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The night air was cool as it blew against you, sending a small shiver through your body. The moon shone brightly above you and the stars twinkled in the far distance beside it. It was quiet, aside from the occasional snores you would hear from inside the camping tent in front of you. The warm glow of the campfire danced along your face, the embers floating up above the flames before cooling off and disappearing into the air. You could feel your chocobo sleep peacefully behind you, its soft feathers and warm body comforting you as you sat alone in the night.
You sighed, feeding a dry stick beside you into the campfire to keep it alive. Your eyes followed the dancing flames grow a bit before darting over to the large camping tent. The boys had turned in for the night and, not going to lie, you missed their company. You wanted to hear Prompto’s loud laughter as he looked through the photos he took throughout the day and showed them to everyone. You wanted to pester Ignis about what you guys were going to have for dinner before offering a hand to help him. You missed your chats with Gladio as he filled you in with some fighting tips or his teasings about how small you were compared to him. You missed catching eyes with Noctis during dinner and sending him a goofy look and then laughing about it with him.
But you couldn’t wake them up just because you missed them. That would be selfish and annoying of you. Besides, you would be seeing them first thing in the morning anyways, and it’s not like you deserved their company with your performances in the most recent battles.
You bit the inside of your cheek as your mind raced through your memories of the previous battles with the boys. You were a strong fighter, you swore you really were. But ever since you joined the Crownsguard and promised to protect and guide Prince Noctis to Alitissia for his arranged marriage with Lady Lunafreya, things have been quite rough on your end. It’s just… You were always in need of help when taking down the beasts your team faced. It wasn’t like they needed your help anyways, even His Highness could easily take down a sabertusk or voretooth by himself.
Even when you tried taking down some beasts by yourself, one of the boys would always jump in and aid you. As much as you appreciated their help, you couldn’t help but feel so worthless. Could you even take down a beast by yourself? Could you even stand your own ground? Would you even be able to protect the Prince by yourself if he were attacked right now by a beast? Your thoughts ran rampant inside your mind, every negative word to describe your strength and usefulness to the team plagued your thoughts.
Worthless.
Weak.
Unreliable.
You cursed yourself quietly under your breath and quickly stood up, startling your poor chocobo in the process. You crept towards the boys’ tent and quietly opened the flap so you could peek in. Your eyes viewed the scene in front of you: Ignis sleeping quietly on his side to the left, Noctis’s back facing Ignis and curled up beside Prompto, Prompto sleeping on his back with a cute grin on his face, and Gladio sleeping with his back towards everybody to the right. You felt a small smile grow on your face before focusing on what you came to do in the first place. You quickly snatched Ignis’s bag and darted out of the tent, making sure to close the flap so the boys wouldn’t be disturbed by the night air.
You sat back down by your chocobo and opened Ignis’s bag. Your eyes caught sight of a familiar sheet of paper and pulled it out. It was a bounty hunt for a group of mindflayers that weren’t far from the campsite. ...Alright so these weren’t beasts but if you could defeat a group of daemons then that’ll sure show the boys that you can handle yourself and that you were fully capable of defending the Prince by yourself, right? You could feel yourself grin as you continued eyeing the flyer. It listed that you only had to deal with two pesky mindflayers in the area, that shouldn’t be too hard.
You stuffed some extra potions and elixirs in your own bag before gently waking up your chocobo again. It squawked rather loudly and you quickly hushed it, thanking the gods that your chocobo didn’t wake up or startle the other chocobos. You waited a couple moments to see if the squawk had woken up any of the boys before sending a little glare at your chocobo.
“Hey now, no need to get so excited from waking up,” you whispered to it. Your chocobo only tilted its head in response to you, blinking confusedly as it waited for you to get on and ride it somewhere. You could only laugh at its lack of response. “Alright, enough dilly-dallying. Let’s go slay some daemons.”
Needless to say, you were not doing so well fighting these mindflayers. Your lance could only do so much damage and these daemons were… way stronger than you thought they would be. You barely managed to take down one, but the other two were getting irritated and you swore they had gotten stronger. You cursed as you dodged one of their attacks, it nearly missing your face by a couple inches. Oh you fucked up royally, you should’ve at least warned someone that you had gone off somewhere, but your pride and big head prevented you from doing so.
You swung your lance and felt yourself smile when you hit one of them, but failed to pay attention to the other. You had realized too late about the next attack and couldn’t defend and parry the daemon in time. The mindflayer cried out into the night before swooping in and enveloping you in its lower tentacles and suction cups. You could feel your life slipping away from you as it began sucking your energy out from your body. A cry of pain fell from your lips.
“Shit! Ow, fuck, let me go!” you shouted at the mindflayer, struggling as best as you could while trapped in its tentacles. But it wouldn’t budge. You cried out in pain again. This was it, this was how you’re going to die. Sucked to death by a stupid daemon in the middle of the night with no witnesses. How were you going to protect His Highness now? How were you going to-
A loud squawk of a chocobo brought you back to your senses along with a loud grunt and shout of your name. There was a flash of light blue and a cry from the daemon above you. Before you knew it, the pain you felt earlier subsided and you fell to the ground beside your lance. “(Name)! Shit, are you alright?!” a familiar voice shouted out at you. ...Prince Noctis? You could barely process what was going on and grab your lance beside you before you were hoisted up. “Come on, help me here!”
It was then that you snapped out of your daze. Your eyes assessed the scene in front of you as your hand clenched the lance in your hand. Noctis was fighting the daemons that you were supposed to be dealing with by yourself, his sword slamming down on one of the mindflayers before warping away and then warp-striking back to attack the daemons. How.... How did he get here? How did he know where you were?
Your thoughts were interrupted as one of the mindflayers began speeding towards you, its tentacles open and ready to swallow you again. You quickly dodged the attack and shoved your lance through it. You pulled your lance back out and jumped away from the mindflayer in case it counterattacked and dealt some heavy damage to you.
“(Name), the floor’s all yours!” Noctis’s voice shouted at you. You knew what that meant and you couldn’t help but feel a small smile tug at your lips.
“Of course, your Highness!” you called out as you jumped at the mindflayer in front of The Prince and shoved your lance into it. You grunted, pushing your lance further into the body of the daemon before thrusting your weapon up into the air and tossing the daemon up.
“Young Prince, you’re up!” That was Noctis’s cue to warp above the daemon and slam the blade of his sword down, knocking the wind out of the daemon and slamming it to the floor.
It wasn’t long before the remaining mindflayers were dealt with and their corpses laid on the floor. You let a long sigh leave your lips, your eyes closing and your body falling to sit on a rock that was beside you. You sent your lance away in a flash of blue light and let your head fall back. This battle… was a doozy and you owed your life to the young Prince, even though you wanted to handle this by yourself.
Soon, You felt… guilt weigh on your shoulders. Prince Noctis had to wake up in the middle of the night to save your sorry ass because you wanted to prove a point, to prove that you were strong individually.
Before you could thank him for saving your ass in that battle and apologizing for having to wake up and save your ass, you heard crunching the foliage as Noctis marched towards you and his hand bunch up your shirt and pull you up. Your eyes widened and met his, his blue eyes that were usually a peaceful sky blue were now a deep, stormy blue and filled with anger.
“Are you out of your mind?! Why did you come out here and take on this hunt by yourself? Did you not realize how dangerous that was? Do you know how reckless you were being?” You flinched at his words. Oh, you’ve really pissed him off now. It wasn’t like The Prince to nag at others considering how lax he was.
“I-I’m sorry, Your Highness. I just wanted to prove to you, to everyone, that I wasn’t a weak unit in your team. I know I’ve been slacking lately and thought this was the best option.” Noctis scoffed at your reply.
“You’re not weak, (Name). No one thinks you’re weak. You’re an important and useful person to this team.” You watched Noctis’s eyes avert his eyes and felt him slowly unclench his hand from your shirt collar. “...And you’re an important person to me. You don’t know how scared I felt seeing you with that mindflayer stuck on you.”
Your eyes widened hearing Noctis say that. You were… important to him? You couldn’t respond back to him with his words still processing in your mind. There was a moment of silence before he continued again.
“You… I care about you a lot, (Name). Not only me though, the others care about you too.” Noctis took a breath before continuing.
“...You don’t… need to prove anything to us, I hope you know that. We’re a team, we help each other and work together. Of course, individual strength is important too, but… You don’t have to work on that by yourself, nor do you have to take things on by yourself. You have Specs, Gladio, and Prom to help you out with anything or with training.”
Noctis paused again, but his eyes flitted up to meet yours again. The storm in his eyes weren’t there anymore and instead were replaced by something more calm and inviting. His hand fell from your shirt and moved to hold your hand in his. Noctis was nervous, you could feel it in the shakiness of his hand and the look he gave you in his unwavering eyes. He leaned closer to you, close enough where you could count the number of eyelashes on his lids and gaze deeper into his blue eyes. He spoke again, but this time in a voice that was loud enough for just you to hear.
“And you have me. You can rely on me if you ever need anything. So please, please don’t do anything reckless again.”
Who were you to deny The Prince?