Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first thing that happened: Noct’s phone let out an ear-splitting shriek during the last class of the day, and Prompto fell straight out of his chair.

The second thing that happened, which occurred while he was still climbing back into his seat with reddening ears, was that their history teacher, Mrs. Young, stabbed Noct.

He had glanced up expecting to see Noct smirking at him, but instead, Mrs. Young was plunging a long dagger through the air towards Noct. She was snarling; she had lipstick on a front tooth. While Prompto was still inhaling to scream, Noct became an afterimage of blue light and the knife went straight through his translucent chest.

The third thing that happened: Mrs. Young stumbled forward against air, and the real, solid Noctis, who was bleeding from the arm, twisted in the tight space between rows of desks as students scrambled out of the way. The sword that blossomed in Noct’s hand as he spun caught Mrs. Young across the neck with a sick, meaty thwack. Her head jerked backwards unnaturally, and a spray of blood landed hot on Prompto’s face.

By now, Prompto was up and people were screaming. Noct had jumped backwards as Mrs. Young had fallen. He looked over wildly, grabbed Prompto's hand, and yanked him painfully towards the door.

“Don’t let anyone in,” Noct commanded the room. “Barricade the door.”

Without waiting to see if they would listen, Noct pressed the cold handle of a gun into Prompto’s hand — he’d never held one outside the firing range before, didn't you need a license? — and pulled him out into the hall.

Then, Prompto was crushed. Everything went blue until the horrible pressure lifted just as suddenly as it had started, and he immediately threw up on the ground. But Noct didn’t stop, just kept pulling him along, and he was so dizzy, and they were not outside the classroom anymore.

The PA system crackled to life with their principal’s voice ordering everyone to shelter in place as Prompto’s brain sputtered to catch up with the events of the past, what, 45 seconds?

But Noct was gripping his wrist with painful force, and he followed. They barreled into a stairway, down the steps, and out an emergency exit that set off shrill alarms inside.

Bright sunshine blinded him after the dim hallways. Something loud, so loud, cracked in the air, and Prompto swerved to see someone way too close with a handgun take aim again.

Prompto’s first shot went wide.

His second did not.

Noct grabbed him again and pulled him forwards, away from the body that twitched on the ground.

 “What—” Prompto got out, but then he was crushed. Blue. Vomiting again, all over his shoes, but Noct pushed him into the back of a car that had come out of nowhere (or had they . . . warped to it?) and which screeched away from the curb before Prompto could even pull the door shut.

“You,” Prompto said, his voice a high-pitched, hysterical wheeze, “are so failing history.”

Noct sobbed out a laugh; he was clutching his upper arm. Scarlet ran down his fingers, soaking into the black of his uniform blazer.

“Shit, Noct—”

Noct was holding an energy drink, somehow, and Prompto almost laughed with actual hysteria because now was not the time to chug back a Red Bull, and also, had he just killed a man? Prompto thought he had just killed a man. And he was pretty sure Noct had just killed their history teacher. Noct crushed the can in his hand, but instead of spewing sickly-sweet fizz everywhere, it vanished into flakes of blue light.

“Highness, are you unharmed?” the driver, a woman in Crownsguard uniform, asked. Her face was grim.

“Yes,” said Noctis, and Prompto was about to point out that Noct was actually bleeding freely until he noticed that, though Noct’s hands were still bloody, the slice in his jacket didn’t seem to be oozing anything any longer. Prompto was glad he’d already thrown up twice. He only swallowed bile this time.

Air sirens began wailing, ones Prompto had only heard during the monthly tests. They were louder now.

The guard flipped on a radio, and it crackled “—fifth district is under attack—”, but she immediately changed the frequency to something much clearer.

“This is Alpha 15. Target 2 secured,” she barked at it. “Status green. Need rendezvous point; passcode is tureen.” She glanced behind her in the rear view mirror.

“Theta 5 confirms Alpha 15,” a voice barked back. “Rendezvous at 700 and 1500. Passcode is phoenix. Your ETA is 2 minutes.”

The driver pulled a sudden U-turn, blaring the horn and narrowly missing several oncoming cars that screeched to a halt.

“Prince Noctis, I don’t have full details, but would you like a —”

“No,” Noct cut in. “Don’t tell me anything, I can’t think about . . .” But he didn’t finish the sentence. Like there was something he couldn’t say.

Noct was staring out the window. Prompto followed his gaze and his heart jerk-jerk-jerked. Something enormous hung in the sky, metal with red lights, like a freight car impossibly suspended and drawing closer — and behind it, more of the same. Imperial dropships.

“Prompto,” Noct said, still using that voice of absolute command he’d never switched out of since he’d sliced the throat of their history teacher, “tell me something dumb. Anything. Just talk.”

In retrospect, it would have been more reasonable for Prompto to have asked what was going on — or, failing that, freeze up and ask for confirmation about the whole killing-a-person thing he’d just done. Maybe. Probably.

But Prompto’s big, stupid mouth had never failed him yet, and it didn’t now. He opened it and words flew out.

“I went outside to get the mail this morning and I was still wearing that amazing-slash-dumb chocobo onesie you guys got me for my birthday, the one with the hood that has a beak,” he said immediately. “And you know my mailbox is like, what, four steps from the door — is this what you meant? — okay, so yeah, it’s four steps from the door and I was outside for all of three seconds but obviously that cute neighbor I was telling you about was dragging her bins out at the same exact moment and we made eye contact. And yes, the hood was up.”

He drew in a breath. Noct’s eyes were closed and he was doing some kind of breathing thing, evenly in and out. He motioned for Prompto to continue.

So he did.

“And she looked away immediately. Didn’t even laugh. That would have been better, right, but she just averted her eyes like I was unfit for human society and the only polite thing was to pretend like it never happened because it was too mortifying to admit, like you told me you have to do when someone farts at a fancy party, just pretend it never happened because it’s too mortifying to admit, and—”

“We’re here,” snapped the driver.

Here was some kind of military building with barbed wire outside of it, and she drove right on across the grass and over the sidewalk to park next to the chain-link fence.

Prompto and Noct both jumped out of the car, and the guard scanned something outside the gate so that it swung open, and they ran across a cheerless concrete courtyard towards steel doors. The sirens were so much louder outside of the car, and Prompto could hear ambulances now, too.

“Highness, I’m sorry, but your friend doesn’t have the proper clearance.”

Prompto’s heart seized. He would blindly follow along forever, but he couldn’t get separated from Noct. Whatever was happening was bad. So bad. If he let Noct out of his eyesight he knew he’d never see him again and he would start to panic and then —

“You forget to whom you speak,” Noct said, and it was another completely surreal thing, because that was Ignis’s “don’t fuck with my prince” tone coming out of Noct’s mouth. “He is cleared now.”

The guard suddenly looked terrified, and that scared Prompto more than anything. “Forgive me, Your Majesty.”

Noct’s hand on Prompto’s wrist jerked like he’d gotten an electric shock, but he did not let go. Did not stop. Someone had swung the stainless steel doors open for them.

Your Majesty.

Ignis was inside the doors. “Thank Astrals,” he breathed, and at the sight of him Noct’s arm jerked again. “Noct, are you —”

“Just. The wall,” Noct choked out, pleading. “Don’t tell me about anything or I won’t . . . The wall. You have to make me.”

“—the 17th district is burning,” someone was snapping into a walkie-talkie behind Ignis. “Confirmed dropship collision near the Shinra Building. Mass casualties. Kingsglaive deployed to —”

Ignis pulled them forward, into a large room that looked like a university lecture hall, with oak-paneled walls and rows of scuffed desks. They stopped in the aisle between the two sides of the hall.

Gladio was there, and Noct’s hand did that involuntary spasm again, then let go of Prompto’s wrist as someone in a Crownsguard uniform slammed the door shut and locked it behind them.

Gladio looked like he was going to say something, but Noct cut through.

“Wall first. Give me the ring.” His voice cracked on the last word.

Gladio uncurled his fingers and held his hand out towards Noct. The heavy black ring, the one Prompto had never seen King Regis without, sat cradled on top of his calloused palm, which was stained with dried blood.

Noct choked on a cry and sank to his knees. They all went down with him, four of them on the floor in a huddle around Noct. 

Noct didn’t open his eyes. “Put it on me,” he gasped, making these terrible little noises like he’d been stabbed in the gut. “I can’t.”

Gladio’s face was pale, but he took the ring and slipped it on Noct’s finger.

As soon as the ring went on, Noct gasped like he’d been pushed into icy water, then cried out with a scream that went on long enough to leave his voice ragged by the time it stopped. They were all holding onto him; Prompto had his arm, Gladio was in front of him, still holding both his hands, and Ignis was on the other side with his arm on his back, the only reason he hadn’t knocked himself backwards.

“The wall, Noctis,” Ignis said in a rough voice, like it hurt to command, as soon as the scream cut off. “The wall.”

“I can’t,” Noct rasped. “Don’t make me, I can’t, I—”

“You can,” Ignis insisted. “Don’t think. Just do it.”

“You got this, kid,” Gladio growled.

Noct gasped again, and again, and again, and then he wrenched his hands out of Gladio’s grasp and planted them on the ground with a hoarse cry.

Glass broke.

No, it just sounded like glass breaking. That same ethereal blue shot out in flat, flickering waves from where his hands met the ground; in an instant, the waves covered the floor of the auditorium and a rushing noise filled Prompto’s ears, and pressure, followed by a deafening, ear-popping boom and a wave of light so bright it whited out his vision.

It knocked Prompto on his ass. He scrambled back to his knees as the light faded, obviously no one else had been thrown back, though Ignis and Gladio were both wide-eyed, and Noct was slumped forward into Gladio’s arms with his eyes lit up glowing violet.

“It worked!” one of the Glaives by the door called. "The Wall is confirmed up."

The last thing that happened: Noctis begin to sob.

Chapter Text

It's been six months since Prompto last saw Noct.

Or, as the rest of Insomnia might put it: It’s been six months since the Wall of King Regis (Astrals rest him) fell, and six months since King Noctis (Astrals preserve him) raised the new one.

Tonight, as dusk falls, candles cast a warm glow in windows and people huddle for vigils on snow-dusted streets, though the crowds are thinning as curfew approaches.

He's not the only one wishing they could rewind time and press play on a different reality.

Scars from the invasion linger, even here in this upper-class urban neighborhood. One of the houses on this block got plowed into the ground by a drop-ship. The twisted, burnt wreckage has been replaced by a hole in the ground that's covered in snow, now. The street sign got taken out, too, but that’s still laying crumpled on the ground.

Of course, once the Imperial invasion was rebuffed, the internal threats started in earnest. Cleaning up from the explosion-of-the-week doesn’t leave a lot of time for replacing street signs.

Prompto lingers by the chain-link construction fence, tugs his beanie lower over his eyes so that no blond hair escapes. He's kept it short, ever since.

Ever since.

Ever since the day he had watched Noct raise the Wall, bloodied in his school blazer and pushing aside news of his father's death.

Ignis had given Noct about a minute to weep. Less, probably. Then, he got an arm under Noct to help him up and motioned to Prompto, who did the same on the other side. Gladio barked orders to the Crownsguards at the door to keep it locked, let none in. Not even the Guards in the hall.

Especially not the Guards in the hall.

Betrayal.

They helped Noct, who was sweating and weak, to the back of the hall, into fluorescent-lit corridors behind the auditorium's stage. Whatever Ignis murmured into Noct's ear all the while both stiffened his spine and made his whole body shake against Prompto's.

They helped Noct sit against the wall, and he immediately leaned forward, curled a fist in Prompto's blazer and held his gaze with terrible intensity. Prompto could feel the heat of the ring hovering near his neck, hot enough to sear. Skin flaked like ash up Noct’s neck over the collar of his school blazer.

"I need you to run.”

"No.” Prompto grabbed Noct's fist with his own hands, stomach somehow falling further through the floor. "No, I stay with you, no matter—"

Noct's grip tightened. "If you mean that,” his breath hitched and his eyes closed, then flickered back open, still traced in violet. “I need you to wait. And be ready.”

No.

No.

Prompto nodded.

Noct summoned the gun he'd given Prompto earlier, pressed it into his palms and wrapped his hands around Prompto's. “Close your eyes.”

The endless blue Prompto had fallen through when Noct had warped with him surged into his mind and stayed. Like an extra room he’d never known about. Or a whole new dimension, a new color he’d never seen, a reality overlaid on top of the one he’d known until that moment.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see divine eternity, but instead found Noct's crystal-blue eyes searching his.

The gun was gone.

"Reach back in for it," Noct commanded; he did, and felt its heavy weight back in his hand.

Heavy boots thudded towards them, then. Gladio, yelling that they needed to go — Ignis jumped up to meet him. And shouting, from farther away. But Noct stayed on his knees with Prompto's hands in a vice grip.

Another shimmer of blue, and he pressed a key with a tag into Prompto's palm and started snapping off commands: "Only Ignis, Gladio, and I know this address. Keep it that way. Don't go back home. Give me your phone.”

When Prompto obeyed, Noct placed the phone on the ground, summoned a dagger, and drove the point through the screen.

"I don't know what's happening," Noct said. “But as long as you can access your space in the armiger, I'm alive.”

"Noct," Prompto breathed. DON’T LEAVE, his brain screamed.

But he’d promised.

Ignis and Gladio were there, then, and Gladio scooped Noct up off the ground just as the sound of the steel doors flying open reverberated through the auditorium, even where they were backstage. Yelling, gunshots. They ran out through the back exit, bursting outside into an orange glow that was part sunset, part burning city. Air sirens sang low beneath the trill of ambulances and fire trucks.

Gladio shoved Prompto in the opposite direction and he sprinted, running faster than his sluggish mind, which was buzzing with the electric static of fear.

Prompto was only two blocks down when the entire building they’d come from exploded behind him.

His heart skidded to a stop, but not his feet. Instead, as he ran, he held out a hand. A gun materialized there.

So he kept going.

Under the cover of a city on fire, a city still besieged from forces now trapped within the Wall, he'd made his way to the address of the house on the key, shedding his blazer and uniform shirt along the way, keeping his head down and sticking to back ways, heart pounding with sickening dread and fear.

By the time he'd found the house — thankfully intact — and worked up the courage to try the door, night had fallen in earnest.

And the nightmare had really begun.

Standing by the fence, biding his time before going back inside, he reaches into the armiger for his gun. Catches it and sends it back in the next heartbeat. Nervous habit, by this point; call the gun, check it over, make sure it's clean and loaded. (Check to make sure Noct is still alive.)

Once and only once, two weeks after the hasty overnight, underground coronation of His Majesty Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV, he'd reached for it and nothing had happened. He'd stared at his empty hand and tried again. He’d never had trouble, but maybe he was just doing it wrong, because it couldn’t be — it couldn’t mean —

He'd tried again, and the gun materialized, sending relief splashing over him like a wave.

Two things were different, though. First, the handle of the gun was warm, as if someone had just been holding it. Second, a charm dangled from the handle, a little skull motif, styled in black and trimmed in silver. A royal insignia.

A sign, from Noct. From Noct, who must have just been holding this in his hands before sending it back into that ethereal space he’d granted Prompto access to.

Occasionally, the charm would change, though Prompto never again happened to summon it while Noct had the gun out again (thank Astrals, he preferred to not have heart attacks, thank you very much — and a couple of times, he'd needed that weapon right that moment, in the bordering-on-warscape that was Insomnia now). Sometimes, it would seem like a message, like the teardrop when it was confirmed that Prompto’s parents had been killed in the initial attack and their names had appeared on the official list of the dead. (His own name was on there, too.) Other times, it just seemed like proof that Noct hadn’t forgotten about Prompto.

Which was good, because Prompto often considered: maybe Noct had forgotten about Prompto.

It would be understandable, because Insomnia was falling apart at the seams. The Imperial blockade was causing shortages of everything (food, medicine, electricity, hope) and tempers ran high. Attacks continued in the city. Curfews went out, and checkpoints went up, and air felt sharp with the crackle of tension.

The one mercy: Noct's Wall was apparently a lot bigger than his dad's had been. Prompto wasn't sure how much bigger (his knowledge of geography outside Insomnia wasn't great), but it kept the Imperial attacks further from home than they would normally have been.

So the body count within government was, on the whole, higher than that of the general population. The initial assassination had revealed just a fragment of the traitors laying in wait. Prompto had thought he was kind of done being shocked, to be honest. It had been grim for a long time. At first, Noct had been on the news, at events, overseeing military operations — but when it became clear that any public appearance of the Crown meant another attack, another round of bodies flying and close calls, those tapered off.

But this morning, he'd been proven wrong, again.

This morning, on the way to the part-time, cash-under-the-table job he’d picked up mostly to keep himself from going insane (Ignis must have been in charge of provisioning the safe house because he could survive for years on the tinned meat, dried beans, and canned soup therein), he’d seen the headline that had sent shock through his over-worked adrenal system for the first time in a while: KING’S SHIELD ARRESTED FOR TREASON.

It's not that he knows Gladio super well. But he’s kind of got a feeling that . . . that it can’t be right. And if it’s not right — not that he’s going to trust that instinct further than he can throw it — he’s got another feeling, that he knows where Noct’s scary bodyguard might turn up.

Sure enough, when he steels himself and opens the door to the safehouse, Gladio’s inside sitting at the kitchen table. He closes and locks the door behind him, then summons his gun and aims it at Gladio’s head.

Gladio merely raises his hands. Waits. Kind of looks like he’s not too concerned either way with what Prompto decides to do.

Prompto glances down at his gun, where a new charm swings from the holster. A white bird? Oh, a dove.

A symbol of innocence.

He sends the gun back into the armiger and let out a shaky exhalation, then joins Gladio at the table. A fresh scar runs down the length of Gladio’s face. He's wearing disheveled jeans and a ratty old T-shirt.

“What the hell happened, Gladio?” he asks.

Gladio rubs at his eye with a knuckle, defeat written through every line of his body — and that reads loud for such a big guy in such a small space. “Don’t even know where to start.”

Prompto swallows. Puts a hand on Gladio’s elbow, keeps it there, even though he wants to run out of this weird reality where Gladio is clearly trying not to cry at his (not his) kitchen table. “Maybe bed, first,” he suggests, after it's been five minutes and Gladio hasn't been able to say a single word.

“Sorry,” Gladio says, voice strained. “You probably have a lotta questions. I swear I’ll talk, I just —”

“I do and I don’t,” Prompto cuts in. “And I have a feeling I won’t like anything you tell me.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Tomorrow,” Prompto says, with firmness he doesn’t feel.

In the morning, Gladio’s pulled himself back together. Prompto makes coffee. Gladio talks, and Prompto was right.

He doesn’t like any of it.

That evening, he’s walking down the street to work, keeping an eye out for shapes following him, when someone slips their arm through his and says: “Don’t react.”

So he doesn’t. Doesn’t even turn his head, and it’s a testament to how much the past six months have changed him. But he does hold his other hand to the side to get his gun. But it doesn’t come. It doesn’t — which means —

The guy shifts and presses cold metal into his other palm; the handle of his gun. And this time he recognizes the voice that says: “Looking for this?”

Prompto still doesn’t look.

But he lets out a breath he’s been holding for six months.

Ignis is driving the car (a regular sedan, tiny, with rust creeping up from the bumper) and Gladio’s already squished into the passenger seat, so Noct and Prompto slide in back.

Noct’s sky-blue hoodie is up around his face, and it’s weird to see him in something other than black. And then he turns to look at Prompto and it’s . . . It’s just weird to see him.

He looks older. There’s the barest thint of 5 o’clock shadow on his jaw, more than he'd ever have been able to manage in high school (six months ago, in high school). His hair is a bit longer, less styled, more formal. His jaw has a squarer set to it. Prompto thinks he looks more like Gladio’s age, now; like he’s lived a few years in the span of the last six months.

And he just looks super fucking tired.

Prompto knows he's changed, too. His hair is way shorter, and it’s still underneath the gray beanie he was wearing. He’s probably not quite so fresh-faced, either. He's seen some things and done some things he very studiously never ever thinks about. But . . .

Noct slides his eyes away, looks out the windows. He’s probably noticed Prompto staring. “I’m sorry,” he says, face shadowed once more.

“What?” Prompto asks.

“For making you wait,” Noct says again, voice soft and just a bit deeper, raspier than he remembers, but still — Noct. It’s Noct, and Prompto really, really missed him.

“You had some things on your plate, dude,” Prompto says, though the humor's thin.

“Yeah,” Noct breathes. “Yeah, I did.”

Gladio’s got his arms crossed and his face is stormy in the front seat. “Should we really be taking the main road, Iggy?”

“I think speed is more crucial than secrecy, here,” Ignis says. “After all, theoretically, they’re not interested in stopping us.”

Gladio grunts. "Theoretically."

“Where are we going?” Prompto ventures. They’re heading outward, towards more suburban neighborhoods that border the city proper.

Noct’s mouth tightens, and his fists clench on his knees. “Tomorrow morning, the Council will sign a peace treaty with Niflheim. Lucis will cede all the land outside Insomnia to the Empire.” He stops here, clears his throat, looks out the window at the city flashing by. “As part of the agreement, I’ve been exiled.”

It’s been six months and a lifetime of misery since Prompto last saw Noct.

When he leans into Noct’s shoulder and Noct sags, buries his face in his hands, black ring catching dark glimmers of streetlight, he wonders if those six months will end up having been the easy part.

Chapter Text

Noct lets the Wall fall at dawn.

They had driven through the night and not reached the end of it; in the early light, Prompto can just make out its faint iridescence, like a dragonfly’s wing. That barrier is all that stands between these lands and daemons in the night.

He wonders how far it goes, but he’s afraid to ask.

From the scenic overlook, the Disc of Cauthess is just visible in the distance, spiking upwards to catch the barest hints of daybreak. Prompto’s fingers itch for the camera he left in Insomnia.

Noct's gone up ahead of them, climbing through sweet-scented tall grass wet with dew to stand at a high point and look over the lands that are, for a moment more, beneath his protection.

Ignis tells Prompto that Noctis had negotiated to allow the Wall to stand until sunrise.

Ignis tells him, quiet and resigned: At sunrise, the Council will announce the death of His Majesty Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV (Astrals rest him) and the signing of a treaty with the Empire to avoid the invasion of their defenseless kingdom. The Lucian council will be allowed to stand, but an Imperial Chancellor will sit the throne.

Noct lifts his face towards the lightening sky, towards the Wall, shoulders squared, ring glimmering darkly — and for a moment, though Noct’s in his sky-blue hoodie and dew-dampened jeans, Prompto thinks: majesty.

Even from this distance, Prompto can see the moment Noctis breathes in deeply — and he holds his breath, too, without even realizing — until Noct’s shoulders slump, his head bows, and his knees hit earth.

Above them, the barrier in the sky dissolves in flakes of breaking morning light, like dust motes in a sunbeam.
 

It doesn’t take long for the daemons to come back.

It’s easy to find work as Hunters. They live on the road, camp at havens, help keep the darkness at bay the old-fashioned way: elbow-deep in gore and daemon viscera.

(And maybe they crawl through some decrepit old tombs, too, so Noct can get stabbed in the chest by a scary variety of glowing swords and axes and shields.

If they do, no one else has gotta know.)

Whenever they get in over their heads, when Ignis's whirling daggers and Gladio's Titan-like swings of the broadsword and Prompto's steadily improving gunplay and Noct's frantic warping across underground chambers and moonlit woods aren't enough — 

Well. Noct has the Ring.

The first time Prompto sees him use it, an iron giant has just caught Ignis in the arc of its massive swing and cracked him back into the moonlit pavement with a crunch of breaking ribs. He makes no noise. He does not move.

Noct is there in an instant, hand aloft. Power bakes off him like steam, and he is violet-eyed with rage in front of Ignis's unmoving form. Reality shifts to meld itself with the will of the once-a-king; space ripples to banish everything unholy into the void.

Ignis is fine, after a slew of elixirs and a couple nights at a motel to recuperate.

Noct, though . . . he's not.

He hovers over Ignis, lingers at the edge of the bed, tentatively reaches for his wrist every so often while he sleeps. Even though the healing magic has done its job, even though Ignis is just resting, even though he'll be fine. By the second evening, Ignis is propped up in bed with a book and pointedly suggests Noct stop hovering and get some fresh air. 

When Noct’s not back after a couple hours, Prompto heads out to find him on the roof of the motel: shoulders rigid, fists balled on his knees, staring out across the Longwythe landscape.

Noct’s head snaps up as soon as Prompto climbs up over the ledge. "Is Ignis okay?"

"Yeah," Prompto says, settling down. "Are you?"

"I'm not the one who almost died." Noct crosses his arms tight, like he’s holding himself down.

Prompto wants to lean over, bump a shoulder like he used to, but — but there's a wall up around Noct, and he doesn't know how to bring it down.

So he doesn't. "Are you talking about now, or . . ?"

Noct barks a laugh that sounds a little like a sob. "You've got good aim, Prompto."

He's not sure what he can do in the face of whatever this trauma is. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Noct doesn't say anything for a long time. When he finally speaks, it's so low Prompto has to strain to hear it over the low rumble of trucks and the buzz of neon.

"It was so close. Ignis — he's better now, but he wasn't okay, after. Not like this. And I — we trusted — so many people died, and I couldn't make it stop."

He swallows. They haven’t talked much about that time, but his three friends are haunted, by day and by night. "No one could have, Noct."

"But it was me who was supposed to," Noct says. "And I failed. I failed so many people. Everyone."

"You didn't fail me, dude."

Noct laughs again; a bitter, hollow noise. "I kept you in the dark, isolated and alone, for half a year, Prompto, and I knew. I knew exactly why that would be hard for you. But I was afraid."

Prompto, he's . . . spent a lot of time hoping Noct won't apologize for that.

Because he knows he has no right. He knows he’s wrong to feel wronged. But yeah, yeah it was a unique kind of hell, and forgiveness —

"You came for me," Prompto says. And when he says it — he suddenly means it. "That was what made it hard. Knowing I was a liability, worrying that you'd forgotten me, or had figured out it wasn't really worth finding me again."

"Prompto," Noct breathes, like he's in pain. 

"But you did,” he says firmly. “And you tried to tell me, when you could, that you hadn't — forgotten."

"I wanted to do more," Noct says, low and earnest and so, so burdened. "Every day, I wanted to. But I couldn't put you in danger. ”

“It's not like I didn't figure out that the danger was real."

"I'd say you shouldn't have had to defend yourself like that," Noct says, confirming an inkling he's had that there were more eyes on him than just unfriendly ones. "But if I start thinking about all the shoulds—" he draws in a shuddering breath that shakes his whole body, and Prompto knows he shouldn't go there, but:

"Noct. I'm sorry about your dad."

Noct folds like he's been stabbed in the gut.

Prompto finally lets himself wrap his arms around his best friend, the exiled King of Lucis, and Noct clings back like it's the only thing keeping him tethered to the living world. Still, he doesn’t cry, doesn’t let anything out, just gasps — and Prompto remembers, Noct bloody and scared and planting fists down to unleash a Wall that would steal the softness from his eyes, jaw, life — 

Eventually, the gasps subside. Noct straightens out of Prompto’s arms, and the moment is broken. The wall is back up. "I'm sorry. You lost your parents, too."

 "I had a lot of time to cry, dude," Prompto says. "I'm getting the feeling maybe you didn't."

"No," Noct says, voice breaking on the laugh. "Dad deserved more than that."

"You know we're with you, buddy. No matter what."

"I know," Noct says, and it sounds like both an anchor and a burden. "I know."

Noct stands, offers a hand to Prompto, and they head back in.

In the morning, Umbra arrives with a red notebook, and Noct reads the note aloud:

Meet me in Altissia.