Work Text:
There stood a boy with hair too dark for the deep snow of the north and eyes that glowed in the dark unlike of any MT 05953234 has ever seen.
“I come from a land,” The boy told him as he cleaned the rancid cell, sick with the scent of waste and blood alike. “Where we thrive in the dark and worship the goddess of death.”
It didn’t sound like an omen when the boy said it like that, more like the steadiness of a clock reaching midnight.
It was nothing like the emptiness of Niflheim, where the people did not thrive in the dark but rather feared it and made very little time for gods and their affairs when the hunger in your stomach was too much to bare.
The chains clinked as the boy shifted on the bench, both wisdom and fear both too old and too young for him. 05953234 wished he could admire more closely, but the black bars along his wrist dissuaded him.
For 05953234 was just a lonely MT and the boy with inhuman eyes was the crown prince of Lucis.
05953234 was defective, that much was true. He was slow to follow orders, sometimes the words would run through his head and come out the wrong way. He was clumsy, he failed 63% of his combat testing, and he was the worst thing an MT could ever aspire to be.
Emotional .
His mouth twitched whenever he had to skin rabbits for food, he would clamp on his ears whenever the bellows of the prisoners became too much, liquid would make his eyes moist when an MT was in the wrong place during a captain's bad day and the sound of a bullet made him flinch.
05953234 was defective and weak. It was only on the grace of the empire that he was still alive, and so he must devote himself to being useful in what other ways possible that the empire required of him.
Every day, from 3:00 AM until 11:PM he worked in the bellows of the keep. Prisoners rattled on the bars, some screamed themselves hoarse for forgiveness and I haven’t done anything please while the older ones, the forgotten ones, huddled under the never ending chill. 05953234’s job was to clean the prison’s cells everyday, like a clockwork. Scrub the residues of blood, stitch up any self-harm wounds he stumbled upon and dispose of the corpses for which he was too late for. Empty waste buckets and deliver food at the allocated times. Keep an eye on the status of those getting sick, try not to throw up at infected wounds and clean them instead.
It’s a thankless task, but he doesn’t mind. The newer ones spit curses at him and call him the obvious, things like clone or empty . He likes the older ones, they sometimes regard him with a story of life outside the keep. It always makes him sad when they die, for one reason or the other.
But the keep has a new prisoner, a boy with the call of holy light in his veins and a seething determination.
For what, 05953234 did not know.
He learned several new things about the newest prisoner. One, was that the there were actual guards posted outside of the door, which gave 05953234 pause for a moment before he hunched his shoulders through the door, food tray held in hand.
Second, was that the prince ate what was given to him with little complaint, except for the vegetables. He always pushed them to the side, no doubt to be thrown away, and 05953234 discreetly pressed a hand against his ribs.
05953234 works on the blessing of the empire, he should not complain about his rations or anything else, just to continue to work until he dies one day.
Third, was that the boy was chatty . 05953234 guessed he was the best person to talk to if one needed to talk to about anything (he learned in his resisting torture lessons that social deprivation was deadly to humans, but he was not human so he nothing to train for). 05953234 could not leave even if he wanted to, as the door locked behind him for the minimum of a half hour to ensure he either was thoroughly finished with his task or thoroughly dead.
05953234 didn’t know what to think about him, except that perhaps it wasn’t bad listening to him talk.
The prince sat as steady as ever, hands chained in a warded red that was locked by codeprint. 05953234 was one of the few who had access to unlock those chains, as his ‘caretaker’. Guards flanked him whenever he unlocked those cuffs to bring the boy to wash, doing his best to remain subtle about his efforts to cover the naked prince from prying eyes.
After one such session where 05953234 had washed his hair for him, standing directly in front of him and eyes fixated at one lock of hair, the Lucian had watched him with sharp eyes for the rest of the half hour before 05953234 fled to the next row of cells to clean.
“What’s your name?” The boy asked, fingers steepled together. The defective MT flinched a bit, confused for a moment before he realized he was asking for his designation. What a strange way to ask for it.
“05953234.” He stated as monotone as he could, but if he could hear the little bit of shame there then so could the prince.
The prince waved his hand dismissively, ruined by the familiar jingle of his handcuffs. “No, not that. Your name, not some code of random numbers.”
Ah. “MT’s do not require names and as such are referred to by designation.” He recited near perfectly, would be proud of himself for remembering that word by word if it weren’t for the horrified look the prince was wearing. “Did I say something wrong?”
Slowly, ever so slowly, he shook his head. “No, it’s nothing. Forget it.”
05953234 was tempted to argue, but the horrified look never left the prince’s eyes, so he left well enough alone.
Next time 05953234 returned, the prince was sporting a bruise around his eye and a nasty cut upward of his ribs. With well practiced movements, he snapped open his well-stocked first aid kit and cleaned out his cut, even giving him ice for his eye despite it being beyond the required healing.
“You shouldn’t resist.” He murmured quietly, just enough that if there were any bugs that could survive the biting cold of the keep’s winter they wouldn’t be able to hear him. “It only makes things worse later on.”
05953234 had no reason why he was giving that particular piece of advice out to him, but it seemed to bring the boy more a little bit to himself. “They were asking information about my land, I couldn’t give it to them.” The prince whispered harshly back, and 05953234 disguised the movement of whispering into his ear as reaching back to pull off the tattered shirt.
“They like when you struggle or cry.” 05953234 admitted, sliding the shirt up easily. The prince followed easily, knowing that the defective MT wouldn’t do anything of that sorts to him. “Don’t give them a reaction, and they’ll get bored soon enough.”
The prince hesitated for the briefest of moments, and he used the moment to pull the shirt off the rest of the way and stuff it into his cart, along with the other prisoner’s clothes that were depending on him to sew back up again, to conserve what meager allowance he was allowed to spend for the comfort of the prisoners. Shoving a clean shirt back on over the cuffs now, chains firmly disconnected while he changed him.
“Alright.” The prince muttered when he was by his mouth once more to pull the shirt down his chest. “But I’m fighting back the instant it goes past some punches thrown.”
05953234 nodded. He wouldn’t expect anything less.
It was a quiet afternoon, the clock around his clean wrist displaying it around three pm. No one had died or particularly wounded themselves while he was getting the few scant hours of sleep he could, and even the prince was in an agreeable mood, remaining his chatty self while 05953234 sewed, figuring he would get some work done while he was locked in with the prince anyhow.
“What’cha doing?” The prince asked him, legs propped up against the wall while his head dangled upside down off the bed. It didn’t look comfortable at all, but he looked happy enough so the MT left him be.
“Sewing.” He stated as bland as he could, mouth twitching in a way he knew followed under ‘happy’, though that wasn’t quite the word he would use. “Good time to get work done.”
The prince tilted his head, flipping himself back to his feet and scooting as far as his chains would allow towards 05953234, even leaning forward to watch the way the needle threaded carefully and closed the patch the man in block four cell twenty three made clawing at his forearms.
“You know,” The boy’s voice was quiet; subdued. “My advisor Iggy used to do that for me all the time. Fix rips in my clothes, things like that.”
05953234 stilled, knowing in some vague way that this was something vulnerable. Something 05953234 was not allowed to think about, yet struggled with all the same.
Emotional .
“I miss him,” The boy whispered brokenly, tears openly dripping down his face. His pale hands, unfamiliar callouses that knew the handle of a sword but now how to climb the training room’s tower. “I miss him so much…”
Then, to 05953234’s utter shock, the boy pitched right into his lap, narrowly avoiding the needle as he collapsed face-first into his kneeling legs.
05953234 hesitated only for a moment, before a faded memory, worn with time and the wish to forget, of a woman’s soft touch upon his hair as she tucked him preciously into her arms came to his mind. Then, and only then, did 05953234 slowly curl his hands around the prince’s back, practically pulling the boy into his half embrace, folding his torso over his slumped body and mummering barely heard reassurances.
Something changed between them after that.
The prince eyed him when he thought 05953234 wasn’t looking, something unsure and tender in his gaze. He was more easy to ask for affection: trailing his fingers along the underside of his wrist, letting himself relax into his touch when he washed his hair, dropping his head on his shoulder when eating.
05953234 wonders if it's the stress of the situation, making him latch onto the first person who shows him kindness, even if that kindness is misplaced.
He almost wishes the prince isn’t so kind, so affectionate. Maybe that would stop him from leaning right back into those oh so very kind touches.
It’s been a bad day, there was an achiness to his bones that come from pulling all nighters consecutively. There was a new tenant in block D who had spent all night throwing a fit, the ones who weren’t meant to stay too long before they ‘disappeared’. 05953234 didn’t ask questions, and so he got to stay where he was.
The grace of the empire, he whispered to himself when he stumbled into the prince’s cell, barely able to see a foot in front of him but hearing the distinctive sounds of chains hurriedly coming his way.
“Shiva, you look sick as a dog.”
Sick as a dog? How sick were dogs….?
A laugh, and then a hand settled around his waist and hoisted him onto the metal bench, letting his head drop on the prince’s lap in a mockery of what happened weeks earlier.
“Jeez, you’re skinnier than me even after all the grup they’ve been serving here. I’m gonna give you my veggies from now on, you got it? And then, maybe you can stay a couple hours here, I don’t mind if all you do is sleep. You got sick days in the empire, right?”
The last person 05953234 had met that had tried to call out of work for having his appendix removed had him shot point blank in the middle of the hallway.
Silence.
“Astrals…”
05953234 wanted to sleep, even if only for a couple of minutes.
“Then sleep, silly. I’ll wake you up when you gotta go, okay?”
Okay…
Before he knew it, 05953234 was bringing the prince gifts from outside the cell. It wasn’t much, defective units were never allowed to leave the keep if they survived, but it was certainly more than what he had in the cells. Pictures he cut out from the ones in the infirmary when another prisoner tried to either hurt him or themselves. Miscellaneous items that were usually dumped when a new prisoner was dumped into the bowels of the beast that he tried his best to salvage.
One memorable occasion, he brought an ancient hand-sized radio with him.
The walls were soundproof, this he knew. The secured cells often were, to prevent the screams from disturbing the guards from their nap, he imagined. So it was for this reason he fiddled with the radio until it stretched to its very limits, past Niflheim approved stations until he landed on one where Lucian rang through the walls in waves.
The prince’s eyes widened, his mouth dropping open the slightest bit as he stared at the radio with sheer wonder. “That’s….That’s a popular pop song…”
05953234 smiled, though the notion of it felt weird and constrictive on his face but never failed to make the prince smile in return, so it was worth it. He fiddled with the chains, letting them detach from the cuffs and sweeping the black haired boy to his feet.
“Are we - Are we dancing?!” The prince yelped as 05953234 spun him rapidly around in a circle, unsure of how to actually dance so he just threw a lot of spinning and tapping his feet into it.
“Mm-hmm.” He hummed excitably, already spinning again with a half choke that made the prince’s eyes look like a soup bowl.
“You laughed!” The prince stared in wonderment, voice oddly hysterical. “You laughed!”
05953234 made that weird half-choke again, and this time, the prince joined him.
“I’m gonna come up with a name for you.” The prince announced to him one day.
05953234 blinked from where he was spooning greul into a bowl. “I already have a designation…?”
The boy scowled at that. “Not some random strings of numbers, hell no. Like an actual name with letters.”
He paused for a moment, hand hovering over the soup handle. “....I think I would like that.”
“Damn well you will.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Being so nice. You didn’t have to be, but you made this so much more bearable.”
“....It’s no problem.”
Being with the prince was like from the fairytales, but yet not. There was no rescuing from a far off tower, no one coming to save them.
Like all things, it had to end.
The empire is the highest command, no other order is more superior than the empire.
05953234 scrubbed at the floor of the cell, brush sickly red and nausea curling low in his gut. Liquid branded his eyes as he cleared the last remains of someone’s presence from the cell.
He liked her. She was an older woman with wisdom in her eyes and words that rolled smoothly off her tongue. She was a writer, she told him once when he asked why she traced invisible letters along the walls, and she wrote books the insulted Niflheim emperor’s politics, back when free will was a thing.
And now she’s dead.
You are alive due to the grace of the empire and you will contribute to its continued success.
Was this life? He was lucky if he slept for two hours each night and took small naps throughout the day to keep his brain from rotting in his skull. Food was once a day and his skin clung to his ribs thinly. There were constant sores on his hands and bare feet, blisters on his heels and inflamed skin from light frostbite at all times.
The order is absolute and all those that oppose it are to be wiped out.
The guards were talking among themselves when 05953234 approached with the food tray, trading back whispers of a conversation.
“-stepping up interrogation-”
“-emperor isn’t happy-”
“-force it out of the prince-”
They paused when he passed by, letting him be scanned with a bowed head as he entered the door to the cell.
They were going to increase the torture sessions, force the prince to give him what they wanted.
He wouldn’t allow it.
There was a glaive in the cells.
The man with the strange tattoos was thrown in block A, in preparation for them to torture him into submission.
His name is Nyx, the man admits easily with one eye closed as he bandages the claw marks around his back, and he was betrayed by someone he held dear.
“I’m going to need your help.” 05953234 whispered, holding onto his wrist gently. “So be prepared sometime tonight.”
The glaive narrows his eyes briefly, before relaxing once more, even reclining his feet up on the bench. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and trust you kiddo.”
“Blondie…?” The prince asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes as 05953234 crept into his cell. 05953234 didn’t blame him, the digital clock around his wrist read it was far past four am, much too early for someone without a schedule past mid-afternoon wouldn’t be awake for.
“Shh.” He whispered gently, sliding his barcode against the scanners on the cuffs and catching them quietly before they hit the floor.
The prince’s eyes widened once he knew what that meant, stretching his fingers out as something darker, tasting more like the tart raspberries he had once upon a time. His magic, presumably.
“We gotta go.” Interlocking his fingers with the - with Noctis, he pulled the other boy out of the room that kept him captive all these months. Two guards were sprawled in front of them, and Noctis let out an impressed sounding whistle as they stepped over them.
“That was quick of you.” Noctis laughed a bit, letting himself be pulled along and through the various corridors until they reached where Nyx was waiting for them.
“I swear kid if you let me out of my cell for -” Nyx paused, his job dropping as he watched Noctis being dragged behind 05953234. “Your highness!”
Nyx dropped to his knees right there and then, and both of them felt very distinctive at the sheer relief the man was radiating. “It’s been a while, your highness, the king was worried sick.”
Noctis shifted uncomfortably. “By it’s been awhile, do you mean…?”
“A year, your highness.”
The only sound for several moments in the hallway was Noctis’ deep inhales.
“A year, huh.” His voice sounded broken, like it did near the beginning. “Guess I’m twenty now, right?”
05953234 didn’t think, just reached out with his other hand and held Noctis to his chest. “But we’re going home now.”
Nyx nodded, a new light to his eyes 05953234 had never seen before. “You got that, your highness. Me and the kiddo are gonna get you home safe and sound.”
“Home…” Noctis mouthed the word. Then, slowly, he began to smile. “Yeah, let’s go home.”
Insomnia hovered in the distance in all it’s spiraling glory. Refugees that came on the long hike from the basins of hell flocked on either side of them, brushing against each other and talking excitably about peace.
The bells tolled in the distance from the Citadel, guards swarming the gates as they realized how many people were approaching the gates on foot, on wild chocobo, on cart. It had been a long several weeks as they all scraped enough to survive and continue traveling to safety, and most of it had been thanks to Nyx’s glaive training that they even could keep themselves fed, nevermind sheltered and healed.
Noctis’ hand tightened around his own as the bells continued to toll, the two of them in the front of the hundreds of people behind them, as if was only fitting, Nyx had told them over their personal campfire that as the prince and (in what had later made him blush) the defector who risked everything to save them, they should lead the final stretch of the march.
His socks had rust stains all over them and his feet ached beyond comparison, but yet…
Coming to Insomnia after eveything, it almost felt like coming home.
“C’mon, quicksilver.” Noctis quipped wirely, squeezing his hand three times in quick succession. “Let’s go home.”
Prompto smiled almost to himself, squeezing back three times. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”
At the gates of Insomnia, the guards parted as the King’s car tore out of the entrance towards them, and everything seemed like it might one day be alright.