Midnight
A/N: Hey all! It hasn't been that long but I'm back in the writing game for now. This will be oneshots with a degree of continuity, but for this chapter I followed the alternate ending of episode Ignis.
Chapter One: Under the Influence
Aranea coughed harshly and her feeble ribs rattled and stung in protest. Her eyes squeezed shut for protection from the particles as her hands frantically scampered the rubble to feel the object on top of her. The dust from the rubble was just too thick.
She was pinned between two fallen boulders, likely from the spell one of the glaives had cast- a real rookie mistake on her part. Were they gone? Her ears focused on her surroundings; the absence of the flapping wings of daemonic wasps were gone, as well as the stench from the noxious gases they emitted.
'That's always a good sign.' She thought dryly to herself.
"Aranea!" A familiar voice called somewhere behind the wall of rubble to her. She opened her mouth to reply but couldn't muster the breath to respond. Why were her breaths so shallow? The pressure from the rocks weren't helping things.
She only groaned as her hands feebly pressed against the boulder against her chest. She was slumped backwards and it was not a favorable angle to push the object that was pressurizing her chest. She heard a truck ignition start before the glaive called her name again, this time faster and louder pitched- the pitch of recognition.
"Aranea! I see you, hold on a sec!"
She groaned again, noticing her breaths get faster.
The glaive in the truck hopped out and together they attempted to pull the rocky prison around her apart.
"Shit. I could try breaking them up with a spell."
"You'll kill her, look she's already injured beyond whatever curatives we've got."
"Fuck."
At this point Aranea couldn't remember names. The calmer one, a male directed the female to back the truck up towards the boulder and fetch chains from the bed of the truck. She obliged and as he made some tension breaking joke about the unlikely usefulness of a specific training exercise and the female didn't seem too amused. Aranea wasn't. She could appreciate a morbid sense of humor but the tension in her chest was building too much.
Together the glaives secured the chains around the boulder and the woman jumped back in the truck, her dark silhouette a blur to Aranea as she attempted to crack her eyes open. The truck crawled forward and Aranea slid limply to the side as the male glaive caught her in his clutch. The pressure of the boulders was off of her, but now her breathing had quickened despite her faint sensation of lack of oxygen, causing the sharp pain from her ribs to increase.
Her head rolled backwards, platnuim hair littering the rubble around her, mouth gasping for air in irregular shallow breaths.
"Aranea." The man spoke again, rolling her onto her back and bending an ear just over her mouth.
"Elle! She's alright but I need the first aid kit! She's alive but she sounds like she has a pneumothorax!"
The woman jumped from the driver's side of the truck, the door had already been open while she had crawled the truck forward to pull the boulder. She came running with a black bag that had been safely stowed in the glove compartment.
"You remember from training where to decompress?"
"Second and third space." The man answered as Elle passed him a large bore needle in a long package.
"Sorry, ma'am." He looked over her, clearly not looking sorry. "You can beat my ass later." He tore at the hem from the collar of her shirt, ripping it open to expose her chest. Fingers expertly counted her ribs from her collarbone. She was croaking now, weakly attempting to grab at him out of desperation and confusion.
"Right there." She heard Elle confirm.
Then, he tore open the package with his teeth, uncapped the needle with one hand while maintaining an firm pressure in between her upper ribs with two fingers on the other, as if marking his spot.
Then he drove the needle into her chest with a pop and splutter of blood from her chest, followed by a sickening hiss of air. The sensation pulled her back into a more pragmatic consciousness as instant relief settled in her chest.
"Tape." Elle said, nudging her fellow glaive to prompt him to secure the needle. He did so and the hissing from her chest slowed, but continued.
"Hold on a little longer, Aranea. Let us move you, we're right outside of Lestallum and we'll take to straight to the doctors alright? I think your lung collapsed. Just a little longer."
Aranea nodded, dizzy and still delirious from the impact. The warmth of a healing spell washed over her, causing little more than a tingle in her extremities and a temporary relief from the pain in her ribs.
The two hauled her in the bed of the truck, the woman retrieved the chains and slowly pulled away from the site. Aranea's head rolled to the side limply, eyes settling on the welcome sight of her lance, strewn carelessly in the bed of the truck beside her. She closed her eyes tightly.
'I'm going to survive this.' She thought to herself, willing it to reality in a self reliant prayer. 'I'm not going to die from a fight with a bunch of killer wasps.'
If she had it in her she would've laughed at it all.
"Let me know if you need me to slow down!" Elle called out the driver side window as she peeled back onto the pavement of the main road.
Aranea's breathing was slow now, perhaps too slow. The effects of the curative spell were wearing off and as the truck hit the occasional rough spot in the road.
"You can step on it!" She came to as the man called over her to the driver in the cab. He rummaging through the bag beside her. "The catheter is starting to clot off..."
She drifted again.
Her eyes fluttered open. Ignis was sitting beside her, gently applying pressure to her shoulder as she attempted to sit upright in the bed out of instinct.
"Good to see you again, you're lucky you were so close to Lestallum."
She didn't reply, only attempting to sit upright again.
"Aranea. You're alright." He pressed firmly.
"What the fuck is this-" She gasped, wincing at the monitor to the side of the bed. Her clothes were gone and replaced by a sterile looking blue hospital gown. And all these cords...
"How long?" She croaked, eyeing the blonde man fiercely, "How long have I been out?"
"You arrived the same day I rolled in from Galdin Quay, except you were brought in the morning. So... three days."
Aranea cursed under her breath and winced as she adjusted herself back in the bed as an excruciating pain coursed through her. She pulled the thin hospital blanket back before Ignis could stop her.
The source of the pain was from her side, and all she could see was a translucent white tube emerging from under her gown on the side which Ignis sat.
"Aranea, if you're in pain I can let the staff know-"
She swatted his hand away and unabashedly pulled the side of her gown up her thigh and side to reveal where the tube was covered by a bandage on her side.
"It's a chest tube. To help your lung heal. There was an incident, I'm not sure you remember." He spoke calmly, gently pulling her hands away from the bandage before she would be tempted to pull it back and look. Such would be her manner.
"I remember." She spoke through clenched teeth, not out of spite but out of the bitter pain that was washing over her now.
"Let me see if you can get something. They just weaned your sedation off-" Ignis stood and stopped as she shot a hand up to catch his forearm.
"No."
"Are you sure?" His proper tone carried a hint of skepticism.
"Yes," She replied, voice still cracking, "But you can turn off that monitor. The shit's been running for three days. If I'm not dead yet that thing isn't going to make a difference now."
"How about this," Ignis rationalized, "I'll let the nurses know you're awake, and perhaps if you get pain medication your vitals will be stable enough to where they can turn all everything in here if you want."
Had she been well, she would've thought up some quip to fire back at him, but he was already gone. All of the electricity powering the room irritated her; people were outside the walls of the city putting too much on the line to justify such waste for her own benefit.
That was when it hit her. She hadn't seen Ignis in several months. If she was feeling more herself she probably would've greeted him a little more appropriately and caught up like a normal human being, but instead she'd cursed in his face and damn near flashed him with her nakedness under the gown when she was inspecting the tube.
What he was doing back in Lestallum, she didn't know. And she was unsettled by him just happening to be present when she awoke.
The whole situation of being in a hospital bed was unsettling to her, but since she began hunting daemons several months ago, she'd developed a special kind of respect for the staff in Lestallum's hospital. They operated at a mere fraction of the power and supplies they were used to, and it didn't matter what kind of wounded were hauled back; they responded and make it work.
She made it a point to address those things when he returned, now that she was becoming more lucid. Though that opportunity never came as when he reentered he was quick about it, flipping over the power switches to the monitor and about the room, though it was pretty dim and sparing with the power to begin with.
"Alright then. The nurse is on the way with some medication. Maybe it'll help you sleep if anything. I'll get out of your hair."
Aranea only grunted in response as she repositioned herself before adding, "Were those glaives okay?"
"Yes they were, I believe so. You were awfully lucky for their combat aid training, I doubt any other woman could've survived such a predicament. I'll be in the area for a while longer yet. I suppose I'll see you back out there in several weeks? Give or take?"
Apparently that question was rhetorical, because with that, he was gone. She stiffened when the nurse came in the room with the pain meds, and begrudgingly accepted them. Not because of her agreement with Ignis, but because they'd likely help her sleep and sleep was going to be the only thing that ensured she would get through the whole experience with a tube sewn into her body.
In the days that followed the chest tube was removed and she was moved to a room in a hotel to recuperate before getting the clearance to restart missions. She moved about the city, increasing her distance by day under the grey lights of dusk that had replaced the once bright sun overhead.
After hearing of the incident her former mercenaries trickled in the city gates, tracking her down and confirming the stories.
"Didn't think I was ever so popular with you guys." She remarked dryly to one, and he laughed in response.
The day she set out for her first hunt since the incident, she spotted Ignis as she emerged from the tent, chains wrapped in a loop around her elbow and hand. She decided she would be sure to never leave the gate without a good amount of chains in the bed of the truck.
"Well look who it is," She remarked teasingly, "The last time I saw you, you were ducking outside of my hospital room."
Ignis smiled, running a hand through his uncharacteristically unkempt hair. Several grease marks littered his features and his sleeves were rolled up, indictating he was prepping for some kind of mission himself.
"You're not a very pleasant patient."
Aranea shrugged, "Noted." Her chin jerked in his direction indicating she was taking notice of his appearance. "About to hit the road soon, are you?"
"Yes, and you are too I take it?"
"Yeah. See you out there sometime." And with that, she walked off.
The reason why was unbeknownst to her, but she suddenly remembered that day when she woke with him beside her hospital bed while she was in a post-anesthetic stupor and had pulled her gown up her naked body in front of him while he firmly tried to stop her. If she wasn't in such a rush she might've been embarrassed. But Aranea was rarely embarrassed. However, she couldn't deny the warmth that rushed to her cheeks, which she shook off as she loaded the truck.
A/N: Thank you for reading!
This will likely be a collection of one shots centering around the ten years before Noctis returns, probably heavier in Ignis/Aranea content. I've been wanting to do this since Episode Ignis! After much thought, I've decided to go with the alternate ending for this universe, just because it made things more natural to write for me, and also I just like the idea of Noctis warping into the crystal on his own free will. I also find it interesting to explore the scenes that take place in the credits of episode Ignis, where they're being more proactive in combatting the Starscourge instead of just fighting and incessant population of daemons and waiting around for Noctis to come back. However I may make a separate fic with a chapter consistent with the original storyline. And I also want to include characters and allude to events that take place in my recently finished fic, 'The Tide', but who knows I'm pretty open for anything at this point!