Work Text:
There’s a shadow looming in the corner of his bedroom. He can swear it’s moving. It’s alive, and it’s coming towards his bed. Towards him.
Noctis holds his breath from beneath the bed covers; his head is the only part of his body peeking out at this point, and only so that he can keep his eyes on that thing. It’s getting stuffy and hot under the covers, but it’s either this or exposing himself to the dangers of his bedroom.
He can’t go back to sleep. He doesn’t want to, either, because he just woke up from a nightmare, something about the daemons in his storybooks. The shadow looks like one of them.
If only he could crawl into his dad’s bed and let his warmth protect him. But he can’t. It’s another one of those nights: Dad is really busy, doing important, kingly work. Something about a “charity ball”—it sounds like something only adults do. So Noctis can’t stay in Dad’s room for the night and sleep where he feels the safest.
But he can’t stay here any longer either, not with that daemon shadow watching him from the corner. He eyes the door for a moment and makes his decision.
Noctis sits up. He throws his blanket in the direction of the shadow with a “Ha!,” and storms towards the door, quickly, before the shadow catches up to him. He almost stumbles over his feet, but he makes it to the door, yanks it open and slams it shut behind him.
The moment he’s outside, relief fills him from head to toe. The hallways of the Citadel are glaringly bright—bright and safe. He squints against the light, his eyes still used to the darkness of his room.
“Is everything all right, Your Highness?” comes the voice of a guard. It’s the regular one who stands in front of his room most nights. Noctis has dubbed him Is-Everything-All-Right-Your-Highness, as that seems to be all he can say.
“I’m gonna go sleep in Dad’s room,” Noctis mumbles. He hates talking with the guards, especially with this one. He’s big and never smiles. Noctis bets he must be looking down on him for still wanting to sleep in his dad’s bed, even though he’s already five years old and the Prince of Lucis.
Still, the guard doesn’t ask questions or try to stop him. “But His Majesty hasn’t returned from the charity ball yet! He is veeery busy, Your Highness,” is what he’d have said some time ago when Noctis waking up in the middle of the night hadn’t been a routine yet.
Is-Everything-All-Right-Your-Highness escorts him to his dad’s chamber. He and the other guards expect him to crawl into Dad’s bed, wait for him there, and fall back asleep as he waits.
He enters and walks around the study. The door to the private rooms is ajar, but no one is inside there, of course. He turns towards the old grandfather clock; that’s what he came for.
Noctis can’t help the grin that breaks over his face. He knows the secret passageway behind the huge clock, he’s known it for a while, and he knows that he can’t go back to sleep tonight. Not without Dad.
So, he operates the hidden lever at the side of the clock, if “hidden” is the right word for it. If even he, a kid, has happened across it, it sure isn’t as hidden as whoever designed it thought it was. Or maybe he’s just too smart.
The passage opens with a loud groan, and the familiar damp, old stench hits his nose. Everywhere inside the Citadel is squeaky clean and perfect, but this place is not.
Noctis starts to make his way through the barely lit hallway, set out for his place of comfort. Once, the passageway had been scary. Dark and cold, with no one around to give him a sense of safety. But he isn’t scared anymore. Something marvelous is waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, and just the thought of it makes his heart start hammering in his chest with excitement.
Once he makes it to the other end of the passageway, he finds the lever on the wall and pushes it, grunting at the resistance. All—the dark tunnel, the nightmares, how he wants his dad—is forgotten once he finds the light switch and his mom’s room fills his vision. The Queen’s old chamber. He doesn’t get why there’s a secret passageway between the King’s and Queen’s rooms. Can’t they visit each other openly? But he’s sure they had good reasons to meet in secret, just like Noctis has his reasons.
His eyes land on the center of the room where it awaits him. He walks towards it and climbs up the bench, the leather crinkling under his weight. His hands find the lid, and he pushes it up. He’s gotten used to the heaviness of the lid, and it always feels like an accomplishment when he manages to hinge it up at last. His eyes find the keys, and he grins.
“I’m back, Toothy,” he says.
Toothy grins back at him with its white, brilliant teeth, welcoming him. With his new friend Toothy, Noctis is always in for a fun time.
He doesn’t know why he’s so fascinated by it—the sleek black, the smoothness of the keys beneath his fingers, how huge, grand, it is compared to him. A grand piano, a musical instrument, his governess had explained when he’d asked her about it after he’d made the discovery. Of course, she doesn’t know about this room and his secret. She asks him sometimes now if he wants to learn how to play, but he doesn’t care about pianos, he only cares about this one and the magic it performs. No way any other piano can come close to it.
At last, he lowers his hands to the keys, poking at them. A discordant mixture of sounds follows, and Noctis giggles. It would probably be harsh to hear for anyone other than him, but he likes every single sound reaching his ears and that’s what counts. Sometimes he just lets his fingers flow across the keys, creating melodies that are never the same, impossible to recreate, without any order and meaning. A tutor would be scolding him for sure.
One day, he’ll be able to play properly, though, because there’s this one song he wants to play. He can't remember the lyrics, but the melody has been with him since he can remember—no, even longer.
The air is dry, it’s a hot summer day, so hot that even the songbirds are too lazy to chirp their melodies. The blue sky peeks through the space between the white of the curtains. He’s tired but he can’t sleep. That’s when her melody always lulls him to sleep, a warm and slow song, accompanied by Toothy. Mom’s voice is clear and full of love, right next to his ear when she hugs him close. He can feel her heartbeat. Mom smells like sunshine.
When he tries to remember it, more so than a sequence of sounds, he recalls colors and smells and warmth. It’s the orange-blue blend of dry summer days and her perfume. He doesn’t remember more than this, but he knows her melody is not a lie, because he was born in summer, and it’s also in summer when Dad cries the most.
So, maybe, if he knew how to play the piano, he could recreate it—his mom’s melody—and make her come back. She could sing her lullaby as he plays.
So, he keeps playing. So, he keeps coming here.
The silence of the passageway is even less frightening on his way back. Toothy’s tunes still play inside his head, chasing away the shadows.
He returns and slips into Dad’s bed. It’s still empty and Noctis lets a grin spread across his face. He’s getting better at this. No one even noticed his absence. He likes his little secret, a secret he shares with his mom’s piano alone, with his new friend. That’s pretty much a secret shared with his mom, so it’s a good thing.
Melodies continue swirling inside his head, keeping him awake for longer, his heart still pounding with the thrill of tonight’s adventure.
And he promises to himself, one day he’ll learn to play Mom’s melody.
The bell-like clinks and clanks of Mom’s piano accompany him throughout the summer. Even on days he can’t come to Mom’s room and play with Toothy, it’s everything he thinks about. Clink, clank, clink, clank, his mind repeats all the time.
Noctis gets better and better, not only in operating the piano, but also in finding new ways to sneak out. With every session, Mom’s melody draws closer and closer to the point he can almost grasp its entirety. He won’t go so far as to say he feels closer to Mom, though. That would be a lie, and Dad always tells him not to tell lies. He doesn’t know her, doesn’t remember her. All he knows about her is this piano and the hint of a melody. Even so, Toothy and the melody are all he has. They are good enough for him. It makes him feel there’s something or someone looking out for him when Dad isn’t, as Dad’s always busy these days.
But there are days when the piano isn’t really Toothy but just a plain old piano, when it doesn’t comply, but growls and stutters, and the melody is out of reach.
Today is such a day.
The piano erupts in cacophonous noise as Noctis slams his fists down on the keys. The mismatched sounds hit his eardrums as hot as Dad’s fire spells.
Something ugly builds inside him. It takes possession of him and makes his fingers pound even harder on the keyboard. The piano groans in protest and it sounds the farthest from his mom’s melody than ever. It sounds more like the daemons looming over him in his nightmares—evil, loud, chaotic. Toothy, his one and only friend, has betrayed him.
Another sound joins the piano. It sounds like a baby wailing and he wants to make it shut up. If only his vision weren’t so blurry and his throat tightening up. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, only that he wants to remember Mom so badly. But the melody won’t come to him no matter how hard he tries.
Why can’t he remember?
(He does know the answer. Because who says the melody ever existed? It was a lie, it was all in his head.)
At the realization, Noctis stops pounding the teeth of his friend. A hiccup leaves his lips. Toothy must be mad. He wants to apologize, but the hiccups won’t stop coming.
A rattle at the door.
Noctis’s heart jumps up into his throat. Someone’s there.
The door opens. “Highness!” A guard, his guard, he thinks at first, but it’s Cor. Noctis hates that he’s discovered, but Cor is better than any other guard. “Noctis, there you are.” Cor’s voice is softer than expected.
Cor walks over to the bench, and though he’s usually kind of scary, he takes Noctis in his arms, hugging him close. “Why are you crying?” he asks, and that’s when Noctis notices what he’s been doing.
“I—” he begins, but he doesn’t even know what to say, so he clamps his mouth shut, hoping that stops the crying and hiccupping.
“Shhh, it’s fine,” is all Cor says. He heaves Noctis up and stands, heading towards the door. When he shuts off the light and closes the door behind them, Noctis can’t help another surge of sobs. Will he ever be able to see Toothy again?
Crying is exhausting, and he falls asleep as Cor carries him through the squeaky clean corridors of the Citadel.
When he wakes up, he’s surrounded by soft blankets and a familiar smell.
Dad’s bed.
Noctis manages to open his eyes to the barest minimum. He can see the dark silhouettes of Cor and Dad standing at the door, a soft light spilling out from the study behind them.
“He snuck out?” whispers Dad loudly enough for him to hear. “Where did you find him?”
Cor answers just as quietly, “He was in Queen Aulea’s chamber.”
“Oh.” Dad’s voice sounds off. “But why?”
Cor adds something, but Noctis can’t make it out.
Dad sighs, then looks over. Noctis closes his eyes quickly, pretending to be asleep. No more than a second later, he hears the shuffling of steps upon the floor. Then Dad’s voice rings out, much closer than before, “Noct, I know you’re awake.”
No, he isn’t. He presses his eyes shut even harder. It has to be convincing.
“If you open your eyes now, I won’t make you eat those dreadful vegetables tomorrow.”
Noctis wrenches his eyes open.
Dad, sitting at his bedside, smiles down at him, his eyes glinting mischievously. “I knew you were awake.”
Face heating up, Noctis averts his eyes.
“Noctis,” Dad starts, his tone serious again, “mind telling your Dad what happened?”
Of course, Dad would want to know. Noctis doesn’t want to share his secret, though. He keeps his mouth shut.
The way Dad looks at him, Noctis knows he’s disappointed. “You will have to tell me,” Dad says. “What you did was very reckless. You had us all worried. Sneaking out at night is not a good thing to do.”
Noctis mumbles, “’just wanted to play the piano.”
Dad breathes out a deep sigh. “You can play the piano all you want, Noct, but not secretly at bedtime. Sleep is important and that is what you should be doing at night.”
“But—” Noctis starts, wanting to argue. They will take Toothy from him, he knows it. Just the thought makes him tear up again, the feeling of loss overwhelming. The sobs become more violent and he can’t make them stop.
“Oh Noct,” says Dad, reaching out and enveloping him in his arms. He rocks him back and forth, and Noctis calms down somewhat. After a while, Dad asks, “Tell me, what’s wrong?”
Noctis mumbles, “Can’t ‘member.”
“What did you say?”
"I can't remember," he says more clearly.
“What is it you can’t remember?”
This time, he tries to explain in earnest. “Mom’s melody,” he says, his voice breaking off as another hiccup comes. “S-she played it to me. Right?” He can’t believe how badly he needs Dad’s confirmation. Dad always knows everything. If he doesn’t know this no one does. Then it was all just a lie, after all.
Dad looks down at Noctis, differently than before, realization on his face. “Noctis.”
“The melody. You know which one. Right?” Noctis presses.
Dad sighs. “Of course, I do. I didn’t know you remembered. I’m sorry.” Dad’s hold around him tightens. “Your mother composed this piece herself; she even wrote the lyrics. And you’re correct, she played it to you oftentimes.”
Noctis’s heart leaps at hearing it. So, it hadn’t been a trick of his mind, after all? “Really? You’re not lying?”
“Why should I be lying? I know all about this song. Do you want to know more?”
Noctis nods eagerly, his sorrows from earlier forgotten.
“The song has a special name. Care to guess?”
“Uh—” Noctis ponders. “Mom’s song?”
Dad chuckles. “Not quite. You see, she wrote it for you, so she named it ‘Noctis’,” says Dad, and Noctis wants to believe him. Because mothers are special and love their children, or so everyone says, and this would be proof that he, too, had a loving mother at one point.
“Give me a moment. I’ll be right back,” says Dad, then adds, as Noctis grabs for him, not wanting to let go, “Don’t worry, I won’t leave.”
He stands and walks towards the shelf, rummaging about inside it. “Ah, here it is,” he says at last.
There are clicking sounds, and then a melody rings out. A familiar melody.
The blues and oranges swirl around in Noctis’s head as he listens to Mom’s song: a song about a little boy born in summer, with the name of the night sky. The singer’s voice is clear and strong; it’s her voice, he knows it.
Everything clicks into place, it’s finally as it should be. His mom is right there, and he feels closer to her than ever. This is what he’s been searching for.
Dad’s back at his side, heaving Noctis up on his lap. Noctis clings to him and closes his eyes. Dad’s heartbeat drums in harmony with Mom’s song.
Even after the melody stops, he’s fine. He remembers now and he won’t forget again.
Noctis falls asleep with his ear pressed to his dad’s chest, the beat of his heart a calm lullaby in its own right. He wishes he could remember his mom’s embrace, but he doesn’t. Her melody has to be enough. Dad is enough.
“Good night, my little prince,” he hears as he falls asleep. He can swear it’s not Dad’s voice.