To the Distance

Noctis thumbed through the first few pages, long fingers trembling slightly from intense grief and fatigue. He sat in a row by himself, leaning over the journal Luna had left to him as one of her two parting gifts.

He recognized a familiar grunt from Ignis on the seat behind him as the train took a brief jarring turn, jostling the traincar for a moment. They sat practically back-to-back, but Noctis instead pretended not to notice. He couldn't bring himself to look at his friend. Besides, he knew Gladio was sitting facing Ignis, and he could feel the imposing man's eyes boring furiously into the back of his head.

Gladio didn't think that a King should feel grief or fatigue at a time like this.

He just wanted to talk to Luna instead.

Distant memories muddled his mind of receiving messages from her. Umbra would usually wait for him outside his room in the Citadel, and his apartment afte he moved out during high school.

His heart would flutter when he spotted the dog, and Noctis would let him in for a treat and some water, gently ruffling the thick black fur as the animal lapped at his ceramic soup bowl on the floor.

Noctis did this out of affection for the creature, but also out of affection for Luna. He knew she must have run her own fingers through that fur several hundred times, and doing so was the closest he could come to touching her himself, as if their hands could touch without occupying the same space at a given time.

Her letters were always written with eloquence and graceful language, accented by the slant of her penmanship. He felt his were so mundane in response. She tell him about her strange dreams, the people around her that she found to be muses, and took genuine interest in his world. Her words were always proper with a coy underlying tone of wit that of he could interpret.

Apparently she'd withheld just how terrible the Empire had been to her.

Their lines had been intertwined since ancient times, leaving them with an inherent desire to walk side by side. But even if they were stripped of their roles as King and Oracle, the contents of these conversations would remain the same.

Luna was his best kept secret, the source of his rapture, and his oldest friend. He loved her with an intensity he had been too embarrassed to admit.

Noctis flipped through more pages, eyes misted as he relived their exchanges. After all these years he longed to talk to her, to look her in the eyes and hear the words meant for him from her lips. He had grown tired of reading her pages and tuning in to hear her generic messages on the radio or watching her appear in a political broadcast, her blue eyes scanning her surroundings before offering a polite smile for the camera. Her smile was at him, or so he'd sometimes imagine. It occurred to him that perhaps she'd seen similar appearances of him and thought the same.

They always seemed to occupy the same spaces at different points in time until the trial of Leviathan, when he stirred to the feeling of her leaning over him, blessing him, her forehead pressed to his with loose her pale bangs falling over his eyes and fluttering over her nose and cheeks as he breathed.

Then they lay side by side at the altar, him being unconscious from exhaustion and her fading slowly, the blood from her wounds soaking the white of her gown.

The memory was like a photograph. No scent, he wished he had one to remember her by.

Revisiting the journal was the closest thing he had to having an actual conversation with her, so he reread her thoughts and observations on the train bound for Tenebrae.

If he'd married her he would've taken her somewhere far away after this was all over with, if only for a day. He'd hold her hand and feel the touch of her skin directly on his, and he'd listen to her thoughts; in real time as they flowed from her lips.

He settled on the last written page, her final response beneath the pressed sylleblossom. His fingers creased the binding to get the pages to stay. He inhaled and exhaled deeply to maintain the tears that settled in his eyes, willing them away.

Perhaps he would see her someday in the life beyond, whether that was sooner or later. He hoped she would know where to find him.

Noctis thought of the ring in his pocket. If Kings didn't feel grief then he could never be one.

A/N: If this was too depressing then you can always think of it as a prequel to my other fic, The Tide! That's what I did, but it can really be interpreted either way.

I still feel like Luna's death was totally PREVENTABLE and that the astrals of FFXV are kind of a bunch of a-holes with nonsensical rules. But thats just me.