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There’s a moment, after something calamitous happens, where nothing feels real. Not the sun on your skin, the smell of the earth after a storm, the sting of salt on the breeze blowing in from the pale topaz sea. Not a thing. Like an intake of breath waiting to be exhaled, you wait for the drop, for the punchline.
And sooner or later, you realize it’s never coming.
Smoke from a hundred fires curled on the horizon, turning the morning sky hazy with ash, as the deep thrum of a dozen looming magitek engines drowned out all else. They flew lazily across the waters, like their crews were basking in the sight of such a decisive victory.
Insomnia had fallen. The King was dead. And this was real.
This was real.
Prompto trailed behind the others, idly kicking at every scrap of magitek soldier that appeared in his path. Not a hard kick. Really just sort of… shuffling into them. Knocking gauntlets and helmets out of his way. He wasn’t angry. At least, he didn’t think he was angry. He didn’t think he was feeling anything at all, really. He knew he should be angry, like Noct, storming ahead with his fists clenched at his sides, but Prompto just felt empty. Hollow. He was trying not to think about how the invasion had looked from the streets. The rain had stopped, but puddles remained on the winding, twisting ruined path they’d carved their way through not half an hour ago.
Another magitek helmet, caked with mud and bits of ripped up grass, appeared in his path. Those creepy red eyes were gone now, dimmed as soon as they’d blasted right through the shells of the daemon’s armor, but the mask still gave him the creeps. They weren’t human, not anymore, but someone had made the decision to give them human faces.
Prompto kicked it out of the way, a little harder than the others, and it crashed down the gravel-lined path with a harsh clanging noise that made him flinch. The helmet skittered to a halt just before it skittered into the back of Ignis’ legs, spattering his pants with mud.
He just looked over his shoulder at Prompto, his face blank. “Sorry, Specs,” Prompto mumbled.
After a moment of that hard stare, Ignis’ gaze softened and he just nodded, and they continued back to the Regalia in silence punctuated by the distant roar of war machines. Clouds lay thick and heavy over their heads, and though the midday desert heat lay thick over the baked earth, Prompto couldn’t stop shivering.
He couldn’t drag his thoughts away from what it had looked like, from the streets.
He didn’t know what to do. There was nothing in this ruined corridor that he wanted to photograph, to remember - and he was certain Noct wanted to forget this place even existed. Gladio, too, stalking quickly behind his Prince. This was the place where they’d both found out their fathers were dead, after all.
As they climbed back into the Regalia in silence, without a comment from Ignis about the mud they were dragging in, Prompto folded his arms over the side of the car and rested his head on his elbows, camera at the ready in his lap.
They needed something to… to… hell, he didn’t know. He didn’t have the words or the noble birth or the lifelong training to be prepared for something like this. Prompto’s eyes flicked to the side view mirror as Ignis pulled away from that place. Gladio was staring off into the distance, eyes glazed over, slumped against the back of the seat like a rag doll.
Noct was sitting with his spine ram-rod straight, fists clenched on the tops of his thighs, mouth pressed thin and angry. Prompto was shivering because of the chill that had settled over him like spidersilk, but Noct was shaking as he struggled to control his anger, eyes boring ahead with a peripheral sharpness that cut Prompto to his core.
Prompto’s eyebrows knitted together and his fingers started to tap out a restless tattoo on the side of the car, leg bouncing in time.
“Prompto,” Ignis said, quietly.
Prompto stopped moving at once, turning slightly in his seat. Ignis cast him a brief sideways glance, his eyes quickly returning to the empty roads, but not before he gave a gentle, tiny smile that barely turned up the corners of his mouth. Prompto’s mind started racing - had Ignis’ family also been killed? Who did he need to find? What would make him feel better-
“Let Cindy know we’re on our way to Hammerhead. And… let her know that Marshal Leonis will also be arriving there soon. I imagine she’ll want to forewarn her grandfather.”
“Oh, uh. Right. Right.”
Hells. Cid, too.
Prompto’s stomach twisted. The casualties would just keep mounting, and mounting, and mounting… And he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to lighten his friends’ burdens.
Insomnia’s ghosts sat on their shoulders like weights, sucking the color and sounds from the world until it all tasted like ash on their tongues.
Cindy Aurum paced under the shelter of the Hammerhead’s garage, chewing her lip almost to bloody shreds as she watched the roads for the Regalia. The few straggling customers wandering here and there looked as deflated as she felt - shell-shocked faces every which way she looked. The news had broken that morning.
Poor Prince...
“You lookin’ to wear a hole in my floors, girl?” Cid growled behind her, before his voice softened. “Quit pacin’, you’re liable to give me a headache.”
She made a face but made her restless legs hold their ground. “Prompto said they’d seen it, they saw Insomnia. Paw, if the city’s fallen, does that-”
“Reggie’s gone.” The old man’s head fell forward towards his chest, so that Cindy wouldn’t see the wave of gutted mournfulness as it passed over his face. Behind him, in shadows, was the looming presence of the Marshal. He was almost carved from a block of ice - but he put his hand on her grandpaw’s shoulder.
Cindy resumed her pacing, and the rain pounded on the aluminum roof like a thousand thousand soldiers marching for war.
As the cold wind - cold for the desert, cold like she wasn’t ever used to - started to howl across the land, Marshal Leonis and her Paw sought cover in the garage. Cindy stayed near the pumps.
When the Marshal emerged and told her that he had business to attend to, that he’d left a message with her grandpaw, she wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him to wait , can’t you just wait for them, they’ll be wanting answers and not a wild sabertusk hunt, can’t he feel the weight of dread all around them because it had to be amplified for the Prince - but he shot her a look that said he knew exactly what she was thinking of doing, and that it was a fruitless cause. So she let him go without a fight.
When the Regalia finally appeared over the horizon, Cindy had to stop herself from grabbing the four boys into a tight, mama-bear type hug. She tried to put on a cheerful face for them, promised she’d get the old girl spick and span and as shiny as new, but none of them seemed to hear her. The Prince just made straight for the garage, where Cid was waiting for them.
The Regalia didn’t need much work, but still, Cindy popped the hood and started fiddling with the engine. She needed her hands to be working. She needed her head to stop buzzing around.
Poor kids.
Gladio had expected more, from a tomb of an ancient king.
The simple, singular chamber, no plaques or mosaics or depictions of anything this king had done in his lifetime on the walls, a single stone dais where the bronze cast of the king - the most ornate thing in this, his final resting place - had been laid to rest. It all seemed so… lonely.
Surely, this king had a Kingsguard. Where was his Shield? Where were they buried, if not with their King?
With their families, then?
Gladio’s eyes flicked to the back of Noct’s head, and before he could stop himself, he saw a future of a bronze cast of Noctis lying in a cold, empty, unremarkable tomb, his arms crossed over his chest, with only a weapon to keep him company. All alone.
His throat tightened as he stared down at the ancient king, serene and cold and lonely in death. His only living heir gripped the edge of the dais like it was the only thing keeping him standing upright, cast in deep shadows from the lantern Cor had set up before their arrival.
He tried not to think of his father. Tried not to wonder where he would be buried. If there was enough of a body left to find, of course, and suddenly hot tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. Gladio bit down on his tongue, hard - redirect the pain, localize it. And then get a move on. No time. The world was burning and there was no time for tears. Not yet.
His father was dead.
Iris had gotten out, thank fuck. She was his top priority now - after Noct, of course - and he desperately needed to see her with his own two eyes, because otherwise there was some small part of his brain that whispered it was a lie, a trap, and his baby sister wasn’t actually okay. Hearing her voice on the phone - she’d sounded exhausted, Gladio had wanted to tell her to rest up, they’d be there soon - had been something , but it hadn’t been enough. He needed to see her. The last of the Amicitia line.
Their father was laying, lifeless, in the destroyed remnants of the throne room.
Had it been quick? Please. Please, god, let it have been quick-
No. Redirect the pain, localize it. His tongue started to burn but he only let up when he tasted the iron of his own blood.
...where would Gladio be buried, at the end of it all?
Gladio had always known that, as Noct’s Shield, he would die before he let anything happen to the Prince.
It’s what his father had told him, and what his father had done. If the King was dead, so, too, was Gladio’s father. Inevitable, their fates intertwined like all the Kings and all their Shields from lifetimes past. Like all the Amicitias who had come before him.
As Noct raised his hand, as the sword of the dead king transformed into glimmering souls-light and rose without a sound into the air high above them all, Gladio realized with a start that no, Noct was no longer the prince that he’d grown up with.
No, this young, slim boy, his friend who loved nothing more than fishing and napping the day away, his friend who was now shaking with bitter rage and fear in front of him as they stared up at the blade of souls-light...
He was King, now.
And Gladio was the King’s Shield.
The weight of that title crashed into his lungs like a tidal wave.
The blade of light hung in the air for a moment, just a moment, before it sliced through the air and pierced Noctis in the chest, right between his ribs. He staggered back with the force of the blow, his chest glowing an eerie bright blue, as the weapon of his ancestor forged itself into his blood. His birthright, a kiss of death.
Gladio gritted his teeth.
He was going to be the best damn Shield anyone had ever seen.
And, when the day came to lay his life down in order to protect the King, to protect his oldest friend - well, he wouldn’t go without one hell of a fight.
Like his father had taught him.
The sun scorched the sky with smears of violent reds and blacks, smoke from Insomnia mixing with the setting sun like blood in the water. Ignis frowned at the sight, twirling the spatula in his hands absentmindedly, almost wishing he could tell the sun to move faster. Nothing spoiled the appetite or mood like a sky the color of blood.
He was, unfortunately, powerless in that regard. But, as he flipped the four cuts of trevally over on the small camp stove, when it came to food, he was not .
“Prompto, do try and focus, please,” he said without taking his eyes off of the roasting fish.
Next to him, supposedly on chopping duty, Prompto jumped. “How did-”
“A knife cutting through vegetables does make a rather unique sound,” Ignis said dryly. “I suggest you try and get some practice in.”
Prompto laughed quietly and got back to work. He’d been scanning the horizon for Noctis and Gladioulus, who had gone out - on Ignis’ orders - to try and find some fresh herbs for their dinner. “Nothing gets by you, huh, Specs?”
“I like to think that, yes. Don’t worry, they’ll be back soon.”
Prompto - vegetable chopping duties resumed - grinned and nodded. After a few more minutes of slowly dicing the necessary ingredients - the results were large and uneven, but altogether passable by Ignis’ judgement - the other two returned over the lip of the campsite.
Ignis looked hard at Noctis, and then at Gladiolus, who sighed and shook his head. Ignis frowned but nodded in appreciation of the effort - he’d hoped, though he knew the chances were slim - that having a small task would ease the King’s mind.
Not so, it seemed.
“Smells good, Iggy,” Gladio said, peering over their shoulders before pulling back and handing Ignis a bunch of silvery-green herbs, fresh-picked and sharp-smelling. “Here. Got that stuff you wanted.”
“My thanks. No trouble finding it, I presume?”
“Nah. Easy pickings.”
“Excellent.”
“Hey, look, Noct,” Prompto said gently, a hopeful smile on his face as he gestured to the spread before them. “Ignis made your favorite!”
Prompto missed the warning look Ignis shot him, but none of them could miss the way Noctis’ hands balled into tight fists, the knuckles bone-white against the black of his jacket. Ignis fixed him a plate and said, coolly, a purposely-feeble attempt to halt the storm that was building, “Indeed. I thought it was a suitable choice for the day.”
“Why?” Noctis spat, his voice cold. “Because I’m an orphan now? Because I’m now King of ash and ruins?”
“Don’t be like that. Eat.” Ignis said, the plate steady in his hands. He had weathered royal tantrums before, and braced himself for the storm. Noct needed to get angry. He needed to voice his fury.
And voice it he did.
“I’m not a child ! You don’t need to make me something special to distract from the shit that’s happened!”
“Noct.”
“How can you pretend that this will make it better ?”
“I’m not. I’m just telling you-”
“My father is dead! Gladio’s father is dead!” Ignis caught Gladio’s flinch, and Prompto reached for the Shield’s hand as Noct’s fury raged on. “People think I’m dead, and Luna might be dead, too, and you’re just trying to act like this will make it better? It can’t, Ignis!”
“Of course it can’t.” Ignis leveled the plate towards Noct and went on, “As good as my cooking is, it certainly won’t be toppling the Empire any time soon.”
“Don’t try to make me feel better!” Noct shouted, but his fury could not hide the tears pricking the corners of his eyes. Ignis stood calm at the center of a royal fury, watching him with careful eyes, and that just seemed to upset him all the more. “Don’t! I don’t need pity , I don’t need anyone’s pity - I just need to - I need to-”
“You need to eat, Noct,” Ignis finished for him, firmly pushing the plate back towards him. “No one around this fire is pitying you, I can guarantee you that. I will not allow the Caelum line to die out simply because our King is too stubborn to eat.”
Noct blinked, and Ignis realized that this was the first time any of them had called him by his freshly inherited title. It had been one thing when the Marshal had called him Highness. But this was Ignis, and that seemed to take the fight out of him like air out of a balloon. Noct sank into his chair - Prompto and Gladiolus were just staring at the two of them, back and forth, forks hanging limp in their hands - and took the plate from Ignis without a word.
A log in the fire cracked in half, the sharp sound echoing across the hard-packed earth of the desert, and Ignis’ sigh was lost in chilled breeze. “Noctis. Listen to me.”
Their King didn’t pick his head up, but Ignis knew he was listening.
“You’re allowed to be angry, to be upset. Of course you are. You should be - in fact, I would be more concerned if you were to show no emotion at all - because the world just dealt you a horrible blow. You are in mourning, Noct.”
His shoulders were bunched up tight around his ears, and for a moment Ignis struggled with his words, because now Noctis seemed so small, he was so young…
“In the tomb, you asked what you were King of. Yes, many people died in the attacks. Insomnia fell - but the people of Lucius, the survivors, they all need you, Noct. They need you to keep fighting. The country and your citizens did not just… evaporate. Lucis still stands. And so does her King.”
“But my father…” The words were broken, lost.
Ignis waited, but the words seemed stuck in Noct’s throat, so he knelt and put a hand on his friend’s knee. “Your father did what he could to protect you, and blaming yourself will not… it will not bring him back. Berating yourself for something you could not possibly have known would happen cannot change what happened - and neither will lashing out at us. We will help you bear your burdens, if you let us. We’ll follow you until the end. Don’t push us away.”
Ignis watched the tension evaporate from his King’s shoulders. Sometimes, even Kings just needed a… a helpful reminder. He cleared his throat, and finished quietly, “You’re not alone, Noct. You have us. We have… we have each other.”
Across the fire, Gladio nodded in furious, silent agreement, and Prompto raised his fist with a halfhearted, quiet cheer.
“Thanks, Specs,” Noctis murmured, and Ignis put his hand on Noct’s shoulder with a fond squeeze.
“You’re welcome. Do try and eat, now. You’ll feel better.”
Noct nodded, the fight gone out of him. He hesitated, and then put his hand on top of Ignis’ and held it for a moment, and Ignis had to resist the urge to give his hair an decidedly un-royal ruffle.
When Noct let go of his hand, Ignis made his way back to the camp kitchen and served up the last of the trevally. It was silent as Ignis settled into his own chair and picked up his own plate, until Gladio mumbled under his breath, with a flash of a mischievous smile, “Yeah, thanks, Master Mom.”
Ignis snorted and pointed his fork at the Shield. “One more word and it’ll just be burnt toast for you for the next month.”
Gladio’s jaw dropped in feigned horror as Prompto laughed, and life seemed to etch its way back into their eyes, one moment at a time.
The storm had passed, and the sky was clear.
Noctis couldn’t sleep.
What an ironic fucking twist, that.
He stared up at the canvas ceiling of the tent, listening to the quiet breaths of his sleeping friends around him - or loud snores, in Gladio’s case - and how it mixed with the wind of the desert outside.
One thing he hadn’t expected, when they’d first set out, was how cold the deserts got at night. A chill like winter managed to seep into the tent, into the seams of their sleeping bags, and they’d ended up piled on each other like a bunch of kittens.
And now, that was just the norm. Noct was pressed up against Gladio’s side, Prom curling against his back. Ignis was all but wrapped around Gladio’s other side, his head on Gladio’s chest and seemingly impervious to the snores of the Shield. All of them under every sleeping bag they owned, unzipped for maximum coverage.
Noctis lay still, and listened to the sounds of the world at rest.
Ignis had screwed his head back on, reminded him that he still had a spine. That he wasn’t just going to roll over and let things get worse.
The cold wasn’t keeping him up, now.
The mantle of King - a kiss of death - rested on his shoulders, now. He thought he could hear the weight of it looming over his ribs, not crushing him, not just yet. Simply biding its time. His birthright, as well as his death warrant. A wondrous inheritance indeed.
His head started to spin, and his guts rioted in his belly, and he had to get out.
With a bit of a struggle, he managed to crawl away from the others, and stumbled outside in the bite of the freezing desert night, gulping down huge lungfuls of sharp air as he tried to calm himself down without screaming his anger to the stars.
He collapsed on the edge of the campground, and pulled his knees to his chest. He counted his heartbeats, and made no move to wipe his eyes.
A blanket landed on his head with a quiet oomph.
When Noct poked his head out, Gladio was shuffling to sit next to him, throwing his legs over the lip of the rock and leaning back on his hands. “Dumbass,” he said, sleep making his voice groggy, but fondly batting at Noct’s head all the same. “You’ll freeze to death.”
“I can make fire with my hands,” Noct replied curtly.
“Oh, a smartass as well as a dumbass.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Gladio snorted. “And fire.”
“Now you’ve got it.”
For a moment, they silently watched frayed wisps of clouds skirt the horizon, their edges painted silver with the brilliance of the full moon.
“It gets easier, you know.” Gladio said, softly. “Well - maybe not easier - but more bearable. It gets easier to breathe, is what I mean.”
His eyes were very far away, and Noct offered half of the blanket to him. Noctis had been a baby when his own mother had died. He didn’t remember her, not enough to feel sad about her death. Gladio’s mother had been killed in a skirmish with daemons when they were only ten.
Noct’s chest tightened, when he thought of how his father had walked down the steps - a hard task, for a man with brittle bones and an iron brace - and tried to act like a father, not a king. How Noct had pushed him away. “I’m sorry, Gladio.”
“-’s not your fault.”
“But-”
“Besides. Listen. Both our fathers are with the people they love most again. My old man probably sprinted for Mom as soon as he realized where he was.” Gladio chuckled at the thought, and then wrapped his arm around Noct’s shoulders, and he leaned into the touch.
“...it feels like I can’t breathe.”
“Of course it does. We found out lost ‘em this morning, Noct. It’s not gonna get easier after only twelve hours.”
“How did… what did you do? To make it easier?”
Gladio thought, and behind them, Noct could hear Ignis and Prompto waking up, quietly clambering out of the tent to follow. Prompto quietly sat himself next to Gladio; Ingis gracefully sitting on Noct’s other side, and they all curled together under the huge blanket. Finally, Gladio answered, “I threw myself into training, at first. But honestly - what got me through it was… was you guys. You were there for me, and distracted me when I needed it.”
“We snuck out of the palace to explore the tunnels underneath the city,” Ignis quietly mused. “Yes, I remember.”
"Had to see if those rumors about them being haunted had any truth to them, after all."
“And when Cor found us and dragged us back out-”
“They were so mad at us,” Noct laughed, and the words turned into a choked sob halfway in his throat. Before he knew it there were arms and hands holding him tight, the chill of the desert vanishing as they held onto him, as he grasped back at them like a man drowning at sea, buried his face in the crook of Gladio’s neck and wept like the terrified child he felt like inside.
They let him cry, and all his fears flooded out in agonizing, heaving sobs, but he did not collapse.
They were his bulwarks.
Not one of them moved, or loosened their grip, until his heaving sobs calmed, until his breath returned in fitful gasps and then quieted, until he could move away without shaking in fear.
He sniffed and murmured in a shaking voice, “T-thank you.”
“Feel better, Noct?” Prompto asked, his voice muffled from where he’d pressed his face into Noct’s back.
“Y...yeah. I do.”
“The wonder of a cathartic cry,” Ignis said gently. “You’re not alone, Noct. You’ve never been alone, not in any of this.”
“Exactly,” Gladio said, and Noct felt him smile against his hair. “You’re stuck with us.”
They stayed in their tight embrace for a few minutes more, until Prompto involuntarily shuddered and whispered, “I’m freezing, guys.”
At his words, Noct shivered, and they pulled away. He felt lighter, but he still wanted to be close to them.
“It is warmer in the tent,” Ignis said, accidentally swiping the lens of his glasses with his fingers as he unraveled himself from Gladio and Noctis’ arms. He frowned, his mouth quirking in disapproval, before he sighed and let it be, pushing them up the bridge of his nose and leveling a smile at the group. “Come. I’ll put on some tea.”
“Oh!” Prompto perked up, all traces of chill gone. “Do we still have the-”
“Yes, we still have the mint. And the raspberry, too, Gladio. Never fear.”
Noct laughed, as Prompto and Gladio high-fived, as Ignis chuckled and started searching for the kettle. The sky was clear, the night was calm.
With his friends around him, the weight his father had left him was an easier burden to bear.