to enter his rest

by egelantier

A year after the war is won, Ignis is unsure of his place by his king's side. There are no more daemons to hunt, shoulder-to-shoulder with Prompto, and relying on magic to find his way doesn't work anymore. But there are old shadows he can still face down, and a battle where he can still be useful.

Leaving the room that Noct had commandeered as his private study, Ignis stumbled over the threshold.

He tsked in annoyance, righting himself. He hadn't even realized just how much he had relied on his connection to the royal magic to move over uncertain terrain. Now that the royal covenant with the Crystal was over, taking the magic out of the world, and with it Ignis' claim on magic, he's had to relearn moving around all anew. This time with nothing to assist him but his muscle memory, various helpful implements, and determination.

The process was rather vexing. He had become used to going out into the dark to hunt alone, and he'd come back safely again and again, if sometimes worse for wear, but nowadays even familiar landscapes sometimes tripped him up. Literally as well as figuratively.

It was, of course, a small price to pay, among the myriad of similar small prices; he'd cheerfully learn to live while blind, deaf, mute and paralyzed if it meant what he's gotten - Noct's safety, Noct's life, Noct's continued rule. He was content to relearn again, to get adjusted to indignities and tribulations and little shallow victories, and he'd be proud of his achievements, if not - if not for one nagging, unpleasant doubt.

He stumbled, and Noct, standing in the room behind him, drew an audibly dismayed breath. At least he didn't leap in to help, this time, or apologize; but his misery and guilt radiated through the room, and Ignis' shoulder blades felt heavy and tense under the weight of it.

He had ten years to get used to his lack of sight, to triumph over it, to wrestle a victory over the gods in spite of it. But for Noct, just a bit over a year passed since waking, expecting to die and finding out he was to live. A year since he had first seen Ignis' ruined face.

No matter how much Ignis had reassured him, Noct clearly felt responsible. And so every time Ignis had betrayed himself with a stumble or a flinch, or used Braille in Noct's presence, or dictated his notes instead of writing them down, or demonstrated any of the thousand little and big changes that he'd gotten used to, Noct's guilt became more apparent - and Ignis could do nothing to console or soothe him short of miraculously healing himself.

He had hoped, in the beginning, that time would heal this rift; but time passed, and his lack of sight still lay between them, awkwardly avoided and yet universally present.

Sometimes, when they were working together, late at night, Noct would gather his breath, as if steeling himself to say something, and then swallow his unsaid words. Ignis would cravenly not push him.

Perhaps this unborn conversation would've cleared the air between them. But perhaps, Ignis feared, it would end with Noct gently telling him that he was superfluous to the new order, that his presence was more cumbersome than welcomed.

Not in those words, of course: Ignis had never known Noct to be deliberately unkind in his entire life. But maybe retirement would be mentioned, a well-earned, honorable rest, with all the bonuses and laurels it would entail, and in the face of this generosity - this implicit order from his King - Ignis would, of course, not be able to refuse this well-meaning exile. And then...

He had tried; he had tried so hard; between their restoration attempts, he pushed himself as much as he could, relearning his twice-dark world all over. Before Noct's triumphant return, he would've said he's adjusted tolerably well. Immediately afterward, that the unexpected setback was quite possible to conquer. But now, each day he felt as if he was pushing against the tide.

No matter how much he practiced, how well he used his cane, how carefully he traversed the Citadel hallways, how excellently he adapted to working with paperwork without his sight - none of that was adequate proof of his contentment, if Noct would not accept it.

He left the room without anything from Noct but that aborted exhale, and made his way down to his rooms, fighting the impulse to trail his fingers against the wall to orient himself.

Somebody was walking through the corridor towards him. Years ago, he would've recognized his signature in the force they've both shared, the brilliant knot of his connection to Noct. Today, he's listened to the other's heavy thread and the whisper of leather, and made an educated guess.

"Gladio," Ignis said, and inclined his head.

Gladio clapped him on the back without breaking his stride, spoke over his shoulder. "Noct's still in there?"

"Yes, we're done for tonight, I think, and those propositions are in a good enough shape to be presented to the government."

"Good, good, I'll drag him off to bed then, you don't have to worry. Goodnight!"

"Goodnight," Ignis said, and waited until he was safely beyond the bend of the corridor before he allowed himself to wince.

Ask him eleven years ago if it would've been possible for anybody but him to look after Noct's needs in this way, to ensure his comfort and ease - ask him, and he would've gone for his daggers. He had known with surety he would guarantee Noct's safe return; he had burned with a zealot's certainty, and had dragged the others in his wake, infecting them with his hope.

But nowadays Gladio's star was in ascendance - his king was back, and he took his rightful place by his side, and was radiant with joy at all hours - and Ignis...

Ignis' job was, perhaps, done. If he was no longer truly needed, what could he be for?

---

On the first Saturday of the month Gladio had declared that there were limits to patriotic dedication, and that he was kidnapping Noct to take him to the newly-cleared fishing grounds just outside of Insomnia's bounds, to rest and clear his head.

Ignis had been cordially invited along, and didn't waste any time politely refusing. Noct needed rest and deserved it - they all did. What he did not need was wincing and biting his lip every time Ignis had trouble with the unpaved ground around his place of respite.

In a private protest, Ignis decided that instead of working or working out, he would turn off his alarms and just sleep in. He stayed up the night before, defiantly listening to an audio recording of gaudy historical romance of the kind that Gladio preferred, instead of the latest agricultural reports. He fell asleep just as the desperate knight summoned his courage to offer herself up to her queen, and his dreams were muddled and imprecise, dissolving away under his hands every time he tried to find purchase.

"Prompto," his phone said, launching him out of his sleep with unpleasant mechanic accuracy, "Prompto, Prompto..."

He shook himself awake and fumbled for the phone. Prompto was not supposed to return to Insomnia for another couple of weeks, at the very least; he's been traveling through the country, gathering reports and taking photos of the recovering ecology, and the last check in placed him somewhere in Leide, at least a week ago.

"Prompto," Ignis said, urgently, "is everything okay? Are you in danger?"

Prompto laughed into his ear, and something relaxed deep within his stomach.

"Paranoid much, Igster? Sometimes I wonder how you managed to stop yourself from getting us all microchipped for our safety."

"What makes you say I didn't?"

"Now that's not a nice thing to say, have some shame! Anyway, I'm fine, I'm fine - I've wrapped things up earlier than I planned, I'm in Hammerhead now and probably will be back in town by four or so tonight. How're you, how's everybody? Is Insomnia still standing?"

It was absurd to be pleased that he was the first one to be told of Prompto's return. He knew that Prompto called the others as well on his travels - there were little tidbits of information, an occasional photo sent from the places where the net was back up and described to Ignis by Gladio - but Ignis was apparently always the first to know about Prompto's progress.

Perhaps Prompto, being away for so often, was under the impression that Ignis still controlled Noct's schedule and ran his social life. The thought, unpleasant and unbidden, soured his good mood effectively; he realized that he lost the thread of Prompto's voice.

"...say, six? Go out to this cafe they've reopened by where the old arcade used to be, mingle with the grateful populace?"

"Ah," Ignis said, feeling awkward and just a bit resentful. "I'm afraid Noct and Gladio are out on the overnight trip, mingling with some fish."

"Igster," Prompto said with a huff of impatience, "are you even listening? I asked if you'd like to meet me there and catch up a bit before I go and get swallowed by the Citadel and have to make an appointment with a secretary just to see you or Noct. You know how it is."

Oh. "Oh," he said, "my apologies, I've been woolgathering. I - it'd be my pleasure."

"Awesome," Prompto said. He lingered, instead of closing the call, and Ignis waited. "Hey, Ignis? I want to tell you something when I see you."

"Can you tell me now? Are you okay?"

Prompto laughed, the nervous, familiar sound of Prompto hiding something. "I am, I am. It's not state secrets or anything, just - I'll see you at six, yeah?"

The phone clicked off. Ignis sat for a while, brimming with curiosity, and trying to reorient himself to suddenly having plans. He would, he decided, try and go to the meeting place in advance, so he could wait for Prompto there without the risk of being exposed on arrival - he knew the place Prompto had described, but hadn't been there yet, and the street layout would be unfamiliar after recent rebuilding attempts.

Perhaps he would stumble, or lose his way and have to ask for directions, or clear a doorway imperfectly, or knock somebody's cup off the table. The thought of Prompto showing his discomfort with his newly gained instability was strangely unbearable.

It wasn't like Prompto hadn't witnessed it firsthand. In the days after Zegnatus Keep, when Ignis swung from giddy relief at having gotten the tools to cancel Noct's fate to heavy despair at his new infirmity, when Gladio alternated between excitement and anger, Prompto proved to be a pillar of stability.

He hadn't expected Prompto (who was a good friend and a good comrade and a good ally, but also a self-conscious bundle of nerves, bravado, and overcompensation a lot of the time) to be so matter-of-fact during that time. He couldn't, to his shame, say that he had been especially gracious himself. He had been reeling, overwhelmed and in a great amount of pain - he raised his hand unconsciously to rub at the scars at the memory - and had deeply loathed needing help.

But he had needed it: to tend to his wounds, to dress, to bathe and shave, to get out of the Keep and of Gralea, to fight. He hadn't been able to do most of it without hurting himself, and yet he had tried, and snarled at Prompto when he had picked up the slack.

But Prompto, who was normally extremely sensitive to any hint of displeasure - whom Ignis, in their more peaceful times, could wilt for days with an unfortunate remark - had taken it all in stride, and stayed by his side, unobtrusive, cheerful and steady. A firm hand under his elbow, a guiding voice in his ear, a warm presence against his back at night, when fever and chills had attacked him in turn. And so Ignis had chafed and growled and said cutting words, and yet had leaned on him, and had let him to be the guide he had so sorely needed.

Well then; with luck and a bit of planning, he wouldn't need to show Prompto how much he backslid. He had time enough to get his morning coffee, and deal with whatever chores there were, and maybe finish his novel before beginning to get ready so he would get to the meeting place with an hour or two to spare.

The novel having been finished, the queen and her knight predictably united in marital bliss, Ignis spent some time deliberating over his clothes. Prompto had been the the one who helped him arrange them in his wardrobe, sorting them by color and labeling them with Braille, in the days they had spent reclaiming the Citadel.

After their flight from Zegnatus Keep, attending to his appearance had been at first an act of defiance, and then, in the frantic days and months and years spent preparing for Noct's return, of sanity. Some days he had felt like the armor of his clothes was the only thing holding him together.

These days it fell somewhere between comforting habit and propriety: the way he looked reflected on Noct's consequence, of course. He dressed well because he was what he was, and derived no particular pleasure from the fact; but, for whatever reason, it felt important to attend to himself with care tonight. Perhaps it simply meant that Prompto, whose presence in Insomnia was a rare and treasured occurrence, deserved the consideration.

He made it to the cafe Prompto had picked out with two hours to spare, on foot and without undue trouble, one or two stumbles notwithstanding. The place itself he's found by the inviting smells of nutmeg, cardamom and cinnamon, freshly baked pastries and coffee. He found himself to be too tense to enjoy the ambiance as such, for no reason whatsoever - it was just Prompto, and they were just going to chat a bit and swap some gossip before Prompto returned to the Citadel proper - but he's enjoyed the smells as the proof of their rebuilding efforts. Five years into the darkness, coffee was a precious, hoarded commodity; eight years in it was so sparse sometimes disputes over ownership led to violence.

He settled down, with thankfully little fuss from the waitress, and ordered tea: he chose to quit coffee cold turkey, back when it had became obvious that both Noct and the light would be gone for a very long time, and the distraction of frustrated cravings had been obviously unsupportable. The withdrawal had been one of his most unpleasant physical experiences, up to and including to some really harsh daemon encounters, and had been incentive enough not to pick the habit now that it was available to him.

Prompto, he thought suddenly, probably didn't even know about it, since Ignis had cut himself off after sending him and Gladio out on their respective errands on the road to Noct's salvation, and had ridden out a week of headaches, shakes and his own shamefully uncontrollable temper without inflicting it on anybody. By the time they had came back, battered but well-satisfied, he had been well over it.

(In the back of his wardrobe there was tucked a dusty can of Ebony that Prompto had by Six know what means found for his birthday, nine years into their wait. He remembered the barely contained glee in Prompto's voice, and wished futilely that he could have the image to go along with the voice: Prompto, bouncing on his toes, grinning in anticipation. He had made a big production of stretching and savoring the precious gift, and thanked Prompto with all the reverence the gift deserved. The can, hidden securely in his bags, had followed him from Lestallum to Insomnia to the Citadel.)

The tea was pleasing to taste, if failing to soothe him; the chatter around him inconsequent enough not to bother him, and pleasing to the ear. None of the patrons paid attention to him. He faded far enough into the inner workings of the Citadel to be by and large unfamiliar to the people of the city on sight, much to his relief.

He tried to breathe out the tension still coiling in him, unbidden. It was just Prompto, returning home, surely full enough of news and adventures and photos from his travels that Ignis' participation in the conversation could be safely limited to being an appreciative audience.

He doubted Prompto would stay for long enough to hit on any uncomfortable topics, really. Just as Gladio thrived in his predestined role by Noct's side, Prompto seemed content to act as Noct's eyes and ears in the far reaches of his kingdom, given how far it had spread and how fuzzy its borders became, after the end of the world. He checked on the ecological progress of the outflung territories, kept track of the process of rebuilding in far regions, delivered first-hand news of the Gralean survivors integration into Lucis and Tenebrae, and was practically ecstatic over the opportunity to once again take photos in the daylight.

He'd be gone for months, and then the winds would blow him back into Insomnia - full of energy and zest, brimming with news and reports and good cheer, here and gone again. Ignis was happy for him, just as he was for Gladio - there were moments, during the long night, when both of them, bereft of the benefits of the vision that drove Ignis, floundered and lost their footing, and to see them fulfilled and driven was a pleasure. And if it was a pleasure with a hidden sting - if Ignis sometimes felt as if he became lost just as everybody was found and raised into salvation - well, that wasn't Prompto's fault.

He raised his cup to his lips and discovered it to be cold. He put it down on the table and reached for his phone to check the time. There was plenty of time; perhaps he could listen to some of his work notes while he waited.

The phone vibrated in his hand, almost startling him into dropping it. There was no way to check for the caller without turning the sound on, and he didn't want to disturb the other patrons. He took the call, feeling the faint stirrings of anxiety: with Noct and Gladio both out of the Citadel, and him on his day off, he shouldn't have been disturbed for anything unimportant, and nothing urgent should've been on his docket.

"Ignis," Cor said into his ear. "I apologize for troubling you on your weekend, but there's an incident happening right now, and I could use your help."

"An incident?"

"You know the destroyed Imperial base on Corso Via? We've just gotten a report of some unusual activity around there."

"Looters? Or just children playing? I thought it was picked and swept clean."

"It was, or we thought so - the thing is, I've sent some Glaives to check it out, and there's definitely been somebody there, and we can neither find them nor ascertain for sure that they've left. But my people have swept all the available areas, and whoever the intruders are, they're not there."

Ignis' fingers tightened on his forgotten cup. "You think they've found an entrance that had been missed during the cleanup?"

"I really hope that it was some kids playing around and that they cleared out and made my people look like fools. But I'd like to be sure."

"I understand. I assume you want me to assist with the search?"

Cor actually sounded mildly apologetic, a rare treat. "Right now you're the closest expert on the bloody things, and I'm still not in the city. I'll send Renata Asta to pick you up and bring you over, she's in charge of the search right now. And I hope you'll spot something the Glaives missed and point them in the right direction."

"Of course."

Ignis gave Cor the address for the cafe and ended the conversation. He called Prompto with his apologies and left a voicemail when there was no answer. He tried not to notice the excitement rising up in his blood.

It's not that digging through the Imperial bases ever had been his favorite pastime: he had spent an untold amount of time doing just so in the intervening years, sometimes alone and sometimes with Prompto or Talcott, combing through their records for any information on the Scourge and daemons that could be of use, and had always found it to be a claustrophobic and miserable pastime. There was a scar under his ribs testifying to how close the base in Leide had came to killing him, and it still pulled painfully when the weather worsened.

But he did know them - standard and non-standard layouts, operating systems, command codes - and the prospect of being immediately and clearly useful, without any attached emotional awkwardness...

He heard the distinctive clatter of Crown-issued boots on the floor of the cafe, and got up and went to meet Cor's officer before they could reach him. A bit of magician's trickery, but Cor's new recruits were by necessity young and for the most part unfamiliar, and if he didn't do things like that upfront, he might've found himself to be babysat and shepherded around.

"Count Scientia," the newcomer said; a young woman, Galahdian accent, polite enough but without the court polish. "I'm Renata Asta, the marshal..."

"Sent you," he finished, lowering his voice in hope of getting her to lower hers, "I know. Tell me what you have en route."

They extricated themselves from the cafe without any incident, and without, Ignis hoped against hope, too many Suspicious Governmental Dealings In The Bright Light Of Day videos surfacing on Moogle Tube the next morning.

In the car - it's been twelve years and he still felt twitchy and aggrieved every time he had to fold himself into the passenger seat - she shared the situation report, although most of it just repeated what Cor told him, with more details. This base was one of the first cleaned out by Cor and his people after the fall of the Empire; it was left relatively open to the general public precisely because there was no trouble left to court there, given that most of the base was reduced to several empty rooms and miles of corridors filled with rebar and rubbish. Teenagers snuck out there for makeouts, and latchkey kids played hide and seek there in the daytime.

Ignis felt a headache gathering behind his temples, and refrained from frowning or rubbing them with an effort. If there was anything else to this place - if it was hidden well enough to fool Cor - it couldn't have been anything insignificant, and Ignis had enough of the significant remnants of the Empire to last him to the end of his life.

Prompto sent back a cheerful "stay safe, don't hog all the fun i'm coming soon" text message that his phone dutifully voiced for him, along with the string of incomprehensible emojis.

When the car had stopped, Asta killed the engine and was out of the door fast and smooth, coming over to his side to open the door for him. He's controlled the twitch of his jaw with some difficulty, reminding himself that it was professional courtesy towards a superior rather than pity towards the poor crippled aging chamberlain. He's performed the service for Noct often enough, when they were young and his main worry was keeping Noct focused on his schoolwork and cleaning his apartment.

He had no way of knowing if she's held out her hand for him as well to help him get out of the car, and if she did, she wisely chose not to grab him.

A gust of wind blew stone dust into his face; his cane gave a muffled thump against the stone. He heard the clatter of heavy Glaive boots on the stone, bits and pieces of chatter and commands. One of Asta's people came by to report that they've found the intruders' footprints in one of the corridors - the dead-end corridor, and yet they found an exit, or magically disappeared.

"Well then," Ignis said to Asta, quietly. "They?"

"At least three people. Civilian boots."

Please, Ignis thought to nobody in particular, let us have at least some luck. "Adults?"

"The shoe size is pretty small. Either teenagers or small adults."

There went that luck. "Okay. Take me to that corridor, please, and let's see what I can do."

"This way, sir."

The ground was just uneven enough to force him to be extra careful with his cane. They crossed the expanse of the base's wide courtyard, and ducked away from the wind into the doors of what remained of the upper level. Scuffed-up cement under his cane turned into scarred metal. He adjusted his grip, gave the Glaive an impatient couple of moments to adjust to the trick of guiding him through narrow spaces without grabbing his arm and leading him, and followed him in.

Prompto had accompanied him to bases like this, three years after Noct was swallowed by the Crystal, when it became evident to Ignis that for his plan to succeed he would need to know what the Empire, with Ardyn's help, did with the Scourge and the daemons. It had been a stroke of luck that it was Prompto - Gladio had been away, overseeing the transition of refugees from overwhelmed Galdin Quay to Lestallum, and Prompto had refused to let Ignis go alone - and it had saved their lives when they've accidentally triggered an automated defense system in the first place they hit. They discovered, at the last possible moment, that Prompto's usually hidden wrist code made the programs running those bases turn over and beg for treats.

It had been an awkward conversation; they had huddled together on the cold metal floor, wedged tightly between two consoles, trying to catch their breath while the base quieted around them, and Prompto had told him his most deeply held secret.

He had been terrified, and Ignis could only hope that he had managed to treat his confession with due respect. Back there, in the red-tinged dark, his heart still pounding and his hands still shaking, high on the adrenaline of their narrowly avoided demise, he had acted mostly on instinct, putting an arm over startled Prompto's shoulder, folding him into a tight, unequivocal hug.

He had told him that he had sure proved his loyalty and his allegiance over and over, beyond any shadow of doubt, and that whoever Prompto was by blood or birth or creation, he was Noct's - he was theirs - first and foremost. He had told him all of that and he had held him, and he didn't know if Prompto had quite believed him (even though he was proven right later, first by Gladio, and then by Noct, after Prompto had made his confession to them both on the eve of the battle with Ardyn), but Prompto had leaned into him and allowed himself to be hand.

After that they had combed through the base, room by room and console by console, clearing out the stray daemons, and Prompto had made sure to teach Ignis how to operate the controls by voice commands and blind touch. He also dug out all the high-profile access codes he could find in the guts of the base's operation system - top scientific personnel, a couple of generals (they had proven to be so useful in further explorations, especially when Prompto with his own magically superior and mysterious access hadn't been able to join Ignis on trips, that Ignis could still recite them by heart.)

They had even toyed with the idea of setting the base to self-destruct after they'd gotten everything they came for, but it turned out that there was no way to delay the destruction for enough to let the person initiating it get out.

("I imagine they instructed one of the MTs and left it behind if they ever needed it done," Ignis had said, miffed by the impractical waste of a life, and Prompto had shivered by his side.)

"Here," Asta said, startling him out of his reverie.

The section where their unknown intruders had vanished turned out to be a half-demolished, narrow hallway leading into the depths of the base's ruins, full to the brim by anxious and aggravated Glaives. It took a sharp command from his companion, some jostling and some undervoiced profanity that Ignis' ears had unerringly picked out, for everybody to sort themselves and their elbows out and get out of his way.

He stepped up to the wall, feeling slightly guilty for not bothering to volunteer himself or Prompto for the final sweep sometime before. He should've made sure the information they had was shared by the key personnel; peace time was an excellent time to create policies and protocols instead of relying on individual knowledge.

Something to keep in mind for later; for now, he took off his right glove and started feeling along the offending wall. For this, at least, sight was more of an impediment than requirement; he felt for the peculiar feeling of give in the wall with fingertips that stayed soft and sensitive through all the hardships, and he let himself be as slow and as thorough as the task required. Behind him the Glaives - miracle of miracles - kept an expectant, hushed silence.

The location of the hidden access panels always varied, most likely for security; it was impossible to know beforehand where it would be, just how it would be. But once Prompto had figured it out himself, he had been an excellent teacher.

Ignis kept his breathing even and his movements methodical and slow, despite the palpable impatience simmering behind his back, and on the third sweep his efforts gave fruit. He found the right place and pushed, softly. The section of the wall smoothly slid away.

"Oh shit," somebody muttered behind his back.

He felt for the upper right corner of the panel, orienting himself; he could, he supposed, give the task to Asta, but the layout of the screen came to him easily, along with one of the codes Prompto had unearthed for him. He touched the screen in the first sequence that seemed appropriate - seven numbers, three letters, some long-dead general's high-level access - and with a groan of old metal, the entire way retracted and folded into the surrounding wall.

"Now," he said, "we can get in. But the question is, how did they go in?"

Asta joined him by the wall. "This was a pretty high profile access code you just used, wasn't it? What are the chances of the Imperial personnel of this caliber surviving to this day and choosing now to mess with this base?"

"It does seem unlikely," Ignis said, "but weirder things happened."

Prompto's barcode had seemed to be able to override all the security; he could go through Empire security like it was wet tissue paper. This had been a mystery they didn't manage to solve - they had seen the research on clones raised to be turned into MTs, and assumed Prompto had been one of them, but who would give literal cannon folder such powers? All their attempts to find the answers had ultimately led to dead ends and false leads. This had been the part of Prompto's secret that neither Gladio nor Noct nor anybody else knew, and Ignis wasn't going to bring it up now.

"Sir," Asta said, "if I may, a word?"

He let her lead him aside, several steps back the cramped corridor, to what he imagined was an illusion of privacy. "Yes?"

Her voice, for the first time, had a note of uncertainty to it. "It looks like it could be something more serious than a bunch of kids on a dare, and we're going to go in hot. The chain of command..."

"Ah," he said.

"Obviously you outrank everybody on the scene, and your expertise and fighting experience is unique, but..."

"But you'd rather not have a blind man lead your people into an unknown situation."

"Yes," she said, this time without hesitation, and his respect tasted bitter.

"I concur," Ignis said. "With the understanding that I will take over in regards to dealing with our intruders when we find them, you can go ahead."

"Thank you, sir," she said, and turned to her Glaives, giving crisp, relieved orders; Ignis shook out his fingers where they were gripping the handle of his cane a bit too tightly, and waited to be told his place in the assembled team.

---

The space behind the hiding wall was the same as in any Imperial base Ignis had ever been too; the tap of his cane on the metal floor echoed hollowly and bounced across the walls.

The team Asta had selected consisted of four Glaives, not counting her. Once upon a time, Ignis thought, he would've made it his business to know the exact structure of the Glaive units beforehand, to become familiar with all the key personnel, just to know how to incorporate them better into whatever Noct needed. When had he became content to leave the Glaives to Cor and the Crownsguard to Gladio, and not interfere in their domains? Was he indulging himself, allowing himself less reach and responsibility, more idle time, or was he just folding himself up tighter and tighter, preemptively so he wouldn't have to hear another of Noct's plaintive "You should rest, Specs," and know now that he was causing distress to Noct with his very presence?

He shook his head, dislodging the thought - it didn't matter. Noct had made great strides, growing into his inheritance, becoming a more steadfast and decisive king day by day. Sooner or later Noct'd become sure enough of himself to solve his dilemma: he'd make Ignis resign and rest somewhere away from the Citadel, where he wouldn't have to see the price Ignis had paid for his life every day and be saddened by it, and Ignis would smile, and incline his head, and thank Noct for his care and thoughtfulness, and oblige him. And then...

Once upon a time he'd take some pride in solving a problem before Noct even became aware of it; but he was, perhaps, due this one indulgence: to hoard all the time that remained until Noct gathered his resolve.

And meanwhile, they had a mystery to solve. He was put in the middle of the group, presumably to protect him from harm and the Glaives from any potential trouble with their superiors, with Asta leading the company. The corridor hasn't split yet, and no intruders were in - ha - sight.

"Are the lights on?", he asked Asta quietly.

"Yes," she said, "and not just the emergency lights. You'd think this place was still in business."

"Were you with the group that had cleared it out initially?"

"No, but I've talked to the officer who was in change, and he said there had been nothing unusual about it. It's just another one of of the outposts the bastards built after they took the city. Barracks, maintenance rooms, a hangar for their machines. The marshal and his team had killed everybody, blown up everything they could reach, and moved on. Standard procedure."

Ignis nodded. "From what I've managed to gather about the Empire, sometimes the left hand quite comprehensively did not know what the right one was doing. But if somebody was in on the secret, why come back now?"

From the rustle of her leathers, he could tell that she shrugged.

---

The Glaives around him were tense, on edge; he could imagine their arms on the hilts of their weapons, their intent faces. He wondered if the people Asta picked were a part of the pre-Fall old guard, or the new recruits. The original members had the benefit of proper training and warfare experience, but the ones recruited after Noct's return had one extremely important advantage over them: they weren't trained to rely on warping and weapon summoning, and so didn't have the tendency to reach for the magic that just wasn't there in the world anymore, losing the crucially important split second that could decide the outcome of the fight.

He would, presumably, have the same problem; to his shame, he hadn't stepped onto the training grounds ever since Noct returned. He told himself that he'd just been busy and that his administrative rather than fighting skills had been required... but the truth was that he hadn't been able to stomach the idea of reclaiming his abilities for the second time.

The first time had been bad enough, but back then his knowledge of Noct's fate had driven him, like a cruel mistress. He had to relearn to fight so he would be able to travel and fight for the information he needed; there had been no other choice, and so he had conquered himself. But now, with Noct safely ensconced in the heart of the country that rightfully worshipped him as its savior, Ignis felt that fighting would achieve nothing beyond wounding Noct further?

He chafed under Asta's request, polite as it was, to be given the control of the operation, but the truth of the matter was that he was, essentially, a civilian consultant to be protected right now, and if and when they ran into trouble, he'd have to revert to finding a cover and doing his best not to hinder people who could fight.

Well then, so be it; he's always been good at working with what was at hand.

They walked down the empty, featureless corridor, their boots clanging hollowly on the metal panels, with no doors or branching passages in sight. Ignis' ears strained for sounds, unconsciously expecting to hear the daemon chittering in the distance, but the base around them was dead silent, aside from his comrades' breathing. The air, he thought, was pretty fresh, considering how long this place had been locked.

Asta described the surroundings to him, sotto voce - an empty hallway for several hundred steps. Then rooms that looked like laboratories at the right side, tempered glass panels looking on tidy worktables and consoles, firmly locked doors. A guard station, also cleanly locked.

"This place doesn't look like it was abandoned in a hurry. It's very… orderly."

"A disturbing thought," Ignis murmured in response.

Ten minutes later, a sound that didn't belong to his group filtered into his consciousness. "Asta," he said, halting her, "I hear somebody talking."

He imagined she was giving him a rather dubious look, but she gave a command to be quiet nevertheless. "There's a bend ahead," she said, about fifteen steps.

Two of the company moved ahead - Ignis heard the muted whisper of their leathers as they went - and Ignis tightened his grip on the cane. He didn't even have his daggers on him, but the cane would do in a pinch.

There were no sounds of struggle, though; they returned soon, reporting that there was a metal door around the corner, firmly closed. Ignis allowed one of the soldiers to guide him, and made sure his cane wasn't hitting the floor.

He strained his ears.

"There's somebody behind this door," Ignis murmured to Asta. "At least two people, and they're arguing."

"Understood, sir. We'll be going in, then; can you open the door for us when I give the signal?"

He nodded. "Unless there's clear danger and your people need to protect themselves, please do your best to take them alive and unharmed. We need to find out what's going on here."

Her assent was, if somehow unenthusiastic, unambiguous. Ignis assumed his position by the door's console, even allowing one of the Glaives to actually lead him there by his elbow, for the sake of silence. He acquainted himself with the access screen, set it up so one stroke command would let him open the door, and waited.

He listened quietly to the quiet whispering scuffles of the team getting ready to go in, and to the increasingly frantic indistinct conversation going on beyond the door, and tried to figure out why something about the cadence of this conversation was pinging him as familiar. Something about the tone of the voice?

"Now," Asta said, and Ignis let them in. Heavy feet pounded the floor. something crashed with a loud metallic clang; a young voice cried out in alarm and pain, and Asta shouted orders for the intruders to stay on the floor, hand over their heads!

And then Ignis heard an achingly familiar voice and, in utter astonishment, forgot all about the procedure and rushed through the door.

"Prompto? What are you doing here?"

"Sir," Asta hissed, bringing him back to himself a moment too late; he already waded into the middle of the fray, scattering Glaives and whoever they were trying to subdue, and just as he realized it, a wiry arm snaked around his neck, jerking him backwards.

The knife pressed into the side of his neck was shaking. "Stay back," Prompto said, shockingly loud against his eardrums, almost hysterical, "stay back! Drop your weapons!"

"Prompto," Ignis said, wary now but still disbelieving, "what in the name of Six are you...", and then his brain finally caught up with his ears.

The body behind him was all wrong; too thin, too lean, lacking Prompto's hard-won muscles. And the voice, now that Ignis was listening, was - undeniably Prompto's - but... young.

Young, and full of jittery terror that told Ignis that his chances of getting his throat cut right there and then were pretty high.

"Everybody," he said, calmly, hoping that Asta would remember he did outrank her, "stand down."

"Stand down," he said again, in a voice that had been known to get even the daemons to quake, once upon a time. "Nobody make any sudden movements, and somebody tell me what's going on."

And then, quieter, to Prompto-not-Prompto behind him. "Stay calm, will you? Everything is going to be just fine."

The man - the boy, he thought, and his heart clenched - behind him snorted with the derision this statement probably deserved, but the knife steadied a bit against Ignis' skin.

"Sir," Asta said, vibrating with tension, "this is not Mr. Argentum."

"I gathered," Ignis said, with as much dignity as he could muster.

"Don," an unfamiliar voice said - female, also uncomfortably young - in disbelief. "Don, he's blind."

Astra went on. "There are three intruders..."

"We're not intruders, the girl said indignantly. "We didn't do anything wrong!"

"That's good to know," Ignis said, trying to radiate calmness in all direction. Children, after all; Six, what a mess. "And who would you and your - friends - be?"

Several voices erupted at once; he wished he could map their positions in the room. He shifted his stance slowly, trying not to agitate the not-Prompto at his back, and asked them to talk in order. He figured that, as long as they were talking, nobody was killing anybody, and there was a chance of salvaging the situation.

The girl was Lucia, and her other friend, a boy (slightly younger, Ignis concluded from his voice), was Nur. They came to Insomnia from Lestallum after Noct opened the city; Ignis surmised, familiar with such tales, that they were the darkness' orphans, having lost their parents or been abandoned from them during the strife.

So far, so good; even if they did manage to stumble on a secret Niflheim base by accident, the Crown wasn't in the habit of hunting children. Nothing unforgivable was done yet.

That "Don" behind him, though... His hand trembled a bit when the tale swung back to him, and the Glaives were growing restless.

"It's fine," Ignis said again, professionally soothing. "We just need to know what's going on, and nobody needs to hurt anybody. The more we know, the easier everything will be to resolve."

He felt - he felt surprisingly good. His senses sharpened and settled; he could tell where everybody was in the room now, just from the sounds of their breathing and the shifts of displaced air. He breathed slowly and steadily, hoping it would transfer his reassurances to the panicked young man behind him.

He didn't know if it worked, or if the boy just made a (completely correct) guess at the probability of successfully using Ignis as a hostage to get all three of them out safely, but he let his companions continue.

It turned out that Lucia and Nur found Don a little less than a year ago, soon after they came to Insomnia. He was wandering the streets not far from where they were, and he had no memory of where he was from or who he was. Even his name was the one Lucia gave him.

Ignis' heart began beating heavily and hollowly in his throat. "Do you," he asked, carefully, and hoped it wouldn't end up with his throat prematurely slashed, "do you perhaps have a tattoo? On your wrist?"

The knife jerked, biting into his neck; blood beaded up in the cut. Asta made a sharp noise, and Ignis bellowed "Stand down!" in his best command voice.

"It's fine," he said into the ensuing ruckus, aiming for his best "soothe Noct into doing his homework" tone. "I'm asking because I know another person who has one. He's one of my closest friends. You used it to open the doors in this base, right?"

"Yes," Don said, just a shade above a whisper. "I don't... I don't know how… I thought I might maybe... I don't - we didn't want any trouble - "

"We can sort it out," Ignis said, hoping that Asta hasn't yet reached the terminal point of impatience and wouldn't make a liar out of him. "Whatever it is, we can figure it out and help you, and nobody will get hurt."

He hoped he judged the timing right. "But," he said, adding just a bit of steel, "you need to put the knife down first. Otherwise next time you twitch I might be unable to stop my people in time."

He held his breath; if he's miscalculated the boy's readiness to cooperate, if he's compromised his judgement by how familiar the boy's voice was... But after a frozen, tense moment, the blade fell from his neck.

"Nobody move," Ignis said preemptively, and raised his hand, palm out, towards Asta. For once in his recent life he was grateful for being Count Scientia, the war hero, rather than just Ignis Scientia, the unassuming blind advisor; he had a feeling she'd have mutinied long before without his rank giving him extra consequence. "These are civilians, and we're treating them as such."

Thankfully, nobody did anything unwise in the following several moments, and the boy behind him relaxed minutely and stepped away. Ignis turned to him, trying to imagine the layout of the room now that he had this leisure. Don had fetched against something metallic, judging by the sound - a table? A console?

"What are you doing here? What did you hope to find?"

Ignis heard the movement to his left, the light patter of feet - the kid's friend joining him by the console. He sympathized with the obvious frustration Asta must've been feeling right now, and made a mental note to at least give a positive review to Cor when it was over.

"I didn't want to come here," Don said, quietly; he seemed less tense now that his friends were by his side. "I was fine with Lucia and Nur, they were teaching me - anyway. I kept having - these - these weird dreams. About this place. These rooms. I didn't know what it was, but..."

Please, Ignis thought, don't let it be another prophecy.

"The tattoo," Don said, abruptly. "You said your friend has one. What do you know about it?"

He hesitated for a long moment, used to keeping Prompto's secrets. But he had a feeling that the boy wouldn't respond to anything than honesty, and it felt - it felt monumentally important to do it right. And as for the secrecy - he could outright order Glaives to keep silent, and rely on Cor and on Noct's authority to enforce that order.

"We think," he began, carefully choosing his words, "that the tattoos denote people who were - created, somehow, by Niflheim, in the places like this base."

Don swallowed, heavy audible in the ensuing silence. "Made?..."

"Cloned, most likely," Ignis said, as gently as he could manage. "The friend I mentioned was found and taken away when he was a toddler, a long time ago. It looks like your situation might have been different, given that you're fully grown and have no memory of your life previously. But his tattoo opens the Imperial locks too, just like yours."

"Sir," Asta hissed behind his back, furiously. Ignis made a sharp quelling motion with his hand behind his back and gave a brief prayer to whoever of the Six was feeling particularly merciful at the moment that his authority will carry them for just a bit longer.

"I've never ever been to Niflheim," Don said, and Nur echoed him. "Yes, he's been with us all the time!"

"Of course," Ignis said. "Technically, Niflheim is no more, as both a country and a political entity, not since the war. But if this is the base you came from... it was built during the war. My question would be, what happened recently to make it - let you out? What do you remember from your life before you met your friends? And what made you come back here?"

"I don't know," Don said, sharply frustrated. "I just - woke up somewhere. I don't remember. I knew how to talk and like - tie my shoelaces, things like that. And how to..."

"...How to fight," Nur said. Ignis thought he could feel a hint of Galahdan accent in his voice. "That's how we met. Some guys were bothering me and Lucia, y'know, older kids, for the food, and he jumped right in."

Ignis closed his eyes, for a second overwhelmed with the bright memory of Prompto wrenching the Regalia wheel to check out an injured dog in a road. Nature or nurture, one wondered?

This said, Asta's security concerns, amply expressed by her furious silence and the glare currently buried between his shoulder blades, were justified. "Why did you decide to check the base out? Did somebody advise you?"

"I did," Lucia said. "It's the only weird place around where Don was found, and it had those metal corridors he described. We just wanted to dig around a bit, see if he maybe had a hidey hole there or something - but then..."

"But then the door opened," Ignis said, and his mind whirred frantically. It took him, even knowing exactly what he was looking for, twenty minutes to locate and manipulate the access panel. For them to stumble into it - either the kids were lying (but Ignis doubted that), or the tattoo, just like Prompto's, gave Don an incredibly high access level. The base's systems were attuned to him. But why?

Ah well. He decided they might as well find out.

"Is there a console in the room?"

"Yes," Nur said. Ignis strode over to join them.

"There should be a scanner somewhere on it. Put your tattoo to it, please."

Ignis heard the clatter of heavy boots on metal behind his back: Asta and her people joining them. Don hesitated, but then took a sharp step forwards; the console lit up with a familiar sound. Ignis prepared to walk the kid through the interface, but instead he an unfamiliar recorded voice.

"Greetings, child," the voice - old, and cold, and obviously used to command, and familiar in the way nightmares bore familiarity to daylight landscapes - said. "Welcome to your legacy."

Somebody, Ignis couldn't say who, made an abrupt noise, a hiss of an inhale. "Is there video? Tell me what's on the screen," Ignis demanded.

"I, uh," the kid said; his voice was shaking. "I think it's me. Only old."

"I'm Verstael Besithia," the voice continued, serenely, as if responding to them, and Ignis felt the tiny hair on the back of his neck rise. That name he knew. "If you've been awoken, it means that we've lost the war, however unlikely that is. But," the recording cackled, "even in defeat, there's always space for a bit of surprise, isn't that right?"

Judging by the sounds, more screens came to life; one of the kids, Ignis couldn't say who, gasped. "Sir," Asta said, tightly, "there are notes for something named Project Revelation - "

"I don't want this," Don said over her, his voice rising. "How do I turn it off, I don't want this, I - "

"You're not going to understand this," Besithia (who was, to the best of Ignis' knowledge, dead these past ten years, killed by the daemon infestation he'd helped create) said, with earnest paternal kindness, "but you don't need to, my boy. You're just an instrument of destiny."

A deep, ominous rumble rolled through the room, reverberating through the walls; Ignis lost his footing as the floor shifted under him, reminding him of Midgardsormr stretching its coils.

Don caught him before he could fall. "What's that?"

"Asta," Ignis said, "tell me what this project is, now."

"Sir," she said; she sounded shaken. "It's about - it seems to be about creating a giant hybrid. Mecha and - something alive - and the Scourge. The dimensions of the monster it mentions is..."

"Right," Ignis said, and decided not to swear in front of the children. "Okay. Don, work the console again, try to override the release order."

He knew from the resulting angry chime that it didn't work before Don confirmed. The instrument of destiny, likely kept somewhere in the base and set up to emerge if certain conditions were met. A dead man's switch.

(Was Prompto, he thought with sudden sharp fury, made and destined for something similar? If somebody hadn't smuggled him out of the Gralea labs, would his ultimate fate have been the same?)

The sheer pettiness of Besithia plan made him dearly sorry they never got a chance to met the Emperor's mad scientist - it would have been a pleasure to end him in person.

Asta, deciding it was time to dispense with good intentions, clamped a hand on his shoulder. "We need to evacuate, sir. I'm alerting the marshal, so he could prepare the attack force..."

The floor shook again; Nur uttered a short surprised scream when something crashed heavily into the floor.

"It's not going to work," Ignis said, absently; his mind was sorting through their options with dizzying speed, and Ignis could see the only way that emerged.

He wished he could've at least had this cup of coffee with Prompto, and hear about his latest photos.

"Sir?"

He dislodged her hand from his shoulder, neatly and precisely. "There's no magic left that Glaives could use, and what heavy non-magical machinery we have is likely not going to be enough to deal with it quickly."

He could hear the other two Glaives shifting behind her back, muttering quickly, but she spoke for them. "It's not like there's a choice, sir? We now our duty, and if it'll be a battle of attrition, so be it."

"The Scourge," Ignis said quietly. "There's no more Oracle to heal the afflicted, and it spreads quickly. By the time the beast is dealt with, Insomnia will fall again, just like Gralea fell."

He turned back to the console. "Don, I need your help. Try calling up the base plans; I need a path from here to the main command room - even if it's unmarked, it's going to be in the middle of the base, heavy fortified, and it's at the center of all communication lines."

"Sir," Asta said.

"Here are your orders, Commander," Ignis said. "Take the children and get them out. Brief the marshal on the way, tell him to evacuate as large a radius as can be achieved around the base, maintain perimeter, and be prepared. If I'm lucky, that's all you'll need to do. If not, I wish everybody luck and apologize in advance."

"I found the place you needed," Don said into the ensuing silence, hesitantly. "How do I - "

"Just list the turns I'll need to take to get there, I'll remember them. My codes should still be working, and be high-ranked enough; let's hope it's something Besithia hasn't accounted for. And then you and your friends can leave with Asta and her people. You will be fine."

The shocks evened out into continuous rumble; behind his closed eyelids, Ignis could imagine their death finding its legs, spreading its shoulders, unfolding into the world. They were rapidly running out of time.

"You want to go down there? Are you insane?"

There was no use dancing around it. "The self-destruct function can only be turned on manually from the command center. Luckily for us all, I know how."

The boy pushed him against console; Ignis could hear his panicked, too fast breathing against his face. He wishes his voice didn't remind him of Prompto that much. "No. It's - it's because of me, it's because I came here and fucked everything up. I will - give me the codes, I'll go down there."

If there was hell, Ignis hoped that Verstael Besithia was constantly tortured by the knowledge of how well his creations defied him, when allowed even a sliver of chance.

"This is nonsense, sir," Asta said, "you can't go down there. Give me the codes, and I will do it."

He smiled at both of them; he, felt, unexpectedly, better than he did in months. "No," he said calmly, "and it's an order you can't overrule. I speak with the King's voice, and that's what I've decided."

"And no to you too," he said to the boy. "You've been used, but it's not your fault, and you're not going to pay for it. And there's someone outside who will be incredibly happy to meet you."

"Renata," he told Asta quietly, "please make sure to get the kids to Mr. Argentum, into his care. As a personal request."

She made a sharp, frustrated noise. "Short of torturing me for the codes," he said gently, "you have no recourse, and we are losing time. Now give me the information, take the children and go. I will," and then he had to pause and clear his suddenly dry throat, "deliver my apologies to His Majesty in person."

"Sir," she said. He heard the slap of leather on leather, one and two and three more on its heels - the Kingsglaive salute, he imagined. "It's been an honor, sir."

Several minutes later, armored with the knowledge of all the turns he'd have to take, he turned away from them and let the base swallow him.

---

He was slightly worried about making his way down, despite the reassurances he gave, but the even metal of the base's well-kept hallways was easy enough to navigate. All imperial bases smelled and felt the same - metal and ozone, cleaning chemicals and an odor of something oily and slithery right underneath. He kept one hand on the wall to keep track of the turns he needed to take, and let his body carry him without conscious thought.

(He wondered, idly, just what the secret the Empire possessed for making their contractors do such quality work on a base constructed in the middle of warzone so quietly; assuming the secret wasn't torture or the threat of daemonification, perhaps Noctis could use it... but it wouldn't be Ignis' affair anymore, of course.)

At the third intersection his phone began vibrating in his pocket, over and over, and Ignis winced. He considered letting the call lapse, and then scolded himself for cowardice. He was the one to leave; it was on him to say his goodbyes properly.

He shifted the strap of his cane to the wrist of his wall-checking hand, and put the phone to his ear with the other. "Yes, Prompto."

"Ignis," Prompto shouted into his ear without preamble, breathless and too fast, "what the hell, what the hell are you doing, you can't - I'm just twenty minutes out, I'll be there, my tattoo might work - "

"Prompto," Ignis said, "breathe. You know it's not going to work, and you know we can't afford the chance."

"Shut the fuck up! Ignis, you can't just - Noct and Gladio and Cor are on their way, and we'll figure it out, and if this goddamn thing gets out we'll deal with it, Ignis..."

They had had this argument many times during the ten years of darkness, with Ignis burning with the burden of his knowledge and his responsibility, diving into more and more dangerous explorations - sometimes with sufficient backup and sometimes quite without - and Prompto had tried, without fail, to slow him down, and get him to stay safe.

Sometimes they had had bitter arguments and sometimes they had had more lighthearted quarrels, but the one and only time when Prompto had won the battle was also on the phone. His voice had climbed higher and higher in the same way, into a nasal, congested pitch that Ignis had suddenly realized meant that he was crying on the other side of the line.

He had folded, and had waited for Prompto and Gladio to join him, and together they had reached the last piece of the puzzle that waited for them in the ruins and had saved Noct's life. Ignis never admitted to Prompto, afterward, that his intervention had undoubtedly saved Ignis' life, and with it the success of his entire plan.

And now there would be no further chances to say anything left unsaid.

"Don't cry," he said, aching with gentleness and a giddy relief of freefall. "I'm really sorry, Prompto. I was looking forward to our meeting, too. You know, I spent several hours just deliberating over my wardrobe; I wanted to make an impression, even though I imagine you're accustomed to whatever I have to offer."

"Ignis," Prompto said, not rising to the bait, his vowels coming out thick and distorted. "Iggy, please. This can't be happening."

Another hard jolt saved Ignis from having to respond; he fell hard against the wall, cursed and lost his grip on the phone. It took him several priceless minutes to find it again, sweeping his palms against the floor, and he was tempted to just leave it there; to leave it there so he would not have to hear Prompto beg.

But he had to - Noct was owed his farewells. All of them were. So he gritted his teeth and crawled on the floor until he found the phone, breathing out in mingled relief and regret when it was apparently unscathed.

"I'll call back when I'm in position, Prompto," he said, without listening. "I can't focus on the phone now."

He clicked it off and put it securely into his pocket, and walked faster, at as quick a trot he could manage without worrying he'd miss a turn. The apparent destruction wrought underneath his feet by the rampaging beast felt like it was getting closer, and to get devoured without fulfilling his objective would have been, frankly, professionally insulting.

Three more turns, two sets of stairs, a rather terrifying and bumpy elevator ride; several locked doors that he overrode, biting his lip in impatience. Just as he predicted, Besithia's little bit of theatrical villainy did not include locking out his own senior personnel, and if it turned out they would share the afterlife - and this could happen, since at this point Ignis did not quite believe in Astrals' mercy - he would find great enjoyment in rubbing it into the man's face.

And then he was at his destination. The door slid closed behind him - somewhat comfortingly, although he doubted it could've withstood the beast in either case - and he strode to the consoles that he knew would be in the middle of the room, his mind recalling the exact layout and placement of such rooms he had scoured over the years.

He found the right panel and leaned over it, took his gloves off and ran his fingers over the interface, reoriented himself. Found the right sequence to boot it up, which worked, and then had to go through several of his remembered codes before the third one got him in.

Ignis breathed out in relief and hoped that Asta with her crew and the children managed to make it out. Showtime.

He switched the console to the voice commands, and fed it a long list of instructions; the system responded sluggishly as if fighting him, and the rumble of destruction around him grew larger. Finally, he put in the last command.

He took his phone out and laid it carefully on the nearest surface. "Call Noct," Ignis said. "Turn on speakers."

"Self-destruct sequence is activated," a calm mechanical voice said. "All personnel, evacuate immediately. Commencing countdown."

Noct's voice exploded out of the phone almost immediately. "Ignis!"

Ten, the voice said.

Ignis swallowed. He could hear Gladio and Prompto in the background, their voices clamoring and overlapping each other.

"Noct," Ignis said, and didn't know how to continue.

"Ignis," Noct said again, and Ignis heart gave a painful squeeze at the anguish in his voice. "Please tell me there's something I can do."

Nine.

"I'm afraid not, Noct. You know I would not," and in saying it he knew it to be true, "abandon you by choice."

Eight.

"You keep dying, Specs. I thought - I thought now that I've gotten you back, we'd have all the time in the world."

Seven.

"It's unfair," Noct choked out, less like the grave king he grew up to be and more like the skinny boy whose scraped knees Ignis washed and soothed, back in the day, and Ignis couldn't fix it for him.

Six.

"I'm sorry," he said again, helplessly. He should've talked to Noct about his fears, long before that; he should've not resented and envied Gladio's surety of his place at Noct's side; he should've asked Prompto to stay and share their new dawn. He should have, he should have...

Five.

"Iggy," Gladio said, gruff and angry - Ignis heard this voice from him once, when he had been burning out on the cold stone floor - "Iggy. The nerve of you, leaving first."

Four.

"Ignis," Prompto said, choked up. 'You owe me this coffee, Ignis - damn - "

Three.

So many regrets, but he couldn't regret being here, doing this. He raised his hand to his face, wiped away the tears that stung the edge of his scars. His hands were steady.

Two.

"It was a joy," he said. "Noct - Gladio - Prompto - I love you so much. I'm not afraid. I'll wait for you - "

One.

For a moment everything fell overwhelmingly silent; like an indrawn breath of the giant. His ears popped painfully; he could the fine hair on his arms standing up.

"On the other side," he whispered, unable to hear himself. Then the space around him crumpled, like a piece of paper. There was a confused moment of overwhelming, chaotic movement - pressure - agony - and then nothing at all, nothing at all.

---

Prompto had to focus on Noct's face when the base began collapsing; it was so overwhelmingly horrible that it left no space for Prompto's own terror, and that was the only possible solace left for him.

He was still - he hasn't seen Ignis in at least three - no, five, it was hard to keep track of time - five months, and he missed him. They were going to have coffee, and Prompto was going to find out, totally smoothly and naturally, why Ignis sounded so off in his rare text messages, and whether everything was okay.

They were going to have coffee, and maybe, if Prompto wasn't too rusty, he was going to make Ignis laugh, and since he had already promised - when their cups were empty, he was going to gather his courage to himself and finally tell Ignis, and put the whole thing behind them. They could have laughed over it too, afterward. Right?

- and instead, he was standing there with Noct and Gladio, numb and stunned (a monster? a secret base?), and listening to Ignis - listening to Ignis -

They were at the very edge of what Cor had deemed to be a safe enough perimeter, and Cor had made it clear to Noct that the only way for him to step one foot closer would be over Cor's dead body. There was a moment - Prompto could track it by the miserable wave of tension going through the Glaives around - where Noct had actually considered it.

But there was no magic in the world now, no way for Noct to get to Ignis in time or warp them out, no sense or reason to it - and Gods. Prompto lingered in Hammerhead, shooting the shit with Cindy, for old times' sake, dithered in the old Hunter's outpost, now overrun with tourists, trying to find the perfect souvenir for Ignis with the right balance of tacky enough to make him smile and dignified enough to suit him.

Two hours earlier, and he'd be with Ignis when he got the call; he'd be with him, and he'd stop him - those people who went with him did not know that there was no stopping Ignis by reason or logic when he got his martyrdom on, that you had to hit him over the head and drag him away, that if you did not do it, you'd get to stand with your best friends, helplessly, a year after the end of the war, when everything was supposed to be peaceful and mundane and easy, and listen to Ignis die.

He could feel in the soles of his feet when the self-destruct finally hit. Everything paused just for a moment, even the ominous rumble underground that denoted the monster's tearing passage through the base, and then there was a heavy, immediate snap of pressure - it made Prompto, think, inanely, about Ignis folding their clean laundry in one of the smaller Duscae towns, with Prompto sitting on one of the dryers, drumming his heels against the machine's heaving sides, laughing, trying to get Ignis to pose with one of Noct's jackets for the camera.

The remains of the Imperial base in front of them folded in on themselves, ponderously slow at first, and then nightmarishly fast - the center sinking first, the outlying ruins following after, the crater around them widening and widening, the cracks in the pavement spidering outwards, coming up almost to Prompto's feet.

The sound followed a heartbeat behind, a heavy, resonating boom that rang through Prompto's bones - and then the almighty splintering crash of metal and glass and stone.

Ignis was there, somewhere in the middle of this destruction. Prompto saw Gladio grit his teeth, close his eyes for a moment, saw Noct's face set into granite stillness of pain.

The sound ended; the movement ended; the shaking of the earth ended; the wind and dust settled down.

Ignis was dead.

Noct made a sound - the small, bewildered sound of a child having a nightmare in the middle of the night - and Gladio grabbed him and tugged him harshly towards himself, folded Noct's face into his shoulder, hid his own face in Noct's hair, whispering something.

Prompto watched them for a while, mindlessly. He felt scooped out to utter emptiness like he was one of his cameras: perfect recording, perfect recall, but nothing else going on. Gladio's hand, spasming on Noct's shoulder; leaves and grass still stuck in Noct's hair; the pattern of the cracks splitting the ground; the scuffed and battered toes of his own old Crownsguard boots.

Noct's arms hung limply by his sides; he looked like Gladio's grip was the only thing holding him upright. The phone slid out of his hand and fell on the ground.

Prompto stooped down to pick it up, for a lack of anything better to do. Each movement felt separate, buffering like a glitchy video game. The phone's screen was miraculously unbroken; he glanced at it - the call was still connected - and almost swiped it closed.

Then he said, "Guys. Guys."

Gladio glared at him over the top of Noct's head, without much heat.

"Seriously," Prompto said; his heart began tripping over itself in excitement. "Listen."

Noct shifted from under Gladio's arm and turned to him. "What?"

"The call. It's still on. Listen."

They crowded around the phone; Gladio snapped at the Glaives, awkwardly milling around, to shut up and stand still.

Prompto held his breath and cranked the volume on the phone as much as he was able to. They listened for several seconds, and then looked at each other in stunned hope.

There was a harsh, uneven sound coming from the phone, unmistakable even when rendered through the little speakers. Ignis' breathing, wet and irregular, scratchy.

Alive.

---

All told, it took them six hours to get to Ignis. Prompto wasn't sure those were the worst six hours of his life - there were a couple of hunts during the dark years that could provide a strong contest - but it was close.

They tried rousing Ignis over the phone, but he stayed silent in the face of all their entreaties, gentle and otherwise. "Out cold," Gladio said, "and probably for the best."

(Prompto tried to imagine Ignis coming to, confused and alone and awake and blind, and had to take a break to go and throw up. For the best, oh, yeah.)

They kept talking to him anyway, passing the phone around and listening, listening, listening as Ignis' breath steadily grew quieter, threadier and stuttered in and out more and more.

By the second hour, the call went dead, the battery going out. Prompto felt a shameful surge of anger at Ignis for not overcharging it in the morning as if Ignis could have foreseen the way he was going to spend the night and failed to prepare accordingly. He couldn't even find it in himself to be appalled at his own brain.

They dug and dug, with shovels and crowbars that Cor had hurriedly ferried in from somewhere, because they didn't dare to drag in heavy machinery and shift something deep within the base that still - please Astrals - kept Ignis improbably alive.

Prompto fell into something that felt like a daze; his hands blistered and bled, and his head spun. He had Gladio to his left and Noct to his right, and what felt like an entire Kingsglaive contingent at their backs, and he tried not to run the calculations in his head. Was there air? How fast was Ignis bleeding out, if he was? Was he still unconscious, slipping slowly into a coma? Was he awake and alone, in pain, thinking that nobody was looking for him?

Maybe he was calling out to them in the dark, even now, and wondering why nobody answered. Or maybe he wasn't; maybe he was dying quietly, dignified and resigned, and just the thought of it made Prompto bite his tongue until it bled.

He was, he realized during this long vigil, pretty damn angry with Ignis. And so, he decided, they were going to find Ignis, and bring him back, and take very good care of him, and when he was better, Prompto was going to give him the lecture of his life. It was possible he'd have to get in line behind Noct and Gladio, but that was okay; he could wait and rehearse his lines.

He'd tell Ignis there was a lifetime quota on throwing his life away, and that he had already overspent it; he'd tell him about just how much Ignis' resigned, patient calm during this last call frightened and infuriated him; he'd tell him about how much people cared for him - how much Prompto cared for him, and how monstrously unfair it was of Ignis to go and try to die before Prompto could even tell him, how galling of Ignis it was not to wait...

He dug faster.

It felt like it took forever, but eventually, they got down to the corridor that, if Prompto's memory of their expeditions with Ignis was correct, must lead to the command center. From there on it was slow, careful work: the entire base had folded inwards, and it seemed that the bearing walls there held only by a dint of some miracle, creating a small pocket of space. Gladio made everybody stop and take a breather before they started clearing the way, glaring at Noct when he tried to protest.

"We start hurrying now, somebody's going to whack the wrong strut and bring the whole thing on our heads - and on Iggy's head, too. Stand down and breathe out, and then we're going to be very slow and very careful."

Noct glared back at him, but subsided; the years in the Crystal had really done a wonder for his frustration threshold. Prompto could see the fine, minute tremors in his hands, and the way he was favoring his bad leg.

Prompto was too exhausted to track how it happened, but somebody from the surface passed down some ration bars, and Gladio distributed them around. Prompto ate his mechanically, leaning against the wall, too keyed up to chew properly. His imagination, too lively for his own good, kept sliding him the image of them clearing the door to the command center, only to find Ignis already dead on the other side. Maybe just now dead. Maybe this handful of minutes they took to make sure they wouldn't accidentally kill him would be the ones that killed him, who could've known?

He's had a lot of practice dealing with the inside of his own head, though, and so he told it to shut up, finished his bar, and did some careful stretches, thankful that he's kept up the Crownsguard daily exercises even after the Dawn. They were totally on top of this unexpected miracle; they were going to get to Ignis, and show this goddamn base who was the boss.

With the break over, they got on with it. Everybody was silent; somber; they moved quickly and decisively, without needing to speak, the three of them at the head, and then the rest of the Glaives behind them, working in a chain, passing the bits of stone and metal debris they pried out behind them. Prompto stopped feeling his hands; he could see them moving with careful precision - pull here, push there, insert a crowbar and lean down - but it was like directing a character with a controller, at a remove.

They cleared first ten meters; twenty; fifty...

At sixty-two, Prompto cut his hand on the jagged metal edge sticking out from the wall. He's stared at the cut, dumbfounded, trying to catch up with his body and the meaning of that particular bit of metal.

"Door," Gladio said, making Prompto jump. "We've made it. Steady now."

Prompto coughed; the stone dust swirled in the air, making his eyes tear and his lungs ache.

He blinked, trying to make sense out of the scene before him: shards of glass, twisted and torn shapes. The bulky piece of steel in front of him slowly resolved into an edge of a command console, bashed in by a piece of fallen ceiling. The lone emergency light still worked, improbably, flashing scarlet, overwhelming the flares of their flashlights.

There was a dark puddle spreading from under the console; Prompto stared at it for several minutes, unwilling to assign the obvious meaning to it.

"He's there," Noct said, calmer than Prompto felt. He went down on his knees and winced in apparent pain.

The piece of the ceiling hit the higher edge of the console and formed something of a slanted roof, leaving a small crawl space underneath.

"Let me," Prompto said. "If your knee seizes up when you're inside, we'll be in trouble."

He was prepared for Noct to fight him, but Noct stared at him, hard, and nodded. He shuffled aside, letting Prompto go in instead. Prompto heard Gladio talking to the Glaives, telling them to bring the medical team into the space they'd cleared out.

Prompto crawled forwards, wincing when his palms slipped in - well. In Ignis' blood.

It's nothing new, he told himself firmly. Back then, Noct's potions allowed them to fight things they shouldn't have taken on, secure in the knowledge of instant healing. They'd all been intimately familiar with the sight and smell and feel of each other's blood; they took devastating wounds - mortal wounds, sometimes - in the morning and laughed over them by the campfire in the evening. He could remember it still, the electric tingle of Phoenix Down bringing him back from nothingness, the glowing swirl of potions and elixirs. Back then, the only problem would be extricating Ignis from the trap he was in; however badly mangled he was, if he was still breathing, the magic could fix him, good as new.

Now, though, if Ignis was - and with the knees of his pants slowly getting saturated by Ignis' blood, it was no longer "if" - however injured Ignis was, trapped somewhere ahead, they would be helpless to do anything for him, and they would have to rely on the medics and whatever equipment the first hospital that had opened in the restored Insomnia had managed to scrounge up in the last year.

He didn't have to crawl far. His flashlight caught Ignis' hand first, gloved fingers limp against the floor, the leather stiff and shiny with blood. Prompto swallowed and allowed himself exactly three seconds to squeeze his eyes shut.

Then he crawled closer and made himself look properly. From Ignis' hand up his arm, the line of Ignis' shoulder; Ignis' face, milky-white under the flashlight, slack, eyes closed, his mouth half open. Even the scars looked faded and pale.

Prompto breathed out sharply through his gritted teeth; until this moment he didn't know how much he hoped, on some level, for Ignis to meet him with a raised eyebrow, to ask him what took him too long.

He moved closer, gingerly, carefully, steeled himself and stretched his arm out, pressing his fingers to Ignis' throat. Ignis' skin was cold and clammy.

Please, he thought, to nobody in particular, and held his breath. Nothing; and nothing; and then finally the weak, thready thrumming of blood under his fingertips.

Prompto pushed his forehead against Ignis' shoulder, just for a second, and swallowed a sob. Gods, they were on time; oh, Gods.

Then he uncurled, bit his lip, and went on to look for the source of blood. It didn't take long, and Prompto had to remember the breathing exercises his Crownsguard trainer taught him more than a decade ago when he saw. The same piece of ceiling that likely saved Ignis, giving him a pocket of air and shielding him from the rest of the collapsed base, was - there was a boxy metal piece attached to the end of it that was closer to the ground, perhaps a piece of a ventilation chute, or who knows - Prompto's general experience of Imperial bases didn't really include looking up - and Ignis' legs were under it. Only tops of Ignis' thighs were visible; the rest was hidden under the squashed metal.

Prompto swallowed bile, achingly grateful that Ignis, to the best of their knowledge, lost consciousness right after the explosion.

He needed to get out, report on what they were dealing with, and let the medics do their jobs. He lingered for a moment, though, irrationally convinced that the minute he let Ignis out of his sight he would stop breathing. That he would die without knowing they found him...

"Iggy," he said. "We're here, okay? We're here. I'm sorry we were so slow, but we're here. Must be annoying to sit here in all this blood, huh? There's a lot of sponge baths in your future. Just - hang on. Be stubborn for a little while more. Please."

Then he crawled backward, fast as he could, and still not enough for Noct and Gladio; for the last meter Gladio just caught the edge of his jacket and pulled him out.

"Alive," Prompto blurted out as soon as they could see him and saw Noct's face crumble for a moment. "Alive, but out cold, and he's - "

A tall, angular woman in a scuffed white hospital uniform joined them then and simply moved Noct aside. "Will it be possible to take him out from under there once we stabilize him?"

"No,"Prompto said, swallowing. "His legs..."

"Okay," she said, calmly; weirdly, she reminded him of Gentiana (he hoped that she wasn't a goddess in disguise; they could use some miracles right now, but those tended to be double-edged). "We're taking over; don't worry."

Things happened very quickly and very methodically after that. Noct was shuffled to a quiet corner where he wouldn't be in the way; most of the Glaives got dismissed, with some of them sent for equipment. The doctor grilled Prompto mercilessly on the structural points of the collapse pinning Ignis down, and then sent one of her people to squeeze in with Ignis and set him up with oxygen and several IVs and monitors.

Ominous medical jargon began filling the space; Prompto listened to it for a while, heard the words "renal failure" and "crush syndrome" and crawled away to sit down next to Noct and put his head between his knees.

Not for long; it was quickly ascertained that he was the only person on scene small and limber enough - and tech-savvy enough - to go back under and cut Ignis free from under the metal.

He made himself stop thinking about Ignis that time, made Ignis into just an organic variable of the equation that included a claustrophobically small space, metal, and fire. Made his hands steady and his mind empty of everything but angles, supports, and tiny, careful motions. Crank up the mechanical supports, breathe, measure, cut, burn, pull away. Calm and steady, without letting himself hurry or hesitate. He would have nightmares about it for years to come, about making a wrong move and burying them both, about Ignis opening his eyes and crying out in pain, accusing Prompto of hurting him on purpose - but at the moment, he did everything that was needed with machine precision.

Then it was over; he wiggled back out and crawled away to Noct, who wordlessly slung his arm over his shoulder, and let Prompto hide his face in his neck and breathe for a while.

The medics swarmed over to the crawlspace in his stead; the doctor in charge briefly paused to shoo Nocto and the others out, pointing out that they need all the available space to stabilize Ignis properly. Noct just stared at her for a moment, blinking; Prompto had a feeling he wasn't quite all present at the moment. Gladio nodded to the doctor for all three of them, and hauled them both up without a word, dragging them both through the cleaned tunnel.

Outside was a mess of after-midnight darkness and bright searchlights. Noct dropped to the ground at the entrance, staring intently into the darkness beyond; Gladio stood at something like parade rest behind his shoulder, and after a moment Cor joined him and started saying something to him, quiet and imperceptible over the din.

Prompto made to join them, but got approached by an unfamiliar, exhausted Glaive woman with long braids in a scuffed uniform. "Sir," she said and saluted sharply, and it took him a moment to realize that she was talking to him.

"Just Prompto is fine," he said, automatically, "I'm not with the Crownsguard anymore." He tried to look at the entrance over her shoulder: were the medics taking too long?

"Mr. Argentum," she said, unsmiling. "I led the team that went into the base with Count Scientia."

He jerked his eyes back to her, startled, and she looked back at him, somehow giving off the impression that she would have liked to flinch but wouldn't let herself.

"Count Scientia was adamant that you are the one to take charge of the people we apprehended. It was his - "

"Please don't say 'last wish,' he's not dead," Prompto said in superstitious dread, and then, "what?"

The Glaive stepped aside without a further word, and behind her Prompto saw - himself.

He blinked, thinking for a moment, with a sort of weary relief, that this was it; after long last, he's finally cracked. Then his brain cleared: the person before him was at least a decade or even more younger than him, more of a boy than a man, and he carried himself differently. He - the clone, he thought suddenly, the hurried report they had gotten on the way finally surfacing in his brain. The other clone.

"Hey," he said, and was startled by the laughter that punched out of him. "This is weird, huh?"

The boy in front of him hunched, slightly; behind him, two younger kids huddled, a boy and a girl, the boy fearfully, the girl angrily.

"Really, really weird," Prompto muttered. Then there was a commotion at the entrance to the base, and he swung over like a compass needle to a magnet.

He dragged his eyes back to them with almost a physical pang. "Look," he said, "okay, I'll sort it out - how about I take them with me and sort it out later? You can go with me to the hospital now, right? I can't - "

The Glaive stared at him, and his heart fell: obviously the kids were considered to be some sort of security risk, and he just opened his big stupid mouth and told her he wasn't Crownsguard anymore, and so he couldn't assume responsibility for them - but Ignis wanted him to - and the kid, the clone... - but then the woman reached some sort of internal decision and nodded.

"I'm leaving them in your custody, then." She paused, bit her lip. "I'm sorry about Count Scientia, sir. I should've done better."

Prompto felt a resentful urge to say "yes, yes you should have," and then felt ashamed of himself. None of them was a match to Ignis when he decided on a course of action, that he knew all too well. "I'm sure you did your best," he said, and dismissed her, out of his sight and his thoughts.

"Stick with me," he said to the kids and dredged a smile up from somewhere. "We'll figure something out, but now just - stay by my side, okay?"

They nodded, with varying degrees of apprehension, and he immediately forgot all about them. The medics were finally taking Ignis out of the tunnel on a stretcher; between the foil blanket tucked around him and the mask over his face, there was barely any Ignis left to see, just a flash of pale skin, a slack line of his mouth.

The moment they cleared the entrance, they went to the ambulance almost at a run. Gladio asked the head paramedic something, collected Noct and strode over to Prompto.

"Come on," he said, "we're going to the hospital. What's with the kids?"

The kids were staring at Noct; the boys shuffled their feet and the girl made a passable attempt at a curtsy. Noct looked at them vaguely, like he was unsure of what he was seeing, and then did a double take when he met the clone's face.

Gladio followed his line of sight, and his eyebrows crawled up to his hairline. "Is it - ?"

"Doesn't matter right now," Noct said; his voice sounded scratchy, cracked. "Do they need to go with us?"

"Yes," Prompto said, relieved. "The car - ?"

"I'll get you a van," Cor said, joining them. "And a security detail."

---

They made it to the hospital on the heels of the ambulance and got to see the tail end of Ignis' gurney as he was wheeled into the surgery. A sympathetic but brisk nurse brought them to a waiting room, said something meaninglessly reassuring to Noct, and left them alone. Cor's Glaives tactfully took their posts outside the door. Cor was probably going to feel jumpy for a while, given that they just narrowly avoided an apocalypse take 2, or thereabouts.

Noct collapsed into one of the chairs and stared at the wall like he was hoping to see through it into the surgery suite; after a while, Gladio knelt next to him and wordlessly began kneading his bad leg.

Prompto himself was too wired to sit down; he felt the wound-up ache in his thighs, the urge to just - go out and run until true exhaustion hit and wiped his thoughts out. He made a couple of circuits around the room, tripping on the scuffed beige tiles, tugging at his hair. How the hell did they end up here?

At the fourth round the girl intercepted him. "Sir," she said, and Prompto had to physically stop himself from just bowling her over. "Sir, I'm sorry, but - what's going to happen? And, uh, can we get something to eat? And use the bathroom? We haven't been allowed out ever since, you know. It happened."

Prompto almost snarled at her - didn't she realize that Ignis was most likely dying in a white room out there? - and then took a deep breath and looked at her properly. Fifteen or maybe even fourteen, and too thin, in mended clothes; she was looking steadily at him, but her fingers were clenched tightly together. The boys, both the clone and the other one, came over to flank her. All three of them looked weirdly similar - not in a family sense, but more in the sense of shared poses and gestures. Like people who went through some stuff together and came out as a unit. Like -

"Okay," Prompto said. "Okay. Let's figure it out."

He leaned out of the door and quietly asked the Glaive on post there - he was badly out of touch, pretty much all the soldiers he's met today were young and fresh and unfamiliar - to send some food over.

The Glaive saluted, and then looked him over. "Maybe a change of clothes for you too, sir?"

Prompto followed the line of her gaze, and swallowed; the knees of his pants were stiff and dark with blood. He swallowed some more, deciding that he was going to set some time aside for a really extensive nervous breakdown later, but not now. "Yeah. Yeah, that will be nice. Can you just scrounge up something? I just arrived today, I have no idea where my things even are."

"Will do, sir," the Glaive said, reassuringly. "Please take care of His Majesty."

"Yeah," Prompto said like he had any fucking idea on how to take care of Noct if Ignis - well. This was not going to happen, so he was not going to have to find out. Right? Right. "Hey, by the way, can you take the kids to the bathroom? It's sort of urgent."

The Glaive nodded, unfussed, and Prompto called them over. "Go with the nice lady, okay? The food should be here soon."

The kids went out quietly and obediently, leaving Prompto free to go back and do another jittery circuit of the room. He hoped they wouldn't try to run. What the hell was he supposed to do with them, beyond feeding them right now? He didn't even have an apartment in Insomnia, he'd just use one of the Citadel's unused rooms every time he was back in town. With his luck, some hapless clerk was occupying this space now.

He rubbed his face, palm catching on the stubble; he must've looked a fright. At least he could talk to them, figure something out - he would have to actually think about them sooner or later, and especially about the kid with his own face, the kid that the Empire's dead mad scientist apparently had rigged up like a trap out of some comic strip. The kid that Ignis had saved and, apparently, bequeathed to him.

"When you wake up," Prompto muttered resentfully and kicked the wall for a good measure, "I'm making you accept your share of responsibility. What the hell?"

He went over to Gladio, still bowed over Noct's bad knee, and bumped his thigh into Gladio's shoulder. At least one person had the decency to stay solid and unchanged, he thought. Good old Gladio.

Noct raised his face to him, blindly, still with that creepy faraway look. "He was unhappy," Noct said, apropos of nothing. "He never said anything but I knew he was, and I was afraid to ask him."

Prompto looked back at him, feeling helpless and tongue-tied. He knew that it was true; he kept up a sporadic correspondence with Ignis because he couldn't deal with giving it up, sending him cheerfully, rambling voicemails every week or so. Ignis was always meticulous in keeping up with his responses - witty, succinct, with occasional and treasured notes of warmth - but as the time passed, he mentioned less and less about his own work, or life in Citadel, or anything real. He'd talk about Noct's accomplishments, but not about him-and-Noct. Prompto felt the absence clearly, like a yawning emptiness where a step should be. He had never quite gotten the courage to call him out on it.

He wanted to believe that everything was well. He left because he couldn't - he couldn't deal with seeing Ignis with Noct, finally fulfilled and content, with no need for Prompto hanging around all the time. But at the same time, the knowledge of this happiness - theirs, and Gladio's - back home, with the three of them safe and content in Insomnia, finally busy with the tasks they were prepared for from birth, was paramount. He knew about it and so he could lose himself in the sight of all the beautiful, re-emerging things in the sunlight without the constant dread and deadly danger. Take photos. See with his own eyes what they all bought - with Noct's long exile, with Ignis' eyesight, with Gladio's long toil. To be useful in his own way.

He didn't want to think about Ignis changing, becoming unhappy, about something being wrong back home - and so he didn't ask. Would things have changed if he did? If he came home earlier?

"We'll ask him," he said - the only thing he could say. "It's going to be okay, Noct, we'll fix it."

---

The kids came back, and the same Glaive knocked on the door some time later and passed Prompto boxes of takeout, a pair of clean worn sweatpants, and a t-shirt with a faded moogle print. He could have hugged her.

Prompto parceled a third of the haul to Gladio, since Noct wasn't looking anymore ready to join their corner, spread the remaining food around several pushed together chairs, and told the kids to tuck in.

Then he locked himself in an empty bathroom down the corridor, and peeled himself out of the bloody clothes, trying not to breathe in their coppery smell. It took him an entire roll of wet toilet paper to clean up as best as he could; his old pants and hoodie, wadded up, ended up in the trash bin.

When he came back, the kids darted identically suspicious, fearful glances at him and huddled over their food, but when it became apparent he wasn't going to snatch it away, they went back to it. They ate quickly, messily and silently, with the air of somebody used to food being a heavily contested resource. Prompto joined in, first to put them at ease, and then with gusto. He discovered that he was ravenously hungry. For a while, the silence of the room was only broken by the crinkle of boxes and clacking of chopsticks.

Prompto swallowed the last mouthful of noodles and saw the clone kid watching him intently - or rather, not him, but the black barcode on his wrist. (When had he abandoned the habit of covering it up? He couldn't remember.) He looked hungry again, except not for food.

Prompto abruptly realized that he was holding the whole Verstael Besithia's clone WHAT freakout at bay purely by virtue of Ignis' fate using up his entire ability to panic; but the kid didn't have this excuse, and he was stuck in the unfamiliar place with his friends and a good reason to think that the ruler of Insomnia was incredibly angry with him.

They were all holding up pretty well, considering. But perhaps Prompto could find it in himself to be an adult in the room. Ignis, he thought bleakly, would approve.

"Hey," Prompto said, injecting a bit of forceful we-are-all-friends-here cheer into his voice. "Not how you expected to spend this night, huh? You can ask."

The kid swallowed; the girl put her hand on his shoulder. "It's true then? You're like me? Are you - are you from Niflheim? Did you know that, that old guy from the recording, from down there?"

"Slow down, slow down," Prompto said. "Yeah, I'm definitely like you - our tattoos are pretty similar, right? And, well," he gestured between them, "the face thing is a dead giveaway. And I think I might've been born - uh. Made? Like you? In Niflheim, only I was brought over to Insomnia when I was a baby, I was adopted. I didn't figure out that there was something weird about me until I was about your age, I think."

"I don't think," the kid said reluctantly, "that I ever was a baby. I don't remember anything - from before."

"No scars," the second boy said, quietly and pensively. "No scars, no bruises, no scratches, no nothing. Like you were brand new."

"Okay," Prompto said. "I just don't know. Maybe I would've come out all grown too if I wasn't taken. Until today, I didn't know that the old guy - that'd be Verstael Besithia, he was a big deal during the war - had anything to do with me."

"But," the girl said, "the blind guy - uh, sorry, your friend - he knew that Don's tattoo thing would work on the console, even though he only met us. Does yours work the same way?"

"Yeah," Prompto said. "We spent a shitload of time around Imperial bases like that during the dark. Found out then. I didn't know why, though, and honestly, I'm not any clearer on it right now."

Don fidgeted. "What's going to happen to us? I didn't - I didn't mean to do - any of this. I swear. I only wanted to know, and I kept remembering something about this place, and - and Lucia and Nur just came with me, they didn't even do anything. Are we going to get arrested? Are they going to, I don't know. Study me?"

Prompto rubbed his forehead; the food had transformed his restlessness into a heavy, creeping headache. "Nobody's going to study you, what the hell. Or do anything else to hurt you. You're going to stick by me, and if anybody gives you any grief, Noct will back me up. I guess we will - uh. Is there anybody I should contact for you? Let them know you're okay?"

"No," Lucia said, and raised her chin. "It's just us. And we're okay by ourselves, you can just like - get them to let us go. You don't need to bother."

He felt a sudden, stupid urge to cry, and clenched his teeth. "No can do, I'm afraid. Just - give me some time to figure it all out, okay?"

"Hey," Don said quietly. "I'm - I'm really sorry about the blind guy."

"Don offered," the other boy chimed in, and took a hold of Don's sleeve. "To go instead of your friend. I heard."

Prompto uncharitably thought that it seemed Ignis' bad habits were contagious. "No," he said, "hey. That's on him. A horde of garulas couldn't move Ignis when he's being stubborn. And he wouldn't want you to die, and I wouldn't like that either."

He took a deep breath and made himself to look at the kids properly. His responsibility. His gift from Ignis; it fit, in a way. "He sent you all to me, because he cared, and because, well. I guess you're sort of my younger brother, Don? And I have no idea what it's like to have a brother, and right now I'm really not at my best - but I guess at the minimum it means I'll take care of you, and you'll take care of your friends. How's that work for you?"

The kids stared at him, three identically suspicious, intent glares. "I guess," Don finally muttered, and shrugged. "Not like we have a choice."

"Deal," Prompto said, forcefully bright. "Well. Finish the food, and I don't know, nap if you want? I don't think we're getting out of here anytime soon."

---

The headache took residence for real, humming in his temples. He glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that only two hours passed since they brought Ignis in.

Waiting was good, he told himself. The shape Ignis was in - waiting meant there was a reasonable hope. If only there was something to do!

He got to his feet, went round the room again, then settled back into the chair. Calm. Calm, measured waiting. He could do it, right?

The kids huddled together in the corner, polishing up the remains of the food, whispering to each other, and throwing an occasional covert glance at Prompto or Noct with Gladio.

Noct sat with his head tipped back and his eyes firmly closed, but Prompto saw a vein beating in his throat, and doubted he was asleep. Gladio had finished his ministrations, apparently had succeeded in making Noct eat and eating himself - since when was Gladio so adept at handling Noct? Wasn't tough love more his thing? - and now sat on the floor next to Noct, resting against Noct's good leg. The hospital chairs were probably too flimsy to hold his bulk.

Prompto waited and tried not to imagine what was happening to Ignis beyond the surgery doors. He decided not to go online looking what either 'crush shock' or 'renal failure' or any other bits of medicalese meant, but he could make a pretty good educated guess - and he saw Ignis' legs under the metal that crushed them, those little glimpses of bone through the torn fabric; he touched them when he was cutting Ignis out. Jostled them, inevitably. However fast medicine progressed in recovering what was lost, injuries of that kind needed magic after surgery.

And even during the dark years Ignis would've gotten it - even if Prompto would have had to fight somebody for one of the priceless potions from the world's dwindling supply. Prompto or Gladio would've done it and presented it to Ignis, and dealt with the fallout. But in this new world, Ignis would have nothing but the hands of surgeons, and steel, and hopefully luck. Even though he was probably the second most important person in the entire country - maybe the entire world.

Prompto wished he knew if there was anything left worth praying to.

He waited, waited, waited. The minute arrow on the clock seemed broken. Prompto was discovering, to his great consternation, that waiting in the matters of life and death was pretty good at filling him with nail-biting anxiety and boredom. He wished, guiltily, that the King's Knight servers were still open. Or that he had brought a book. Or that he knew where his camera was. He chewed his nails down to the quick; his right knee kept jerking up and down, up and down, and nobody told him to quit it.

Somewhere around the sixth hour, the kids fell asleep. Gladio somehow got hold of a charger, and immediately got several official-sounding calls in a short succession. He tried to convey some of them to Noct, who waved them away, first absentmindedly and then irritably, and eventually hissed that if his government just couldn't cope without him for 24 hours, perhaps they're more incompetent than he thought and should not actually be his government.

At this point Gladio went out of the door and spent about twenty minutes there, soothing ruffled feathers - Prompto could hear the smooth rumble of his voice. He hesitated for a bit, torn between two warring impulses, but Noct had curled in on himself in a way completely disinviting a conversation, and so Prompto waited for Gladio to fall silent and slipped out to join him.

"Since when are you wrangling politicians, big guy? Or Noct, I guess. I mean, you're doing pretty well, but normally it would be - "

"Normally it would be Iggy's job, you mean?"

"Well, yeah. And you're kinda too good at it to just be temping for Ignis right now."

Gladio rubbed his hand down the side of his face, hard. "I know. I don't know how much you've noticed on your visits, but things have been - weird. Lately."

"I'm getting that, but I have no idea what's going on. When we got Noct back, Iggy was over the moon with happiness, wasn't he? He walked around for days with this dopey as hell smile, it was unsettling. What the hell happened?"

"Beats me. He was happy for a while, and then just - went off, sorta. Became more and more formal with Noct. Kinda stopped talking to me properly. I thought he was going to lean hard into managing Noct's life, because Six knows nothing ever pleased Ignis more than tying Noct's shoelaces for him, but he mostly buried himself in administration."

"And," Gladio says, lowering his voice as if around a blasphemy, "even that was kinda... half-assed. Like, he did a good job and he worked a lot, but it felt like he was sort of going through motions. Noct became terrified he was going to quit at any moment."

Prompto stared at him; that was worse than it sounded. "But why? Did something happen - did Noct do something? Was he having trouble with the politics, or what? I know he had to readjust to getting around without magic, but I thought for Ignis it wouldn't be so - compared to getting Noct back and alive - "

Gladio spread his hands. "I just don't know. And I should've pushed harder, maybe, but it was all - and Noct was back, and kinda floundering himself, and somebody had to look after him, if Ignis wasn't doing it."

He shuddered, briefly, and Prompto stepped closer to him, leaned against his shoulder. "And now," Gladio said, "we might not find out. I could kill him, I swear."

"You can give him a piece of your mind when he wakes up. I mean, you'll have to get in line, but still..."

"Could've used you around here, Blondie," Gladio said, looking sideways at him. "Not that I have a leg to stand on about self-discovery quests or whatever the hell you were doing, but - are you going to stay, this time? I think Ignis will be pretty happy to have you around if he..."

"Shhh," Prompto interrupted in sudden superstitious terror. "Sure, of course. I was thinking about coming back for longer this time anyway."

"Not about staying?", Gladio, nobody's fool, asked him.

Prompto shrugged his shoulder. "It depends," he said, and didn't elaborate.

Gladio nodded anyway like he got it. They stayed together for a bit longer, and then went back in.

---

No news; no news; no news. He fell asleep at some point, nodded off slumped in his chair, and woke up some indeterminate time later, with a horrendous crick in his neck and the greasy remains of a nightmare hastily shoved in the corners of his mind.

More pacing and more waiting; more watching the clock on the wall, willing the arrow to move.

(And then he thought, if they come out and tell us that Ignis didn't make it, I will remember this stretch of time here and want it back. Oh, please.)

It crested "unbearable" and went past it; he wanted to start banging the chair against the wall just to make some noise, and might've actually gone for it, except it would have scared the kids, and also brought on them all the Glaives in the immediate vicinity.

And then, in the completely unremarkable slide between one second to the next, the door opened. The surgeon came in - a small, mousy woman with heavy bags under her eyes - and inclined her head to Noct, with what looked less like politeness and more like sheer exhaustion. "Your Majesty."

Noct shot to his feet, hissing when the movement pulled at his knee; Gladio surged after him, shoring him up. "Is he?.."

"He's stable for a moment," the woman said, and Prompto sagged against the wall as the rest of her words dissolved into white noise. Alive. Alive, godsdamn stubborn asshole. Alive.

---

Two weeks later, Prompto walked into Ignis' hospital room to relieve Noct, who was due for some public appearance.

They decided, immediately after Ignis was transferred to recovery and allowed visitors, that somebody had to stay with him at all times. The idea of Ignis waking up alone, disoriented, in pain and having no idea where he was or what was happening to him, was untenable.

Prompto thought that Ignis could be quite proud of their scheduling skills: they've set up a quite workable rotating watch, drafting Iris and Monica to bolster up their numbers. Noct got the shortest shifts, given that even he at his royalest couldn't ditch his governing body for too long; Prompto, being the most unemployed person at the moment, covered for everybody else. He spent a lot of time hunched over at Ignis' bedside, rewatching old sitcoms and making up, out loud, Ignis' scathing commentary on the characters' lack of good life choices.

He tried rambling at Ignis instead, several times - that was what you had to do with people in coma, right? - but it just felt wrong without an answer. He kept petering into awkward silence, leaving long pauses for Ignis' to fulfill.

Ignis would not oblige; he slept, wrapped in wires and cables like some sort of a science experiment, his face pinched and sour with pain. The doctors reassured them that the prognosis wasn't too bad, and he was due to wake up in his own time. Prompto sort of expected the coma to be absolute, the way they did it in soap operas, but in reality Ignis moved a lot, in tiny, jerky movements, and mumbled something indistinct, sometimes angry and sometimes annoyed, in this achingly familiar will-somebody-do-the-dishes tone of voice, and sometimes just sad.

Prompto hoped he didn't dream about the Ring, or about Noct dying, or about anything else unpleasant; but, he suspected, their lives up to this point had provided enough unpleasantness to cover all the angles.

He slid into the room quietly, not wanting to disturb Noct. Noct was holding Ignis' hand, rubbing his thumb absentmindedly against the burn scars around Ignis' ring finger, and bitching about something political, in a slightly hoarse voice.

"Hey," Prompto said quietly, "rise and shine, Gladio is about to kidnap you forcibly. No change?"

"No change," Noct said and coughed. "I'm tempted to skip this school opening just so he would wake up and scold me."

"Not sure it would help," Prompto said, "you know how contrary he is. Plus, this might be the longest vacation he took in his entire life, you know? Maybe he's just sleeping in. You need a hand?"

"Ugh," Noct said eloquently. "Yes." He took Prompto's hand and hauled himself up. "You'd think the happily ever after would include less arthritis."

He winced guiltily, and Prompto winced with him, trying not to look at Ignis' bed. The prognosis for Ignis waking up was okay; the rest of it included a lifetime of wheelchairs and chronic pain. The surgeon had performed several miracles in a row to avoid amputation - Noct squeezed his personal budget nearly dry afterward for a hospital donation - but the damage to Ignis' legs was just too much, and the rescue took just too long. Prompto kinda hoped, craven as it was, to be away for when this particular conversation would occur.

He hugged Noct, on an impulse that shouldn't have felt as foreign as it did, and turned to see him to the door.

Then a hoarse, pained voice said, behind their backs: "That's because you constantly skip physiotherapy, Noct."

Bum knee or no, Noct practically bowled Prompto over, dashing back to the bed. "Ignis!"

Prompto righted himself and followed him; his breath felt funny in his chest. "Iggy! Are you with us for real?"

Ignis' head moved across the pillow, restlessly but with intent. He licked his lips, opened his mouth, and immediately erupted in cough.

"Right," Prompto said, "water, coming right up."

Noct was already back in his chair, holding Ignis' hands; Prompto grinned at them and went to pour the water. He took a moment to dash a quick "iggy awake gud luck getting noct 2go" off to Gladio, and made a bet with himself on how long it would take the big guy to gladhand everybody who needed it in Noct's stead and get here. Gladio the diplomat - ha! The joke was on him.

When he got back, Noct was folded over Ignis' bed, mashing his face into the side of Ignis' stomach, and Ignis' hand - too thin, they kept having to redo the hospital bracelet so it wouldn't slip from his wrist, despite all the IVs and intravenous feeding - was laying over Noct's head in an awkward benediction. It felt too personal to intrude on, but damn, Prompto was too happy to consider his good manners.

"Open up," he said.

He put his hand behind Ignis' head, wincing at how matted the hair was there - they had to figure out a shower, soon, or Ignis would murder them all in their sleep - and took the glass to Ignis' lips. "Careful, okay? Small sips."

Ignis managed about a fourth of the glass before closing his lips, and Prompto took the glass away. "I have to... admit," Ignis said quietly, "this is unexpected."

Noct mumbled something that sounded like a vicious "no shit" into Ignis' stomach but didn't raise his head.

"Apparently," Prompto's mouth had with zero input from his brain, "you're too awesome to die. What the hell you were thinking, you asshole?"

Ignis opened and closed his mouth; then opened his good eye, finally, his gaze landing somewhere to the left of Prompto; he was usually much better at this, and Prompto clenched his fists. "It's okay, you can tell us how it was for the greater good when you're feeling better, okay? And we can all get on with shouting at you really loudly when you're not in the hospital. Just - maybe consider how you've already overspent your quota on critical saves?"

The corner of Ignis' mouth twitched up. "How generous," he said, acidly. "Am I that badly off?"

If Prompto was alone, he thought, he would've pulled it off even despite Ignis' well-honed bullshit radar. But Noct was still mashed into Ignis' side, and he flinched.

"Ah," Ignis said, and closed his eyes again. "Is that so."

Noct straightened out; his eyes were swimming with tears. "Specs..."

"I would appreciate," Ignis said, clearly and mercilessly, "some information."

Prompto felt a moment of intense self-pity, and wished he could rewind time and be late to relieve Noct. Couldn't he have fallen on some stairs and broken his leg instead? But by the look of it, Noct just - couldn't - and Ignis was pressing his lips together tightly, and everything was quickly beginning unbearable.

Like ripping off a bandaid, he decided. "You won't be able to walk," he said, as evenly as he could. "You're not paralyzed, but your legs are just too fucked up. You're on heavy-duty painkillers now, but when they start weaning you off, it's going to really suck. The damage is pretty permanent."

"...Oh," Ignis said, after a long and terrible pause. He sounded faint. "Thank you, Prompto."

"Specs," Noct said again. Prompto kinda wanted to hug him again. Or, barring that, to find Gladio and get a hug himself.

"I suppose," Ignis said, faintly, "this solves the question of retirement."

"Wait," Noct said, straightening up and staring at Ignis. "What?"

Prompto stepped back, instinctively.

"You could barely look at me without flinching when I was simply blind," Ignis said. "Now that I'm blind and crippled, it will make sense for me to - stop being selfish, I guess."

"Ignis," Noct said, slowly, like he was just figuring out some puzzle that was bugging him for a year. "What the fuck?"

Ignis looked so irritated that Prompto was torn between feeling horrified at the turn that conversation took and pure relief. "Must we keep the pretense up even now, Noct? I lack the energy. You know what I'm talking about."

"You - you asshole," Noct said; blotchy red blush was rising in his face. "I was upset, yes! Because I came back and it turned out I didn't even manage to heal you properly! The person I - really wanted to - and I fucked it up, and I just - Specs, I needed some fucking time to adjust to you going blind, for me. And you had to fight daemons blind, and almost died like every other day, and - "

"It's been a year, Noct," Ignis said, his voice rising, hovering just at the edge of another coughing fit. "And I had a full damn right to my decisions, and I was content - "

Noct actually shouted at him. "You were acting more and more weird! I didn't know what you needed from me! I thought you were going to leave."

A moment of silence descended.

"Who would blame you?" Noct whispered, collapsing back on himself. "I thought you were finally sick and tired of dealing with me, and I was just - I didn't want to stop you, but - "

"Noct," Ignis said, quietly; tears were gathering in the corners of his ruined eyes, slipping down the creases of his scars. "When did I ever, in my entire life, try to leave you?"

"...Two weeks ago," Noct muttered, with vindication. "No, shut up, I know what you're going to say. You're a goddamn hero, by the way, and you won't weasel your way out of a reward ceremony when you're better. Serves you right."

He took Ignis' hand again, leaned closer to him. "Ignis," he said. "Specs. Please. Just - I need you to tell me what to do. Not about the kingdom, or the government, or whatever, I don't give a fuck, I just - I was so terrified, you can't imagine. I can't fucking bear - just tell me. Like if you want to keep working, tell me what you need to make it easier this time. I'll get you fifteen secretaries, and aides, and busybodies, and whoever the fuck you want, just tell me. And if you're sick and tired of it all, and want to, I don't know, write a memoir or breed chocobos or watch the opera all day long or whatever, I'll make it happen too, just - just stay. Stop leaving, damn you."

"Noct," Ignis said, choked up. "I - "

Noct leaned closer to him, pressed their foreheads together.

Prompto backed to the door, quietly; he was sure the other two had entirely forgotten about his existence. His eyes were itchy and swollen; he rubbed at them, angrily, and told himself to deal with it.

Then he slipped out into the hallway, closing the door soundlessly behind him - even though he was pretty sure that Ignis and Noct would've missed a Leviathan rising at this moment - and went to find a nurse.

---

Two months later, Prompto ran into Gladio, coming out of Ignis' rooms in the Citadel. "How's he?"

Gladio shrugged his shoulders but looked pleased. "Ornery as usual. You back from Hammerhead?"

"Yeah, just came in. Did the kids give you any trouble?"

"Nah, they've been behaving pretty well. Going to their lessons and everything. Lucia is making noises about joining the Crownsguard, but I told her she'll have to talk to you."

"School first," Prompto said, automatically, and wondered when he became quite so old. "And I kinda hope the universities will be back up by the time she finishes school."

"Is it maligning the good name of the King's brightest I hear?"

Prompto laughed and didn't even stagger when Gladio clapped him on the back. "Anyway, go on," Gladio said. "I think he missed you."

"Aww," Prompto said. "Hey, you two - are you good?"

"We're doing better," Gladio said. "Nothing helps to clear the relationship up better than good old fashioned medical torture."

"The sad thing is," Prompto said, "I can totally see Ignis agreeing with you on that."

He waved his goodbyes and slipped into the room. The light outside was falling, and the room was mostly shadows and darker shadows. Prompto remembered, suddenly, about several times they had roomed together during the pre-Dawn years when he would come to whatever tiny cramped space they shared and find Ignis working in absolute darkness, curled up in an armchair with his Braille or recorded notes. It had taken him a while to get used to it, but after a while, it was just something Ignis did. He wondered if Ignis did the same thing in the Citadel, or if he took more care to - pretend? Make things more palatable to other people?

Even in this murky half-light Ignis looked bad - winded, pale, with too sharp cheekbones and angry pain lines around his mouth and eyes. But this was to be expected, with Gladio just leaving: another downside of the non-magical healing was physiotherapy and the uphill battle of helping the damaged muscles fight decay. Gladio was a pretty ruthless therapy partner, but knowing Ignis, Prompto suspected Gladio mostly had to stop Ignis from overdoing it.

Ignis turned his head towards him slowly, wincing as the movement clearly pulled somewhere painful. "Prompto? I thought you were in Hammerhead?"

"I was," Prompto said. "I came back, like, a half an hour ago."

"Well," Ignis said, "I'm honored to be your first destination. I'd get up to meet you but it seems my legs are asleep."

Prompto laughed and winced at the same time. The first time around, Ignis had driven him and Gladio batty with each and every blindness-related joke he could find and run into the ground, and if he was doing it again - it was good.

"Look," he said, "the errand. It was about you actually. I talked to Cindy a month ago, and..."

"Hm?"

"I don't know if you've kept track of her, after Noct came back - I figure out you've been pretty busy - but old Cid had a stroke a while back, and he pushed through, but walking wasn't too easy after that, you know? So Cindy figured out a wheelchair for him, with like, bits of Gralea tech and stuff. Like an electric wheelchair, but better, smoother movements, better battery powers, better navigation. Let Cid get around the workshop easier, this kind of thing."

"I've never doubted Miss Cindy's technical genius," Ignis said; there was something sharp lurking just underneath his voice, and Prompto bounced on the balls of his feet, and began talking faster.

"I know Noct will get you the top of the line whatever can be gotten in the Citadel, but I thought like - can't use the wheelchair and the cane at the same time, right? So I've talked to Cindy, and she called in some favors, and she's done the work - she made a chair that has some basic obstacle recognition built in. So you can get around by yourself."

Ignis was silent; Prompto couldn't read his face in the falling darkness.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, we just didn't know if it would work. She called me when she got it, so I went over to check it out and bring it back. It's - it's down in the lobby. I know it'll be some time yet before you're out of bed, but when you're ready, you can test it, and Cindy promised to iron out any kinks you find."

"Prompto," Ignis said, finally. "I - this was incredibly thoughtful of you. Noct's solution was to find a personal attendant, and I might still consent to that, but to be able to move independently - "

He was starting to get a little choked up; Prompto bit his lip. "I know, okay? I'm - Iggy, I'm so sorry you have to deal with this shit all over again. I'd be so angry."

Ignis sighed and settled deeper into his pillows. "I have to admit, I was - before the base - pretty bitter. Feeling rather badly used and rather sorry by myself. And I suppose I could still feel that way, and undoubtedly I will, at some point, but at this base - in those last moments - I realized that I wanted to stay with the three of you, and I had to accept that I won't. Compared to that, the current situation is tenable."

"I'm glad," Prompto said. "Shit, Iggy, I'm so glad. It's been over two months and I still have to pinch myself sometimes, and I'm so glad."

Ignis smiled at him. "Are you staying longer this time? I assume you'll need to settle your wards properly before leaving on yet another trip."

"Uh," Prompto said. "Actually, I've been talking to Noct about places to stay and stuff. I really hope he can help me with the job I want to do."

"What kind of job?"

"The kids," Prompto said. "Not Don and Lucia and Nur, they're doing pretty fine with me as long as they're allowed to stick together, but - others like them. Dark years orphans. I've been scouting around a bit, and talking to those of them that agreed to talk to me, and it looks like they kinda fell through the cracks, you know? After everything. And some of them do fine and some - Nur still has nightmares, and I think Lucia hoards food when I'm not looking. Like, Don has this whole "made by a mad scientist to usher in the apocalypse" thing going on, and I still think he's the least traumatized of the three. I - I want to do something about that. At least begin. If Noct backs me up..."

Ignis was staring somewhere in his direction. "This would be - you would be clearly excellent at it. And Noct will support you in all your endeavors, you know that. And you will stay?"

"Yeah. I don't want to leave the kids alone anymore. They're pretty good at fending for themselves, and Gladio was minding them when I was gone, but - yeah."

"Yeah," Ignis said; they likely both remembered the way Ignis had quietly and without fuss folded Prompto into Noct's household, back when they were young, after finding out about one too many evenings in an empty house. "I wouldn't mind meeting them one day, if you're amenable? I'm afraid our first and only meeting was a bit hectic."

Prompto beamed at him. "Oh, yeah! Don wanted to, uh, apologize to you in person, but I didn't know if you're up to it."

"Of course I am. I'm glad to hear he and the other are doing well. They've been pretty brave, and stuck together well."

Prompto finally dropped into Gladio's abandoned chair at Ignis' side, slouching a bit. He didn't quite dare take Ignis' hand, the way Noct did when Ignis woke up. "I've never actually had a chance to thank you, have I? For - for taking care of Don and the other two. I think if you hadn't guilted that commander into giving him to me, the Glaives would've buried them in red tape just on principle. And you - "

"He had your voice," Ignis said, quietly. "And he was just a child, and that's probably more important, but - for a moment, down there, I thought he was you. Of course I wasn't going to let anything happen to him."

Prompto's throat was growing hot and tight. "So," he said, swinging the course of the conversation around with manic cheerfulness. "Have you decided yet? Are you going to stay on as Noct's incredibly effective advisor, or is it the time for a glamorous new career of leisure?"

Ignis' left eyebrow indicated that he knew exactly what Prompto was up to, but he gave the question proper consideration anyway. "I'm not sure yet. I was so caught up in not being up to perfection in my service that I lost sight" - Prompto groaned - "of pretty much everything important, and ended up hurting us both. I'd like to make a better decision this time. At least I will have plenty of time to do so. I haven't even decided whether I'd like to stay at the Citadel or move out into the city..."

"Yes," Prompto said, with rather a heroic forbearance, "and you know Noct will - what? Why would you move out, wouldn't it make things harder for you and Noct? I thought you'd move in together. Do you still worry about PR? I'm pretty sure that between you and Noct, you've amassed enough good public karma that you can do whatever. Even Luna's biggest fans can't say anything against it."

Ignis' second eyebrow had joined the fray. He said, very slowly and carefully, "Why would I move in with Noct? For one thing, Gladio would have something to say about that, and for the other - "

"What," Prompto said, flatly. The chair under him, so nicely and mundanely substantial a minute ago, began feeling too flimsy. "What?"

Ignis hoisted himself up on the bed with a quiet, angry exhale of pain. "Prompto," he said. "Back then, when you were inviting me for coffee, you said you wanted to tell me something. Would you do me a favor of saying it now?"

"Haha," Prompto said, weakly. "No? It was something silly anyway, I don't remember..."

"Prompto," Ignis said. "Please."

You coward, Prompto told himself, and took a deep breath. "Okay. Just - one time, and you can forget I said anything, okay? You don't need this shit on top of everything else, and I shouldn't even have told you. I just thought, maybe it would be good to just get on with it and move on. Like, I just. All the time you were fighting to save Noct, and I know how much - how much it was worth to you - and I thought when it worked out, when you've gotten Noct back, and everything went back to normal, and you were by his side, and you were so happy - and hell, I was too, of course, for Noct, and for you, I swear I was, I still am. I just - it felt too much to stay and watch, you know?"

The silence around them yawned. He couldn't make himself raise his head. "In my defense, I didn't expect you to blow yourself up before you and Noct could get it on. But like, I'm going to stay now! I'm totally over myself! So please, don't - "

He began considering the merits of just letting this sorry pile of words steaming on the floor and creeping out of the room when a sound of distress from the bed made him jerk his head up.

Ignis was trying to haul himself closer to the edge of the bed; he was biting his lip, and sweat was beading on his brow.

"Iggy," Prompto said, "careful!"

He leaned over, unsure of how to help, and Ignis took hold of his hand with a punishing force.

"Prompto," he said. "What exactly are you saying?"

Prompto stared at him - the last slivers of light left only the elegant lines of his profile visible, the silver of the scars, the strand of ungelled hair his fingers itched to smooth out - and said, helplessly, "Please don't hate me."

Then he leaned over - careful, slow, telegraphing his every movement, one hand of the bed and the other still caught in Ignis' steel grip, mindful of Ignis' injuries - and touched his lips, reverently, to Ignis' mouth.

He kept his eyes resolutely closed, not wanting to see Ignis' kindly cutting refusal. His stomach felt tight and weightless - the moment before freefall, the carnival ride pausing on top before plummeting down, back in another lifetime. A moment, and then -

- and then Ignis opened his lips in a voiceless, long ahh, and kissed him back. Slow, first - like they had all the time in the world, like it was okay, like it was happening over every campfire and every shitty hotel room and every crappy refugee apartment they every shared - and then Ignis' free hand tangled in Prompto's hair and pulled his head forward, and he kissed harder, harsher, with rage, and hunger, and fire.

And then it was over, and Prompto collapsed back on his chair, panting like he just ran for miles; his head sang with the same molten pleasure of a well-earned runner's high.

He touched his lips and felt their heat on the pads of his fingers.

Ignis fell back into pillows, panting for breath; now Prompto wished for light, so he could see if Ignis' lips were as dark, as swollen as he thought they would be.

Then Ignis threw his head back and laughed. "I thought," he said, gasping and spluttering, "I thought that you couldn't stand being cooped up with us - with me - when you didn't have to. I know I was pretty unbearable when we were waiting or Noct. I thought that was why you've left! Oh, the hubris."

"Then," Prompto said, "you and Noct?.."

"Always," Ignis said, simply. "As long as he needs me, and, if we're honest, as long as he doesn't, too. But never like that."

A wild, daring joy began rising through Prompto, bubbling in his chest. "Then," he said, feeling greatly daring and perfectly sure, "then. When I'm looking for the house. Should I go for something without stairs? Wide doorways? A nice terrace?"

He laid his fingers against Ignis' lips, and felt them curve into a smile around his answer.