It's a day like any other, with nothing in particular to mark it: the sunlight is streaming through the open windows, the light breeze is stirring the curtains. Most of the days had been sunny, this last year, as if the weather had been trying to make up for ten years of darkness.
Their morning goes through its usual motions, a smooth and choreographed routine. Gladio drinks his tea standing at the counter, one of his tattered paperbacks in hand. Prompto sits at the table, staring at his own cup; his right leg is twitching just a bit under the table, tapping on the floor in a jerky rhythm.
Yesterday's morning was like this too, and the morning before that, and before that; the chain of them stretches before him, and that's when Prompto turns to Gladio and says, "I can't do it anymore. We should not do it anymore."
Gladio curses and drops his cup on the floor. Prompto stares at the bright white shards, at the slowly widening pool of tea.
Ignis doesn't comment. Ignis is lying on the bed, both arms lax and still over the blanket, his blind eye staring mindlessly at the ceiling. Ignis hasn't said anything or moved a limb from the moment Prompto and Gladio walked away from Noctis' fresh grave on the high hill, then turned around and found Ignis sprawled awkwardly against the tombstone, silent and motionless as a puppet with his strings cut.
They had panicked, of course. They'd tried waking him up first, except he didn't seem to be unconscious, and then tried elixirs, and then dragged him to the remaining Lestallum doctors, but received the same answer everywhere. Ignis was, for all intents and purposes, completely healthy and conscious; he'd just - stopped.
Prompto remembers those first days in blurred exhausted snatches. The way he kept hoping it was some kind of a glitch, a mistake, a momentary break in the program. He remembers the moment that illusion shattered, too, the first time they realized that Ignis, pristinely fastidious Ignis, would soil himself. He remembers looking at Gladio in helpless, bewildered rage, and Gladio smashing his fist against the wall; the rest is vague in his mind, smudged with time.
They settled in a routine eventually, a miserably domestic orbit of two terrified people around one breathing body. A house, a watch rotation, the logistics of feeding, cleaning, clothing. The horrifying discovery of the existence of bedsores, an awkwardly sympathetic stream of visitors that dried out quietly after a while. Just a bit of hope clawing at Prompto every time he woke up, right up until the moment it stopped.
"I can't," he says again, and kneels to pick up the broken pieces.
To his immense gratitude, Gladio doesn't pretend to misunderstand him. He's standing over Prompto, blocking the sunlight. His arms hang limply by his sides, as if they don't really belong to him, as if his entire body is somewhere else, somebody else's.
"The Lestallum's hospital is open again," he says without great conviction.
"They can't provide long-term care," Prompto says, but that's, of course, not really a problem. "Even if we made them, then… what? They'll put him in a nice white room and stick some tubes into him and keep him there for the next forty years, and we'll visit every other week with fresh flowers? Because one day he'll wake up and smile and birds will sing and all will be well?"
His voice is rising beyond his control, a hysterical pitch that hurts his ears, and he can't stop - won't stop - if Gladio tries to calm him down he'd probably begin screaming in earnest.
"No," Gladio says quietly. "No, I don't think that's going to happen."
"I don't understand," Prompto whispers. "I just don't understand. Those ten years, he was fucked up, but he was okay. He trained, he hunted, he, he learned to cook again, he made jokes, he was. Why."
Gladios says, "He was keeping things in order for Noct, that's why. That's it. And after Noct came and left he didn't have to anymore."
He whirls around suddenly, kicks the leg of Ignis's bed with punishing force. "We were there, you selfish fucking bastard! We fucking loved you too!"
(Those early days, when they'd run out of hope but hadn't given up yet, when they'd tried yelling, shaking, slapping. Prompto remembers Gladio's hands on Ignis' unresisting throat, his own horror, the queasy, tempting weight of it. They stopped after that, and it didn't work, anyway.)
Prompto flinches. Ignis doesn't stir.
Gladio sits down heavily on the floor, his anger spent, leans against the side of the bed, tugs Prompto over to him, slings a hand around his shoulder. He says, out of nowhere, "Do you remember his recipe book?"
He does. Ignis' black notebook that started out pristine and crisp and became more and more tattered as even Ignis' superhuman orderliness was unable to save it from the effect of travel and time. Recipes. Lists of curatives, notes on the hunts, desperate attempts to balance their ever-sinking budget. The photo of the four of them that Prompto took early on, grinning and throwing up victory signs on the Quay's dock, tucked into the flyleaf.
And those neat to-do lists, one for every day. Prompto sometimes watched Ignis cross out every last entry by the evening, vicariously excited and slightly weirded out by that feat.
Did he ever see that notebook again after Altissia? He can't remember.
He nods, anyway, and Gladio says, even and low, almost fond. "It's like he had that huge to-do list in his head, you know? He was checking tasks off, one after another, and the last item there was 'bury Noct,' and then he ran out of things to do. And here we are."
"Gladio," Prompto whispers, swallows, leans into Gladio's shoulder. He's exhausted, he's so exhausted; they've been sleeping in turns, this last year, wake up every two hours, check, turn, clean. He's so tired. "Gladio, what do we do?"
"You know what. He made it pretty clear from the beginning, what he wanted. Just - took us a while."
If only he'd been lucky enough to get killed back then, in this last fight on the Citadel's step, he wouldn't have to have this conversation now. Their luck ran out, though, went with Noct into his bed of dirt and grass and old stones. Happy bastard, to be sleeping through this.
"Tomorrow then," Prompto says, and hates the note of relief in his voice. "Tomorrow."
Next morning they get up at the crack of the dawn, Gladio silent and stiff, Prompto wrung out and jittery. He can't remember sleeping, although he must have: there's a fleeting image of Noct in his head, staring at him, mouth pressed into an unhappy straight line. He dreamed of telling Noct he didn't get to disapprove, but he can't remember if Noct had answered.
Yesterday, 'tomorrow' felt like a lifeline. Today, he wishes he'd been braver yesterday.
Gladio helps him with getting Ignis into a plastic chair in the shower. They usually make do with sponge baths, but today... yeah. Gladio goes to get the truck ready after that, leaving Prompto to wrestle with the showerhead and soap, and later razor and scissors, trying very hard not to focus on anything in particular.
He doesn't quite succeed: on the bed, Ignis' painstackingly mended and cleaned Crownsguard uniform is waiting, and just thinking of it makes Prompto notice the body he's washing all anew. All that lean gymnastic muscle, gone to waste: there's just so much that a diet of broth and gruel (tip a spoon in, close the mouth, massage the throat until it goes down, rinse, repeat) can accomplish. The planes of Ignis' face feel sharp and unfamiliar under his careful fingers. Strands of Ignis' cut hair fall around his chair in an uneven circle.
"Look at what you've done to yourself, man," Prompto says, as lightly as he can, "Noct would be so unimpressed. What about all those vegetables?"
Ignis doesn't answer.
He shuts off the water, dries Ignis off, and decides to wrestle him back to the room by himself. The tick-tock of passing minutes in his head is at once unbearable and exhilarating. Time is finally moving; time is moving towards the destination he shies from.
It takes some swearing and outright dragging, he bumps Ignis' hip into the door frame and apologizes for the bruise, but he manages.
In the uniform Ignis looks like a kid dressed up in his older brother's clothes, his thin wrists sticking obscenely out of the sleeves. Prompto considers his handiwork, hums a bit, goes to hunt through unpacked boxes and stuffed drawers, and finally emerges with a tiny jar of hair wax that he hasn't thought about in a very long time.
He stands behind Ignis' chair, arranges the hair into its proper form; the skin of Ignis' scalp is unfairly warm under his fingers. In the mirror he can see the familiar face, head tipped to the side, mouth relaxed, eyes closed, scars settled into the skin. If he blinks, he can imagine they're in Altissia, Ignis recovering, him on his self-declared mission to help him adjust. He thought he could, back then.
He leans down, hugs Ignis' unresisting shoulders, presses his forehead into the back of Ignis' head. "Gods, I hate you," he whispers into Ignis' soft hair, like a secret, like a benediction. "I hate you so much."
Of course, Ignis doesn't answer that either.
It's quiet on the hill.
Prompto hasn't been there since the burial. He's forgotten how steep the climb is, and he's out of shape, anyway. He pants for a while, catching his breath, bent over, hands on his knees. Even Gladio is winded, but granted, Gladio had made the ascent with Ignis' dead weight on his back.
The sun is bearing down mercilessly, but there's a fresh breeze whistling through grass stems, too. The song of the cicadas washes over them like a great wave.
The grave is is overgrown with grass and stubborn wildflowers, untouched by human hands. They never got around to telling anybody where it was, first because of Ignis, then because… just because. There's a statue to Noct standing in the middle of rebuilt Insomnia now, always surrounded by flowers and candles and small offerings. Prompto saw it once and thought it looked more like Regis than Noct, the sculptor obviously working from the old portraits and a great deal of artistic license rather than knowledge. It's not as if that many people actually saw Noct during his brief return. He didn't like it much, and didn't leave anything at its marble pedestal, but he never went back to the real tombstone, either.
Until now; at 'now,' his thoughts scatter. He's breathing, in and out, watching Gladio grunt as he lowers Ignis down, arranges him to lean against the stone. In and out. Are they actually here? What are they doing, what are they doing, what are they doing.
Gladio turns, looks at him; his face moves like his muscles forgot how to work properly. He says, "Go back to the truck, okay? You don't - it's not - you don't have to. I will come down soon."
Prompto's mind stutters. It's ridiculous that he's never thought past this moment, past bringing Ignis where he wanted to stay from the very beginning. But of course they can't just abandon him to sun and hunger and the mercy of stray beasts. Of course he knew that. He brought his gun with him, after all.
(A lifetime ago, walking eagerly between Gladio and Ignis towards his first royal audience, an adventure stretching ahead, his fatigues feeling more like cosplay clothes. He went through the training and gave his oaths, but didn't really understand, not until later. Maybe even not until after.)
The fabric of his own uniform is heavily unpleasant against his skin, sweat soaking it through between his shoulder blades. Prompto swallows, straightens up, touches the wooden grip of the gun at his side. No runes, no charms, no fancy tricks, just somebody's old revolver, mended and refitted, serviceable. He says, "No. I. It would be neater. He'd like neat, right?"
Ignis' head is tilted back; Prompto can't say if he's awake or asleep, if he can feel the sun on his face, the warm stone at his back. If he understands.
He walks over, stands in front of Ignis but can't quite look at his face. His gaze is skittering, catching on the shape of familiar letters etched into the stone behind Ignis' shoulder, the curve of Ignis' slack fingers. His eyes are burning, dry.
Gladio comes to stand behind him. Prompto feels him move, knows what he's doing without looking: the Crownsguard bow, the proper one, the one Prompto's never got a chance to get down quite right. Wouldn't ever need to now, not after today.
They're the last ones left; this is the end of the world (the beginning, he thinks, it's the beginning).
He raises his arm, locks his elbow, takes careful aim; Gladio's arm settles over his, the other heavy and warm on his left shoulder. Makes himself look, for the last time, and sees: Ignis's lips, curving up just slightly. Just enough for a smile.
When he pulls the trigger, the hum of the cicadas falls silent, just for a moment. Then it begins again.