A/N: Hello everyone :) I'm pleased to introduce to you all my second fan fiction, based on final fantasy xv! I'm really into the game at the moment - like, I'll tell myself only one more hour and then, five hours later, there I am still doing the random side quests and having an absolute blast! It felt like I'd been waiting ages for this game to finally be released and I'm so glad that it's met and exceeded my expectations ^_^

Anyways, this fic is called "Another's Tale." I'm really excited to be writing this fanfic, especially since I enjoy writing my other one so much - even if I am a bit behind on updating, whoops :'D - and also because the game has just so much content that can be built upon, changed and shifted around to suit my own imaginations. This is a story about my own character, Olivia, intertwined with the story of Noctis and his friends which is told throughout the game. In saying that, obviously this fic will follow the plot of the game and also follow some of the side quests... it may even branch out to the anime that was released pre-game, who knows :) It will not directly reflect the gameplay - there's a new character, new stories to tell and it will definitely have my personal twist, according to how I would reimagine the game. In saying that, please be warned if you haven't played the entire game that some chapters may allude to spoilers and as I would like to not ruin the game for any of you, please proceed to the next chapter with caution. Thanks ^_-

Obviously, I do not own any of the characters except for Olivia (and maybe a few others later... we shall see); they belong to the wonderful creators of Final fantasy XV and I can't thank them enough :)

Now, Please enjoy xx

-AshTree13 xoxo

*edited 31/3/17

"The marks humans leave are too often scars."

- John Green, "The Fault In Our Stars" -

Prelude:

The weight against her back was still warm.

She could still smell the smoke, the lingering remains of a smouldering fire and the burning of flesh. It was an acrid scent that made her stomach heave; if she hadn't already emptied the contents of her stomach upon the stained earth. The blood on her skin - not her own, of that she was sure - had long since dried, crusting over her skin and in her hair and each time she blinked, the rusted flakes caught in her eyes, making them water and allowing for tears to slip down her cheeks. The tears cut through the grime coating her face and stung the cuts and bruises marred into her flesh. Her arms - pinned beneath the weight atop her smaller frame - felt numb and her tiny fingers dug into the bloodstained dirt, pulling at the thin blades of grass. Her legs… she doesn't dare move them, aware that if she tried the pain would be unbearable; she is certain that at least one of the bones was broken - to what extent, she isn't sure.

Her young, frazzled mind can't seem to comprehend the extent of her injuries, can't seem to distinguish what was real and what was not nor how much time had passed.

How long has she lain there?

How long had the anguished cries of those who had suffered quietened?

She herself had long since lost the use of her voice, screaming into the night along with the others until her voice could no longer hold, until the tears had almost dried up. What good had it done? There was no one for miles, no one travelling the long roads by nightfall because of the dangers it possessed... no one would come to help them, no one would come to save them because doing so would mean risking their own lives.

She didn't blame them.

Not anymore.

With a shaky breath, she turns her head to the side - as far as she can manage with the weight still pressing down upon her - and studies the night sky, littered with glowing stars and a gleaming, pale moon. She smiles an almost bitter smile, because the sight is as beautiful as it would've been from the safety of her home, from the warm embrace of her parents arms.

The world can be cruel but, like her mother always told her, the world could also be kind.

"Search the area!"

The voice startles her into tears - surprisingly, for she was sure that she had no tears left. Unable to wipe them away, she lets them fall and pays them no mind, instead attempting to peer through the gloom for the source of the voice; for her potential saviour. Her hearts feels as if it were beating a mile a minute, her tiny body shakes, desperate to be free from the weight keeping her trapped in the never-ending nightmare before her.

What was the point though? She knows that no good will come from hoping.

She cannot call out, she cannot make them hear her. Even when she tries, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air, no sound comes out from her throat except a few strangled gasps and squeaks. What chance then, does she have? How will they find her amongst the bullet-riddled bodies and the scattered, distorted wreckage of cars burned and blackened by flames? How will they find her when she knows that she is small, buried beneath another, hidden behind the smouldering wreckage of the car that had taken her to this nightmare when it had meant to take her to safety?

One - a new voice - seems to confirm her fears: "Sir... there doesn't-"

"I don't care how hopeless it seems," the first voice yells, the deep and rough tone echoing throughout the night, "I don't give a damn if you think it's not worth searching every nook and cranny, you will comb through every inch of this wreckage until I am satisfied. There has to be survivors... they can't have butchered everybody."

"But sir-"

"No buts!" The voice roars and there is the unmistakable clang of someone hitting something metal, the sound of a light object flying momentarily through the air before hitting the ground and coming to a stop. She envisions the helmet of an Imperial solider, prehaps one of the few that were wrecked in the attack, rusted over with dried blood and dented further from both its victims strikes and that of the stranger who was just a few feet away.

The thought almost has her gagging.

Maybe it was a piece of one of the cars? A twisted scrap of metal, a barely distinguishable fragment maybe.

No... that seemed to only make her feel worse.

Nonetheless, they were close - whoever they were.

So close but still so far.

How could they find her? The men who had slaughtered everyone hadn't, what made this group of strangers think they could?

And yet despite the apparent futility of it all, somehow the mysterious man managed to do just that.

In a few moments that passed by in the blink of an eye, she found herself looking up into kind, weathered blue eyes.

The corners of his mouth seemed to pull down as he regarded her: a tiny child crushed beneath the still warm body of her mother, her back pressed against her mothers' chest, the woman arms securing her there. It was incredibly telling of the womans' final moments, before she too was shot down by the legion of soldiers who had massacred everyone in the vicinity.

Everyone.

Except for the little girl... except for her.

She stares up at him as he silently inspects the corpse atop her, noting the flicker of recognition in his eyes as he gazes upon her mother. Because even in death with her back covered in a thin, dried layer of blood and with bullet holes glaring up at him through the fabric of her white blouse, the woman was as beautiful as the stranger recalled. Her unseeing eyes were still the same vibrant blue all the members of her family seemed to share, and her hair which was twisted in what might have been a french braid, was still the same silver-blonde beneath the crusted blood. Her ivory skin, marred by bruises and covered with dirt, was otherwise flawless and her heart shaped face, with her high cheekbones and full lips, still made his heart skip a beat or two.

Yes, even in death Georgiana de Claremont was still a picture of beauty.

However, in that same thought, the stranger comes to the realisation that if she is here - if her child is by her side - then her husband would not be far, because in the nine years since they had wed, they had not left each others side for more than a day. It had seemed, when the stranger had witnessed the two lovers in action, that the de Claremont's seemed to have loved each other more and more with each passing day; something that had only seemed to grow with the birth of their daughter. Their love and their strength, had been obvious in the way the two would look at one another when they believed no one was watching, in the way that they had loved their only child, in the way that whenever Matthew de Claremont had travelled for work, Georgiana would often follow because she could not bear to part from his side. And the stranger does find him, after a few passing moments of careful observation; he lies spread-eagle, with both his legs bent at awkward angles - obviously broken - and his lean body riddled with bullets, the back of his skull caved in from the blunt force of a strike. Mathew de Claremont - a man the stranger had once called a comrade, a man he had once called a friend - was very much dead and the realisation makes the stranger want to shout in frustration. Yet, after running his fingers through his short hair and aiming a hard punch at the distorted car beside Georgiana and her child, he decides against it, already aware that his presence - and the presence of his men - was attracting more attention than what was necessary.

If the daemons made an appearance, he wasn't sure if he could fight them off and protect the weeping child before him.

She was now the priority.

Slowly, the stranger moves closer to her and gently - after he was sure that she would not cry out - lifts the deceased woman from her body, lying her atop the burned grass and folding her across her stomach. He then presses his fingers to each eyes, gently closing them so that Georgiana de Claremont at least appeared to have died in peace; she looked as if she were merely asleep, to the young girl, dreaming away the horrors of their reality.

"It's ok," the stranger murmurs, inching closer to her in such a manner that was reminiscent of hunter trying not to startle his prey, "it's going to be ok."

She looks up at him and nods her head, feeling her body ache and tremble as feeling returned to her limbs.

With a relieved smile, he crouches down so he is face to face with the young girl and continues: "My name is Cor Leonis... and you wouldn't happen to be Olivia, would you?"

Silence and then: "yes."

Her voice was hoarse, barely above that of a whisper. Cor couldn't help but wonder at how many hours had she lain there, screaming for help, crying out for her parents until her voice no longer had the strength to continue. It was a miracle that they had been able to find her at all; it was the overturn car - a smouldering pile of steel now - and the overall carnage that had drawn Cor to that specific part of the wreck... If he hadn't spotted Georgiana - a familiar face amongst all the death and destruction - what would she have done? Who would have come to her aid?

Luck had kept her alive this long, but luck always ran out.

"Can you walk?"

A shake of her head: no.

"Can I pick you up?"

This time, a nod.

Relieved, he gently scoops her tiny body into his arms, cringing when she flinches as his fingers graze against her legs and hook under her knees. It was clear that something was broken, how badly he couldn't tell but bad enough that she hadn't the strength to stand on her own. She loops her bruised, bloodied arms around his neck and sniffs, letting her tears roll down her cheeks in a steady, consistent stream but as she does not move to wipe them away, he wonder if prehaps she simply hadn't noticed that she was crying. He begins to walk away, back towards his men who look to him with forlorn gazes, their own search coming up empty.

But after a few steps, something makes him stop and look back.

A feeling? A sense of foreboding? A warning? A premonition?

He's not sure... and he can't afford to waste anymore time attempting to figure it out.

With all that had been happening over the past month, he could risk lingering any longer than he already had.

"Move out," Cor yells eventually, looking away from what could very well be a picture of Hell on earth.

And this time, he does not look back.

0-0-0-0-0-0

There was something familiar about the girl before him.

Maybe it was the hair - that shade of blonde - that made him think of Lunafreya but this girl wasn't her... it couldn't be, of that he was sure.

Nonetheless, the young prince studied the girl as she lay in her hospital bed, her chest rising and falling with each soft breath, her fair eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks which were ashen in colour. There were shadows present under her eyes despite the days of unending rest and his blue eyes traced the pattern of bandages covering her arms, her head and what he could see of her torso, stark white against her greying skin before following the tubes and cables that connected her to a blinking, beeping machine; a machine that was supposedly helping to keep her alive.

She looked to be about his age and like him, had lost her mother and the similarities didn't end there. Her unending sleep - not quite a coma, according to the doctors, just pure exhaustion - was the result of what the Marshal and his father had told him was a terrible accident. Just like him; although, not as detrimental to her health as his accident had been to his. The way they had said 'terrible accident' had him conjuring up faint memories of his own. Unlike him though, she had lost her father too... and she had seen it all unfold before her very eyes. In a matter of seconds, the girl had become an orphan and another victim of the Imperial Army; an attack that was just one in a string of violent outbursts since the fall of Tenebrae.

No matter how much his father and the servants and everyone tried to hide it from him, the Imperial Army was only causing more devestation and Tenebrae had simply been the beginning; the girl before him was proof of that.

"Who are you?"

Startled, he nearly fell off his chair when he heard the soft, melodic voice speak up from beside him.

Had that been her?

When he had managed to regain his balance, he looked over to the hospital bed and found himself looking into a pair of jade green eyes, made even more luminous by the dark shadows beneath. The girl had managed to pull herself upright, leaning back against a pillow and the metal frame of the narrow bed, her heart-shaped, ashen face angled towards his in such a way that the light of the setting sun - just peaking through the curtains of the window - hit her silver-blonde hair in such a way that it created a kind of halo. Although she looked as if she were at death's door, there was still an almost angelic glow to her under that light - it was a kind of glow that again reminded him of Luna.

She was awake... she was awake! Now what did he do? Did he tell a doctor? Grab the Marshal? His Father? Who!?

"Who are you?" she repeats in a voice that - although hoarse - sounds sweet and lilting, as if she were singing. Her tiny hands clutch at the crisp white sheets, a flash of pain making its way over her face as she shifts her weight. "And where am I?"

"Insomnia," the prince replies, leaning over to help the girl back against the headboard, "inside the Citadel. They brought you in here after your surgery at the hospital."

"Hospital? Surgery?"

"They had to check that you were ok... I think they said something about your legs being really bad?"

Both of them seem to glance at her prone legs, hidden beneath the sheets.

"Anyways..." the boy says, immediately looking away when she catches him staring, "after that, they took you back here to sleep and recover and hooked you up to all those tubes and things... you should try to relax."

She gives a small nod, some of the tension leaving her small body at his suggestion. But after a few passing moments, she catches his gaze once more.

"Did you say Insomnia?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"You're not from here, are you?" The prince asks, curious.

Slowly, the girl shakes her head. "I'm from Tenebrae," she says slowly, "but my dad was born here in Insomnia."

"So why'd you live in Tenebrae? Why not here?"

"My mum," the girls explains, with a faraway look in her eyes, "she's - I mean... she was..." biting her lip, she studies her bandages, a finger tracing over the layers of white gauze covering the expanse of her skin. Swallowing thickly, she blinks back tears and continues: "my dad... after he married mum, he became an emissary between Tenebrae and Lucis... I'm not exactly sure what that is and daddy didn't like to talk about work when he was at home so..."

"Did you see it?"

"See what?"

Noctis pauses. Should he ask?

In the end, curiosity won him over: "Did you see Tenebrae fall?"

"No," the girls answers softly, her gaze faraway, "we weren't in Tenebrae at the time... I heard it was bad, that they attacked the royal family... the queen was killed but the media reported it as a fire, related accident; they lied."

"Yeah," Noctis replies, recalling how, in a mere instant, the hall of Tenebrae was set ablaze and the world around him seem to erupt into a mixture of fire and blood and tears and screams. He still saw Luna's face in his dreams, watching as his father carried him to safely until she was lost from his view, swarmed by Niflheim soldiers.

They had told him she was ok.

He didn't believe any of it.

"Did you see it?"

He almost misses it; she had spoken so softly. But as he dragged away from his own nightmares, he caught her inquisitive, pitying gaze and knew he hadn't misheard.

"Yeah," he answers, "yeah... I saw it all."

"Why were you there?"

"Because I had to be..."

"But why?"

"Because it was the only place I could go," Noctis explains.

"That's not very-"

"It's the only answer I can give," he says, "I'm not entirely sure how I ended up there anyways..."

"Oh."

Silence falls between them.

"Umm... do you by chance know a girl called Lunafreya?" the prince asks in an effort to break through the awkward pause and because he really was curious, especially since she was from Tenebrae. Maybe he could tell her something the other hadn't, maybe she had seen Luna recently and maybe she could tell him that his friend was going to be ok, surrounded by her enemies.

At first, she seems almost startled by the question and somewhat guarded. But then the girl nods and smiles a soft, tiny smile - a small smile but it was a smile all the same - and her entire face seems to lit up from within, her green eyes twinkling: "She's my... well... lets just say she's my friend."

"She's my friend too."

"Oh," biting her lip, she looked him up and down, then shrugged her tiny shoulders and widened her smile, "then I guess you're not so bad."

"Hey!"

She giggles at his indignation, covering her rosy lips with her tiny, bandaged hands as she did.

"That's the first time you've laughed," the prince notes with a small smile of his own.

"Well... you were funny."

"I'm glad you find me amusing," the prince replies dryly which only causes her to erupt into further giggles.

After the laughter has subsided, the girl tilts her head to one side and asks, "why are you here?"

"My dad and Marsh- ah - I mean, Cor - you remember him right? - said that you're going to need a friend... Since you can't go back to Tenebrae."

Her face fell at that but after a moment, brightened considerably. Shyly, she plays with a strand of her golden hair and, looking away asks, "so... Are you my friend?"

"Well," teasingly, the prince pretends to consider it but at her crestfallen look, he can't keep up the charade and with a laugh, holds out his pinky, "of course I am... and I always will be, pinky swear."

"Pinky... Swear?" She asks, clearly confused.

"You've never pinky swore?" She shakes her head, so he leans forward and links their pinkies together himself. Sitting up proudly, he shakes their pinkies together, and in a sing-song voice says: "it goes like this: I pinky swear that we'll always be friends and that I'll always be by your side... if I lie, I shall swallow a thousand needles and die."

"That's terrible!"

He laughs and, with their pinkies still locked together, leans forward, bumping his forehead against hers, "but it works. So... Do you promise."

"I promise," she agrees with a smile, bumping her forehead against his and after a moment, she lifts her head, "I'm Olivia, by the way. What's your name?"

Letting go of her pinky, the prince extends Olivia a hand and grins, pushing back his black hair, blue eyes flashing with a kind of excitement he had not felt in a long while.

"The name's Noctis... But you, Olivia, can call me Noct."