Twelve

When Noctis is twelve years old it's the first time he realizes it's a kidnapping. He realizes very fast but he's already got his hands tied and he can't get to his watch.

How he finds out is easy—someone tells him to get in a car. The guy looks like a sleazeball and smells like a burning dumpster fire. Noctis knows no matter what his answer is to his dad's routine question he is going to be running as fast as his skinny little legs will carry him.

It sucks because his back is still a mess from the Marilith and running for very long (or running at all) hurts. He doesn't have to run far, just far enough to hide somewhere. He figured out a way to turn off the watch from tracking his every movement months before and he needs to pop the little piece of diamond back in to make it work.

But Noctis asks the question and gets a stupid response.

"What's today's color?"

His dad changes the color every morning and Noctis knows that it's always the color of the fruit that he leaves to rot on the side of his plate.

Today was grape.

Yuck.

"Yellow."

Noctis drops his backpack and runs, but he's right in his guess that his back would leave him running like a crippled old man. The kidnapper thwaps him across the head and he's too woozy to stop himself from going into the trunk of the car with his hands tied behind him.

It's dark and scarier than Noctis will ever admit to anyone (even Ignis and definitely Gladio) and he tries his best to remember what Clarus drilled into his head after his first two kidnappings.

Why do they want him?

The guy doesn't seem like he is all that stable. Money? S...sex?

Does he want to hurt Noctis?

Shit if he knows. The guy looks drunk and smells like Gladio did when he snuck out for his fifteenth birthday and came back to the Citadel at three in the morning. He came back puking food he hadn't eaten in two years.

But Noctis is in the trunk and he would give anything to have Gladio next to him. Even drunk Gladio would have been better than nothing.

Noctis thinks back on the last two times but he can't remember the actual kidnapping and just his dad's scared face.

Noctis tries to breathe through his nose and remember that things will be fine, because lots of people saw what happened and the Crownsguard would be coming very soon.

"Hey, hey! I need to pee," Noctis yells through the trunk, kicking his feet against the back metal. It hurts a bit— his school shoes aren't made for this— but Noctis knows that even if his watch isn't working they'll find him. They've got to find him.

"I need to pee!" Noctis tries to keep his voice calm, but when the car just continues chugging on he knows that the man doesn't care if he needs to pee.

"I'll do it all over your car, I swear it!"

Not even a little deceleration. Okay.

Noctis isn't willing to pee himself to be spiteful, but he does take a little joy in spitting all over the inside of the trunk. If he is lucky… maybe the drunk guy can't remember to bleach out the back and they can track him by his scent.

Maybe he should pee—no. Nope. Not going to happen.

Noctis feels like an idiot because his kidnapper is going to know that he's a liar and not a good one and… well, he's not going to do it.

So Noctis thinks more and more about the other two times. One time he puked and the other times he sang. Since puking is gross, Noctis goes for option two.

He can't really remember the words like he used to, but Noctis does know the high note. It had once been a really nice F5. Now it's like puberty chewed on it and spit it back up like mush. Ew.

Noctis still remembers how loud he used to be able to sing, so he takes in deep breath after deep breath and hopes that the sound of his voice will do something.

It's cracking and raw and loud. The metal shakes and the sound comes as such a shock that the crazy drunk man crashes his car.

Noctis knows that it's bad because he can feel warm blood in his mouth and he's pretty sure he bit his tongue. There's pain lancing across his head like when Gladio punched him once, but he's happy when the trunk opens up and Noctis can see the drunk guy looming over him.

Noctis closes his mouth as the man leans forward to pull him up by his shirt collar. Noctis doesn't like this; he's too close and now Noctis is worried that what the man maybe wants isn't money. He's not sure, but he doesn't like the way the man is staring at him.

Just as his kidnapper gets close enough, Noctis hocks his head back and spits the blood collecting in his mouth across dumpster creep's face.

Clarus and the other Crownsguard told him time and time again that if he's kidnapped again he needs to be calm and cool like a cucumber. Well, Noctis hates cucumbers and this guy put him in the trunk.

Screw that.

He doesn't even really mind the man backhanding him because he latches onto the man's hand for dear life when it comes back for a second blow. It knocks out one of his baby teeth and it hurts, but Noctis doesn't mind because his captor is screaming and his own pants go wet across the front.

Hey, at least it wasn't Noctis.

When the man finally gets Noctis to let go with a solid smack to the ear, it still doesn't stop him from screaming at the man as he runs off down the side of the road.

"Waittttttt! Come back! Let me try one more time!"

He spits out the blood against and tries to hit the high note, letting his voice crack. The birds above take off in a flock of black feathers and terror. Noctis hopes at least one of them manages to crap on the running man's head.

Poetic justice or something.

This kidnapping is the shortest of Noctis's kidnappings and he's got a nasty cut over his eye (kind of like the one on that cool new Glaive, Nyx) but his dad makes him take a potion and tells him he can't keep it.

Dad's always an apologizing mess when Noctis gets kidnapped, but this time is the worst one yet. Maybe it's because all the other times Noctis was fine. This time… this time he wasn't. Not completely, anyway.

So, he makes more plans for more classes until Noctis can sweet talk his way out of any kidnapping attempt that may happen in the future. There's also mandatory training with Gladio and now he's getting a permanent member of his dad's staff to follow him around… forever. Forever-forever.

Noctis doesn't like it, but he guesses it's better than being kidnapped again.

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