WHO: Ardyn and... well, anyone who decides to venture forth to check on him
WHAT: Someone is not taking the aftermath of the event well at ALL
WHERE: Ardyn's cabin
WHEN: post-New Age flood
WARNINGS: minor self-injury and blood

It has been years since he felt pain.

Not physical pain, of course. He feels that like any other; it is, in fact, a constant in his life between the daemons crawling around in his skin and the strange haunting injury inflicted by his very first death at the hands of the people of Lucis.

His people.

But this pain, the pain he had felt that day, as the hands scratched and beat, as the whip cracked and the cheers started and the agony began and the darkness came-

The darkness came and never left.

He hasn't felt it for years. It's just been... it's been like his hip, a reality of his situation, an old wound that necessitated certain measures but simply a part of his reality. It only hurt when you forgot to take those measures. And then...

And then...

These strands of affection and warmth, for Shiro and 'Lilith', whoever she might be, and for the man with the coat, the boy who'd tried to take care of the children, for Helen, for Yara- Like the stinging of a limb as feeling returns but a thousand times worse, a hundred thousand, and where his hate had burned low and steady for this place and those in it, it rages now

It rages in desperation.

In truth, it simply rages. No more will he be simply satisfied by the thought of his own death. No more will that peace he has so justly earned be the only reward he will take. His feelings on the Barge itself had been a low-burning anger, frustration and contempt for all it stood for, irritation that his end would be denied to him again. Now he is resolute.

He doesn't know how, but he will stab the heart out of this place. He will find whatever it is this Admiral truly cares for and he will rip it to pieces in front of his ineffable face before watching the surprise in his eyes as a blade crosses his throat. He will find a way. He's always found a way. No matter how clever, no matter how powerful. He has always found a way. All it takes is time.

But for the moment, at this moment, he will rest. He will pant with an exertion he hasn't felt in years, shift at the strange feel of air on his skin, on the strange patchwork of scars that cover him front to back, move his fingers for the bite and sting of the impact wounds he had left on the knuckles and the feeling of the black sludge that filled his veins slowly dripping out of them. He will absently push a piece of debris from under his leg as he lets his head drop and ignores the destruction he'd wrought almost unconsciously upon his room.
"What will you do? Banish the daemons and bring peace? Erase me from history once more?"

"This time, you can rest in peace."

Lies.


[ ooc: threads to his room will be directly after this, but feel free to tag him as being in the dining hall or a corner of the deck if you'd like a not-this-raw after-flood conversation. He's a little more sedate but will look reasonably normal otherwise. ]