Chapter Text
Prologue - August 752 ME
They’ve been running for a few minutes, a stumbling sort of sprint-then-jog-then-sprint-again hybrid that has Prompto gasping for breath, when Ignis slows, then comes to a stop.
“No,” Prompto pants, “no, no, no—Iggy, we gotta go.” He grabs at Ignis’s hand—slick and hot and sticky—but Ignis shakes him off, yanking his hand away. Prompto tries to grab Ignis’s hand again, but Ignis shakes his head and takes a few steps back, then turns away and throws up for real. Fuck.
“Iggy—”
Ignis jerks his hand up, cutting Prompto off, and bends over, puking up more of his guts.
“Okay,” Prompto pants, more to himself than to Ignis. The beam of the flashlight is juddering, skipping over the rails; Prompto shifts it from hand to hand, then anxiously turns it back the way they came. He can’t see anything yet. “Okay, okay, but we gotta get going.”
Ignis seems to have finished. He’s pulled his shirt up and is wiping his mouth and face with it, then he’s smoothing it back down, barely grimacing at how gross it must feel. Prompto catches the way Ignis’s hand brushes against his trouser pocket where he keeps his phone, the way his hand jerks when he feels his pocket is empty. Even in the shaking beam of the flashlight Prompto can see the confusion and fear on his face.
“Prompto,” Ignis asks, “what are we doing?”
“We’re heading home,” Prompto tells him. “The Crownsguard are on their way, I swear, but we gotta keep running.”
Ignis frowns at him; his shoulders are rising and falling—he’s as out of breath as Prompto, or maybe more—and his fingers are still flexing over his empty pocket. Prompto really, really needs to get him running again.
“We can go slower,” Prompto offers, “but we just gotta go. C’mon, Iggy, Noct’s waiting for us.”
Maybe that’s the magic word. It must be the magic word, because Ignis just nods, short and sharp, and follows when Prompto begins to run.