The last thing Noctis remembered was fire and starlight; when he woke, it was to someone pointing a fog light at his face.

"Hold still." A warm hand clamped deftly around his jaw, immobilizing him as he tried to turn away. Then it moved to pull open his eyelid. Noctis didn't fight it this time, recognizing Gladio's deep voice and steady hands.

After a moment, the light switched off. "You with me now?"

Noctis blinked the stars out of his eyes to discover that retina-scorching blast of photons had in fact been a penlight—probably taken from the Regalia's emergency med kit, based on how they seemed to be neither in Imperial custody nor near any kind of civilization. Everything else remained inexplicably dark.

He raised a careful hand to the back of his skull, reclining on what seemed to be the headrest of a car seat—again, presumably attached to the Regalia. The smell of gasoline and burnt oil hung stagnantly in the air. His hair was matted in...something...but his head didn't hurt nearly as much as he had expected. The slightly metallic aftertaste of an elixir sat heavy on his tongue.

"Yeah," Noctis croaked, wincing at the taste. "I think."

Then, like clearing mist, memory began to return. "Ignis. Prompto!" he choked, struggling to sit up. A heavy hand landed on his chest and pushed him back down.

"Calm down," Gladio ordered. "They're fine. So's Iris and Talcott and everybody else."

Somehow, he hadn't expected that. Bahamut had killed his friends so many times before, over and over again in Reflection until Noctis' own deaths, in turn, could finally sate his appetite. And with Noctis running around the timeline at large these past few months, the Draconian must be feeling peckish by now. Bewilderment and surprise made his head swim, even as elation for his friends' unexpected deliverance overwhelmed him. His heart pounded wildly in relief.

Apparently Gladio could feel his agitation beating a rhythm through his shirt, because his hands moved up to land on either side of his face.

"Hey," he said. "Look at me. They're fine."

Noctis wanted to ask why—how he could know, what else he had learned. But everything was muddling together, crowding him with a flood of bewildering sensations.

Instead, he asked, inanely, "Why's it so dark?"

Gladio dropped his hands and sat back, half his face in shadow, and Noctis realized his eyes must finally be acclimatizing to whatever scant light source was at hand.

"We're in Daurell Caverns," Gladio said. "Had to drive the Regalia out into the bush. The Niffs sent a damn flotilla of airships after us, and it was the best place to hide. Been here about a day. You, Charmless,were a hot mess. Had to use most of the curatives in the trunk just to get you stabilized."

Noctis ran a hand gingerly down his bandaged limbs, even as something in his chest eased, just a little, at Gladio's use of his old nickname. There was still something in his tone that spoke of an approaching reckoning; Noctis understood his old friend well enough to recognize that immediately. But they'd hash that out in their own time, he knew. They always did.

"So what's the damage?" he asked, shifting experimentally in the seat. Shocks of pain from still-healing wounds flared through his nerves, and he stopped, grimacing.

Gladio's eyebrow hitched. "To you or the car?"

Noctis returned him a small, dry smile. His friend knew him far too well. He'd been referring to himself, but his father's beloved car had, in fact, been forefront in his mind. "Both."

"The Regalia'd almost give you a run for your money—ain't a potion in this world that's gonna cure her, though." Gladio pocketed the pen light, then began gathering up the graveyard of discarded dressings lying loose across Noctis' legs. "Cosmetic damage aside, her undercarriage looks a lot like the one time we accidentally ran over that slactuar crossing the road. Biggest problem so far is the fuel leak, which I managed to patch, but I haven't even finished taking a full accounting of her injuries yet. Needless to say, she's not gonna take us anywhere anytime soon.

"As for you…" Gladio fell into a clinical, businesslike tone, as if he were rattling off a list of training equipment in need of repair. "Lacerated arms, punctured feet, second degree burns, and severe bruising in your back that managed to aggravate all the old scars. Sliced up your swordhand pretty good, and got yourself a concussion on top of a concussion to boot. Had to get that under control first, before your brain swelled through your skull—though we're gonna have to cut glass out of your arms later. I didn't have time to pick it all out before I had to treat your head."

Noctis grimaced, missing his magic more than ever. Yet another downside of the storebought potions was their tendency for bulldozer-style healing. The curatives they'd carried in the armiger, touched with magic, had focused their work at the root of the damage, branching outward from there to essentially rewind the effects of whatever object had inflicted it. This included popping glass or bullets or even blades, in the case of the stronger curatives, right back out of the body. It was a painful process, to be sure, but highly effective—and once it was done, it was done.

Commercial curatives, on the other hand—even the quality brands—were essentially nothing more than healing accelerators: mimicking the body's natural processes at a slightly enhanced rate. This meant that, if not attended to first, skin and muscle would grow over the top of a foreign object, and infections could become trapped within the body. Common wisdom dictated that most wounds were best treated the conventional way first, with curatives applied as a controlled supplement over time. In more dangerous professions, like hunters'—and theirs—the philosophy gravitated more along the lines of "blast it with a potion now, sort out the damage later."

Speaking of bullets—and more specifically, in this case, the biting of them—Noctis sighed and braced himself. Might as well get it out of the way right now.

"Two concussions, huh?" he said, looking flatly at his Shield. "One of them wouldn't have originated from your giant, thuglike fist, would it?"

Gladio regarded him with an unreadable expression, perched on the edge of what Noctis could see, now that his eyes were fully acclimatized to the half-light, was indeed the Regalia's passenger seat—evidently doubling as his sickbed. His Shield had been sitting with his back wedged between the dash and the open door. Now he straightened, gazing levelly back at him. "Sure did."

Noctis waited patiently, even as he distantly marveled at the changes in his friend. Old Gladio would have been past the point of pissed and well into his flight off the handle by now, berating him for everything from indifference to idiocy. New Gladio was upset, no doubt about it; but Noctis was struck by his composure, his muted responses, and most of all, a certain receptiveness that hadn't been there before.

"So," his Shield finally said. "You wanna tell me what the hell you were thinking?"

Noctis took a deep breath. "I wasn't. I was out of my head. Blame it on the original concussion if you want, but when I saw Leviathan again, all the memories came flooding back and…I lost it."

Technically it was true; they just hadn't been quite the same memories Gladio would think they were. Guilt scraped at his soul for deliberately misleading his friend—again—but he brushed it away.

Gladio grunted. "Yeah. Because that's the only reason I could figure for you trying to jump out of a car screaming down the road at eighty miles per hour. What'd you think would happen—that you'd land on your feet, charge up a hill crawling with Niffs—not to mention gods—and fly on in to their rescue?" Here a bit of the old Gladio was finally surfacing, evident in the growing frustration of his tone.

"Like I said, I wasn't," Noctis said, his own voice sharpening just a hair. "And you guys can't keep doing this. You can't keep elevating my life above everybody else's."

Gladio laughed, and it wasn't a nice sound. "Someone's gotta do it, since you can't seem to manage it yourself. Seems like throwing your life away is all you've been bent on since we brought you back, though I sure as hell can't understand why."

Noctis faltered at the unexpected hurt in his friend's voice—no more than a shadow, but there nonetheless.

But then Gladio continued, "Besides which, it's our job—something that, for whatever reason, you can't seem to handle anymore."

Noctis' remorse was immediately steamrolled by his frustration. "I don't want that to be your job! Gladio! I don't want 'being stabbed through the back as you save me from falling through a window' and 'getting chopped in two protecting my clueless self from Red Giants' and 'staying behind against overwhelming odds so that someone else can get me out' to be your job!"

"Too godsdamned bad," Gladio said. "I took an oath. We all did."

Noctis seethed, all his fear and doubt and buried grief rising to the surface at once, boiling over before he could contain it. "Why are you still Shielding me? I'm hardly even a king anymore—a figurehead at best. That situation isn't ever likely to improve, as you well know. You're investing your whole life and the honor of your family line in a has-been, Gladio. What's the point?"

Something in his deluge of admittedly ill-conceived and half-formed thoughts hit Gladio hard. Rising to his feet, his Shield towered over him. Noctis forced himself up as well—at least to a sitting position, his aches and pains momentarily buried by his agitation.

"A has-been. Really." Gladio spoke quietly, the sudden contrast feeling ominous in the dark. "You really think that's all it's about? That it's all I'm about? Duty and honor and nothing else, huh?" He shook his head. "You're such an idiot."

He stalked away into the shadows. Noctis watched him go, then flopped leadenly back onto the seat with a sigh.

xxx

He soon discovered that Gladio couldn't go far, though proximity hardly mattered to the man when he was truly bent on administering the silent treatment. The Regalia having finally rolled to a gasping, sputtering halt at the edge of Daurell's underground river, they would have been plunged into near total darkness—and the mercy of the daemons within—had Gladio not rigged the car's battery to a nearby electricity deposit, a stroke of ingenuity Noctis found truly inspiring. He had heard of such things becoming common during the Long Night, but to see it in action was another thing entirely. The car's brilliant, daemon-repelling headlights now shone at all hours of the day and night (one and the same, down here)—creating a small habitat of light upon which they currently depended for their survival.

Noctis avoided Gladio as well, his body still in too much pain to devote more than the bare minimum of effort toward sorting through his muddled thoughts. Eventually, though, he grew restless; and despite the assortment of half-healed injuries still wreaking havoc on his body, he found he couldn't bring himself to lie around any longer. Clenching his teeth, he levered himself clumsily up and out of the car.

Alongside the subterranean river lay a large, vibrant green pool. Noctis tottered over to park himself between the two, just at the edge of the ring of light. Alert for evidence of aquatic life, he stared absently down the river, as far as he could see by the glow of the toxic sludge. Daurell would probably have been beautiful, if not for those pools of poison. Or the daemons. Or the freezing, wet rocks, for that matter. His own misery aside, Noctis figured that between its crystalline waterfalls, rainbow caverns, and the sharply defined shafts of sunlight one could find closer to the surface, it must have been considered something of a destination once.

Eventually he wandered back to the car, having noted a few satisfyingly fishy shadows, and bent to rummage through the trunk. Between Gladio's efforts to coax both him and the Regalia back to life, Noctis suspected he hadn't had much time to devote to a thorough cataloguing of their resources yet.

So, making piles as he went, he began to take inventory: one med kit, mostly gutted. Half a dozen potions. A few water bottles. Two grocery bags packed with snacks of questionable nutritional character. Scattered odds and ends from the Regalia's toolkit, along with a nest of unidentifiable wires and gadgets. Ignis' compact but still incredibly lethal "dire straits backup plan" daggers. Half a bag of charcoal, plus matches. Two cans of Prompto's Power-EX, a disgusting but extremely effective strength-boosting energy drink his friend had taken to of late, upside-down and dented from what had presumably been several wild turns in the Regalia. No Phoenix bars, because he and Prompto had eaten them all back at Caem after a night of particularly sweaty hunts. His fishing rod and tackle, blessedly still in one piece. Gladio's shield—which surprised Noctis initially, until he recalled his friend elbowing them all aside the night before their planned departure to lay it reverently across what little floor space remained, grousing about how everybody's crap would monopolize all the real estate if he didn't lay claim to it early.

And finally there was the Sword of the Father, still buried deep in the darkest recesses of the trunk. Noctis left it there, shoving the rest back to cover it.

There was no extra clothing, no blankets, no towels, no tent. Also notably absent were the beautifully fashioned gifts his friends had surprised him with on his birthday—Prompto's hookshot, Gladio's handmade sheath, the rune saber Ignis had bought in Old Lestallum. Those had all been up in the room, and were now probably floating around in the form of microscopic particles in the atmosphere. And there were no phones—at least not that he could see. Though it wasn't as if they would have functioned this deep in the caves, anyway.

Noctis gathered up his rod and tackle and limped barefoot to the river, hopping over Gladio's outstretched legs as the man swore and muttered beneath the car. Kneeling on the stony bank, he grit his teeth and plunged his head in, scrubbing gingerly at the dried blood that caked his hair. He emerged with a gasp, shockingly cold water running down his neck and soaking into his shirt. Ignoring his own shivering, savoring the burst of alertness brought about by the chill, he pulled out his fishing rod and sat back against a rock. He cast his line down the river, his eyes tracking the distant specters of Necromancers as they ghosted through the corridors.

Several hours later, Noctis returned to their makeshift camp with a small selection of bass. He cleaned them as Gladio heated up the coals, and they dined on unseasoned fish with a side of cheesy puffs.

After dinner, Noctis sat on a rock and, ignoring the chill, pulled off his battered, bloodstained sleep shirt. At his feet he lined up a potion, a water bottle, and the remains of the med kit. Fishing for an alcohol wipe, he ripped it open to swab his entire upper arm and shoulder.

Taking a few deep breaths, he picked up one of Ignis' daggers. Then he methodically began to cut the glass out from beneath his skin.

The sensation was nauseating, but Noctis refused to cry out; instead he gathered up the pain and swallowed it, buried it deep inside himself with all the rest. He'd been forced to do far worse to himself, after all. He could certainly handle this.

His breath shook, but his hand remained steady. The first glass shard emerged and fell to the cave floor with a tiny tinkling sound. But now blood was running down his arm freely enough that he couldn't make out the next site. Tracing his finger across the skin instead, searching out the sensitive, irritated lumps, he began again.

Over at the Regalia, Gladio had been sorting through the toolbox, but Noctis knew he was tracking him from the corners of his eyes. Soon enough he stopped and set down his wrench, making no pretense anymore over the fact that he was watching. Abruptly he stood and crossed the stone floor, coming to crouch by Noctis' side.

"Dammit, Noct," he muttered, so softly that Noctis almost couldn't hear it past his own labored breaths.

But there was no rancor in it. Without a word, Gladio plucked the now-slippery blade from his hand. Noctis let him.

"Sit here," Gladio instructed, guiding him down to the cave floor. "Lean back against the rock."

Noctis did as he was told, wincing at the pressure against his still-bruised back. Gladio settled on his knees beside him, wadding up Noctis' shirt and tucking it between his head and the stone. Then he carefully wiped down his arm, followed shortly by the blade.

"Ready?" he asked, and Noctis nodded, closing his eyes and breathing through his nose.

The pain began again, but it was bearable now, carried out by someone whom Noctis knew had only ever wanted the best for him. Leaning back into the numbing chill of the rock, he soon became it, letting the distractions and small agonies of the world flow around him on all sides, failing to move him.

Gladio shifted to his other arm, and Noctis breathed through it. And soon enough he felt a cold bottle being nudged into his hand. Gladio's own wrapped around his and helped him guide it to his lips. "Drink," he ordered.

Noctis did, and with the healing draught of the potion came immense relief. Sighing, he fell limp against the stone, letting Gladio manhandle his arms as he finished with the cleaning and bandaging.

"Thanks," Noctis rasped as his Shield secured the last dressing in place.

Gladio merely grunted. But he lingered for a moment longer, regarding Noctis assessingly. Noctis couldn't help but note his residual frustration—but just traces of it now, and mostly diluted by something that looked a bit like remorse.

Remorse, accompanied by frank forgiveness. And that was reply enough for him.

xxx

The rest of the evening passed quietly, but with an air of easy contemplation, and none of the tension of before. Exhaustion hit Noctis suddenly and with the force of Titan's left hook, accompanied by the beginnings of another headache. Thoroughly drained, he finally turned in for the night—meaning he curled up as tightly as he could on the reclined passenger seat, tucking one bandaged foot beneath the other and then alternating, hoarding whatever shred of warmth he could gather. Gladio eventually settled down in the driver's seat and closed his eyes, his hands folded over his stomach.

Despite his fatigue, Noctis soon discovered that sleep wouldn't be putting in an appearance anytime soon. The Necromancers droned and whispered through the caverns, occasionally stopping to hover at the borders of the light. Their uncanny mutterings chilled him, but not as much as the freezing air of the cave on his minimally covered skin. He shivered and tossed, painfully regretting his diligence in retrieving every bit of bedding Ignis had asked him to carry up to the house and failing to neglect so much as a pillowcase.

Beside him, Gladio finally sighed in exasperation, long and loud. Noctis jumped, having completely missed his Shield's own wakefulness.

"C'mere," the man said, and without warning, reached over to haul him bodily across the center console. Noctis squawked in a decidedly unkingly manner, even as he jealously marveled at the sheer core strength such a move would have required.

Edging his own body as far as he could against the door, Gladio wedged Noctis sideways into the narrow strip of space between his side and arm, the latter of which he'd draped across the emergency brake.

"There. Better?" he said. His voice rumbled from his chest into Noctis' ear.

It was better. Natural furnace that he was, Gladio was like a mini, musclebound Exeneris plant, melting ice and hearts wherever he went. Noctis was surprised Shiva even let him near her. Not that he was complaining; the warmth seeped into his muscles, relaxing shoulders that had been strained into rigidity throughout his ad hoc surgery and then hunched in on themselves ever since. The seat pressed against his arm, aggravating his tender, still-healing wounds, but Noctis didn't mind. At the moment, there was truly no place he'd rather be than squashed in Gladio's armpit.

Not that he was about to tell his Shield that. He replied to Gladio's question with a drowsy snort.

"Barely. Your stupid muscles are like…like…"

"A transcendent, godly experience?" Gladio supplied.

"Yeah. Godly. Like cuddling with Titan. He's a big pile of rocks, Gladio."

"I read that he's actually an iron-limestone compound."

"Ugh, shut up."

Gladio snickered, but soon lapsed into silence. Noctis felt his muscles loosen further, despite the seatbelt retractor that was currently digging into his thigh. The Necromancers muttered and whispered, but he dismissed them from his mind. Both of them needed the rest, and the headlights would keep them safe.

But after a moment, Gladio spoke, his thoughts clearly not geared toward sleep. "So that old sea bitch is after you now too, huh?"

Noctis shifted, realizing his hip was starting to go numb. It began tingling slowly back to life, filling his whole left side with hot and cold prickles.

"Yeah. So it seems."

"Any idea why?"

He knew exactly why. It was because Bahamut had sent her…and that was because The Draconian himself had finally woken in this timeline. Noctis knew it, in every fiber of his soul, to the core of his being. It scared him nearly witless—

If you refuse to acquiesce…I shall destroy all those close to your heart

—but his friends didn't need to know that.

"I don't know, 'cause she's got a perpetual stick up her ass?" Noctis muttered. Then he sighed. "I don't think she likes the fact that Umbra's letting us roam around the timelines." More half-truths.

Gladio made a noise, something that didn't exactly ring with conviction. But he let it pass.

"Umbra's a good dog…god…whatever, but it'd be grand if they'd all keep these little beefs of theirs to themselves," he grumbled. "I've been feeling pretty done with living on the ass-half of their whims since…oh, say, that time you told us they were sending you off to die."

Noctis stilled, thinking back to that bittersweet night—a moment divorced from all others, frozen in time and belonging to the four of them alone. There were many things he could have said right then.

Instead, he settled for, "Umbra's not a god."

"So Iggy tells me," Gladio snorted. "But you'll notice even the Six don't bounce around indiscriminately through time."

"Because…they're…outside of it? Time, that is?" Noctis hazarded. His brows drew together. He honestly didn't know.

Gladio shrugged, dislodging Noctis' head from his arm in the process. "Probably a good thing, anyway. My guess is it's the only reason humanity's even still around."

Noctis nodded absently, repositioning his head until it was comfortable again. Farther up the tunnel, somewhere beyond the reach of the headlights, water dripped out a slow, unbroken cadence into one of the neighboring pools. It sounded strange and stifled in the claustrophobic caverns, so different from their many nights out beneath the sky.

After a moment, he asked, "What do you think Ignis and Prompto are up to right now?"

"Hang on, I'll tell you." Gladio made a show of checking the time. "Prompto's snoring away as blissfully as if he's died and gone to the Afterlife. Ig's shoving a pillow down his throat in hopes of helping him along the way. You know, the usual."

Noctis laughed. The movement hurt, but he didn't care.

"I've been meaning to ask," he said, as his smile loosened back into contemplation. "How'd you know everybody made it out? Did your phone survive the attack?"

"Hell, no," Gladio scoffed. "That thing's been feeding the fish, if it wasn't blasted into atoms first. Iggy sent a text to the spare in the dash, which apparently made it through right before we lost reception in the caves. I didn't find it till a couple hours later." Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the seat, his breath misting ever so slightly in the cold cave air.

Noctis blinked, the reel of his brain skipping a couple of frames. "We…keep a spare phone in the dash?"

"Well, it's in my pocket now, but yeah." Gladio shrugged again. "What can I say? The man thinks of everything."

Noctis smiled. Good old Ignis. There was no way he would have made it as far as he had—in any timeline—without that man.

He shifted again, squirming uncomfortably as Gladio's lumpy shoulder dug into the side of his face. "Ugh, seriously Gladio. It's like using Ravatogh for a pillow."

Gladio smirked, his eyes cracking open to slits. "We found a Royal Arm up there, so I'll take that as a win."

"You would," Noctis muttered.

"Sounds like someone's just having trouble accepting the glory of this royal arm." Grinning, he flexed, sending Noctis caroming back off the side of his shoulder. "Hey, where do you think you're going?"

"Back to the non-moronic side of the car," Noctis informed him, grunting and panting his way through the laborious ascent from the canyon of the seat to the top of the center console.

Gladio huffed in laughter. "Get back here."

Grabbing Noctis' shirt, he tugged him back down against his side, then wrapped an arm securely around his shoulders. "Go to sleep, idiot."

He did.

xxx

A/N: A bit o' Noct and Gladio bonding time there for ya. These two have some things to work through.

A/N #2: Guest #1, I was in such a rush to get these past few updates out that I totally forgot to reply to your absolutely lovely review on Chapter 19. All I can say is thank you SO much. Providing a story worthy of hot chocolate and a quiet corner, I think, is what any writer would aspire to. Also, I hope you have forgiven me now for the cliffhanger. :)