Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just a fucking nerd trying to calm my nerves during this trash fire of a decade. So, y'know, don't sue me. I don't have any money.
Seven Devils
Chapter 4: The Tie That Binds (Glauca)
Note(s): Glauca's hometown was never specifically mentioned in any FFXV canon, so I just decided to name it. The geographical location, however, can be found on his page on the FFXV wikia.
Set after both Kingsglaive and Chapter 7 of the game.
Aranea may well never know the truth of the events within the Crown City of Insomnia, and that suits her just fine. It is both above her pay grade and beneath her interest what part the rebels, imperials, and Lucians all played in the catastrophe that has captivated the Star.
What does interest her, however, is how General Glauca ended up in inpatient critical care in an imperial hospital, barely breathing on arrival, and with that infamous magitek armor melted into his flesh.
She may even admit to a healthy curiosity as to how he infiltrated the Crownsguard so long and so successfully. If the rumors are to be believed, that is.
There's no love lost for a man like him, stalking throughout the city like a great black shadow, lingering at the edges of awareness the way a persistent nightmare might. His unwavering fealty to the emperor had always rubbed her the wrong way, like fresh sandpaper on skin. Then again, it may not be loyalty to the empire that drove him so much as a hatred of Lucis, though Aranea finds that she can't quite get behind that flawed logic, either.
She's never seen his face – few in Niflheim have – so there is a surreal feeling that hangs over the commodore's head like a fog as she crosses into the room, green eyes fixated on the figure laid up in bed. While it's hard to tell where the various wires and tubes begin and end, Aranea sees a distinct spike on the heart monitor as he startles, turning his head to watch her with a glazed look.
He's an attractive man – she'd be a goddamn liar to tell herself otherwise – but this is Glauca, a warmongering bastard with no tolerance for insubordination or failure. Hell, he's been known to off his own on the battlefield if he believed the situation called for it.
"You look like shit," she says plainly, and it is at that very moment that she picks up on the distinct scent of earthy cologne. Strange. He doesn't seem like the sort to bother, least of all while hospitalized.
While he stares at her dead on, the general says nothing for several minutes, and were it not for the steady waveform of his breathing on the monitor, Aranea would have sworn that he'd died right there.
Finally, he scoffs.
"You're the second one to say that to me today..."
Her brows rise in open but measured surprise at the sound of his voice, strangely warm but understandably weary, and the smirk wishing to paint itself upon her red lips dies before it can be born. It's Glauca's vague gesture to the bedside table shoved against the window that creases the commodore's brow, a look of disgust settling in.
Of course, Izunia's been here. It explains the smell, some strange blend of lavender and brandy. Not to mention the overtly gaudy floral arrangement obscuring much of the view outdoors.
How had she missed that?
"Ah. I see the circus is still in town."
To her relief, there's something resembling a smile on the general's scarred face, and Aranea is certain that the eccentric state of one imperial chancellor is something the pair of them can agree on.
But she didn't come here to gossip about him.
"So, what's your grief with Lucis?" Aranea seats herself on the physician's chair at his bedside, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. "Why go to all that trouble just to wind up here?"
Whether or not it was worth it seems a better question, but with her phrasing as it is, there's a chance Aranea may well fool him into thinking she knows more than she does.
To her surprise, it works.
"Umbra Scala," he says, and she can feel the confusion before it reaches her expression, a wry smile on the general's face. "A small village that once rested in the shadows of Insomnia on the northeastern archipelago."
A silence lapses between them, and Aranea scours her mind for any mention of the name, for she has certainly never seen it on any map of Lucis. Glauca looks both pleased and disheartened as it dawns on her, the history of the nation and the empire's part in it.
For over a century, Niflheim had been seeking the Crystal, the alleged Heart of Eos, eager to have its lands blessed with the same good fortune that had been granted Lucis. They had been chasing a pipe dream, coveting change from beyond their borders that would have been better sought from within through that same hard work and determination.
The Great War. How fitting that everything in recent history between the two nations always seemed to circle back to that.
Aranea had not even been a concept at the time that King Mors had seen fit to scale back the Wall to Insomnia's ramparts, effectively sacrificing all the lands without. Umbra Scala, like all the rest, had inevitably been wiped out as a result.
Of course, it all boiled down to revenge. It always did.
"So you faulted Regis for that loss?"
Childish.
"No, only his name and what House Caelum came to represent with Mors' passing: The preservation of a lineage rather than a nation." He looks distant, lost to another point in time. A better time, more than likely. "If anything, I wanted to return to the rest of Lucis that which had been taken from them."
Not just revenge then, but jealousy – a desire to take what the people of Insomnia had and redistribute it among the greater populace. Understandable – hell, almost noble – were it not for the innumerable lives he had helped Niflheim destroy in pursuit of his goal.
How many had died as a direct result of his actions? How many people could have been saved from the empire's tyranny by the hand of King Regis' diplomacy alone?
"That's selfish," she says, hands on her knees as she stands. "Look, don't get me wrong: I'm not a goddamn saint myself, but toppling a nation – and leaving its people to hang in the wake of their leader's death – just to prove a point like that, it's... completely fucking baseless."
The general stares at her with some amalgamation of irritation and bewilderment. Had he honestly expected her to endorse his failed escapade simply because they were military comrades? Or had he anticipated her understanding because her home had also been destroyed as a result of ongoing warfare?
God, what a complete bastard, trying to play on her emotions like that.
"So you were angry about what happened to your home, jealous of the people under the protection of the Wall because you and yours weren't counted among them." She glares at him, bitter and a hair's breadth from spitting only venom. Having grown up in the midst of it, Aranea knows a thing or two about war; about losing people and being powerless to stop it. "That's when it's most important to grow up, recognize that you can't control the world and everything in it, so you pick yourself up and commit to something bigger than you. Something that you believe can make a difference for those in your old shoes, and you work to be better than the people who failed you."
He appears startled a minute, taken aback by the terseness of her tone, the unbending iron of her body language. But it doesn't last, inevitably giving way to a humorless laugh and a smile that makes the commodore want to break his neck all the more.
"Is that what you're doing by serving the army, Commodore?"
Hers is a hair-trigger reaction, one that few are able to coax forth. But Glauca has been successful in doing so, in needling her, and it's the resounding smack of the commodore's palm against his cheek that swallows up the room, putting a very distinct punctuation mark at the end of their conversation.
Heels of her boots strike the floor with purpose, the distance between them growing as she approaches the door, tense fingers on the handle as she turns back to look at the general once more.
"The difference between you and me, Glauca, is that I weigh my options before resorting to violence, and I don't kill people. It's very apparent that you don't have any qualms about either."
