WARNING: This is the first time I've felt the need to caution readers regarding one of my story's contents, as it deals very heavily with depression.
Unzipping the tent flap, Ignis climbed out with slow, precise movements to prevent waking the other three occupants before zipping it back up to keep out the pre-dawn chill. A moist mist clung to the treetops surrounding the swamp and roiled around the waterline; occasional large, fat water drops indicated yesterday's rain still retained a foothold in the valley and would turn fiercer as the day progressed.
Straightened from his cautious crouch, he wiggled his toes and let the water squelch up to cool the soles of his feet. The tent was always too hot for his liking but worse was the crowding. Instead of using the sleeping bags as they were intended, Gladio unzipped them, using two as bedding and two as comforters which allowed Ignis' three companions to sprawl like exhausted puppies at the end of the day.
Ignis unfolded one of the camp chairs, then went to the cooler and extracted a container of Ebony from their supply before stripping out of his long-sleeved Henley. Now bare-chested, he tucked the shirt into the cooler on top of the cans to keep it dry and sat down. While there was no carbonation in the drink, pulling its tab sounded loud and invasive to Ignis' ears. Rather than drinking though, he placed it on the ground and simply sat, looking out at Alstor Slough.
Everything looked so gray and Ignis felt his chest constrict as his imagination, just for a moment, took him forward to a time where the days stretched on like the landscape, an emotionless vacuum, frozen, like one of Prompto's black-and-white photographs. As quickly as the thought occurred, he tamped it down by thinking about the mundanities of his day: making breakfast, planning their travel route, seeing to the supplies and a dozen other tasks to help see the group to its ultimate destination. Absently, he took off one of his gloves, picked up the coffee and brought the can to his lips. He made a face at the first bitter sip and placed it back on the ground, then removed his other glove and rubbed his fingers, flexing their joints.
As he inspected his fingernails, he decided his first task after breakfast would be to re-assess their finances to budget for more caravan and hotel stays. The sleeping situation was becoming untenable, yet there was no reasonable way to raise the subject without the ensuing awkwardness that would inevitably follow from any remark he made. Gladio lay on his back and snored, Noctis slept on his stomach, drooling onto his pillow, but Prompto…
Ignis massaged his right palm with his left thumb. The prince's best friend's need for warmth resulted in unconscious, intimate contact while they slept. Unilateral behavior might have been curtailed by now, but it was only Ignis he clung to and never Noctis on his other side.
He took another swallow, shaking his head minutely at the taste that never improved, even after drinking it for years. In truth, he preferred tea. He appreciated the ritualistic nature of its preparation: measuring the leaves, the precise requirements for heating water to specific temperatures depending on the leaf, how long it was steeped to maximize the tea's aroma and flavor. However, his friends always bought coffee and he was indisposed to dissuade them. They seemed to enjoy searching for Ebony during their occasional shopping trips, ensuring he was well supplied for their long drives; the least Ignis could do was stomach the brew a few times a day. The caffeine impacted his ability to sleep – he was normally the last to bed and first to rise each day – and given the current situation, was at least one benefit of continuing the charade that he liked it.
He put the can down again and settled back into his chair, looking up at the sky. A droplet hit his forehead and he felt it trickle past his hairline and down his scalp. Too light to be night, too dark to be dawn, it was like a continuation of the land, gray and reaching to the horizon. Like the clouds above, his thoughts drifted before settling on a memory.
"Don't gawk, child." His aunt and uncle were escorting him through the Citadel to the room he would be staying in, after having presented him to King Regis and his young son. His aunt Estrith began repeating her lecture from the night before once the three were alone in the hallway.
Ignis pulled his gaze away from the large paintings they were passing and instead looked straight ahead at the expanse of patterned carpet. There was a lull in his aunt's monologue and recognizing the pause as expectation he answered, "Yes, ma'am."
"Don't be mawkish with the Prince. He'll likely get enough of that from his father. Hughor will be looking in on you as necessary to ensure you live up to our House's expectations."
"I will be severely disappointed if I encounter you gibbering nonsense at Noctis like a monkey," his uncle interjected.
The residence wasn't far and Hughor Scientia produced the key and unlocked the door. Ignis followed behind and Estrith was last, shutting the door behind her. The room was small and Ignis remembered feeling smaller still in the presence of his relatives in the compact space.
He hadn't been given permission to sit so Ignis remained standing. The two adults stared at him, before his uncle finally pinched the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes and shook his head. "It's a blessing from the Six you're a homely child, Ignis. There will always be," his aunt shuddered delicately at her husband's next two words, "unsavory individuals who hover around royalty like carrion feeders and attempt to curry favor. No one will ever look twice at you and be wary of any who do, for there's nothing you'll ever have or be that will interest them beyond your access to power."
Ignis shut his eyes to the colorless sky and listened to the world around him: leaves rustling, a night bird's occasional preek preek, the splashy ebb and flow of water around the gargantuan catoblepas grazing for water weeds in the slough's deeper ponds, a gentle susurrus from raindrops falling from tree branches to land on the grasses below. Duty first, even after the prince evolved into the ruler he was destined to be, but over the last few years, duty seemed to become a substitution for everything he enjoyed when he was younger.
"Were you… humming?" Prompto had asked him one day, months ago.
In truth, Ignis hadn't made any sort of noise and was, more likely, clearing his throat. He recalled his affection for singing though, and how he enjoyed it, even though his pitch was often off-key. He turned over the question in his head, confirmed that humming was something happy people did and that the circumstances indicated he should be happy at that moment. "I suppose I was."
Prompto had turned around, grabbed him by the arms and looked up at him. Eyes still shut, Ignis raised a hand and snapped his fingers. 'That's right.' They had been in Galdin Quey and privately, poetically, he used to compare Prompto's eyes to the clearest blue of sea water, an aquamarine plucked from travelogue magazine covers.
"Who are you, and what did you do with my Iggy?" the other man had demanded.
Once, that sort of offhand phrasing would have made him smile in earnest. Ignis would have entertained an optimistic, though brief, flight of fancy about a divergent future. A time or place when the prince's best friend saw something in him worthy of attention and affection, ignoring personality differences as drastic as the seasonal change from winter to spring and oblivious to Ignis' appearance. The shame over his mental indulgence could have come later. At the time, Ignis tried to tether the comment to an emotional response, but he found he couldn't push past vague boredom regarding the situation and his surroundings. He knew, though, that the expectation would be to smile and so he had, although the expression did not feel at home on his face and he had wondered then as he did now when Prompto took pictures of their group, if he was doing it correctly anymore.
No, the problem with the sleeping arrangement wasn't that he was repulsed or disgusted by it, although commenting on it openly might imply such an attitude. There would have been a time he would have secretly relished such closeness, although he would have preferred it to be intentional rather than reactionary.
In his late teens, he had struggled with an internal conflict between his duty and his personal desires. No one could have a greater priority in his life than the crown prince, something members of his House instilled in him since he was a child and placed as Noctis' retainer. So, after no small amount of inner turmoil, he had done his best to bury feelings like these, control his emotions to a paranoid degree and once they started to drift away it was almost a welcome respite. The things he disliked about himself no longer drilled like a jackhammer into his head every night when he laid down to sleep, nor was there an almost crippling terror of something happening to Noctis while he was under Ignis' care. The fear of failure, the taint it would bring to House Scientia, no longer weighed on him, as if the god Titan forewent holding up his immense burden. However, with their loss, went everything else. While there was no longer brutal self-loathing, neither was there joy. He no longer sang, nor read prose. Ever dutiful, he cooked and chauffeured and performed a hundred other day-to-day chores for the prince, even attending meetings so Noctis could enjoy some measure of normalcy as Ignis never could, but the pride he took in doing his job well diminished. His already small social circle dwindled as invitations were uniformly declined. His daily routine took on a monotonous sameness; weekends and holidays ceased to have any tangible meaning.
He ran a hand through his hair which was damp and soft enough to slick back against his skull, before drawing his gloves back on, meshing his fingers together to ensure the leather settled comfortably between each digit before snapping them closed.
The problem was that the apathy and detachment he lived with in Insomnia continued to adhere itself to him here, like a leech. His devotion to duty ensured there was no lapse in the quality of his care for the prince and – by extension – his other two companions although Gladio might be loath to admit it, but a pervasive scratch in the back of his mind nagged that something was deeply wrong if he was willing to reject Prompto's clinginess when a spark of hope nestled in his heart about him for so long. Not even his body reacted; there was no correlation between Prompto's breath on his neck, the other man's arm draped across his hip or hand splayed on his chest, holding Ignis close, beyond weight and the sensation of pressure on his skin.
He mined his soul for a dialogue path that would let his friends know he was troubled but there didn't seem to be an explanation that wouldn't disturb or worry them unnecessarily, when there were so many more immensely important concerns both immediate and far-flung.
Ignis continued to sit in the chair, hands in his lap, taking in his surroundings but not really seeing, even once the sky lightened to indicate the approach of dawn. In the wan light, the view didn't change. Everything remained gray, like a wasteland burned to char and cinders until only ashy shells remained as a testament to existence. His own skin, he noticed, was the same color. Fitting, he thought, that the deadness inside reflected without too.
Objectively, he knew that observation should frighten him. Instead, he stood, folded the chair neatly back up, went to the cooler, opened it and pulled his shirt back on. He disposed of the now empty coffee can in a small waste bag and began preparations for the group's morning repast, settling on an egg stir-fry he was certain could mask the flavor of Noctis' hated vegetables.
Nothing had changed when they arrived in Lestallum weeks later – Ignis had kept his council to himself – despite a staggering heatwave descending on Duscae which dogged them to the mountain town in Cleigne.
"The view of the Disc of Cauthess is said to be breathtaking." It was one of a hundred details about the city Ignis knew, joining hundreds of others about every other city, town and borough in Lucis.
"Picture time!" Prompto all but shouted and, when Ignis glanced over, looked as if he might leap out over the Regalia's door while the car was still moving and run the rest of the way to see if the claim was true.
"Settle down, tiger, let Iggy get us there and you can rubberneck to your heart's content." Gladio must have received the same impression as he leaned forward and reached out to set a hand on Prompto's shoulder to restrain him.
Traffic slowed the vehicles on the roadway to a slow but steady crawl, but a quick look in the car's rearview mirror showed Ignis that Noctis was as alert and eager as his best friend. "We can stay here for a few days, right? A shower would be great. Five showers would be great. I'm all," the prince curled a finger around the neck of his tank top, pulling it out and back rapidly enough for a self-made breeze, "sticky and gross."
"That's not all you are," growled Gladio, fanning a hand in front of his face.
The amiable banter continued, until the prince's bodyguard accused the two younger men of being tenderfeet, not being able to handle their nights roughing it in the wild. Prompto's response was to pull off one of his boots, twist around in his seat and stick his leg awkwardly between Noctis and Gladio, trying to disprove the claim while Gladio protested it wasn't meant literally and "By the Six, that's a smell I can taste, Prompto, put your shoe back on!" The prince just laughed, trying to shove his best friend's foot back into the front seat.
Thirty minutes later, they'd arrived and located a parking area. With the car stopped, blinker turned on to turn into the lot, Prompto took the opportunity to jump out. Noctis followed suit and Gladio followed, grumbling under his breath. It took Ignis several additional minutes to locate an open spot. Once parked, he raised the Regalia's roof, placed a sunshade on the dashboard and locked the car's doors.
He hadn't seen which way the trio went and expected he might need to request directions to the nearest scenic viewpoint from one of the locals when he spotted the three men. Ignis adjusted his glasses, pushing them back onto the bridge of his nose. There was someone with them, a fourth man and one Ignis recognized. He approached, catching the tail end of the conversation.
"You need only heed the call. Visit the Archaean and hear his plea. I can take you."
"We in?" Gladio asked out of the corner of his mouth as Ignis joined them.
"I don't know…" Noctis replied.
"We take a ride…" Prompto said.
"But watch our backs." Gladio added.
The hairs on Ignis' arms prickled. He smoothed his hands over the sleeves of his jacket to quell the sensation. "Fair enough."
Noctis voiced their decision and the expression on the man's face changed. 'He's not smiling,' Ignis thought although he knew that was the effect the other man was attempting to achieve. He wondered if the others saw it too, like a mask being raised at a fete. A few minutes later he provided his first name as they walked towards his car, confirming the suspicion Ignis had after their previous – seemingly chance – encounter. Ardyn Izunia, Chancellor of Niflheim.
Ignis had read his dossier, one of dozens the Lucian ruling house kept on their Imperial adversaries and made a vain attempt to catch Gladio's eye but the prince's bodyguard was too intent on watching both Ardyn and Noctis to notice.
"Allow me the honor of assigning your driver," the chancellor said, once they reached his car. He raised a hand, waggling a finger between the four companions. It came to rest on the prince. "I choose… you!"
Noctis snorted, and, rolling his eyes, looked at Ignis. "All yours, Ignis." The prince headed towards the Regalia, with Prompto trailing behind on his right side. Gladio had remained a few steps further back and once Noctis had walked past him, flanked him on the left.
Ignis hadn't yet moved to leave when the other man called out after the group, "Come now. Live a little! You know what they say… life's too short!"
Arms crossed, Ignis found himself saying, "They're wrong." He hadn't intended to speak but at his words the chancellor's eyes met his and it was like being pinned by a viper's hypnotic stare. Ignis found the rest of the words dragging themselves from his throat, pitched low, a whisper that he knew only the chancellor would hear. "It's so long." The utterance felt as if it had sucked all the air from his lungs and Ignis stood completely still, flayed by his confession.
Head tilted, the chancellor's expression changed again and this time Ignis knew the emotion was genuine. It was as if he'd heard the most salacious secret whispered in his ear by a lover. "Dear, dear. I stand corrected." Ardyn stepped forward, lacing his arm through Ignis' own, placed a hand on his bicep and turned them both towards his retreating companions, like they were couple on an evening stroll. As they walked, Ardyn leaned in closer and murmured, "Sometimes the only way to go is to just go on. Hmm?" The sound was like an affirmation to his own question. "Never fear. I shall contrive a reprieve for the prince's melancholy advisor. Yes, I can see it taking shape even now."
The chancellor pulled away from Ignis and quickened his step to catch up to Noctis and the others. "Come now, he always drives. Be a friend and let him rest for a change."
Ignis let him speak to Noctis and persuade him to ferry the group to their designated rendezvous. He rode in the car, sitting in the back seat, silently watching the scenery rush by. Because when he looked into Ardyn's eyes, mired behind a cleverly crafted subterfuge, Ignis saw something else – something which stayed his hand from going for his dagger and plunging it into the chancellor's neck.
Understanding.
Author's Note: I recently began playing FFXV. I received it a few weeks ago as a gift and I'm only through Chapter 8 (with 120 hours played, sidequests HEYO) and have been doing my best to avoid spoilers, although I know "bad things happen", some specifically because I've read several stories here to get a feel for the community's receptivity. I have not played Ignis' specific DLC yet. While my previous stories for other fandoms contain varying amounts of angst, I've never delved this deeply into something that's personally impacted me and tried to tie it up into a digestible bowl of fiction (weird food metaphor, blame Ignis). Any failures in handling the subject matter rest completely on my shoulders.
The inspiration for this story came from an episode of 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt'. The episode, (S02E05, 'Kimmy Gives Up!') contains a song called 'Just Go On' from a fictional Broadway play and its lyrics have stuck with me for a long time and are used, albeit sparingly, here. While I think the show's presentation was meant to be hopeful, the context can also go in a completely different, less positive direction. Originally, when I started thinking about writing about Ignis (and indirectly Prompto [because shipping]), it was more of a divergent storyline where Ignis willingly leaves with Ardyn (I just know this guy is going to be bad news even without anything more obvious right now for me in-game beyond the excellent voice acting) to protect the other three from a perceived threat. Several pages in though, it didn't feel right and so I scrapped it and started over and this is the result. I am unsure at this time whether or not the story is complete.
The universe and characters belongs to Square Enix. As a side note, by odd coincidence while trying to really "hear" Ardyn speaking, I wanted to make sure I was using the right words too and looked up 'melancholy' in the dictionary. I knew it loosely meant depression but I was surprised to discover that, archaically, it meant: the condition of having too much black bile, considered in ancient and medieval medicine to cause gloominess and depression. I thought the correlation between black blood and black bile was too overwhelming not to use and think Ardyn would appreciate the wordplay.
Thank you for taking the time to read it. I've done my best to proofread and check for errors (hurray for slowly reading aloud). If you're so inclined, please feel free to review; a critique is as valued as praise.