"If you don't manage to get your sleep schedule under control, Noct, one day you're going to wake up and find your whole life has passed you by."
Noctis remembered Ignis chastising him over and over again for his tendency to sleep as long as he could get away with. How he and Gladiolus would go out of their way to find excuses to get him out of bed with the sun. It was miserable every time. He loved the warm comfort of his cocoon of blankets, the tranquility of unconsciousness; if he could just stay that way forever it would be great.
Ten years.
Noctis couldn't believe that it was Talcott of all people who had picked him up on the road. It seemed like yesterday he'd been dragged into the Crystal and told what saving the world would require of him. Next thing he knows he's waking up on some island completely alone except for Umbra, and the whole world is living in perpetual night.
How had he slept ten years? All that work, all that effort and sacrifice to save the world, and he was gone for ten whole years. The number was so surreal. That was literally half his life, a third now, and most of it had been spent sitting behind a desk in school. Now that time had just passed by in the blink of an eye.
He had made his peace, he was willing to do what he needed to put a stop to this. Ardyn wanted him angry enough to kill him, had killed Lunafreya and kidnapped and tortured Prompto to make sure he would be. So much suffering went into making sure Noctis had the resolve to put an end to all of this, but it had still taken him all this time to finally get to where he needed to be.
Noctis felt guilty, even though the time he spent in the Crystal was not something he could have controlled. He'd abandoned the world to this while he prepared for the battle ahead, and he couldn't help but feel that if he was more dedicated from the start, more willing to give it his all as everyone else had been, that he wouldn't have had to wait all that time to come back.
Talcott had grown up in darkness, him and countless others. There were probably children who had never even seen the light of day living in constant fear in a never ending war against the night. The death toll had to be beyond measure, millions was easily plausible. How much of humanity had survived the dark, how were they supposed to rebuild from this?
Noctis couldn't imagine how much suffering and death were left in the wake of Ardyn's master plan to get someone to murder him. There probably was no way to quantify something like that, but just from Galden Quay to this truck had been enough to make all of it very personal. Not that it wasn't before, but Noctis took it all and added it to the list of crimes that Ardyn would answer for. It was a short list, nice and concise: Insomnia, Luna, Prompto, and the Whole God Damned World.
Ten years.
Noctis prayed and hoped Ardyn put up a fight, because he wasn't going to let him off easy.