Chapter Text
“Time,” Regis says, looking out over Insomnia, at the last vestige of hope, “is the true villainy in this tale.”
Hands shaking, Regis clasps his fingers together, trying to still the motion. He’s retreated, in a single moment of peace, to the only place in the Citadel that gives him comfort anymore.
If Aulea were still alive, she would be at his side, offering him words of wisdom and comfort. She might hold his shaking hands in his own, offer a joke, or an anecdote, or simply stand with him in silence.
Aulea hasn’t been alive in some time.
Time.
In the distance, the Niflheim battle ships float, almost inconspicuously, as if they haven’t come to steal everything Regis has held dear in his life—everything he’s given his life to protect.
When Regis was young, he thought there was plenty of time. Now he realizes, he’s always been living on that which is borrowed. He’s never had enough of it to satisfy, and now comes the eleventh hour. Now comes the hardest series of events that will ever come to pass.
The last of them, too. At least for Regis.
“Majesty?”
Regis bows his head forward, eyes closing.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
“Regis?”
Forcing himself to stand tall, keeping his weight off his bad leg, Regis turns to Clarus and asks, “Is everything in order?”
Like Regis himself, Clarus is old, softened by the passage of time. Their skin sags, their hair has gone gray, and they move slower than ever. Neither Regis nor Clarus have seen battle in eons, tucked away safely behind the shield that protects Insomnia. But they feel it in their bones like a heavy ache.
The wall, power provided by the crystal, makes Regis feel like a hypocrite. He remembers being younger, and feeling constrained by it, finding it unnecessary and a hindrance. But he still left Insomnia several times. Now, no one goes in or out. Instead the people of Insomnia are locked away from the rest of Lucis like preserved artifacts of a different age.
Again, more kindly, Clarus calls out, “Regis?”
Their eyes meet and Regis, for just a split second, one that hardly even registers, feels like the young boy again who kissed his future Shield in the wilderness of Lucis.
“I just needed a moment to compose myself,” Regis relays, and he takes a step forward with a pronounced limp.
“Thinking of Noctis?” Clarus asks.
“For once,” Regis chuckle deeply, “I am not.”
Noctis, his precious son, is gone from Insomnia now. Noctis has gone to reclaim his birthright, to rise into the position of King of Kings, and take back the future of all of Eos. It’s a terrible fate waiting to behold one, a thing that has crushed Regis’s heart practically to ash. But Noctis also has more time than the rest of them. Noctis has months or years more, and Regis knows that the rest of Insomnia has days.
Clarus seems to decide, “Good. Gladiolas is with him, and he’ll keep Noctis safe until the time comes. A Shield under the name of Amacitia has never failed a king of Lucis.”
Regis leans forward on his cane. “Clarus, I’ve spoken to House Amacitia’s retainer.”
“Jared?” Clarus asks.
Regis steadies himself as he tells Clarus, “When Insomnia falls, when I’m no longer …capable of protecting us from Niflheim, Jared is to take his family and evacuate. I’ve secured lodgings for him at Lestallum, and assigned a crownsdguard as protection.”
He sees the obvious confusion on Clarus’s face. And his Shield says, “Jared has been invaluable to the Amacitia line. Thank you, Regis.” But there’s uncertainty with Clarus still.
“Niflheim will hit the Citadel hard,” Regis decides, moving to the nearby bench and sitting on it. He waits for Clarus to join him before saying. “The Empire won’t simply target the line of Lucis. It will also aim to destroy the Nobel Houses, along with prominent members of the government. I suspect, however, Niflheim will pay very little attention to a vast majority of the civilians simply trying to flee the destruction. In that, Jared will make his escape, and he’ll take with him your daughter, who otherwise will be a target.”
Clarus’s face crumples in that, his eyes suddenly wet.
Smuggling Noctis from the city was easily enough. He and his companions, escorted by Cor, could pass relatively unnoticed from the city. But there’s no room for additional evacuations. Not on the chessboard Regis has been moving his pieces about for some time.
“Insomnia will fall tomorrow,” Regis tells Clarus. “You understand this rouse for what it is. The people do not. They hope for peace with this signing and marriage, but we know better. If they did as well, there’d be panic. There’d be an attempt at a mass exodos. This is the only course of action I can offer you, Clarus, as an attempt to save your line. Still … the risk …”
“I accepted how this might end long ago,” Clarus says. He means to say, he’s already accepted that Gladiolas can be spared, at least for a time, to protect Noctis, but Iris will die along with all the other members of the Nobel Houses.
Regis reaches out with one gloved hand, and puts it down on Clarus’s nearby knee. “Jared will do everything within his power to see Iris safely out of the city. She will live if the gods favor us even a small bit.”
Regis used to dread the idea of the two of them marrying, having children, and growing apart. And the truth is, Aulea passed over a decade ago, and Clarus’s wife several years ago, but they haven’t shared a moment of intimacy since Altissia. Not since Regis went to see his mother, since they rode the gondolas, dined on the finest food, danced and laughed and made love.
Even now they don’t touch often.
Regis doesn’t know why. They’re both old men left alone now. They’re King and Shield. And still, nothing transpires between them. Maybe the time has passed.
“My Iris,” Clarus breathes out, shoulders shaking.
When Gladiolas was born, Regis remembers, it felt truly like the end of one life for them, and the beginning of another. Clarus had his heir, the throne had its next potential Shield, and Regis had his own duties to fulfil.
Once and only once, with Gladiolas cradled in his arms, the baby sleeping soundly and swaddled tightly, Clarus told him, “I love you, Regis. I will always love you. This, none of this, makes me love you less.”
But having a child is something that changes a person. Regis learns this the moment that Noctis is born. A baby, born of one’s own flesh and blood, changes a person. It changes priorities.
Regis never doubts that Clarus still loves him, not as the seasons change, and the years pass. But nothing is ever the same as it was when they were young.
Elbows going to rest on his knees, Clarus tells Regis candidly, “This isn’t how I imagined things playing out. This isn’t how I imagined things at all.”
Regis laughs a little. “You didn’t think The Empire wouldn’t eventually claw its way here?”
“No,” Clarus corrects, moving his own hand to cover Regis’s on his knee.
They’re touching. They never touch. But now, they’re touching.
“Then what?”
Clarus smiles at him. “I hardly thought you’d survive that fall you took off a chocobo at Wiz’s post two decades ago.”
Regis contents immediately, “I did not fall! That was a dismount. I dismounted the chocobo.”
“Your foot caught the side of the saddle,” Clarus points out, “you tipped sideways, and you had a fine breakfast of mud and grass to show for it.”
Regis feels his face go red.
“After I was assured you hadn’t broken your neck, it was most certainly the best thing I had ever seen in my life.”
“You undoubtedly laughed long enough.”
Fondly, in a way that only familiar friends can share, Regis and Clarus laugh.
Regis says, “I was a little excited, I’ll admit. I could have paid more attention to what I was doing.”
Clarus remarks, “You really wanted to see those chocobos.”
These are the memories Regis clings to. These are the memories that he’ll take with him into the afterlife, when he sacrifices everything to give Noctis a fair shot at his destiny.
His poor, unlucky son, favored by the gods.
“In the end,” Clarus says in a sober way, “I didn’t think our lives would end like this. Sitting side by side on a bench, attempting to outmaneuver a more powerful enemy who has set his sights on our kingdom, our crystal, and our king.”
“Thought we’d go out in a blaze of glory in the throes of combat?” Regis questions. “There’s still time for that, my friend.”
Clarus gives him a haunting look. “No. Your Majesty. I just foolishly believed in the end, that I might be able to save you.”
For some time, Regis doesn’t speak. And yet he hears everything Clarus means to say despite the silence.
“Noctis,” Regis decides to say finally, “is the only one who can save Eos. And we’ll buy him every bit of time that we can to accomplish that.”
Looking weary and tired, Clarus says, “Protect your King. Be his Shield. Give your life for his. Prioritize the crown. These are the tenants my mother drilled into me, long before she was confident enough to trust you in my care.” He huffs. “And look at you now. Look at what I’ve allowed to happen.”
Regis laughs a little, “Surely I don’t look so bad.”
Clarus arc towards him and says passionately, “You are as desirable to me now as you have ever been. I yearn to be by your side, let alone have you allow me the privilege of being wanted in return.”
“It’s no privilege,” Regis denies.
“It is the greatest honor in all of Eos.”
Palms a little sweaty, Regis leans more heavily on his cane and asks, “What do you think you’ve allowed to happen to me?”
There’s such pain, such grief in Clarus, it nearly bleeds into Regis.
“I have born witness to the greatest king Lucis has ever seen, forced to lower himself to the filth that is Niflheim.” Clarus reaches for him then, taking Regis’s shoulders in his hands and pulling him close. “I have seen you, Regis, lose your wife in an attack that might have been hindered if I were there.”
“That was no one’s fault,” Regis says. Least of all Clarus’s.
“You destroy yourself each day, bit by bit, protecting Lucis,” Clarus finishes. “The crystal steals away your life force, as the wolves come battering at our door, and you will die, my King, long before it is your turn to.”
Regis sets his cane to the side, having no further use for it at the moment. And then he takes Clarus’s face carefully in his hands and says in a commanding way, “Every sacrifice I have made, every part of myself I have given up, has been of my own free will. You often called me altruistic, Clarus. You’ve always seen that as a character defect.”
Clarus goes to interrupt.
Regis presses on, “No king deserves to rule, who is not willing to give every part of his essence, to keep his people safe—to keep the ones he loves most, safe.”
Now Clarus doesn’t try to speak.
Regis’s fingers trace over Clarus’s face, along the groves and lines that age had bitten into his skin.
“I have no regrets,” Regis says, “save for what path my son’s destiny will lead him down, and how in over two decades, I’ve not felt your touch against mine, your lips to my skin, and your warmth in my bed.”
“Oh, Regis.”
“Will you grant an old man his last wish?” Regis asks, daring to have a touch of hope at the end of a long journey. “I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight, but having you with me will be a comfort.”
“You need only have asked,” Clarus chokes out, wrestling Regis’s form against him even further. “Regis, my king, if you had but asked for me once, all these years, I would have come to you. I would have willingly and eagerly shared your bed.”
This is something Regis has always known. He’s known from the moment he relinquished Clarus to his husbandly duties, and turned his own focus towards Aulea and Insomnia. He’s always known how weak he and Clarus truly are in the matter of their desires.
“I know,” Regis reveals. “Which was why I couldn’t. Our paths diverged for a reason, and I wouldn’t let you be to Aulea, what your mother was to my mother. I wouldn’t forsake the vows we made to our wives, upon our honor. Least of all when our children were born.”
“And after?” Clarus asks. “After Aulea died, gods bless her soul? After my wife died?”
“Then,” Regis says slowly, “then I had Noctis to worry over, and Insomnia to hold together, and I was afraid, Clarus, that for once in my life, I would be indulgent and selfish. Insomina has always required a selfless king, and I was afraid to be otherwise.”
The fragile, intimate moment between them is shattered by a soft voice clearing.
Regis turns to see a young girl eyeing them worriedly, her gaze flickering about the hold they have on each other.
But Regis is old now, and days away from destruction, and he has no time or mind for propriety.
“The council has concluded their break, Your Majesty,” the girl says, bowing deeply to him. “They’re asking to begin again—to finalize preparations for the glorious treaty signing tomorrow.”
Regis imagines himself a daemon of sorts. The whole of Insomnia’s people are celebrating. They’re drinking and eating merrily, dancing and laughing, and celebrating a cessation of war that is nothing but a farce. They’re expecting the wall to come down, Noctis to marry Luna, and things to be better now than they have been in a millennia.
Regis is letting them think these things, all the while knowing better. Even Regis’s council, the men and women that have his confidence, don’t truly know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe even Regis doesn’t know how bad it will be. Suspecting, and anticipating is enough.
But if Noctis is going to have a chance, if the King of Kings is going to rise, Regis will play his part.
He simply won’t give Clarus up any longer.
“Back to work, then,” Regis says, letting his fingers linger on Clarus for just a moment more. Then he asks again, bravely, “Will you come to my chambers tonight?”
Brazenly, Clarus asks, “Is that an order, my king?”
“No.” Regis shakes his head a bit, reaching for his cane. He gets himself sturdy on his own feet. “It’s simply an offer, from a man named Regis, to one named Clarus.”
Regis turns to go, with Clarus falling into step beside him. The child scurrying ahead is ignored as Clarus points out, “We haven’t simply been Clarus and Regis in some time.”
Regis decides, “Now is a fine time to start again.”
Clarus does come to call that night. He knocks sharply on Regis’s door hours after most of Insomnia has gone to sleep.
“You look surprised,” Clarus greets when Regis opens the door.
Regis is forced to confess, “I half expected you might not show.”
“Impossible,” Clarus denies. “I would never keep you waiting, not with an open invitation.”
The door shuts behind Clarus, and there’s but a second of pause before Clarus’s hand is cupping Regis’s jaw, and they’re kissing.
They haven’t kissed since before the birth of Gladiolas, not since their last night in Altissia, not since they stood on a balcony overlooking the falls and held each other tightly.
And it feels now as if there is nothing more important in the world, than making up for lost time.
Clarus presses Regis back against his bed, hands slipping under clothing, and for once Regis lets himself wonder if Clarus’s self control hasn’t been nearly as impeccable as perceived. Has this ferocity and this yearning been lurking beneath the surface for so many years?
“You consume me,” Clarus says.
Regis replies, “You are welcome to all that I am.”
They’re not young, spry men anymore. They’re not young at all. And since conceiving Noctis with Aulea, Regis has taken vows of celibacy. So part of him is afraid. He worries he’s lost the ability to be a competent lover.
Clarus is quick to remind him, with deft hands and a wet mouth, that one never really forgets such a thing.
Still, age is most certainly still a factor. And Regis, his body isn’t nearly as strong as he would like it to be. Holding the wall has taken nearly everything out of him. Regis is not close to a fraction of what he used to be.
But he’s enough.
“Never,” Clarus breathes out into Regis’s hair, holding the king in his arms, feeling the slide of their sweat slick bodies press together, “doubt that you have my heart. You are my heart, Regis.”
Regis’s skin pulses with heat, and he feels Clarus’s heart beat beneath his ear.
Against him, Clarus feels strong and mountainous, despite how the years and stress have eaten away at Clarus’s previously sturdy form. Clarus feels like a Shield should. And they’re in the position now that most Kings and Sheilds find themselves.
A king must be everything to his people. These are the words Regis’s father said to him so long ago. And now Regis hears the second part of the statement, left out by his father and meant for Regis to discover himself.
A King is nothing without his Shield.
Still a little breathless, and far from recovered and ready for a second round of lovemaking, Regis asks curiously, “When did such a thing occur? When did my insistent and frankly embarassing fascination with you, finally find reciprocation?”
Regis has never asked before, but now he wants to know.
When did Clarus Amacitia fall in love with him?
Clarus gives him an odd look. Then he responds, “I remember the first time you kissed me. I remember exactly, to this day, what it felt like. Precisely.”
Regis pushes himself up a little, muscles complaining. “That’s the moment?” Considering the immediate protest that followed his actions, Regis has to doubt this. He was also very young, practically still a child, and certainly out of line.
“That’s not the moment I knew I loved you,” Clarus laughs, his whole body shaking with it. His toes nudge into Regis’s. “That was the moment I knew it was in trouble, when I knew that I’d surely never be rid of you in my heart, but it’s not the moment I realized you had my heart.”
Regis waits with bated breath.
“It was,” Clarus says almost dramatically, “the moment when I was very respectfully, absolutely innocently, strolling my way through the Citadel, and this heathen of a child, who was destined to grow up and be king, slid down a bannister and crashed into me. It was love at first sight, you understand.”
No, Regis does not.
“You … that moment …”
Clarus cautions unnecessarily, “We were children. It was a chaste love. But it was love. I knew it for what it was in that instance. And the feeling, while evolving over time, has never faded.”
Regis grips Clarus tightly. “You are far better than I have ever deserved, Clarus.”
Clarus nudges them until they’re lying side by side on the bed, sheets kicked down to their thighs. Clarus kisses Regis’s brow and says, “I have had that exact thought nearly every day since that moment I knew I loved you, Regis. And if tomorrow it all comes to an end, I’m honored to have stood with you through it all.”
They make love again, even more slowly now than the first time, and Regis clings to the moment more viciously than he has ever before in his life. This moment, with Clarus in his arms and quiet peace around him, will never come again. This is his last indulgence, a dying, old man’s, and it feels like it might be stolen from him in any moment.
“Stop thinking,” Clarus shushes gently, his fingers tangled up in the pendant Regis still wears. “What comes tomorrow, comes. Let us have now.”
Easier said than done, Regis wants to choke out, but tears burn behind his eyes, and the air he’s breathing in feels dangerously thin.
And Clarus, as perceptive as ever, pushes the subject no more. Instead he says with a light chuckle, “I still can’t believe this thing survived all the years, all the battles, and all the drama.” He tugs a little on the pendant. “I can’t believe you still wear it.”
Regis’s fingers catch Clarus’s around the pendant. “I’d never dare take it off, Clarus. It’s good luck. And in this time more than ever, we could use good luck.”
Regis wonders if Clarus can feel the indentation in the pendant from so many decades long ago, where a bullet struck it and saved Regis’s life. Even if luck is a fable made up for children, and nothing tangible or real, Regis will never take the pendant off. He’ll die with it on.
“I wondered,” Clarus observes. “I looked for it ever so often. But I was unsure.”
“I wore it under my clothing only,” Regis says. He releases Clarus’s hand and follows the curve of the man’s shoulder and neck with his fingers. “I wanted to keep it private—special only to myself. It was your gift to me, Clarus, that did more than just save my life. I wanted to share it with no one else.”
Regis’s fingers ruck against the stubble on Clarus’s jaw.
“Aulea …” Clarus tries delicately.
“I loved her very much,” Regis confesses, eyes closing at the feeling of Clarus’s weight shifting a bit more onto him. “But I have always been in love with you. She would have never asked me to take the pendant off, and I would never have taken it off, even for her.”
More than once however, at the beginning of their marriage when they had been trying to conceive, Regis had watched her eyes stray to it, the metal peeking out from under his pajamas in the privacy of their bedroom.
He often wondered what she thought of it, and maybe he still does wonder to this day. Did she think them tragic and melancholy in their love? Or was there even a hint of envy? Regis can’t say. He only knows that years after her death, Regis felt strong enough to remove his wedding ring. But he has never so much as pondered the idea of removing his pendant.
“I wanted to think you still wore it,” Clarus admits, a touch of possessiveness in his tone. “You’ve always been mine, Regis. Even when we couldn’t be like this, you’ve always been mine.”
Through the night Regis delights in these words, and they hold off the morning just long enough.
In the morning they rise. Clarus helps Regis dress, attendants dismissed, and fingers drift about as if they’re teenagers. All decorum, all propriety, and all care is tossed aside. They’re just Clarus and Regis for a few moments more, and it gives Regis strength for what comes next.
Death comes next.
When death comes for Regis, after Niflheim’s betrayal, and the sham of the marriage between Noctis and Luna is exposed, Clarus stands at his side. It’s not exactly unexpected, but it’s also heartbreaking in a way.
Regis has always known Clarus, like the other members of the king’s council, are slated for death. No one important to Insomina is expected to survive the initial onslaught. But all the same, Regis tries to give Clarus a chance. He tries to run the man off—to buy him at least a little more time.
Clarus scoffs at him and asks in an offended way, “And abandon my king?”
Clarus dies for him then, to protect him, to stand before him as Shield, and the honor of the Amicitia line is preserved.
The Kings of Lucis are not built to stand for long. Regis has known this since he was a child. Kings come and go, and frequently at that. Regis is yet another in a long line, and he’s done all he can. He’s kept his nation strong, raised and loved the King of Kings who is meant to bring peace to all of Eos, and Regis has never once lost sight of who he is.
All in all, as death extends its icy grip towards him with finality, it is a life well lived.
Regis can ask for no more.
Except maybe Clarus waiting for him in the afterlife.
Because even in death, hope isn’t such a terrible thing to have.