Prompt: #11 Monster

Summary: It is not only the creatures in the dark that you need to be afraid of.

A/N: This is a continuation the Adventum Aduro verse.

Monstrum is Latin for "monster".

Monstrum

The frustration threatened to boil out of her and she could barely contain the scream that was caught in her throat. Never had there been a time that she felt more self loathing than she did at that moment. She could almost press her hands so forcefully against her eyes that she would crush them to prevent them from ever betraying her again. This was just, unacceptable, foolish, weak. What would have been a moment to prove her strength and acceptance, had only proven how useless she really was. She wishes she could just erase the memory from both their minds. She wishes that she could take back that moment. She wishes that she had never been born! A split moment of unconscious reaction was going to cost her everything. What killed her, what absolutely wretched her heart out of her chest, was that he would never blame her for it. He would never even be upset with her for what she had done. He would understand which made it that much worse. She knew that he would never hold it against her. He would make excuses for her when she did not deserve them.

Think. Think. She needed to think about what she was going to do. There was no way that she was going to live through his ill focused guilt again. She needed to do something. How did one go about undoing damage that was unfixable? No, she could not be so bleak. It was not in her make up to look on things so negatively. She was not going to start now. The self deprivation would have to wait for a later time. There would be plenty of time for that later, when she was alone and after he understood. Right now, she had to put all her mind and efforts into damage control. The only comfort she can give herself is the knowledge that he would not avoid her. He was too noble to leave her, even though it probably pained him to even think of looking at her now.

Was all this mental anguish even healthy? What kind of a relationship could they establish if they were constantly tip toeing around each other? Always being so careful around each other. This was destructive, not productive. She did not like that. This was not the type of love that she wanted. This was not what she had envisioned her future would be like. It all seemed to be wrong. She and Noctis were constantly at odds with each other. Neither one of them could accept that they were equal to the other. So it was a constant battle of emotions. Things went from extreme highs to extreme lows so easily. It made everything that much more worse that they needed each other regardless. They were stuck so that they had no choice but to face it. Avoidance was not an option. It was not just about their own feelings here. What happened between them would effect the entire planet. If they could not become a solid pair, there was no hope of activating the Crystals. More was at risk here than her heart. She could recover given enough time, but it was not just her heart at stake and that was the problem.

Like a prelude of what was to come, the day had not started out very well. She had awoken to a bright day after such a wonderful outing with Noctis. The last thing she remembered was laying her head upon his shoulder and letting the calm, steady beat of his heart lull her into slumber. He must have carried her back to her rooms, but the thought did not make her as happy as one would think. She had not been able to take advantage of that contact. It had been a great opportunity and she had missed it. He had not been there when she opened her eyes, but she had felt a lingering trace of his presence. She had known that she had just missed him as he left her. Which meant that he had stayed all through the night and watched her. She would have felt content had he stayed until she could see him. The image of his face greeting her when she opened her eyes in the morning was bliss. With his lack of physical presence, she had only the whiff of his scent in the air. The resulting emptiness could be likened to an addict denied his fix. That had been her and the entire morning was spent in half awareness as everyone assembled to see her and Noctis off to Tenebrae.

It was only when she had seen him and felt his presence just beside her, that she felt settled again. Her previous withdrawal had been appeased. She had looked up into his face and could not help but smile. A warmth had spread through her chest when he had returned it. If his smirks had the ability to move her, his smiles could knock her completely off her feet. The only thing that had been missing was the touch of his hand seizing hers. That would have completed the feeling. She had found herself actually swaying in an attempt to be closer to him and was almost leaning into him by the end. The need to be close to him had been strong. The want for him to touch her as he had too briefly and too sparsely before was mounting. It was a tension that felt as bitter as it felt sweet. The expectation was a thrill through her entire body as they stood looking at each other.

After fond but brief good byes, they had boarded the airship together. Once aboard and in the air, they had walked about the ship side by side until they had found themselves on the flight deck. The conversation between them had been a light banter while exchanging flirty glances. Her glances were flirty at least. His were those fierce, penetrating stares that always had her questioning how he could always have so much restraint. He wanted to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched by him. Why he could not see that whenever he looked so deeply into her eyes was confusing.

It was when they were at the halfway mark above VallisAcerbis that things plummeted. Plummeted in both a physical and metaphorical sense. They had seen the threat at the same time, though he had actually felt it first. A monster. A very big one that had been in mid action when they had caught sight of it too late. They instantly reacted. The pilot had dipped into a very steep dive to avoid the boulder that was vaulted towards them a second later. She heard Noctis shout an order to the pilot before disappearing and she teleported right after him when he appeared on the ground to face the beast. He had been wise enough not to try and be a lone hero and had accepted her help with nothing more than a silent nod. If anything, it had looked like he had been proud of her for being there beside him. This was a chance to show just how compatible they really were.

So they had fought together and did very well. It was a heavily armored thing with a hide that could not be penetrated. After a few strategic attacks, they had spotted the thing's weakness in the area around its heart. With a nod to him, she had maneuvered herself to its grotesque face and pierced solidly through its eye. The resulting reaction threw her off its head while it jerked its body violently in pain. Instead of stabbing the exposed chest as he was supposed to, Noctis had saved her from the clutches of those massive thrashing limbs. One of which would have crushed her as she continued to fall had not Noctis placed himself between her and it. The force of the severe blow on his back flung him towards her and he had crashed, bodily into her.

Catching him within her arms, she had teleported the both of them to the ground. His weight had them stumbling onto the sand together. Terror had seized her when she saw his thick blood staining the sands beneath him. His eyes had been closed and within that quick moment of panic, she had not even rationalized that he could just be unconscious. There was no time for anything except the cry that flew from her mouth as she looked down at his blank face. The beast had roared a raging retribution for the loss of its eye and she could do no more for Noctis. She had been steering herself to finish this fight alone and had stood to face it when she felt Noctis' presence behind her. It was like he had magically appeared on his feet and before she could even turn around and look at him, he had stepped in front of her. Her eyes saw the outline of his spiky hair and the insignia emblazoned on the back of his leather jacket before he was in action.

The battle between man and monster was vicious. There was a power around Noctis that had every hair on her body stand on end. It was no quick pinch this time. It had felt more like someone had lightning straight into her chest, creating an almost static fire to race through her body. The breath was knocked out of her lungs as her limbs stiffened. Her skin had felt like there were sparks threatening to catch her entire body on fire and its color began to change. For a moment, she almost felt detached from her body as she saw the color of her skin change to a bright yellow before it started to morph. It grew to an almost dark glowing orange when it retracted. Just like that, her skin was back to its usual pale color and the bolt of electricity within her chest retreated. All this happened the instant Noctis reappeared just before her with his front still facing the massive body of their foe. A foe, that as she had watched over his shoulder, was falling to the ground before landing with a quaking thud. The shake had been enough to unbalance her already unsteady legs and she had crumbled to the sand. The shock of her fall reminded her that she needed to breathe. The beating of her heart had never felt that fast and she had been shaking uncontrollably as her body went into shock.

It was only once he had waited a moment to confirm his kill that he had slowly turned around to look at her. Cal had told her about the time he had seen Noctis in battle during their travels together. His description of how Noctis had looked had always seemed exaggerated by Cal's usual enthusiasm. Cal had a habit of blowing things out of proportion. She had never appeared that way, even after an especially difficult exertion of her powers. Her cousin had said that the color of Noctis eyes had changed to a blood red. His face, though unchanged, had somehow seemed distorted as an outline or silhouette had hovered over his features. Cal had never been able to describe it other than to say it looked like an apparition of sorts. She knew now that he had not been exaggerating. He had actually not even been able to touch a fraction of what she had seen in Noctis at that moment. It had been horrifying and beautiful and it had overwhelmed her with its appeal. Something inside herself wanted to be close to whatever it was that hovered just above his face, like she always wanted to be close to him. Desires already present, were doubled.

The cry that had escaped her lips in reaction to the picture that Noctis had made was completely misunderstood. Her breathe had still not recovered and her body had still been in the throes of trembling shock. So when he had reached out to her, she had fallen back. The sparking electricity had shot through her again at his actions had pushed her back. Her mouth went dry and no words could escape it's depth. His black gloved hand had stopped halfway from reaching her face before he had recoiled. The tormented look of agony that had flashed from those red eyes showed just how damaging her reaction had been. With a blink of those eyes, the red was retreated back to blue and it looked as if the weight of the world crashed onto him as he collapsed a few feet away from her.

It was another moment before her senses came back to her and she had finally managed to stop shaking. As soon as she could, she staggered towards him. She was not sure what she had wanted to say or what she was going to do. All she knew was that she had to make him understand that she had not been cringing away from him on purpose. She knew that he must have thought she found him repulsive. It was another moment before she realized the blurriness in her vision were her tears as she wept her apology. All for naught. His eyes were closed once again, finally succumbing to unconsciousness. The sand he laid upon clumped with the thickness of his blood and she is not sure what she would have done if she had not heard the sounds of the hovering airship above them. With one defiant burst of energy, she had teleported them directly into the little infirmary before she fell back and joined him in that void of sleep.

When she regained consciousness, it was within her own bed within her own rooms in Tenebrae. The first thing she did was fly off the bed and demand to know where Lord Noctis was. Only to be told that he had recovered and had disappeared. She knew he would not stay away for long, so that was not what worried her now. It was the reason behind his need to disappear that had her pacing her rooms like a caged animal with the temptation of bashing her own head in. Noctis always claimed to be a creature of evil that other evils hide from in the dark. He confessed this as if he were some monster that you should run from in terror. What did that make her then? If he was what evils ran from in the dark, that meant that she was something worse than a monster. She must be, because it was her that had him hiding now.