Defy the Stars
By: Strange and Intoxicating -rsa-
Author Notes: I wasn't the only person whose heart was shattered into a thousand pieces at the ending of FFXV. I had already started this series, having a feeling that I would need to write stories in the FFXV world, and IgNoct grabbed my heart. However, I realized that when I finished my game that this series had literally the perfect entry into this story. Please read "Sacramentum" before reading this, and I would also recommend the first chapter of "A King's Wizard."
Warnings: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, Violence, Blood, Gore, Sex, Language, Death, etc. Consider this my "Not nice things" buffer.
Ignis could not see, but he could feel.
He could feel Noctis's face against his palm, the scratch of his beard that had grown in his time sleeping. Oh, Ignis could imagine what Noctis would look like; a younger, more handsome version of King Regis, no doubt, but with bluer eyes than the sky. Noctis, the smattering of freckles against his pale nose, a few lines touching at his eyes. Regal as a king, sitting upon his throne.
He felt the lips, chapped like they always were. How many nights had Ignis felt those lips against his, against his skin, against even his soul? He always wanted to put some balm on those lips, and would deny it to Noctis when he would ask that yes, he did like the roughness. Even when Noctis still held baby-fat still in his cheeks, Ignis had loved the feel of the smooth skin and his rough lips. Such juxtaposition.
Eyelashes. Why did Noctis have such long lashes? He knew that Noctis hated them; he said they were girlish more times that Ignis could count. But Ignis would lay in bed with Noctis's face pressed against his chest and each flutter would tell him a story.
His hair was longer, now. It was dirty and gritty, and Ignis could see it—falling limply over his eyes. Even when they were dirty, rolling around in the mud, Ignis could remember that errant little hair that always stuck up in the back. How many nights had Ignis tried to smooth it down to no avail?
God.
Noctis's dimples when he smiled. The way he would so rarely do, but Ignis knew each of them just as much as he knew the plains of Noctis's cheeks and the slope of his neck.
No pulse.
Noctis.
Ignis knew, he could smell it like hopelessness and despair.
He knew every sound Noctis made. He knew each hair. He knew the smell of Noctis's skin.
He did not need to see, nor feel, nor touch, nor smell to know.
Noctis could have been sleeping, so peacefully and gently—like their last day in the Citadel, where his Noct laid crumpled in bed sheets, morning bed hair and a stubble against his cheek. Ignis had that image burned into memory. Not even blindness could take it from him.
Ignis ran his hands down until it his cold metal, and he knew this sword. He had seen the sword a thousand times as a small child, then even more as a young man and then, with his blindness, learned to recognize the sound of it as it whirred through the air.
He did not bother to grab the pommel, instead reaching both hands around the blade and pulling. Ignis knew his hands, knew the false skin that had grown back now more times that he could imagine, yet he could still remember the first time.
The car.
Noctis.
The engagement.
Ignis could only laugh, tight and wet and hot like bile on the back of his tongue, as he pulled and pulled until he heard the blade pull through metal, bone, and flesh. He had to choke back as he felt the warmth of blood against his fingers, and he knew it wasn't just his.
He would have moved the heavens and Eos itself to have it just be his.
And yet, he could see like he was no longer blind, how Noctis's body came loose from the chair and pulled forward as the sword, his father's sword, his inheritance of the city of bone and death, came out with a sickening screech.
Ignis could not hold it.
It wasn't the pain, for he had been dealt his hand of cards and knew pain. Waking with no sight, listening to Noctis scream, feeling the weight of a prophecy bear down on his shoulders. He knew the feeling of poison in his veins, of blood curdling in his stomach. The feeling of bones smashing under his skin. Organs liquefying.
He felt pain.
But this was...
This was absence.
This was the cold hand of ten years yet without hope. This was a body without air, a body without a soul. This was fate, foretold and written in the stars without his acceptance, without his agreement.
Curse the stars.
This was Noctis's blood on his hands, staining the floor red. He could see, God he could see it. Droplets of stark red against his cheeks. Those cheeks, once so warm and full of life, the slight hint of pink hidden away like a secret. He could see the blood on the diamond patterns and the red velvet that had been so entrancing as a young man.
He once wondered what Noctis would look like upon his throne.
This was not what he thought it would be like.
Ignis felt his legs give way, and he could not stand. Not even as he felt the sun against his face for the first time in ten years. He wanted to see the sun, had wanted it for so long...
Yet Noctis was not with him, holding his hand as he felt the sun rise.
No, Noctis was peacefully asleep on his throne.
Ignis reached up and felt the man's shirt, knowing it as the ceremonial garb he was presented with before they left for the wedding.
It was supposed to be what they wore at the wedding. Even a sham wedding for peace, Ignis remembered the curve of the black fabric against Noctis's body, the way it seemed to swallow Noctis whole, into a black abyss.
He looked handsome, so regal in his mind's eye.
Ignis laid his head against Noctis's lap, letting out a sound that crossed between snarl and scream, like a wild animal ripping off its own leg. He lurched forward as he felt Noctis's cheek fall to rest against his skull.
And he screamed, screamed until his voice was raw and he could taste the blood on his tongue and he could no longer deny the sun, the treacherous sun, against his his face.
Warmth and coldness.
Ignis allowed his hands to rest against Noctis's skin as he slowly reached up to cup the unresponsive face of the one he loved, the one he promised to live for. He had promised to live, had sworn an oath to his king.
He had sworn to protect Noctis, to never allow this to happen. He had promised.
He had failed.
Ignis let his hands slide through Noctis's hair, and he leaned forward to press a clumsy kiss against his dry, cold lips.
He pulled Noctis onto the floor, cradling his head against his chest as Ignis laid in their blood, the sword right next to him. His body was numb, and all Ignis could think of was the feeling of Noctis's weight against him. Years ago, before he had the strength to understand and comprehend his emotions, Ignis learned to hide his feelings within himself, in the little box of his secret desires and yearnings. He wished he still could reach into that empty abyss of nothing to hide himself like a boy running from the darkness.
Noctis taught him that feeling was wrong, that he could not hide himself. Noctis taught him how to live.
Their last night in camp... the meal he had cooked, Noct's favorite. The kiss that left both of them trembling. The feeling of their bodies against one another, like two pieces of a puzzle coming together, clicking into place.
He could only reach out with his hand to fumble for it.
Noctis weeping into his chest as the never-ending night continued on and on.
Ignis held the sword in his hand and pressed the blade to his throat. He knew how to cut it open for the quickest death, having hunted with Gladio so many times during that year where the light began to dwindle unknowingly. The sword was so sharp he wouldn't even have to pull hard, just a light yank, and then he could be with Noctis again.
"Ignis... would you live for him?"
Ignis choked back a sob as the words ran through his head. The King, his words. They had haunted him for those long ten years of silence, and yes... Ignis had lived for him. He lived when all hope was gone, when the entire world fell to hell, when the heavens itself snuffed out the light.
All hope was lost, the daemons ran free, and Ignis soldiered on. He fought, fought until he could do so without his sight, until he knew that when Noctis came back he would be able to stand by him, stand and do what was needed.
He had lived for Noctis, waited for 3,784 days of unending night for him.
And he failed him.
"Noctis, please forgive me."
There was no reply, and Ignis felt the blade against his throat.
"Ignis, would you live for him?"
"I... I don't know what you mean."
The never-ending night, the loneliness, the despair, the loss of his entire being.
He had given everything, and had lost everything.
Noctis's blood against his hands, his blade against his throat, the memory of his smiling face and his lips on Ignis's.
Noctis was to sit upon the throne and describe the sunrise to him. It was his last promise, his vow that last night of unending night. Those tender moments where Ignis could pretend, just for a moment, that it was the truth and that he did not know Noctis as the man he was. Noctis, the man who had grown from an angry, sullen boy into a king.
And in front of his destroyed throne of skull and bone and blood in this hall that reeked of death and lies, he could hear his promise repeated back.
Protect Noct. Continuance of the bloodline. A future worth protecting.
Here was his promise, and here was the blood on his hands, the ribbons of flesh showing what his promise was worth.
Nothing.
Ignis could only bring more death into a room already tainted with it.
A future—what future was there? The others would live on, the story of the boy king pinned to his throne like a butterfly would be spread far and wide, and what was left for Ignis?
His world was destined for unending night.
He would never see the sun again.
"Ignis, please... Put the sword down."
Gladio.
"Noct.. he wouldn't want you to do this..."
Prompto.
"Ignis, would you live for him?"
King Regis.
"Iggy… please say something."
A flash of a smile and dark hair, mischievous blue eyes dancing in the sliver of light.
Ignis pushed the sword away from his throat, letting it drop with a clatter near his head, and instead wrapped his arms around Noctis, pulling his body closer. He could remember the way Noctis would starfish to him, surrounded by their blankets in the cold Lucian winters. He would have done anything to go back to that moment, the hours before this nightmare began, to be able to hold Noctis in his arms.
The stars. Noctis was given to the stars.
How could their lives be chosen upon by fate? Who was Etro, who was she, to promise life in return for death? Who were the gods to demand payment in his innocent blood to break the prophecy of kings of yonder?
How dare the stars take him.
How dare they.
"Then I... I defy you, stars." Ignis could not hold back his scream of rage as he shook Noctis's corpse—his corpse.
His corpse.
"I... I defy you. I... I... def—"
He choked down another sob and when something touched his back he swung out and smashed his hand against it, hearing the high-pitched keen of something that wasn't human.
"Umbra!"
But Ignis couldn't care about a dead girl's beast, for Noctis was gone and with him the light.
Ignis lay there on the floor, the blood drying on his body, and he found himself pulling Noctis up until he could rest his forehead against Noctis's, like he had as they were children. Someone, Ignis was sure it was Prompto, kept talking but Ignis could not hear it. All he could do was touch each inch of skin on Noctis's face, memorizing each detail, etching out a sketch of Noctis with his fingertips. Unsure, scared, nervous Noctis. Imperfect and flawed, but never one to give up without a fight. A king.
His king.
"Noctis, do you remember the beach? When we were children? I taught you the stars, and you taught me of your hopes and dreams. We laid in the sand and I... we watched the constellations and the nebulas. I wished upon a shooting star. I fell in love with you. So foolish... Noctis, please wake up. The sun has risen. It's dawn."
But Noctis did not stir.
"Iggy, Iggy, please. I need to fix your hands. You're going blue..."
But Ignis did not let go.
"Ignis, would you live for him?"
"What kind of question is that? I failed him... I can't. I can't go on without him."
The stars were cruel, and he was their slave.
Just as Noctis was, just as Noctis always was.
"You raised him as a pig for slaughter. I protected him, I stood by his side, I never let go. I believed in hope, I believed in him. And this entire time... you watched him grow and you knew."
Betrayal. A king to his son, a sword through the spine.
"You made him into a martyr, you nailed him to his throne." Ignis spit his next words. "You made me promise to protect him... for naught. All for naught."
What was the point? Why give him the illusion of a future where there could be something like happiness when the gods would snatch it away?
"Please... please... Noctis, wake up." Ignis's voice was barely even a whisper, as he nuzzled his nose into Noctis's hair, smelling the singed hair and... it was gone.
Despite falling into the eternal sleep's clutches, despite the blood, the cloying sweetness of death was gone. The smell that clung to Noctis since he was a child, marked by the stars as their chosen sacrifice, was absent.
"Noctis... my Noct..."
His energy was spent and he could no longer fight against the feeling of something pulling him down into the vast, empty abyss. Something was at his back, gently nudging him.
The bloody dog would not let him die in peace.
He wanted to turn, but found he could not. Perhaps it was the wounds from the battles against the daemons. Perhaps it was death, coming to take him away without needing his own hand to do it.
He could be with Noctis, then.
"How heavy your crown has been, my king. I would have helped you carry the burden..."
"Ignis, would you live for him?"
"I did."
Had he not proved himself, over and over? Why was King Regis mocking him, how dare the man claim to be good, all the while he played to another master...
The stars could wither and die.
"Then Umbra, you know what must be done."
Ignis's head was fuzzy and the pulling at his back was becoming more and more pronounced, and there was something happening, like a fizzle of magic when Noctis's spell would get too close. He knew that this was when he was to move, to dance with Noctis as the man swung his sword. So in sync, ready to anything the world threw at them.
They were young and foolish, so stupidly in love and in pain that the entire world could have fallen around their ears. And it had...
The search for the Astrals, Noctis's ancestors and their Armigers, their countless nights under the stars, promising that life would continue on. Noctis, whispering of his future plans for the kingdom he would one day rule. He wanted to be loved, not feared. He wanted the people of Lucis to see him as a man willing to bend, never break.
Even after ten years of waiting, Ignis clung to that dream of a brighter tomorrow all the while knowing that one day Noctis would awaken and then they could fight back Ardyn, take back the light.
Regis and Lady Lunafreya... had they known since the beginning what would happen to Noctis? Certainly. They guided Noctis by the hand, foolishly pulling him into the darkness.
Something was hot and burning against his face and Ignis wanted to reach up to grab his eyes, but doing so would have meant letting go of Noctis. No, he wasn't ready. He couldn't do it.
But the burning intensified and it was now like Ifrit, only so much hotter. His blood, his body, his mind...
Pain.
Yet he continued to cling to his broken King, grabbing for the pieces as his body began to disintegrate between his fingers. Ignis scrambled for Noctis, reaching out into the chasm of nothingness, only feeling the brush of ash against his fingers.
Then the silence.
Noctis's body...
Noctis was gone.
Bright lights, like a fire burning, purifying.
Ignis screamed.
It was pain more lasting, more brutal, than anything Ignis had ever experienced. It was standing on a livewire with all his nerves pulled taut and thin, snapping like strings of thread.
And then, like the light from his eyes had been snuffed out as he watched Altissia drown...
He could see.
Ignis had spent ten years in the dark, only visited by color when he was tucked away in the furthest corner of his dreams. There, and only there, he could pretend things were normal and that the end of the world did not linger like ash around him.
Ash.
Noctis.
The colors were blurring together, too much for his eyes to take in after the never-ending darkness, yet he could see the gold embossed pattern climbing like a tree up the sides of the chair, the red velvet, the gray marble and the white outlines.
King Regis upon his throne, frowning down upon him.
And Ignis couldn't stand, because his knees were like water and his body felt like lead. His knees hit the marble with a jolt and the King's mouth pulled down into a frown.
"Then the Crystal has shown you... it has given you its warning."
But Ignis could not understand, because there was King Regis, the same way he had looked the last day Ignis had seen him, just before they had left. Regis, sitting upon the throne... the same throne Noctis had sat upon to accept his family's curse.
Ignis couldn't hold his body up to stare at the man, the mortal man, who had ended Noctis's life. He fell forward onto his hands, a mockery of a bow before a king.
"I am sorry, Ignis. Your pain, your burden... it is heavy. But the Crystal has shown you a path—an omen. I have lived through my own. Noctis... each time it is different, another path he may choose. I have prevented my own path from coming to fruition. It is now your turn, my boy... Ignis. This is now the cross you must bear."
Ignis scratched his nails against the marble and he could see it, the way his nails bent under the pressure, the white and pink of his skin, the reflection of his face in the polished stone. The distorted picture, the tears falling onto the gray stone with white trim, too big now for Noctis's foot to fit inside.
"Glaive, please leave us."
Ignis could hear the heavy doors shutter closed and he rested his head against the stone, feeling the coolness bring some kind of semblance to reality that was spinning in front of him.
"Wh—what is this?"
"The Crystal... it has imbued powers into its servants, allowing the chance to right wrongs, to change the Stars." Ignis closed his eyes, focusing on the words. After ten years of darkness, the light was too much for him to bear. "What you have seen... what you have lived... it is the path you would have followed."
"I failed him."
Regis said nothing for a moment. "Ignis, did he bring the dawn?"
Ignis let out a hoarse, strangled snarl of a laugh. "The dawn in exchange for his life."
"Then you know of the Providence... the revelation of Bahamut... the immortal Accursed."
"And you knew—you know who he is?" Ignis's head was pounding so loudly he could barely hear the King's response. He lifted his head to look at the King, at his frowning face. He could not bear to look for long, staring back down at the tops of his hands.
"A Caelum, disfigured by time and the Daemons. Yes, I know who he is, Ignis. I could see our blood in his veins the moment he entered this room. The Crystal... it remembers him well."
Ignis curled his fingers in and watched as his tendons popped under his skin. His hands felt strange.
"You knew... how long?"
"How long did I know of Noctis's fate as the King of Kings?"
Ignis did not want to hear the answer; how much of their life had been changed, warped, violated by the King and their prophecy?
"You perhaps do not remember, Ignis, but at the age of four Noctis came into contact with the Starscourge."
Ignis closed his eyes and rested his head against the marble.
Of course Ignis remembered.
The Plague of the Stars, attacking the Queen and the Crown Prince. Despite the Oracle's power, it had killed Queen Aulea in the end. She had died with a clear heart, the Daemon's magic soothed by the Oracle's prayer.
Noctis, Noctis had not stirred.
Ignis could not remember most of it clearly, as he was still quite young himself, but he did remember the panic of the Citadel and the pink light of the Crystal glowing brighter and brighter until it engulfed the building in its light.
"The Crystal cleared the Starscourge from him and he was left unharmed, or so we thought. However, it only became clear later that the Crystal… the Crystal had reached forward only because he was the King of Kings. It was always meant to be him, Ignis. There is nothing any could have done to take away his fate."
But Ignis did not care for fate, for the prophecy that was thrust upon him by the Stars. Noctis had suffered… Noctis had died.
"You killed him." Ignis tried to keep the whimper from his voice.
He knew it was unfair, knew that it had been Regis in spirit, but it did not change the fact that Regis's sword had pierced through Noctis, his Noctis.
Truth be told, he wanted his words to hurt. He wanted them to stab straight through the king, to leave him breathless and in agony. The King's crown upon his head was lead, but his sword… that was steel and blood and Noctis.
The King said nothing, and Ignis did not supply anything further, finding his head warped with pain. The light was too much.
"I was to send you to Altissia—"
"No."
Ignis almost expected a knife to descend upon his throat, but it did not. He had never spoken back to the King, never whispered a word or even breath against his king.
But this man, this mortal man…
This was not his King.
Not anymore.
Ignis opened his eyes, staring at the pool of his own tears before him, like a sacrifice on the altar of the gods. He slowly pushed himself up, enough to look at Regis.
He looked old. Not in the way that he had the last time Ignis saw the man, as Noctis said his farewells… today. It was supposed to be today. Now, there seemed to be something so much older, so aged and desperate. Regis looked like a man who had lost it all, and Ignis wanted to remind him that he had been the catalyst for Noctis's ascension.
"The history books… during his sleep, I found them. If given just a little more time… I was close." Noctis believed in the prophecy, believed it would be him and only him to end the scourge, and there had been little time left. The scientists knew the parasite was multiplying at an increasing rate in the final year, before Noctis returned. The rate of those touched with the Plague had multiplied exponentially in the end. They had been fighting not only the daemons, but an invisible monster…
And confident Noctis…
Deep in Ignis's heart, he had known Noctis would not return. He had listened to Noctis's sweet words of comfort and wanted so desperately to believe them, because without those words Ignis would have taken Noctis's hand and entered the Citadel with him.
He would have sat together with Noctis as the sword came to greet them, and they could have curled against one another to meet the dawn.
"Then you believe you can alter the fate of the Stars?"
Ignis pushed himself, slowly and steadily, to his feet. He did not break eye contact with the King until he was standing on both feet. All his years of training, of kneeling before the man, it was at this moment Ignis truly understood.
He turned his back.
"I shall."
Ignis had never forgotten the path from the Throne Room to Noctis's quarters. He could have been blind again, surrounded by the darkness in its vast nothing and Ignis would have been able to run there.
The two Kingsglaive waited outside of the room, joking. But Ignis did not have time to give them more than a quick, "Go," before pulling the door open and throwing himself inside, slamming the lock down hard enough to leave his hand stinging.
He was so close.
Ignis almost lost his resolve there, standing between the foyer of Noctis's room and the door, and he listened to Noctis's sweet, soft breaths.
It took a moment for Ignis to pull himself together, to swallow back his own whimpers as his feet guided him forward.
Noctis was there, twisted against the sheets, his arms wrapped around a pillow, legs spread across the bed. The sheen of sweat against his brow, the slight stubble on his cheeks, the way his lips parted and moved in time with each breath.
His chest, moving.
Heart, beating.
Ignis tried to take a step forward yet his feet would let him go no further. He was a newborn fowl, his feet no longer able to carry him. Ignis caught himself on the corner of the nightstand, feeling the wood corner dig into his hand.
Noctis made a small sound, shifting in the bed, and the barely noticeable light from the curtain struck his face like a kiss.
Ignis stood silent with his knees broken below him as Noctis's eyes fluttered open, soft blue and glazed with sleep.
"Iggy—wuz wron?"
He wanted to respond, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and all he could feel was his heart seizing inside his body and every breath was a rush of air that left him feeling lightheaded and woozy.
The Crystal… no.
It was no imagination. It had happened, it was real.
Noctis's body breaking into ash, his heartbeat silent. Cold lips, harsh like a frozen tundra. The blood rushing over Ignis's hands—his hands. His blood and Noctis's. The blade biting against his flesh as he pulled the sword from the throne.
"He—hey, Ignis." Something about Noctis's voice was different, stronger and tinged with worry. Ignis watched him reach up and brush at his eyes, running his fingers across the hollows of his cheeks. "Whuzzit?"
And this was too much for Ignis. Noctis was awake, breathing and whole, and the only thing keeping Ignis from falling was his hand gripping the nightstand tight.
Noctis pulled himself out of the bed, not letting go of the sheet, instead swinging his feet over the side with it still wrapped around his lower half. His eyes were still blinking, so fast that Ignis had to look away.
"Iggy… please say something."
There were no words as Noctis reached out to grab Ignis with one arm, the other tightly wound around the sheet. Ignis found himself reaching out too, with both hands and weak knees.
Noctis was unable to keep them both upright and Ignis could not try.
Warmth. His body was warm, pink and fresh, clean and soft and so inherently Noctis that Ignis could not stop himself from clinging to Noctis's back, then shoulders, then to his face.
Soft cheeks, just a hint of baby fat. His harsh lips, the stubble on his chin, the small scar under his eye.
He could feel Noct, his Noct, and he was real and this was real, and there was the little hair that stuck up in the back no matter what he did to keep it down, and there was the curve of his nose, and he was a blind man again reaching in the dark and memorizing everything by touch but now there was color and contrast and the crease in Noctis's dimple as he frowned.
Ignis couldn't stop himself from leaning forward to kiss the dimple, then his nose, and those harsh, dry lips that Ignis wished he could drown in.
Noctis was panicking because Ignis realized only later that he was sobbing out Noctis's name like a prayer.
How long they say there on the floor, Ignis did not know. All he could do was cling to Noctis, to press their lips together, to trace his fingers against Noctis's face and stomach. There were no wounds. No sword. No trace of ash.
"Ignis, Iggy, what happened? Fuck, what happened to your hands?"
Ignis blinked through the haze of tears at Noctis, who grabbed both his wrists. He cradled them within his own palms.
He looked down to see the thick white scars, the braiding of his skin in a macabre warning straight down the lifeline of both his palms.
"An omen," Ignis whispered, voice breaking. "An omen of the Stars."
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