Chapter Text
At first, Noctis didn’t understand why his father didn’t love him anymore. He remembered bits and pieces from before the attack—large hands in his hair, the warmth of an embrace, a soft chuckle that didn’t sound anything like the way his father laughed now. It was like all that warmth had drained out of him during Noct’s long time in sleep, and Noct didn’t have the language to call it back.
The truth took a little while to figure out. Noct had let the monster strike him, let sleep take him. He hadn’t recovered fast enough from his injuries, had spent so long in his wheelchair when he could have been catching up. Worst of all, when Noct woke up, he didn’t even remember his father’s name. He kept thinking of him as Regis, when everyone knew that Noct’s father was Ardyn. Ardyn Izunia, chancellor of Niflheim.
If he’d been as strong as his father, he wouldn’t have placed such a burden on him, and his father wouldn’t have had to use up all that love just to keep him alive.
If he became strong enough, Noct reasoned, he would be able to get some of his old father back.
The officers who worked in the fortress Noct and Ardyn called home started to call Noct Ardyn's “little shadow.” He trailed behind Ardyn at all times, a silent presence at his heels. He watched him from the corner of the room at meetings, carefully hid his vegetables during meals, and curled up on benches while his father sparred with human soldiers and MT units in the training yard. By the end of the day, he would usually be asleep on his feet, stumbling several yards behind his father as they made their way to their rooms. There, he would take a bath, brush his teeth, and stare at the mirror, trying to recreate the face his dad used to wear when he was happy. He would narrow his eyes, like this, and his hair was soft on the sides, like this, and his mouth tilted just a little at an angle…
If he timed it right, he could force himself awake several hours before his father got up for the day. When he finally woke at the right hour, he got up, tiptoed around his father’s bed, and sidled out the door. The MT patrols scared him at first, but he had the metal wristband that told them he wasn’t an enemy, and he held it up between himself and their jerking, shuddering bodies as he passed. Then he made his way to the training yard.
Okay, he thought. Start small. What did the human trainees do? Lie on their stomachs, like this, and push their hands out, like this, and lift up…
He was a little more tired than usual, at first, and his arms and legs were always sore, but at least he was trying.
After a week of this, he fell asleep at dinner. He jerked awake immediately, heart tight with panic that his father had noticed, and looked up at Ardyn at his side. His father was looking at him, eyebrows raised.
“I’m sorry,” Noct said, softly.
His father smiled, but it wasn’t the smile that Noct practiced in the mirror every night. It was different, tilted at both corners, strange in its unfamiliarity.
“You know,” his father said, in a low voice. “If you didn’t get up to exercise in the middle of the night, you might be able to stay awake through the afternoon.”
Noct felt himself start to shake. He tried to hold it in, biting his lip until it hurt. “Are you mad?” he asked.
His father opened his mouth slightly, closed it, and looked away. “No, Noctis. I don’t believe so.” There was a long silence, long enough that Noct started to fidget, and Ardyn said, “If you don’t mind waking up at dawn, I can teach you how to fight the way I do.”
Noct grinned wide, and his father’s answering laugh was so warm that he carried it with him all day.