Work Text:
There was a time when things were clear. There was plenty of light, natural and artificial, to see things with. He always wore his glasses, even when he didn't need to (although sometimes, he needed to) just so he could keep a literal and figurative eye on what was important.
There was a time when things ran like clockwork. Everything ran on schedule and "lateness" was a tedious apology short of a crime. Ignis woke at the same time every day, checked on Noct, then went to sleep at the same late hour. It was a comfortable rhythm.
It was only when Noct went away, that it finally hit Ignis that all of those times were in the distant past.
And that he never truly relied on the light, or his spectacles, or his eyesight, or things being on time.
It was Noct's presence he relied on. Purely and simply, it was the center of everything in his life.
And it was gone.
Ignis wondered for a time if it was worth it to keep going. There was no center anymore, no polar star, nothing to navigate by.
The feeling of aimlessness was only alleviated when he realized that Noct's absence was felt by everyone, too. He was loved and looked up to by others, and they had lost him as well.
Not like how Ignis lost him, though.
The Dawn would not feel as empty to them as they would to him. They would not have to fake a smile, force one foot ahead of the other, to a rhythm borrowed from a long-lost time.
The rest of the world would move on, bathed in light.
But the darkness from this irreplaceable loss would hound Ignis for the rest of his life.