I cannot remember your face. Nor the sound of your voice.

I have naught but fragments left. Black, curly hair threaded between my fingers. Warm hands in mine. Knowing you would laugh at my jokes, even as I cannot recall what the joke was, or what you might have said in return. I remember you loved my silliness, my vanity, how I depended on you and no one else.

I remember we created the purest light in Eos.

Memories decay with time. This is true even of immortals.

I cannot decide if it is better this way or not.

I cannot tell if this dulls the pain or not.

I wonder, is it better to know you have loved and hold on to the few scraps left of it in your mind? Or is it more merciful to forget it entirely, now that it is forever more beyond your reach?

Sometimes I think I see you in the darkness, but when I look, you've gone. If it was ever you at all.

You are the only thing I pray to anymore. Maybe a part of me still hopes one day you'll be able to answer.

It wasn't just my future they stole from me. I gave up on having a future when Bahamut chose me.

I cannot forgive that they stole yours too. I cannot forget that they erased what we might have been, the children we would have had, the kingdom we could have built.

I cannot remember the name of our daughter.

I do not care about the kingdom. I never actively sought that sort of power, and though I would have taken up the crown as commanded, I do not mourn the loss of it. If we had only been allowed to live in peace, I would have forgiven them their treachery. If they had only left us alone, I would have been content with that.

There was a song you used to sing to yourself. You didn't sing it often, never around a crowd and sometimes not even in front of me. But over the years we were together, I heard enough of it to piece together the whole thing. It was a lullaby, I think-I cannot recall-but your voice, soft and sweet and at times so remarkably off-key that it would reduce me to laughter, made it the sweetest thing I had ever heard.

I try to hum it to myself now. When I cannot stand the silence. When I try to forget the other sounds that haunt me. I cannot escape into sleep-I have not slept in ages. I am so tired, El, but I cannot rest.

The smell of your blood has sunk into the stones of this prison. It permeates the air. I cannot escape it. I cannot escape the horrid sound you let out when Somnus' blade cut through your chest. I cannot forget the thud of your body as it hit the ground.

I cannot remember your last words to me.

If I am here until the end of Eos itself, will I forget you completely?

I tell myself a story.

In an age long past, there lived a healer in the ruins of what was once Ifrit's kingdom of the sun. He could cure the afflicted of a Scourge that turned men and animals into beasts. And during the Long Night, a woman came to him and begged for help.

I cannot remember, El. Did I save your sister, or your mother?

El. Elpis Maelen, Eldest Daughter of...

Elpis Maelen, of... Izunia.

Whose name was Izunia?

Elpis. Would that I could carve your name into my skin so that I could never forget it.

In an age long past, a healer lived in Solheim. The gods themselves promised him the sun, and for a time, he had it, in the form of a woman named Elpis. And though he did everything they asked of him, in the end, the Crystal asked one thing of him that he could not give. He could not give up the sun.

The gods lied. And the healer's sun was snuffed out. Another took her place, just as another took mine.

Somnus. Was this what you wanted? Did you grow to hate me that much and I was blind to it? We had our differences, but we were brothers. I loved you. I would have protected you from the crown and the Crystal if I could.

Let me tell you a story.

In an age long past, a Scourge ravaged mankind...

Once I believed my destiny to be the savior of my people, of Solheim. I believed my destiny was to be king, and the sun itself my wife. But my destiny was a lie. My fate is to live in darkness forever, a monster hidden away from the light.

Somnus. The Astrals. You all wanted a monster, didn't you? You wanted a monster for your story.

I was not a monster when I began this tale. But I will become one. I will be the greatest monster Eos has ever seen. I will be the monster you made of me.

If that is my destiny, I will play it gladly.

Forgive me, El.

Light. Light, and the sound of many footsteps.

Ardyn looks up and hisses as the light glares into his eyes. If he still felt pain, it would be agonizing.

A man with blond hair approaches him. "Aren't you an impressive sight? Who knew the soft Lucians were capable of such cruelty?" The man smirks, regarding the hooks in Ardyn's flesh. "Mayhaps we should take notes."

Ardyn does not respond. His eyes, still adjusting to the light after ages of going without, roam over the people that have assembled in his prison cell.

And then he stops. For there, just in front of the exit, he sees the flow of an orange skirt, white fabric dragging along the ground, the curve of a smile with full lips.

Elpis smiles at him, brown eyes shining, and before he can even whisper her name, she's gone.

"Well," the man says, an unwelcome intrusion, "if the Lucians feared you so desperately that they hid you here, that makes you a very intriguing person to know." To the strange soldiers around him, the man says, "Get him down."

Ardyn, gazing at the spot where Elpis was, does not immediately realize the clanking sound he hears moments later are the chains coming away from the walls. The soldiers around him curse quietly as they see the hooks in his body.

"No need," he finally says, his voice just as clear as it was the day the gods cursed him with immortality. He rips the hook from his right palm, watching as the Scourge drips from the wound. It's strange to see a hole in his body and feel only a sense of pressure, not pain. Then it heals, leaving no trace it was ever there at all.

Slowly, Ardyn smiles.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he says to the blond man in armor. He picks up a long lost dagger from the ground and hears Elpis' dying gasps once more. "Ardyn Izunia. At your service."

I see you everywhere, Elpis.

History has forgotten us. There is no mention of us in any books, any stories. Only Somnus and Crescentia-though their names have been forgotten as well. It's not much of a comfort. Deus rewrote history well.

There are no tribes in the desert anymore. Everyone has assimilated to towns and cities. I think you'd like that your home still looks nearly the same as it did two millennia ago.

Somnus began a kingdom, the kingdom that should have been ours. He named it 'Lucis'. He did not stay in Solheim; his castle lay past your desert. Insomnia, it's called. I suppose he thought himself smart for that. Then again, 'Elpida' would have made a beautiful name for a capitol. You never would have gone for that, though.

The prophecy has not forgotten me. I am known as the Plague, the Wicked One. Isn't that grand? Isn't it amazing how one can go from being blessed to being cursed in two millennia?

Gods, El. Two millennia. I have lived in darkness for two millennia without you.

I see you everywhere. Never for very long - you are not the Oracle anymore, to defy the veils between our realms. The beyond keeps a close hold on you. But I do see you. I see you in Galdin Quay, in Lestallum, in Gralea...

You are watching over me even now. The True King has the gods and the Crystal and the Oracle watching over him; I have you. I need nothing more.

What would you think of Eos now, I wonder? You would love how easy it is to have any kind of dish from any culture you wanted. I no longer need sustenance, but sometimes I eat a meal, just to feel... something. I've even grown fond of spicy foods. You would be proud of me.

I see you now, Elpis. On the darkened streets of Insomnia. It has been forty long years since I've been freed, Elpis. I cannot understand why you still wait for me, after everything I've done. After everything I'm about to do.

Perhaps it's not you I see at all. Perhaps you're merely a figment of my imagination. I have become very good at creating illusions, after all.

On the darkened streets of Insomnia, Ardyn waits for Noctis. His impatient, cheerful humming falls silent as he senses something on his shoulder.

Elpis stands behind him, hand on his shoulder. His white robe hangs from her shoulders and is utterly clean of the blood that spilled on it two millennia before. At his confusion, she grins mischievously. "A certain Oracle helped me sneak through the veil."

Ardyn raises a trembling hand to her cheek - and watches in dismay as it passes through her. "El," he says, his voice a reverent whisper.

"Your time in darkness is coming to an end, Ardyn," Elpis says, and there's still so much love for him in her tone that it makes him want to weep. In his head, though, the monsters wail. They remember her, and both love and hate her and the salvation she promises. "I will await you in the beyond."

He shakes his head. "You should have moved on without me. I am not the man you loved. I have not been him in ages."

With gentle sympathy, Elpis puts a hand to his cheek. There is only a hair of separation between his skin and her soul. "What you are is not your fault," she says quietly. "I know you, Ardyn Lucis Caelum, and you are not the Accursed Immortal. You are, and shall ever be, my dearest husband."

Smiling bitterly, Ardyn closes his eyes. "I would have seen you happy without me. You should have lived a long, full life."

"It would not have been so without you," Elpis says. "I have seen all the threads of fate, dearest Ardyn, and our souls were always meant to meet. We are so tightly intertwined, you and I. In every life, we meet; in every life, we love each other."

"Let us hope those other incarnations fare better than we," Ardyn says, and he cannot help the pure venom in his voice.

Elpis only smiles slightly and steps away. "I'm so sorry, my love," she says. "But this will hurt."

Ardyn hears the sound of a warp behind him and knows Noctis waits. In a blink, Elpis is gone, the only sign she was ever there a drifting of beloperone petals on the air.

Pain, Ardyn muses with a slow grin as he turns to face the True King. Won't that be a novel experience?

Over Insomnia, the sun rises. The Long Night comes to an end once again. In the throne room, a woman in a wedding gown and a man in royal black kiss on the throne while sylleblossoms and soul crystals float around them, the sun shining down.

And far away, on a cliff overlooking the desert, a woman in a white healer's robe sits with a man resting his head on her lap, his long red-violet hair spilling over her legs. She stares out at the desert that she both can and cannot recognize, and she waits.

Slowly, the man's eyes open, revealing amber irises. He gazes up at her with awe.

Smiling, Elpis puts a hand to Ardyn's cheek, leans down, and kisses him deeply. When they part, Ardyn has tears falling from his eyes.

Come now, Elpis says as she strokes his hair. You can rest, Ardyn. Rest with me.

Gladly, Ardyn says. She presses her forehead to his and, together after two thousand long years, Elpis and Ardyn rest at last.

NOTES: For real now, this is the end of the actual story. I have some thoughts about doing alternate timeline scenarios (because if the game itself can do it, why can't I?) but I'm going to let them simmer a bit before I touch them.

I decided to play around just a bit with Ardyn's memory of things. This comes mainly from when he was displaying the illusionary dead bodies in the throne room before the final battle. I noticed that a certain little brother was not amongst them, and you can't tell me Ardyn wouldn't have slapped up an imaginary dead Somnus. It wasn't all people Noctis knew and loved - Nyx Ulric was up there, so it was people who had gotten in Ardyn's way specifically in the story. So, I figured Ardyn's memories must be hazy. This always give leeway for the reader if they prefer to think that Ardyn was lying during his reveal to Noctis at the Crystal.

(We'll also ignore the fact that, after two thousand years, the language of Eos would have evolved so much that once Verstael said anything to Ardyn, his reaction should have be "? Why is this weird man speaking gibberish at me?" I assume Square will also ignore this little wrinkle in Ardyn's DLC.)

Thanks for reading my little 50k monstrosity of a fic, y'all.

The playlist for the epilogue:

1. Which Witch by Florence + the Machine
2. Seven Devils by Florence + the Machine
3. Main theme from FINAL FANTASY by Yoko Shimomura for the FFXV soundtrack