It doesn't really hurt, in an insulting way: the swords of his ancestors jar his soul down to its foundations, but his body barely notices them. At least Ardyn gave his muscles and bones a workout before going ahead; at least Ifrit scorched him with fire and Shiva kissed him with frost.
He never thought he'd find the workings of his own body to be so bitterly priceless. He fell out of accord with it after Marilith shattered his spine, and never quite recovered the childhood ease, never quite took its smooth workings for granted again. And then he lost it for a decade and eternity more - touch, smell, taste, pleasure, pain - and got it back for just one day, and just one night.
His father stands over him in ashamed silence, and all Noct wants is for his blow to have the decency to hurt.
It doesn't.
The might of the kings sweeps him into the loneliness of Beyond, and he greets Ardyn there as he would greet a brother: he doesn't forgive but he understands, now, how it is to be loved by the gods.
Finish it, he tells himself. All the sacrifices that brought him here, unwilling, willing, ready, all for this moment. No place, in that shining space, for his little regrets, for the bitter yearning of his life to happen; too many others have paid in advance.
And when he does - when the will of the gods smashes through him, erasing him, shattering him - unraveling -
Noct, Ignis shouts, space and time and divinity be damned, take my hand!
He shouldn't, but he can't refuse - he reaches out, through the veil separating here from nowhere, and, against all odds, his questing hand finds warmth.
Ignis is by his side,Ignis' eyes burn with holy fire, and between their fingers, the light of the Crystal wells up, an unstoppable tide.
Ardyn is gone in a blink of an eye; he's set free, but Noct isn't. The light pours through him and Ignis, pulses between their palms, sweeping wider - wider - through Beyond, into the mortal world, chasing the last cobwebs of darkness away, healing the land, brightening the sky. Instead of disappearing, Noct gathers his body to him, feels its stubborn, awkward, hard-won life. He turns to Ignis, laughing in joy, grateful, incredulous -
(Enough, little mortal, a voice of swords and wings says in his head, amused, and not to him, you got your deal.)
- and the fire goes out.
The marble of the floor is cold under his back; his bad hip is twisted and aching unbearably, all the pain he wished for and more.
Gladio is leaning over him, and the familiar, exasperated, caring rage in his face is so ridiculously dear Noct can't help but laugh, and then gets distracted by the way laughter travels through his throat and lungs and lips.
He laughs until the meandering path of his returning awareness brings him back to Ignis, who's curled against his side, face hidden in Noct's shoulder, not moving despite Prompto's more and more frantic attempts to wake him up.
"Ignis!"
Noct surges up, his delight forgotten, and hauls Ignis up. His memory of what happened is already fading and fracturing, but Bahamut's deal still rings in his head. Nothing good ever came from dealing with the gods.
"Ignis," he says again, quieter this time, pleading, as Ignis stirs in his arms. "What did you do?"
Ignis raises his head. His eyes, empty of their divine burden, are blackened ruins; and his smile is lopsided, pulled down sharply on the right side.
(Prompto's swearing somewhere to Noct's left, a long, inventive and sobbing string of blasphemies. Gladio is ominously silent, but he's warm and solid at Noct's back, shoring him up when Noct's knees weaken.)
"Argued. Had… t'make… space. Worked?"
The rising sunlight creeps into the throne room, lights Ignis' hair golden. His smile is sweet, content, utterly alien, achingly familiar; he's done what he wanted to, and got away with it, and left Noct with no exit at all.
"Yeah," Noct says, and curls over him, hides his face against Ignis' shoulder. "Yes, Specs, it did."
Despite the eternity separating Noct from his unhappy teenaged self, they are still united on one fundamental front: mornings are the worst, and waking up early is an injustice. He muses on this, groaning and trying to stretch his stiffened leg out without making it scream bloody murder, and considers being irresponsible just for once. But Ignis is already up, and they live on Ignis' calendar, now.
Noct rolls out of bed, drags a hand through his hair, listens hard. Possibly a bad day: there's no coffee smell floating from the kitchen, and this is one part of kitchen duties that Specs usually never misses.
The rising sunlight paints a patchy pathway to the door, and the wooden boards are beginning to warm up under his feet. If he's honest with himself, the floor was one of the reasons he chose this cabin. It's been so new an experience, so different from anywhere they stayed before, from Insomnian marble and steel to rickety caravans. There's something pleasingly alive about the way the boards come to life in the morning; sometimes Noct's tempted to pet them.
(The bakery cat is about to give birth; Noct remembers that he's been promised one of the kittens in the litter, and smiles. Maybe there will be a black one.)
The bathroom is unoccupied; he does his business quickly, and starts a more systematic check. The kitchen is empty, although there are an empty pot and the opened coffee bag on the counter; the living room, with its carefully spotless floor, is empty too, and so is the freshly made up guest room. The trapdoor to the cellar is firmly closed, and the keys are still - Noct checks - in their proper hidden place, because just the idea of Ignis trying to get down those stars on one of the bad days gives Noct screaming anxiety.
Finally, the verandah, and - yes, right around the corner, on the swing seat Gladio helped Noct built last year, gazing sightlessly into the fog swirling over the lake in front of their house. Noct frowns and retreats to the living room to snag a throw off the sofa, and then comes back out.
"Hey," he says, quietly, in case it's a bad day after all. "Working on your tan?"
Specs turns to him, smiling his uneven smile, and Noct smiles in return, for all that it goes unseen. "Hands," Specs says, holding them up to demonstrate, "misbehaved. Not risking coffee."
His fingers are indeed shaking, and sometimes it means a bad day, but he's enunciating clearly and carefully, and he seems fully present, so Noct breathes out in relief. He'll take any kind of physical symptom over the twilight despair of the days when it's achingly obvious just how much of himself Ignis had gouged out to let the light of the gods in.
"I'm on it, no worries," he says, spreading the throw over Specs' knees, careful not to dislodge the cane leaning against the swing. He sits next to Ignis, gently bumps their shoulders together. "How's the head?"
"Quiet."
"Plans for the day?"
"Is Prompto..? Today?"
"Yeah, tonight. New Braille books for you - they found an untouched library, he says - new fishing rod for me, love from Gladio and Alma, and all the fresh Insomnian gossip he can carry."
"Good," Ignis says, and falls silent.
He leans back, and Noct reaches out, takes one of his hands, smoothes out the twitching fingers. Ignis' face is tilted toward sunlight; there's no tension in his shoulders, in the long line of his throat. In the entirety of their life together, Noct rarely saw him so still, relaxed rather than mortally exhausted. And in the floaty uncertainty of Crystal dreams, Ignis' visits were short, bright, crammed full of real and imagined memories; he only remembers one, of them running and leaping over the Citadel rooftops, laughing in the setting sun.
He knows now that it was Ignis' way of saying farewell before he hollowed himself out, an indulgence and an apology at once, a sharp-edged gift from the gods. But the joke's on them: bad days or not, here they both are, and Noct won't trade it for anything.
The sun climbs higher, makes the fog over the lake sparkle and shine before chasing it away. Noct pets Ignis' fingers, and lists the day's tasks in his head - fish, market, a bottle of local moonshine for Prompto's visit, check in with one of the passing hunters for more of Ignis' pain meds, make lunch, make dinner, the roof over the verandah needs patching - and thinks no further than a day ahead.
"Noct," Ignis says, quietly, without turning his head. "While I. Remember. Forgive me?"
"Yes," Noct says, and maybe doesn't lie.