The air inside the cell stank of blood and vomit and other, more unpleasant odors. Prompto was no shrinking violet by any means, but even he had to hold his breath as he walked in.

The prisoner stirred at the sound of his steps, but couldn't manage more than a feeble full-body twitch - whether towards curling up or trying to get up, Prompto couldn't tell. Neither would've worked, in any case: between the injuries and the manacles (totally overkill, in Prompto's opinion) holding him, he was completely helpless.

"It's me," Prompto said brightly, kneeling down to him, and just as during his previous visits, the injured man didn't deign him with a response.

The burns on his face were still shocking, even though Prompto was now, by his fifth visit to this place of misery, pretty intimately acquainted with them. The entire left side of his face was a raw, weeping mess of blisters and melted skin; on the right side, the damage was focused mostly around the eye, but no less ugly. They didn't look much worse today, to Prompto's moderately trained eye, but neither did they look much better. Injuries of that kind needed a real doctor and antibiotics and probably surgery, not Prompto's basic field medicine knowledge. Or, barring that, the renowned Lucian royal healing magic, if it was a real thing and not a myth that people spread around to better brag about their rulers.

All Prompto could do was clean the burns out again, and give the prisoner water, knowing all the while that he was likely prolonging his life for several days at most. But that, after all, was what he was ordered to do.

He began with water. As usual, the prisoner pressed his lips together and tried to turn his head away from the bump of the bottle on his lips; just as before, Prompto had to dig his fingers into the corners of his jaw, hurting him, forcing his mouth open, pour the water in, and then hold his mouth closed until the man was forced to swallow. It was a slow, agonizing process, but the prisoner was only allowed so much water daily, and he needed every last drop of it. The bottle was tiny, and the whole thing still took about twenty minutes.

Prompto kept the count in his head. Water, then burns; the bruises from the capture and the sores forming under the manacles were irrelevant right now, all things considered. He had about forty minutes left to do the tending, and so he leaned over the prisoner and began. The bitten-off sounds of agony the prisoner couldn't quite suppress, although he stubbornly tried, were irrelevant as well; Prompto strained his ears and listened hard to the space of the hallways behind him.

There was a crucial difference to that fifth day: it was pretty obvious that the prisoner was way beyond being any kind of security risk. By now, the guards stationed by the door were bored, and neither of them enjoyed the sight of gore. And, most importantly, in the chaos and bustle of invasion, the protocols were somehow lax. Which meant that Prompto was finally alone with the prisoner.

He finished his assigned task first, spreading topical cream over the places that weren't quite raw flesh. And then, leaning closer to the prisoner, he whispered to him, "I want to help."

The prisoner stilled under his hands; then laughed, the laughter immediately dissolving into a deep, wracking cough. He wheezed, almost inaudibly: "A bit... too late... to whip out a good cop routine."

He swallowed the rest of the cough, pressed his lips tightly together. The blisters on his face tore and cracked, spoiling Prompto's handiwork. "It's no... use. He won't come and I won't help you lure him."

Prompto fought the urge to shake him. This ridiculous, stubborn loyalty was, after all, why he was here now, consorting with the enemy, signing his own death warrant.

He had been stationed in the newly-captured throne room of Insomnia, standing guard for His Imperial Eminence with the rest of his squad, and that was where he had seen the prisoner first.

The invasion so far had been - well. War was war, the war was forever, for as long as Prompto knew, the Empire and Lucis pushing each other across the map, and if nobody could quite remember why it began, it was just - a thing. Prompto had always been too far down the army ladder to be foster any kind of glowing patriotism, but neither had he had any qualms about his place in the grand scheme of things. War was war; some lost, some won, life got on.

And then they'd dragged the guy in and forced him to kneel before the throne. He'd looked pretty damn young, and about as civilian as possible, with heavy glasses and clothes that never came within ten miles of regulation dress, and for all that he'd glared and held his chin high, it'd been pretty obvious that he'd been terrified.

Even that had been by and large acceptable. He had turned out to be an advisor to the prince, and losing the prince in the invasion had been a big fucking deal, the kind that could make the whole war stretch far and wide again instead of ending neatly. Prompto had had no illusions about how interrogations were conducted, and if they'd went about extracting any information the guy could have on the prince's whereabouts by force, it would've been like. Okay. Not fun, but okay.

Except that nobody had interrogated him. Instead, the tech people had brought cameras in, cameras and honest-to-Six light equipment, and had spent some time mundanely fussing and arranging everybody just so, and the guys from communication had set up the live feed, and then - well.

And then Chancellor Izunia, whom Prompto has always vaguely thought about as the least unpleasant of the top brass, had carefully taken the position under the spotlight and burned half of the prisoner's face off. All the while cordially inviting the prince to come back and retrieve his advisor if he cared.

The poor guy still had been thrashing in the guards' hold - he ran out of screams and had been making a horrible wheezing noise instead, the breath whistling out of him - when the Chancellor had leaned down to him and dragged him up by his hair, and asked him if he had anything to say to his prince.

Honestly, if the guy had blubbered and begged? Prompto, still trying not to gag on the stink of burnt meat wafting through the throne room, would not have blamed him. But he'd spat blood and licked his lips and given the camera a feral, crooked smile, and what he'd rasped to the cameras had been, "Long live the King."

The Chancellor had slapped him so hard the guards had let go of him and he'd collapsed; and between the slap and the moment he had hit the floor Prompto had been struck with a horrible, clear knowledge that they were the bad guys.

And so, five days of confusion and wheedling and bribery and cold sticky terror later, there he was in the cell, damning himself beyond salvation, and the guy he was trying to help was being noble in the least helpful way possible.

"Look," Prompto hissed, "I'm just a grunt, okay? I'm not full of big plans. They're broadcasting you pretty much 24/7. If that prince of yours wasn't crazy enough to come before now, he's not coming now. I just want to, I just want to help. What can it hurt?"

The prisoner tilted his head, giving an uncanny impression of staring at Prompto, even though Prompto had first-hand knowledge of just how much his eyes weren't working anymore. He stared for an agonizing couple of minutes - but Prompto kept counting, and they were still on track - and finally said, reluctantly: "If you're in earnest, then... You could..."

He tilted his head back, baring his throat in an unmistakable gesture of surrender, and Prompto looked at him and swallowed hard.

"How about you pick something else."

"I," the prisoner said, and halted. He was quiet and still, but Prompto heard the ominous snap of wires in his head anyway, the immense sound of support beams folding one by one. "The only way I could still... serve. Make this - stop. Please."

Shit, Prompto thought. He breathed in through his nose and breathed out through his mouth, nice and slow, like they'd taught them on the shooting range, and tried very hard not to wonder if there were any good guys in this entire clusterfuck.

Their allotted time ran out. He paused, straining - and heard two soft thumps outside of the cell.

Lax protocols, right? In Gralea, any guard who took food while on duty would've been summarily executed on spot, even if it was just a couple of rations from harmless fellow infantry pal. Here in Insomnia, stuck with guarding a prisoner so helpless - well. He wished them luck.

Prompto busied himself with the prisoner's manacles. "Tell you what," he told him, "you don't have to cooperate, but how about you just see how it goes? Just don't make noise, okay? Because I really really really don't want to be shot."

He hauled the prisoner up, grunting with effort: even with days of starvation, he was pretty heavy, and awkwardly taller than Prompto. But he didn't make another suicidal bid or objection at least, which maybe meant that he'd agreed to try. Or that he was planning to give Prompto away at the first available opportunity. Or that he was trying not to pass out when blood returned to his arms and legs.

None of that mattered, Prompto was in it now regardless of the outcome, and they had a very tiny, very precise window of opportunity to get out at all. All Prompto had going for him was the fact that the security was aimed outwards, hoping to nab any intruders. And it was stretched thin by necessity, meaning that if you were batshit insane and committing the kind of treason no punishment was capital enough for, you could just - slip - through.

Forty minutes later, exhausted to the bone and gross with terrified sweat, Prompto found himself and his companion, beyond his wildest hopes, in one of the repurposed vehicle garages, unnoticed and unmolested on the way. His charge was mostly dead weight at this point, although Prompto had to give him credit, he did a really admirable job with at least trying to shuffle along with Prompto. Given that Prompto could feel the fever radiating from him, it was no mean feat.

"And now," Prompto told him, mostly to hear his own voice, "we're going to see if I stole the right ID."

The guy - Prompto was going to learn his name at some point if they didn't get killed in the next hour - didn't answer. Prompto dumped him in the footwell of one of the four-wheels and couldn't tell by his breathing if he was listening, unconscious, or simply dead.

Nothing to do about that now. Prompto trawled around the garage and found some tarp to pile on top of him, and then got behind the wheel and fixed his hair and uniform the best he could in the back view mirror. He felt as if PROMPTO THE TRAITOR was branded into his forehead for the entire world to see, but the worst the mirror had reflected at him was the blotchy, sweaty flush of his cheeks. He wiped his face on his sleeve and whispered a quiet, heartfelt prayer to whoever out there was listening to the plight of madmen and idiots.

Then he drove.

A couple of hours out of Insomnia the engine sputtered and died. Prompto stared at the dashboard in dumb astonishment for several minutes, trying to reconcile himself to the reality of his shit luck. His eyes felt greasy and gritty with exhaustion, and his hands shook with the aftereffects of the adrenaline crash.

Getting out of Citadel had been one of the most terrifying things he'd ever done, give or take a couple of infantry attacks he'd been a part of - and also, for all his terror, utterly anticlimactic. He had flashed his stolen ID and babbled about his acquisition orders, with just enough boring but upbeat details that the checkpoint officer's eyes had glazed over, and had been irritably waved through. Everybody had been busy; every incoming car had been checked down to its last nut and bolt. But Prompto had looked and moved and talked right, and - at least until the prisoner's empty cell would be discovered - who would've even imagined the enormity of his stupid daring?

(He spent at least an hour on the road muzzily trying to imagine what they were going to do to him when - if - he was caught. Getting nicely and cleanly put against the wall was probably not going to cut it.)

The checkpoint out of Insomnia had worked more or less the same way. Prompto had put all he had into not slouching and smiling (relaxed and friendly but not too manic) at the patrol; his back ached for hours afterward, still expecting a bullet. But against all odds his calculations about shift changes - and the efforts he had put into making sure his commanding officer would think he had duties elsewhere - held; there had been no outcry, no accusing fingers or guns stuck in his face. He had listened to the soldiers bitch about suicidal civilians, bummed a cigarette off one of them while his papers were processed, and went on his way.

All of that unbelievable, improbable good fortune - and there they were, sitting ducks in the middle of the road. Any moment now a search party was going to swoop on them, and...

He pinched himself, hard, jolting himself out of useless thoughts, and got out of the car. Checking the backseats took him some effort and trepidation - and a bit of a guilty hope. If the prisoner had died while Prompto was getting them through the checkpoints and rattling them over Insomnia's bombed roads, that would be it. Prompto'd just - leave him - and hide -

Prompto threw away the tarp and had to pull the guy out by his feet, unceremonious and ungentle - did he have to be so tall? But with some swearing and tugging, he managed to lean him sideways on the seat and found him deeply conked out, and breathing pretty badly - but breathing.

"Ugh," Prompto said towards the uncaring universe at large, unsure of whether he was expressing gratitude or despair. The midday sun beat down on him like a living, malevolent thing; in moments he was soaked in sweat again.

In the distance, wavering a bit in the dry desert air, he saw an outpost.

He found a bottle of gross tepid water in the car, trying to buy himself some time to think, drank exactly half, and set to feeding the rest to his unconscious charge. All his choices were collapsing around him: staying in the car was suicide, but cutting across the wild country without supplies and with somebody so heavily injured was another, messier kind of suicide; if the sun wouldn't do them in, the beasts - he squinted and saw a pack of voretooths in distance - would. The outpost ahead was their only choice, even if it just meant delivering themselves into the hands of people who would obviously turn them in for the inevitable reward.

"Let's hope," he told the prisoner, "that those guys feel romantic about royalty."

He managed to make a quite decent dragging stretcher out of the tarp and cannibalized car parts; getting moved around in the thing wasn't going to do his guy any favors, but - Prompto leaned over to squeeze the last drops of water into him, and checked the pulse at his throat - he knew that whatever he did now, it would be a miracle if his charge lived past sunset.

He got into the makeshift harness and shrugged his shoulders. "At least won't be a cell, eh? Maybe even a nice bed. Some water. You deserve to die in a bed, dude."

Prompto settled into a rhythm pretty soon - a good marching rhythm, where the only thing he lacked was the boots of a soldier in front of him to stare at. Step-step-drag, step-step-drag, pick up a small stone and hold it in your mouth to suck on. The sweat evaporated worryingly fast; he felt dry, desiccated like old, dusty bones, with his tongue lying like a piece of old jerky in his mouth. Step and step and step...

"Wish," he rasped at some point, barely recognizing his voice, "I'd asked for your name."

His burden made no comment. Prompto decided that if he stopped to check on him he'd never start again, and so on he went, dully watching the slap of his army boots against humming asphalt. Step, step, step...

At some point he tried to make the next step, and discovered that he couldn't; something was preventing him, and - there was some nice - he stared and stared, his brain booting up like a rusty, useless piece of machinery. The barrel of an old shotgun was pressed against his chest - a shotgun held by a pair of slender arms - bare arms - female arms, holy shit.

Prompto dragged his head up and saw a woman in blindingly yellow overalls peering at him intently over the gun. Her lips were moving.

"...away from home, soldier."

He could practically feel the blast blowing his chest open. "Help," he croaked against all hope, and slid down to his knees.

"Pawpaw," the woman was saying over her shoulder, "shit, look," - Prompto felt a movement at his back he was too exhausted to do anything about - and then a gruff old voice said, "Holy shit, Scientia?", and Prompto stopped tracking for a while.

He didn't really lose consciousness, just went into a twilight, underwater state that allowed the woman to drag him to his feet and tug him somewhere. His vision was tunneling so badly he couldn't figure out what was around them; the woman and the old guy kept talking over his head, but their voices were dissolving into gibberish the more he strained to understand. He hoped they weren't hurting his prisoner guy. He hoped the patrols weren't here yet. He hoped...

He came to himself in a tiny, rusty shower cabin; more precisely, he came to himself under a blast of freezing water from the faucet, shocking him back to instant, heart-racing awareness. Prompto croaked in outrage and half-fell out of the cabin - right under the cool, amused gaze of the yellow overalls woman.

She threw a towel at him with her left arm; the shotgun was still in her right, although at least now it wasn't aimed at him.

"Feel better, sugar? Heatstroke is a bitch."

He fumbled for the towel, too exhausted to feel either embarrassment or excitement. He could practically feel the blisters rising on his skin. And that reminded him of...

"Is he?.. Did he?.."

"Not yet," the woman said. "But probably soon. It's a crying shame, what you Niff animals did to him."

Her eyes weren't amused anymore. Prompto had a feeling that he was going to get reacquainted with the shotgun barrel in a moment if he didn't do something -

"I know," he said, too tired for anything clever at all. "I'm sorry."

"Hm," the woman said. "Well. Come on then."

And just like that, she turned her back on him and went away. Prompto, dumbfounded, scrambled to follow, keeping a death grip on the towel.

"Wait," he called her. "The search parties are going to come - when they find us, you - "

The woman rapped her knuckles on one of the walls without turning back. "Don't you worry your head. You're under the garage; nobody's ever going to find that place if Pawpaw doesn't want them to."

That didn't sound as reassuring as the woman meant it, but for the lack of better option, Prompto swallowed it.

The woman turned a corner, throwing aside some sort of curtain made out of clacking beads, and Prompto found himself in a windowless room with a low ceiling, lit by a cheerful, gaudy lamp.

He stared for a while.

"Well, buddy," he said, finally, and rubbed hard at his eyes. Every color around him felt too bright and too low at once. "At least you've got that bed."

"His name's Ignis," the woman said softly; she crossed the room and leaned down to tug the blankets over the prisoner guy - Ignis - higher. "And you would be?"

"I'm Prompto," he said. "You can't do anything for him?"

"Honey, I work with cars, not people. I gave him what I could for the pain, but I don't think it's making a dent."

"I know," he said.

She rummaged in the corner and offered him a bundle of clothes: another pair of overalls, thankfully in simple brown. "Name's Cindy," she said. "It's a pity, isn't it?"

At the bed, Ignis turned his head from side to side, restlessly. He muttered something - a short word, almost a sigh. Probably a name.

Prompto fought the overalls and his own arms and legs, suddenly heavy and clumsy, furiously, and won. There was a chair by Ignis' bed, and he made his way there and sat down heavily, wishing he could just - allow himself to sleep through the next four hours or so.

"You know," he said, "if that prince of his has any sense, he's probably halfway to Accordo now or something, I get that. But this guy just - I wish he could've at least like. Like heard that he's done well, I don't know. It just feels shitty."

"Hmm," Cindy said. She went digging in the corner of the room, unearthing a small portable fridge, and dug a bunch of - oh, bottles of cold water. Prompto fought the urge to hug her knees and cry in gratitude. She pressed one of the bottles into his hand and stacked the rest next to his chair. "Look after him for a while, will you? I'm going upstairs to see what's up with those search parties."

She left without waiting for him to say something, which was just as well, because Prompto wasn't sure he wouldn't beg her to stay and not leave him alone on death watch, and that'd be just embarrassing.

He chugged the water, trying not to choke on it; it washed about a desert's worth of sand and grit down his throat and made him feel more human.

Prompto turned to the prone figure on the bed. "Last time for the road, huh?"

At least this time Ignis didn't fight him; he meekly let Prompto squeeze drops of water from the towel corner that he wetted. If not for his less-damaged eye, roving aimlessly over the room, Prompto would've thought him unconscious.

He was even hotter to the touch, if it was at all possible, burning from the initial fever and the heatstroke. The previously undamaged parts of his face looked almost as bad now as the original burns. Prompto could feel the rattle in his lungs without leaning down to him.

"Shhh," he found himself saying, inanely, "shhh, shhhh... It's okay..."

An hour later, Ignis moved his head again and said, "Noct," suddenly and clearly. "Noct, I'm sorry."

Prompto's eyes were rebelling on him, it was the only possible explanation. He saw people dying before - people he fought with, and ate with, and on occasion slept with - people that he killed himself - but right now, in this tiny basement box, leaning over a dying man he barely knew, everything just felt so impossibly, monstrously unfair.

"It's okay," he said again and swallowed useless tears. "I bet he's not angry with you. He's probably proud of you, dude. You'll get a posthumous medal or something. A nice eulogy. I'm sorry, I'm - "

Somewhere around the corner, a door banged open with urgent violence; Prompto jumped and fumbled for the gun he no longer had, and between one moment and the next -

- a dark-haired young man was by Ignis' bed, surrounded in a slowly fading halo of blue sparks. He leaned over, put his hands on the sides of Ignis' face. "Specs!"

"What the hell," Prompto said.

Then he very gently put his hands down, because a blade of the biggest sword he'd ever seen, attached to a biggest tattooed guy he'd ever seen, was gently kissing his throat.

"Step back," the giant rumbled, and Prompto swallowed - very, very carefully - and slowly slid away from the bed.

"Noct," the giant said. "Is he?"

"Not yet," the prince said. "Just let me..."

"Noct?"

Prompto wondered if he'd ever made it to the outpost, or if he was having some kind of weirdly specific hallucination by the side of the road. "Like, Prince Noct? How come you're here?"

Everybody ignored him. The prince was doing something weird over the bed - more sparks?

"Specs," he said again. "Come on, Specs, give me something to work with, come on."

Prompto could've sworn he saw the tug from him to Ignis - Specs? - that he was unable not to answer. "N'ct?"

"Yeah, Specs," the prince said, and laughed a bit. "Stay with me."

"No," Ignis moaned, shaking his head. "No... a trap..."

"It's okay, Iggy," the giant said, and for all that his sword was still at Prompto's throat, he sounded unbearably gentle. "For once I think there's no trap."

"Look," Prompto said, "it's not - I'm sorry - even if you have a surgeon in your pocket, it's probably too - I'm sorry."

The prince actually turned to look at him; he looked furious and happy at once and had very blue, very sharp eyes. "Let him be, Gladio."

Then he turned to Ignis and - it looked, to Prompto's exhausted and wavering stare, like he folded space somehow, and pulled - and then a shimmering wave of blue rolled over Ignis.

"Shit," Prompto said, awed. Nobody paid him any attention.

He could see Ignis' face; the burns were still there, but now they looked like old, familiar scars, faded quietly into his skin. His breathing was even and slow again. Prompto bet that if he could sidle closer and touch, his fever would be gone.

Royal healing magic, he muttered to himself and found his lips inexorably stretching into a smile.

"Noct," Ignis said, lucid and strong and - annoyed. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you on the move? Of all the ridiculous, reckless things..."

The prince began laughing. "Specs," he said, "only you...", and then he gasped and folded over the bed, making hopeless choking sounds; one of Ignis' hands found his head and petted it slowly. The giant man strode over to them and took the other.

Prompto, feeling like he was watching something he didn't have a right to, turned to the wall and went to see if there was anything stronger than water in that corner fridge.

He felt light as a feather. Like he could fold the basement open and fly.