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He is so annoyed. Irritated, ticked off, every anger he could name radiating off of him.
It’s alright, Clarus Amicitia would say, if Gladiolus told him this. Just try it again.
The younger Shield did not want to try it again. Or ever, for that matter.
Every strategy used did not go right. Every split-second decision blew up in his face. His orders weren’t heeded or they were forgotten.
Basically, training with Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum always ends up a piping hot mess.
“I told you-” Gladiolus whips around at this moment, after another failed session. “To go left. ”
The other boy gets back up with an exhale, and his forehead’s bright with sweat, his eyes glaring daggers through his raven strands. “I didn’t hear you.”
“How didn’t you? I was screaming!”
“A magic knight nearly hit me!”
Noctis phases with a blue spark then, passing through the Shield and sending a very unpleasant sensation through him to pick up the sword he dropped.
“If you said that a little sooner I probably would have listened.”
“I told you as soon as I could! You’re just too damn slow!”
The prince’s gaze turns frosty, and with another dematerializing of his body he again invades Gladiolus’s rib cage, resulting in the other getting more pissed off as he whirls back around.
“Stop doing that!”
Noctis ignores him, and stomps on the floor to bring the battle simulation controls back up to eye level. He clicks their level of battle again, but Gladiolus is done. He’s done with all of this.
“Okay, look. I don’t care anymore. Left or right, you choose. I’m out of here.”
One of their projected enemies makes an aim for his chest but he knocks them out by the face with his sword hilt.
“Are you serious right now?” Noctis manages to dodge his oncoming opponent and shoots Gladiolus an incredulous look. “I started it already!”
The Shield’s already at the door, sidestepping another attacker. “Whatever.”
“ Gods .”
The prince straightens up and his gaze is sapphire steel, sharp and stinging.
“I don’t like you. Actually, I just hate you.”
Gladiolus stops in his tracks, because he didn’t expect that. The absolute honesty in Noctis’s voice, the absence of a lie.
Hurt glances across his heart, before he wrangles it down and spits back, “Yeah. So do I.”
The doors to the training room slam behind him.
That was the first time they said that to each other. It wouldn’t be the last.
—————————————————————
Noctis hits the floor with another thud, and holds back a snarl as he rights himself up.
“Great Archaean, that hurt.”
He rubs at his chest which took most of the blow as he sits up, then notices the hand out of the corner of his eye.
Which belonged to his usual sparring partner. His usual mental punching bag. The person who gets angry the most often because the prince did something just to spite him.
Gladiolus Amicitia.
Who looks like he’s on the brink of saying sorry as his palm lays up, fingers outstretched. Offering Noctis help.
“What…are you doing?”
The older boy’s eye twitches.
“You helped Iris, right?”
The prince flashbacks to a small girl latching on his hand as he leads her on the path back to the Citadel garden’s entrance, how she was shivering from the rain, so he slowed down and tried to give her some of his body warmth.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“So now I’m helping you.”
The Shield grabs the prince’s hesitant, raised hand impatiently, and pulls him upright.
Noctis immediately separates from the touch, shaking his hand in disgust.
“Well, thanks. I guess.”
“It’s no problem.” Gladiolus’s face contorts like it is a problem.
The prince gets a bit of space between them, and after a pause, readjusts his sword.
His gut feeling is saying something to him. It flips over the stones of his Shield’s actions, trying to find anything false. But there was nothing strange. Like Gladiolus was being honest, despite the way he seemed to be putting it.
So Noctis thinks that he could ask this. “Do you want to go for another round?”
Amber eyes scrutinize him, probably trying to uncover some barb in his question. But eventually, Gladiolus answers.
“Sure.”
—————————————————————
The second time is a year later, but not at the training room. Instead, it’s after school.
Ignis is out sick with the flu. But Noctis didn’t know that, for his father actually drove him to class for the first time in a long while that morning.
Of course, even with that good news, the day was, in short, horrible.
His anxiety was at an all-time high, caused by the nightmares he had the night before. It had rendered him almost speechless when his literature teacher asked him a question like she always did every day, always trying to make him appear a model student.
He stammered twice, but got the answer right after a tense five seconds. The result was his teacher looking at him in confusion and the rest of the class whispering amongst themselves.
Along with a few snickers from the corner in the classroom that by lunch would become bold enough to throw cans at his head and call him His Stuttering Highness mockingly.
It was like this every day, but recently it’s just been eating away at him. His thoughts churn over and over, calling him a nobody and a failure and a pity case.
He leaves the building with stormy thoughts, his fists clenched tight by his sides, and the memory of one of the kids exiting behind him calling, “See you tomorrow, Prince Weirdo.”
And his mood gets worse, remarkably, when he sees Gladiolus instead of his beloved retainer, holding the door to the royal limousine.
His Shield straightens up when he sees his charge, and offers a hand for Noctis’s backpack.
The prince drops the strap almost out of his reach and slides into the car.
This doesn’t go unnoticed, and as Gladiolus pulls the door closed, he asks, “What’s up with you?”
Noctis doesn’t answer that, and just shoots back, “Where’s Ignis?”
“He got sick.” But the Shield’s persistent. “Hey, did you hear me?”
“Nothing.”
There’s a lull, and the prince takes a chance to glare out the window, cursing whatever supernatural force put him here.
But Gladiolus still isn’t done.
“Did something happen? Like, at school?”
“ No. ” Noctis’s tone grows harder, and it feels both like a protective barrier and a screaming beacon of a lie.
“Because Ignis told me about-”
“Ignis told you what? ”
Gladiolus’s expression reflects surprise at the prince’s sudden outburst, then it narrows.
“He told me about how some people in your class have been calling you names-”
“Which is none of your business!”
And it wasn’t Ignis’s business to tell Gladiolus about any of it either, so Noctis is even angrier.
“Is everything okay back there?” The chauffeur checks the rearview mirror with concern, and the two of them immediately turn away from each other.
“We’re fine,” the Shield responds.
“Yeah.” Noctis resists the urge to cross his arms.
And yet, even after they’re dropped off at the Citadel and they’re on the elevator going up to the prince’s chambers, Gladiolus still makes a final attempt.
“Listen, Ignis obviously thought it was my business because he told me.”
The prince ignores him.
He thinks he hears the other’s teeth grind. His mouth parts to say something, but then the elevator stops and the doors open.
And in comes King Regis Lucis Caelum and his Shield, Clarus Amicitia.
“…with the shortage in the Kingsglaive- oh!”
Noctis’s father recognizes the boys first, and the corners of his eyes crease in a genuine smile. “Good afternoon, son, Gladiolus.”
This was terrible, terrible timing.
“Hello,” Clarus greets with cheer, to which his own child responds with the same.
“Did you get to school on time?” Regis chuckles and bumps his Shield gently with his shoulder. “I haven’t driven since last year. How was class?”
“It was fine,” Noctis grits with forced positivity. “All good.”
Gladiolus’s eyes bear into his, thinly veiled indignation sealed in them.
“And how is your training?” Clarus looks expectantly at them both, and his son’s expression wipes away in a flash.
“We’re on schedule.”
“Good.”
For the rest of the flight up, the older Shield and the king talk amongst themselves in obvious closeness, and they get off on the floor just under Gladiolus’s and Noctis’s own with twin goodbyes.
In contrast, the prince and his Shield walk down the hallway to the door in tense silence.
They stop at the entrance, and it’s obvious that there’s still words that they both want to Say.
And Noctis lets his burst.
“It is none of your business, no matter what Ignis says.”
He doesn’t want to be a pity case anymore. He’s been one since he was eight years old when a daemon nearly tore him in half.
He’s been one since people started walking like they were stepping on eggshells and broken glass around him.
He’s been coddled and he’s been viewed as weak and pathetic and never again, never again-
“And it won’t ever be. Just leave me alone.”
Whatever Gladiolus was going to argue dies away, and as Noctis uses his key to get the door open, he just murmurs, “You’re such a stupid little jerk. No wonder why I still hate you.”
He starts back down the hallway without looking back, and Noctis clenches the doorknob and doesn’t give him another glance.
Same here. I’ll hate you forever.
—————————————————————
Noctis turns fourteen on a hospital bed.
He woke up somewhere around half-past eleven and watched the clock over the door click until it hit midnight in a quiet ticking fanfare.
Yay. I’m a year older.
He never planned to be. The last thing he wanted to see was the empty pill bottle in his hand.
They told him he was close, really close to slipping away.
His father told him never again. Don’t do that ever again. Cried into his elbow at the foot of the mattress with his hand gripping Noctis’s so tight that the prince was losing circulation.
Maybe he’ll listen. Maybe he won’t. He doesn’t really know. And he doesn’t really feel like himself either. Disconnected from the whole world, sitting in clouds that look like stark-white sheets.
Then he hears the door lock click, watches as light streams through. Recognizes the silhouette.
Gladiolus looks older when one can’t clearly see his face. He’s taller than most fully grown men. And yet, he’s just seventeen.
The door slowly closes, and the Shield quirks his lip. The only really suitable greeting. Way better than, Hi, Your Highness, how are you feeling?
“His Majesty’s baking the cake. Like, by himself. Wouldn’t let me or my father help at all.”
He takes a seat in the swivel chair that doesn’t have a back, and rolls himself up to Noctis’s side.
The prince feels himself kind of smile a little at the mental image of Regis, King of Lucis, with a little drop of batter smeared against his cheek. “And Ignis?”
Gladiolus pauses, and he appears to contemplate that question.
“I…haven’t seen him.”
“Oh.”
Noctis leans back against the headboard, and there’s a fuzzy memory replaying in his mind. He could be wrong, but Ignis probably did tell him last year that the prince was one of the only things he had after the accident with his parents.
It was possible that the retainer was taking what happened as hard as his father was. Maybe even harder.
“Hey.”
Gladiolus taps his arm gently with a finger, and holds out a box wrapped in blue, with the words Happy Birthday scribbled on top.
“…you did not just get me something.”
“Well, yes, I did.” The Shield seemed pleased, even proud of himself. “Go ahead and open it.”
Noctis does.
Nestled among the wrapping paper is a midnight black sweatshirt.
The prince shoots Gladiolus, who has his elbows against the bed and his hands supporting his face, a puzzled, searching look, but reaches in and pulls the clothing out.
WOMEN WANT ME
FISH FEAR ME
“Oh my fucking Astrals- ”
The Shield muffles his laughter into the prince’s smushed pillow, and Noctis hides his face in his hand.
“You did not just- ”
“Happy b-birthday!” Gladiolus’s face is turning red from the air he’s unable to suck in. “Read the card.”
Can’t believe you’re now 14
Happy birthday
-your stupid asshole annoying dumbass sparring partner
Noctis can’t help but smile wider.
“I cannot believe you right now.”
“I don’t remember if I included bitchface on that.”
“Shut up. ”
The prince holds up the sweatshirt again, stares at the dumb snapper with its mouth open on the front, and he shakes his head as he holds back his oncoming snort.
“I am not wearing this.”
“Yes, you are. ”
“Not in a thousand freaking years.”
He pretends to throw it at Gladiolus, and a chuckle actually bubbles out of his throat, completely real, when the Shield dodges like he’s in some action movie.
“Fine, then I’ll wear it.”
Noctis instantly snatches the clothing back. “No, you’d look stupid.”
“Exactly!”
“Women fear you.”
“Yeah- wait, what? ”
The prince laughs even harder now, resting his head against the wall. He and Gladiolus are probably waking up the other patients right now, but he feels light. He forgets for a moment on how he even winded up here in the first place. It’s a feeling he hasn’t had in a long time.
…and he knows he would’ve missed it.
The noise eventually dies down, their breaths steadying with sighs.
Noctis reaches up to feel his chest, and his heartbeat. Thump, thump, thump.
Everything feels clearer. Everything feels closer. He’s back on Eos.
“Hey. Noct.”
He turns his head, and Gladiolus’s face has faded away into seriousness. The curl to his lip is gone.
“Be honest with me.”
The Shield inhales, and exhales.
“Are you…going to do it again?”
Noctis doesn’t know. He doesn’t think a lot of people would know.
There are good days. And there are bad days. There will be times when he feels like he’s being driven close to the edge, and he doesn’t think they’ll go away any time soon.
He looks into Gladiolus’s eyes, and tries to find the words to tell him that.
But he doesn’t have to, because the Shield’s face changes, and his eyes seem to water a little. He understands everything without a word.
Then Noctis is enveloped in his embrace.
It’s warm. And it’s the first time with both arms. They don’t usually hug, and when they did, it was always so brief.
But Gladiolus holds his prince tight. Holds him so gentle, holds him like he’s treasured, like nothing else is worth as much as him. Holds him until time feels like a fabrication.
And even when he lets go, his hand lingers over Noctis’s bangs, pushing them away from his eyes.
“Can I… Can I stay the night?”
Staring into that amber gaze, the prince has a feeling he’s not the only one who’s vulnerable. Not the only one who needs to be okay right now.
“Yeah. Of course.”
The Shield takes the sofa on the other side of the room, the nurse coming in briefly to hand him a blanket and pillow.
Noctis watches his rising and falling chest until his insomnia gives way, and he can finally sleep again.
—————————————————————
The third time they both say the h-word, it’s a little more of an agreement they share, something they tell their new friend Prompto, as if it’s a sort of introduction to their weird relationship.
“So I’ve trained with Noct starting from when he was eight,” Gladiolus shares, helping himself to Ignis’s homemade chips. “Up until now, yeah.”
“Whoa,” the blond muses, eyes wide, looking between the Shield and the prince. “And you’re fifteen, right? You’re almost, like, double the age you were.”
“Yeah.”
Noctis meets his Shield’s eyes. Half of my life.
“It wasn’t easy for the two of them, though,” Ignis comments. “If anything, it’s a miracle they made it this far.”
“Huh? Whaddya mean?” Prompto is innocent and bug-eyed and curious, and Noctis doesn’t want to break it to him.
Gladiolus does.
“Well, we can’t exactly stand each other.”
The blond tilts his head, visibly confused.
“We argue a lot. Like, a lot, a lot.” The Shield laughs a little, giving the prince a little side-eye. “He pisses me off so easily.”
Noctis grins. “Same here.”
“This…entire time?” Prompto stares with his jaw hanging loose. “You hated each other? You still hate each other?”
“Yep.” The prince turns his head first this time towards Gladiolus. “He’s a shithead and I would punch him in the face.”
“ Like you could reach. ” The other’s eyes turn into slits.
“Ooooh,” Ignis and Prompto both whisper.
Noctis responds to that by picking up a cracker from the snack tray and warp striking his Shield’s forehead.
—————————————————————
But that night, as the stars hang over Insomnia and the clouds are absent in the sky, Prompto and Gladiolus stand outside on Noctis’s new apartment balcony, and the blond asks again, with more inquisitiveness in his tone.
“…Is it true? You really can’t stand each other?”
Gladiolus doesn’t really look straight at him, and his voice isn’t all that loud. But it’s honest.
“It’s not like before.”
Prompto leans his elbows against the railing, and wonders if that’s all he’s going to say.
“But at the same time, I still want to throttle him.”
Gladiolus tilts his head back to see the heavens.
“It’s just different.”
The blond studies him, and he doesn’t really get it. He doesn’t understand. It’s hate, but different?
Maybe the world just made them that way, impossible to compute, a problem unable to be answered.
Gladiolus and Noctis are just an enigma, and nothing or no one would be able to make sense of them.
Whatever they have between them, it was only them who had the power to figure out what that is.
—————————————————————
When they say it again, it’s a hot, hot day in Leide, and not a single person was excited they were on a roadtrip anymore.
It was the heat, it was the dust from the dry dirt getting into their eyes, it was the constant beasts they kept running into, and it was the walking. The constant walking.
Two of them are the agreeable type, Prompto and Ignis. The blond is just a generally easygoing person who makes light of anything in order to get through it, even when he’s struggling himself. And the tactician tends to shove down his emotions about things that bothered him.
As for the other two, they’re not so quiet.
Gladiolus may be suffering the most, for his allergies are acting up now, and every particle of dirt entering his nose proceeds to make him sneeze, rendering his face sore and uncomfortable.
And Noctis was suffering mentally, lost in his own head about this dumb (maybe attractive) Shield beside him and the memory of a horrible nightmare he just couldn’t shake. He’s been having the same one for the past couple of days.
The moment their annoyance snaps is when they’re about fifteen, twenty minutes away from the car.
Ignis is about to announce this to the miserable group when out of nowhere, Noctis curses. “Fucking- ow!”
“Huh? Noct?” Prompto chirps while Ignis whips around, protective mode instantly activated.
“Are you alright-”
“ Gods, shit, can you watch where you’re going?”
Gladiolus’s voice tends to go deeper when he’s seriously lost his patience, and right now, it is extremely resonant, low octave in his chest. His eyes spark like wildfire as they pierce into Noctis’s own.
“In case you haven’t noticed, you bumped into me.” The prince’s voice is taut.
Prompto makes a noise of dismay. “Oh no.”
“Because you stopped! For no reason!”
“You could have just walked around me!”
“I was blowing my nose because of my dumb fucking allergies-”
“Can we please not fight right now?” Ignis mutters. His request is knocked to the ground figuratively.
“Please?” Prompto echoes meekly.
That also goes unheard as the argument escalates into full swing, both the prince’s and Shield’s voices raising.
Ignis sighs, and pats Prompto on the back. “Come on, let’s keep walking. We can put some space between us.”
For five minutes, there is the only sound of four pairs of feet hitting the ground with the chorus of two irate voices filling the air.
Then, there’s nothing for two minutes, so Ignis peeks over his shoulder to see if it’s over. But Gladiolus sneezes at that exact moment, and Noctis drags him into another round.
And that one lasts up until they see the Regalia in the distance, tapering off into grumbling noises as they each run out of barbs to throw at each other.
Then, it’s just a suffocating silence as they reach the car doors.
“Hey, Noct? Or Gladio? We can switch seats if you want, since you’re…you’ve got beef,” Prompto finishes lamely.
However, both prince and Shield get into the car without a single word.
“O…kay.” The blond gives Ignis a confused glance. “That works too.”
Since they weren’t hissing and barking at each other, the advisor decides to leave the seating arrangements alone, and activates the Regalia’s hood so air conditioning could bless them with its presence.
As he turns onto the road towards Hammerhead, he opens his mouth to tell them that they needed to work out whatever conflict this was between them when they got back to the caravan until-
“Ow, Sweet Ramuh, you just headbutted me.”
“Sorry, let me just…”
The sound of someone shifting in the backseat has Ignis looking at the rearview mirror, and the sight he finds nearly makes him swerve into the opposite lane.
Prompto looks back as well, and his dumbfounded expression confirms that the tactician was not in fact going crazy.
Noctis had his head resting on Gladiolus’s shoulder, eyes closed, expression completely relaxed and comfortable.
The Shield was clearly allowing him to be there too, his own head tilting onto his prince’s as he read the book he brought along for the trip.
The scene was absolutely bizarre, and Ignis nearly makes an illegal turn. They were literally just fighting. Now they’re pressed together almost intimately.
“You’d better not be doing this just to annoy me,” Gladiolus growls.
“I’m not. You’re just more comfortable than the window.” But there’s a smile to Noctis’s words. “Don’t worry, I still hate your guts.”
When Ignis looks at the mirror again, Gladiolus is fighting back a grin, his eyes clearly not focused on the pages before him. “Same. So you’d better get off when we stop or I’m throwing you in the junk heap.”
And yet, his arm readjusts itself to wrap around the prince to pull him closer.
—————————————————————
There was a saying once, with no origin. People didn’t know if it was some anecdote written in a forgotten book, or spread by mouth by some ancient philosopher. Some theorized that it came from the lips of the Astral Shiva herself, when found evidence was proven falsified.
Hate is not love’s enemy.
Noctis didn’t understand it when he first heard it. To him, it just didn’t make sense. The emotions could only be opposites, totally different, destined to oppose each other.
He’s twenty now. But he feels older, so much older. There’s still the memory of his tears drying against his cheeks. There’s still the echo of Lunafreya whispering that she will watch over him always.
Maybe that quote makes sense to him now. It makes sense to him in the most explosive way, noxious and corrupt, oozing with the blood he sees in his nightmares. It makes sense when he stares into red-veined golden eyes that reflect how haunted he feels, how trapped and torn up inside he’s become.
You think you’re a king, but you’re a coward.
Shut up!
Don’t do this-
Prompto did his best to diffuse the oncoming tide, but it again builds, and builds until the utter rage is a coiled quivering mass in Noctis’s chest and chokes up his lungs and floods his tongue, builds until he can only see that Shield he despised his whole life , standing at the other side of the swamp.
There is one thing that breaks through the haze, one thought that sinks into his heart and grips it until it suffocates.
Gladiolus thinks the same.
Together, they drop their weapons to the side of the bank. Both blades sink into the ground, buried like all the feelings their owners felt, about to be brought to the surface.
The Shield assumes his fighting stance first. He’s more hunched than Noctis remembers him.
Prompto breaks the silence, worried and afraid. “Guys?”
He’s ignored.
The newly turned King takes the deepest breath he could possibly manage, thinks of every article he read, Regis Lucis Caelum found dead, capital of Lucis in flames, Princess Lunafreya has passed on, thinks of his nightmares and the screaming in them, thinks of the non-stop shaking of his hands, and charges.
“No! Stop! ”
Their sharpshooter’s scream comes too late.
Noctis collides into Gladiolus, and they both topple into the water.
“Don’t!” Prompto starts towards them desperately, but his wrist is seized, and he’s tugged backwards.
Ignis’s expression is pained, but he shakes his head. He wished more than anything that this all would cease, but it’s not possible. Not anymore. This is their answer. This is how it can end.
He pulls the blond to him and wraps his arms solidly around the other’s frame, as the King and his Shield surge up with flying droplets, Noctis’s hands gripping Gladiolus’s throat, and crash back under.
“Iggy?” Prompto fights the retainer’s grip, nails clawing at his forearm. “Why aren’t you doing anything? They’re gonna hurt each other!”
He’s crying. Ignis could feel the tears dripping onto his knuckles, could hear the crack in the other’s voice.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. ”
The advisor strengthens himself when Prompto threatens to tug himself free, as their friends again resurface, Gladiolus’s head flung to the side from the King’s strike.
The Shield’s face twists almost unnaturally from the impact, his eyes shine and they burn, and he has a handhold in Noctis’s drenched hair as he brings his knee up and into the other’s stomach.
They roll, the waves they cause crashing against the sand and over Ignis’s knees, and Prompto’s sobbing now, clinging to him and whispering, “Stop, make them stop. Please.”
Ignis knows he can’t. It’s too much this time. They’ve lost too much. This is the only language they know. To drive their shattered pieces into one another to deal with it all. The trauma. The grief. To let out their agony with their violence.
He knows that they need this.
“ Please, ” Prompto begs, and Ignis moves his head so his face in the elder’s shoulder, trying to spare him from the sight like himself.
“It’ll pass, I promise. I promise. ”
The moment after is filled with sickening heaviness as Sword and Shield are locked under the water, their struggle too hard to listen to.
Noctis bursts out with a gasp for air, and Prompto wrenches his eyes away from Ignis’s palm to see the King as he gets up with a stumble, clutching the bleeding gash near his temple.
Gladiolus appears a second later, a swollen violet ring around his eye which he reaches for but doesn’t touch, and his cough is a hacking, gurgling noise as he gets his feet under him.
Noctis pivots to face him, and his chest heaves. He wipes over his eyes, smearing a red streak against his forehead. He breathes, and breathes, and finally screams.
“You, of all people, you should know! ”
His Shield tilts his head up to look at him, his teeth gritting together.
“I loved her.” The King winces, shakes his head, clenches his fist until the skin on his palm tears. “She loved me. She cared for me. She was the reason I even lived back then!”
He runs, and Gladiolus brings his arms up. They fall again, Noctis the one over them both.
“Without that journal, I would’ve been long gone. She risked her life to save mine!”
A fist in the Shield’s collar, he drags him up, his elbow slams the other’s jaw.
“Now she’s the one who’s gone. And I couldn’t save her. ”
Gladiolus shoves Noctis back, but the King’s eyes glow, and the Shield is forced down once more.
“And I couldn’t save my father, I couldn’t save Jared, the citizens, the Crownsguard, the Kingsglaive, I can’t save a single damn person!”
Hit in the face again, Gladiolus spits out red. Noctis throws him to the side, causing a giant ripple, and advances on him again.
“And the one thing they all have in common is that they tried to protect me.” Noctis’s face crumples like screeching metal. “I never asked for that!”
The Shield grabs him as he lunges this time, flipping him until this time Noctis lands first, pins the King down even as he spits in his face.
“Then tell me, King of Light. ”
His voice is the same volume, the same ragged shout.
“Tell me how many more are going to die for you!”
But he doesn’t act, he only traps Noctis, only stares into his eyes and yells for an answer.
“Tell me how many more people are going to stand in the Empire’s way, in Ardyn’s way, for you! ”
The King manages to free his arm, but Gladiolus catches it, slams it into the water outstretched as he forces their heads together.
“ Tell me! ” He stares into those eyes, of diamonds, of the sky, both day and night, of the sea and of the Crystal’s deepest hue, and he hates him, he hates him, he hates him so much-
And then, he just breaks.
“Tell me how long until it’s Iris’s turn.”
The water swirls around them, Noctis is shaking beneath him, and Gladiolus can feel the tears bead in his eyes.
“Tell me how long it’ll be until my baby sister gives her life for you too.”
He can see her in his head right now, hiding her pain just like she always does, alone in Lestallum, a fifteen-year-old girl, not even out of school. Her kind eyes who’ve already seen so much.
“Because she would. She’d do anything for you. So would Ignis. So would Prompto.”
His grip’s growing weak now. The King stares at him, eyes wide.
“So tell me. Will it take her? Will it take Ignis? Will it take your best friend? Will it take me, your Shield, to make you realize?”
He’s going to lose it now. He makes one final attempt to wring the emotion back, slamming his hand into the swamp’s ground, sending a splash of dirt against Noctis’s cheek.
Then the tears fall.
“How long will it be until you realize we need you?”
There is a pause.
The water is a perfect reflection of the sky above.
Noctis’s eyes are shimmering pools. He whispers. He repeats, his voice a shadow.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know.” The drops from Gladiolus’s eyes hit the King’s chest. “Neither did I. But it doesn’t change anything. We still need you.”
His breath shakes.
“ I still need you.”
Then, he really cries. Quietly. His whole body shakes.
And there, as the world feels like it’s gone still, Noctis watches him. Then he falls apart, too.
Ignis releases Prompto and lets him stagger away. He knows it’s over. He knows it’s done.
Prompto takes a step forward, then stops. He watches as Noctis pushes himself up, traces his Shield’s face with trembling fingers.
“I’m so sorry, your eye- the scar-”
“It’s okay.” Gladiolus takes them away, but clutches onto his King’s shoulder, nose buried there. “Don’t waste your strength.”
“I hurt you. ” Noctis looks empty, touches his Shield’s nape gingerly, like he’s afraid of himself. “I could’ve really hurt you- ”
“I’m okay,” Gladiolus reassures. “Your ribs, I don’t know how hard I-”
“I’m fine.” Noctis pulls his shirt down, pushes the other’s hand away, but gently. So gently. “They’re not broken.”
“Okay. Okay.” Gladiolus leans there against the King, his amber a dying flame, for a second, two seconds, before he hugs him.
Noctis does the same.
They’re both still crying. Curled against each other, sitting there in the water. Both feeling so small. Both feeling so afraid.
It’s their silent reconciliation.
Prompto stands there at the edge of the swamp, and the image of them grasping onto each other burns into his mind.
It’ll be one of the things he replays when he fights for himself in Niflheim. One of the things he’ll replay for a lifetime. A mental picture he’ll never forget.
—————————————————————
At Tenebrae’s station, despite the amount of people, it’s quiet.
Or maybe Noctis is just so exhausted from how much he’s cried in the past few days that everything is too much to comprehend.
However, Gladiolus is a rock, a solid anchor in his inner turmoil.
Prompto’s panicked scream haunts the King’s ears, his hands trying and failing to hold onto the train car’s roof flash behind Noctis’s eyes, and Ardyn’s blow is still a phantom sensation on his neck.
But then Gladiolus guides him to his side on the steps, with his fingers stroking through his hair, and the thoughts disappear. Even if it’s only for a little while.
“Rest your eyes.”
His voice is still a little hoarse from their fistfight at the swamp, but Noctis’s eyelids hang heavy. The Shield untangles a knot, and the King fades into a doze.
Time stretches out, it distorts. It feels like years until Noctis faintly registers Ignis’s voice as it asks, “Is he alright?”
“Yeah.” Gladiolus curls a strand of the King’s hair over his ear. “He’s just tired.”
The tactician hums, and after a moment, his presence is there at Noctis’s other side, all three of them slowly pushed together.
It’s warm. Comforting.
The King could almost feel like he’s at peace.
There’s a soft pressure of lips at his head, followed by Gladiolus’s whisper.
“Sleep well.”
—————————————————————
“Do you remember when those pictures came out on the news?”
The campfire’s dwindling down now. There’s fewer sparks hitting the ground by Noctis’s boots.
“The ones Prom took of my bullies?”
The King still remembers the horrified look on the principal’s face as he bowed in front of his father, swearing that those students would be expelled, though Regis had put a hand on his shoulder and reassured him that there was no need for that.
“Yeah. Those.”
Thirty-three-year-old Gladiolus has frown lines on his forehead, and his smile is run-down.
But it’s a smile, at the very least.
And Noctis is aware of the fact that he’s never going to see it again.
“I was just remembering that. How Blondie had the guts to do what a lot of people wouldn’t. He knew you and that school inside and out.”
The person of their conversation is in the tent right now, going over the plan of attack for tomorrow in Insomnia. The ins and outs, where it’s safe and where it’s not.
Noctis was never sure if the blond could really be one of them, but he proved himself worthy of it. He proved it to all of them.
“I’m happy I had him. I’m happy I had Ignis. And I’m happy that I had you.”
The Shield’s mouth still has aftershocks from the trembling, the fight to keep his face blank when Noctis told him, the sharpshooter and the tactician that they were the best he’s ever known.
Noctis watches them, and he breathes in, breathes out.
“Gladio.”
Amber. Gold. The glow of the wood in front of them. The King does his best to find every word to define those eyes, so he can remember them when the time comes, when it’s all over.
“Do you remember all the times I told you…”
That I hated you?
“I remember.”
Noctis knows he does. It’s that almost telepathy they both share. Familiar with every facet of each other. Gladiolus can always guess what he’s trying to say.
“…I never meant it.“
Not once. All those times, all those years ago.
The Shield’s gaze is welling up again.
“I know. Neither did I.”
Noctis allows a moment to pass, then he stands up.
Gladiolus watches him, then rises up to meet him.
There they stand, by the weakening flames.
The King steps forward, and with that action, brings their faces millimeters apart.
He raises his eyes, and could feel the rise and fall of his Shield’s chest against his, the air breathed out billowing across his cheeks, and could see how Gladiolus’s eyes have stars flickering in them.
In the next heartbeat, and in the next, their lips touch.
Gladiolus’s hair is all tangled in Noctis’s fingers. It’s filled with dust, with caked blood, and the King doesn’t care. He tastes memories, his childhood, his home, the fluttering of the pages in the books the Shield always read.
Their kiss separates without a sound.
And Gladiolus’s thumb strokes against the corner of his eye.
“Don’t cry. Don’t.”
It swipes again, more firmly, but shakily.
“I’ve seen you cry enough.”
Noctis sniffles. Closes his eyes to remember the sensation, and presses his Shield’s hand against his jaw in hopes to never let it leave.
“Will you let me say it?”
Hate is not love’s enemy.
…will you let me tell you that I love you?
Gladiolus eyes glimmer. Then, they flood.
“No. No, don’t. ”
The King nearly crumples in on himself.
“I will not allow you to say it, not when I’m going to have to watch you walk away from me.”
Gladiolus bites down on his tongue to stem his pain.
“If you do, I’ll die too.”
“Don’t say that either,” Noctis pleads, and he pushes back his Shield’s bangs, constantly, reaching and grabbing for every last second he looks into them, no matter how much his vision blurs. “You can live, you can be someone else’s-”
“I’m no one else’s. ” It’s a blatant, clear, honest belief. Gladiolus stands proud like he always has, always will. “I’m only yours.”
“Gladio,” Noctis whispers.
“I belong to you. Only you.”
And the King’s knees buckle, he falls into his Shield, squeezes his shoulders with all his wounded essence will allow him, weeps in the clouds of the night.
“I’ll change the whole world for you.”
Gladiolus pushes the piece of hair over Noctis’s ear again, just like he did ten years ago in the train station. Ten years ago, when the King knew he was falling, whether he was afraid of it or not.
“I’ll show them how much you gave for them. I’ll make sure they’ll never forget for as long as I breathe.”
And Gladiolus kisses Noctis’s head again, harder than before, the last tears he sheds breaking away there.
“And I want you to know that in any other life, I’d tell you.”
That I love you.
“If we were born different, if you weren’t the sacrifice to all of this-”
I would tell you.
“Over, and over, I would-”
Gladiolus envelops Noctis, traces over his features with all the gentleness he has remaining.
“I would. ”
The fire burns out.
They stand there in the dark. In the distance, the daemons bellow.
Noctis hides in his Shield’s arms, but he knows he can’t. Not anymore.
“Me too.”
The fire was the clock on the night he turned fourteen.
The embers dying is the hand hitting twelve.
Time’s up.
I love you. I love you.
I love you.
fin.