Headcanon Where Nikolai Grows Out His Hair After Fyodor’s "death" In The Hopes That When He Looks In

hamelin-born

@secret-engima

*snicker* Just - think of the shenanighans if they both came back as teenagers of the same age! Considering their obviously familial interactions, people would constantly mistake them for siblings - but, oooh. If Nox still addresses Ardyn as ‘Uncle’, that - opens the door for some truly hilarious misconceptions on the part of any onlooker…

*giggles*. Just. Imagine people thinking that Nox and Ardyn are nephew and uncle, and Nox wearily (and Ardyn gleefully)  having to tell people over and over and over again that Nox’s grandfather had Ardyn in his old age - Ardyn will be sure to imply all kinds of things about said ‘grandfather’, and end up misleading so many people by telling them the truth.

…it also works out pretty well time-wise. Regis, once he gets over his heart attack(s), will be faced with the unfortunate conjecture that Mors had Ardyn at approximately the same time Regis had Nox - that is, during the Chocobro 1.0 Roadtrip.

Regis: My family is so messed up.

Cid, unsympathetically: Yer royalty, Regis. Pretty sure there’s a lot more screwed up stuff yer family’s done over the years.

Regis: Do not remind me!

Me: *wheezes softly* you’re so lucky I’m looking for some stress relief rn and thus in the mood for another Nox verse. That and this is hilarious.

-Nox still calls Ardyn Uncle. No he doesn’t care they are both physically sixteen (aging Nox up from the 13 of Main so that they’re both “born” while Mors was kicking), this is his UNCLE. He will not call him otherwise. He got used to calling him that in the void.

-Nox and Ardyn still drift in to Hammerhead, this time together, and Cid gets to witness the combined stupid of an uncle-nephew pair of Lucis Caelums who are both going through puberty at the same time.

-Cid is a Screech™ on the inside.

-Ardyn needs a new name since “the Chancellor” is now missing. He snags the name Apollo because he’s a gremlin like that

-Axis is still Nox’s Shield, and Titus is still Apollo’s, but neither realize that Apollo is Ardyn de-aged. Nope, they think that Ardyn was Apollo’s half sibling, one of three, the other being Nox’s mystery mother. It’s a soap opera level backstory, but it works because APOLLO AND NOX NEVER SAY IT. Everyone else just puts those pieces together themselves when struggling with the name “Izunia” and the pair’s insistence on them uncle-nephew.

-In this AU, gremlin child Apollo is the one to give the game away, he kinda-maybe comes across Noctis’s birthday trip to Galdin during the day, WHILE Noctis is in Galdin, remembers what is going to happen that night and is just like “Welp the marilith can’t kill him if he isn’t THERE, right?”, promptly picks Noctis up, knocks him out with a bit of magic, and wanders off using his magic in a manner very similar to his old daemon illusions.

-Nox is not a happy camper when Apollo saunters over to their campsite a few miles away from Galdin with mini-him under one arm.

-So anyway Regis and the guard proceed to wig out when they realize Noctis has somehow disappeared from the middle of his security detail and start combing the area, Apollo and Nox evacuate said area with child in tow because What is Braincell and encounter Axis on a Hunt.

-Axis: “what is that.”

-Apollo, lion kinging the unconscious prince: “A CROWN PRINCE”

-Axis: “NO”

-But Axis doesn’t want to get caught by Regis anymore than Apollo and Nox do so welp off to Hammerhead we go with a small child in being passed around like delicate but unwanted baggage.

-Noctis wakes up about halfway to Hammerhead and would freak out except Nox is wrapping him up in frightened by caring magic and Apollo is laughing his head off as Axis chases him around with a knife and it’s all very three stooges like. So Noctis giggles despite himself and then laughs out loud when the three “kidnappers” proceed to freak out and fall all over themselves to keep him happy.

-Noctis: Are you two … my brothers?”

-Nox: *bluescreens*

-Apollo: Nox is your half-brother yes, but I’m your uncle, actually.

-Noctis: *confused but pleased noises*

-So LONG story short, Cid calls Regis to inform him that his kid is in Hammerhead, Regis rushes over and because Apollo and Nox have already been discovered by Noctis, they swallow their unease and stay put where Cid ordered them while Axis sneaks off before the king can arrive.

-Regis arrives to find not one, but THREE blood relatives waiting for him, once of which is a son he didn’t know he had, the son he DID know he had, and a HALF-BROTHER who is roughly the same age as son number one.

-Regis needs a drink. And a sit-down. Clarus is just about ready to blow a gasket.

-And OH the conclusions they make (with Cid’s help because he’s known these morons for about a year now), oh the RUMORS that start once the pair are returned to the Citadel and eventually announced to the public. OH BOY.

-Apollo is honestly taking a bit too much glee in everyone’s horror at his age and Mors supposed actions. Nox is just- he’s tired. He’s so tired. Can he just go to sleep and wake up when people stop being ridiculous? No. Lovely.

-Cor is vaguely impressed. Just when he thought Regis’s life couldn’t get more complicated thanks to Mors, look what shows up seventeen years later.

-Also Cor: You know so if Ardyn is Apollo’s half-brother, and Apollo is Nox’s uncle, that means-

-Regis, nursing a drink and a mental breakdown: I KNOW COR. DON’T TELL ME COR. LEAVE IT ALONE COR.

-Titus, who has been dealing with the gremlin (read: Apollo) for a while now: I’m not sure if he inherited most of his problems from his mother or from Mors’, honestly.

-Apollo: :3

Hi! You know who I am and what I bring, so... Nox and Ardyn having serious arguements; what's do you reckon it would be like and how others think of it?

YOU. HOW DARE. (grumbles) fine. Lemme see how long it takes me to make everyone cry.

-There are very few things that Ardyn and Nox have serious arguments about. That doesn’t mean they don’t fight (they do, nigh constantly unless one or both need moral support instead) but the things that make them have serious fights are things they intentionally try to avoid. Those things can basically be boiled down to:

1. Nox not taking his health/self-preservation seriously

2. Ardyn not taking his health/self-preservation seriously

3. The Past (not just their personal past, but the past that lies between them as the Accursed and the Chosen King, the 114th of Somnus’s line and the Betrayed Healer King, and no matter how hard they try sometimes, after bad nights or hard days, it weighs them down).

-Both of them are aware of their own buttons and take pains to avoid them, which is why a serious, slow-burn argument literally never happens between them. If tension starts to slowly rise between them, one of them will notice before it gets too bad and call a time out for them both to cool off.

-No. When these two fight, really fight, it’s sudden and devastating. Like flash floods and lightning strikes. Little to no warning, sudden escalation that looking back on it either can fully explain. From the outside it’s a little more visible, the sudden tensing of shoulders, the way Ardyn’s teasing because suddenly layered in venom without him even seeming aware, the way Nox’s insults turn genuine and become pointed, stabbing into old wounds that normally he would never touch. For the two of them, there is no real memory of when or how their words escalate from the norm to trying to verbally rip each other apart.

-No matter what the topic is about or who “started” it (and really there is almost no way to tell who starts the escalation in these things), it always ends the same way: one of them crosses a line. Spirals out of control so far and so fast they reach out and verbally gut the other with something that only they know about. Ardyn might reference the Train Incident with Prompto, or him not being there when his father died, or, worst of all and only in his blackest of moods, Nox’s failure to save Luna (no one is ever mentioned by name, but the references of trains, ignorance, protecting loved ones… Nox always knows what Ardyn is talking about and it always cuts too deep). Nox, on the other hand, drags up Ardyn’s own temper, needles him over his old manipulations and his lies or, in his worst, most poisonous moments, references Ardyn’s lover Aera (again, no specifics or names, just oblique references, random phrases that only the two of them understand).

-(It is ironic, in a way that makes both of them hurt, that their greatest weaknesses are the Oracles they loved and lost. This one pain they share on an intimate level yet somehow can’t always stop themselves from weaponizing against the other).

-After that Final Line is crossed, the silence that falls around them both is a weight of its own. Anyone unfortunate enough to witness it can feel the hurt emotions, the regret for words that cannot be taken back and the anger that keeps apologies from being aired. From the inside of the argument it feels like a tornado just whipped through, tearing apart their emotions and leaving them both stunned and hurt and confused on how it went that bad so fast or even what the argument was originally about. From the outside, it feels like witnessing a horrible car crash, the silence that follows being the harsh ringing in the ears after metal stops screaming.

-One or both of them always leaves the room after that. If the other stays, they tuck into themselves, refusing to interact with anyone, drifting to some window or corner where they can brood and seethe.

-The silence will stay for at least a week. Maybe more. Less because they are being stubborn and more because they have little to no sense of time on a good day, and they are Not Having A Good Day right now. They won’t stay in the same room, won’t talk, won’t even look at each other.

-Ardyn will sometimes leave the Citadel altogether, disappear into the wilds for however long it takes him until he either no longer looks at Nox and sees Somnus standing over Aera’s corpse calling her a “foolish woman” (if Nox is the one who crossed the line) or no longer feels like there’s a monster trying to crawl out of his skin and finish the job he did hurting his nephew (if he’s the one who went too far).

-Nox, since he cannot exactly leave the Citadel without an escort unless he wants to panic his dad, will go mute entirely. He won’t talk to anyone, will barely eat or drink and often can’t hold it down as he stews-stews-stews. If Ardyn is the one who crossed the lines (particularly the Luna line), Nox might go out into the garden and scream wordless pain into the rain (and it will always rain when he goes to the garden, his magic calling down Ramuh’s storms even as the Fulgarian tempers away the lightning and thunder that want to come to the grieving Chosen’s call). If Nox was the one to go too far, eventually someone will find him in one of two places. One of those places is the Hall of Arts.

-The other is the Throne Room.

-For Regis, there is nothing quiet as terrifying as the day he walked into his Throne Room without warning or knowledge of Nox’s presence and walked straight into a grieving magic field so thick and powerful it took him ten seconds of frantic blinking to see Nox standing by the throne, touching one armrest with shaking fingers rather than sitting on the throne looking too-old-too-tired in a pool of his own blood with a sword through his heart (he never asks what that vision was, but he does order an extra close watch kept on Nox for the next month, just in case it was a look at his eldest child’s inner thoughts).

-Eventually, whoever wandered off will drift back in, fall into the other’s orbit without a word. They’ll stare at each other for a while, not apologizing, not speaking. Then either Ardyn will plop his dreaded hat onto Nox’s head, or Nox will slide forward and hug his Uncle with shaking hands and they will know that all is forgiven. Their regular snarking and arguments resume like nothing has happened. To an outsider, it looks unhealthy. Surely they need to talk about what happened, to understand each other to prevent if from happening again?

-They don’t though. They had an entire afterlife and time-traveling journey to hash out their issues and scream their grief and sob their apologies. What arguments that flare between them, the hurts they air, are nothing that they have not already bared their souls about and apologized for a hundred thousand times before. They know where they went wrong, they know that they are both sorry. They don’t need to say it again, just like they don’t need to bother pretending that the wounds ripped open in the latest fight ever really stopped bleeding in the first place. They know that the other will never intentionally hurt them anymore, so flash-fire fights like these are just … slip-ups. Steam blowing before they can turn it against someone who doesn’t understand what they do and might not survive the fallout should it turn physical.

-That’s why they so rarely fight. They’ve both done enough hating and hurting for lifetimes. After everything they’ve been through, there is very, very little worth fighting over in their minds. And certainly nothing worth the inevitable fallout.

always just beyond my reach

So if I understand Fyodor's ability correctly-

there is no "freedom" in "destiny"

I hope Fyodor is in Nikolai's body now and that he's forced to experience Nikolai's love for him in such a way that he can't escape because he's joined them irrevocably. I hope it does something deranged to his psyche to parasitically gorge himself on someone who had, with utter, grief-stricken sincerity, mourned him.

I hope Fyodor drowns in the horrifying waves of intimacy as he subsumes the only person who didn't need a lobotomy to adore him.

[Sandbox] A piece I drew for Feb 2nd last year, I post it here now. Happy 2/2.

@secret-engima THESE GIVE ME NOX/LITTLE-NOX AU VIBES!! AS WELL AS CHILD KING NOCTIS AU!!

First Pic: https://www.zerochan.net/2129241

Second Pic: https://www.zerochan.net/2129242

Third Pic: https://www.zerochan.net/2090127

@blackkatmagic @rayshippouuchiha @followthestars @araceil

Now you tell me,it can be said that the match between the five-hundred-year-old Fyodor and Dazai Osamu ended in a draw almost like fifty fifty???

idk if it's been explored yet how fyodor's ability opens up insane fyolai dynamics like i'm pretty sure fyolai shippers gotta be ready to have prime quality angst content for breakfast lunch and dinner but now you get a full on five star seven course meal 24/7, 365, made of bernadette animatics and tears of blood

like what do you MEAN his ability is to take over the person who finally kills him, stripping them of their will and freedom in the most visceral way possible, until they become his everything? what do you mean that knowingly killing him now would be, perhaps, the ultimate act of going against human instinct to so thoroughly give yourself and everything you are up to this person who can now use you in such a complete sense of the word?

shut UP and don't talk to me about the possibility of nikolai finding out or knowing about his ability and still wanting to bury a dagger into fyodor's heart - except maybe not, because he remembers the burst of the helicopter and tower, he remembers the still-warm limp hand clutched in his own, he wonders if that agony was humanity, there goes the one person, the one person-

and fyodor, would he hesitate at all? what's one more person after all these years of living on stolen time? or would he bleed at nikolai's hand and wonder even for a second if maybe it's time to let it all end, that his suit and hat and cards wouldn't suit fyodor anyway, that maybe those mismatched eyes might not be a sacrifice he's willing to pay

imagine the sheer devotion it would take to look him in the eye and kill him, killing yourself, the ultimate lovers' suicide really, dazai should be jealous, because here is a bond that can rival the stars, like a single free dove reviving a demon from the pits of hell, carrying him on white wings, because he is the only person who ever understood

imagine fyodor opening his eyes in that offered body and looking at his own hands and knowing they will never be clasped so happily again, no one to look at him without fear, no one bold or deranged or maybe just lovely enough to offer him a friendship bracelet with one hand and stab him with another

do you think nikolai would kill him, die for him, die with him, free himself from the world by becoming a vessel for a hell he loved. do you think fyodor would even care.