Chapter Text
It was an unseasonably cold day in the sloping hills of Cleigne, and the son of the chancellor of Niflheim shivered in the damp salt air. He was a slight young man of eighteen, with long, black hair, fine cheekbones, and too-bright eyes. He had a swordsman’s body—all wiry muscle and strong legs, and he wore a loose black tunic and trousers that draped him like silk. He could have been beautiful, even with the scars that flashed at his arms and curved beneath his eye, but his expression was twisted in a dark grimace and his hands were slick with blood.
“Shit,” he said, softly. He crouched down to wipe his fingers on the shirtfront of the man at his feet. The man was also in black—a uniform of the Lucian Kingsglaive, expensive cloth ripped ragged at the chest and side. His eyes were wide in death, bloodshot and bulging, and closed stiffly at his killer’s touch.
“Noctis,” called a smooth, sing-song voice from down the hill. “What have you done to your father’s sword?”
Noct lifted his hand from the dead Glaive’s face and looked down. Ardyn Izunia, his father, was leaning against the door of his hideous sportscar, peering into the sun at Noct’s back. At Noct’s side, the pieces of a jagged-edged blade tilted precariously on the lip of a mossy stone. Noct pulled it to safety, and tried to will his expression into stillness.
“It gave out,” he said, and winced at the way his voice cracked. “The Glaive had a mace.”
“Oh, Noct.” His father stalked up the hill, taking care to step over earthy patches made damp by the midmorning dew. “It’s only a sword, in the end.”
“I know that.” Noct said it sharper than he meant to, and turned aside. It had been his first sword, given to him on his twelfth birthday, and one of the few possessions he truly cherished. It hurt more than he cared to admit to see it scattered in the dirt, broken beyond repair.
“Perhaps it is a blessing,” his father said, stepping onto the rock where Noctis was crouching on his heels. “You have long since outgrown that sword. It’s time you used that stolen armiger of yours in earnest.”
Noct ground his teeth, not trusting himself to speak. He and his father had been raiding tombs for years now, claiming ancient weapons that rightly belonged to the King of Lucis—the man with the coward’s heart who hid behind walls and barriers in distant Insomnia. Perhaps the ancient kings and queens to whom the weapons originally belonged knew that their arms were in the hands of someone unworthy. Perhaps this was more of the Lucian line’s twisted magic at work. Whatever the case, using the weapons, however right it felt in the moment, always came with a price. The exhaustion that bit into Noct’s bones every time he fought with them was so strong that he rarely used them at all. Clearly, his father had noticed this.
“I know it’s hard,” Ardyn said. A warm hand rested on Noct’s shoulder, and he turned to see his father kneeling on the ground behind him. “I can teach you how to bear it a little easier.”
Noct tried not to look at the sword at his feet. “I don’t want to burden you with my own weakness,” he said, at last.
“Why Noctis,” Ardyn said, placing a hand on Noct’s cheek. “You are my boy.” Noct sighed, and felt the brush of lips as his father kissed the crown of his head. “I would put out the stars for you.”
---
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.”
Noct woke with a jerk, blinking hard at the light that streamed through the upper window of his room in Insomnia’s Citadel. At some point in the night, he’d rolled himself onto the floor, and he was tangled in a sheet that was half hooked to the edge of the too-soft bed.
Gladiolus, the man who had woken him, stood at the door with his arms crossed. Noct scowled. He couldn’t help tensing up whenever Gladio was around—Even though it had been several years since they’d first met, it was hard to shake the memory of this massive, grim-faced man bearing down on him in a rush of wind and steel. It hovered behind his level eyes and impassive expression, a promise of what would happen should Noct decide to run.
Not that Noct had anywhere to run, these days.
“Gods,” Noct said. “I never oversleep. What time is it?”
“Close to eight.” Gladio raised his eyebrows. “We’re making the announcement this afternoon. Iggy’s on the way up to brief you.”
“Iggy?”
“Ignis. You remember.”
Noct disentangled himself from his blanket and stood. “Not likely to forget. And you two are what, going to drag me kicking and screaming to the audience hall?”
“Only if you’re a brat about it,” Gladio said. Noct cast him a scathing look and made his way to the bathroom.
Damn. He scrubbed his hand over his face with a dejected sigh. It had been two weeks since he'd unwittingly entered the palace, and going so long without shaving made him look like he’d aged ten years. His face was starting to look too much like the King’s, making it harder and harder for Noct to look into the mirror and see anyone other than a familiar stranger with another name. Noctis Lucis Caelum. Whoever that was.
“You know,” he called, through the open door. “It would be nice if you could let me use a razor.”
“Not likely,” was the gruff reply. “You know the rules.”
“I also know that I can summon at least twelve very sharp, very deadly weapons at any second. And yet here we are.”
Gladio walked over, stopping to lean against the bathroom doorframe. “Look,” he said. “If you can shave with your ancestor’s magical greataxe, I will personally buy you the best shaving razor in Insomnia.”
“That a challenge?”
Gladio laughed. Noct narrowed his eyes at the man, uncertain, and looked away. After a moment, the young man sighed and made an expansive gesture that flickered in the mirror.
“Come on,” he said. “Sit down, and I’ll shave you.”
Noct balked. “I don’t need you to—“
“I know,” Gladio said, with a finality that assured Noct that he did, in fact, understand. “But you know my dad. He’ll kill me if I let you so much as nick your chin.”
“Yes,” Noct said. “What good would it do for me to die before he can wring the secrets of Niflheim out of me?”
Gladio didn’t take the bait, only gestured to the toilet seat. Noct sighed in resignation and sat down, watching the young Crownsguard soldier run a handcloth under the tap. When Gladio had all his supplies ready, he sat down on the rim of the bathtub and gripped Noct by the chin. Noct almost jerked back. It felt strange, having someone else touch him like this, and he tried not to look at the other man as he set to work.
“Ignis would probably be better at this than me,” Gladio said, using the tub faucet to lather his hands. “But believe it or not, he doesn’t always have knives handy.” He flashed a pocket razor between his fingers, then ran it slowly through the lather at Noct’s jaw. “When we were kids, you used to tease me about my beard. It started growing in when you were pretty young, I think. We’d be training in the yard, and you’d make fun of the way it came out in patches. Picture of noble tact, right?”
Noct gave him a steady look, not wanting to talk and disrupt the blade. Gladio interpreted his glare correctly and huffed.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re hardly noble now, either. I know.” He motioned for Noct to turn his head, and started on the other cheek. “Okay. I know how it is. I’m not gonna argue that we didn’t… meet… on the best of terms. But I’m still your shield. It’s my job to protect you.”
“Oh,” Noct said, unable to contain himself. “And the time you, what was it, tried to beat me down to get me home, that was protecting me?”
The look Gladio gave Noct now was so twisted with emotion, thick with sadness and an unfathomable pain, that Noct felt the vitriol drain out of him.
“Yeah,” he said. “If it got you away from the Niffs.”
“I didn’t need to get away,” Noct said, unthinking. Gladio raised his eyebrows.
“Really?”
Noct looked aside. He knew what Gladio meant. Noct had made his choice, for better or worse, on the night Ardyn had come to bring him home. Ardyn, who Noct still loved in his strange, fierce way, even though he knew he had only used him as a pawn against the King.
What Noct couldn’t tell Gladio was that getting away had done more than just take him out of Niflheim’s grasp. It had changed Noct somehow. It was still changing him. It would be easier to go back to not knowing who he was, to believing that he was only Noctis, son of the chancellor, enemy to the Kings of Lucis. Now, he was somewhere between the boy he was before and the man he’d become, and he could feel himself turning into something new and unrecognizable.
“There.” Gladio drew a damp washcloth from Noct’s face. “You almost look human.”
Noct rose and turned to the mirror. “Not bad,” he said, after a moment. “If you want to give up terrorizing strangers in the wilderness, you might make a living as a barber.”
Gladio laughed, and Noct felt his own lips twitch in the faintest smile.