Chapter Text
Aera loves Noctis.
Childhood friends turned lovers. A shared destiny. Him the savior of mankind, her an oracle of the Gods. It is a union is blessed by the Astrals themselves. A true fairytale romance.
Aera truly loves Noctis.
And yet, perhaps her love does not run as deep as it could…
Perhaps if there was more to their relationship. More than the easy companionship they’d always shared. More to talk about other than that of Gods and destiny. If he were a more ambitious man, no less kind, no less gentle, but someone with bigger dreams, and smaller secret desires. Things he could share with her and her alone…
Then maybe there would be more to them than what they have. Something much deeper, something much truer.
Aera loves Noctis.
But she does not love him enough to give her life for him.
And when the Scourge flows freely from his wounds in place of blood, when the sight of the taint dripping down his face fills her with horror/disgust/fear, when his brother - a man she has never liked or and barely tolerates on good days - declares him a monster, Aera runs from him.
Anyone would have run, she tells herself, it was only natural.
Noctis failed his task, failed to meet his destiny. He was meant to heal the Starscourge, and yet he let it consume him. The fate bestowed upon him now is the result of that failure. It is only natural, she tells herself.
It is much easier to think of it as Noctis’s failure than it is to think of how she had pushed him into assuming his role as Healer and Savior. How she had soothed his doubts with pretty words and making promises she could never have possibly kept. How it was she who had interpreted the words and will of the Astrals for him. How it was her words he had followed.
It was much easier to think him a failure than it was it think they had been lied to, that she’d been the one to bring about his downfall.
She pushes down her doubt and soldiers on. She must, for his sake and the sake of the world, she tells herself.
Her faith is rewarded. The Astrals grant her and those of her blood some of the Crystal’s light, the power to heal the Scourge. A power she had long sought after, and was once elated to find in Noctis. The nature of her powers differs from what his had been. It leaves her drained with every person she heals. As she grows older exhaustion becomes a constant companion.
It is a boon when her sister’s youngest daughter manifests the same abilities she had oh so long ago. She takes the girl in, teaches her how to commune with the Gods, how to see their signs and read their messages, how call upon the light inside her and use it to purge the Blight from it’s victims.
The burden of keeping the Starscourge at bay is a heavy one to bear, but she will succeed where Noctis failed. And when her body fails her, when she grows too old and too weary, her line will continue to bear that weight assuredly.
Aera had loved Noctis, she tells herself even years on.
Even as she thinks of him, locked away in that cold desolate prison, like a monster, never to see the light of day again. Even as the Astrals whisper their terrible, wonderful, tragic plans to cleanse their star once and for all in her ear. Even as she lay dying, old, decrepit, and entirely alone, she tells herself she made all the right choices.