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It’s simple enough to be dead.
The world is untouched around him. Insomnia is just as perfect as the day he left it. There are some differences, of course. The Crystal doesn’t sit at the heart of the Citadel, and there’s not a Ring to be found anywhere in the wide expanse of their deathless world. The sun shines as if it were never dead.
And everyone here is dead. But that’s to be expected.
He has Luna. He has his parents. He can call the armiger at will and explore a Lucis untorn by war. He has everything.
But he’s restless.
Sure, he could stay here and finally rest. He has. Often.
But the other world is still there. Despite himself, and despite the grief, Noctis can’t help but miss it.
He’s not the only one.
Most nights, Luna visits the havens, walking unseen along the glowing trails of the runes she once maintained. There may no longer be an Oracle in Eos, but the magic remains, and so does the light. Noct joins her on some nights, sitting by the phantom flames and stoking the fire for whichever weary traveler might come along. The two of them don’t talk much during these visits; instead, they bask in the light of the moon and enjoy their time walking between Eos and the life beyond it.
Sometimes, campers are resting at the havens when they get there, and that’s when Luna smiles the most. She doesn’t show herself too often, but Noctis knows that the campers will always go to sleep and dream of sylleblossoms and light. The runes shine brightest when she rests on the warm stone beside the travelers, untouched by rain or wind or cold.
She can touch the world. Even now, even from beyond, in the place where magic keeps their world pristine, Luna can always find the rhythm of Eos’s pulse. She walks among them and lends her help when she can, radiant and impossible and powerful. She makes a difference.
Noctis doesn’t understand.
“How do you do it?” he asks her one day. He’s slumped in the throne, as he so often is, feeling restless and lonely. Nearly everyone he’s ever known walks these halls, but it’s still not enough. There are still people on the other side of life. He needs them here. He needs them at his side, or he needs to be there. If Luna can do it, so can he. He has to.
Luna smiles and turns from the window, illuminated by phantom sunlight that turns her hair to spun gold. “Love,” she tells him sweetly, and she leaves him to his thoughts.
Noct watches her go. She descends the stairs like the royalty she is, gods-touched and beautiful. She’s the only person here who’s anywhere close to being as powerful as he is. Ravus is waiting at the door for her; he offers her an arm and leads her into the Citadel, telling her of his plans to make an excursion to Tenebrae.
And then Noct’s alone.
He doesn’t want to be.
So he leaves the perfect, untouched Citadel, and he focuses in the way that Luna taught him, and as he walks out of the throne room that shines with crystals and sylleblossoms, he walks into the sunlit ruins of the Citadel he left behind.
The reconstruction is going well. It’ll be a long time until Insomnia has half the beauty it once did, and even longer until it’s full of people again, but the progress is encouraging. All around him, people are working to bring some life back into Lucis.
Some people are working harder than others. Noct goes to them.
He watches Ignis most of the time.
Sometimes, Noct tries to do what Luna does: he reaches out to the people around him, focusing hard on the magic in his chest and trying to remember what it felt like to be alive.
It’s not enough.
---
He tries harder the next time he visits.
He’s sitting with Ignis when it happens, watching him work through some reports on the rebuilding of the city. Without having to worry about light, Ignis works tirelessly even once the sun sets and casts shadows across the pages of raised script. Noct watches him the whole time. Sometimes, he talks about his day, but Ignis gives no indication of having heard him, so Noct saves his breath. Not that he needs the breath, anyway.
Still, the company is enough.
Ignis reaches for a new report, but his arm knocks against an unopened can of Ebony that he’s left out and evidently forgotten. That sends it rolling away across the table, where it teeters on the edge of the hardwood before falling to the ground with a loud thud.
“Blast,” Ignis mutters under his breath. He rubs at the bridge of his nose with a loud sigh. He doesn’t make any moves to retrieve the Ebony, though. He must have written it off as a lost cause.
The can, however, has landed at Noct’s feet. He studies the logo for a moment. Absently, he kicks it.
It rolls.
Noct stares at it.
He kicks it again.
It rolls. It’s rolling.
He’s doing that.
Noct kicks it to the floor at Ignis’s feet, making sure to knock it against his toes. “Here, Ignis,” he says, and when he says it he thinks of Luna telling him love.
Quickly, Ignis plucks it from the ground, and he absently says, “Ah, thank you, Noct.”
Noct freezes.
So does Ignis.
He makes a soft, pained noise and then abruptly closes his mouth, holding on tightly to the can. All at once, Ignis manages to make himself look small and nervous and vulnerable.
“Ignis?” Noct tries quietly, stepping closer. Hear me, please hear me-
Ignis closes his blind eye and lets out a long, shaking breath. Then another breath, slow and shivering in the silence.
He sets the can aside carefully, placing it with incredible precision on the table. His fingers linger on it for a moment. His nail scratches against the cool, unyielding metal. For a moment, Noct thinks Ignis might throw it. Instead, Ignis just withdraws his hand from the can and clenches it into a fist instead, opening and closing his hand like he’s not sure that it works.
“Ignis,” Noct says again, and he tries so hard to focus, but he can’t.
Ignis makes a strangled, desperate noise, but that’s the last of it. He gets up from the table, stiff and silent and sad. Methodically, he pushes in his chair, walks to his bedroom, and places his visor on his bedside table. He crawls into bed. There’s a curious look on his face that Noct has never seen before. It’s not quite misery, but it’s something close enough. It hurts to look at him for too long.
Ignis doesn’t sleep the whole night. He just stares up at the ceiling he cannot see, silent and unmoving. His breathing hitches around something quiet and painful, though, and by the morning, his cheeks are stained with tear tracks.
Noct stays by his side through it all.
---
“I keep doing it,” Ignis says quietly one night to Prompto. He’s laying on the couch beside Prompto, splayed out in an oddly unfamiliar way with his head in Prompto’s lap. This is one of the newer things that Noct has noticed since he’s started watching Ignis. Prompto and Ignis seem to find some sort of solace in each other’s presence in the absence of Noctis, adopting bits of each other as they try to find their way through the world after the dawn. Quiet nights like this usually end up with them talking softly about old times while Prompto finds something to do with his restless hands. Today, he’s making an absolute mess of Ignis’s hair, running it through his fingers while they navigate their misery together.
Prompto pauses in his absent ministrations, frowning down at Ignis. “Doing what?” he asks.
“Forgetting that he’s not there. I talk to him. It’s like a reflex.”
“Reflexes take time to fade,” Prompto protests.
Ignis huffs out a small, self-deprecating laugh. “You’d think that ten years without him would have done the trick.”
“Iggy-”
“No,” Ignis interrupts, waving a hand. “No, never mind. Forget it. It’s the same thing every time. You’ve heard enough of it.”
Prompto sighs, “Ignis.”
“Prompto, I’m done with this.”
“But-”
“No.”
Prompto nods, pressing his lips together. “Fine.” It certainly doesn’t sound fine. He ducks his head and resumes carding his fingers through Ignis’s hair. He swallows.
Noct sighs. “I’m sorry, Prom.”
Prompto bites his lip, clearly considering something. He offers, quietly, “Gladio tried to lift a cart by himself today.”
“Did he?” Ignis asks faintly. It doesn’t sound like he’s listening.
Prompto’s face twists into something between a smile and misery. “Yeah, bud,” he murmurs, and he starts a messy, doomed plait in Ignis’s hair. “Can you believe it?”
Noct doesn’t miss the way that his lips tremble around tears.
“He’s too noble for his own good,” Ignis comments, and he shifts to give Prompto better access to his hair, sprawling even more across the couch. And, well. At least he’s trying to make it okay.
The two of them talk long into the night. It’s all idle, quiet stuff now, and none of it is entirely useful. That’s unconcerning in and of itself, but it’s what they don’t say that has Noct worried. They avoid certain topics. They don’t discuss the sunlight. They don’t mention Noct.
They’re not smiling anymore.
Were they ever?
Noct frowns.
He’s not doing enough.
---
Ignis did always say that Noct was a force to be reckoned with when he put his mind to something.
It becomes a routine.
At dawn, he joins Ignis on his morning walks, breathing in the dew-heavy scent of the dawn over the ruins of Insomnia. It’s only a faint hint, locked away from Noctis by the blessing of breath and a heartbeat, but it’s enough to feel like he’s really there. While Ignis makes his breakfast in his tiny apartment, Noct goes to check on the others: Prompto’s usually awake and fidgeting by then, and Gladio’s already throwing himself into another construction project. None of them ever sleep through the sunrise.
Noct feels guilty.
For now, he follows Ignis, going through the motions day after day, and every time, he tries to speak. It never works.
One day, he’ll get it right.
---
“Noct, you wouldn’t believe what Gladio said to me today.”
“Try me,” Noct says, laying down on the floor of Ignis’s apartment. He can’t exactly feel the texture of the floor beneath him, but he’s aware that it’s there. Things work weirdly when he walks between the worlds. Today, his voice fails him, and he can only sit and watch.
It takes time, Luna’s voice remind him, but he can’t stand it.
Ignis turns the page of his book, smiling faintly at whatever is printed beneath his fingers. “He said that he’s taking a day off to raid some old grocery stores for noodles. Apparently, he’s trying to test the limits on what really is non perishable food.”
Noct can’t help but snort. “That’s funny, Ignis, yeah.”
“Isn’t that funny?” Ignis picks at the corner of his page, smiling softly with his eyes closed.
Noct grins. “Sure sounds like him.”
“It sounds like him, don’t you think? I thought you might appreciate hearing it. Though now I wonder which will have expired first: him or the noodles. Which do you wager?”
Noct opens his mouth to speak.
Ignis frowns, though, and makes a soft, pained noise that’s half a laugh and half a whimper. His fingers pause and stutter across the page he’s reading. “I-”
He stops.
He puts down the book. He doesn’t even bother slipping a bookmark between the pages like he usually does; instead, he just closes it sharply, losing his page. It falls from his fingers and tumbles to the floor with a soft clatter and whisper of pages.
Noct sits up. “Ignis?” he asks carefully.
“What am I doing, Noct?”
“Ignis-”
“Talking to nothing.” Ignis laughs, low and bitter. “A blind man in the middle of the night, talking out loud to nothing. I’m lucky the neighbors are asleep.”
Noctis clenches his fists. “Ignis, if you could hear me-”
“I should stop doing this. Reflexes, and all that. Prompto would have my head.”
Noct wishes he could tell Ignis that Prompto talks to him too.
Ignis sits forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. He leans forward, head bowed. Noct has never seen him look quite so defeated. Maybe after Altissia. Maybe when he asked Noct to just throw everything away before they could lose something more. Noct can see that same misery now in the set of his shoulders, and in the way that his long hair falls to hang across his forehead, unheeded.
“Keep talking,” he urges. Gods, that’s the only thing keeping him sane.
“I know you’d say that it would be foolish-”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“But I couldn’t help but think that it may be possible that-” Ignis cuts himself off and bites his lip. “Well, I can’t help but hope that maybe I haven’t lost you entirely.”
Noct moves across the floor and settles down on his knees before Ignis, staring up at him. Like this, Ignis just looks so defeated. It’s so unlike him that it hurts. Ignis has always been proud. Ignis has always been strong. Noctis hates that he’s the one who’s brought Ignis so low.
He moves to brush a lock of hair behind Ignis’s ear, but his fingers pass through it like smoke, unable to offer any form of comfort.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, but Ignis doesn’t seem to have heard him.
Gods, he never does.
---
Noctis doesn’t go back to the living world for a few days.
He finds, in that time, that it’s exceedingly hard to destroy things in the perfect world he’s stuck in. The Citadel of always-dawn resists his attempts to sow anything other than happiness, but that doesn’t stop Noct from trying. He conjures the armiger, over and over, using the full power of his ancestors to shatter the throne into rubble. He yells as he does it, turning his frustration into sound and violence.
The throne just keeps rebuilding itself. That only makes Noct try harder.
“Noctis.”
He ignores it and conjures his father’s sword, stabbing it over and over again into the spot where it had impaled him on this throne in the world he left behind. If he can kill the memory, then he can kill the truth of it, and he can wake up in Insomnia beside Ignis.
“Noctis.”
He bares his teeth and switches weapons. It’s not enough. It won’t work. Nothing ever works.
“Noctis!”
Noct whirls, engine blade in hand and armiger rising up around him, and he bares his teeth. He growls, “What?”
It’s Luna.
She stares at him from mere feet away, head tilted to the side. She’s unthreatened even in the face of his full power. “Is that not futile?” she asks, nodding to the throne.
Noct glances over his shoulder. Already, the stone and iron of the throne is shifting back into place. The rubble and torn fabric repair themselves until there’s no sign that he’s thrown his full force against it. “It’s convenient,” he mutters, but he banishes his engine blade, and the Royal Arms as well. “Gives me something to keep attacking.”
Luna snorts. “That’s one way of doing things.”
“What do you suggest, then?”
“Reason, perhaps?” Luna leads him to the window beside the throne, quietly distancing them from the target of Noct’s rage. “What troubles you?”
“I can’t reach any of them.”
“Not yet, at least.”
“I’m the savior!” he growls. “I should be able to do this sort of thing!”
“You are.”
“Luna, what part of this looks like I’m making any sort of difference?” Noct gestures out at the city below him, and the perfect image wavers, and for a moment the ruins of the waking world shiver into view. And then they’re gone again, obscured by magic and hidden by the veil that keeps Noctis here, dead and powerful and useless.
Luna sighs and sits down on the ground beside the window, pressing her hand to the glass. She stares down at the world below. Again, the veil between the worlds shivers, and battle-torn Insomnia merges with the perfect city of Noct’s youth once more. “The world heals, even now,” she says softly. “Slowly, though. Slowly. But it heals where it counts.”
Noct lowers himself down beside her. He tugs his knees up to his chest. “How?”
“The sun rises and sets on the Insomnia of the living. People rebuild. Your people are resilient, Noctis.”
Noct frowns down at the city streets below. If he squints, the glowing forms of the peaceful dead walk side by side with the living inhabitants of Eos, superimposed and entirely unaware of each other. Few of them have the power to look past the veil between the worlds. It’s beautiful, he thinks grudgingly. “I just wish I could do more,” he admits.
“You’re not patient.” Luna takes his hands and smiles. “You never were.”
Noct snorts. “Just another of my winning personality traits.”
“You’re a good man, Noctis,” Luna tells him, “with a good heart. But you need to accept that sometimes, you will fail. Despite the power, and despite your fate, you cannot always bend this world to your will.”
“I’m going to keep trying. I won’t stop until he hears me.”
Luna squeezes his hands. “I know you won’t.”
---
Ignis works too much.
Today, he’s on assignment at a relatively intact concrete-and-steel building. It’s not too tall, only two stories, which makes Noct think that that’s why they chose it. It’s an easy target. Already, the construction crews have moved in and set to work assessing the foundations and integrity of the steel and cement of the low-slung building.
Noctis trails behind him, half-listening to the status updates from construction workers. Gladio’s here too, but he disappears to some hidden corner of the building with the foreman before too long, leaving Noct and Ignis to wander the empty halls together. It’s boring work; he’s privately pleased that he never really had to do much of this stuff before he died.
Eventually, Ignis ends up on the bottom floor, frowning over the floor plans for the building. This’ll become a market when they’re done with it; someone’s gone to the trouble of printing the proposal and building contracts in physical script for Ignis to read. Noct appreciates that the people haven’t forgotten to keep Ignis in the loop, and that they value him with or without his sight. As it should be.
He leans against the table while Ignis works. He contemplates reaching out to touch Ignis’s cheek, but he’d hate to break Ignis’s concentration now. Instead, Noct settles for watching Ignis work, admiring the way his mouth silently moves to shape the words he reads with careful fingertips.
Through the general hum of the construction, a curious creaking begins, like metal on metal.
“Look out!” someone bellows, muffled by concrete and steel.
The building shivers and groans around them.
Ignis looks up from his work, fingers lifting from the plans he’s reading. His brow furrows.
“Ignis,” Noctis warns.
Gingerly, Ignis steps away from the table and wanders into the middle of the room. He looks up at the ceiling. “Gladio?” he calls warily. “Is everything alright?”
There’s no response. The building groans again, and there’s a distant shout once more, and Ignis stumbles and falls.
“Ignis!” Noct rushes to stand over Ignis, heart pounding uselessly in his chest. He’s about to bend over and check if Ignis is okay, but then something cracks and shifts above him, and he looks up to see large, spidering cracks shuddering their way through the mortar and concrete ceiling.
It’s going to collapse.
And Ignis doesn’t know.
“No!” Noct cries, and he holds his arms over his head in a reflex, but he’s dead and he’s useless and he can’t stop the world from falling down around them.
So he throws himself over Ignis where he’s fallen to the ground, and he thinks of the power of kings and he thinks please-
The impact doesn’t come.
He hears it like a thousand shattering chandeliers, and the building groans around them, but nothing comes hurtling down to crush them. His useless heartbeat rushes in his ears, roaring with the sound of the ocean and the whispers of his ancestors. When he hazards a glance away from Ignis, he nearly gasps. They’re surrounded by rubble; it piles up around them, sending rocks and old rebar skittering across the cracked concrete around them. There are chunks large enough to kill Ignis, but all of them surround them in a ring of death. Dust billows around them in a dry, noxious cloud.
He looks back at Ignis. Ignis, who he’s just saved from what might have killed him.
Ignis lies beneath him, chest heaving in panic, but he’s unharmed save for a streak of dust across his cheek. His eyes are screwed shut beneath his visor, clenched against a threat he never saw coming. Noctis, hands splayed on either side of Ignis’s head, stares down at him. He’s safe, he tells himself. He’s safe.
When he looks over his shoulder, he nearly blinds himself with the light of the kings.
The armiger stretches out above him, glistening with crystalline purity in the air. They’re hovering, familiar and silver-blue, fending off any rubble that dares fall on them. The blades, shining with deadly focus above them, aren’t circling around like they used to when he summoned the armiger. They look like wings.
Like Bahamut, he thinks breathlessly. Just like Bahamut.
Ignis reaches out wildly, and his fingers clasp down on-
On-
“Hello?” he breathes, and he’s touching Noct. He’s touching Noct.
Noctis gasps.
Coughing around the dust in the air, Ignis rasps, “I believe a sincere thank you is in order.”
Noct just stares. Ignis is touching him. Ignis is grabbing his clothes. Ignis can feel him. He did it. He finally did it.
Ignis tilts his head. His fingers tighten in the barely-there fabric of Noct’s jacket. “Hello?” he asks again. This time, his voice shakes.
“Ignis,” Noct whispers when he can find his voice again. It hurts to try to force so much of himself into the world, and the armiger drains him even more, but he ignores it in favor of being so close. He’s the Chosen King. If he can’t do it, of all people, then nobody can. He didn’t die to be powerless. “Ignis.”
For a moment, he’s afraid that his efforts haven’t been enough, and that his voice hasn’t made it past the wall between the worlds. But then Ignis’s eye widens, silvery-bright in the light of the armiger still poised above them. “Noct?” he murmurs, and he raises his other hand towards Noct’s face. His fingers alight on the curve of Noct’s cheek.
Noctis can barely feel the touch, tenuous as the connection is, but he turns his face towards it nonetheless. “Ignis,” he whispers again, straining past sudden tears in his throat.
Ignis blinks, as if that’ll clear his vision and deliver him a glimpse at Noct. His lips part in wonder. Noct can’t help but notice the scar on his lip, dark and familiar after all this time. Ignis rasps, “It can’t be.”
“Ignis,” Noct repeats, urgently, because that’s the only thing in his mind. It’s Ignis, Ignis, Ignis. “It’s me.”
The gentle fingers on his cheek falter for a moment. “Noct,” Ignis says, and something like a smile blooms across his face.
He’s beautiful.
“Ignis!” someone bellows, and the spell is broken.
Noctis jerks backwards in surprise, losing his concentration, and the swords of the kings dissolve into diamond dust above him. Something inside him shifts, and he chokes around the sudden tightness in his chest, all at once exhausted. And then he’s just smoke and shadow again, separated from Ignis by death once more.
Ignis, lying in a halo of rubble and dust, doesn’t move. His hand hovers in midair, held aloft with fingers outstretched for a king he cannot reach. His lips tremble.
“Noct,” Ignis whispers.
“Ignis,” Noct tries, but he’s too tired to reach out. His voice feels tight, straining against sudden tears.
“Ignis!”
Gladio comes barrelling out of the swirling dust and rubble. He’s got blood dripping from a gash on his arm, but it’s shallow enough that it seems like he’s ignoring it. He looks around wildly for a moment, and his face goes through several stages of desperate despair when he sees Ignis lying among the massive piles of rubble where the building has collapsed. He dashes over and falls to his knees at Ignis’s side, heedless of whatever debris might pierce him there. “Fucking - Ignis, are you okay?”
Ignis’s fingers clench into a fist; he pulls it back and holds it to his chest. “I’m fine,” he says faintly.
Gladio helps Ignis to his feet. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” he scolds, voice shaking despite the growl in his tone. “What the hell was that?”
“What was what?”
“I saw something.” Gladio’s carefully clutching at Ignis, checking him for injuries. His fingers flutter restlessly from Ignis’ shoulders to his cheeks to his chest.
“You did?” Ignis’s silvery eye widens begins his visor. “What did it look like, Gladio?”
“You could be hurt.”
“Gladio,” Ignis interrupts, low and desperate, “I need you to tell me what you saw.”
Gladio stops in his frantic ministrations, hands hovering at Ignis’s shoulders. He blinks rapidly, staring at Ignis through the dust in the air. He swallows. “Someone,” he finally rasps. “Someone kneeling above you.”
“Someone like-”
“I thought I saw the armiger, Ignis.”
Noct steps forward. His vision is swimming with blueness, and he wants nothing more than to curl up and sleep for endless eons, but he still tries once more. “You did, Gladio,” he urges. “Gladio, c’mon, please.”
Gladio’s eyes, for just a moment, flicker towards where Noctis is standing. Then they harden, and he closes his eyes and sighs. “It was probably a trick of the light.”
Ignis’s face lights up with desperate, beautiful hope. “It wasn’t, Gladio. Here, let me show you.” He turns back towards the impossible halo of carnage where Noct had saved him from harm.
“Ignis,” Gladio says, voice tight. “You should get some rest. You’ve just had a near-death experience.”
Ignis waves his hand airily. “I’m fine. You should look at this.”
Gladio grabs him roughly by the shoulder and turns him around. “You’re not,” he insists. There’s no heat in his voice, though, and there’s only concern in his eyes. “I know what you think I saw-”
“I heard his voice, Gladio.”
“And I know what you think you heard,” Gladio continues. “But Ignis, you can’t - we can’t keep doing this.”
Ignis makes a quiet, desperate noise. “Gladio,” he says softly. “Gladio, please.”
Gladio turns his head to the side. “I miss him,” he says through gritted teeth, like he’s holding something back. “Damn it, it hurts every goddamn day. But we can’t keep chasing ghosts like this.”
Ignis reaches out and clutches Gladio’s hand with both of his, holding on tightly. “Gladio, I felt him,” he pleads. “He was here. Somehow-”
“There’s no magic left!” Gladio snaps, voice strained. He pulls away. “He’s dead, Ignis! Nothing is going to change that.”
“Gladio,” Ignis begs, and his voice cracks.
Gladio shakes his head. “Go home, Ignis,” he orders roughly. “Please.”
Ignis’s lips tremble, just a bit. He stumbles backwards from Gladio, face vulnerable and wounded even behind the cool mask of his visor. Then he composes himself, because he’s Ignis, and he clears his throat. “Gladio,” he repeats, but his voice is tight and cold this time. It’s a dismissal. He straightens his jacket, he brushes off the dust from the rubble that should have killed him, and he turns on his heel.
Noctis follows.
He wishes he didn’t hear the way that Ignis’s breath keeps catching in his throat, like he’s trying to keep himself from screaming.
Noct takes one last glance over his shoulder as he goes. He can’t help but notice the dust covering Gladio’s face, and the way that tears streak their way through it, forging a dark path down the curve of his cheek. Gladio doesn’t seem to notice. If he does, he makes no move to wipe the evidence away. He just stares at the spot where Noctis had been, and his mouth moves soundlessly over a word that might have been Noct’s name.
“I’m sorry,” Noct tells him.
He leaves Gladio behind.
Noct chases Ignis down the rubble-strewn streets of Insomnia, walking between worlds to stay by his side. He’s exhausted beyond words, and beyond hope, but he can’t leave Ignis behind now.
It’s sunset by the time that Ignis drags himself to the door of his apartment. The rage-red light of it plays against the scars on Ignis’s face and deepens the creases in his skin that speak to endless frowning. At dusk, like this, the sunlight only makes Ignis look tired. Just like that, the proof of Noct’s sacrifice fades from the world again, casting long shadows in its wake.
Ignis drops himself onto the side of his bed with little ceremony. He sits like that, silent and miserable, staring at nothing with his eye wide open.
Noctis waits.
Finally, Ignis runs a hand through his soot-covered hair, sending motes of dust spiraling into the rays of light shining through his window. He doesn’t seem to care about the mess. Not anymore. It’s just another change that hurts whenever Noct notices it.
Ignis swallows. “Noctis, I-”
He stops. His breath hitches, and the sound of it echoes through his sparse bedroom. In the golden light of the sunset, his cheeks shine with tears.
“Ignis,” Noctis says quietly, reaching towards him, but he’s too tired to turn his touch into reality. He’s just smoke and shadow, watching from the world between the worlds. His fingers slip through Ignis’s cheeks like passing starlight, turning the teardrops to crystal in their wake. But he can’t touch Ignis. Not really.
Ignis swallows and swipes a hand across his cheek, brushing his tears away. He finally says, “I know you’re there.”
“I am. I am.”
“Or at least I hope you are, because otherwise I fear that I’m going insane.” He laughs a little, but it’s tearful and it cracks a bit, and Noct’s heart aches for him.
“Ignis,” Noct says softly.
“Nobody believes me,” Ignis says ruefully. It sounds painful with the tears in his voice. “I don’t know if I believe myself anymore.”
“Ignis,” he tries again, desperate now. “Ignis, c’mon. Please.”
Ignis shakes his head. “I won’t-” He stops; stammers. “I won’t keep kidding myself.”
“Ignis!”
Noct reaches out for Ignis’s hands, and he focuses on the distant memory of long car rides and longer meetings. He thinks of holding hands beneath the Council table, and of curling up together in the back seat while Gladio drives for a bit. He thinks of drifting off to sleep in a tent in the middle of nowhere, lulled into safety by the constant warmth of Ignis’s fingers twined with his. He thinks about nights under the stars. And he focuses on what he knows Ignis felt like, recalling battle-born calluses and softer caresses.
And he loves him for it.
And then it’s not just the memory.
He feels Ignis’s hands in his. He feels them. He feels them.
Ignis takes in a small, quiet breath and falls still. He fixes his sightless gaze down at his hands and asks, softly, “Noct?”
“I’m here,” Noct promises, and he knows that Ignis can hear him, and that’s enough.
“I hear you,” Ignis tells him, and suddenly, despite the tears, he’s smiling. He’s radiant. He’s breathless. “Gods, Noct, that’s your voice.”
“It’s me,” Noct assures him, trembling, and he twines his fingers with Ignis’s.
Ignis nearly sobs. “Noct,” he says, but Noct can hear everything else in his name. He understands what Luna meant now.
“I can’t always be all the way here,” Noct murmurs, and he punctuates his words with a kiss to Ignis’s temple, “but I’m watching. I walk with you.”
“I always knew,” Ignis whispers, shaking. “I always hoped.”
Noctis tells him, “I know.” He kisses Ignis’s cheek, and he’s delighted when he can truly feel the wetness of Ignis’s tears. “I heard. I was always watching. I’ve been trying for ages.”
“Ages?” Ignis repeats, and he laughs, breathless and beautiful.
“Ages,” Noct promises.
“Stay here tonight,” Ignis begs. “Can you?”
Noctis nods, though he knows Ignis can’t see him. “Of course.”
“Even if I can’t feel you or hear you,” Ignis tells him, “knowing that you’re here would-”
“I know.” What wouldn’t he give for a chance to be beside Ignis again? Even if he can’t touch him, knowing that Ignis knows he’s there is intoxicating enough. Of course he’ll stay. Of course.
He’s exhausted beyond words, but this is worth it. Ignis is worth it.
They lay in Ignis’s bed together; Noctis focuses on the sound of Ignis’s breathing, and that’s enough to keep him tethered here. He spreads his fingers over Ignis’s chest, above his heart. It’s nearly impossible to conjure up much more of himself than that, so he concentrates on his voice and on the constant rhythm of Ignis’s heart that he can finally feel beneath his fingers.
He whispers I love you every chance he gets, and he never gets tired of the way that Ignis’s heartbeat flutters beneath his touch every time he says it.
---
Luna hugs him when he returns.
“I’m so proud,” she tells him, smiling. She’s radiant. She always is.
Noct hugs her back, fierce and tight and with all of the affection he was never able to give to her when they were both alive. “Thank you,” he breathes into her ear.
He means it. He does, he does, he does.
—-
Noct manifests at dawn.
Unless Ignis needs him, the energy is hard to muster up. He can always walk between the worlds, watching silently by Ignis’s side, but speaking or appearing is draining. Luna assures him that the power will come with experience, and that he’ll grow into it with every attempt he makes.
Noct’s impatient. He always has been.
He tries whenever he can. Sometimes it’s as simple as attempting to roll a scroll towards Ignis, or to press a kiss to his cheek as he falls asleep alone. Other times he tries to speak: to Ignis, or to Prompto, or even to Gladio. Some days, he can barely muster more than a whisper in the world where they live.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Until then, he has the dawn.
Ignis goes on walks early in the morning before the city comes alive, leaving the Citadel and trekking towards the wilder, greener spots of Insomnia that nature reclaimed. He has a favorite spot up on a hill where the sunlight creeps up to meet him from beyond the walls of the city. That’s where he stops today, gracefully sinking down in the grass to sit and await the dawn.
Noct settles in beside him, squinting out at the horizon. The sun will be rising soon; already, the sky is turning pale pink and gold at the edges, turning the night sky to a dusky gray. In this light, out here, Ignis looks more peaceful than he ever does in the Citadel. Noct only wishes he could tell him as much. As he’s trying to find his voice, he does what he can: he presses a kiss to Ignis’s cheek.
Ignis’s eyelid flutters shut, painting his cheek with the shadow of his eyelashes. He’s silent for a few moments; Noct gives him time. Finally, Ignis speaks, low and rough and beautiful. “This isn’t your normal wake up time.”
Noctis shakes his head, though he knows Ignis won’t see it. “Trying something new.”
“Wonders never cease,” Ignis teases lightly. He sighs. “It’s good to hear your voice,” he admits, smiling.
“You’re lucky,” Noctis says. “Speaking is easier than being seen.”
“Small miracles.” Ignis tilts his head towards where Noct sits unseen. “What’s it like? To visit me, I mean?”
Noctis considers just telling him love. He tries, instead, to explain, “It’s like substance without sight.”
“All the better, then, that I can’t see you. I’d prefer you over an illusion any day.”
Noctis laughs at that. “Glad to hear that.”
Ignis turns his face towards the rising sun, suddenly somber in the newborn day. Perhaps because of it. He says, so softly that he’s barely speaking above the wind, “It’s not the same without you.”
“No,” Noctis admits. “It’s not.”
“I miss you every day.” Ignis’s eyes are closed against the light of the dawn. “It never gets easier, Noct.”
“No,” Noct repeats. He squeezes his eyes shut against the rising threat of tears there. “It never does.”
Ignis breathes quietly beside him, still blind to the sun as it warms his face. His voice falters when he asks, “I’ll be there someday, right? Beside you?”
“One day,” Noct promises. He reaches down and twines his fingers with Ignis’s.
Ignis squeezes his hand, gentler than he’s ever been. It’s like he’s cherishing the feeling of Noct’s touch, committing it to memory while it still lasts. “Until then,” he says, “please stay with me.”
“Always,” Noct swears.
He means it.
—-
Ignis still goes to see Prompto. He spends most nights there, and Noct doesn’t mind. He likes the company just as much as Ignis does.
Some nights, Gladio stops by. He refuses to talk about Noct, and there are lines around his eyes that speak of more tears than laughter, and they welcome him nonetheless. Ignis plays with Gladio’s shoelaces while Prompto quietly talks about the progress the Crownsguard’s making, and Noct sits and listens and drifts between slumber and watchfulness. They’re not quite happy, of course, but they’re broken in a way that fits them together into a family.
And it’s peaceful, maybe. It’s home.
Tonight, though, it’s just Prompto and Ignis and Noct. Curled together in the light of a few candles, they brave the night together.
Sometimes, the two of them talk about Noct.
“Is he here now?” Prompto asks, barely above a whisper.
Ignis smiles and extends a hand out into the darkness of the apartment. His fingers hang there, elegant and pale, without expectation or fear. Quietly, he says, “He could be.”
Noctis, curled up beside Prompto in his usual spot on the couch, reaches down and tangles his fingers in Ignis’s hair. He’s too tired to really step between the worlds, but he pours enough of himself into cherishing the softness of Ignis’s hair beneath his touch that he knows it won’t go unnoticed.
But just in case Ignis is listening closely to the spot in himself where the magic used to live, Noct whispers, “I am.”
The smile on Ignis’s lips turns soft, and his eyebrows crease in the way they always used to when Noct would roll over in bed and say Good morning, Specs. It’s beautiful to see after all this time away. “He is,” he murmurs, quiet and reverent. “I know it.”
His fingers slowly curl back towards his palm like a flower blooming in reverse, pale and beautiful. He brings his hand towards his chest and holds it there, as if Noct has delivered him something precious beyond words and beyond sight.
Prompto smiles, and for once his eyes light up too. “Hey, buddy,” he calls softly.
Noct leans his head on Prompto’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “Hey,” he calls back, low and lazy and content.
He feels the hitch in Prompto’s breath, and the quiet exhale of his name that sounds like reverence, and he lets himself drift off to sleep.
—-
Most of the time, it’s simple enough to be Ignis’s guardian.
Following him is a task he’ll gladly do. Many days, Ignis wanders the city, helping those he can while the daylight brings the citizens outside. By night, he works on matters of state, painstakingly listening to transcribed reports from a computer and dictating his responses. He stays up too late trying to fix the world, but there’s not much Noct can do about that other than whisper quiet encouragements to sleep. Sometimes Ignis hears. Sometimes he doesn’t. Even when he does, he refuses. It’s endearing, really.
The protection is the easiest part. Breaking through the barrier to manifest in Eos is simple when danger threatens Ignis. Those times, Noct conjures up his power in the ways that Luna taught him, and he forces the world to let him take form. And he’s so scared of losing Ignis that all he knows is love and that’s enough to bring him back, if only for a heartbeat.
Noct looks forward to those moments.
One day, on one of Ignis’s walks, a pack of mutant havocfangs runs up to Ignis, snarling a challenge. Ignis is armed only with one dagger today, but he draws it nonetheless. One of the creatures leaps at Ignis, and it’s killed swiftly, but two others take its place, and they wrap their jaws around Ignis’s arm, biting hard enough to draw blood.
Ignis cries out.
That’s all it takes. Noct shatters through the barrier holding him back, and he takes form beside Ignis, yelling a challenge into the morning air. The havocfangs snarl back at him, shaking out their shaggy, overgrown fur as they assess him. They’re doomed.
Noct wraps his arms around Ignis, and he whispers, “Get ready.”
Ignis smiles against his skin. He hears Noctis. He feels him. “Always.”
Noct laughs.
He conjures the armiger like a tornado around him, holding Ignis tightly as he wields the weapons of his ancestors to keep him safe. The havocfangs don’t stand a chance against the might of the Chosen, and they fall. The sleeping city falls silent around them once more as the last havocfang breathes its last and collapses to the ground.
When it’s done, the weapons return to him with the clinking of broken glass and the whispers of ancient kings, hovering behind Noct as they await his command. They Noct chooses to use them once more, circling the two of them in a halo of crystals and light. It’s just the two of them in the middle of a forgotten part of Insomnia, wrapped up in the glittering weapons that demonstrate every bit of Noct’s power.
“Thank you,” Ignis breathes into his ear before Noct can dissolve into diamond dust once more.
Noct kisses him even as he fades. He savors the feeling of Ignis’s lips on his, and he holds onto it, cherishing this new chance to know Ignis again. He chases the feeling for as long as he can, but he’s not needed anymore, and slowly the afterlife pulls him away from the living.
“Thank you,” Ignis repeats to the cool morning air after Noctis has faded, surrounded only by the corpses of the havocfangs Noct destroyed.
It’s not enough. It never is. But it’s what they have.
Noctis kisses Ignis again through the veil between them, though he knows it makes no difference.
Maybe Ignis feels it. He smiles sadly, at least, before he turns and continues on his way to their favorite hill. The sun will be rising soon. Ignis never misses a sunrise. Not one.
Noctis watches him for a moment. He’s not sure how long it will be until he’s once more able to roll over in the morning and find Ignis there, and he can reach out and touch him. But looking at Ignis, and at the noble silhouette of him in the newborn sunlight, he considers himself lucky that he has this. Even if it’s not enough.
He spreads his wings of crystal and steel and follows Ignis into the dawn.