A/N: a thing
i liked it when i wrote it
but i didn't look over it again after that
any mistakes are mine alone
someone help me out of this hell
i've taken some liberties with canon, as you may know, but with some unimportant stuff that i thought would just be a little more impactful.
-oxy
Bright afternoon sunlight fell from the sky and bounced off the pale stones of the circular courtyard of the Citadel. Regis stared at the impeccable blue and then back down at the small bundle in his arms. His son was asleep - understandable, as the business of being born was a tiring one. Regis was tired, too.
A harried Regis and his very pregnant wife Aulea had left their quarters nearly a day earlier when Aulea woke her husband in a panic. Something was wrong, wrong, wrong, and she needed help.
Across the courtyard Aulea had been ferried, tears streaming down her lovely face, and now across that same courtyard Regis walked alone.
Not alone - Clarus, ever-loyal Shield, walked behind him and to his left - but alone.
The burden in his arms was heavy and light all at once.
"Noctis," Aulea had said, seeing blue eyes and a tuft of black hair and the soft, pale light of the moon shining gently through the windows on her son. She was ferried elsewhere soon after - somewhere Regis could not follow.
And so 'Noctis' was the King's son.
The sun was too bright. It glared accusingly from the sky. Regis made his way to the great doors of his home.
"Noctis," Regis declared as he breached the threshold of the Citadel.
Then he pressed his lips gently to his son's soft forehead and handed him off to someone else -anyone else - and went to hear supplicants.
He remembered the nanny, first.
Her skin was soft and weathered from time, hands gentle when they picked him up after he fell on the carpet of his rooms. White hair encircled her face as would a wreath of age and wisdom and kindness.
She read him stories.
When he asked for things, about things, she answered with a patience nobody else had.
He called her 'mother' once by accident, and his father grew red and purple in the face when he heard, and then he never saw her again.
"Oh, Noctis," his father sighed when he was crying over the woman who had disappeared.
His father held him in his arms, and it was so unfamiliar he struggled to escape the grip.
Dad was busy. Always busy.
Noctis found himself disappointed more often than not when a dinner was cancelled, when a trip into the city was forgotten. He stood from the great table in the huge dining room and left his plate cold when the minder at the door gave a sad shake of his head and a pitying look.
Ignis helped him learn things, most days. Ignis was gentle, too, and he was four, not three like Noctis.
"He's the King," Ignis said.
"He's my dad," Noctis pointed out.
"But he's the King, first."
They sat in the garden and made daisy chains and Noctis tried to hide his disappointment.
Ignis was right, as always.
Noctis should just stop expecting anything.
There was a curious day when Noctis was five.
Regis found him sitting with Ignis in the gardens again, playing with action figures in the grass and laughing.
The King had taken a look at Noctis, lifted the small boy into his arms, and wept on his knees.
"Dad?" Noctis asked, shocked, and realized there was no reply coming soon when Regis just clutched him closer.
He was sat down later, and it was explained to him that he was the Chosen - he would be the King of Light when he was older. His father told him something about a prophecy and his duty, and Noctis nodded and said it was okay while Regis looked on, trembling.
From that day onward, Regis never cancelled a dinner, or a trip.
Noctis wouldn't know why for a long, long time.
He remembered a lot of pain, and watching red seep across the ground. Loud, monstrous screeching and the moon going behind the clouds.
Then Dad was there, all strong blue and silver light and vengeful countenance and beating back the daemon with sword after sword after sword.
And Noctis's eyes slipped closed because Dad was there, and Dad would even fight the Six to keep him safe, Noctis knew.
Starting school was nice, but everyone stared at him.
He knew why they stared at him, but he wished that they wouldn't.
And school meant being stared at for hours and hours and hours, and listening to giggling girls not brave enough to approach him and boys daring each other to try to be his friend.
Noctis's school days were filled with being an exhibit at a zoo, only he knew what was going on in addition to being powerless to stop it.
At least, until he 'met' Prompto, that is.
("That time in elementary school didn't count!")
Prompto was sunshine in a person, Noctis was convinced of it.
Gladio was loud and rough, but he could be gentle, too. Not the same gentleness as Ignis's near-motherly care, nor the gentleness as Prompto's constant sunny glow, but gentle in a strong way.
"C'mon, Prince," Gladio insisted, holding a hand out to Noctis where he lay on the floor of the training grounds, "back on your feet."
Noctis saw the way he handled Iris, and contrasted this with the way he menaced Noctis with a sword, and found himself in awe of the way Gladio had achieved a perfect balance.
Noctis fell asleep in class one morning after a long night of dealing with his princely duties and wished he could steal that balance for himself.
Noctis being busy with school and Regis being busy being King forced them apart more often than not.
Noctis grew to see the banquet hall, his father's study, and the Citadel kitchens as poisonous places. They were blackened with the knowledge of all Noctis would never do with his father, all the conversations the two of them would never have.
So Noctis petitioned his father to live in an apartment complex a few blocks away, for his own space and his own agency. He wanted independence, said the Prince in as Princely a tone he could manage to disguise the shake of his voice.
Regis allowed it after just five minutes of talking to his son.
Noctis smiled at his newfound freedom and hugged Regis for a brief moment before exiting the room with the excuse of furniture shopping.
In the hallway, Noctis leaned against the wall and wiped at his eyes.
He wished his dad had fought to keep him around, at least a little bit harder.
When he did see his dad, he seemed tired. More tired than someone of his age should be.
Noctis would pretend like the throne didn't loom above him as an imposing reminder of his father's declining health.
He would pretend that he didn't believe wearing the Crown would break his neck, or wearing the ring would break his soul.
"Walk tall, my son," Regis said to Noctis with a hand on his son's shoulder.
Regis watched Noctis make his way across the Citadel's circular courtyard in the bright afternoon sunlight for the last time and closed his eyes, mourning all the wasted time.
Watched his son be ferried somewhere Regis would be unable to follow him.
Noctis hadn't been there.
He hadn't been there when the signing went wrong.
He hadn't been there when Niflheim betrayed his father and murdered him. He hadn't been there when Insomnia was destroyed.
Instead, he saw images on TV of the streets smoldering, buildings falling, ancient stone littering pavement and ash falling from the sky.
And then, when Vyv asked the four of them to capture a shot of the city, Noctis went a step further than just taking a picture from the hill overlooking the bridge - he pulled himself to the top of the Wall with a few well-placed warps and sat on the dark stone a hundred feet in the air.
It had rained a lot since the fall of the city, so all the fires were out. Niflheim had decided that combing through the debris was no longer a necessity, and so had pulled troops out of the city and instead stood guard on the outside.
Insomnian bodies littered the streets like so much garbage, left behind by uncaring children after tearing down a pretend city. From up so high, Noctis couldn't see or smell the decomposition, though he trembled with the thought of it.
Seeing the result, it was almost as if Noctis had been there to see Insomnian citizens felled by smoke, by falling rubble, by gunshots. He pulled in a heavy breath and it was as if he could smell gas lines bursting and flooding the streets, hear glass breaking and cars crashing. Hear his father's last, gasping breath.
He pressed a hand to the tall, imposing, steadying stone and saw his home burn.
Later, he returned to Prompto with his camera, insisting that he couldn't get any good shots from up so high, and was the first to go to bed at camp that night, listening to Gladio and Ignis and Prompto quietly discuss how red his eyes had looked.
He was thirty when he saw the throne again.
He was thirty and he was twenty, and it had been nighttime for ten years and he hadn't been there for any of it.
But here he was, prepared - at long last - to take revenge for his home and his father and his friends.
The cause was sitting on the throne and mocking him, but Noctis refused to be talked down to from the seat.
Refused to be cowed by a coward.
"Off my chair, jester. The King sits there."
Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio had been there when Regis hadn't.
Noctis felt like he owed them so much more than he could give them. Bringing back the dawn for them simply wasn't enough, but he had nothing else that he could give.
"What can I say? You guys are the best."