"You were supposed to be too tired to stay awake all night." Cor was leaning against the wall outside Reina's door when it opened.
She turned her eyes on him. Sharp. But that was Reina all over now, unless she was trying. "I slept. And Bahamut came to me."
"He came to you?"
"He showed me what would happen if I fail to kill him."
She told him. When she finished, he wished she hadn't. They had worshipped that thing; everyone on Eos revered the Astrals and the Draconian most of all. And he wouldn't think twice about throwing them out with the garbage.
"How do we kill him?" Cor asked.
She shook her head.
"You killed him before," he said.
"I did. In my Dream I went to Angelgard with Ardyn. We summoned him there and battled to his death."
Angelgard. "Isn't that place impossible to get to?"
"Almost always," she said. "In this age, we have one or two days a year when the waters are calm enough to reach it by boat. In the long night things were different, but in any case we had the luxury of time. Now the longer I wait the more dangerous he becomes to everyone on Eos."
But she only cared about five of those people. That part went without saying.
"Can't you just jump over there? However you get around in the shadows," Cor said.
"No. Angelgard is a place of light and the single most well-guarded location on Eos, with respect to the Starscourge. It was, after all, where they entombed Ardyn for two thousand years. They couldn't risk him escaping so easily; the island is warded against the scourge by divine magic. During my Dream, the scourge slowly ate away at the wards, becoming more powerful as the light diminished until it was possible to leap across in one bound. But not today."
So much for the easy answer. Alright. Next solution.
"So we'll go by air," Cor said.
"Easier said than done, unless you have an airship you're not telling me about." She looked him over, like she thought he might be hiding one up his sleeve. Or was at least considering all possibilities right now.
"Niflheim has airships," he said.
"Yes, and that is a possibility. But I would have to travel to Niflheim and kidnap a pilot to force him to fly me to Angelgard. And that would take time."
"Best idea we've got right now."
"Yes, I know." She sighed. "I was just hoping someone had a better one."
"Maybe they will when they wake up. If you're willing to wait that long." Actions he could do. Orders he could follow. But ideas were someone else's job.
She considered with her lips pressed in a tight line and her eyes staring straight through him. Finally she spoke. "It will take him time to amass that sort of power. He can't destroy Eos in a few hours."
"Then we wait," Cor said. "Regis will have something."
"Yes…" She said. Quietly though. Unconvinced.
"You should go back to sleep."
She turned sharp eyes on him. That was a no. The kind he didn't get to argue with no matter who he was or what she thought of him.
"What are you doing out here anyway?" She asked. "Do you have some sort of sixth sense that tells you when I've woken up in the middle of the night?"
"No. But I don't trust you to stay in bed unless you're tied down." Even then she would have gotten out.
"So you were just going to stand here in the hall all night?"
Cor fixed his gaze resolutely on the opposite wall dead ahead and a foot above her head. It was, admittedly, not his finest idea. At the time it had seemed like the best one. Or the only one.
This was why ideas were someone else's job.
Reina sighed. "Stubborn ass."
"Talking to yourself again?"
When she wasn't trying, she had this empty, robotic look to her. He'd stared down enough MTs before. It was that unsettling.
"Stop it," Cor said.
"Stop what?"
"Looking like you've got no soul."
Just a hint of confusion showed through. Looked wrong on her face now.
"I don't know what that means," she said.
He took her shoulder and steered her down the hall toward the lounge. He stood her in front of the long mirror across from the elevator. She stared at her reflection, expression unchanging, before her eyes flicked up to meet his in the mirror.
"I see," she said. "But I don't know how to change it. I think I did it on purpose once. Now it just happens."
"Why would you do that on purpose?"
"So that you would believe what you're thinking now. That I don't have a soul."
"That's not what I'm thinking."
"No?"
"No. I'm thinking you're so damn wrapped up in solving things yourself that you can't even admit there's something going on underneath," Cor said. "And why the hell would you want me to believe you don't have a soul?"
He shouldn't have asked. If she wanted to talk about it, she'd talk about it. Him poking and prodding and making her think about things she wasn't ready to remember only ever made things worse.
She sighed, turned away from the mirror, and looked directly at him. "I wanted to protect you. And me. Maybe. I don't know."
She shook her head. Even though she looked away, she never got that look on her face like she was miles away. Or years away. She chewed her lip and picked at her nails, shook her head again.
Cor grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the couch to sit her down. "Tell me what happened."
She didn't object to being steered to the couch and said nothing when he sat down next to her. Maybe she wouldn't say anything at all. For a long time she just stared at her hands.
"I found out a lot of things that I didn't think the world should know. About the Astrals. The Starscourge. The prophecy. Everything that was keeping people alive through the long night."
Cor nodded—she'd told them that part earlier tonight—but said nothing. If he spoke, she might realize she was actually talking about her Dream.
"I thought I could protect that fragile hope by keeping it all a secret. So I pushed you away—pushed everyone away—because it was easier to keep a secret if I didn't confide in anyone."
He forgot he was supposed to keep quiet. "You think I give a shit what the Astrals did? You think I was still going because I believed some giants in the sky had everything all worked out? Idiot. I never followed Regis because I thought he had divine right. I'm not here because you're the Chosen King's twin. I'm here because I love and respect your father. And I love and respect you."
That empty look was off her face, at least. Now her mouth was open like he'd interrupted her—he had—and she'd forgotten what words came next. Or what words were.
"You could have told me the whole world was going to hell and there was nothing we could do about it. It probably was going to hell. I still would have stood with you."
She dropped her gaze again, picked at her nails.
She told him more. More than he thought he'd ever hear about those ten years. He tried not to say anything. Mostly he succeeded, but not always.
"I know," she said finally, "I know you would have stayed until the end if I hadn't made you believe I was a monster. But I… later I knew I wouldn't survive. I wanted to die. Take Noctis' place. And I thought it would be easier if you didn't love me."
"Easier for who?"
She looked up. "You, I thought. But you're right. Pushing people away isn't strength. It's weakness. Maybe I did it as much for myself. Maybe I thought I wouldn't have the courage to go through with it if anyone was waiting for me to come home."
"Idiot. You think I wasn't always waiting for you to come home?"
He'd gotten complacent. She'd been talking about her Dream all this time without any trouble—or at least without any of her usual problems. This time his words sparked something else.
She stared past his ear for a moment, tears building. She shut her eyes, hung her head, and let them fall on the couch.
"I found out you were when it was already too late."
Cor grabbed her shoulders and crushed her against his chest. "It isn't. You woke up, remember?"
She held onto his arms like she was afraid he was going to disappear. "Yes… I woke up."