Specs didn't show up to wake him up in time for school.
That was unusual enough, but Noct didn't have time to dwell on it. He had, of course, slept through all his alarms but the last one, and woke up literally ten minutes before he had to leave. He ran around his apartment, trying to brush his teeth and pull on his pants and find his bag at the same time, and only managed the fleeting thought that Specs was never going to live this down.
He begged a ride off one of the Crownsguard people stationed in his building and burst into class with barely three minutes to spare, panting, disheveled, and annoyed. The teacher tsked at him, he didn't get a chance to talk to Prompto, and he had, of course, left his homework back home, on the coffee table.
Finally, the class was over; Noct was dialing Ignis before the class bell rang, ready to deliver something really scathing.
Specs' phone was off.
The world snapped into immediate, nauseating clarity. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, heavy and hollow. Specs' phone was never off, not for Noct: he charged it religiously, carried a couple of spare batteries on him just in case, and always, always, always picked up when Noct called, no matter where he was or what he was doing. A world where this wasn't true just wouldn't work in the way Noct knew.
He waved Prompto off, found a quiet corner to fold himself into, and dialed a number he knew only to use in case of emergencies. It represented a compromise: he didn't call unless it was absolutely necessary, but when he did, it got picked up regardless of what its owner was doing.
For a queasy moment, he was terrified that this line wouldn't work either, that something essential had changed and broken while he was asleep - but the familiar voice answered him on a second ring.
"Noct? What's wrong?"
"Dad," he said, and had to lick his dry lips to continue. "Something's happened to Ignis. He wasn't there this morning, and his phone - his phone is off. Something's wrong."
His dad paused like maybe he wanted to tell Noct not to overreact, but this was their emergency phone line, and it had different rules.
"Wait a second," Dad said, and Noct heard him speak to somebody, probably Clarus. "Wasn't Gladio having a meeting with Ignis this morning? Can you ask him for me where they are?"
A pause; he heard some rustling on the other end of the line. Prompto was hovering nearby, expression soft and uncertain. Noct squeezed his eyes shut and wished Gladio to pick up with all his might, and for Ignis to be with him, and - there were more noises, indistinct chatter, the door slammed, letting somebody in; a phone rang.
"Noct," Dad said, and Noct jumped. His tone wasn't all that different, but Noct felt the tiny hairs on his arms rise. "Stay where you are, Kingsglaive will pick you up soon. Seems like we have a situation."
He spent the ride jittering with nerves and full of questions that the glaives assigned to pick him up, ones with unfamiliar faces, couldn't answer. There were two of them, though, one to drive and one to sit next to him, her magic humming with readiness, and that alone told him it wasn't just a question of Gladio and Ignis getting improbably drunk together somewhere and receiving the lecture of their lives from Dad and Clarus right now, no matter how much he wanted it to be so.
He tore out of the car almost before it stopped and ran through the Citadel, the harried Glaives hot on his heels. He burst into Dad's study, usually a solemn, quiet place, and found it buzzing with activity. There were a couple of techs with their workstations spread out; Clarus was glowering over the shoulder of one of them, an aggrieved woman with Galahdian braids, who was squinting at her screens. The guards at the door were doubled. Dad was talking quietly with Cor, rubbing his bad knee absentmindedly.
Noct's stomach went tight at the sight. "Dad," he said, and cringed when everybody in the room looked at him. "What's going on?"
"Noct," Dad said, and his smile felt wrong, wrong, wrong. "Come in and take a seat."
"Dad?"
Cor answered instead of Dad. "We can't locate either Ignis or Gladio. They were supposed to have a meeting early this morning, to discuss your schedule; we're still trying to track where exactly it was, if it happened at all, and we don't know where they are now. Neither of their phones is online."
"Holy shit," Noct said, and nobody bothered to chide him for language. Ignis would have, he thought wildly, Ignis would chide him for language and remind him not to slump if they were in the middle of an apocalypse. Ignis - Ignis couldn't be located. Ignis and Gladio, Gods.
HIs legs refused to hold him up; he managed to turn the fall into a mostly controlled descent onto the nearest chair. "Are they - "
"I'm afraid," Dad said gently, implacably, "that we have to assume foul play for now. You're going to stay here until the situation is resolved, where the security is easier to manage."
Until the situation is resolved: until they were found, of course. Found and rescued and - or until their bodies were found, he thought, and hated himself deeply for the thought, but couldn't chase it away. Bodies, discarded somewhere, twisted and ruined; he rubbed his fingers unthinkingly, trying to rub phantom blood away. Marisha's blood, covering him while he cowered under her dying body, and that, and that. That was what happened when people served him. When a situation arose.
He bit his tongue, furiously, and focused on the bright pinprick of pain, made the darkness and the stench of blood go away. They couldn't - he refused to think they were dead. They were strong, and they were his, and they were alive, somewhere, and they just needed to be found. There was no other option.
"Your Highness," Cor said, quietly, "it would really help us to have at least a beginning point for the search. There's a confirmed meeting in Scientia's schedule, but no address and they clearly didn't meet in the Citadel. Do you know anything?"
"No," he said, miserably. "It was - Gladio never would tell me about the place, so I wouldn't tip Specs - Ignis - off."
Clarus pivoted away from the poor tech, focusing on him. "Tip Scientia off about what?"
Noct squirmed and then decided that Gladio could deal with the lecture at the price of being found and available for it. "He, uh. They had to have those meetings, and he was trying to rile Ignis up - like, not in a mean way, it was a joke - I mean, Iggy figured it out pretty quick, it was like a game of chicken - um."
"Rile him up how," Cor asked, and he was leaning in, looking at Noct intently. "What did it have to do with a meeting place?"
"He, uh. He would pick out really trashy places to meet and eat? Like, cheap and weird and dingy. So Iggy would get angry."
(Astrals, but Ignis did: Noct was designated something of a neutral ground in their cold war, early on, and so he would get Gladio crowing about his latest picks in one ear and Ignis bitching about the latest horrors he was forced to endure in the other, while to each other's faces they pretended that nothing was wrong. He thought it was hysterical, at the time, and now he wished he'd made Gladio send him a goddamn signed itinerary.)
"I don't know what he picked this time," Noct said, heavy with disappointment. "I don't - wait, he said something about noodles? Ramen?"
"It's a start," Cor said, and nodded at the tech woman, who started typing furiously. "That will help, Your Highness, thank you."
It didn't feel very helpful to Noct, but he nodded anyway.
Cor went over to join Clarus in hovering over the techs, leaving Dad to sit alone. He looked - old, Noctis thought and veered sharply away from the thought. It was intolerable on the best of days, and right now - no.
The room was buzzing with tension, with the low voices of the techs and Glaives, reports and questions. He sat as quietly as he could, trying not to fidget, because he had to be strong, right? He wasn't a kid, he had to - and there was this phantom, flaking blood on the tips of his fingers again, and he gave up and got up, crossed the room with jerky, shaky steps, and sat down next to his father.
"Noct," Dad said, in that needs-must voice of his Noct passionately hated, and Noct shook his head.
"No," he said, "no, okay, just. Dad. Tell me it's going to be okay."
"Everything possible is going to be done, but…"
"No," Noct said again, and Dad patted his hands, awkwardly.
"It's going to be okay," he said, and Noct swallowed. "They're bright and strong young men, and they won't give up easily, and we will find them."
"I don't," Noct said, and had to stop and begin again. "I don't want them to leave. Dad. Everybody leaves."
"I'm sure they will do their best to return to you, Noctis," Dad said. Noct leaned against his shoulder, and did his best to believe him.
Noct kept expecting one of the techs to say a-ha!, to find some clue, like on the trashy cop dramas Prompto was fond of, but there were, apparently, a lot of dingy noodle joints in Insomnia, and none of them came with a helpful "Ignis and Gladio were there" plaque on the front.
He sat by his Dad for as long as he could, until Dad said, sharply, "Clarus, stop hovering and let them do their job," and beckoned Clarus over. Clarus' face was - Noct looked at it and slunk away, feeling small and ashamed, because until that moment he just didn't think, didn't remember that Clarus was waiting for them to find his son. His son, who probably was taken because of Noct.
He looked around and realized with another wrench of self-disgust, that the quiet, sharp-faced man sitting by himself by the far wall was Ignis' uncle. Iggy never talked about him much, because Iggy never talked about himself much, but he said once they had a 'cordial' relationship, whatever that meant in Ignis terms, and he had to be freaked out, too.
He didn't - he didn't think. Gladio and Ignis were his, and he just - he didn't think.
He moved to the far wall and folded himself up in a tight ball on one of the chairs - if Ignis got himself kidnapped, he could deal with Noct putting his feet on Citadel furniture - and tried to be patient.
He fell asleep at some point, drifted off into a tense grey twilight that took the quiet busy noises of the room and stitched them into an uneasy tapestry of dreams. They found them, then they didn't - you need to look at the bodies, somebody told him insistently, and he didn't, he didn't want to - then Ignis was there, and Noct unfolded towards him gratefully, wanting him to say that it was all one long prank, a mistake, and Ignis smiled at him with just the half of his mouth, because the entire right side of his face was gone, mashed into a mess of blood and bone. Gladio kept bitching about his ruined tattoo: the eye of the bird curling over his shoulder was a ragged bloody hole. "Noct," Dad said, "you know why this had to happen," and Ignis kept smiling at him, unheeding of the blood and brain matter that drenched his shirt collar, and Gladio said, "Yeah, Princess, you do," and his fingers closed on Noct's shoulder - Noct could see the rest of the room through the bird's yawning eye, and he couldn't unstick his jaw, couldn't tell him - couldn't tell them - his shoulder burned under Gladio's merciless grasp, and it wouldn't stop and wouldn't stop and wouldn't -
"Noct," Dad said sharply, and Noct gasped as the dream dissolved. "Wake up, we have something."
He uncurled and bit down his groan; his back was killing him, and his head felt fuzzy and slimy at once. He shook it, and scanned the room in a quick, compulsive sweep of his eyes, halfway afraid to find the revenants from his dream still lurking in the corners.
They weren't; he shook his head again, made himself do the careful stretches Gladio had painstakingly beaten into him, unlock his spine vertebra by vertebra. Dad's aide was politely shaking Ignis' uncle, who somehow managed to sleep with his back straight and his mouth closed, awake.
"Dad," Noct said, and closed his mouth. He thought his Dad wouldn't - he would say the bodies, Noct knew, he would say it straight and expect Noct to deal with it properly. "What? What did they find?"
"They were caught on camera when leaving the location in lower Insomnia, this morning. The video quality is poor, but it looks like they'd been drugged; we could see them both collapsing, and then three men taking them away."
Noct went over to the tech's screens so he could see it for himself, a grainy, scratchy video loop. Iggy and Gladio leaving the doors, Ignis walking ahead, placing his steps gingerly on the garbage-littered ground, and Gladio behind him, catching up - and then Ignis staggered, and Gladio fell to his knees - Ignis slid down the wall and Gladio fell, face down on the dirty pavement.
And then three men, their backs to the camera, briskly entering the small dank alley - one of them picked Iggy up by his collar, briskly and without care, dragged him up, and Noct leaned towards the screen, clenching his fists because nobody - nobody had any right -
The video skipped and looped to the beginning. This happened hours ago; whoever those people were, Noct could do nothing about it, about the nonchalant way they manhandled Ignis and Gladio up, like they were things and not people, like they were allowed. Noct's teeth ached, he gritted them so hard.
"It was a private camera," Cor said, calmly. "That's probably why the assailants overlooked it. Every other camera in the vicinity was disabled. Our people are on the scene now, questioning the cafe owner and neighbors, and trying to find some leads."
"At least we know they've been taken, not disposed of," Clarus said; Noct glanced at him and then away.
"Has there been a ransom demand? Any attempt at communication?"
The quiet, careful voice startled him; it was Iggy's uncle, standing now behind Cor's shoulder.
"No," Cor said. "Nothing so far. Whoever took them must've done so for a different purpose."
Noct shivered. He knew he was allowed to be sheltered, so far, from the war they were fighting; but being permitted not to think about it was not the same as not thinking about it. "A purpose" was only marginally better than "no purpose"; somewhere out there, Gladio and Ignis were helpless, and in the hands of people who meant them harm.
He needed to do something; he wanted so badly to stomp his feet and demand to be allowed on the scene, to relieve the awful tension in the back of his neck by banging on doors with the investigators and shaking the answers out of people. But he knew without having to ask it would be selfish, that he would be in the way.
He wondered if that was how Dad felt, all the time; Dad, who once fought like no one in the land, Dad from the old photos, grinning at the camera with his friends by his side, over the bodies of slain monsters. Dad who sat in Insomnia now, sending his Glaives out to die while the Wall ate him alive.
He turned away from the video, swallowing harshly: he didn't want to watch it anymore. He went over to Dad, instead, and leaned against his shoulder in a way he hadn't let himself for a long, long time; and Dad, after a startled glance at him, hugged his shoulders.
They waited.
Cor gave them the reports from his people on the scene: a whole lot of nothing at first - it was too early, none of the neighbors were awake to see anything.
The restaurant's owner was taken into custody, but swore up and down he didn't see or know anything. He remembered Ignis and Gladio - they came in, ordered food, had a conversation, paid their bill and left. Nobody but them had been in the restaurant at the time, and nobody followed them. The place was tiny and cramped, a single room under the owner's apartment, and in the afternoon the owner's nephew came to help out, but in the morning he was there alone to take orders, cook and serve the food.
"Something did happen to them in there," Cor said, "because they both went down in the alley before the kidnappers appeared on the scene. Either he put something in their food or let somebody do it, but we need time to get it out of him."
Finally, the Glaives hit paydirt - a curious grandmother in one of the houses further down the road, who was woken up by a car backfiring right under her windows and looked out to see who was driving so early. She saw the vehicle that must have been the one taking Ignis and Gladio away - a grey van with an advertising logo on its side - and miraculously, managed to retain part of its number.
It wasn't a lot, but it was something: the tech people in the room bent over their keyboards, trying to get the glimpse of the van on the street cameras, to reconstruct its route.
Cor left to question the restaurant owner himself. Clarus sat by Dad's side, clenching and unclenching his fingers. Noct went back to his chair, next to Ignis' uncle, who was sitting straight-backed and staring fixedly ahead.
Useless apologies bubbled in his throat and wouldn't come out. It was because of him; but then pretty much everything that ever happened to Gladio and Ignis was because of him, and both Clarus and Ignis' uncle (Gods, he had to learn the man's name; he swore to himself he'd make Specs introduce them if - when - when Specs was safely back) had to know that; would probably be offended by his apologies.
Everybody around him lived and breathed service. He always knew that, had got used to it without thinking about it much. But he was discovering that it was one thing to be frustrated by this loyalty when it came in the form of Ignis fussing over protocol or Gladio kicking his ass in training, and another when it meant he could lose them like this.
He suddenly realized, with a feeling of dull horror, that if they were lost, he wouldn't even be left alone to grieve. They'd find him another Shield - Six, they'd probably sic Iris on him, Iris who wouldn't even hate him for getting her big brother killed - and another advisor, somebody smart and responsible and sharp, somebody who would not be Ignis, who would run his life without making it bearable, who never sneaked out to the Citadel roof with him to show him constellations, who never laughed at his own jokes and learned to bake to cheer Noct up. Some stranger who he won't be permitted to resent.
Several hours later, Cor came back and went straight to Dad and Clarus, his mouth a tight irate line.
"Sire," he said quietly, and Noct strained his ears to catch his report. "The restaurant owner was called by an unknown man several minutes after Scientia and Amicitia went in. He was told that his family, in the apartment above, very held hostage and threatened, unless he he did as the perpetrators wanted. He had been told to go to the door where a man gave him the drugs to put into the food. He was warned not to tell anybody and he was too scared to disobey; he didn't know who our people were. The man was masked and he didn't see his face, but," and Cor paused, grimacing, "he swears the man on the phone was an Insomnian. With a 'posh accent', even."
Noct bit his lip not to swear out loud. This didn't mean it couldn't be the Empire, working with a local intermediary, but -
A phone rang, cheerfully loud and out of place, making everybody in the room jump. He saw Clarus, still frowning at Cor's news, fish his phone out of his pocket, and fleetingly felt sorry for whoever was on the other side of the line.
"Who's that?" Clarus barked into the phone, and then paused; his face spasmed. "Son," he said. "Gladio. Gladio!"
Everybody stared. Cor shook himself off first, sharply ordering the tech to track the signal.
"Gladio," Clarus said again, listening intently, and shook his phone in a weirdly helpless gesture. "He's not answering. I can hear him breathing, but nothing else."
"We're getting the location. As long as the phone stays on…"
It felt like the whole room held their breath; except for the frantic activity of the tech people, everybody was silent, looking at Clarus, whose fingers were white on the phone. Noct clutched at the handles of his chair, willing himself to stay still.
"Sir," the tech said to Cor, finally, "we've got it - it's Lord Acciaio's estate, in the Ostiente district."
Cor was already giving out orders, Glaives jumping to attention. "Your Majesty, may I?"
"Go," Dad said. "Clarus?"
Clarus made a jerky, aborted motion towards him. "My duty…"
"We're in the middle of the Citadel, under heavy guard. Go bring the children home, Clarus."
Noct couldn't sit still anymore. He surged to his feet, towards Dad, ready to plead - he had to, he had to see, he had to know if Gladio - and Ignis -
Dad turned to look at him, and the gentleness in his face was unbearable. "Noctis. If you go, the priority of everybody on the scene will be your wellbeing, not the rescue. Are you going to risk that?"
Noct drew his fingernails into his palms. Six damn Dad's teaching moments, Six damn his title, Six damn everything. He shook his head; his eyes burned. Cor and Clarus and the Glaives were already filing out of the room.
"We'll go to them the moment they're brought back. Hold on for just a little longer, son."
Noct shook his hand off and went back to his chair.
"Your Highness," Ignis' uncle said quietly, startling him, scalding him with shame anew. He had, at least, some fighting training; there had never been any question of this man going into the potentially hostile situation. "Thank you for worrying so much. Let's keep wait together, shall we?"
Noct nodded, miserably.
He bit his nails down to the quick when Dad finally got a phone call. Dad's face was unreadable; he listened, said yes a couple of times, and this can be done at the Citadel, and good job. Finally he disconnected the call and went over to them; Noct thought he was limping heavier than usual.
Noct surged up. Ignis' uncle got up as well, and for the first time during the day he looked like his professional calm had cracked, showing the worry and fear underneath. "Sire?"
"Noct, Ignatius. Our team got them. They're both alive."
The phrase begged to have "and well" appended, but Dad didn't say it.
"Ignatius, I'm afraid Ignis is in a rather rough shape. They're being brought back to the Citadel; we'll give the medical wing orders to prepare to treat him. I think right now it would be safer than the city hospital."
The walls of the room suddenly wavered in front of Noct's eyes; he stared at the whorls and ridges of their marble, willing them back into place. His ears were faintly ringing.
"Is he?..."
"He's alive," Dad said gently. "It's going to be all right."
Noct said, without recognizing his own voice, "Gladio?"
"As far as I understand, he has some minor injuries and he's been treated with healing potions on the scene. He's out of any danger. You'll see them both soon."
He dropped his hand on Noct's shoulder and held it there; for a moment it seemed like he wanted to say more. Then he turned away, and beckoned his aide to him; Noct heard the words trauma team and orthopedic surgeon and had to stare at the wall some more. With how paranoid the Glaives on the guard had to be feeling right now, somebody was bound to follow him to the bathroom and raise a fuss if he gave in to the urge to puke, and he couldn't risk anything disrupting his chance to see Gladio and Ignis.
Gods. He tried to imagine what injuries could preclude the use of magic healing and need surgery - the possibilities were plenty, and the Citadel had a dedicated medical wing despite Dad's magic - and then he tried to imagine those injuries in conjunction with Specs, Specs who ate dinner with him last night and went mercilessly through his history essay and then let Noct show him at least ten cats-and-boxes videos in consolation - Specs, who was not dead in some ditch somewhere. Him and Gladio, coming home.
They weren't allowed to meet the returning cars in the courtyard for security reasons, since it turned out that Cor was still overseeing the cleanup on the estate where Specs and Gladio were held, and they weren't sure yet they'd nabbed everybody involved with the plot.
It made Noct feel twitchy and irritable, all of them essentially getting imprisoned in their own Citadel for the time being, but it just figured. He tried not to think about it, usually, but Dad flat out never left it anymore, not since the Wall went up and his health went downhill - no more cutting the ribbons on new buildings, no more public photos ops - and Noct knew his own Absolutely Normal, Totally Independent apartment building was most likely populated with Crownsguard, even if nobody would come out and actually say it.
All of his very civilian neighbors were polite, quiet, disciplined and sported very obvious military posture. His school was normal, but he knew its security was beefed up as well, for all everybody pretended, politely, that it wasn't. He'd learned to recognize plainclothes Crownsguard people in the crowd pretty well, lurking around corners when he went to the arcade or some fast food join with Prompto, and with practice learned to ignore them.
Some days, he appreciated the safety; some days, it made his skin itch with the pressure of a thousand benevolent, protective, watching eyes.
Back then, Ignis had fought like a lion to get him into that apartment, quarreling with half the Council, appealing to Dad over their heads, citing precedents; he had maybe even bribed a couple of people, and blackmailed some more. Back then, caught in the jaws of dull, unendurable anger as Noct was, he'd dismissed it as Ignis' typical overachieving zeal; now, he wondered if Specs just knew how he felt, and wanted to gift him this little slice of pretend freedom.
Thinking about it didn't help; he rocked on his toes instead and tried not to gnaw on his nails again. What if the cars got ambushed en route? What if Gladio's injuries were more serious than they thought? What if Ignis - the surgery suite was waiting behind his back, scrubbed and prepped and hosting a very rumpled, very irate orthopedic surgeon, the best in Insomnia, who got practically kidnapped herself by the Glaives and brought over - what if Ignis had… what if he already…
That's when he finally saw them - Gladio and Clarus, Gladio leaning heavily on his father's shoulder, his shirt in tatters, smeared with bloody dirt. He looked pretty whole, but Noct could feel the shadows of his injuries lingering under the familiar magic - bruises, abrasions, torn wrists, a gunshot wound. He was walking as if in his sleep, with his eyes closed.
Noct couldn't help himself: he rushed forwards, barreling into Gladio's chest, throwing his arms around Gladio's middle. Gladio said "oof" somewhere above his head, but didn't buckle; after a confused second, he put his hands on Noct's shoulders, kind of gingerly, reassuring.
They'd never been especially demonstrative. Gladio had always been an essential staple in Noct's life, irritating, brash, frequently frustrated, immovable; Noct chafed under his rule on the training grounds and sometimes hated and admired him in an equal measure, and none of it mattered right now, when he was pressing himself into Gladio's stupid washboard abs and breathing in the rank smell of unwashed, sweaty, battered body, and knew that Gladio was alive.
"Hey, kid," Gladio said, quietly and without censure. "It's okay, we're here. Breathe."
Noct made himself let go, too happy to even be embarrassed, and look up - Gladio was smiling at him, fondly as he rarely did, eyes crinkling up a bit. For a moment everything was alright; and then Noct finally looked past him and saw Ignis - Ignis who was on a gurney that two nurses were pushing at speed, with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. His eyes were closed; the right one was bulging out grotesquely from under the bruised, swollen eyelid; the shape of his face looked wrong.
He tried to rush towards the gurney, but Gladio's hand clamped on his bicep, halting him. He strained against it blindly for a second, feeling that he had to - go over, fix it, heal it, unmake it. Six, he couldn't take it. Gladio looked like he was in a pretty bad fight, which was a disturbing but familiar sight; half of his private training consisted of pretty bad fights and obstacle courses. But Specs looked like he was beaten - he could see the ring of dark bruises around his neck, bruises hugging his ribcage - like somebody held him down and did it to him, and it was obscene.
"Son," Dad said, next to them all of sudden, and where Gladio's hand on his shoulder couldn't halt him, Dad's voice did. "Let the medics do their job."
"It's okay," Gladio said. "You don't even know how stubborn he is, he's going to be fine."
Noct subsided, made the snarling magic that rose in him go down, pour out harmlessly from his fingers.
Ignis got whisked into the surgery; Gladio got taken away for a checkup and a debrief that Noct was apparently not allowed to sit on in, and only Dad looking at him sternly stopped him from exploding about it. So he was too young, so he was not in the line of command yet, so what: they were his, they were taken, they were hurt, and still all he could do was wait in yet another room, impotent and furious and helpless.
He swore to himself it would be the last time.
The surgery took several hours. Gladio joined him and Ignis' uncle after the debrief was over; he had cleaned up. Somebody had brought over fresh clothes for him, probably some Glaive's gym spares, sweatpants and a too-small hoodie, and if not for the deep, sunken circles under his eyes, apparently the remains of a concussion, he looked almost normal.
Dad's aide brought snacks from the kitchens and Gladio fell on them like he was starving. He probably was: Noct checked his phone, winced guiltily at the roughly thirty worried messages from Prompto, and realized it was pretty late at night.
Clarus tried to get Gladio to go get some sleep, but Gladio just stared back at him and settled deeper into the waiting room chair. Clarus didn't fight him on it. He and Cor left soon after, looking angry and determined. Whatever they put together after the debrief and their own investigation, they didn't share, but Noct was ready to bet that some highly-placed heads were going to roll by the morning.
Dad joined them for a while, and ordered Ignatius to eat. The man did, gingerly, and Noct made himself eat too, reluctantly at first, and then with gusto. He suddenly realized he hadn't eaten in Six knew how long, too.
Nobody talked; the silence felt stretched, bleary, insurmountable. Noct caught Ignatius watching Gladio several times, opening and closing his mouth, but he didn't ask whatever questions he had. Gladio, Noct realized, probably didn't even know who he was.
Noct's own questions churned uneasily in his stomach, along with the sandwiches hastily made by some unlucky night-shift cook: who did it, what did they do, why did they do it. Was Gladio scared, was Ignis scared? Were they going to be okay, was it going to be okay again, was Gladio angry at getting caught up in whatever it was. Was Gladio angry at him? He should be.
But Gladio was staring at the wall opposite, picking slowly at his thumb, tapping his foot, and Noct couldn't make himself ask.
At the third hour mark a nurse came out and asked Dad, quietly, to come in. This meant they were done putting Ignis back together and were ready for a healing. She smiled at the rest of them, distracted but not panicked, and Noct tried to relax his shoulders, let out the breath strangling him.
Dad went in; they stayed put. Noct stared at the clock on the wall, wondering if it was broken: the hands moved with glacial slowness, each tick falling into silence like a stone in the well.
An eternity later, Dad came back out, and they scrambled to their feet. In the white scrubs, smelling sharply of disinfectant, he was unfamiliar and severe and weird; Noct couldn't remember last time he saw him out of royal raiments. But he smiled at them, and said, "Everything's done, he's going to make a full recovery. He's sleeping now."
Noct's breath caught; to the left of him, Ignatius folded forwards, hiding his face in his hands, the first uncontrolled motion Noct saw him make through all their long wait.
He felt his own tension flow out of him, suddenly; the room around him wavered, overhead lights going blindingly bright for a moment, and then dimming to near darkness. He blinked, or he thought he did, and when he opened his eyes, only he and Gladio were in the room.
"Hey," Gladio said quietly. "Are you okay?"
Noct laughed, startled. "Me? I'm not - I'm not the one who - "
"Shh. Long day, huh? You didn't miss much. They settled Ignis in recovery, and His Majesty took Ignis' uncle to see him. We can go after they're finished."
"Okay. Are you okay?"
"Good as new," Gladio said and shrugged. "No broken bones, so they fixed me right up in the car on the way here. I basically only needed a shower."
The nurse came out at that moment and took them to the recovery suite. They caught Dad and Ignatius coming out, Dad's looking grave and regal and Ignatius just - old. Noct caught the tail end of his "but he's so young," and turned away.
They met in the hallway, and Ignatius bowed to him, the crisp lines of his courtly posture sagging for a moment. "Your Highness. Lord Amicitia. Forgive me - "
"It's okay," Noct said, hastily. "We just want to see Iggy."
"Not for too long," Dad said. "He needs his rest and so do you. I'll wait for you here."
"I'll get a ride with the Crownsguard," Noct said, surprised. "You must have a ton of work to catch up on."
Dad looked at him, and Noct couldn't understand his expression at all. Was he angry for some reason? Disappointed? He knew he wasn't very useful during the search, or very composed: did Dad expect better? Was he going to get a lecture before going home?
"I just hoped," Dad said, "that you could stay in the Citadel for tonight, in the family suite. I know you must be tired, but we could have dinner together?"
Noct stared at him, distantly aware that his mouth must've been hanging open. Their dinners together were a thing of the distant past - before the war, before the meetings and reports, before the thousand little cuts of the demands the kingdom put on two of them. Surely Dad couldn't mean...
"Of course," Dad said, "if you'd feel more comfortable at home, that can be arranged, too. I'll talk to Cor. The security will have to be higher over the next week, but I was told the majority of the perpetrators have been dealt with, and - "
He knew this tone of voice; he'd said "yeah, sure, no problem" in that exact tone a hundred times to yet another cancellation, emergency and denial, over the years, once he got over his initial resentment. He made himself focus.
"No, that - I'd like that. To stay. Of course."
Dad's smile looked so unfamiliar it made his head hurt.
Noct hesitated on the threshold of the room, long enough that Gladio had to push him inside - unusually gently for Gladio, too. He knew that Ignis had to have been healed fully after the surgery (that's why Dad was there, after all), but he couldn't get rid of the memory of Ignis' grotesquely bruised face; his mind conjured visions of tubes and machines, wires and IV lines.
He didn't want to see Ignis like that, he realized. Sometimes, when they quarreled, he thought viciously that he'd kill for something to ruffle Ignis' professional, untouchable calm, to push him off-kilter, and the moment he was stuck in now, lingering in a doorway, felt like a karmic punishment for those fantasies.
It felt like even a hair out of place would be unbearable; he wanted Ignis to wait for him inside the room, pristine and untouched, dressed with his usual annoying perfection, looking at Noct over the top of his glasses, ready to scold him for missing classes, for looking unkempt, for biting his fingernails.
He entered the room as if he was diving into it: with held breath and his eyes closed. When he opened them again, he saw Ignis whose bruises had faded to a pale, barely-noticeable yellow tint shadowing his cheekbone. He was asleep, deeply enough that their entrance didn't stir him; laid out on his back, with arms stretched over the white hospital blanket, he looked - Noct crossed the room in two strides, unable to stop himself, and leaned over to catch the warmth of Ignis' quiet breath, to. To make sure.
"Careful," Gladio said, quietly, startling Noct into recoiling from the bed; for a moment he'd forgotten Gladio was there. He whirled around, saw Gladio lean against the wall, his arms crossed, looking as ill at ease as Noct felt. "He's okay, he just got to sleep. You know the healing takes it out of you."
Noct nodded, dropped into the chair somebody left by Ignis' bedside, and stared at Ignis. He couldn't remember when he last saw Specs asleep - years ago, maybe, when they were both young enough it felt okay to nap together after lessons, an old Cosmogony volume spread between them. Nowadays, Ignis went by his place a lot but never stayed over; nowadays, Noct couldn't say for sure Ignis actually slept, busy as he was digging them both from under the constant avalanche of work and study.
He reached over and took one of Ignis' hands, cradled it between his palms; it was cool to the touch but not frozen, and it gave him the courage to ask, finally. "What happened? I don't care about names and stuff, if you can't tell me, but - I need to - please, Gladio."
He wouldn't have made into an order, no matter how much he wanted to, but Gladio, after a palpable hesitation, told him anyway. A sanitized version, Noct knew; he rarely bothered to listen to other people, but he was taught to listen well, and so he cataloged every pause, every moment where Gladio stopped to rearrange his words, every small indrawn breath. They were taken, they woke up in the cellar, Gladio restrained and Ignis not, Ignis got interrogated, Ignis stole the handcuffs key from their captor; they got out, the pursuers caught up to them, Gladio fought the bad guy and won them enough time to call for backup. Dry, clean, somewhere between a status report and a video game plot, and into the pauses went Ignis' hours of surgery, Gladio's bruised, exhausted silence.
"He did well," Gladio said, in the end, and Noct, because he was listening, heard the unspoken and I didn't at the end of the sentence, and pivoted to look at him.
Sometimes it was easy to forget, with Gladio constantly in his face, pushing and prodding, whacking him around training grounds for hours, but Gladio hated to see people hurt; Gladio liked protecting people. Gladio didn't even like Ignis before, Noct knew, complained about him endlessly, but this had to be a nightmare for him, all this pain with nothing he could do about it.
"You saved him," Noct said. "Cor and everybody were trying to find you both, and they were - if you didn't call, they wouldn't have been on time. If you didn't..."
Gladio shrugged his shoulders, tried to look away, and Noct talked faster, louder. "You did well too. You got him out - you came back."
He held Gladio's gaze until Gladio nodded, and saw him - sag a little, like he wasn't holding himself up too rigidly against the wall anymore. It felt good, to be finally able to do something; and it felt wrong, because a Gladio who could be reassured by him was about as bad as Ignis asleep and defenseless.
He turned back to Ignis, giving Gladio time to collect himself. Ignis' brow was furrowed a little, like he was worried even in this heavy healing sleep, and Noct's fingers twitched with the need to smooth it out. He said, absently, "He looks so weird without his glasses. Are they in his clothes? I can ask somebody to look."
There was another of those pauses. "They, uh. They got broken. Do you know where he keeps his spares?"
He saw it, suddenly - one of those people who took Ignis and Gladio, striking the glasses carelessly off Specs' face; heard them crack under somebody's heavy boots. The hot feeling behind his eyes suddenly grew, expanded unbearably; he tried to hold it back and couldn't, tried to swallow the sob that rose in his throat and couldn't either. Tears spilled out of him, unstoppable and childish, stupid; he folded forward, trying to hide his face in his hands, and cried like he hadn't for years.
"Hey," Gladio said, "kid, hey, it's okay." His hand landed on top of Noct's neck, heavy and not unkind, and it was wrong, too - he should've told Noct to shut up and suck it up, to stop being so - Noct sobbed and couldn't stop and couldn't stop and couldn't stop.
Gladio's hand stayed with him all the way through; Ignis slept on, paying them no attention. When Noct finally cried himself out and fell silent, still hidden behind his palms, Gladio left for a while - there was a noise of the door opening - and came back, thrusting a towel into his arms. Noct swallowed a tiny hysterical laugh: figured that neither of them had tissues on hand. Specs would have, if Specs was awake.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled from behind the towel; for the life of him, he couldn't make himself look at Gladio's face. Words spilled out of him, and he couldn't stop them. "I'm sorry, crying like - it's not like I was - I'm sorry - it was because of me - you must hate me, Gladio, you and Specs, and - "
"Eyes up," Gladio said and took hold of his chin, made him raise his head. They stayed frozen for a moment, Gladio looking at him, thoughtfully, head cocked to the side. "Nah," Gladio said, and grinned at him suddenly. "We're good."
"I'm serious," Noct said, stubborn.
"Me too. It's fine, okay? It wasn't your fault, and you couldn't do anything about it. It's kinda nice, that you were that freaked out. And next time we'll do our job better, so you'll just have to do yours."
"It can't be just a job," Noct said. "It isn't. You aren't, and Specs isn't."
"I'm getting it, I think," Gladio said. "Talk to Ignis when he wakes up, okay? He gets it, too, and will tell you so."
He smiled again - he looked less tired out all of a sudden, more like himself - and tugged Noct up, out of the chair. "Go get some food and sleep, runt, you look pretty dead for somebody who sat on his ass for the entire day."
"Specs..."
"I'll stay until he wakes up, I haven't been cleared to leave anyway. Get somebody to send his glasses over, okay?"
"Okay," Noct said; he was suddenly so tired he could fall asleep right there, standing up, even though Dad was waiting outside. "I'll come back first thing in the morning. I'm sleeping over in the Citadel."
He turned to leave, then pivoted back, suddenly, and hugged Gladio again, squeezed him as much as he could. "I'm glad you're back."
"Wasn't going to leave," Gladio said, and thumped him on the back; then he thrust him away, and went to straddle Noct's abandoned chair at Ignis' side.
In the hallway, Dad was waiting for him; he'd changed back into his normal clothes, and his face over the severe black of his collar looked washed out, made out of stark lines and grey skin. But he smiled when he saw Noct, and Noct walked over to him and took his hand, without hesitation, and pretended not to notice the way Dad startled.
"Dad," he said, "let's go home."