Chapter Five: Solidarity

Gladio knew something bad had happened the second Ignis's phone announced that Noct was calling. A suddenly stiffened set of shoulders told him he was in good company, too.

"What's wrong?" Ignis inquired as soon as he picked up the call. It was a testament to just how panicked Noct was that Gladio could hear his side of the conversation from where he was standing a few feet away; even Ignis had to pull the phone back from his ear to avoid going deaf as well as blind.

"Ignis, you've gotta stop this thing!"

Any other day, Gladio would have snorted at the idea. After all the trouble they'd gone to just to get the train moving again, there was no way in hell they were stopping until they reached Tenebrae. Noct's hoarse distress, however, chilled Gladio to the bone and wiped away any traces of amusement.

And that was nothing compared to his next words.

"Prompto fell off the train. I pushed him—I mean, Ardyn made me. I don't know where he is, but we can't leave him!"

So, the chancellor had been behind this mess, after all. He'd thought as much. There wasn't enough anger in Gladio's system to bring the heat back to his core, though, not with the knowledge that they were down one member of their team. While he had to take a few deep breaths to keep a cool head, his arms folded tightly over his chest as though he could physically hold in all the thoughts and feelings that went spiraling through him, Ignis appeared to take everything in stride.

"Stay calm, Noct," he ordered almost harshly, attempting to break through the haze of panic that had apparently descended upon their prince and was licking at the edges of Gladio's consciousness. A part of him wanted nothing more than to turn this bucket of bolts around, but Ignis took the words right out of his mouth when he continued, "I'm as concerned for Prompto as you are, but stopping the train would endanger everyone on board. We'd be sitting ducks for the daemons."

That didn't placate Noct a damn bit, and it ate at Gladio's resolve to hear him sounding so much like the kid he used to be as he begged Ignis for guidance. "What do we do!?"

"First, we drop the passengers off at Tenebrae. We'll be arriving shortly."

"What about Prompto!?"

"Given the chancellor's involvement, it's probable he's no longer where we left him. In any case, he may try to contact us. Let us wait and hope for now."

It definitely pained Ignis to have to tell Noct that they were going to leave his best friend behind, and Gladio reached out to squeeze his shoulder in silent solidarity. They couldn't stop, not even for Prompto, and there weren't enough rational reasons in the world to make that any easier. Ignis seemed to appreciate the support and pressed on before Noct could interrupt. "Can you make your way here? Gladio is with me."

"Are the…two of you okay, at least?"

Dammit, Noct…

Drawing in a deep breath, Ignis's voice softened as he reassured him, "Yes."

"Okay, on my way." There was a beat of silence, and then a surprised groan echoed over the speaker. Gladio's fingers were already itching to pull his greatsword out of their invisible armory without Noct having to say, "I'll be there as soon as I take care of these stowaways!"

The line disconnected before either of them could ask what he meant, but Gladio thought it was pretty damn obvious when he turned towards the window and saw the semi-darkness of the tunnel around them. The fact that they'd left the relative safety of the sunlight behind unnerved him, especially when he shoved aside the engineer to glare out at their surroundings.

In Lucis, tunnels were hit or miss when it came to trouble. The first few weeks of their journey hadn't been so bad, with the obvious exception of the imperial blockades standing in their way; tunnels were even preferable to hanging out in the open where the magitek engines could spot them. The closer they got to leaving for Altissia, however, the more that changed. With shorter days came more daemons prowling in the shadows, even when it was light outside. As much as Prompto had hated it, Gladio put his foot down on taking chocobos everywhere after they were ambushed in the tunnel near Caem in broad daylight. There was no reason to put themselves in danger, he'd said, not when they had a perfectly good car with daemon-repelling headlights that would keep them safe.

The train didn't have those, and this tunnel was a hell of a lot darker than any of the ones they'd traversed in Lucis. The white lights spread at intervals on either side did little to illuminate the bulk of the space; the only thing Gladio could see clearly were the multitudes of snaga daemons hanging along the walls, just waiting to hop onto the moving train.

"Damn…"

"What is it?" asked Ignis, the frustration evident in his voice. Gladio winced with a twinge of guilt—in the heat of the moment, he occasionally forgot that Ignis needed a few more details spelled out for him these days.

"We're in a tunnel, and we've got a ton of company out there."

Humming, Ignis frowned as he slowly recalled, "If I am remembering correctly, the map showed that the passage outside of Tenebrae was not terribly long. We should be through it shortly."

"Yeah…about that…"

Gladio squinted into the darkness, even going so far as to lean over the console for a better look in the hopes that there was just a glare on the glass keeping him from seeing clearly. It didn't seem like he was going to be that lucky, though, and he bowed his head with a sigh.

There was no light ahead. If Noct was up on the roof the way it sounded, the only help he'd get was with his own two hands.

They'd already lost Prompto—Gladio couldn't let anything happen to Noct as well.

"I'm going up there," he grunted, already halfway to the door with his greatsword appearing in his hand. He probably shouldn't have felt as savagely satisfied as he did when the engineer paled at the size of his weapon, but hey, he was allowed to be in a bad mood right now.

And it looked like that mood was only going to intensify when Ignis's hand latched onto his sleeve to stop him.

"We should remain here," Ignis pointed out, his tone bordering on commanding instead of suggesting.

Gladio had to grit his teeth to avoid doing more than just snapping, "The hell, Iggy!? Noct's out there alone with the daemons."

"I am aware of that."

"Then let me go."

Ignis didn't obey. If anything, his grip tightened. "We need to stay together."

"You're saying we should leave him."

"I'm saying that now more than ever, it is imperative that neither of us becomes separated from the others," he countered immediately, his lips turning down in a look of distaste at the implications of his own words. "Whatever Ardyn was planning, he clearly wanted Noct on his own. We cannot allow him to remove us from his side the way he did with Prompto."

Gladio blinked once—twice—then deadpanned, "So we stick with him by not sticking with him."

It looked for a second like Ignis desperately wanted to hit him and was restraining himself only through the employment of godlike levels of patience. A part of Gladio was viciously glad to see it, to see anything on Ignis's face besides composed resignation. Yeah, it was the advisor's job to keep a level head and make sure that they continued on their path without fail. Gladio got that—but this was Noct. The last time they'd left him alone, he'd almost gotten killed by a giant snake goddess in need of a serious attitude adjustment. Gladio wasn't willing to make the same mistake twice, whatever the cost. He'd been uneasy enough entrusting the prince's safety to Prompto, and it looked like he'd had good reason.

Right now, Gladio wanted—needed—to be at Noct's side. What good was a Shield anywhere else?

When he tried to peer beneath the surface, Gladio could tell that a war was being waged within Ignis's head. The guy had been with Noct since they were little kids, well before Gladio started his training or even met the prince he would be tasked with protecting for the rest of their lives. It couldn't be easy for him to say the things he did, but there was still a resolve in his stance that indicated he hadn't changed his mind no matter how much he might want to.

Gladio decided he simply wouldn't listen anymore, not when he could already have found Noct by now, but Ignis chose that moment to say the one thing he knew he couldn't argue with—the one thing he'd already told himself earlier that day.

"He can't lose anyone else, Gladio."

That froze him in place just as he was about to wrench his arm out of Ignis's grasp. Sensing an opening, the latter took advantage of Gladio's stunned silence to continue with an exhausted sort of regret.

"He knows where we are and that we are together. Noct has grown strong these last few months. He can handle whatever is waiting out there, but we must remain together for his sake. He'll need us both now, to find the Crystal and Prompto as well. If Ardyn managed to trick him into hurting Prompto somehow, there is no telling whether he is still waiting on the train to do it again once one of us is alone. We cannot afford to take any chances."

He…hadn't thought of that. Don't get him wrong—Gladio would have loved to come across Ardyn right about then. It would be the perfect opportunity to vent some of his frustration, maybe take the chancellor's head off once he told them where Prompto was. But whatever he'd done to Noct, it had sent the prince reeling; that much was obvious just over the phone. His charge knew what he was doing, though, and he could take out some daemons even if the idea of him being up there on his own was less than ideal.

Yes, Noct was strong, but Gladio had serious reservations that he was strong enough to withstand losing either Ignis or himself. Not after Prompto. After Lady Lunafreya. After his father.

Too much. It would be too much.

So, he stood down, and his greatsword vanished in a flash of light that appeared significantly less defeated than Gladio felt at the moment. Ignis opened his mouth, most likely to reassure him with some bullshit that neither of them was about to believe, when his voice died in his throat and his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

"Do you hear that?"

I'm getting real tired of him saying that.

"Hear what?" grumbled Gladio, wishing he hadn't asked as soon as the words left his mouth. He didn't think he could handle any more surprises today.

Ignis was already moving in the opposite direction, tripping his way to the console as if he could actually see whatever it was he thought he heard. It was out of pure spite that Gladio was going to keep his distance when, of course, he started hearing things too—loud, crashing things. He barely had the time to dart forward, grab Ignis's arm (plus the engineer by the back of his collar because he was too damn nice), and jerk them all away from the window before a pack of enormous daemons dropped onto the front of the engine.

They were the spider ones. God, he hated those things.

That wasn't the worst part this time, though. Not by a long shot—because they'd finally exited the tunnel and emerged back into the gathering twilight, but nothing changed. The sun was still high enough that there was no way so many daemons should still have been able to tolerate it much less keep attacking the train. It didn't seem to have any effect on them, though; they moved just as fast and strong now as they did underground.

The hell is goin' on!?

The engineer fumbled around in a panic, believing for some reason that daemons would be scared away by some stupid horn, and Gladio was helpless to stop him as he began to notice something else—as if there needed to be more coming at them right now. Seconds later, however, he felt his breath hitching when he realized exactly what it was he was looking at: particles of crystalline light began to flake through the air outside, seemingly invisible to the daemons but all too clear to him. He knew those shards—they'd seen them how many times, now? It always heralded…

"Son of a bitch," he whispered.

"He's summoning," Ignis murmured beside him. Gladio didn't bother asking how it was he knew.

He was far too impressed with the sight of that giant sea snake that had caused them so much grief outside the train, swimming through the air as though it had suddenly turned into water. Which…apparently, it had. As Leviathan dipped beneath the level of the tracks, waterspouts erupted into the air like massive pillars, spawning huge balls of moisture that hovered for a moment before flying straight at the train. Gladio couldn't be sure if it was from the sheer amount of water in the air or if the heavens really had opened up above them, but a downpour drenched the outside of the windows until he could hardly see through the gale from this side. It was only by sheer luck that he realized what was going to happen half a second in advance, and he threw himself over top of Ignis to shield him as the glass shattered, raining down on them.

Grunting, Gladio ignored the way the sharp little shards nicked his forearms and kept his head down until he heard the rain begin to taper off and a distant roar indicate the Hydraean's retreat. Even then, he waited a moment with his hand on Ignis's shoulder to warn him away from rising too soon; the windows were blown out, which meant there was nothing standing between them and the daemons now if they wanted to get inside.

A few seconds passed that could have been hours for all Gladio knew, yet the only sound to be heard was that of the wind as it whipped through the open locomotive. When he raised his head, Ignis doing the same beneath him, it was to find that the cabin was a wreck: the equipment was drenched, and glass glittered on every surface in the light of the setting sun—but there were no daemons. The arachnes were gone, the snagas had vanished—

And Tenebrae was burning.

As it turned out, they didn't meet up with Noct at the engine the way they'd planned. Hell, he wasn't even the one who found them.

Within minutes of Leviathan leaving them to clean up the mess she'd helped to make, the engineer issued a strained announcement to the rest of the train that they were pulling into the station at Tenebrae. It was obvious that everyone was more than ready to get off the remains of this deathtrap, because Gladio and Ignis couldn't even reach the doors with how many people were rushing to get off. Waiting for the path to clear had Gladio bristling, wanting to shove a few of them out of the way like he would have if they were back in Lucis. At home, everyone had known the king and the prince—even more importantly, they knew Gladio and his father. When you saw one of the two Shields, you moved your ass out of the way to make room. It appeared that these people hadn't gotten that memo. At the start of their trip, Gladio would have been happy to hear it; their anonymity was the key to their safety. Now that all that had gone up in flames? Yeah, he would have loved to push past them, damn the consequences.

Disembarking was quicker once the train slowed to a complete stop and the doors slid open. People were practically falling all over themselves just to get to solid ground, and more than one relieved face looked torn between running for the hills and kissing the flagstones. Gladio grimaced at the sight—civilians could be such wusses.

It took him no time at all to find Noct in this mess, which he admittedly hadn't expected. A paranoid voice in his head had started rambling on about what might have happened to the prince when Leviathan attacked, whether he'd been knocked off the top of the train, if he was floating face-down in the water hundreds of feet below the bridge… With his best effort, he shoved that part of him aside and focused on the facts: Noct had summoned the Hydraean. Whether she was happy about it or not, she'd given him her blessing and therefore couldn't hurt him. (Well, much.) So, he couldn't be dead—at least not yet.

Nope, instead he was dripping a puddle onto the steps leading away from the station, his head cradled in his hands. It was a tableau reminiscent of when he'd gotten those migraines from Titan—god, that felt like ages ago now—and Gladio grabbed Ignis's arm to make a beeline for him before anything else went wrong.

Noct didn't look up, clearly not noticing their approach, and Gladio took the opportunity to scan him for injuries. From the looks of things, he was in one piece; soaked clothes and misery aside, there were no obvious broken bones or bleeding abrasions. His charge knew better than to let himself suffer from his wounds at a time like this, though, especially when they were still doing fine on curatives.

…Which they'd left in the sleeper car.

Fantastic.

Making a mental note to grab those and the rest of their belongings before they left for Gralea, Gladio stopped Ignis at the foot of the steps and lowered himself to one knee in front of Noctis. It took another second for him to realize he wasn't alone—Gladio could forgive him for that just this once, considering what they'd dealt with today. When he raised his eyes to his Shield's, however, the despair swimming in their depths tore at the latter's stomach.

A few weeks ago—no, scratch that. A few days ago, Gladio would have told him to pull it together and get a grip. Sitting here moping about Prompto wasn't going to help them find him; whining about what he'd done wrong wouldn't fix the fact that he'd done it to begin with. Those weren't the words he wanted to say now, not after his conversation with Ignis. All three of them.

There was something he hadn't realized until not too long ago, a side of his duty that he'd never stepped up to fulfill. Shields didn't just protect against bodily injury, after all. Sure, that was their primary function; if you asked any soldier, they'd tell you that. Still, there was a certain reassurance that came with strapping a shield to your side before you stepped into battle back in the days when they used that kind of thing more often. When you walked into war with a shield held in front of you, you knew that you were safe to a certain extent. You were confident that whatever came your way, there was a good chance that it would have to work a hell of a lot harder to kill you. There was a barrier there, a wordless, soundless shield that would take the brunt of the attack. Having that guarantee was what kept men from going mad, even if only the most frayed bit of thread was the difference between functioning and sinking into the void.

That was what he had to be, and he hadn't realized it until this godforsaken road trip of theirs. Noct, for all that Gladio still worried about him, could take care of himself when it came to the physical battles. He knew how to fight, knew how to defend himself, and—probably most important—knew how to get the hell out of a place if he came up against something he couldn't beat.

But Noct, like Gladio, was terrible with emotional shit. Gladio wasn't afraid to admit that. From the time he was a little kid, it had been hammered into his head that his job, his entire existence, was centered around his charge. There wasn't room for error or lapses in judgment—the kind of stuff that usually happened when you let your feelings get in the way of things.

Noctis wasn't the same. Hell, why would a spoiled little prince ever need to hide what he was feeling? That didn't change the fact that he did so more often than he would actually tell you what was going on in that thick head of his. If it weren't for the three of them, Gladio had to wonder if Noct would have drowned in his own mind by now.

Maybe they weren't so different there.

It wasn't easy for a moogle to change its pom-pom on command, though, and Gladio felt an obstruction in his throat that refused to subside for him to give his charge the reassurance he needed to keep going. Luckily, Ignis didn't require his vision to know what to do; he had a sixth sense for that sort of thing.

"Noct," he began in his softest cadence, awkwardly moving to sit on the step beside their prince. It took every ounce of control for Gladio to let him figure it out on his own, which he did after a little longer than Ignis probably would have liked. "What happened?"

Noct mumbled something neither of them could make out, not even Ignis with his increasingly supersonic hearing, and turned his gaze back towards Gladio's shoes.

"What was that?"

One trembling breath and a few failed attempts at speaking later, Noct finally managed to whisper, "He looked like Ardyn."

Frowning, Gladio quietly clarified, "You mean Prompto?"

Noct nodded once, still refusing to make eye contact. Ignis appeared to sense it and lowered a hand gently onto the prince's shoulder as he suggested, "Perhaps it would be best if you started from the point where we left you."

Easier said than done. Drawing information out of Noctis was like grappling with a behemoth over a chocobo carcass: inadvisable and a goddamn pain in the ass. Gladio's newfound sense of understanding was tested every time the prince ducked his head in shame as though he couldn't answer; more than once, he was tempted shake his charge and remind the latter that they couldn't very well act unless they had all the details. However, just when he thought he was going to slip back into the habit of exploding out of sheer frustration, he took a deep breath to calm his nerves and forced himself to listen to what little Noct was willing to divulge. They'd get it out of him—it might take all night, but they would.

Ignis, because he was Ignis, sat patiently and absorbed everything with a slight crease between his eyebrows. Gladio had known him long enough that he could practically see the way his mind was grinding down all the information, committing every word Noct said to memory so that he could peruse it at will later. Not once did Noct's reluctance seem to faze him, and Gladio had to be a little jealous of that. Unlike him, Ignis could wait for their prince to find his words; unlike him, Ignis knew the right way to lay his hand on Noct's back or interject to comfort him.

Gladio didn't even know where to begin. For him, comfort came from action. Comfort came from knowing what had happened, acknowledging the consequences, and doing something to fix it.

Comfort wasn't sitting around swapping stories so slowly that the Glacian's corpse was moving faster.

By the time Noct finished, he looked so exhausted that Gladio was beginning to wonder whether hurrying on their way was even worth it. He knew the answer to that: they didn't have time to delay, especially not when they had no idea where Prompto was or what kind of shit he was going through. Still, a prince who couldn't be quick on his feet was of no use in a battle. He'd be more likely to get himself hurt than anything else, and then where would they be?

They didn't bother burdening him with the tale of their own escapades on the train, nor did he ask. There wasn't really a whole lot to tell, after all. They'd gotten no new information on the longer nights, they hadn't run into Ardyn, and they sure as hell didn't have any intel on how they were going to get the Crystal and Prompto out of Gralea (because it wasn't as if they were likely to be anywhere else). Telling Noct about their own experiences would do nothing more than add weight to his shoulders that he really didn't need to carry. That, after all, was their job.

And it wasn't the only one. Not even close.

As silence fell between them, Gladio knew what he had to do. It couldn't be Ignis—it had to be him.

So, he leaned a forearm on his knee and reached his other hand out to rest on Noct's shoulder. Somewhere in the back of his head where he stored the things he didn't want to think about too often, he could see himself in a similar position years ago when he took an oath to honor, serve, and protect for all the days of his life. There was no way of telling whether the prince could feel the same sense of nostalgia that surged up in his Shield's chest, but Noct finally met his gaze head on. That was something.

Once Gladio knew he had his charge's full attention, he held it as tight as he could. Noct didn't try to look away this time, not even when Ignis stood and stepped back to give them some space. It was like staring into the eyes of someone who was drowning and desperate, and Gladio soon realized he was squeezing Noct's shoulder so hard that it had to hurt.

"We'll find him," he swore. Shield to prince—friend to friend—brother to brother—he promised, "No matter what, we'll get 'im back."