hugtopia_logs | Affurgato Mingle: July edition

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Affurgato Mingle: July edition

♥ Who: Open to all
♥ Where: Affurgato
♥ When: This week
♥ What: An open mingle at the restaurant which is... mysteriously celebratory!
♥ Rating: who knows, probably PG/13ish?

Regulars of Affurgato might notice things have spiced up a little bit in the last several days; the decor is a little brighter, the staff more upbeat, and the food, while tasty as ever, is a little different. The restaurant is advertising a summer menu of slow-cooked BBQ sliders, sweet potato fries with honey butter dip, grilled pineapple and watermelon slices, and warm peach cobbler with ice cream. The prices are slightly more premium than usual, but ooh, doesn't it all smell worth it? Newcomers might even get a discount, if the right elf twin gets their bill. But how do you know which one's the right twin? ...Yeah, good luck with that.

For this week, the menu will include two curious additions as well: a Thanksgiving-esque meal including fresh slabs of turkey and stuffing, flavoured with bacon grease, and a slice of rainbow layer cake. The cats are very attentive, especially to recognizably good tippers, and there's a display sign outside the door with a doodle of a binicorn in flashy sunglasses shouting the words "ONE YEAR MORE, NERDS", which might be weird to those who know that Affurgato opened about six months ago. Ah, well.

Also noteworthy is the fact that an actual, tangible magical bicicorn will be running around for the first 45 minutes of every daily shift that the restaurant is open, trying to scoop people up onto his back and deposit them in front of the shop. You're here now, so you might as well get a meal, right? Don't question it.

Come one, come all! Enjoy some good food and the company of your neighbours, maybe visit the elves and see what's up.

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Normally I'd say it's a good thing... not so sure, in this case.

[He feels sorry for his dad if the three of them are using titles while living there.]

I was merely teasing you. If it bothers you, I won't do it again.

Kinda does.

[He doesn't mind teasing; he's used to it, and it's good that Ardyn can branch out and show a little bit of his humour, rather than endless sincerity. It's not something he wants to discourage, normally. Just... titles. Titles bother him.

He's quiet a moment, internally debating with himself - he didn't think he'd have to do this again, but he also didn't know if he'd ever be okay with it again, either - before he lowers his voice.]

Call me Noct instead.

...

[Caught off guard, Ardyn barely stopped himself asking if Noctis was sure about that. Of course he couldn't possibly be, but he'd said it regardless. That meant something--that was significant, and Ardyn couldn't question whether or not he was sure about such a gesture as that.]

I...a-alright. Noct, then.

[His hesitation makes Noctis hesitate, unsure if that was the right decision. When a response finally comes, he wonders if it might perhaps merit... some explanation, awkward as it was. It's been months after all.]

He... called me Noct. I wanted some space between me and that memory.

[He figures he doesn't need to specify just who it is he means. And thank the Six that it didn't seize up his heart to hear that nickname spoken with Ardyn's voice, the way it had before. Maybe he really is doing better.]

I didn't...want to assume anything. After you woke up, I mean.

[Not that he needed to specify.]

I know that you didn't hate me, or at least I wanted to believe as much. It...just didn't feel right.

No... you were right. If you'd done it, I would've resented you. It isn't fair, but... that's the honest answer.

[If it hadn't been his choice, it could have been one hell of a step backwards. Ardyn's caution was to their benefit, not for the first time, or likely the last.]

Maybe it isn't, but that's alright. I'm not going to blame you for a reaction I find perfectly reasonable.

Yeah, yeah, I know that already.

[Of course Ardyn wouldn't blame him. Does he blame anyone for anything?]

[it varies]

I'm...glad you're willing to let me call you that again. I won't deny I missed it a little.

...Yeah. Me too. Didn't know I would, but...

[One very rarely knows exactly what they want until they have it- or lose it. Or get it back after the fact.

Hearts are complicated, in other words.]

I know this is likely a ridiculous thing to say, but...I'm also glad you don't hate me.

It's not ridiculous. Who would enjoy being hated?

[Certainly not him, and not someone who thrives on kindness, either.]

...I... don't want to hate people. I don't even want to hate the other guy. [He does, though, at least a little. He's not that good of a person, and he's not reached the point where he can let it go.] That's not who I'm supposed to be.

...I don't, either. It's...tiring to live like that. Tiring, and much too painful.

Edited 2020-07-12 00:21 (UTC)

...Yeah.

[Those weeks back home, and more time here, that he'd spent hating the man who'd taken so much from him, who hated his family right back... that was some of the worst days of his whole life. He'd been miserable, dwelling on what happened time after time, allowing those thoughts and complicated emotions to fester. Hatred had caused him to push Prompto off a train, it'd pushed him away from Gladio and Ignis, it'd interfered with his ability to properly mourn the ones he'd lost. It'd separated him from Ardyn here because he struggled to differentiate between the two. He doesn't want to end up in that cycle again.]

How... do you stop?

[At first, he didn't answer--leaning his head on one hand and staring out the nearest window. He wasn't sure there was an answer, but as with most difficult questions he had to come up with something.]

I think that... [Careful and deliberate, Ardyn tried to untangle something he'd deliberately avoided contemplating in any real detail.] ...it's a matter of separating 'hatred' from 'anger'. They share a great deal of common ground, to be sure, but they remain two distinct things. And were I to elaborate on what separates them, I would call it 'understanding'.

[Years in the future--or perhaps in the past--on the burning streets of Insomnia a spirit would ask understanding of a vengeful demon, and be vehemently denied. Past too late and too far gone to even consider the idea, that Ardyn would only despise the man before him and the kingdom he built. But now, long before a desire for revenge could take root, sitting across from the Founder's mirror image...what else could he call this?]

...What happened two thousand years ago were actions taken for the sake of the kingdom--that there would even be a kingdom in the first place. Whether my brother was right or wrong in his assumption of the end result had he done nothing is long since irrelevant. For that purpose, knowing what reasoning drove him to act...I can understand it, and with that reasoning I can no longer hate him.

[How could he? No matter what happened, even with everything that had been lost and how it still hurt...Somnus was doing the same as Ardyn: the only course of action he saw to protect Lucis.]

I understand why he chose to act as he did. Why the road he traveled was the one he chose to walk. It requires standing back to examine the whole affair, rather than focusing only on the single moment. Mind you, that is no easy task. Neither does it come with forgiveness, or even a halt to the anger itself. Just...an attempt to stand back and piece together why something is happening, even if the 'why' of it is beyond your own field of view or comprehension.

[He listens quietly, soothing his nerves and the layers of discomfort he's feeling by stroking his fingers slowly through the cat's fur, listening as it purrs beneath his hand. Hatred, anger... he'd tried to learn the distinction, after Prompto fell, though it never stopped being a struggle. Learned to hold back his rage rather than charge in blindly, no longer trusting his eyes to know friend from foe. He'd managed to let Izunia walk away, not only because he was apparently unkillable but because the Glacian was no longer there to give him a target towards which he could direct that rage without risking others. He's... not sure he knows the difference, yet. He's not sure he's ready.

He does listen, though. He takes in every word, allows them to sink in, trying to layer what he knows with what he's being told, to recognize the parallels between their situations. Ardyn's love was taken from him. He was wounded, mistreated, locked away from everything he knew. He was victim to the whims of the gods.

Replace the names and that's exactly what's happened to him. In many ways, he's been forced to feel precisely what Ardyn Izunia must have felt, once.]

...I... if I... wanted someone to hate me, enough to kill me. If I knew what made me hate that much, first. What he did to me... would be a way to do it.

[And it isn't right, it isn't fair. There was no need to victimize others, make them suffer or die just to hurt him. But it worked, gods did it ever work. He'd wanted so badly to kill that man.]

[Ardyn didn't dare look back at Noctis, not knowing what his own expression might say if he did. It made sense, more than he wanted to admit or consider. If that person in the future was as tired as Ardyn was now, if he was so overflowing with hatred and anger with its real target long since dead...what else was there to do? What else could something like that do but scream in rage at a world with no place for him, destroy what he'd once saved and cause so much pain that there would be no choice but to end him like the daemon he was?]

['I will drag you from that darkness. Out of solitude. Out of emptiness.]

[...And it hadn't worked at all, had it? Not in the end--in some ending, somewhere, sometime.]

It is...difficult for me to theorize about what that person is or what he would truly want. Perhaps I myself don't want to understand it or fear making an attempt, but...

[He trailed off, free hand curling loosely on the table as if the ancient scars ached with some phantom pain. Until you are free, echoed that not-yet-memory, you suffer alone.]

...I think that's precisely the intention. Hardly the sole aim, I would say, but I would presume it a very likely goal in the end.

[In truth he's not looking for an answer; he shouldn't expect one from Ardyn, wouldn't want him to fully understand what had pushed Izunia into the corner he'd ventured into by the time their paths crossed. No one who wants to stay sane or happy should try to truly understand that mentality. Whether he wants to die, or whether he wants to destroy the world, or whether he'll find either one or the other as an acceptable end for his tale... that, Noctis doesn't know. But if he truly wanted to damn the world, he'd had ample opportunity to steal the life of its last hope, rather than simply ruin it.

"Only once the Crystal and King are no more... can I know redemption."

One, or the other, or both. The Crystal and the line of Lucis will end, no matter how their story concludes. But only one will free the monster from an immortal and solitary life, and only one will give hope to those left behind. What would he do, if left to exist alone on a dead world? As bad as his life must have been that sounds far, far worse than a thousand of years of suffering and building power, only to lose the final battle.]

It's not what he said he wanted. But I don't know if he's ever done anything but lie to me.

[Even when what he said was technically true, about helping Noctis achieve his goals, or not standing in his way- it still felt like a lie, or was self-serving enough that it might as well have been one. Izunia's last threat to him - "killing you as a mortal will bring me scant satisfaction," implying but not saying that killing him as the bearer of the Crystal's power - could have been his last lie. He won't know until they face each other again. He might never know.

He'll... have to be satisfied with that, a mystery he takes to the grave unsolved.]

...I'm sorry. I wish there were better answers I could give you, but all I have myself is mere conjecture and assumptions.

[But if he thought too long on the matter, he could almost see the thread of logic strung through complete madness, and that terrified him to contemplate.]

Either way...it's no simple act, to understand what you should justifiably despise. Least of all when it's something like that.

[Noctis offers up a weak smile in Ardyn's direction.]

I don't have years and years to reflect on it, either.

[He's twenty, and immature, and after ten years in a Crystal he'll still be twenty and immature, body be damned. The space within the Crystal was timeless, he hadn't felt the progress of it at all in whatever time he'd been there. When he comes out of it, he won't have weeks, months, or years to reconsider his feelings on his enemy. He'll be lucky if he has days before he marches into Insomnia to kill and be killed.

How long does it take, to decide your hatred has shifted to anger and understanding? If even Ardyn doesn't know, he doubts he'll figure out the answer.]

It's... okay. [It's not. But it could be worse.] It would be shitty of me to expect you to know for sure, when you're not him. Still... thanks for trying.

You don't want years to reflect on anything, trust me.

[He glanced back to Noctis with a shaky smile of his own.]

I just...want to help wherever I can. If I can at all.

[He wouldn't mind a few years to do something, honestly. Even if reflecting on his issues took up the bulk of it, Maybe if he could do it while fishing...

Ardyn's probably right, though.]

You are helping, I can promise you that much. Even if it's just... peace of mind, I guess. It's better than shoving it all under the bed.

[He's done plenty of that in the past - and still does it now, most of the time. Out of sight, out of mind. Except it's not out of mind at all, it's just not out of his mouth, in that he won't talk about it. No one's required to help him feel better about the trash fire his life's become, but the fact that Ardyn tries really does mean a lot.]

...I think it is, too. None of it is all that easy to speak on, but...it does feel a little better to try, rather than keep such things quiet.

[Even if there wasn't much to be done at present, heavens knew no one could quite understand either of them in the way the other could. That was significant in a way Ardyn wasn't sure he could put into words, when some part of him still often felt wildly out of place.]

That's what I was thinking. I mean, take that with a grain of salt, considering how good my track record is for decision-making, but...

[He's trying, okay. And he shares the unspoken sentiment; with such intertwined lives, and so many echoes of light and dark between those lives even two thousand years apart, the mutual understanding is too real to deny.]

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