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Ignis leaves the country three weeks before Noctis begins his last year of high school.
It's something he has been preparing himself for more than a year. Since Ingis applied for that prestigious university in Tenebrae, which offers one of the most well-known curriculum in management and administration, and provides for a wide range of evening courses.
Including culinary classes.
Tenebrae is Ignis's native country. His friend can assert whatever he wants, Noctis notices the sparkles in his eyes whenever a new exhibit - or anything related to this country, really - gets mentioned. The man longs for discovering the country he left at such a young age, to bound with his origins. Noctis is the last person of Eos who would deprive him of his dream coming true. They talk a lot about how they are going to organize themselves when his advisor-to-be leaves. It's a long process made while eating Ignis delicious meals and involving a lot of papers and sticky notes.
But when the time comes for Ignis to place his suitcase on the rolling mat of the security control of this airport, Noctis feels ready to spend the next three years without relying on his best friend for any kind of chores or administrative tasks. He can do it.
The first weeks - no, the first months - carry their weight of trials and failures. He vents toPrompto a lot, and luckily for him, his blonde friend proves to be a treasure of knowledge when it comes to daily chores and life skills. Which isn't a surprise, really, come Prompto basically had to take care of himself on his own since middle school. Noctis has never been so grateful to have an emergency number when he has to remove a stain from a fancy suit overnight.
Phones are useless once the borders of Lucis are crossed, but emails still make through. For the first time in his life, Noctis finds Ignis venting to him and talking about issues he encounters, doubts he has, failures he fears he can't overcome. There is something incredibly humbling about being the receiver of that vulnerable side. Noctis is grateful for being able to experience it, even if it means they won't be able to see each other until Ignis graduates.
Then, things take a turn for the worse.
It's early morning and Noctis fetches for the remote to switch the TV on. He likes to watch a bit of nonsense cartoon while he finishes his morning coffee, but first he always lets the 24/7 news channel on. He has long learned it's for the best to be aware of whatever happened during the night before the reporters bring the info to you while interviewing you on the steps of the Citadel.
He chokes on the image of smokes and flames eating the center district of Tenebrae.
The camera focuses on various landmarks crumbling to ashes while Noctis' mind goes numb, until it lands on the campus. One could easily get it mixed up with the Grand Senat, but Nocits recognizes the representations of Pitioss adorning the halls, all in the gothic style that was favored by the artists before the Tenebrae renaissance movement began, which Ignis has been ranting on and on when he first arrived in his new dorm.
His heart turns cold.
Clammy hands reach for his phone to dial his father's number. But the words he hears hardly have any comfort to offer. Queen Silvia had lost her life, alongside most of the people who were attending her open healing session in the city main hospital. His best friend Lunafreya has to step up to become the new Oracle overnight and the King, gone defending borders, orders his son to take the reins of the Kingdom as Regent Prince.
Three weeks after the catastrophe, his frantic emails to Ignis remain unanswered. Despite her own mourning and all the tasks falling on her shoulders, sweet Lundafreya takes the time to inquire of Ignis' whereabouts, albeit without success.
Nobody fitting his description is being cared for in the many temporary hospitals that opened in the Capital of the Silverblossom. No body found in the rumbles and ashes, for them to bury and mourn.
But mourning, Noctis does.
With anger and tears first. He becomes a body full of coldness and rage. Then with more tears and hollowness. The curtains of his apartment are drawn shut while he shelters himself in a cocoon of blankets, dressed in Iggy's favorite polo shirt he left behind.
Grief, they say, is love with nowhere to go.
Since it has nowhere to go, Noctis does his best to redirect it.
In the careful way he irons his black suit and arranges the fresh white silverblossom in the front pocket of his jacket before he is driven to the 6-month remembrance ceremony. The public one is set in the square in front of the Citadel. People drop lines and lines of flower arrangement along the fences, until the citadel is surrounded by a sea of gentle colors waving in the light breeze, petals flying like lazy birds whenever it slightly picks up. It goes in the tears he shed at the private ceremony they held in one of the most remote gardens, holding Gladio's and Prompto's hands like anchors, his other brothers leaning on his shoulders to express their own pain.
Ironically the sun brightly shines above but the air is chill enough the warmth remains pleasant. The kind of weather you only experience when spring shyly picks its head out of the winter veil, in which Ignis was always prone to coast him out of his apartment to take a stroll through the park and enjoy the way nature was slowly awakening from its seasonal slumber.
It's in the way he dutifully picks himself up, locking the heartache deep into his own chest, to settle on his coffee table the many brochures of Insomnia's best universities and define what kind of curriculum he wants to build for himself.
"We should take cooking lessons." Prompto blurts out, one night he stays over. It makes Gladio's eyes go huge and not-so-discreetly shoot a worried glance at Noctis, which he ignores, just as he does for the visceral pain that is set alight in his chest.
"Together you mean?"
"Yeah." And the way Prompto seems to choke back a sob, it's clear they all still have a long way to go on the road of mourning. "It doesn't feel enough to lay down a bunch of flowers on stone, you know? And I though, Iggy would have appreciated we turned his death into something...like, practical."
That last remark tears out a wobbly laugh from Gladio at the other side of the couch.
"Like learning some life skills?"
"Sounds like Specs, alright."
"If you guys do it, I'm in."
"Aren't you supposed to graduate this year?" He thinks of all the classes Gladio has to attend, and of the training sessions they all still have with the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive.
"Don't know how that's going to stop me."
It doesn't stop them. The three of them prove to be a challenge to the teacher, but because they're royalty, none of them gets kicked out of the course. Thursday nights cooking becomes their way to unwind when everything becomes complicated and, well, real.
It only stops when Noctis graduates and is set to assist his father in his duties.
As a Regent Prince, he is entitled to his own office, with a pristine desk, which probably has belonged to twelve ancestors and has three or four hidden drawers for secret documents. A picture of his three friends during his formal eighteenth birthday party finds its place in the corner, together with an old picture of his father and himself with the Fleuret family during an unofficial holiday trip in Tenebrae. Between the two of them, adjusted not to be seen by visitors, a small picture of Ignis, humble smile and vivid eyes, holding his graduation certificate.
When things get tough, he stares at his friend's face, and thinks of the person he wanted to become for this man. He removes the latch locking the box of feelings that have no longer a place to go, letting them wander to a time and space where a tenebrean accent would still berate him for procrastinating reading the council’s latest minute while stirring garula stew in his kitchen.
What kind of man would he have judged worthy of him? He thinks, and straightens up his back, picks up his pen, opens the next report.
What kind of man would he have deemed worthy to walk along Ignis' side? He studies the new battle plan to reconquer Keycatrich, trains some more and gets his own gear ready to be part of the troops.
What kind of man...
The mantra holds him on year after year. The man he wanted to become, if only because he refused Ignis not to have the best partner by his side, and he wanted to be that person. Even if that possibility had been ripped from him.
The pain may have subsided with time, yet the day he looked at his reflection in the mirror and realized he was now older than Ignis would ever be, the violence of his sobbing had brought him to his knees. Knowing that, one day he will be so much older that he will think of his friend as a mere child, that he will live so long that that number of years without Ignis will easily surpass the number of them he lived with him, feels like switching the TV on to find the pictures of Tenebrae burning all over again.
A morning day in Spring, he switches his television on while he pours himself his first coffee of the day.
Now that he is part of the Council and firmly investited in the royal decisions, the bad news come through emails he reads on his secured phone.
Except, notifications to his formal email address aren't the only ones popping up this morning.
He blinks once, because it barely is six o'clock, so there is a chance his brain is still half-asleep.
It's not.
In a bright white bubble, his phone indicates to him that the email address he has long abandoned, ‘[email protected]’ has received a priority email from 'Ignis.Speculars.Scientia’ .
'Dear Noctis,
I pray the Astral you are still using the address and that my message reaches you well,'
He flies on his feet. The receiver of the fixed line he is to use only during emergency lockdown finds its way against his ear. The line links him directly to the Citadel, and he has never been this grateful for the lack of need to dial than this instant, for his eyes are glued to the glowing screen.
'Know that I am well and alive. After all these years, I finally managed to find my way back onto Lucian soil.'
"Your Highness?"
"Monica," he acknowledges. "I've received an email on my personal account. I need you to find you if there was a breachery in security or if it's genuine."
"Of course, Your Highness."
'As our communication is not secured, I call for a Pitioss code. I will make my way to the headquarters as defined in the emergency protocol of the date of August, 16th 746.’
"And look up in the archives of emergency protocol of the Crownsguards. I need to know by the next hour what outpost was chosen as headquarters in 746."
"Certainly." There is no hesitation in the woman's voice. No doubt her incredible capacity to remain focus is what favored Cor in choosing her as her second-in-command.
"Figure out if it's a scam and send Gladio and Prompto here with a couple of Glaives."
"Highness?"
"You will understand when you read the message. I will be heading out in ten, ETA to your office in thirty. I need my answers by then."
'If Pitioss doesn't take pity on me, I shall find my way back to you on my own.'
Noctis makes sure it doesn't come to that.
It takes five days to march to Cap Caem, where Imperial troops thought it would be good to sneak in and establish a new garnison, another two day to track Ignis, who traveled from Niffelheim hidden behind boxes of rations and munitions, to Galdin Quay, where they find him sitting in plastic chair by the trailer.
Noctis launches himself out of the car as soon as he notices him. The man wears hunter clothes, mended and dirty, with hair longer than any member House Scientia would allow themselves to have, and scars along on his face that makes Noctis suspect he lost one of his eyes.
But an Ignis all the same, older than him as he should, and alive.
It's the same kind stare, the same soft smile.
"Hello, Noct."
"Welcome back, Specs," he chokes on his words despite smiling wide, as if he is sixteen again, as if all those years of love with nowhere to go are nothing but a distant dream.
‘Please expect me back to your side, for there is no other place where I would rather be.’