@rexcrystallis:
Her presence is announced, and Noct gives the indication she can enter. The throneroom is still half-gone, and the broken wall there -- gaping, is still in the process of being patched up, scaffolding barely visible outside. Yet it is cluttered too: improvised desks and lights, and right now it serves as office and conference hall both. Sometimes, it may even be a hospital. He hears her quiet footsteps and Noct finally turns from the hole in the wall, to face her. In Altissia, they said-- but he is stone now, rock, like the crystal in his blood. Still, he bows to her, an incline of the head. He is glad that she is well, after everything that has transpired, the Long Dark and the Dawn.
---
Luna recalls with absolute clarity, the last time she set foot in this place. It seems so long ago now - an age, in fact. Back then, the throne room had exuded this untouchable grandeur, helmed by Noctis’ father as he’d smiled down at her.
Now, it holds a splendor of a different kind. Every corner of that vast, empty space is occupied now, as the room fittingly attempts to serve every possible purpose, just as a King ought.
And there he stands, the same person and yet very much changed. For all that has transpired since they were children, Luna smiles at him now just as she did then, offering a bow of her own.
❝Noctis,❞ she greets, ascending the steps with something familiar clutched in her hand. The vestiges of a more innocent time, immortalised in leather binding and branded with a sylleblossom on the first page. She presents it to him now: the journal that had once been so dear to them both; unspeakably sentimental yet somehow robbed of its utility as they stand face-to-face. How very strange it is that the thing she’d always wanted most of all was for her most treasured possession to be useless. But that oddity is overshadowed by seeing her oldest friend alive in the light of day, as he ought to be. As he deserves.
There is a sense of exhaustion about Luna as she folds her hands neatly in front of her. Yet in spite of it, in spite of the weariness that pulls down her features and the scars that remain inside and out from the ten-year night, she smiles.
❝It would seem our work is done.❞ With a tilt of the head, she regards Noctis carefully. Though she had heard rumours of the King’s state, it is quite another thing to see it for herself. ❝Will you be quite well?❞
