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From Ignis’s carefully selected seat on the couch, he has a perfect view of the moment when Noct’s bedroom door finally opens and Gladio slips out into the hallway. Gladio closes the door silently, a perfect match for his stone-faced and grim countenance. Ignis, meanwhile, has locked his own expression into a blankly professional lie that he hopes betrays nothing of his own lingering horror at their near loss.
“Has he fallen asleep again?” Ignis asks.
Gladio stares at him from across the room, and Ignis isn’t certain if Gladio forgot he was out here or if his mind is still back in the room with Noctis. Gladio’s jaw works for a moment before he nods. “Yeah. So’s Prompto.”
Prompto, who had his first kill today in a defensive, lethal reflex that was beautifully executed and left him trembling on his hands and knees, dry heaving, after the medical staff whisked Noctis’s unresponsive body away. There was still a faint tremor in his hands by the time Ignis made it to the Citadel.
The two of them waited together, Prompto in borrowed scrubs after he’d ditched all of his bloody clothing except for his spattered wristband. Ignis could feel the tremor because their arms barely touched where they stood against a wall together. They watched the king receive whispered updates on Noctis’s condition and the investigation into the assassin. Ignis had to squash the urge to thank Prompto for saving Noctis, just in case the preemptive gratitude was enough to tip the scales of the universe against Noct’s survival.
(Ignis wasn’t anywhere nearby when Noctis took two bullets to the chest.
He had the day off. He hadn’t even gotten an emergency alert until after Noctis was already out of his reach in the medical wing. He could have died before Ignis even knew he was in danger.
Noctis had almost died once before, and Ignis hadn’t known anything was amiss until he woke up to a terrifyingly quiet Citadel and gone in search of Noct’s nanny.)
“Anything new?” Gladio asks
Ignis glances down at the tablet in his hands, but there have been few updates in the half hour Noctis was conscious and coherent enough for Gladio to visit. “Nothing significant,” he says and makes a note to fetch clean clothes for Prompto later. He had swapped the scrubs for a pair of Noct’s pajamas, but he will eventually need something suitable to leave the Citadel in. “Did your version of the self-preservation lecture go any better than mine?”
It’s too grim to be called a smile, but Gladio’s expression flickers toward something more flesh-and-blood, enough that a small thread of tension loosens in Ignis’s chest. Where Ignis had failed to get through to Gladio earlier, someone had managed to shake him a little loose. None of them will be back at equilibrium for some time, but Noctis is alive—and that means that they can regain their balance, in time.
“Also no,” Gladio says, and he finally crosses the room to drop onto the couch cushion next to him. He sprawls out, a sharp contrast to the stiffness of his body when Ignis caught him hunched over the evidence review station, torturing himself over the surveillance videos yet again. This is a deliberate pose, a non-verbal insistence from Gladio that I’m fine and fuck you for asking.
So Ignis doesn’t ask. What he says instead is probably just as unwelcome. “I find myself incapable of being angry at him.”
Gladio cuts him a sharp, considering look. He is one of the few people who has seen Ignis’s well-guarded temper, but he holds his tongue and decides to wait for the explanation Ignis has been mulling over.
“He wouldn’t be our Noctis if he didn’t want to protect his friends,” Ignis says quietly. Nearly fond, if it weren’t for the lingering fear of what ifs coloring his tone.
He doesn’t often think about the theoretical paths his life could have taken if he hadn’t met Noctis as a child, when he had no defenses against a shy, sweet boy who seemed so lonely and was delighted to banish Ignis’s own loneliness in turn. If Noctis hadn’t grown into the kind of young man who cared so deeply about others that he would have won the loyalty of the people around him even without his royal position.
It’s true they had rough patches before, entire weeks and even months where it took every bit of Ignis’s white-knuckled professionalism to show up each morning. And yet, he still wants to be at Noctis’s side. Especially on days like this, when it could have been the end. “I think I’d let the entire world burn to save him. Even from himself.”
Gladio sighs, but he doesn’t disagree even though Ignis can see the way his hands flex with an itch to force Noctis into valuing himself above the rest. How far they’ve come from the days when Gladio thought Noctis little more than a spoiled, sullen brat. Nor does Gladio rehash the old talking points about the sacred duties of House Amicitia and how Noctis just needs to accept what it means to be a prince. He won’t get anywhere with that; he never has.
Gladio tips his head back and stares up at the ceiling, as if there were any answers there. Eventually, he does find words, disgruntled though they are: “Some checkmate we’re caught in.”
Ignis hums, not quite a denial, nor is it an agreement, and sets the tablet aside.
“Out with it,” Gladio prompts.
The thoughts are still nebulous, and Ignis is a little reluctant to put words to them, to delimit the boundaries of the feelings that have been knotting up his insides since he first found out how close they came to losing Noctis. Still, Gladio is asking, and in a time like this, how can he refuse? “It would only be checkmate if there were no moves left for us to take.”
That has Gladio looking away from the ceiling and back to him. Something in his face must give him away because Gladio’s expression eases again, just a touch.
If they’re all better, then the odds that Noctis will have to step in to save one of them tilts in their favor.
Gladio sounds somewhere between amused and resigned when he says, “Give me at least forty-eight hours after this shitshow to put together a new training regimen for us.”
“Prompto, too,” Ignis says, because he knows the guilt of being protected is threatening to drown him. There is a haunted quality to Prompto’s eyes that Ignis doesn’t think will go away for a long time.
“Prompto, too,” Gladio agrees, then adds, with a vicious sort of approval, “What a sharpshooter he’s turned out to be.”
Not a bit of praise Ignis thinks Prompto will appreciate verbatim, not after the messiness of the day, but still true. When things are less raw, and Prompto can bear to be parted from Noctis for a private conversation, he’ll make certain that Prompto gets enough reassurance to let him pull himself out of his guilt. Until then—
Ignis picks up the tablet again and offers it to Gladio, open to the last update he received regarding the would-be assassin’s personal connections. “Read this, and I’ll send for food. We can discuss it during the meal.”
To his relief, Gladio accepts the tablet instead of going back to torture himself with the security footage again. Ignis gets to his feet and heads for the landline that will connect directly to the dining staff to place an order from the Citadel kitchens.
“Hey, Ignis?” Gladio is already scrolling through the document and does not look up. “Thanks.”
Ignis knows better than to make a production of Gladio’s gratitude or even smile. “Of course,” is all he says, and feeling more settled himself, he turns his attention to his work.