Chapter Text
“Everything has a cost. If you think something is free, you just don’t know what it costs yet.” As grim as this sounds, it was part of a lecture Prompto got when he was seven and whining at his mom in the grocery store. She meant well, probably.
The first time he used magic to repair something it was almost deceptively easy. One moment he was sitting on his bed holding back tears because it was his new lens-- the one he’d worked months to buy, doing jobs for neighbours and begging his parents to increase his allowance. He stared at the crack and willed it to be gone with every cell in his body.
Light seared his retinas. And when he was able to see again, the lens was whole. He turned it over in his hands, held it up to the light. It was fixed, just like that. Magic had burned down his arms and flooded his fingertips and just… done his bidding.
He was so stunned he sat on his bed for five minutes just staring at the lens. Then he was giddy with excitement. He fixed something! Somehow, he of all people could use magic, and he could use it to fix broken things! That was just about one of the best powers he could think of. That was some serious comic book shit. He put questions of whether it had anything to do with the barcode snug and secure under his wristband out of his mind.
An hour later his fingertips were numb. They hurt if he pressed on them.
Everything has a cost. That’s the thing. That’s a lesson Prompto got young, but he didn’t start learning it until he was almost a teenager.
xXx
It wasn’t just a game. It was Chocobo Collective Racing 2, and it was Prompto who broke it, which made it so much worse. They’d logged more hours on it than any other game. It had been, at first, the reason for Noct inviting him over most days after school. Prompto picked up the two pieces of the cartridge and cradled them like a broken baby bird.
“Think it’ll still work?” Noct said, but there was about zero optimism in his voice.
“I wouldn’t expect so.” Ignis was still sitting at the kitchen table buffing the smears out of the flatware like there isn’t a momentous tragedy happening in front of them.
“But it’s Chocobo Collective Racing 2!” Prompto said, like that might help impress upon Ignis the importance.
“Man. This sucks. I got that--uh, before.”
It felt like Prompto’s heart stuttered in his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Prompto said. Noct waved a hand.
“Hey man, it was an accident, don’t worry about it.” And he meant that, which made it way worse.
Prompto looked back at the game in his hands, and he just wanted so badly for it to be intact. He screwed his eyes shut and for a second, heat flared through his palms.
“Um. What the fuck ?”
“Noctis?” There was the scrape of Ignis’s chair by the counter, and when Prompto opened his eyes Noctis was blinking at him like he’d had a camera flash popped in his face and Ignis was leaning over his shoulder inquisitively. And the cartridge was in one piece again.
“How the--you can do magic ?”
“I-I didn’t mean to! I mean, I didn’t know I could !” He saw Ignis from the corner of his eye, scrutinizing his face. But Noctis was beaming--Noctis was bowled over. He took the cartridge from Prompto, turned it over and shook it like he was testing a magician’s trick. But the cartridge remained solid. It didn’t melt into leaves like fairy gold in some old story, or crack back apart.
“You’ve never done that before? How’d you make it happen?”
“I don’t think--wait, once when I was a kid. I always thought maybe I dreamed that.” Prompto rubbed the hair at the back of his neck. Noct snorted. “I just concentrated, and there.”
“Huh. Maybe you draw power from the King, like the glaives. Specs, you think that’s possible?”
Ignis adjusted his glasses before answering. He plucked the cartridge from Noct’s fingers and turned it over.
“Hmm, perhaps. I wonder how he would tap into the power without the King’s blessing, though.” He handed the game back to Prompto. “A useful power to have, nonetheless,” he said, but his gaze lingered on Prompto a little long, and he felt like the skin on his wrist was itching--or rather, he felt like the skin on his wrist was begging to be peeled off.
They booted up the game and found their saves wiped, but it ran flawlessly. An hour or so into playing Prompto felt his fingers cramp up so hard his eyes watered. He went into the bathroom and shook his hands out and splashed some cold water on his face. He felt off balance, overheated, a little drunk.
There was a half inch of black crawling up from his nail beds. So he pulled his sweater down over his hands and returned to the living room.
“You up for another stage?”
“Dinner is going to be ready in a moment,” Ignis cut in. Prom reorganized his face into a grin.
“Ah, sorry, but my mom wants me home! Next time!” he said. He tried not to fixate on the way Noctis’ smile slipped. He tried not to commit it to memory at all.
When he was eating cold rice in his empty house, he had to switch to a spoon because his numb fingers kept fumbling the chopsticks. He peeled off the sweatband and inspected the barcode underneath. Not faded, not stretched even a little with age, it look clean enough to set off a grocery store scanner (something he had once considered trying, however briefly).
Wouldn’t it be nice if Noctis was right, and he drew power from the King just like the glaives. But he had this roiling feeling in his gut, this sweat on the back of his neck, this shred of half-memory. Metal walls. Tubes going into him and out from him. Something thick and rotten in his veins. He pulled the wristband back on and dumped the rest of the rice in the garbage. It was well past tasting good anyways.
xXx
It wasn’t so bad that time with the video game. But when Prompto was in his last year of high school, the washing machine broke down, and he was still waiting on a reply to his week-old texts about where to get replacement parts for the vacuum and how to unclog the sink (two things he had already moogled and figured out by then) so he figured asking them was pointless.
Moogle got him to the problem, and then provided him a solution. Sometimes the problem is: your washing machine is irreparably broken, and the solution is: buy a new washing machine. But if he bought a new washing machine he wouldn’t make rent twice over. That was… impossible. He chewed on a thumbnail while his phone vibrated on top of the busted washer, then grimaced when he realized his fingers still had grody old grease on them.
Noctis was blowing up his phone with a slew of incomprehensible emojis (which generally meant he was blind-texting under the table at a meeting). He fired off a “get ur princely duties, loser” message, and started putting the washer back together. Once it was a whole thing he stood up, took a deep breath, put both hands on it and willed it unbroken.
The lights came on on the front. It gave the delightful little “ding” that it did when a load was finished. Then Prompto blacked out.
When he came to it was an hour later, his phone was glutted with Noctis-in-meeting texts, and the washing machine was still fixed. He took a moment to grin to himself before bile surged up his throat, and he had to scramble for the bathroom. He made it as far as the sink, where he coughed half-digested cereal and stomach acid, and then spent a few minutes washing the mess down the drain and brushing his teeth at the same time.
He was too tired to even retrieve his phone, and opted to just fall into bed.
“Dude, you look terrible today.”
“Thanks Noctis, you look like a shitty nerd.” Prompto tried not to squirm. Sunlight hurt. It felt like his skin was too tight. It felt like all his clothing had been replaced with sandpaper.
“First of all,” Noct began, slinging a hand over Prompto’s shoulder, which ow , he tried not to flinch at, “you and I both know you’re the one who’s a shitty nerd.”
“Whatever, Mr. King’s Knight boxers.”
“Hey! Those are cool! Ignis got them for me!”
“Everything about that sentence is soooo lame, Noct.”
“Whatever.” Noctis gave Prompto a playful shove. He tried not to stagger, but Noctis must have noticed something. “Hey, seriously, are you okay? You look more tired than me after a meeting.”
“I was just up late studying.” Prompto didn’t know why he was lying. The longer he had to think about it, the less he knew. He could have told Noctis about the washing machine, but it felt like he’d be pulling at a string, and a thousand things he didn’t want to talk about would unravel. So he shrugged it off, rode out a long wave of nausea in the bathroom, went home with some excuse about helping his parents clean the house, and slept the remainder of the day away.
And the next morning he felt better. He felt fine. So three things seemed clear:
- He did, in fact, have control over the power. He could will it to happen when he wanted.
- There was an upper limit to what he could repair. If it was a flexible limit was yet unclear.
- His magic, if he could call it that, was poisonous.
The last thing he fixed before setting out on the road trip to Noctis’s wedding was a mug. The handle broke off in his hand while Ignis had his back turned and he panicked and just pushed it back together. And Ignis turned back to see him sipping his tea like nothing had happened. Ten minutes later he excused himself and dry-heaved into the sink, but it passed in almost an instant. His fingers didn’t go numb. He felt strong, for once. He felt kind of kick-ass.
He should have been remembering what his mother told him. But she was more a myth than a person in his head at that point. She was the theory of a person, and in practice, she was no one.
xXx
The rain is just spitting, not really enough to get them wet but enough to make it cold. Noctis has recovered himself when they get over there, and his elbow is bleeding, but not badly. Ignis crushes a potion against him as soon as they get over there.
“It wasn’t even that bad, Specs,” Noctis says.
“Better safe than sorry,” Ignis counters. He looks back over to Gladio and Prompto, now that his Noctis-Bleeding tunnel vision has abated.
“Is she okay?” Noctis jogs over to meet them, and Ignis follows. Gladio is crouched down and Prompto is on his knees stroking the bird’s head. Her eyes are half-shut.
“It’s not great,” Prompto says.
“Like… die not great?” Noctis asks, and Ignis sees him working not to avert his eyes from the injured chocobo.
“No, not that bad. But I don’t know how we’re going to get her back to the Wiz like this…”
“Her leg is messed up bad,” Gladio fills in.
“Hmm.” Ignis taps his chin, and he feels three gazes shift over to him, but truthfully, he doesn’t have any answers anyone will like. Noctis chews his lip for a second.
“Your call, Noct,” Gladio says.
“Specs, got any ideas?” Noct immediately counters. Ignis uncrosses his arms, resting his hands on his hips.
“That was our last potion. Seems to me the wisest option would be to return without the injured bird.”
“Ignis, what!” Prompto cries.
“And, if you would let me finish, perhaps procure a curative and return.”
“Still,” Gladio says.
“She’d be daemon food before we got back,” Noctis says. Prompto leans in, touching his forehead to the chocobo’s fluffy crown. There’s a burst of white light, like a camera flash. Ignis blinks.
“What the fuck?” Gladio says.
“Whoaaa, you did the thing!” Noctis cries. Prompto peels open one eye and laughs, a little shakily.
“I did. I didn’t know it worked on alive stuff!”
“Wait, the magic thing?” Gladio looks to Ignis. That was an odd conversation they had, one that actually led to a conversation with the Marshall, but he had assured them the people who needed to know about it already knew.
But now Prompto is beaming, bouncing with elated energy. Noctis carefully re-mounts the chocobo, who is chirping happily and tugging at Prompto’s clothes.
“Let’s go!” Noctis calls.
“She’s really okay, huh?” Gladio says, giving Noct’s chocobo a light pat. Ignis examines the animal. Her eyes are bright, she’s scratching at the earth like she wants to move… he glances back at the other chocobos. She almost looks healthier than them, with her glossy coat and unruffled feathers. It is still spitting on them though, and it could start raining any time.
“It would seem wise to get back on the road,” he says. So they go. Halfway back, he passes Prompto on his chocobo, and glances over his shoulder to see him gripping the saddle white-knuckled, staring at nothing.
“Prompto,” he calls, but gets no response of acknowledgement. “Prompto.”
“Huh? Oh, ‘sup Iggy? Need something?”
“I was merely wondering what planet you might be on.”
“Uhhh, this one?”
“Right. Naturally.”
When they get back to the caravan, Prompto calls dibs and slips into the shower before Gladio can so much as open his mouth. When he looks to Ignis like he expects some retribution, Ignis merely shrugs.
“As our leader, I feel Noctis has outlined the ‘dibs’ rule quite clearly,” Ignis says evenly. As someone who strongly prefers cold showers, he himself never has an issue going last. He chops carrots while Gladio scowls on the couch pretending to read and Noctis falls asleep in the middle of King’s Knight and drops his phone on his face.
Past the ten minute mark, Gladio gets up to hammer on the door, but Prompto bursts out in a cloud of steam, flushed head-to-toe.
“All yours big guy,” he says brightly, diving into bed to smack Noctis with his wet towel.
“Prompto aughhh!” Noctis cries, and Ignis merely shakes his head despairingly.
“Perhaps you two would like to help me with dinner.”
“Not really, no,” Noctis says.
“Cominnng,” Prompto says, but there’s a few minutes of giggling and whisper-fighting before he actually gets up and comes over. “What do I do?”
“If you’d chop these potatoes for me.” Ignis slides the cutting board his direction.
“You got it! Potatoes, get ready to meet your maker! Wait. That would be, like, a farmer.”
“Perhaps the existentialism is not required for this recipe,” Ignis suggests. In a minute or so Gladio has traded off the bathroom with Noctis, Ignis is done with the carrots and the onions and garlic and Prompto is… still chopping potatoes.
“Are they giving you trouble?” Ignis asks, resting a hand on his hip. Prompto startles like he’s been shocked.
“Uh, no! I dunno, I just zoned out a minute. Can I… I’m gonna grab some air just for a second.” And without waiting for a response, Prompto abandons the knife and bounds out of the caravan. Ignis meets Gladio’s gaze, frowning.
Gladio glances in the direction of the door.
“That’s weird, right?”
“Hmm.” Ignis glances at the door too, but he returns his attention to measuring the spices. And right when he is about to put down his spoon and go out there, Prompto comes back in.
“Sorry, just felt kind of, funky for a minute there. You know?” he says, as if that’s any explanation. But then he chops the potatoes. He helps Ignis season the meat. He compliments the food like always and he helps with the dishes. Ignis resolves that he has yet to, and perhaps never will, understand the intricacies of Prompto, and whatever goes on in the pop-rocks and sunshine sponge he calls a brain.