#so - Nyx's reunion is a little worse than his one with Ardyn

[charlottedabookworm]

The Cruellest Cut - Part 1

I’m bored and my mum won’t be home for another half hour, so.

@hamelin-born @sparklecryptid @distressedherbalist @luxroyalty @snappysprinkledog @theotherguysride

You are all giant enablers and I am blaming all of you for this. The title comes from @hamelin-born , who suggested it and it fits far better than the previous title that I’d thought up (oh father, tell me, did we get what we deserved) so I rolled with it. 

Under the cut, have the Cor & Nyx reunion in a verse where Cor is actually immortal and was Ardyn’s Shield. I want to write more for this - and I will, I have explanations and Regis’ POV planned, and Cor meeting Ardyn for the first time back in Solheim, and so much more because this is fun - but this is what I have so far. Scream about this AU with me.

Nyx had heard of Cor the Immortal. Of course, he had. He might never have met the man, might never have even seen him, but the Marshall of the Crownsguard was practically a celebrity in Insomnia. Everyone knew his name, everyone knew his deeds, everyone knew who he was. And he’d heard all of the stories – you couldn’t help but do so when the Guard was so proud of their Marshall. But Nyx hadn’t really cared. Why would he? Why would he care about someone who carried the title Immortal, simply because of his deeds? Nyx had scoffed, the first time that one of the Glaives had brought up Marshall Leonis and his title, had had to fight back the urge to laugh. Because immortal? Yeah, right. Nyx knew immortality – knew it down to his bones, knew it with every breathe he took and every beat of his heart, knew the truth of it in a way that so few did – and no one who truly understood what immortality meant would dare claim the title. People spoke of Cor Leonis with awe, due to his supposed immortality, and Nyx had to fight back his rage at their sheer ignorance. (Because immortality wasn’t great. It wasn’t awesome, it wasn’t venerable, it wasn’t something to aspire to. It wasn’t life. Immortality was everyone else dying. Immortality was watching everyone else fade away. It was war and disease and old age and losing everyone that you had ever cared for. It was funeral after funeral after funeral, battle after battle after battle. It was watching the world change until you no longer recognise it, it was longing to hear the language of your birth again – just the once. It was watching everything that you loved fall to pieces. It was a curse, and Nyx wanted to sneer at everyone who thought otherwise. Because immortality was a battlefield. And it was empty. Because everyone else had fallen) Still, humans – mortals – were idiots who couldn’t see the forest for the trees, who looked at immortality and thought life instead of wondering why. And he couldn’t kill them for that. Nyx pushed back his rage and did his best to ignore the topic every time that it came up – and the Galahdians were nice enough not to discuss it in front of him, especially since they knew that the name brought up far too many memories for their Chosen. Outside of the almost instinctive offence that his title caused him, Nyx didn’t particularly care about Cor Leonis. But he wasn’t expecting the man who swept into the King’s office without a care in the world. --- Nyx had been pulling a lot of guard duty recently – had been ever since he’d doubled back against orders to save Linus Bellum, one of the baby glaives, from a daemon. It was Drautos’ idea of a punishment – take him out of the field temporarily and give him something boring to do all day while surrounded by Lucians – and Nyx would probably complain more about it, but he’s mostly been shadowing the King recently, instead of guarding the wall. And, as much as he hates the Citadel – as much as he hates what it reminds him of, as much as he hates what it stands for (a monument to the being who had cursed his father, built by his uncles line) – Regis is a good man, a good King, and Nyx doesn’t mind guarding him so much. (No matter how much it pisses him off to have to listen to the Lucian nobles talk about his people as though there were lesser) So, he puts up with it – no matter how boring standing by the King’s office door watching him do paperwork all day was. Occasionally he’ll have to step outside for meetings, or the King will want to walk somewhere with Nyx shadowing him, but mostly Nyx spent his days acting as a well-paid door opener. (He’s had worse jobs) However, when Cor Leonis stalked into the Kings office and tossed a pile of paperwork onto his desk, Nyx stopped breathing. There was no way that this was happening. This was impossible. It couldn’t be him – it had been two thousand years. The man who had carried him on his shoulders and taught him to use a katana and who had looked at his father like he was his salvation was gone. Had fallen trying to buy them enough time to escape from the betrayal. Had been executed just as Nyx’s father had. He was dead. (“Go.” He stumbled as Cor shoved his father into his arms, the added weight forcing the two of them passed the boundary of the doorway. Swinging one of his father’s arms over his shoulders – and damn it, Uncle, how could you, the Scourge was already killing him anyway, what was the point in this? – he glanced back when he didn’t hear the tread of familiar boots behind him. Cor was standing with his back to them, sword out and held at the ready to defend them. Nyx swallowed, suddenly feeling like a young child again, being told his mother was dying. “Faeder?” “Go, Your Highness. Take His Majesty and be safe. I’ll hold them off.” The man who had been a second father to him his entire life said steadily, only a thread of heartbreak in his voice as he faced near-certain death at the hands of their own people to protect his King and Prince. He hesitated, knowing that he should go – that his father was depending on him – but unwilling to leave Cor behind. “Nyx!” He barked, and Nyx was turning away, reaching for the furthest warp-beacon that he could manage with his father’s dead weight – conditioned since childhood to respond to the command in that tone, even as he cursed fate and Bahamut and his uncle and the drugs that they had used on his father that kept him out of it. Just before the magic of the land carried them away, Nyx glanced back over his shoulder. “Faeder!” The scream tore itself from his throat, heartbreak and betrayal and grief and loss and rage mixing together, blood splashing across his face as one of his worst nightmares played itself out in real life. The last image he saw of Solheim’s crown city was of his Uncle standing over the body of his faeder, blade stained red with his blood) But the man in front of him was a familiar profile, unchanged from Nyx’s faded memories. His hair was a little shorter, his eyes darker and more shuttered, the way that he carried himself a little stiffer – but the voice was the same. The voice of the man who had talked him through his nightmares and helped him prank his father. “F-Faeder?” The word slipped off his numb tongue without permission, and from the corner of his eye he could see the way that the King had turned to look at him in confusion, but Nyx’s entire focus was on the man who froze at the almost-foreign word. His heart stutters in the silence of the room as the image of his faeder stares at him in shock and he can feel horrible, painful, hope growing in his chest. Please. Anyone, just, please. Let me be right. Let me have this, please. Just, give me this. Please. “Nyx?” And Cor was reaching out, exactly like he had always done when Nyx had come to him for comfort, and he couldn’t handle this. He looks his home in his eyes and shakes, falling apart at the seams even as he throws himself into the man’s arms. Nyx breaks. --- Cor swept into office, a scowl on his face and paperwork in hand. “We need to do something about the western border.” He’s started saying before the door has even swung fully shut, sending an absent nod to the glaive on duty as he stalked up to Regis’ desk and tossed the files he’s collected onto it. They spread out as they hit the desk, showing hints of the data that he had spent the past week compiling. Regis glanced down, keeping an absent eye on him even as the King began to peruse the files. “Daemon attacks are increasing and we’re still haemorrhaging resources. If we don’t do something soon then they’ll break through-” “F-Faeder?” A quiet, stuttering voice interrupted him. The moment that he recognised the word, he froze. The word, one almost foreign to his ears after all this time, made his heart stop. It had been so long since he had last heard that word spoken, last heard the title given to him by a young boy with bright eyes and an even brighter smile. And he had never heard it spoken like this. He’d heard it squealed during tickle attacks and yelled during battles and murmured late at night and yelped after embarrassing moments – he’d heard it screamed as an expression of raw grief and pain and anger and betrayal and loss, as the child that he had helped to raise, the boy who was his son in all but blood, had watched him be cut down by a man that they had all trusted absolutely – but he had never heard it like this. Never heard it tentative and disbelieving and pained and so full of heartbreak and with a thread of new-born desperate hope that it made him want to weep. Cor spun on his heel desperately – needing a proper look at the glaive who had spoken that word with a faint Solheim accent, ignoring the way that Regis tensed and half-rose from his chair at the look on his face – and then he stopped. And he was staring. He knows that he was staring. But standing there, in the black uniform of the Kingsglaive, is a ghost. (A ghost who looked exactly like his long dead son. Who had Ardyn’s facial structure and nose, who had flecks of gold in blue-grey eyes. Who wore the beads of a Chosen of Ramuh and the tattoos of a Galahdian hunter. A ghost who called him faeder and looked at him as though he couldn’t believe that Cor existed. A ghost who looked exactly like he had when Cor had last seen him) He swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. “Nyx?” He asked, voice rife with emotions that he had rarely allowed himself to show over the years – rife with surprise and pain and old, unhealed grief and a growing desperate hope that hurt far more than the grief did. This isn’t possible. He wanted to say. You died. But he had never seen a body, had just trusted Somnus – trusted the man who had betrayed them – at his word. It’s been two thousand years. And it had been so long since he had heard that voice – Galahdian accent now far stronger than the Solheim one that he had used to sport – so long since he had seen his son, but he hadn’t changed. Cor couldn’t help but reach out – couldn’t stop himself from reaching for his son, for proof that he wasn’t some sort of illusion – and then he stumbled back a step when Nyx slammed into him. How did I not know? He thought, even as he brought his arms up to wrap them around his son – and this was his son, he was certain of that and even if he wasn’t then the way that the magic of the land was singing faintly in joy would be proof enough. Eyes shut against the burn of tears, he felt as though his heart had been ripped from his chest as he clutched at his shaking son – holding him as he sobbed silently into his chest. Never in his life had he ever felt like more of a failure of a father than in this moment – not even when he had been told that his son had died, alone and on the run and in the middle of nowhere. Standing there with his son – his son, the son of his King, who he hadn’t known was alive, who he hadn’t even seen in two thousand years, who was shattering into pieces in his arms – Cor was reminded of just how much he had failed, and it made the breath catch in his chest. Because this was his fault. He had sworn to protect them – sworn the oaths of a Shield to his King, the oaths of a man to those that he loved – and he had failed. Had failed in his duty, had failed to protect them, and because of that his King (his lover) had lost his life – had been murdered by his own brother – and his Prince (their son) had spent so long alone and broken. And Cor hadn’t been able to do anything – he’d failed them and broken the oaths that he had sworn as a child. Almost as though he could hear his thoughts, Nyx looked up at him through teary eyes – loosening his hold just enough that Cor was able to slide to his knees in front of Solheim’s lost prince. Regis made a noise of shock in the background, knowing him well enough to be surprised by his actions, but he didn’t look over at his friend. “My Prince,” he said, head bowed as he glanced up at the man who held his life in his hands through lowered lashes. “I have failed in my duties, failed the oaths that I swore, and it cost you your father’s life. Any punishment that you decree worthy-” “No.” Cor started in surprise as Nyx cut him off with a snarl. “No.” He said, yanking him to his feet again. “You do not get to do this, Faeder. You, of all people, do not call me that. You do not get to ask for punishment. Not when I watched you cut down so that your King could escape, not when I heard tell of your execution at His hands – mere days after my father’s. You gave your life for your King – just as the oaths you swore demanded, just as any Shield should – and what came after that was not your fault. And I will not have you blame yourself for it. Is that understood?” The words were accompanied by a fierce glare and royal bearing and, despite the red eyes and drying tear tracks, Nyx looked so much like his father at that moment that it made something in Cor ache. Still, at the command from his son – from the man who had never looked and sounded more like the Crown Prince of Solheim that he had once been than now – Cor could do naught but bow his head in submission. “Yes, Your Highness.” He met his sons’ eyes and waited for the other man to nod before he pulled him back in for another hug. Over Nyx’s shoulder, he could see Regis looking at them in surprise and confusion and intrigue, and he knew that he – they – would have to explain all of this to the King at some point but. But that could wait. For the first time in two thousand years – for the first time since they had been betrayed, since he had told his family to go, since their betrayer had come with words of his son’s death on his lips, since his king had been murdered – Cor was home.

#my fic #snippet #ffxv #ardynson au #the cruellest cut #cor leonis #nyx ulric #regis lucis caelum #so - Nyx's reunion is a little worse than his one with Ardyn #because Nyx was like 90% sure that he watched Cor die at his uncles hand when they escaped Solheim #the news of his execution was a shock - and then Nyx hated himself for not knowing that his faeder was alive #Cor blames himself #Nyx blames himself #Ardyn will blame himself when he finds out #it runs in the family #I need to write Ardyn's reunion with Cor #This is so much more heartbreaking - because at the moment it hasn't occurred to them that Ardyn might be alive #Cor watched him die - Somnus forced him to watch the execution #And Nyx has spent the last two thousand years certain he was alone #Cor is totally alive due to some mystical bone between a King and his Shield - caused by the fact that Old Kings where tied to the land #angst #nyx is ardyn's son #nyx is cor's son #he and Ardyn might not be married but Cor is as much Nyx's dad as Ardyn is #This is Cor who feels like he's failed his son - who looks at this broken man and remembers the bright boy he was and hates himself for it #you are all giant enablers #and I would be more irritated if I wasn't looking for an excuse to write it