solheimian immortal prompto au #it's like a little under two thousand years of a domestic slow burn #needs a lot more structuring before i crosspost to ao3 #but for d-december... it's good enough 😤

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