Roads

By: Strange and Intoxicating -rsa-

Warnings: Spoilers

Author Notes: I cried while writing this. I cried a lot more than I want to admit.

Roads

Perhaps it was the magic of the Crystal inside it, but the Regalia… The Regalia was always more than a car. She was, in her infancy, a beautiful show piece that made even the most stalwart of men pause in her grandeur. Her sleek black paint, the monochrome details along the rims, the two-toned leather seats that soon after being purchased by the Prince cradled tired bodies into the blissful arms of sleep... She was different. She knew her job was to love them. And the Regalia would protect her passengers. Her family.

He was her Wild Boy, her Prince. Always sneaking out with his friends, spinning wheels across hot pavement and getting into the sort of hijinks no Prince was supposed to. He would drink with that Shield of his and fool around with many lovers... Oh, so many lovers would sit in the Regalia's seat, pressed against her leather. She caressed their backs like he did, dark hair and bright eyes and that soft laugh that anyone would fall in love with.

And then there was only one, and the Regalia was happy because her Wild Boy was happy. When they would make love in the backseat she would make sure that the windows fogged and their privacy was shielded away from prying eyes.

The Regalia would warm when he was cold, and cool when he was hot. She knew his favorite music station, his love for the saccharine sweet pop melodies that he mocked with his friends but would secretly turn on when he drove through the quiet streets when he needed a moment to think.

When the night has come

Their song... it was always their song.

When he drove her to their secret spot near the northern Wall, she wished that she could hold him as he cried. She could feel his fingers shaking on the steering wheel and the radio wasn't playing bubblegum music but an announcement that the King was rushed to the hospital. He just needed a moment to pull himself together before he drove there, drove toward destiny...

She would never have let him crash, but there was no way for him to know that. Her sweet, Wild Boy, her Prince, with his forehead pressed to her steering wheel, sobbing out his heart... the Regalia broke when he broke, and mourned as he mourned.

The light of the wall dimmed, the cracks in the surface reminding the Regalia that her Prince—her King—needed her. And though she was loathe to do it, she honked the horn, shaking him from his stupor. She would have given anything to wipe the tears from his eyes, to comfort her Prince as he drove to the hospital, yet she did not have hands.

And the land is dark

When he returned to her, she could feel the cold ring on his hand and knew it was done.

He didn't touch her for months after the night at the hospital, but the Regalia understood. She understood her King's pain like it were her own, because he had always been part of her. When he hurt, she hurt, and when he cried, she felt her insides churn and the gas inside her got hot and slick. Yet she never would cause any trouble for her King because he had enough trouble for the both of them.

And the moon is the only light we'll see

It was a blessing when he came back to her, smiling just like he did before, before the cold ring took its place on his hand. She didn't like it, didn't like the way it seemed to make the fine black hair at his temples go slightly gray, didn't like how it always felt like death against her leather.

But he came back to her, as he always did, and she made sure to play his bubblegum pop and cradled his lover within her seats. She drove them through Insomnia, across the beautiful landscape as the trees lived and died and lived again, a hush of color on the background of the gray brick wall.

She allowed the Shield and the others to tie cans to her bumper and made sure that the horn was loud and cheerful as possible as her King honked and honked. It was as loud as the Regalia's voice would have been if she could have made a human sound. The dress, black like the night sky, fit in perfectly with her leather.

Her King's Queen was beautiful.

And they made love across her back seat as they had before, and the Regalia fogged her windows and played the radio softly in the background.

Oh, I won't be afraid

And when she whispered to him that the test was blue, that there was something so much more precious growing inside of her, the Regalia tightened its buckle and slowed the speed. The little life inside her King's Queen, her King's Prince, would be perfect.

She watched her King's Queen swell, how her skin grew paler, how with each day and each night she labored with the weight of the little life inside, fighting for life.

The Regalia carried them to the hospital when the Queen's water broke, kept them safe through the terror that was her Little Prince's head gently touching the seat. He wanted to be free, wanted to live, and though there was no doctor there was a helper to make sure that her Little Prince entered the world surrounded by the cradling of soft arms.

The Little Prince was born on the side of the road, only a minute from the hospital, but they were well.

The Regalia had done her King well.

Just as long as you stand, stand by me

The Regalia remembered the Little Prince and his wailing sobs, the way he refused to slumber until her King buckled him into his chair and drove, around and around. The Queen was too ill, the radio told her, for her to care for the Little Prince. It was the Regalia's duty to care for him, to protect him, just as she had done for her King.

If the sky that we look upon

It was little things, like making so the back window became so clear that the baby could stare up at the cosmos with all his childlike wonder. She adjusted her temperature, made it so that he never needed anything but a thin blanket. It was hard but when his pacifier fell from his mouth the Regalia had figured out a way to make sure that it was always able to roll back into reach.

Messes were absorbed into the leather, for her King had bags under his eyes and needed all of the help he could get. The clutter of bottles and later breakfast cereals and squished fruit gummies and wholly unwanted vegetables were hidden between her seats, but the Regalia paid them no mind.

But sometimes the gentle rocking was not enough to calm the Little Prince, and so the Regalia knew then to turn on their song, the sweet words like a lullaby for the brokenhearted boys she loved so desperately.

Should tumble and fall

She knew the day the Queen died, because her King and the Little Prince drove for hours upon hours, the only thing playing was the soft song she knew would be their only comfort.

She wished she could have stood by them, could have whisked them into her embrace. She would have done anything... anything to have given them comfort.

Why was it that when she needed to protect them she failed?

The drives became less frequent but more important as the Little King grew and the gray peppered her King's hair. It was even beginning to catch in his beard, and the Regalia wondered what it would be like for her to feel it against her leather like he had done when she was still new and he was still young.

Or the mountain should crumble to the sea

And then... Oh, oh no...

The Crystal had given her the half-semblance of life, but it would take it from her Little Prince…

The Regalia did what she could, but she knew it would never be enough... not for the Wild Boy who turned into a solemn, mournful King, and certainly not for the babe he held in his arms.

The visits became less and less until that night where they drove through the Outlands. The Little Prince should have been with her, should have been protected inside of her... She would have kept him safe, she would have never let the Daemons near.

His blood felt like tar on her leather and she burned rubber as she sped forward, her engine pushing harder than she had ever tried before. It didn't matter, she didn't matter. Only the Little Prince, anything for him and the Wild Boy she had fallen in love with once upon a time.

She would save them both.

I won't cry, I won't cry

After the daemon attack, things changed. Her King was preoccupied, always so busy with the wall and the invading armies that smashed into it. She would sometimes turn on the radio inside the car and just listen to the stories it told. Infiltrating armies and bargaining, a place long across oceans falling to the sword at their throat.

She wondered what it would be like, to see the ocean. She had seen the blue across the ground, and she had wondered what it would be like to sail over it. She was metal and glass, wiring and rubber. She would never float, but listening to the news allowed her to picture it.

The Little Prince, after his recovery, spent more time with her than ever before. Though she knew she was supposed to be locked, her doors were never shuttered for him.

He would read books to her of faraway places and she would crank the air conditioning and play the songs her King had loved to play with the Queen in the car. The Little Prince would snuggle up against her and she could imagine herself rubbing across his cheeks and through her hair. She had no hands, but hands were not needed for comfort.

No, I won't shed a tear

Sometimes there was another little boy who would pull open the car door to find the Little Prince napping, and at first the Regalia was weary. Her Little Prince had seen so much, would suffer so much in the future... He needed to rest. She could give that to him… she did not need anyone to interrupt.

But the Little Advisor would only push up his glasses and climb inside, tucking her Little Prince in his arms. He would whisper fairy tales of little boys and crystals, about gods and daemons and how to save the world from unending darkness.

She liked the Little Advisor and knew that he would love her Little Prince just as much as she did. She watched them grow the way she had watched her Wild Boy who had been forced to bear the crown far too early. She hoped, prayed, to whatever would listen to a car and her thoughts, that these little boys would have what her Wild Boy did not have.

And the day her Little Prince, hair as wild as her King's was at his age, plucked up the courage to kiss the Little Advisor, she had happily locked the doors when he tried to panic. Just a little push, just a little help.

The Little Prince did all the rest. It was nice to feel warm skin on her leather, and she set the station to something low and smooth, just as she had done so long before. The windows fogged, and if she were human she would have wept.

Just as long as you stand, stand by me

She also watched her King, how his knee went and his neck slowly began to bend. She could feel how he shuffled to her door and how he would shake as he sat down. The lines of time were deep, his hands calloused and grip lax.

And when he drove her to their secret place, the place near the Northern wall, the Regalia knew what this was. She knew it like she knew his hands, how she knew his voice, how she knew his tears against her as he lowered the seat and curled up.

Her King, her Wild Boy with his wild hair and his wild love….

She wanted to tell him how she loved him, how she had cared for him and nourished him and protected him. She wanted to whisper that she would do anything for him, would do anything for her Little Prince, but she could not speak.

Instead, the Regalia turned on the song that had played on a loop, the soft whisper of a voice she could imagine herself with.

Oh darling, darling…

And though he said no words, she knew what he wanted. As he ran the pads of his wrinkled fingers against her headrest, she knew he wanted her to allow the Little Prince to rest his weary head and sleep with mouth the nightmares that plagued him. As he touched her dashboard, she knew he wanted her to keep them safe on the long journey so far from home. When he fumbled his fingers again the tops of the buttons of her radio, she knew.

It was like a kiss.

A goodbye kiss.

The next day she accepted her precious cargo: Four boys who knew nothing of what would come next.

She drove long, drove far through the deserts and the mountains. She kept herself going strong because they needed her, and she needed them to be safe.

But she knew the moment her King took his last breath. She felt it like her engine was ripped out of her. She couldn't start, couldn't think, couldn't move.

The Regalia felt it like she could feel the wind, and this couldn't be it couldn't be it couldn't no no no no-

Her radio shorted, flashing the song through speakers that should have been screaming.

Oh darling...

And try her best...

Darling...

The Regalia broke in the middle of the road.

Stand...

Just another broken thing.

By...

Just a hunk of useless metal.

Me….

Clink.

Thump.

Silence.

So darling, darling

The Regalia liked the blonde girl. She was sweet, kind, full of cheerful laughter and soft touches.

It didn't help much, but she did her best... Just like the Regalia tried. Yet every time the young woman stroked her plugs or whispered her fingers across the engine, it became harder and harder for the Regalia to pull herself back from the hazy glow of something... something more.

He was gone, like the leaves falling after they turned a fiery haze of colors. She remembered what it was like to crunch over them, the stems sticking in her wheels. Yet her King had always taken the time to pull them out, to clean her with the reverence only he knew. The girl... she wasn't the same.

Nothing would ever be the same. If her King was gone, if his wild black hair peppered with gray never touched her, if his aged hands never slid against her like they did when he was wild and free... what was she supposed to do?

Why had the Crystal given her a mind and a love, then taken it?

Why would it give her a soul to only crush it like the leaves against pavement?

Stand by me, oh stand by me

Him... the Little Prince? How long would it be until he left her, too? Until she withered away, scavenged for parts in a world without their light? Who would fall asleep on her back seat? Who would wipe the dust from her windshield? Who would dare hide gummies inside the heater vents to make the car smell like old fruit and childhood memories?

How long did she have left with her Little Prince?

It was hard, but the Regalia stayed with them. She held herself together as the Little Advisor slipped the key into her ignition and she sounded like a purr. It was all she could do, because her King was dead but her Little Prince lived for now. It was her job, her duty, to carry him safely as far as she could.

Day and night, constantly moving and holding them curled inside. Ebony always warm in her cup holder, seatbelt surreptitiously clicked into place to keep them safe. The Little Advisor was a better driver than the Little Prince, but driving at night was perilous. She trusted his eyes and his steady hands... she she stayed diligent.

What she did know what that she did not trust the man with the red hair, the one that smelled like the Crystal. When he ran his fingers over her bumper it had taken everything not to throw off the emergency break and run him over. It took even more strength to not run him right off the road on their way into the steaming hot dirt that choked her.

The enemy took her then, and though a trusty steady she was without her strength. Her King... what would he have said if he could see her open and brittle, spitting up oil and transmission fluid? He would have been ashamed of her, just as she was ashamed of herself.

The Regalia would protect no one. She couldn't...

She had let him die.

But her Little Prince came back for her. He came for her, took her away from the explosions and the electricity that made her gears spark.

She drove them to the sea, and she wished that she could have seen more of it than the inky black waters as they rested her in the hull. She had wanted to see the ocean, wanted to feel the way the songs spoke of earth meeting air. It always sounded beautiful on the radio.

But the Regalia never saw the sea. Moved into a train car by the Sunshine Boy, her Little Prince and his Little Advisor sat side by side in the back, neither touching and neither seeing…

And the Shield and the Sunshine Boy left them there, a broken car with her two broken boys clinging for light in a place of darkness.

Her radio didn't work right anymore. It had been on the fritz since her King's death, never able to play the radio of what they wanted... it could only play what she needed.

And she wanted them to mourn, because she knew better than anyone else what would come soon...

Oh stand now, stand by me, stand by me

And soon it did come. It came like pain and a ripping in her steel shell as her Little Prince threw open her door. She waited for four bodies, but only three entered.

The Sunshine Boy was gone…

They would all be gone, soon.

But the Regalia did not mourn, because she could feel his heart racing and she knew that there was no time. This was it. This was what she had promised her King, what she had worked so hard for and she couldn't fail.

Yet... His heartbeat fluttering against her chair spoke to her. Just like her Wild Boy had the first time he touched her handle, the first time he ran his fingers across her dash, the first time he slipped his key into her ignition.

But her Wild Boy was gone, her King was gone... and what she had, all she had, was the sweet boy she has been with his entire life. Did he know that? Even in the darkest of places, in the moonless nights, she had always been there. She had brought him into the world... She had protected him, sheltered him, loved him in the only way she could.

He had done so well... had gone so far.

She would have to do the rest.

It would take everything in her, she knew, but she would do this. She could feel the daemons at her bumper and the foot on the gas. She used what she had to lock them in place and though their words were startled and panicked, she did not let go.

It was the closest to a hug she could give.

It hurt.

She was metal and glass and agony like magma running through her. The gouges to her side from the train, the daemons clinging to her and scratching her, the missiles from above… Gone was her left headline, farewell to her roof.

"The Regalia can take the punishment. Just focus on your driving."

He was right, her Little Advisor. She would take the punishment. She would take each hit, each projectile, each twisting nail in her wheels. She needed him to live, she needed to protect him.

All she ever needed was to protect him...

She wouldn't fail him.

Not now.

Not ever.

She couldn't stop the radio. She allowed herself to play it one last time, the song she had sung to her Little Prince as he slept under the stars. The song he had been made to, then brought into the world with. It was the song he had kissed his LIttle Advisor to.

It was the first song her Wild Boy had played as he lowered her top as they rode with the wind flying through his hair all those years ago.

It was her warm blanket, her cooling touch, her promise.

Whenever you're in trouble won't you stand by me

"You can do it girl, you can get through this."

Oh stand by me

"Come on old girl... Dad..."

won't you stand now, oh, stand

She could see the light ahead, a beacon of red flashing light and with everything left in her she pushed forward, feeling the closing gate crush her sides. She didn't stop. Only a little more, only a little further, only... only to the light.

And the Regalia felt herself shudder to a stop, body spent, shredded.

Perhaps she was another broken thing, but she had kept her Little Prince alive. She had cradled his head against her one last time as she let the seatbelts click open.

The radio gurgled as steam billowed forward, but he reached out just as her King had... Just as her Regis had, to run the pads of his fingers against her buttons..

The Regalia whispered. For a moment she feared he couldn't hear, but...

She could feel the tears hit the seat as he listened to her engine die.

Noctis knew.

Stand by me

And she had, hadn't she?

Perhaps it was the magic of the Crystal inside it, but the Regalia… The Regalia was always more than a car.

And when she was ushered into the Beyond, she knew that this had been a gift rather than a curse.

She did not have hands, nor feet. There was no heart, no lungs, and no pulse. She could not move her mouth or any of the human parts she knew that humans had, but she was so much more than that. This... this was so much more than what she imagined.

She could see her Wild Boy the way he was the day he chose her off the lot those long years ago. He was smiling, wide-mouthed and big-eyed. He leaned down to rest his cheek against her hood. She could feel the tickle of the shadow across his skin and if she had eyes she would have wept. Instead, she honked. Again and again, because she had thought, she had always assumed that at the end...

At the end, there would be no Beyond for a car...

"But you are more than a car, my Regalia."

His Regalia. Always his Regalia.

His Queen was there, too. She looked as beautiful as she had all those years ago when she held her little blue stick in her hand. Oh... the Regalia remembered. The Regalia could never forget her blonde hair curled at the top of her head like a crown.

They were beautiful. They were perfect and real, just as the sun felt warm beating down on her roof... the roof that was full, glossy and unscratched. No holes, no broken glass, no shattered dreams. She was as she had been so long ago and she was happy to open her doors for her precious cargo. They always had been her family... her everything.

Except... her Little Prince…

But she did not weep for him, because if he was not here it meant that he was still alive. It meant that he could remember the world, remember to live, remember to be what he needed to be. She hoped that he would know the way even without her to drive him there.

And time passed. The trees lived and died and lived again until the day when she felt her Little Prince and his call like the feeling of a cool breeze on a summer day.

They drove to the gate of the Citadel, the last place she had seen her weary King all those years ago, but now... Now it was not a somber goodbye, but a warm hello.

They were there, waiting as they always did, and the Regalia opened her back doors for her Little Prince and his Little Advisor. They looked so young, so full of life. They stared at the sky, and the sun glowing hot and so beautiful. It was surrounded by blue, like the oceans she had never seen but had dreamed of...

Yet they had a gift for her. They opened her hood and popped something into place, something that was unfamiliar and yet felt like it had always been part of her. It was right. It was perfect.

And she accepted them into her as she always had, the feeling of belonging a curious and beautiful feeling, and her radio adjusted itself to play the song of her family. Nestled inside, it was only then that she felt her Wild Boy run a thumb against her steering wheel and against something new, a button she had never known before.

"Where we're going, we don't need roads... do we, girl?"

And for all of the years of wishing she had arms and legs and a mouth... she had never thought she would have wings.

Her Little Prince and Little Advisor were curled in the back seat, drifting to sleep surrounded by her embrace. In the front seat, her Wild Boy held the Queen's hand, lifting it up to place a kiss against her palm. The other hand rested on the side of the steering wheel, though she knew she was in charge.

He trusted her.

The radio played their song as the Regalia lifted into the sky, drifting through the fluffy white clouds and toward the endless expanse of blue above and then—

Below, like crushed sapphires and rolling diamonds cresting the horizon.

The ocean was as beautiful as the Regalia had always imagined.

Stand by me

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