Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Will you tell me what you see?”  Ignis hasn’t needed to ask that of Prompto for a long time. 

Prompto takes a deep breath, and he’s surprised by how little his voice shakes when he speaks. “It’s - all sparkly. Like from the Armiger. He’s - he’s on the throne. He just looks like he’s sleeping." Prompto watches Gladio remove his trembling hand from Noctis’s neck, watches Gladio’s shoulders hitch. “Yeah. He’s gone, Iggy.” 

Ignis disentangles his arm from Prompto’s and steps forward. Prompto sways a little on his feet. He thought he was the one holding up Ignis, but apparently it was the other way around. Ignis tentatively makes his way across the rubble of the wrecked throne room, hand outstretched. Gladio takes his hand when he gets close enough and guides him closer to the throne. Ignis bends, gropes for Noctis’s limp hand, and when he finds it he collapses to his knees as abruptly as a puppet with its strings cut, and Ignis clutches that lifeless hand between his own and sobs. Gladio puts an arm around his shoulders, leans over to rest his forehead on Ignis’s shoulder. 

Prompto hasn’t moved. He ought to be crying too, he thinks. He ought to be nigh-hysterical, but instead he watches the scene in front of him like a distant participant, like he’s trapped in a dream. It’ll hit him sooner or later and then he’ll be flat on the floor, but he thinks he ought to do something to help while he’s still upright. But instead he just stands there in the thin light, his eyes locked on Noctis’s still form. 

That’s why Ignis and Gladio don’t see Noctis’s free hand twitch, but Prompto does. 

It’s just a trick of the light, so alien now to them. Just his shattered heart making his eyes see what he wants to see. 

They haven’t been able to conjure anything out of the Armiger since the moment the sky began to lighten and the last handful of daemons slunk back into the ground. The magic’s gone. But now - what Prompto feels sweep through the throne room is different. It’s like - a sigh that passes through his very bones. It’s like when a television on mute is switched off, and that sudden absence of electricity in the air is felt. It’s unmistakeably magical. 

Gladio’s grip on Ignis tightens, and Ignis lifts his head just a little, and that’s how Prompto knows they felt it too. 

Noctis’s hand twitches again. This time Prompto lets out a strangled gasp, and half a beat later, Noctis does too. 

Gladio moves fastest, surging forward, hands probing the torn mess of Noctis’s shirt, and even from a distance Prompto can see the contrast of Noct’s black shirt and the pale, umblemished skin beneath it. 

Gladio sits back on his heels, speechless, just as Noctis lifts his head and blinks slowly at the two of them kneeling in front of him. He tries to say something, he tries to get up - and fails on both accounts, pitching forward out of the throne and into Ignis’s arms. He’s still sobbing, but softer now, as he cradles Noctis against his chest and presses a kiss to the top of his head. 

Prompto can’t see Noctis’s face anymore, but he hears him ask, quiet and slurred, “Where’s Prompto?” 

“I’m here,” he tries to answer, but what comes out of Prompto’s mouth is barely intelligible as human speech. Prompto hasn’t moved since Noctis did, afraid that the moment he took a step the spell would break and Noctis would be dead again. But now he stumbles forward, crashing to his knees alongside the three of them. “I’m here,” he tries again, taking Noctis’s cold hand in between both of his. 

Noctis blinks at him a few times, then gives him a small sleepy smile. His fingers twitch against Prompto’s. 

“How?” 

Prompto isn’t entirely sure which of them said it. 

It’s meant rhetorically, but regardless, Noctis frowns, like he’s trying to remember something. “She said, ‘enough.’ No more blood. They agreed, but only - just me. No - no magic.” He squirms a little in Ignis’s grasp, then slumps against him again. “No magic,” he says again, more agitated this time. 

“It’s all right, Noct, don’t try to talk. Save your strength,” Ignis soothes. He’s stopped crying now. “We’ll get him somewhere safe, get him cleaned up. Regroup.” That sounds more like the Ignis they know, and Prompto clings to the surety of a plan that will take them through at least the next few hours. 

Gladio nods, already getting to his feet. He gathers Noctis into his arms and lifts him easily. No one comments on the tenderness with which he does so. 

They amble out of the Citadel’s ruins like the weary fighters they are. One foot in front of the other. Out of the city, back to the truck, back to Hammerhead. It’s slow going; the sunlight hurts after ten years of artificial lights. 

Prompto is trying to do a lot of things at once. He keeps pace with Gladio, eyes glued to Noct’s still form in his arms, but he’s also trying to keep one eye on Ignis bringing up the rear who, normally, would need no assistance getting around, but absolutely nothing about this current situation is even remotely normal. Prompto’s boot gets caught on a stray bit of rubble and he doesn’t go down, but he does stumble, arms waving to regain his balance. 

“Watch it,” Gladio scolds automatically. “We’re seriously going to survive all that just for you to trip and crack your head open on the pavement? I’ve got him. He’s just sleeping it off, he’s okay.”

Just then, they step out of the shadow of a nearby skyscraper, and the sunlight hits them full on, bounces off of Noctis’s sleeping face. Noct in the daylight. How close they were to never seeing that again. “He’s okay,” Prompto repeats, and then something cracks open in his chest and he cries, great heaving sobs that make it hard to get enough air into his lungs. Noctis was dead, and even assuming the sudden reversal is permanent, Prompto knows it will be a long time before he can close his eyes without being immediately confronted of the image of Noctis still and peaceful. It will be a long while before he can forget how quickly they slid back into a world without Noctis. 

“Wow. Delayed reaction,” Gladio says sympathetically, and shrugs a little, indicating that he’d offer more comfort if he didn’t have his hands full of Noct. 

Ignis catches up to them and pulls Prompto into his arms without a word, one hand rubbing little circles on his back. Prompto returns the hug, clinging maybe a little too tight, tears still streaming down his face, because now that he’s started he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to stop, not while these equal measures of despair and hope stab at his side like the worst runner’s stitch ever. “What if it’s not - what if he’s not - ”

“Let’s keep moving,” Ignis says in his ear, not unkindly, and when he withdraws he keeps one arm around Prompto’s shoulders. “There’s nothing more to be done until he can tell us what’s happened.” 

Prompto nods and hooks his arm around Ignis’s waist. They lean into each other, and the solid weight against his side is a good reminder that whatever happens next, at the least the three of them will still have each other. 

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. 

Chapter Text

“So, it’s not too dangerous for you to go alone, but it’s too dangerous for me to go with you and watch your back?” Iris demanded. 

“That’s about it, yeah,” Gladio answered, flipping through the scout’s notes on the abandoned warehouse and the daemons that had been spotted prowling around. 

“That’s insane. Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“No. But I might if I’m trying to keep an eye on you.” 

“Keep an eye on me?” Iris repeated. “Gladdy, you know I’ve been training every day. I’m seventeen, you’d already killed a man by the time you were seventeen.” 

“Yeah, and it fucking sucked.” 

“In case you haven’t looked outside in a while, everything fucking sucks!” 

“Langauge.” 

“Is this just how it’s going to be from now on? You couldn’t protect Noctis so now you’re going to run my life instead?” 

Gladio set the report down and dragged his eyes up to meet hers. Her arms were crossed and her eyes were wide. She knew she’d gone too far, but even so she wasn’t about to back down. A small part of him was proud of her. 

“Fine,” he said, voice low. “You want to be treated like that brat? Fine.” He slammed a fist down on the report on the table and Iris, to her credit, didn’t even blink. “We’ll do that supply run,” Gladio continued. “And if it’s not note perfect, you can forget about me giving Dave that recommendation that you join the Hunters.” 

“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll be ready in an hour.” 

“Half an hour.” 

He didn’t mean that about Dave, and he knew Iris knew that. Regardless, she was silent as they set out, except to call out the position of any stray wildlife they passed. Note perfect, indeed. 

Yes, Gladio knew she’d been training every day. He’d been the one to wrap up her knuckles on more than a few occasions, after all. Hell, he knew this argument would happen sooner or later. He was the one who’d found those brass knuckles infused with Holy magic in the armiger and given them to Iris, after all. He couldn’t say with any certainty where they’d come from. A ‘Glaive that hadn’t made it out of Insomnia, probably. 

But it was one thing to practice and train, and it was one thing to patrol the outskirts of Lestallum, and it was one thing to watch the engineers’ backs while they made repairs to the flood lamps - but it was another thing entirely to go out there, just you in the darkness and everything that lurked just out of view.

No, if Gladio were honest with himself, protecting Iris from the physical danger was only part of it.

They reached the warehouse, attached to a now-defunct auto manufacturing plant, without incident. The logistics of feeding people in a world without sunlight was a goddamn nightmare, and Gladio was content to leave the nitty-gritty of it in more capable hands. But he did know it meant that supply lines and the vehicles that traversed them were more important than ever. 

Gladio flicked on his light and scanned the list Talcott had given him. Iris was pale in the wan light of the flashlight as she kept an eye on the perimeter while Gladio did the shopping. She was afraid, but Gladio only knew that because he had known her for her entire life; anyone else would simply see a capable fighter, a little on edge, sure, but who wouldn’t be?

Maybe, Gladio considered idly, as he hefted the last oil filter assembly into the canvas bag he brought, it wasn’t fair that he didn’t see her in the same way. 

“That’s everything - ” he began, and just then there was a deafening crash as a box of wrenches tumbled all over the concrete floor. Iris choked on a startled yell, and in the darkness Gladio could hear the skittering, chattering laughter of a chorus of imps. 

“Do not underestimate imps,” he said in a low voice, as Iris pressed her back against his. “Especially in a closed environment like this. Especially when there’s a bunch of them.” 

“Got it,” she said evenly. 

Imps were an odd lesson in contradictions; they were the weakest daemons, in both strength and mental facilities, but at the same time they were undeniably intelligent enough to enjoy fucking with humans. There were flashes of movement between the boxes and the metal shelves, illuminated in strobes of light from Gladio and Iris’s clip-on lights as they turned in unison, attempting to get a read on the number of imps lurking in the shadows. 

Two leaped out of the shadows and straight for Iris, perhaps picking up on her relative inexperience. A spin kicked knocked them both back. It was a little stiff to Gladio’s keen eye; she’d been holding her body too tense. But it did the job. 

Gladio had no time to help her; he had to dodge a wrench thrown at his head. He surged after the imp that had thrown it and bisected it in one quick movement. But there were more just behind it, and he had to back up, straight into a metal shelf, in other to have enough room to swing his sword. 

The sound of kicks and soft grunts and brass knuckles against bony flesh told him Iris was holding her own. Gladio was certain he’d never seen so many imps in one place before. And this time they weren’t just idly throwing themselves at the nearest opponent. They were actively working to keep Gladio and Iris separated. If they could just get out of this damn warehouse, have a little more room to breathe. 

A sudden heavy weight on his back threw him off balance, and the following hit on the back of his knee drove him to the ground. The groaning of metal above his head was the only indication Gladio had before the shelf above him was toppling over. He clambered out of the way, but boxes of papers and files tumbled down all around him and all over him. Not too heavy, but it was more of a distraction than either of them afford. 

The imps were back on him before he could get to his feet, claws angling for his throat, and then there was a gutteral shout above him and then the imps were being flung off of him. Iris moved like he’d never seen before. Gladio didn’t waste the opening she’d given him. With the two of them back on their feet, back in sync, the imps didn’t stand a chance. 

Finally, there was no further sound in the warehouse besides their heavy breathing. Iris braced her hands on her knees a moment and then she straightened, brushing her sweaty bangs off her forehead and giving Gladio a triumphant grin. 

Behind her, though, there was movement in the darkness. “On your six!” Gladio yelled, and she whirled just in time for the iast Imp to catch her full in the chest. She gave a choked cry of pain, cut off abruptly when she slammed into the ground. Gladio roared her name and in one swift motion, seized the Imp and threw it off of her. Cleaving it in two was the work of another moment, and then Gladio dropped to his knees next to Iris. 

Her breathing was shallow and her gaze unfocused, and she was bleeding freely from a fresh gash on her shoulder. “Can you move?” he asked, voice low. 

“In a minute,” she gasped. “Heavier - than they look.” 

Before he was really thinking about it, Gladio pulled a potion from the armiger, and he had it over Iris’s shoulder before her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “Don’t even - think about it.” 

Fuck. They’d used so many curatives storming the keep, and Noctis had only been able to make so many before the Crystal and… “Fuck,” he said aloud, before putting the potion away and replacing it with the standard first aid kit. He rummaged around in it until he came out with a handful of gauze pads. Iris was in the process of slowly pulling herself into a sitting position. She touched her shoulder, and she went pale at the sight of her own blood on her hands. Her eyelids fluttered, not a good sign. 

“Hey,” Gladio said sharply. “No passing out. Breathe, deep as you can. Clench your fist, then the other one. That’s it.” He leaned over and pressed the gauze against the cut. It was a long cut, and a mess of blood, but as far as Gladio couldn’t tell, it wasn’t very deep. 

“I’m okay,” she said faintly after a moment. 

“Good.” He grabbed her limp wrist and guided her hand to the gauze he held against her shoulder. “Keep pressure on it. We’re going to have to get out of here. I gotta carry the supplies. You think you can stand?”

“In another minute.” 

“Fine.” 

They lapsed into silence. Gladio supposed he ought to thank her for saving his life, but before he could, she said softly, “I’m sorry. About what I said. I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s a flesh wound, Iris. You’re not dying.” 

“I know. I’m still sorry.” Very slowly, she got to her feet, Gladio only having to briefly hold her uninjured arm to keep her steady, and their journey back was as uneventful as the journey there, which Gladio supposed he ought to thank the Astrals for. 

The cut needed stitches, which Monica took care of, mouth pressed in a thin line. Iris didn’t cry; she didn’t even make a sound. 

“Chicks dig scars, you know,” Gladio said, when Monica was about a third of the way through, and he offered Iris his hand. She placed her thin sweaty hand in his, and squeezed tight. 

Once Monica had her cleaned up and bandaged, and Gladio had given her a glass of water, Iris tipped her head back and apologized again. “That was the meanest thing I’ve ever said to you,” she said. 

“It was. But it was also the truth.” Angry words on a speeding train. Ignis’s disapproving frown from across the table in the dining car. “Overdue taste of my own medicine, I guess,” Gladio murmured. 

She let her eyes drift closed. “I know you miss him. I can’t even imagine how you guys feel. But you can’t - it goes both ways. What would I do if you died? Gladdy, we’re all we’ve got left.” 

He didn’t answer at first, just dragged his chair around the kitchen table, trying not to look at the towels on its surface still flecked with Iris’s blood. He put an arm around her and drew her to his chest, careful not to jostle her sore shoulder. “I’ve gotta tell Dave how amazing you were. What an asset you’d be on any team.” 

Iris cried when she was still fifteen, when Gladio went to her and told her Noctis was gone and they had no idea when he would be coming back. “I’m so sorry,” she’d sobbed, curled up in his arms. But that was it. She didn’t cry when the sun stopped rising, and she didn’t cry when she got that first wound stitched up. She didn’t cry when she called to tell him her first partner with the Hunters was dead. 

But when she pulls her car into the Hammerhead parking lot, and steps out of the driver’s seat, and she sees him, her face screws up, and she runs straight at Gladio. He catches her in his arms and lifts her clear off the ground so she can bury her face in his shoulder, in a way she hasn’t done since she was a little kid. 

Noctis had spoken with her on the phone the day before they left for the Citadel, to face Ardyn and whatever else. “Talcott tells me you kick plenty of daemon ass in your own right these days,” he said, and whatever Iris’s response was - something cutesy and a little boastful, maybe - it made Noctis chuckle. For all the ways Noctis drove Gladio up the wall, he’d always loved Noctis for the way he treated Iris. 

It was only later, Noctis in tears at camp, that Gladio understood that phonecall was a goodbye. 

He’s glad he doesn’t have to tell her that Noctis is dead. 

She, Gladio, and Summer are standing around Iris’s car with a map of Insomnia spread out on the hood, mapping out their initial trip into the city, when Noctis approaches. 

“You guys are heading in there tomorrow morning, right?” he asks, and Gladio knows that tone. 

“That’s the plan,” he answers. 

“I’m going to go with you.” Noct squares his shoulders, gearing up for a fight. 

But Gladio only shrugs. “If you’re really sure you’re up for it. We don’t know what we’ll find in there. If you think you won’t slow us down.” 

“Yeah, how are you feeling, Noctis?” Iris asks. He does look somewhat pale and drawn. 

“I’m fine,” Noct answers. “Just tired.” 

Gladio and Iris exchange a look. “He doesn’t know the Rule,” Iris says. 

“The Rule?” 

“The Rule we came up with a couple years in,” Gladio explains. “Iris and Talcott are in on it too.” 

“The Rule is,” and Iris punctuates the explanation by wagging a finger at Noctis, “if one of us asks how you’re doing, you have to tell the truth. Even if the truth sucks and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. So - how are you feeling?” 

Noct considers this for a moment, and then his mouth quirks in a smile. “Smart rule. Just - weird dreams last night. My dad and - Ardyn.” His voice drops a little on that last word. 

“Ardyn dreams are the woooorst!” Prompto singsongs from where he has the guts of Iris’s radio spread out on the pavement in front of him. Noctis doesn’t say anything, but Gladio doesn’t miss the way his jaw tightens. 

“Well, we’d be glad to have you, if you’re up for it,” Iris beams. “It’s your city, after all.” 

Yes, the ruins of Insomnia are less eerie in daylight, but that’s not saying much. It’s sobering to be there, between the ominous creaking of the decayed skyscrapers, the rusted metal, the uncomfortable knowledge that this was once home. They won’t go too far deep in the city, not this time. All they need is a better idea of what they’re dealing with in the sunlight. Turns out it’s pretty quiet without any daemons to liven things up. There’s a couple of pockets of MTs tucked in corners and even they are silent, waiting for activation from an Empire that no longer exists. Gladio cleaves them in half just in case. 

The few stores he passes are pretty empty too, long since ransacked by the Empire’s human forces and the city’s terrified survivors, but Gladio pauses outside the hollow shell of an electronics store. “You ladies go on ahead,” he calls. “Noct, c’mere.” 

“What for?” Noctis asks, but he follows Gladio in anyway, carefully picking his way over the broken glass of the windows. 

It’s been pretty well picked over, but Gladio paws through the dusty shelves. “We’re looking for cameras. Or camera stuff,” he offers.

“For Prompto?” 

“Yeah. You, uh - ” Gladio straightens and turns to Noctis. “You know how the armiger’s gone and it took everything with it?” 

“Yes…”

“Prompto’s camera was in there.” 

“Oh. Shit,” Noctis says at length. 

“Exactly,” Gladio hums and resumes picking through the shelves. 

“The pictures, too?” 

“Some of ‘em. He’s got prints of some, and the rest on a memory card, but nothing to read it with.” 

“That camera was the first thing he bought with his first Crownsguard stipend,” Noctis says. He sounds lost in the memory, and sure enough when Gladio turns Noctis is staring at a random spot on the wall. 

“Noct. I’m pretty sure between you and his camera, he’d rather have you.” 

“I know, just - he didn’t say anything.” 

“You know how he is. He’d rather die than complain about that kinda thing.” 

“Well,” Noctis says evenly, “you’ve known him longer than I have.” Gladio opens his mouth and closes it again, realizing he doesn’t have a counter for that. Noctis fixes him with a defiant stare, bordering on smug. Noctis always was a sore loser, and even more a graceless winner.

That’s when it hits him. No wonder Noctis made such a weird face when he mentioned Ardyn. No wonder he keeps anxiously hovering near Ignis’s elbow. No wonder he’s dreaming about his father. For Noct, these are fresh wounds, not the old scars the rest of them have learned to live with. 

“Nothing here,” Gladio says, and if he sounds a little too casual, Noct doesn’t remark on it. “C’mon, let’s catch up with them.” 

When they find Iris and Summer, Summer is crouched in front of an empty intersection, frowning at the map. 

“How’s it looking?” Gladio asks. 

“Not bad, looks mostly like surface damage. I won’t know the full extent until I can get to a power station. According to this map, there’s a subway station nearby?” 

The three Crown City natives take a cursory look around, but none of them are too familiar with this part of the city. “Gladio and I can split up and look,” Noctis offers. 

“Don’t go too far,” Summer says nervously. “It’s not that crucial. If you can’t find it in a few minutes, we can move on.” 

Within a few minutes, Gladio’s pretty sure the map is out of date, or she’s got it oriented wrong. Was it the blue line or the yellow line that ran through this part of town? There’s not even a sign pointing towards a subway stop. The narrow street he’s on turns and suddenly opens into what would have once been a park, but is now an open space of overgrown grass and rusted monkey bars. At least now Gladio doesn’t have to go hunting for Noct; he’s standing still in the middle of the park. At Gladio’s footsteps, Noct whirls to face him, eyes wide. 

“What,” Gladio says flatly. 

“Ardyn was here,” he gasps. 

“What?” Gladio says again, closing the distance between them. There’s clearly no one in the park except for the two of them. Noctis runs his hands through his hair, agitated. 

“Just for a second,” he says. “Maybe I…”

Gladio grabs him by the shoulder and gives him a little shake. “Look, creepy bastard had ten years to dick around here on his own. He could’ve set up all kinds of magical booby traps.” 

Noctis draws in a long breath and exhales loudly. He doesn’t look convinced. “Spar with me,” he says suddenly.

“What?” 

He’s already shaken Gladio’s hand off his shoulder. “You can’t tell me that I want to train and you don’t.” There’s that defiant set in his eyes again, daring Gladio to call him out on not yet being strong enough. 

Fine. He’s clearly shaken, and far be it from Gladio to deter someone from using a little exercise to work out their shit. “A round of basic footwork drills, then,” he says. “Don’t give me that look, we’re all still getting used to being armiger-less.” 

As a kid, Gladio busted up his ankle pretty good in training once, and even after he got back to it, all his footwork was sloppy; he kept feinting on the follow-throughs. This went on for two weeks until his father sat him down. “It’s okay to be afraid of getting hurt, son,” he said, holding a bag of frozen peas against Gladio’s sore ankle. “But you can’t work around that fear until you acknowledge it.” 

He sees that same hesitation in Noctis now. Noct leaves himself wide open for Gladio to get a grip on his wrist and toss him aside to the asphalt. To Gladio’s surprise, though, Noctis doesn’t curse or pout. “Should’ve seen that coming,” he mutters. 

“You’re out of practice,” Gladio says, offering him a hand and hauling him to his feet. “And you’re trying to start from scratch. Just because you lost your magic doesn’t mean you gotta relearn everything.” He claps Noct on the shoulder. “C’mon, we’ll give it another go back at Hammerhead. We’re keeping the girls waiting.” 

The two of them fall in line and walk shoulder to shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Noctis announces, out of the blue. 

“For what?” 

“For - it took me so long to be who I was supposed to be. And that was all you were trying to do. You were the one that saw who I could’ve been if I could just get my head out of my own ass.” 

“So did Ignis, though.” Gladio has no idea where this is coming from. It’s hard to see how it even matters now, when just a week ago he’d been watching the sun rise and facing the very real question of what to do with Noct’s body. 

“it wasn’t the same. Ignis believed I wasn’t there yet. You were the one that knew I already had it in me.” 

Gladio opens his mouth to argue, then closes it again. How many times had Ignis’s vague insistence that Noctis “just needed time” led to an argument between the two of them over the years? Probably too many to count.

“I would’ve hated me too, if I were in your shoes,” Noctis says. There’s no double-edge there, no baiting; he says it calmly like he’s stating a fact of the universe, but to Gladio it feels like he’s been hit by a truck. 

“You don’t seriously think I hate you,” he says hoarsely. 

“I mean, not now, and not all the time - ”

“Never,” Gladio says, loading that one word with so much ferocity that Noctis ceases his prepared speech. At some point they’ve stopped walking. He turns and grabs Noctis by the shoulders and looks him square in the face. “I don’t hate you. Never once. Never in all the times you pissed me off did I hate you, I - shit…” 

Noctis just smiles in the face of this naked display of emotion and sighs, shoulders dipping in Gladio’s grasp. “I never hated you, either, even when I thought you were the biggest jerk on the planet.” 

 It’s not like it’s impossible to understand how Noctis could come to believe Gladio hated him. It’s not hard to look back at all the times that Gladio had chosen the tough love approach only for the “love” part to get a little buried. Sure, he was aware there was a line, but he always toed it, and he did cross it at least once, and he knows that he never said or did a damn thing to make it right. Words seem cheap now, but words are all he’s got left. “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for how I acted after Altissia. I was…an asshole.” 

“You were.” Noct chuckles humorlessly. “You were a major asshole. But you were right. I was so busy blaming myself I couldn’t see anything else.” 

Gladio squeezes his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it. You know that, right?” 

Noctis nods slowly. He doesn’t look entirely convinced. Well, maybe that’s not surprising. Gladio’s not going to undo ten years of self-blame in one pep talk. “Even if I was right,” Gladio continues, “I was still out of line. I was the one that couldn’t deal, when your battles stopped being the kind I could fight for you.” 

“Gladio…”

“When Ignis told us what was going to happen when you came back? Took me a long, long time to make my peace with it.” 

“Yeah, well,” Noct mutters, “that makes two of us. I just keep thinking, all the times I could’ve been better than I was. Like, if I’d been more, I guess, kingly, from the start, it wouldn’t have been ten years.” He chuckles humorlessly, shrugs. “I’m ready for the ‘I told you so.’ Now’s your chance.” 

But Gladio can’t waste another breath on such words, not now that he knows Noctis died believing Gladio hated him. “You were - are - fuck, I don’t know - Noct, you’re great. We’re proud of you. You know that, right? I’m proud of you.” 

Noct’s expression goes all wobbly. If he starts crying, Gladio’s just done. “C’mon, we’re keeping them waiting,” Noctis says at length, and Gladio doesn’t comment on how the wobbliness has spread to his voice.

Chapter Text

The campfire crackled, the worn camp chair creaked ominously beneath Ignis, the daemons snuffled and howled just beyond the perimeter of the haven. Yes, the sounds and smells were the same as they had always been, but even without his sight there was no forgetting, even for a heartbeat, their missing fourth member.  “He’d be mad if he knew we were doing this,” Prompto remarked glumly from his right. “He hates his birthday.” 

Ignis sighed, wondering if he would still be any good at tying a tie, if that was the sort of thing where muscle memory counted more than seeing what one was doing. Noctis had - has - a very specific expression for official functions where he was to be the center of attention - bland and benign, well-practiced, not quite a smile or a frown. 

It terrified Ignis, how quickly Noctis’s face was growing fuzzy in his mind, without sight to shore up the memory. 

“Well, tough titties, we’re celebrating it anyway,” Gladio said. Sitting nearly silent around the campfire seemed more like an acknowledgment of their loss than a celebration, but Ignis didn’t say that aloud. There was the sudden magical pop of something being called from the armiger, and then the trickle of liquid hitting Gladio’s tin camping cup. 

“Are you keeping booze in the armiger?” Prompto asked, scandalized. 

“Where else am I supposed to keep it? Ignis, give me your cup.” 

Dutifully he handed it over. Gladio placed it back in his waiting hands a moment later. Ignis lifted the cup to his nose and took an experimental sniff. It was whiskey, there was no mistaking it on that count, but there was a familiar spice note as well. Cinnamon and…Leiden peppers? “I gave you this bottle,” he said. 

“Yup.” 

“Wow. You sure you want to waste it on us?” Prompto asked, mirroring Ignis’s thoughts. 

“On the contrary, you guys are the only people I’d waste it on. Unless you’d rather I take up drinking by myself.” 

At the first sip, Ignis remembered what a good bottle it was, with the price tag to match. It warmed, not burned, on the way down, and settled in his stomach like a miniature campfire. “It was for your induction ceremony. As Noct’s Shield.”

“Yup.” 

Prompto smacked his lips, let out an exaggerated sigh of contentment. “I see why you keep it in the armiger. And Iggy isn’t even mad?”

“Why would I be?” Ignis sniffed, in between sips. “It’s probably better there, and not somewhere where it could break and make a mess of our supplies.” 

“That’d be a crying shame,” Gladio said. 

“Is the armiger really unlimited?” Prompto mused aloud. “Or is it like a disk drive and you run out of space eventually?” 

“I would think it depends on the individual’s skill with magic and the strength of their connection with the Crystal.” 

“Is there a size limit?” Prompto asked. “Could you put, like, a catoblepas in there?” 

“Well, no, since you can’t put anything living in the armiger.” 

They lapsed into silence for a moment, and then Gladio announced, “Noct’s dad put the Regalia in there on a dare once.” 

There was a beat of silence, and then Prompto let out a hoot of laughter. “Seriously? You’re not messing with us?” 

“Nope. My dad told me the story. This was when they were out on their grand road trip. Sounds like there was some…” Gladio trailed off, and then there was the sound of liquid sloshing as he gave the bottle of whiskey a little shake. 

“Obviously,” Ignis said, but his mouth quirked up in a smile regardless. 

For as much as everyone liked to say that Ignis was the one with the words, Gladio was just as skilled at reading the room, and on that humorous story, the silence changed into something more companionable than awkward, a silence more easy broken by the occasional anecdote or “remember that time when…”

Ignis was partway through his second cupful of whiskey when Prompto broke the latest round of companionable silence. “I miss photography,” he said. 

“Nobody said you had to stop,” Gladio answered. 

“Yeah. I guess. Just seems kind of silly. Kind of like a waste of time.”

“Because we’re obviously so productive and focused on survival all the time,” Ignis said, raising his cup in a sarcastic toast. 

“I know, I know. It’s just that, Noct was the first person I really started showing my pictures to. Just makes me miss him more, you know?” There was a rather noisy slurp as Prompto drained his cup. “To Noctis. Happy birthday, and also get back here before I forget what an f-stop is. Wish you were here, dude.”

“I don’t,” Ignis blurted out. 

There was a long silence. To their credit, both Prompto and Gladio waited patiently for him to explain himself. 

Damn it all, this was exactly why, long ago, Ignis had decided his limit was one glass of the requisite wine or champagne served at official functions, and the occasional one beer with Gladio. 

It was not long after they left Zegnautus, after they had come to the conclusion that Noctis would not be re-emerging from the Crystal any time soon, that Ignis resolved to tell the two of them the contents of his terrible vision in Altissia. But he had resolved to do it carefully, when the time was right, and drunkenly blurting it out around the campfire on Noctis’s twenty-third birthday was not the way to do it. Ignis sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and silently held his cup out to Gladio for a refill. 

“The Prophecy,” he began, “is very vague on the ultimate fate of the Chosen King. When I wore the Ring. The Astrals showed me. Noctis will succeed, when he returns. But at the cost of his life.” 

Gladio handed him back his newly refilled cup, but otherwise said nothing. 

“You mean - you saw the future? Like a vision?” Prompto asked. 

“Yes.” 

“A vision where - Noct died?” 

“Yes.” 

To say that the possibility had never entered his mind would be a lie. The vagueness of the prophecy, the difficulty in tracking down a copy of the original text, those looks Regis would direct at his son when he thought no one was looking... Yes, part of Ignis’s education had been to learn to consider and plan for every possibility. If he had never considered that Noctis was fated to die, he would not have been properly doing his job. The long silence around the campfire only serves to confirm that Gladio and Prompto had considered it, too. 

“But there’s got to be some way we can stop it. Change things,” Prompto said. “Right?” he added, voice taking on a note of high-pitched desperation. Neither of them answered him.  “The hell is wrong with you guys? One vision and that’s it? It’s just decided? Noct’s gonna come back and die? Bullshit. It’s bullshit!” There was the sudden rustle of canvas as Prompto stood abruptly, followed a second later by the clatter of plastic on stone as he kicked over his camp chair. “Bullshit!” he shouted again, and then the sound of his footsteps, stopping abruptly when he reached the edge of the haven. 

Beside him, Gladio exhaled very slowly. “Have you seriously been sitting on that since Altissia?” 

“I have.” 

The hand that came down on his shoulder seemed more for Gladio’s benefit than Ignis. “The minute I’m sober we’re having a talk about your compartmentalizing.” It was impossible not to pick up on the notes of guilt in Gladio’s voice. Damn it all. The last thing Ignis wanted to do was give Gladio something else to blame himself for. Ignis reached up and lay his hand over Gladio’s. They stayed like that until Prompto’s footsteps rejoined them. Another rustle of canvas and the scrape of plastic on stone as he righted his chair. 

“It is bullshit,” Ignis agreed belatedly, as Gladio poured Prompto another drink. He huffed out something between a laugh and a sob in response. 

They were quiet. “I’m sorry,” Ignis said softly. “I meant to tell you…more tactfully.” 

“Whatever,” Gladio answered. “Some things are better just out in the open. Hey, stop crying in it, you’re gonna ruin the flavor.” 

“Of your armiger-booze?” Prompto’s voice was thick. 

“Yeah, my armiger-booze.” 

Prompto let out a long, shaky exhale. “All in favor of kicking the Astrals’s asses, say aye.” 

“Aye,” Glaido answered without hesitation. 

Well, what was a little drunken blasphemy between friends? “Aye.” 

Deft fingers curl around the onion, probing for the root end and slicing off the other end with a swift and practiced chop. The door to the caravan creaks open, slowly, as not to startle him. 

“Something the matter, Noct?” he asks. 

“I’d ask how you knew it was me,” Noctis answers, “but you’ve been doing that kind of shit since we were little.” 

“Indeed.” Ignis gets the sense that Noctis is gearing up to say something, so he resumes quartering onions in the meantime. 

“Do you want some help?” Noctis asks hesitantly. “Not because you need it, I know you don’t, but just - because?” 

Cooking without sight is a tightly orchestrated routine of everything in its prescribed place. Perhaps ironically, having another person in the space actually makes Ignis’s work slower. Especially cooking without sight in cramped quarters, though at least Ignis had plenty of practice cooking in less-than-ideal kitchens to fall back on. It was always a point of pride for him, that he could make a proper meal on a camp stove, or in Noct’s apartment with cheap nonstick cookware from the local bargain bin. 

Yes, if Noctis thought Ignis was strict about his mise en place before, well, he has another thing coming. But to turn away Noctis now is inconceivable. They’ll live if dinner is a little bit later than usual. 

“Of course,” Ignis answers. “If you’d be so kind as to mix the spice rub.” 

Noctis steps closer and Ignis hears him finger the spice bottles sitting out on the tiny counter. “Steak skewers?” he asks hopefully. 

“Indeed.” 

“Nice.” 

“The spice rub and the type of meat has changed a little over the years, depending on what’s been available. But it ought to taste much the same.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be great, Specs.” 

The sound of the nickname winds something tight in his chest. Maybe if the sensation of Noctis’s death-cold hand in his own wasn’t so fresh, Ignis would make a snide remark about Noctis finally appreciating his cooking. 

They work in companionable silence for a moment, Ignis chopping and the clink of spoons as Noctis measures out the requisite seasonings. 

“I missed it,” Ignis says suddenly. “That was all.” 

“Cooking?” 

“Mm. So I challenged myself to learn it again. I suppose I missed the normalcy of it, as well.” 

“I bet it helped everyone you cooked for. No matter what Gladio says, you can’t live on Cup Noodles and protein bars alone.”

“Exactly,” Ignis answers, perhaps with a bit too much conviction, because Noctis chuckles under his breath. 

“That’s all of it measured,” Noctis announces at length. “Stir it together, right?” 

“Precisely. And then toss it with the meat, if you please.”

Ignis pauses for a moment and thinks about what’s next, and then reaches for the wooden skewers soaking in a bowl of water. 

“What d’you soak them for?” Noctis asks, throwing Ignis off his mental calculation. Ah well. 

“So they don’t catch fire on the grill.” Carefully he begins the process of skewering each piece of onion. 

“Can I ask you something?” Noctis says suddenly, and Ignis gets the feeling Noctis is winding up whatever it is he came into the caravan to say. The distraction is only going to throw him off more, but Ignis merely nods. 

“In everything you ever read about the Ring of the Lucii. Was there - was there anything about it making the wearer…see things?” 

Ignis hums thoughtfully. “The Ring no longer has any power, correct?” 

“Right.” 

“Gladio mentioned you saw a vision of Ardyn yesterday.” 

“Of course he did,” Noct mumbles. 

“He was concerned.” 

“Are you? Concerned?” Beneath that bravado, there’s an unmistakeable twinge of fear. 

“It’s something to…monitor. The Ring’s magic is ancient stuff, barely understood by the greatest scholars Lucis ever put out. Even without the Crystal, is it possible that it still gives off - echoes, or visions? Certainly. It may not even be the Ring. You died, Noct, and then came back. Who can say what’s cause for concern, and what’s ‘normal’, for lack of a better term?” 

“I guess you’re right,” Noctis mumbles.

Ignis nods, and passes over the skewers. “The meat next, please.” Ignis reaches for the bell peppers and sets to work dicing them into chunks. He hopes that if these versions were truly pervasive Noctis would say something, rather than keep it to himself in an attempt to save them the worry. Gladio did say he and Iris informed Noctis of the Rule…

Ignis hisses as the tip of the knife finds the tip of his index finger. “Bloody hell,” he mutters. 

“You okay?” Noctis asks, but Ignis has already shifted sideways to the sink and is running his hand under the sink. 

“Fine. It startled me more than anything else.”

“I’ll get a bandage,” Noctis says, telegraphing his movement with a hand on Ignis’s shoulder as he slides past him in the cramped caravan. There’s the sound of the cabinet door opening and shutting in the tiny bathroom. 

“Here, let me look,” Noctis says a moment later, and Ignis obeys, holding out his injured hand with a faint smile. If Noctis wants to fuss over a tiny nick, Ignis isn’t going to begrudge him that. “Oh, yeah, it doesn’t look bad. Phew. Tell me if this is too tight,” Noctis says, winding the bandage around the tip of Ignis’s finger. 

“It’s fine, Noct, thank you.” 

“Does that happen a lot?” Noctis asks warily. 

Ignis sighs, chagrined. “No. Only when I let my mind wander too far. Would you mind washing the knife?”

“Nope.” Again, Noctis passes behind him, and then the water in the little sink begins to run. 

“What’s bothering you? Besides the visions,” Ignis asks. 

“You’re even better at this shit than when we were kids,” Noctis mutters. 

“Well?” 

The water shuts off, and there’s the swish of fabric as Noctis dries the knife on the dishtowel. “Gladio told you we went through a round of drills.” 

“He did.” Ignis hadn’t been exactly thrilled, but if there was anyone who knew Noct’s limits as well as (even better than, sometimes) Noctis himself, it was Gladio. 

“It was…sloppy. So I keep thinking. What if I never get my strength back? What if - I can’t protect you guys anymore.” 

It is too early to be making dire predictions about Noctis’s future abilities, but Ignis doesn’t say that, because he’s certain Noct already knows it. It’s not the reassurance he’s looking for right now. “Then you’ll find other ways to protect us, without swords,” Ignis answers evenly. “You’ll adapt, cut fingers and all.” 

“But we’re not all as strong as you are,” Noctis whispers. 

Ignis reaches out until his fingertips find Noctis’s back, and then he flattens his palm out and just holds his hand there a minute. Noctis stiffens at the touch. “Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you never met me?” he asks, voice still low. 

Ignis’s breatch catches in his throat. Gladio certainly wasn’t lying about Noct’s self-blame. “No,” he answers, “because my life without you in it, isn’t my life. It’s someone else’s. It’s like pointing to a stranger on the street and asking me to imagine myself in their shoes. An ultimately pointless exercise.” 

Noctis shudders a little beneath his hand, and then Ignis feels him turn so that they are facing one another. “Thank you,” Noctis says abruptly. “For, well, a lot of stuff, but for telling them what was going to happen when I came back.” He chuckles humorlessly. “For doing my dirty work, like usual.” 

Ignis scoffs. “Enough. It was never dirty work.” He reaches up and puts both hands on Noctis’s shoulders. “And I don’t regret it. Not putting on the Ring. None of it.”

“I don’t get how you can say that like it was nothing,” Noctis grinds out. 

“It wasn’t nothing. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. But I’ve never regretted it. Not for a moment.” 

Noctis lets out a shaky exhale. “But I was never - I never did anything to be worth it.”

“Noct,” he sighs. Noctis, who whined his way out of bed and in the next breath jumped to offer to catch frogs or wrangle chocobo chicks or retrieve waylaid shipments of beans or whatever else was needed, simply because someone had asked him for help. Noctis, who had walked away from them to die to save all of them. 

“I’m sorry,” Noct whispers, though exactly what he’s apologizing for, Ignis isn’t sure, and he’s not sure Noctis knows either. Noctis told them that he wasn’t conscious all that time in the Crystal, at least not fully, and thank goodness for that tiny mercy from the Astrals - but it seems like he had enough time to ruminate regardless. Well, so has Ignis. 

“It’s all right,” Ignis answers. “You don’t have to believe me. But at least believe that I’ve told you my truth.” He’d like to have the magic words to convince Noctis, but he knows there are some things that he must leave in the hands of time. Ignis cups Noct’s face in his hands, brushes his fingers against the curve of his jaw, the side of his nose. Noctis leans into the touch. If this was one of Gladio’s silly romance novels, Ignis would be able to map out a perfect image of Noctis’s face through touch alone. It doesn’t work like that, though, and the image of Noctis in his memory remains as fuzzy and malformed as ever. He finds that doesn’t bother him the way it used to. It’s still Noctis, alive and breathing beneath his hands. They’re both here, and that will have to be enough for now. Maybe Noctis can’t look at him without guilt at his scars, but Ignis hopes he’ll be able to someday.

Suddenly Noctis stiffens under his hands and abruptly turns his head. Ignis has heard nothing, and there was no way someone else could have entered the caravan without him noticing. 

“Noct? What is it?” 

Noctis lets out a long, shuddery breath. “Nothing. Sorry.” 

Noct has shared all that he’s willing to for now; so Ignis lets him get away with breaking the Rule. 

“Then let’s get dinner back on track, shall we?” he says smoothly. “If you’re still willing to act as my sous chef?” 

“Always,” Noctis answers. 

The two of them work in silence for a few moments. Noctis huffs suddenly. Ignis isn’t sure if it’s a sound of amusement or frustration. “I have a confession to make,” Noctis says at length. 

“Yes?” 

“You know the pastries? The one from Tenebrae?” 

“What about them?” 

“I think it was when I was thirteen or fourteen. And I realized - I’d had so many more of yours over the years than the actual ones in Tenebrae, how was I ever going to know if you got it right? It was, like, a lost cause.” 

Ignis hums in understanding. “And you never told me you came to this conclusion because - ?” he asks, amused all the same. He hadn’t taken another shot at those berry tarts in years. He hadn’t even considered it. Even once he relearned to cook, he wouldn’t have had the heart for it. 

“Because I didn’t want you stop making them,” Noctis says easily, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“You could’ve just asked, Noct,” Ignis answers, and if his voice trembles a little bit, well, Noctis doesn’t let on that he noticed. 

“Yeah. Thanks, Iggy.” 

Chapter Text

“You seem like you’re - ugh - handling things well,” Aranea said, punctuated by a soft grunt as she pulled her lance from the sahagin’s corpse with sickening wet crunch. 

Prompto put a bullet in the head of the one still twitching at his feet. He supposed he couldn’t begrudge Aranea her skepticism. After all, she’d once witnessed him handle things by considering self-mutilation with a burning stick. That hadn’t even been two years ago. The endless night had a way of making time pass both very slow and very fast. He’d once thought that his life would be divided into before Insomnia and after Insomnia. He was coming to learn that his whole life was made up of those sorts of cosmic opposites. Sunlight and darkness. Before the truth and after the truth. Before Noct and after Noct.  Prompto shrugged. “So do you.” When he looked up, Aranea was giving him an appraising look. 

“You sure there’s a Haven around here?” she asked. 

He chuckled humorlessly. “I promise I’m not as helpless a damsel as I used to be.” 

Even in the harsh shadows cast by his flashlight, he could just make out her mouth twitch in the beginnings of a smile. “I know. It just looks like a whole lot of nothing but trees and rocks out here.” 

Prompto nudged the third sahagin with his toe, studying the curve and width of the creek. “It’s not far, just a little ways across the creek. There’s a Royal Tomb not far from here.”

“Ah.” 

Aranea’s post-battle remark was one of the few things they’d said to each other since they set out from Old Lestallum hours ago. It was simply safer to keep quiet - less noise meant less chance of being attacked, and less talking meant more energy to expend on survival. Just a few scant years ago such a long span of silence would’ve had Prompto itching for something to fill it with. 

It was not the first supply run he did with Aranea, and hopefully it would not be the last. At the end of the day - night - the two of them made a good team - she wounding and slowing daemons and wildlife alike, Prompto using her openings to line up some proper shots. It was - fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it - easier to be the marksman he knew he was when there was only one ally on the field to keep track of, not three (especially when one of those allies liked to disappear and reappear halfway across the field in, literally, the blink of an eye). 

They moved along in silence for a while until Prompto’s sharp eyes spotted the faint blue glow of the Haven’s runes in the distance. But as they got closer, there was another light - the faint, but unmistakeable orange glow of a campfire. He and Aranea exchanged a glance. They were tired, laden with supplies. They needed the break. 

“Probably a group of Hunters,” Prompto said. 

Aranea frowned. “You ever heard the phrase ‘don’t tempt fate’?” 

But he wasn’t nervous, not really. True, the end of the world hadn’t immediately broken down all barriers and eliminated all prejudices. Prompto wasn’t that naive. But he believed just as firmly that there was no survival if they didn’t stick together. 

“Who’s out there?” shouted a man’s voice, harsh and nervous. So much for a group of Hunters. 

“We’re Hunters!” Prompto called. The two of them approached the Haven slowly, and Prompto had his hands up in a gesture of placation. They’d been beaten there by a man and a woman, and even in the light of their meager campfire Prompto could see they were haggard and gaunt-cheeked. They’d probably been surviving on their own ever since the sun had gone down. No small feat, especially if they were armed only with the handgun clutched in the man’s hand. 

“What do you want?” the woman said warily. 

“Same thing as you,” Prompto said slowly. “Just to rest for a couple of hours. There’s plenty of room for both of us. I’m Prompto, and this is Aranea. Listen, we’re on our way to Old Lestallum with supplies. Why don’t you come with us?” 

“Don’t think we’re going anywhere with a couple of Nifs,” the man snarled.

“Oh, here we go,” Aranea muttered under her breath. “The Empire barely even exists anymore, you idiot,” she said aloud. 

“Can you not?” Prompto hissed at her, his eyes still locked on that gun. 

“We’re not going anywhere,” the woman repeated. Prompto watched as her eyes grew wide when her husband slowly raised the gun and kept it trained on Prompto and Aranea, though it shook just a little in his grip. Good, then they were as reluctant to turn to violence as Prompto was. 

“Just turn around,” the man said. “Walk away, and I won’t put a bullet in you for all the good people your kind’ve killed.” 

Prompto didn’t doubt that Aranea had encountered these kinds of comments since leaving the Empire. But she hadn’t grown up with it like Prompto had. She hadn’t learned, like Prompto had, when to punch back and when to walk away. And the kind of desperate, wide-eyed look that man was giving them? That was an indicator that it was time to walk away. 

“This is ridiculous,” Aranea snapped, taking a step forward, and then a lot of things happened at once. The man’s hands were shaking even harder, and he shouted a wordless warning. There a loud crack. Aranea stuttered, like a video skipping a frame, and then she dropped like a stone. 

“No!” Prompto yelled, dropping next to her. Her hands, already slick with blood, clutched at her neck. Prompto pried her hands away, and what he saw confirmed his fear - the bullet hadn’t hit her square in the throat, but it had clearly nicked an artery or a vein. He clamped his hands over hers. Dimly he was aware of the man sobbing out “oh, gods,” and then the clatter of footsteps on stone as the couple scrambled away. Some part of Prompto hoped they went blundering into an Iron Giant. Those dark thoughts were promptly chased away by the calm, even realization that he had less than five minutes before Aranea would bleed to death. 

Before the three of them went their separate ways, they had a long conversation about the use of curatives. Or, probably more accurately, Ignis and Gladio had a long conversation about the use of curatives, and then told Prompto what they decided - only to be used in the most dire of emergencies.

Thankfully Noctis had the good sense to restock before they found the Crystal. Prompto had been jerked out of a fitful rest on one of the musty dormitory bunks by the crackly ozone feeling of Noct’s magic. “Sorry I woke you,” he’d said quietly, warm hand gentle on Prompto’s shoulder, eyes still full of concern. “Just restocking.” 

It was a good final memory to have of him. 

When they first left Insomnia a lifetime ago, Prompto felt frankly weird about using something so important on someone as ultimately insignificant as himself. And maybe he still felt that way, just a little bit. But he’d also decided that he flat out refused to die without seeing Noct again. And at first, knowing they had a modest stock of potions and a couple of phoenix downs was a comfort, like Noct was still looking out for them. But then weeks became months, and months became years, and knowing that modest supply was going to have to last indefinitely was a new source of anxiety, no less sharp than the uncertainty of how to keep a world without sunlight adequately fed and watered. 

But all of those considerations vanished in the seconds it took Prompto to assess the severity of the injury, and it only came crashing back to him once the cool glass of a hi-potion flask appeared in his hand. Panic flared in his gut. Aranea’s wide eyes darted from the glass in his hand back to Prompto’s face, and then her eyes fluttered closed - whether from resignation, or merely unconsciousness from blood loss, he couldn’t say. 

There’d be one less hi-potion in the world. One less rare and precious towline back from the brink of death. 

But they needed someone as capable as Aranea, didn’t they? Wasn’t her life worth more than one hi-potion? But then what if someday - days or weeks or months or even years from now - Ignis or Gladio needed a hi-potion to survive and there were no more left? How would he live with himself? How would he tell Noct when he came back? Were their lives worth more than Aranea’s? Aranea, who went out of her way to save his ass? Aranea, without whom Prompto might have done something even stupider than burn himself? Exactly how would he live with himself if he repaid her help by letting her die? 

“Fuck,” he hissed, and cracked the vial over her throat. 

The familiar glow of healing magic made her pale skin look absolutely translucent. The flow of blood from the wound slowed to a sluggish trickle and then stopped, but she lay very still for a long moment. Prompto sat back on his heels and prayed to the gods he had come to resent that with all his dithering, he hadn’t missed the window during which a hi-potion would still be effective. The thought of having to go through all of those same mental calculations with a phoenix down made his stomach churn. 

But then Aranea finally took a shuddering breath, and fixed her confused gaze on Prompto. She opened her mouth to speak, and spat out a mouthful of blood. 

“Don’t try to talk,” Prompto said urgently, rolling her on her side so she wouldn’t choke. Then he set to work bundling her in every blanket in their meager kit, and building the biggest campfire he could manage, and tried not to think about how quickly his hands stopped shaking and his breathing evened out. 

When Aranea brings the first group of Insomnian citizens to Hammerhead, their first glimpse of their Dawn King and his companions is of Prompto surging forward to throw his arms around the great black chocobo that Aranea slides off of. 

“There’s my best girl!” he coos, as the chocobo lets out a happy wark. “You’re my best girl, too,” he adds to Aranea, grinning when she rolls her eyes and punches him in the shoulder. 

Noctis has already found himself the center of a throng of survivors equally curious and reverent. 

“He looks good,” Aranea says, but she’s looking at Prompto, not Noctis.

“Yeah.” Prompto never told her how the prophecy was going to end, but she’d probably guessed pretty close to the truth. “It was pretty touch and go - we didn’t think he’d make it at first.” 

She nods, ruffling the chocobo’s feathers. “Well, I’m glad you were wrong.” 

“Me too.” They stand in silence for a long moment, watching Noctis speaking with his citizens. Prompto can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but he thinks of every news clip he’s ever seen of Regis, leaning a little forward, head tilted as if to catch every word spoken to him, of the firm handshakes offered to foreign diplomats and concerned citizens alike. 

Eventually, Noctis sends the refugees in to Takka’s for food and rest and joins Prompto, who’s taken it upon himself to get the chocobos fed and watered. 

“Nice to see some things haven’t changed,” Noctis says. “We’d have to practically drag you away every time we went to Wiz’s.” 

“I did a lot of supply runs for Wiz, actually. We ended up needing chocobos more than ever, with gas being rationed,” Prompto explains. “I’ll have you know these are noble creatures,” he adds, though the effect of this statement is lessened somewhat when the black chocobo notices suddenly that he is paying attention to another animal and nudges his hand with an annoyed click of her beak. 

“Hey, girl!” Prompto grins as the chocobo sticks her beak in his hair and begins preening. Her striking black feathers glint in the sunlight; even surrounded by fine birds she attracts attention.

“Wait a minute,” Noctis says. “That’s not - ?”

“The egg we rescued, yeah! She took a shine to me every time I came by to do a supply run, so I started taking her out when she was old enough.”

Noctis gently lays a hand on the chocobo’s soft neck. “Does she have a name?”

Prompto groans a little. “That…would be Katriel.”

Noctis frowns a moment, and then recognition alights on his face. “That was your favorite healer in King’s Knight. Your - ”

“Yes, I called her my wife, and yes, her best support character was Neriah who was also my husband, are you happy?”

Noctis ducks his head, grinning. “Nerd. Hey, that - the game’s not still running, is it?”

“Nah. They had to shut the servers down about a year in. Put up this nice message thanking everyone for playing and hoping we were staying safe out there. You were still on my friends list, offline for, like, four hundred days. I bawled.” 

Noctis wears that sour lemon face he gets every time one of them says something about the ten years of darkness. The two of them lapse into silence. There are a couple of children nearby, scrabbling quietly in the dirt for dry desert grasses to offer the chocobos. 

“They were born in the dark,” Noct says suddenly. 

“Yeah, but they don’t have to grow up that way, you know? And neither do their kids, or their kids. They’ll be able to play gacha games until the middle of the night like we used to.” 

One of the kids gives a delighted squeal when a chocobo snatches a piece of grass out of his hand, and Noctis smiles softly. “You still want to make the world a better place, huh?”

“You bet,” Prompto answers quietly. How many times, though, did he remember that promise and despair that it would go unfulfilled? It was about year six when he began to despair of ever seeing Noctis again, and by year eight Prompto had been firm in his belief that the gods had decided to abandon humanity to the dark. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “That I ever doubted you.” 

Noctis shakes his head. He’s still idly patting Katriel. “Don’t be. I was the one that fell for it in the first place.” 

For a moment Prompto struggles to place what ‘it’ is, and then he remembers the other morning at breakfast when Ignis pulled him aside and told him quietly that apparently Noctis had seen a vision of Ardyn in Insomnia. 

Suddenly the last ten years yawn between them, and Prompto realizes that his old scars are Noct’s freshly bandaged wounds that he can’t seem to stop worrying at. And what is Prompto supposed to say to that? Not to worry about it, because the last ten years were worse than anything that old fuck could dish out? 

“It’s okay,” he settles on, finally. “I mean, it wasn’t, at the time, but I’ve moved on, you know?” Noctis is starting to get that same pinched look, so Prompto grabs his shoulder and gives him a little shake. “Just takes a while,” he adds. 

The children suddenly scatter and run back to their parents at the sight of Aranea, striding towards Prompto and Noctis. “I need to take her out,” Aranea says, nodding towards Katriel, who has long since finished grooming Prompto and contented herself with basking in Noctis’s attention, half-hearted as it was. 

“Everything okay?” Prompto asks. 

Aranea sighs. “Maybe, maybe not. Last night Alba’s chocobo got spooked and ran off. And apparently her husband Maro went off looking for it on his own this morning once Hammerhead was in sight.” 

“And he hasn’t come back?” Prompto says. “And she wants you to check on him.” 

“Bingo.” 

“Want help?” he asks. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.” 

“And three are better than two,” Noctis says, and he throws a glance at Prompto as if daring him to protest, before turning back to Aranea. 

She blinks at him as if just now seeing him. She shrugs. “You two do what you want,” she says, swinging up onto Katriel’s back. 

The search party of three would cover more ground if they split up, but even now, that would be stupid and dangerous. The wildlife of Lucis was always on the aggressive side, but the years of demons, darkness, and fewer humans on the road have made them downright feral. That was the other reason chocobos were such a vital part of survival - their keen senses kept their human riders from blundering into a pack of voreteeth, or worse. 

It’s Katriel who stops first, shaking her head and snuffling in distress. “You smell something, girl?” Prompto asks her, as his and Noctis’s chocobos stamp their feet in nervous agreement. 

“Let’s go,” Aranea announces, sliding off the chocobo’s back. Noct’s dismount was a little bit clumsy, and though Aranea didn’t comment on it, there was no way she didn’t notice. “Good to have you back with us, Noctis,” she says abruptly, as the three of them set off in the direction that Katriel resolutely would not head towards. 

“Thanks,” he says, sounding mildly surprised. “And - I owe you. For looking after Prompto.” 

Aranea looks sideways at Prompto, her eyebrows raised. He nods slightly. 

“Turns out, you’re too late,” she says smoothly. “He’s already repaid the favor. Saved my ass in return. Of course, then there was the time he got trapped in that cave by a pack of coeurls and I had to bust him out…”

“Oh yeah? What about the time that Red Giant snapped your lance in half? Your bacon woulda been fried if I hadn’t pulled one of Iggy’s spares out of the armiger - ”

Noct abruptly flings his arm out into Prompto’s chest, putting an end to the banter. “Look,” he says, pointing up at a nearby narrow ridge. They can see the telltale shape of a chocobo sprawled out on the rock, its yellow feathers twitching in the breeze. 

“Really miss warping right about now,” Noctis mutters, as the three of them clamber up the ridge. 

The poor chocobo is long gone, half-eaten, but amongst the feathers and blood and voretooth clawprints there are telltale human footprints in the dirt. But there’s no obvious footprint leading away from the chocobo carcass. The other side of the ridge is much steeper than the side they climbed up. Prompto and Aranea notice it first, exchanging a glance before she leans out over the edge. 

“Shit,” she hisses, and so Prompto isn’t surprised when he joins her and there’s a man’s body sprawled at the bottom of the ridge. Prompto winces at the unnatural angle of his leg. 

And then the body twitches. 

“Shit!” Aranea says again, and the three of them scramble down the opposite shallow end of the ridge, and down and around. Prompto, with his stamina and years of running, reaches the man’s side first. He’s barely breathing, he barely even responds when Prompto lays a hand on his shoulder. “Maro?” Prompto asks softly. “Can you hear me?” Maro’s eyes flutter open, glassy and unfocused, and he groans softly. Blood bubbles between his lips. Prompto clamps down a wave of nausea at the sight of white bone beneath the torn fabric of Maro’s jeans. The pulse beneath Prompto’s fingers is faint and fluttering. 

“Well?” Aranea says behind him. 

Gently he lifts the hem of Maro’s shirt. Prompto’s seen Noct come back from being slammed into rocks, with internal bleeding like this - with a potion applied within seconds of the injury. Prompto sits back on his heels, shakes his head.

“Wish we’d gotten here sooner,” Aranea says quietly. 

Prompto just nods, stomach churning as he tries not to think about how long Maro’s been laying here. Noctis kneels next to Prompto, brows knit together. 

“Hey, buddy,” Prompto says, taking Maro’s clammy hand between his own. His lips are still moving like he’s trying to say something. “Don’t worry. Don’t you worry about a thing. Alba’s safe, we’re going to take good care of her.” 

Those were the words Maro was waiting to hear. His eyes flutter closed. The pulse between Prompto’s fingers stutters, and then disappears. 

They take him back to Hammerhead, on the back of one of the chocobos. Prompto and Noctis pair up. Noctis is silent at Prompto’s back. 

Aranea spurs Katriel on ahead, so that she might give Alba some warning. The two of them are waiting at the edge of the settlement. Alba screams and surges forward, and she flings herself protectively over Maro as soon as Prompto’s gently lowered him off the chocobo’s back. Save for that one scream, she’s complete silent, clutching her husband to her chest, eyes wide. 

Noctis kneels beside her, and gently lays a hand on her shoulder. “Can I do anything?” he asks. 

There’s a beat of silence, and then Alba lets out a low gutteral moan, and shoves Noctis away with a surprising degree of strength. “Who the hell do you think you are?” she screams. “You left us! You left!” She breaks into loud sobs, but Prompto is watching Noctis, knocked backwards, eyes wide, gaze locked on the body of a man who just wanted to come home, same as the rest of them. 

Noctis has long since retired by the time Prompto enters the caravan for the night, but Prompto can tell he isn’t asleep at a glance. He’s lying too still. “Noct?” 

“You’ve done that before,” Noctis says suddenly. “Sat with someone dying like that.” 

“Yeah.” Prompto sits on the edge of the cot. 

Noctis rolls over to squint at Prompto, and then he pries himself into a sitting position. “I never have. Dad and Luna - and all the dog tags we picked up for Dave…” 

Prompto lays his hand on Noct’s knee. “It wasn’t your fault.” 

Noctis chuckles humorlessly. “Why does everyone keep saying that to me?” 

“Because you don’t believe it yet,” Prompto says quietly. “Because it’s the kind of thing you have to hear more than once.”

“I wish I could believe it.” 

“I know, buddy. I know.” 

Noctis draws his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He looks so young. 

“For what it’s worth,” Prompto says, “you’re handling it better than I did. I just got really drunk and cried a lot.” 

Noctis presses his forehead against his knees. “I don’t know how you guys did it,” he mumbles. 

Prompto scoots closer to Noctis and flings his arm around Noct’s shoulders. “We didn’t do it alone.” Prompto doesn’t begrudge Alba the need to rage at something, but that doesn’t he mean he didn’t wish she’d picked something other than Noctis. He wants to say that nothing matters except Noctis being alive, but he knows it’s not that simple, and he knows Noctis knows it too. So he just tightens his arm around Noct in a one-armed hug, and resolves to stay like that until Noct decides to pull away.

Chapter Text

The abandoned park set his teeth on edge, but it was the creak of the rusted merry-go-round that had him flailing for the spare sword at his waist. 

Harsh laughter echoed behind him. “That move needs some practice.” He  whirled,  and saw  Ardyn  stopping the slow turn of the merry-go-round with his foot. “What a fine kingdom of rust and rubble you have.” 

“Leave me alone,” Noctis hissed. 

Ardyn  only grinned. “Make me. Oh, wait, that’s your big, strong, Shield’s job, isn’t it? Why don’t you ask him for help?” 

He thought his heart would shatter, there in that tiny caravan kitchen, Ignis cupping his face, feather light and gentle, like he used to do when they were little and Noctis screamed awake in terror of daemons and then the Empire’s army. 

Ignis looked so peaceful and it was so quiet that Noctis resolved not to ruin it with tears. Though when Noctis let out a long shaky exhale and Ignis’s mouth quirked in a  smile  he knew he has been found out  anyway . 

“How sweet.”

Noctis jerked out of Ignis’s grasp and when he turned, there was  Ardyn  lurking in the doorway of the caravan. 

“ Noct ? What is it?” 

“Oh, don’t let me interrupt. Such loyalty you’ve managed to inspire. I wish I knew your secret. How do you do it?” 

Noctis stared at him. That Noctis was the only one that could hear  Ardyn ’s taunts was both a terror and a comfort. ‘You’re not real,’ he mouthed. Then he dragged his gaze back toward Ignis, who was busy frowning at him in concern. “Nothing,” Noctis said. “Sorry.” 

Noctis tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw that man’s broken body in the dirt. So he just lay there as the  sun set  and the shadows in the caravan lengthened, and thought about what a fucking coward he was, hiding in there, denying the truth that Alba had screamed at him. 

He knew the others were worried about him; he knew he couldn’t hide in there forever. But when he felt the mattress dip with the weight of another person, though he heard no one enter the caravan, cold terror seized his limbs. 

“That poor, poor man,” came  Ardyn ’s oily voice from above his head. 

“He would’ve died anyway,” Noctis whispered. 

“I suppose that is true. Still, though, makes you miss the days you could break a glass vial and be good as new, hmm? Shame you had to give that up. I wonder what you’ll do, next time, when it’s not a stranger. What will you do when it’s  Prompto  or Gladio or Ignis?” 

“Don’t say their names,” Noctis hissed through clenched teeth, eyes still squeezed shut. 

The bed shifted once more. “Well, I do hope it was worth it,  Noct .” Then, nothing but silence for a long time until the caravan door opened and footsteps creaked up the stairs. 

“ Noct ?” came Prompto’s voice, and Noctis only hoped Prompto didn’t notice him trembling. 

“Tell me what you see,” comes ignis’s quiet voice behind Noctis. 

“Um.” Prompto kicks a spare bit of plaster rubble and it skitters across the marble floor. “It’s a shitshow.” 

“Duly noted,” Ignis responds dryly. 

“Seriously, Iggy, it’s a mess in here. Watch your step.” 

Noctis absently rubs his bad knee and pretends not to notice Gladio watching him; that was a lot of stairs to climb. Prompto’s assessment isn’t wrong. The living quarters of the Citadel bear all the scars of the Empire’s assault, Ardyn’s cursed presence, and the years of neglect. 

None of the four of them have been inside the Citadel since that first sunrise. Ignis and Gladio have come close, going into the city as part of the early reconstruction efforts. But now with a memorial service for lost loved ones planned to occur in the plaza out front, and questions about the future of the Lucian government becoming louder and more urgent, it’s time to bite the bullet, as it were. 

So Noctis forges ahead, and pushes open the door leading to his old rooms. There’s a loud clatter as the door falls off the damaged hinges. First the more public reception room that rarely saw use, more of a relic from the days before the Citadel had press rooms set up with cameras and the royal family had a social media department. It’s messy and dusty, but the real destruction starts in Noctis’s private rooms. 

“Oh, man,” Prompto says softly from his elbow. The TV is smashed, the game consoles long gone, though whether the looters were Niflheimr or Lucian, who can say. The bed in the center of the room is covered in a layer of dust and it looks as though someone had stomped on it. Most of his childhood books are scattered on the floor, pages torn up. When he looks down, his foot is just next to a picture book of constellations that Ignis gave him on his ninth birthday. 

But these ruined relics of his childhood are just too distant to get under his skin. His memories of this room are dominated by sickness and pain, by fear and nightmares, and what small comforts he could find within. No, seeing his apartment like this would hurt worse. Hesitant footsteps behind him; Ignis is standing in the doorway, silent. Noctis turns, abruptly, and leaves the room, pausing only to lay a hand on Ignis’s shoulder; partly a gesture of comfort and partly to telegraph his movements. Noctis didn’t really come here to see his rooms, anyway. 

The door to his father’s study is still intact; Noctis rests his palm against the wood for a moment, considering how many times in his life he’s knocked on this door. What would happen if he knocked now? Would he still hear that same warm voice inviting him inside? 

The door may be intact, but the study itself is in worse shape than his rooms. Every drawer of the desk has been yanked open and the contents thoroughly ransacked. His father’s papers are scattered around, yellowed with age, torn. They left a surprising amount. Then again, what use would the state secrets of Lucis have been, with it no longer a sovereign state? 

In the middle of the desk is a copy of the treaty. There’s a dagger sticking straight up through it, the point embedded in the wood. The blade is rusted with a substance that looks suspiciously like blood. Noctis might have expected the sight to make his blood run cold, but ultimately it just strikes him as cheap, too on the nose. Maybe he really is starting to feel his true age. 

“What do you think of my handiwork?” asks Ardyn’s voice behind him. 

“Fuck off,” Noctis mutters aloud.

He pushes on into his father’s bedroom. The heavy velvet curtains are gone, and the light has bleached the dark, once crimson rug into a wan brownish color. The fine silk bedlinens are gone, too. It’s his father’s wardrobe that finally makes his breath catch in his throat. His foot kicks something; it’s an empty velvet jewelry box, and his stomach flips when Noctis recognizes it as the box his father kept his pearl cufflinks in, a wedding gift from his mother. 

His father’s regalia’s been stripped of every bit of valuable ornamentation - the gold, the brocade - and what’s left has been torn and slashed. But for the most part, they’ve left alone the casual wear, the slacks and dress shirts and sweaters that his father wears in all of Noctis’s best memories of him. Without thinking, he grabs a moth-eaten sweater off a hanger and buries his face in it, inhaling deeply. He seeks out even a trace of that familiar scent - coffee and cologne and pain cream - but it is long gone. The sweater smells like the rest of the Citadel, musty and decayed. He drops the sweater. 

The others have followed him into his father’s rooms. Noctis doesn’t acknowledge them, instead stepping out onto the attached balcony. The glass sliding doors have long since been blown out. Shards crunch beneath his shoes. 

“Watch the broken glass,” Ignis calls automatically, and Noctis smiles a bit despite himself. 

He has a vague dream-memory of being on this balcony with his father, and his father lifting him up so he might see over the railing. It was a narrow space, with barely room for the two of them when Noctis was grown. More an opportunity for the hard-working monarch to get a bit of fresh air without having to hike to the gardens, than a true outdoor space. 

Insomnia stretches out before him like it always has. If he squints, Noctis can pretend that the view that he used to know so well hasn’t changed, but the illusion shatters as soon as he blinks. Years of neglect and looters and daemons have rendered the city’s towers jagged and damaged like crooked teeth. 

Footsteps behind him, and Noctis turns to see Gladio watching him, frowning, arms crossed. Noctis squirms a little under his gaze. The four of them used to be better at reading each other, at knowing when they needed space or comfort or a distraction. Or maybe the three of them are just as good at it, and it’s only Noctis that’s fallen out of sync. 

“It’s just…stuff,” he says. “It’s not him. It’s not them.” 

Gladio’s expression eases a little and he nods once, like Noctis has given the correct answer. 

Noctis isn’t really sure what he came here expecting to find. Some kind of final message from his father, maybe, that laid out the future reassuringly and deliberately. Hell, he would’ve settled for some inspiration, some brilliant and eloquent speech about love and loss and hope.

“People are ready to move on. They’re ready to feel better,” Ignis says, after they go through, one more time, the brief remarks the two of them have put together for Noctis to say. But Noctis thinks of the murmur of voices questioning whether they need him, of the Hunters with their own government, of Alba screaming at him, and Noctis thinks that people are ready for a release. 

The crowd that gathers around the makeshift memorial in the plaza in front of the Citadel on the sixteenth night since the sun rose is quiet and subdued. Noctis wonders how long it will be before people feel like they can speak louder than a whisper, with no daemons around to hear them. 

The other thing that’s different about Insomnia now is how clear the stars shine above, without the light pollution of the city. The stars are reflected down below in the candles that form a glittering ring in the center of the makeshift memorial, casting a warm glow on the photos and belongings of the victims of the long night. 

He takes some small comfort in the fact that his friends are getting just as much attention as he is. They deserve it. Ignis looks in his element, talking with everyone. Gladio never strays far. Noctis isn’t sure if it’s comforting or not, how quickly they seem to fall back into their respective roles.

But this is definitely not a royal function; for one thing, the nobility and diplomats and whatever kind of hangers-on the Citadel managed to attract had no qualms about barging right up to their king or their prince, whereas these people don’t seem to know what to do with Noctis among them. Maybe he ought to do more to approach them, but the fear of making them uncomfortable keeps him from making the first move. He steps forward, crouching, on the pretext of inspecting the trinkets glittering in the candlelight. It’s a vulnerable position to put himself in, especially when it’s not inconceivable that there are people here who wish him harm. Movement out of the corner of his eye catches Noctis’s attention - it’s Alba, crouching nearby, tucking a photograph in among a child’s stuffed moogle and a well-loved book with a cracked spine. She notices Noctis watching her. 

She straightens, slowly, and Noctis mirrors her. “At first, I wasn’t sure if I could put his picture here, since he made it through the Night,” she says, and Noctis isn’t sure if she’s speaking to him until she turns to face him. She shifts her weight awkwardly. “Is shouting at royalty treason, or something?” 

Noctis blinks. He had been bracing himself for whatever further grief-fueled anger she needed to let out. “It’s really not,” Noctis assures her. “Even if it wasn’t, I’m not sure being royalty counts for much these days.” 

“Treasonable or not, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for what I said.”

“It’s fine, you don’t have to - ” Well, maybe fine isn’t quite the right word. It would be a lie to say that what she said had not gotten under his skin; after all, it had triggered another Ardyn visit. It would be equally inaccurate to say that he doesn’t still feel like he owes her an apology. But years of etiquette training haven’t been entirely forgotten, so he says, “I accept. I know you were upset. You were in shock.” 

She shakes her head. “It’s true, but not an excuse. Everyone here’s lost someone. Even you.” 

“Even me,” he repeats. And it’s not just the loss of Dad and Luna, it’s something deeper than that, something he can’t put into words, but he can see it, in the shiny scars around Ignis’s eyes, in Prompto’s long stretches of silence, in the way Gladio’s eyes don’t snap straight to Noctis at the first hint of danger. “If I could have been with you - with all of you - in the dark, if there had been any other way - I would’ve taken it in a second,” he says. He means for it to be a simple quiet admission, but it comes out harsh and strangled, that indescribable grief rising up and threatening to choke him.

“A lot of people don’t believe that,” Alba says, and she adds, “but I do. For what it’s worth.” She looks back at the memorial and the people gathered around it - some silent, some chatting, some weeping, some laughing. “Was this your idea?” she asks. 

“That depends,” Noctis says slowly, “on whether or not it was a good idea.” 

“It’s…a better idea than I first gave it credit for.” 

“Then yes. It was my idea.” 

She actually gives him a small smile, before excusing herself to rejoin her family. 

“What a kind-hearted king,” coos a voice in his ear. 

“Fuck off,” he hisses, but doesn’t turn.

“Is that all you can say to me now? Best keep it quiet, hm, before your people see you arguing with the empty air.” 

He stalks away with no particular destination in mind, and nearly collides with Prompto, who grabs his arm to steady him. 

“Whoa, you okay? You look kinda pale,” he says. 

“Fine,” Noctis grinds out. “Just…a lot.” 

“I know,” Prompto says, giving his arm a squeeze before letting him go. “It’s nice, though. Kinda wish I had my camera.” 

“Gladio told me it’s gone.” 

“Yeah, kind of a bummer, but, there’s worse things to lose.” His smile is way too sad, way too soft, and all it does is call to mind Prompto’s hollow expression in the throne room. 

The other day, Noctis tried creating a potion out of a bottle of water. Even with magic it wouldn’t have had much healing power, and even though he knew nothing would happen he tried it anyway. He sat there for a good half an hour, eyes closed, mind probing for a connection he knew no longer existed, willing himself to be a conduit once more, and he nearly threw the bottle against the wall in frustration before he remembered this was not a world where you could do such a thing with a resource like water. 

He understands, logically, that had he remained dead this would still be a world without the healing magic of the Lucis line; but it’s different to have made the conscious choice to give it up. 

They’d used their first phoenix down on Prompto - as if he didn’t have enough complexes about his place in the group already, but whatever, shit happens. Noctis doesn’t even remember the fight - maybe the one with the coeurl and an unfortunately positioned river nearby. But Noctis does remember sitting there, limbs tingly with relief at the sound of Prompto just breathing, and for the first and only time in his life, grateful for his bloodline. If the Crystal had some terrible fate in store for him, at least he could, in the meantime, use its power to save people. People he loved. People he still loves. People that, maybe, he should’ve been strong enough to leave. 

“Noct?” 

Noctis drags his gaze from some distant point over Prompto’s shoulder. “Yeah?” 

“Isn’t it almost time for you to go up there?” 

“I’m not,” he says abruptly. “I’m not - I changed my mind. It’s not about me. It’s about them. They’re the ones that - all I did was die.” 

Prompto cringes. “Buddy…” 

It was a tasteless comment, especially here. But before Noctis can stammer out an apology, there’s movement in the crowd out of the corner of his eye that attracts his attention. A bit of white, a flash of blonde hair, nearly glowing in the dark. Salt and blood and flowers. “Be right back,” he mutters to Prompto, and disappears into the growing crowd. His heart hammers, even as he tries to convince himself it wasn’t really Luna. That there are other women in the world with blonde hair that wear white clothes. That seeing her is just another symptom of his apparently growing instability. 

But… She will have her own choice to make. That was what Gentiana said. What could it mean except that Luna would be given the same choice as Noctis? 

The crowd has grown exponentially since he began speaking with Alba - there, in the distance, yes, gods, if someone put him up to it he would swear that was Luna, but then the crowd shifts again and he loses sight of her. He tries to shout her name, but it comes out in a strangled gasp. Bodies press in on every side. He turns wildly. There, on his right, some six people deep. He actually raises a hand to reach for her. Someone jostles him. When he rights himself, she’s gone. Abruptly he bursts free of the crowd. And he realizes it suddenly became so crowded because they were waiting for him. 

“ - for the best,” someone nearby him sniffs. “What’s he got to say worth hearing? He wasn’t there.” 

“All that waiting and the king can’t even give us five minutes,” someone to his left mutters. 

Noctis suppresses a bubble of hysterical laughter. ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ his father had sighed once after a Council meeting that had devolved into near-shouting over the pros and cons of the policy item on deliberation. 

“Abandon the common folk,” says a third voice. “Like father, like son, I suppose.” 

“Well, that’s gratitude for you,” Ardyn says airily. 

Noctis was taught at a very young age that very few people were allowed into the upper floors of the Citadel, and that if he ever saw anyone up high not wearing proper identification, he was to find a grown-up he trusted immediately. The highest parts of the Citadel had always meant safety, with perhaps the exception of when he was a teenager churning through the bullshit of duty and destiny. 

There’s a staff entrance he can slip into - or he would be able to slip into it if Gladio wasn’t blocking the doorway, arms crossed. “There you are,” he says. “Prompto said you were out of it.” 

“Yeah, I just - ” He licks his lips. “Crowded.” 

Gladio doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he nods. “Need air?” 

“No, I was - going to get something of Dad’s.” He jerks his head back in the direction of the memorial. 

Wordlessly, Gladio opens the door, gesturing for Noctis to enter first. 

“Gladio.” 

“Noct.” 

“Five minutes. Just - five minutes.” He sounds desperate, probably, but Gladio steps aside to let him pass. 

“Five minutes,” he repeats. 

Noctis, like a child, like the furthest thing from a king it’s possible to be, retreats to his father’s study. It’s dark and silent, and he thinks it’s probably the first time he’s been truly alone since he woke up. 

Except now he’s not sure if he’ll ever be truly alone again. 

“Your reign has truly gotten off to an auspicious start.” 

“Shut up!” Noctis snarls, rounding on Ardyn, knowing that this time he doesn’t have to be quiet or subtle. Perhaps this is truly the reason why he wanted to retreat. 

“Since we’re alone, I thought we might at least discuss my ideas for our kingdom’s future? 

“Get out of my head!” His own hysterical voice reverberates in his skull. Noctis surges forward, not really sure what he is expecting, but just like always, Ardyn flickers out of view before Noctis can make contact. 

“You never learn, do you, Noct? Perhaps the Crystal should have left you in there to cook a little longer. Or perhaps not. Any longer and there wouldn’t have been much left to save, would there?” 

Thoughtless, trembling with rage, Noctis tries to summon a sword; Ardyn throws his head back and laughs. “Remember, you gave all that up! Because you decided that you just had to be part of the world that survived ten years in the dark just fine without you. And how is that working out for you, Noct?” 

“You aren’t real!” Noctis screams, and again he launches himself at Ardyn. Again, Ardyn winks out of view at the last second. This time, the momentum sends Noctis careening out onto the small balcony, and he throws his weight against the railing. There’s one loud crack, and then the railing gives way beneath his hands. 

Noctis tries to scramble backwards but there’s not enough time to correct his momentum, not here on this tiny space. He tumbles forward.

Cor and Gladio would both scold him for his habit of warping up to some high point to hang off the edge of his weapon, but that instinct to grab hold is the only thing that saves him. His fingers cling to the edge of the balcony, but the structure itself gives an ominous creak. He has no idea if it will hold his weight enough for him to attempt to climb back into the room. 

So what does he do? Does he attempt the climb, knowing he might just plummet to the ground anyway, or does he just…let go? Even in a world with magic, a phoenix down would do nothing for a victim of a fall like this. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers aloud, just tasting the words. Testing them out. It’d be fine. They’d be fine. He could just close his eyes and let go. With any luck, he’d pass out before he hit the ground. Kind of an ignoble end for the line of Lucis, but he has ancestors killed by truly stupid things - drowned in a bathtub, tripped on a sword. Driven to semi-accidental suicide by the voices in his head. 

Maybe it’s just the howling wind, but he thinks he hears someone say his name. It sounds like his father. He opens his eyes to confront this latest hallucination.

“Noct!” 

He’s never heard Gladio shout his name like that, and that’s what brings him back to his aching fingers. “It’s not gonna hold much longer,” he gasps. 

“Gimme your hand,” Gladio says, low, urgent, crouching in the open doorway, planting his feet on the floor. “C’mon. Right hand, like a handshake. I won’t drop you.” 

Noctis knows this; he also knows if he lets go now Gladio would follow him right over the edge. So his hand shoots out to grab Gladio’s wrist, the balcony creaking louder. As soon as Noctis has both arms up on the balcony Gladio grabs him bodily and hauls him through the doorway. No sooner do they sprawl out on the mildewed carpet that Gladio is on his feet again, sweeping the room for an assailant Noctis knows he won’t find. Satisfied that there are no assassins lurking in dark corners, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps a few buttons - summong Ignis and Prompto, no doubt. 

Then he kneels in front of Noctis, still trembling on the floor, and brushes his windswept bangs out of his eyes with surprising tenderness. “You want to tell me what the hell just happened?” 

Noctis eases himself up on his knees, facing Gladio, but before he can even begin to stammer out an excuse he spots Ardyn standing just behind Gladio, holding a finger to his lips. 

Very slowly, Gladio turns his head, following Noctis’s gaze. He turns back to Noctis. “Ardyn.” 

Noctis gives a jerky nod. 

“Noct. There’s nobody behind me.” 

“I know,” he chokes. 

“Okay, just…okay. Breathe.” Gladio’s hands fall to his shoulders, and then pull him in to sag against Gladio’s chest. The adrenaline has left Noctis a shaky mess. He’s not sure how long they just sit there like that until two sets of thundering footsteps echo down the hall and burst into the room. 

“What happened?” Prompto asks, his voice suddenly at Noctis’s ear, his hand on Noctis’s shoulder. 

“I’m losing my fucking mind,” he mumbles, lifting his head just enough to peer up at Prompto. His eyes widen, but he asks no follow up questions. 

“That day you and I went into the city, was that the first time you saw him?” Gladio asks. 

“No.” 

Ignis has come to kneel next to Prompto. “How often are you having these…visions?” 

Noctis doesn’t answer. 

“Dude. Why didn’t you say something?” 

“Because I didn’t want you to know I was going crazy. I didn’t want you to know I came back wrong.” His voice breaks on that last word. 

“Nobody expected you to just walk out of there like nothing happened,” Gladio sighs. “You died.” 

“I know, I was there!” He shoves himself up off of Gladio’s chest, eyes wide. “Gentiana showed me. She showed me you guys, with - my body, and she asked me what I wanted to do and I couldn’t - what was I supposed to do, just leave you like that?”

For a moment there’s no sound except Noctis’s ragged breathing. 

“Are you saying,” Ignis begins softly, “that you would not have chosen to return if you hadn’t seen - our grief?” 

“I don’t know,” Noctis mumbles. He can’t look at them. “No, I - I want to live, but it’s not enough.” 

“Why isn’t it enough?” Ignis asks, gentle. 

“I can’t - I can’t heal. I can’t fight. Those people down there, what does it matter to them if I live or die? They don’t need me. You didn’t need me. You were fine without me.” 

“You’re right,” Ignis says at length, and his voice is trembling. “We survived without you for ten years. If we had no choice, we could continue to survive without you indefinitely.”

“But we don’t want to,” Gladio says, voice low. 

“That’s right,” Prompto says, and he, too, sounds like he’s holding back tears. “We love you, man.” 

Noctis finally raises his head and the three of them are looking at him expectantly, so kind and so concerned. “I love you too,” he gasps. “I just wanted that to be enough.” 

“You’re not listening,” Gladio growls. He tugs Noctis close again, but this time his arms wind around him and hold on tight. “It is enough.” 

Noctis wants to respond, but all that comes out is a long ragged sob, and then two other pairs of arms come up around him. He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face in the front of Gladio’s shirt. There are no taunting voices in his head, just the sound of his own weeping and the warm embrace of his brothers. 

He thinks this is what that first sunrise must have felt like. 

Chapter Text

A message comes from Accordo - an invitation of friendship and cooperation with Lucis and the Dawn King. 

Noctis read it over and over, frowning. “I can’t not go,” he said. “But I can’t leave, either.” 

“Welcome to politics,” Ignis quipped. 

“Specs. What do you think I should do?” Noctis asked, and Ignis practically glowed at being asked for his opinion.

So that’s how Ignis and Prompto end up in Altissia, this time on official business for the king of Lucis. First, however, they have an important stop to make. 

The memorial set up at the site of the altar is simple - a lifesize replica in silver of the Oracle’s staff, crowned with silver sylleblossoms. It glints in the sunlight. That’s the thing Prompto gets caught up on in his description of it for Ignis - the way it shines, a beacon above the cold, gray water. They stand in silence for a moment, and then Prompto retrieves his phone from his pocket and opens the camera app. “I’m going to get a shot of it, for Noct.” 

“Good idea.”  

“I feel like it would’ve done him good to come,” Prompto says, still thinking of Noctis hunched in on himself on the floor of the king’s study. 

“Perhaps. But if he feels he’s most needed in Lucis, we must trust his judgment.” 

Prompto sighs. “But he doesn’t have anything to prove. Not to anyone.” Ignis hums, non-commital. It just isn’t that simple, and they both know it. 

Noctis tells them now, when Ardyn shows up. Not that the sudden wide-eyed thousand-yard expression Noct gets on his face is hard to miss, now that they know what it means. And it’s been happening less and less, in the fortnight since the memorial service. Ignis has a couple of working theories as to how Ardyn got to following Noct around - that Ardyn’s magic left traces of himself around Insomnia and their shared lineage is why only Noct can see him, or perhaps a shade of Ardyn literally followed Noct back from the afterlife. Secretly, Prompto, who has plenty of experience with the kinds of nasty visions a traumatized brain can conjure up, thinks Ardyn is a simple manifestation of Noct’s guilt. He supposes they’ll never really know what it was. He supposes it doesn’t really matter, as long as Noctis is getting better. Which he is. That Ignis would leave him, even for this brief diplomatic errand, is proof enough of that. 

“You about ready to go?” Prompto asks. “Watch your step, it’s a little slippery - ” But just as Prompto turns, something bumps his ankle, and he yelps in surprise. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Prompto looks down, and there’s a miserably wet little white dog looking balefully up at him. “Holy shit!” he yells. “It’s Tiny!” 

“What’s tiny?” 

“No no no, I mean it’s Pryna!” 

“What?” 

Prompto crouches and reaches for the little dog, scratching behind her ears. “Heya, sweet girl. How have you been?” But Pryna is nudging at Prompto’s hand, whining - she even gives his wrist a tiny nip. “What’s wrong, girl?” He straightens, and Pryna spins in an anxious circle. “Hey, Iggy, I think she wants us to follow her.” 

“Are you quite sure it’s Pryna?” 

“Sure I’m sure! She lived with me for a few days when I was in middle school!” 

“Beg your pardon?” 

“Oh, yeah, long story - I’m gonna follow her, you coming or you want to stay here?”

Ignis huffs with annoyance. “I’ll come along,” he says. Prompto is glad; he would’ve felt like a proper asshole leaving Ignis here, but he would’ve done it if he had to. Whatever Pryna is here for, it’s got to be urgent. 

Pryna leads the two of them away from the altar and down along the edge of the water. It’s slow going along the slippery wet stone, and every so often Pryna stops and looks back to make sure the two of them are still following her. The little dog dodges under a half-fallen arch and disappears from view. “Hold up, girl, we’re coming!” Vaguely he wonders if it’s blasphemy to talk like that to a Messenger of the gods, and then he pauses. “Hey, Iggy? If - if part of the deal with Noct coming back was no more magic and no more gods - where does that leave the Messengers of the gods?” 

“I don’t know,” Ignis huffs. “That’s exactly why I asked you if you were certain it was Pryna.” 

“It’s her,” Prompto answers, though he knows there’s a tremor of doubt in his voice that Ignis will pick up on. “Watch out for this archway, pretty rubble-y right here,” he cautions, ducking forward. And then he stops. Pryna is gone, there’s no longer any sign of her. But half-submerged in the water, half-sprawled out on the rubble, is a body - one he recognizes. “Holy shit,” he whispers. “It’s her.” 

“Who, Pryna?” 

“N-No. It’s Lunafreya.” 

Luna opens her eyes, the afternoon sun low in sky outside the window. She frowns. She had not meant to fall asleep. Noctis was going to call. 

Across the room, Prompto notices her stirring and sets his phone down on the table. “Hey,” he says. “Did you have a nice nap?” 

She nods, reluctant to admit it; it seems absurd to have slept so much in the past day and a half and yet still be so tired. “Did you speak with Noctis?” 

“Yup,” Prompto answers. “He was kinda disappointed not to talk to you, but I told him you were napping. He said you’re not to worry about anything, that we’ll figure it all out when he and Gladio get here.” 

Figure it all out. The place of an Oracle in a world without gods or the Scourge. The role of a princess of a country that exists only in tatters. No doubt Noctis has asked himself many of those same questions since he first opened his eyes as Gentiana must have bade him to.

She remembers Gentiana’s arms around her, and her whispered apology. Then she remembers cold, and a foggy sense that there was something she must do, someone she must see. Then there were voices, and other arms around her, lifting her, peeling her out of her cold wet dress and wrapping her up in something warm.  Luna felt boneless, senseless - trapped by an exhaustion so pervasive it was difficult to open her eyes. “Rest easy. You’re among friends. Noctis is alive and well.” She didn’t know the voice, but she did know that name, so she obeyed, and slept, until she had the strength and presence of mind to speak with her rescuers. 

The introductions were made, though she knew who they were, of course. 

“Where are we now?” she had asked calmly. 

“Hotel Jardin, in Altissia,” Ignis answered. “As far as the hotel staff is concerned, Prompto has taken ill and we are not to be disturbed.” 

Luna exhaled slowly. “Your discretion is appreciated. May I… also ask what I am wearing?” 

“That would be my sweatshirt and sweatpants,” Prompto squeaked. 

“Your clothes were completely soaked through,” Ignis offered. “We could not risk you developing hypothermia.” 

“No, I suppose not.” Luna isn’t embarrassed, per se. It just seems a little absurd that they would have considered the possibility. Perhaps it was just that it had been so long since anyone had been concerned about her bodily comfort. 

“Don’t worry, Iggy’s blind, so it’s not like it was weird,” Prompto added cheerfully. 

“Yes,” she said faintly, for lack of anything better to say. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t noticed. It made her cold to think about - what had happened to him, what had happened to all of them. 

“It’s an old injury,” Ignis said smoothly. “Nothing to concern yourself with, Lady Lunafreya.” 

“Perhaps,” she answered, just a little dryly, “there’s no need for formality, given the circumstances. It…does not seem like coincidence, that you were the ones that found me.” 

“It wasn’t. Pryna led us right to you,” Prompto said. 

That was not the answer she was expecting, and it must have shown on her face, because Prompto said, “Yeah, I was surprised to see her, too.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “You probably don’t remember, but this one time when we were kids - ”

“Of course I remember, Prompto,” she said warmly, and Luna could not stifle a giggle when his ears turned bright red. 

“Well, thanks,” he said, clearing his throat, and then he turned soft eyes to meet hers. “Because meeting Noct was the best thing that ever happened to me.” 

 No, although she had never met Noctis’s inner circle she has seen them, in tabloid articles or standing at his side at televised functions, in the occasional snapshot he tucked into the notebook. And she has read through enough stories about them to have the sense that she knows them. The one thing she is certain of, for she could feel it in every word, was how much Noctis loves them, and how much they love him. 

Jealousy is a terribly inconvenient thing, a thing Luna has never had time for, so she folded it as small as possible and slipped away in a dark corner. But even so, sometimes late at night she’d hold that notebook tight to her chest as if she could take some of the love she felt bleeding on every page for herself. Is that what she’ll find, she wonders, when she finally sees him again after all these years? Love? Luna does not need anything so sweeping. If he could only help her to find some inkling of what to do now in this future she never imagined, that would be more than enough.

“Did Noctis say how long it will before they arrive?” she asks.  

“He said Cid and Cindy - there’re our, uh, mechanic buddies - were already on the way to Cape Caem to get the boat back in order. So if it turns out it’s in good shape, within a day or two.”

Luna does not ask what happens if the boat is not in good shape. Ignis enters a moment later with a small paper bag clutched to his chest. “I thought we could all do with some tea,” he announces. 

Prompto flashes a conspiratorial grin at Luna. “You’ve got him in full Team Mom mode.” 

They have explained to her why they came to Altissia, and she does not wish for them to feel obligated to babysit her at the expense of helping Noctis be king. “Please, there’s no need to trouble yourself on my account,” Luna says. 

“Nonsense, it’s no trouble. The vendor at the tea shop was outside handing out samples as I passed by. I would have stopped in to make a purchase anyway. Cream and sugar, Lady Luna?” 

The odd but not unwelcome combination of her title and her nickname fill her chest with warmth. “A little sugar, please,” she murmurs. Honestly, Luna has not been so carefully looked after since she was a child, since the title ‘princess’ actually meant something. Once she can do something other than sit in bed like an invalid, she will have to repay them. For now she has little choice but to let them fuss and bring her tea in bed. She cups it in her hand and inhales deeply, watching Ignis and Prompto have a silent conversation next to the electric kettle. 

“Is there something wrong?” she asks. 

“There is something we need to tell you,” Ignis says seriously, so Luna sets her tea aside and sits up a little straighter. 

Prompto crosses the room and sits on the edge of her bed and takes a deep breath. “Hey, um, Ardyn got ahold of Ravus,” he says on the exhale. “And by the time we knew, there wasn’t anything we could do to help him.”

“Oh,” she says faintly. 

Luna’s always known that, one way or another, the Empire would succeed in eliminating the House of Fleuret. But never had she even considered the possibility of outliving Ravus. She greets this news with only a distant sense of shock. Of course. The ground the Empire had replanted her in was so full of poison that slowly turned her heart hard and cold, and now she can’t even properly mourn her brother. 

Then Prompto lays his hand on top of hers, limp on the covers. “I’m so sorry, Luna,” he says. 

What a contrast, to gloved hands yanking her wrist, the barrel of a gun prodding at the small of her back. After her mother died, the only one to touch her like this was Gentiana. Not even Ravus could embrace her after that. She never understood why that was, until this exact moment, Prompto’s warm hand dismantling the wall she’d built up so carefully, brick by brick. 

“Oh,” she says again. The tears come so fast, coursing down her cheeks before she can even attempt to pull herself together, and then Ignis hands her a silk handkerchief so she stops trying to. 

Luna may have no family of her own left, but she allows herself the sinful luxury of hope that there is room for her in Noctis’s family. 

“Hey, you want to send Noct a selfie?” Prompto asks later out of the blue, whipping out his phone without waiting for Luna’s answer. 

“I’ve never taken a selfie before,” she says, unnecessarily. 

“Yeah, but you’ve had your picture taken, right? It’s the exact same thing,” he says, holding his phone at arm’s length and leaning in. “Say cheese!” She smiles dutifully. He appraises the picture with a satisfied nod and holds his phone for Luna’s inspection. “We’re adorable.” 

She looks ridiculous, with her blonde bedhead and wearing a too-big sweatshirt. She supposes looking ridiculous is the point. She nods, once she realizes Prompto is waiting for her permission. 

Some half an hour later, Prompto’s phone vibrates on the table. He reads the message, then laughs, even as he winces a little. “Oops,” he says, and shows Luna his phone. 

gladio: yo what did you send him? 

gladio: hes been crying at his phone for 20 min 

Luna leans with her forearms on the windowsill, letting the breeze play with her hair. She was never allowed open windows, at least not open windows without bars on them. 

“I’m pleased with how far along the reconstruction efforts are,” Ignis says beside her. 

“I am too. I was - it was difficult not to be afraid, that day.” Every one of these soft admissions of her heart feels like a defeat and a victory at the same time. 

“I can only imagine,” he murmurs, and his hand finds her shoulder. It’s just the two of them in the room. Prompto left about an hour ago to fetch Noctis and ferry him to the hotel via the tangled back routes of a city that was already rather mazelike, even before it was almost destroyed. 

It’s ironic, that after everything, they should finally meet in Altissia. Or maybe it’s not. The gods always did like that symmetry. And yet, there is a part of her that can’t forget the fury of the ocean that day; though she trusts Gentiana, there is a part of her that still struggles to believe the gods will simply let them live. She wonders if Noctis feels the same way. She’ll be able to ask him soon enough. 

Perhaps it is only a few more seconds, or maybe it’s another fifteen minutes - but then the door opens and Luna whirls to face it, her heart in her throat. 

Noctis is standing in the doorway, staring at her, open-mouthed. No one says anything. She is suddenly conscious of how small and ridiculous she must look, still bundled in Prompto’s borrowed clothes. Gladio, hovering in the doorway just behind Noctis’s shoulder, wordlessly puts a hand on Noctis’s back and shoves him into the room. He takes two stumbling steps, and then, the spell broken, he takes a few more until finally Luna can throw her arms around his neck. 

“Luna,” he says. And then he says her name again, like he’s testing it out. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Gods. I’m so sorry.” 

She pulls away just as abruptly so she can look at him properly, older and more tired but still the prince she remembers. Still the same eyes, just shiny with tears. “None of that,” she scolds quietly, reaching up to rest her hand on his cheek. “No need for any of that.” It’d be more effective there weren’t tears on her own cheeks. 

Noctis pulls her into his arms then, cupping the back of her head with one hand. She allows herself to be held for the first time in so, so long; buries her face in his chest and holds back tight with all the strength she’s gained back in the last few days. 

“It’s okay, Luna. We’re gonna be okay. It’s gonna be all right.”

She knows it is.