Chapter Text
Someone was running their fingers through his hair. Noctis might have been laying down, but he also felt oddly weightless, like there was nothing beneath him to be laying on. He couldn’t see anything, so he figured he had his eyes closed. Or maybe he no longer had any use for sight.
If this is death, this is nice.
“Enough,” said a woman’s voice somewhere nearby, and a distant part of his mind - or his consciousness? did he even have a body anymore? - recognized the voice. But the voice was low and nearly vibrating with barely-concealed anger, so surely the owner of this voice was not the one petting him like a gentle mother soothing a feverish child. “The blood price has already been paid, and you know it,” the voice said. Was that directed at Noctis? Was he supposed to respond? It all seemed so familiar, like the melody of a song he once knew.
The answer to this question was loud, booming, and authoritative, but the words themselves were unfamiliar to Noctis. He knew that voice, too, and he heard that language once before - a long time ago, the smell of salt and sylleblossoms in his nose.
The woman’s voice answered, in that hard language of the Astrals. Gentiana? Noctis asked, or maybe he just thought it out loud. The voices ceased all at once.
Yes, he must have had his eyes closed, because suddenly he could open them. He didn’t seem to be anywhere in particular. It was bright, that being about the only thing he could definitively say, and he did have a body again, and he was not inside of the Crystal.
“What - ?” The rest of the question died in his throat.
Gentiana was standing there watching him, and cradled in her arms was Luna.
Noctis gasped her name and closed the distance between them. Luna’s eyes were closed, and she was so pale and still, but there was no blood staining her clothes. “Can I hold her?” he asked, plaintive like a child.
There was a spasm of pain on Gentiana’s face, there and gone again so quick Noctis wasn’t even sure he saw it. She fixed him with a - not that he had much experience with such things, but Noctis might call it motherly - gaze, and nodded. Carefully he took Luna’s body into his arms, and at the movement, her eyelids fluttered.
Noctis was so startled he almost dropped her. He forgot. He was dead now, too.
So he sunk to his knees with her, tucked Luna against his chest. She sighed in her sleep, but didnt’t open her eyes or otherwise acknowledge him.
He looked up at Gentiana. “I don’t understand. Why won’t she wake up, if we’re both dead?”
Gentiana just nodded, which was unhelpful. “Bahamut and I spoke of you. Both of you.”
“I heard you,” Noctis said, but that still didn’t tell him anything about what was happening. Suddenly, their formless surroundings flickered and took the shape of the throne room of the Citadel, bathed in pale light. Noctis blinked at the sight of his own body, slumped on the throne. Another shape took form; Gladio, his fingers pressed against Noctis’s neck, searching for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find. Ignis and Prompto winked into view as well.
“Is this real?” Noctis whispered.
“Yes.”
He went in alone so that their last memory of him might be something kinder than this.
Noctis has never seen Ignis cry like that, not even when they were children. He has never seen Gladio cling bonelessly to anyone like that, either. And Prompto’s face was bloodless, eyes wide, lips pressed into a hard line. It hurt too much to try and reconcile that blanched figure with the kid that slapped him on the shoulder and burst into his life. It hurt too much to see them like that. To know that he was the cause of it. He bowed his head, pressing his forehead against the crown of Luna’s hair.
“Why are you showing me this?” Noctis asked, tasting the salt of his own tears.
“So that you would understand the choice that lies before you.”
“What choice? Gentiana, I don’t understand any of this!”
She glided forward and knelt in front of him in one smooth motion. “Listen very carefully, Chosen King. Will you stay here? The throne becomes your tomb. Your blood becomes the dawn. Or will you shed your life as Chosen King and return to the world you left, mortal among mortals? A world without the Crystal’s protection?”
Gentiana waited for his answer. Noctis thought he understood all that, but he also couldn’t stop hearing the echo of Ignis’s helpless sobbing. “I’d be alive,” he said slowly, “but no magic. No armiger. None of it.”
She nodded.
“Can Luna come too?” he whispered, childlike.
“She will have her own choice to make.” Well, it wasn’t ‘no’, at least.
The throne room had long since melted away, replaced by the same nondescript light, but Noctis knew he would be haunted by what he saw there for as long as he possessed consciousness. “I can’t leave them like that,” he whispered. “My answer is yes. Please. I have to go back.”
She cupped his damp cheeks in her hands and very gently pressed her forehead against his. “Forgive me. Forgive us. We never meant to be the cause of such pain. You have paid the price over and over again. Both of you. All of you.”
And Noctis tried to thank her, but all at once he was aware of a sharp pressure on his chest and a heavy ache in his limbs, and when he looked down Luna had disappeared from his arms. The bright formless world grew dark at the edges, and Noctis remembered that now he needs to breathe again so he did, a sharp, strangled gasp -
“Are you sure about this?” Ignis asks.
Noctis wobbled a little when he got to his feet; leave it to Ignis to pick up on that. “Yeah. I just want to stretch my legs a bit. Believe it or not, but even I’ve had enough of lying in bed.”
“Will wonders never cease,” Ignis remarks dryly, but there’s a smile playing on his face. The two of them make their way slowly, carefully out of the caravan, out into the dazzlingly bright landscape surrounding Hammerhead. Funny how, with the sunlight back, the world looks every bit as wide and wild as it did when they first left Insomnia.
Everyone’s sense of the passage of time is all shot to hell, but it’s been about a week since that first tentative sunrise. Noctis was barely conscious for a good chunk of that. He remembers hands, and being touched, mostly - someone carrying him, and then someone peeling off his torn, sweat-soaked clothes, and someone’s soft voice - Was he always that skinny? - then hands bundling him into sweatpants and a t-shirt and tucking him under a musty blanket.
He remembers frustration with his own heavy limbs. Hands that pressed him down by his shoulders when he tried to flail into a sitting position. Hands lifting a bottle of water to his mouth, and then smoothing the hair from his face when even that wore him out. Until finally he was strong enough to swat weakly at Gladio in protest at Gladio’s insistence that he lie there and rest. “You guys have to know what happened.” Noctis sounded whiny and petulant to his own ears, but Gladio’s expression grew serious and he left to retrieve Ignis and Prompto. So Noctis told them all of it - the kings of old and the sword in his chest. Luna and his dad, and Ardyn. He left out the part about seeing the three of them there in the throne room when he told them of Gentiana and her intercession on his behalf, and the choice she offered him.
There was a long beat of silence when he finished.
“So it’s - you’re really back for good?” Prompto asked.
“Yeah.”
Prompto nodded exactly three times, and then burst into tears. Noctis reached for him, helpless, and Prompto took that as an invitation to lurch forward and collapse on the edge of the cot and wrap his arms tight around Noctis. But even just talking that much wore Noctis out, and his last thought before he was asleep again was that Prompto was curled up on his chest to listen for his heartbeat.
So no, Noctis doesn’t begrudge any of them their fussing. He knows he’d be doing the same thing if their positions were reversed. In fact, he would like to be strong enough to return the favor. All he did was die. Easy, in the face of surviving ten years of daemons and darkness.
Standing next to a car that Noctis is pretty sure wasn’t parked at Hammerhead the last time he looked out the window of the caravan is Gladio and Prompto, talking with a black-haired woman with her back to Noctis. The way Prompto’s face lights up at the sight of Noctis is like a little sunrise in and of itself. “He’s up!” Prompto calls cheerfully. “Hey, Noct, look who’s here to visit!”
The woman whirls around, her dark eyes wide.
“Iris,” Noctis says simply.
She closes the distance between them at a run, stopping just to throw her arms around his neck. He wobbles a little, but Ignis has a hand on the small of his back for balance. She’s only a little taller than when he saw her last, but it feels like she’s packing about as much solid muscle as Gladio. “Good to see you too,” Noctis says, returning the hug.
She pulls away just as abruptly, still gripping his forearms. Her eyes are full of tears. “How are you feeling?” He has no idea how much Gladio and Prompto have told her, but apparently enough that she’s got the gist of it.
“Fine,” he says. “Just a little tired still.” He holds her at arm’s length to get a good look at her. She’s always worn her hair short, but it’s even shorter now; Gladio keeps his hair longer than hers. And he can see, peeking out on either side of the strap of her tank top, a long scar along her collarbone. It’s hard not to feel his physical weakness keenly then, though there’s pride mixed in there as well, looking at the girl he always thought of as a little sister now a grown woman that could probably bench-press him one-handed.
“What news from Lestallum, Iris?” Ignis asks.
“Oh man, where to start?” she says. She releases Noctis and gestures for them to gather at the plastic outdoor tables and chairs set up outside the caravan. There seems to be some sort of unspoken signal that now it is time for Business, because Talcott wanders over from beside his truck, where he was talking with a woman in her early forties Noctis definitely doesn’t recognize.
Noctis isn’t really sure how to deal with the bright adoration in Talcott’s eyes, so he turns to the woman instead. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
She blushes, her face turning the same shade of red as her hair. “N-no, we haven’t, Your Majesty, my name’s Summer, and, um - ”
“Just ‘Noctis’ is fine, Summer.”
“She’s Holly’s wife,” Iris pipes up. “Holly works at the power plant.”
“I remember Holly. Do you work at the power plant, too?” Noctis says, and Summer nods, turning even redder.
“She’s a civil engineer,” Talcott explains. “She volunteered to get some reconaissance done in Insomnia. See what sort of shape it’s really in.”
“A lot of people are already eager to come back,” Iris says. “It’s like - now that the sun is back, it’s like there’s so much to do and everyone has a different idea of where to start. We - ” Noctis remembers that ‘we’ means the Hunters before he gets too lost - “decided to start with our communication and supply lines. Firm up the ones we already have and establish new ones. Oh, Ignis, Dave sent me with the rough plan, he wanted me to pick your brain on it, if you have time.”
“Certainly,” he says softly.
“We’ve been hearing rumors, right from the start, really, of isolated towns getting by on their own, but until now, they’ve all been too dangerous to follow up on,” Iris continues. “Prompto, your old hunting partner is leading that effort.”
“Aww, Aranea,” Prompto sighs wistfully. “I miss her making fun of my aim.” There’s a genuine note of fondness in his voice, too.
Noctis knows he’s right to be proud, hearing all the myriad ways the people he was supposed to die for banded together and survived. But he can’t help thinking they wouldn’t have had to if he’d been better from the start, if the Astrals hadn’t decided he wasn’t ready yet, like they were Ignis frowning at a half-set cake and sliding it back into the oven to finish baking.
“There is one other thing you guys ought to know,” Iris frowns. “There’s…talk. About Noctis.”
“Well, yeah!” Prompto interjects. “Dawn King?”
Noctis flinches a little at the moniker, and hopes no one else noticed.
“Nah, more like…A lot of people, even people that used to live in Insomnia - are questioning, I guess, if we need you.” As if embarrassed on behalf of those with such thoughts, Iris shifts in her seat and tucks a stray bit of hair behind her ear, suddenly looking a lot more like the teenager he remembers.
Ignis frowns, Prompto makes a loud noise of indignation, Gladio crosses his arms.
“They’re not…wrong,” Noctis says, and suddenly all of their eyes are on him. “You didn’t need me. I just mean…it sounds like the world did fine without me.”
“Hell of a lot easier to get things done with sunlight, though,” Gladio says, to a chorus of murmured agreement.
But even that. He wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did without them. Even that, what did he really do except lean into the magic of the Crystal and his ancestors? But he doesn’t want them to keep looking at him like that, so he just nods. “Whatever helps you guys out,” he says, offering them a tight smile. “That’s what I’m supposed to do.”
Ignis’s expression is impossibly fond. “I’m sure we’ll find plenty of ways to put you to work in the coming days,” he says. “The naysayers will simply have to come around in time.”
Noctis isn’t sure it’ll be that simple, but they’ll figure it out as they go.
They talk throughout the afternoon and well into the evening, Cid and Cindy and the others drifting in and out of the conversation, but the four of them stay fixed in their positions.
Noctis makes a hollow comment - “just like old times, huh?” - when the four of them pile into the caravan for the night. He knows his reappearance was the first time the three of them had been together in months, if not years. They’ve all given excuses about being spread thin, about being able to help better if they split up, but he knows that’s not the whole story. He’s not sure he fully understands, either. Like a math test where he arrives at the right answer more through luck than actual understanding of the problem.
He awakes, abruptly, in the dark. In another moment he realizes what must have roused him - a soft, pained moan. There’s a rustling of scratchy threadbare sheets, the creak of worn bedsprings.
“Ignis.” That’s Prompto’s voice, softer than a whisper, softer than Noctis has ever heard him speak. The bed creaks again and then Noctis can hear the two of them whispering to each other, so low he can’t make out the whole conversation. In the darkness Noctis can just make out Prompto sitting on the edge of Ignis’s cot.
But he does make out Ignis’s soft, “thank you,” and he can make out when Prompto leans over to rest his forehead on Ignis’s shoulder. It feels like something Noctis isn’t supposed to see, so he screws his eyes shut and hopes sleep will come back for him. It must at some point, because the next time he opens its eyes it’s still dark, but now there’s a figure standing in the middle of the crowded caravan, silent and unmoving. Noctis blinks a few times, tries to speak, but finds that he can’t. He can’t even move, and it feels like there’s a weight on his chest.
He remembers these night terrors from the months after the marilith, and he remembers Ignis at ten, voice slurred with sleep, talking him through breathing exercises. He knows that whoever - whatever is standing there is not real, that it can’t hurt him, but it’s unsettling nonetheless.
Just as Noctis can twitch his fingers, the figure steps forward, and he hears the familiar tap of a cane hitting the peeling linoleum floor.
“Dad?” he chokes out.
The caravan is suddenly awash in a pale blue glow - from the Ring, back where it belongs on his father’s hand. His father is watching him with a flat expression. Noctis has seen his father fix him with a lot of different looks over the years, but never one like this, devoid of all emotion and even recognition. His opens his mouth as if to speak, but all that comes out is a trickle of blood. And then his legs seem to give out, but his father is gone before he hits the floor, leaving Noctis alone in the dark, his own thundering heartbeat echoing in his ears.
He feels better the instant he’s outside, the night air cool against his hot skin. He’s not alone, either; Prompto is sitting at one of the plastic tables out front. He turns at the sound of the caravan door clicking shut and he jumps a little at the sight of Noctis there, like he’d forgotten this was a world where Noctis still existed.
“Mind a little company?” Noctis asks.
The smile Prompto gives him is small, and tired, but genuine at least. “‘Course not. I won’t even get snot on your shirt this time. You can’t sleep either?” he asks, as Noctis takes the chair next to him.
“Had a weird dream. I…heard you guys earlier. You couldn’t go back to sleep after that?”
“Nope.” Prompto picks his phone up off the table, clicks on the display, then sets it back down again. “I’ve got a theory, see. Ignis has the worst dreams because he can’t see, so his brain comes up with all kinds of crazy shit to make up for it. Me, I have this one recurring dream where one of us gets hit really bad, and I just used the last phoenix down in the world on, like, my childhood hermit crab or something.” The whole time he’s been speaking Prompto has been staring off into the dark, and once again he picks up his phone, turns on the display, then puts it down again.
“Are you waiting for something?” Noctis asks, because that seems like the safest question at the moment.
“Huh? Oh. No, I just - ” He tucks his phone in his pocket, wipes his palms on his pants, and finally turns to look at Noctis. “I keep getting nervous about what time it is when it’s dark out, you know?”
Noctis wants to apologize, wants to beg forgiveness for what the last ten years have done to them, but instead, all he says is, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Ah. No. I mean - rain check. Maybe in the future, when it’s a little farther away.” Prompto leans forward, stretches his arms out in front of him. “I think I’m gonna try and get a couple more hours.” He stands and when he walks past Noctis, Noctis seizes hold of his wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he hates that note of desperation that creeps in there. And he hates the look of pity that crosses Prompto’s face.
“I know, buddy,” he says, gently tugging his arm out of Noctis’s grip. “Wasn’t your fault.” As soon as he’s back inside the caravan, Noctis drops his head into his hands and takes slow breaths through his fingers.
For a long moment, it’s quiet, save for the occasional distant howl of the wildlife. And then, close by, someone makes an exaggerated tut-tut sound.
“Just look at what you’ve done to our poor little gunman.”
Slowly, Noctis lifts his head, and when he does, there is Ardyn, sitting in Prompto’s newly unoccupied chair. He has his hands folded over his stomach and his typically self-satisfied expression.
“You’re not real,” Noctis whispers.
“Look at what you’ve done to all of them,” Ardyn continues, as if he hadn’t heard. “And you actually thought all you needed to do was open your eyes and walk tall and everything would go right back to normal. All sunshine and smiles for Noct, the Dawn King.”
“You’re not real,” Noctis says again. “You’re dead.”
“That may well be. Would you like to find out? Oh - that’s right. You have no weapons. Not even dear old dad’s sword.” Ardyn’s gaze swivels to the caravan, where his friends are sleeping, and Noctis feels his limbs go even colder. “You could go in there, borrow one of theirs, couldn’t you? Make a fuss. But I may not be here when you return. Tell me, Noct, if I’m not real, where does that leave you?” Ardyn’s oily eyes shift and lock on to Noctis’s wide ones. “Sweet dreams, Your Majesty.” He stands slowly, never breaking eye contact, until finally Ardyn turns and walks away from the caravan, away from Hammerhead, across the highway, eventually vanishing into the darkness.
Noctis doesn’t move; he barely even blinks, his eyes locked on that distant spot on the horizon where Ardyn disappeared, until the sky begins to lighten.