[ Her arms find their way around his shoulders and her touch soothes, relaxes. His eyes shut a moment just to savor the feeling of her fingers in his hair, but a second later, he starts speaking again. ]

That makes two of us.

[ No, he still hasn't convinced himself of everything he decided to be, of everything his friends thought him to be, of everything she sees in him. But he's working on it, everyday, and...

He'll get there. Someday. ]

After that, I met up with Aranea again. We trounced some monsters and put a stop to the last experiments of my old man's. And after that...I was off to join back up with my friends.

[ He wishes that could be the end, because it's a much happier, if open-ended tale, but it's not...quite. ]

...Ardyn caught me again on my way back. Except this time, he...used me as bait to lure Noct and the others to Gralea. [ Insult to injury, to say the least. Those days he'd waited for them were some of the longest of his life, and he doesn't dare to spend much time lingering on them. ] And...it worked. They did, but...

[ His eyes flicker open again at last. ]

That's when Noct disappeared into the Crystal, where Ardyn trapped him. And that's...the last thing I remember from home. Gladio told me a bit about what happened after, about...the daemons that ran wild over Eos without a single second of sunshine to break things up. We all kept fighting, even without Noct around, but that's all I really know.

[ So that, by necessity, is the end of the story. ]