"Ummm…" Prompto stammered. Hearing part of its name, the dog's tail waved harder.
"Words please, Prompto," Ignis said, sounding rather strained.
"It's Umbra," Gladio's rumbling voice supplied, and the beast in question barked once, an inane grin stretching across his muzzle. "He, uh…came up the elevator." The Shield frowned and shifted Noct more comfortably against his chest, eyeing the dog guardedly.
"Umbra?" Ignis repeated, softly. After a moment's hesitation, he sighed and stepped forward, crouching to run his hands through the beast's furry ruff. "I'm afraid you've lost yet another good friend," he murmured, his fingers gently massaging the base of the dog's ears. Umbra's tongue lolled blissfully. "But then you already knew that, didn't you?"
Umbra barked, and suddenly he was staring intently into Ignis' eyes. Ignis couldn't know, being blind, but Prompto found himself taking a step back, disconcerted.
And that's when the dog spoke. Not in words, not like humans—but with images, sounds, smells springing to life in their minds—woven together so masterfully that they somehow managed to convey such.
(A blackened, treacherous road, running deep into a wood. One can move forward along it, but it is far too steep to turn tail. Looking back along the way, however, one sights a game trail—barely perceptible in the dense undergrowth—that had branched off into thinning trees, heading for eastern lands. For a sunrise.)
Prompto gasped as the understanding hit him. Ignis staggered backward, his hands dropping from Umbra's face. "There…there had been another way?" he whispered, and Prompto thought this might be the thing that finally broke them all. But before they could even grasp at this newest pain, more images poured in.
(Ahead, the road continues onward into crouching trees—but running alongside it is an escarpment, climbing to unknown heights. Though steep and precarious, if one looks closely, one can discern the occasional handhold.)
That traitorous fleck of hope stirred to life deep in Prompto's chest; desperately, he stomped it down, knowing too well the consequences of allowing it to stay. But it flitted away, flaring bigger and brighter. Beside him, Gladio made a strange noise.
Ignis merely stared straight ahead, the quickening rhythm of his shoulders the only sign that he was still breathing. Woodenly, he translated, "But that…that doesn't matter. The king is dead, but…but the man might still be saved." He released the last word in a disbelieving whisper, and Prompto's uninvited hope spark blazed brighter than ever. "How?" Ignis gasped, sounding half-suffocated. "Please, tell us how."
(They are ranging through rolling hills, keeping the sun at their backs in the morning hours and following it past its zenith. Now: a shining beetle, wobbling along a forked twig. Finding its route snapped off prematurely, it simply flies to the parallel branch.)
Ignis released a shuddering breath, then continued his translation. Though they all understood, he seemed to find anchor in serving as Umbra's voice. "Time entraps some; others, it does not. There are always alternative paths, though none are perfect.
"Bahamut's Accursed is flown from all realities on this plane and is beyond this soul's power. Bahamut's Chosen King is not. The knights of the Chosen King are not."
(A pack of fluffy, pointy-eared dogs bound together through swelling prairies of wildflowers. Another wanders alone across a bizarre landscape of smoke and iridescence. A pine forest at night, quiet except for the sounds of strange, buzzing insects…)
Umbra's thoughts shifted, accelerated, the images becoming more exotic and unfamiliar until Prompto abruptly felt as if someone had turned a kaleidoscope inside out and slapped him in the face with it. Moaning at the renewed queasiness in his stomach, he shifted closer to Gladio, who, for his part, was squinting against the onslaught and muttering curses.
Ignis merely pressed a fist against his forehead and gritted his teeth, straining to listen. And after a moment, he stood, turning from Umbra to face his friends.
"Did you get all that?" he queried breathlessly, wiping a bit of sweat from his hairline.
"No, Ig, I didn't have a pen handy to take notes," Gladio grated. "Something about Ardyn being gone pretty much for good but I fell off the bus somewhere between the canine wonderland and Umbra's dreamworld hurking up a rainbow. Mind just telling us so we don't have to do that again?"
Ignis ignored the weary sarcasm, which might not have been his best move as Prompto had long ago learned to identify this particular tone of Gladio's as Overwrought, Bearing Rapidly Toward a Meltdown. Or Gladio's version of one, anyway. Prompto figured most people would feel the same, had they been holding their dead friend and former life's purpose in their arms.
But Ignis was on a scent, one that had momentarily cleared the despair from his face and transformed it into an agony of hope.
"Umbra…is a creature unbound by time's arrow. Linearity means nothing to one like him. That being said, he asserts that the prophecy's fulfilment need only occur once in any timeline, as Bahamut never specified otherwise."
Gladio looked unimpressed. "M'kay, I'm going to need things to start making sense real soon here, Ig. Are the gods gonna bring Noct back or aren't they? Because I've gotta say these bullshit games of theirs are really starting to piss me off."
Evidently he had made some headway into the Meltdown end of the spectrum. Prompto himself was starting to feel considerably out of sorts. Far too much was happening, far too fast. And his best friend still lay limp and pale and dead, having left way too much of his blood on the front of Gladio's jacket and not nearly enough in his own body.
"Umbra is not a god," Ignis corrected absently. "What he means to convey, Gladio, is that he can take us back to a time we know—a time where Noct still lived—but with a key difference: the prophecy will no longer exist, because it has already been fulfilled. Period. Today is that time's future; but time does not matter, because the prophecy has been realized, once and for all. It is no more."
"So we'd pull, like, a Forward to the Past II?" Prompto said. "And Noct would be alive again and wouldn't be forced to die just 'cos some immortal bigwig said so some crapload number of years ago, and Ardyn wouldn't be smarming around, and we could…what, just live our lives out, all while handily dodging our past selves? You guys know that only happens in the movies, right?" Even Prompto winced at the cynicism in his voice, but the hope that now raged unabashedly—not to mention nonconsensually—in his heart was simply too much to bear.
"No past selves," Ignis calmly replied. "Simply another branch." At Prompto's incredulous stare, he continued, "We would proceed from an earlier point in our past, but, with the absence of Ardyn and the prophecy, could forge our own future. With the Accursed gone, daemons will no longer have the ability to propagate at nearly the levels they had done before. There will likely be no Long Night. And Noct...Noct can live."
Ignis cleared his throat—evidently in a bid to buy himself a moment's composure—because he then continued, "However, there is a catch, and...it's a rather significant one."
"Course there is," Gladio muttered, but judging by the rigidness of his spine and the intensity of his gaze, he, too, had given in to hope.
Umbra's tail thumped slowly on the floor, disturbing a small cloud of sand and dust. Images flooded their minds: Pine trees sprouting from desert dunes, their boughs glittering with snow. A dust devil spinning on high seas. Fish swimming among the grasses of vast prairies. The roving pack of dogs.
"In returning," Ignis explained, "we will essentially be taking a portion of our current reality with us. I'm not certain how that would play out in practice, but nevertheless, it will...clash, to some degree, with the realities of those native to that timeline, and in fact may even cause harm."
He removed his visor and seemed to look them each in the eyes, an uncanny effect from one who was blind. "What this means is that we must not seek to make waves. It means that we may have to avoid any extensive interaction with people there who were once fixtures of our lives. It means that we would, in a sense, become strangers in a strange land—bound to one another, but islands to all others. For the remainder of our lifetimes."
In the silence that followed, Prompto could hear the strengthening dawn winds swelling through the cracks in the Citadel's walls, sending long-dead leaves skittering across cold marble floors. Sunlight now beamed through the highest windows, but still no birds sang.
Then Gladio said, "Okay, and...? You know I'm in."
Ignis looked at him. His voice was gentle as he replied, "Please consider carefully, my friend. In making this decision, you would likely never see the Iris of this reality again."
"Yeah. I know." Gladio's voice was gruff, and for a moment Prompto saw an old, deep sadness in his eyes. But right alongside it was an iron-clad certainty. "Iris knows the deal. She'll understand." He added lowly, "She always has."
Two pairs of eyes swung to Prompto.
He blinked and stared back. "What?"
"Prompto…" Ignis began, his voice kind.
"Wait waitwaitwait," Prompto intercepted. "You guys didn't think I was staying here, did you? Obviously I'm coming with you and Noct!"
It was as if he hadn't even spoken. Still in that same tone, Ignis continued, "Gladio and I gave our lives to Noct long ago, come hell or high water. But you, Prompto, are unbound by such commitments. I'm confident Noct would not choose a life of such exile for you."
"Exile? Exile? You call going back to an intact Lucis with the three people I've ever given the most craps about in existence exile?"
"Noct—"
"Noct doesn't get to make that decision for me. So maybe it turns out I never get another chance with Cindy. The alternative is that my best friend—my brother—is dead and stays that way forever. You think I don't love him just as much as you two?"
Long ago, young, unseasoned twenty-year-old Prompto would have shied away from such a word, hurriedly laughing it off or making light of it with a joke and probably an insult. But they were so far beyond that now. He had been through literal hell with these men. They had fought at each others' backs until their sweat and blood was so intermixed nobody could tell who was the most seriously injured, then turned around to whittle away long and boring hours of travel crafting inside jokes that grew so layered over time that their origins were more convoluted than a Lucian royal's family tree. They had shared more late-night fries in greasy diner corner booths and rainy evenings trapped in a humid, smelly tent together than Prompto could count. They had hovered in one another's space until they were all heartily sick of each other, only to come back for more. They had exchanged words of tired carelessness and words of comfort, and had been there for one another when anyone else would have run hard. They had laughed until they'd blown snot from their noses, and bled messily, and raged furiously—all together. They had seen each other at their worst and best and least dignified. And somehow they had come out better for it.
So yes, Prompto was a tiny bit pissed that anyone—least of all Ignis, who should have understood—would imply he should stay behind to pursue some alternate life that had never meant that much to him anyway.
Looking at the man now, though, Prompto saw the warmth in his friend's eyes. Gladio, too, though tired and on edge, bore an expression of satisfied pride. Pride...for him. Prompto. His heart climbed in his chest until he was sure it had lodged in his throat, because that was the only reason he would suddenly feel too choked up to speak.
"That's settled, then," Gladio grunted, shifting Noct in his arms, "since I know Iggy'll rip out my kidneys if we even hint at asking him. So let's get this show on the road already."
Umbra, sitting demurely with his tail wrapped about his feet, licked at a paw.
And Ignis said, very softly, "Not quite. We...should consider whether this is something Noct would want. For himself."
Prompto's heart fell back down into his chest, failed to catch itself, and tumbled on down into his stomach. Strangers in a strange land. Not making waves. Islands.
Would Noct want it? A life of ignominy, unable to rule as he had been raised? Because he suddenly realized that was exactly what this path might mean, if Umbra were to be believed. Ignis, Gladio, and even Prompto himself would be carrying on much as they had before. Noct, meanwhile, would find himself redefining his entire existence. He had told them he hadn't wanted to die, but unless he managed to finagle some sort of hermit king regime, it had sounded like the life he'd be entering into wouldn't be recognizable even to himself.
The silence stretched, and then Gladio said, "Noct is dead."
...So he doesn't get a vote. Prompto knew that in his own typical blunt way, Gladio was only seeking to lay bare the course of action they all so desperately wanted to take.
(A lotus floats on ocean tides, drifting out of their reach as an enormous orange sun melts into the lowest borders of the sky.)
Prompto reflexively shook his head against the newest spate of images, and Ignis said with sudden urgency, "Umbra is loath to end our discussion, but he fears we are running out of time."
The three shared a look, fraught with meaning, and the decision was made.
And that was how Prompto found himself standing on the cliffs of Cape Caem.
xxx
When the light first hit Ignis' eyes, it seemed his brain had momentarily forgotten how to process it.
When it hit his whole, undamaged eyes, he felt his legs give way. Into soft, growing grass; into soil that teemed with life.
His brain kept shouting at him to snap those eyes shut, to shield them from the clamor of colors and patterns that suddenly beat against them. But he simply couldn't bring himself to consign them back so quickly to a world of darkness when this one was a world of radiance and clarity. Overstimulated though they were, his eyes stared and stared and stared.
He had never seen those years of ruin—not the vast daemon hordes, nor the mounds of trash choking Lestallum's overcrowded streets, nor the skeletal, silent survivors, nor the ceaseless suffering. Not with his eyes. But he had felt it—absorbed it into his pores—the suffocating thickness of the Scourge clogging the sky, killing the land, extinguishing hope as the years dragged on.
Now he was seeing—seeing—the dramatic angles of the early morning sunlight as it set the clifftops ablaze, pushing the shadows back into the deepest folds of the land. He was seeing its sparkle along distant wave crests that basked in the full light of the open ocean. He was seeing the wind's eddies in the long, silvery grasses that had grown wild across Cape Caem in the days before the Darkness alternately froze and starved them into chaff.
Ignis found himself crying, nearly choking for the beauty of it. He blinked rapidly and scrubbed at his (gloriously whole and undamaged) eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, forcing his attention to return to the moment. He had already noted Prompto from the corner of his (fully functioning) vision a minute before, looking as thunderstruck as Ignis felt. The gunman was missing his tuftlike beard, the angled-out planes of his face having returned to something softer and younger and less hungry. Just a short distance away was Gladio, the unruly hair of his youth on full display while his Glaive uniform remained damp and bloody, mud and dirt still smeared across his skin, kneeling in the grass in the shadow of the lighthouse...
...Kneeling over Noct's lifeless body, pumping his chest rhythmically with the heels of his interlocked hands. His eyes blazed, but his face was rigid with concentration.
"No," Ignis gasped. He staggered to his feet only to fall again at his king's side, the marvels that surrounded them all but forgotten.
Noct looked twenty years old again, clothed in the torn and bloodied regalia he had worn to his death, but otherwise appearing just as Ignis remembered him. Except that Ignis was fully aware of the fine beard he had grown, the sudden gravity in his demeanor, the hollowed-out cheekbones and gaunt frame he had somehow acquired—just like the rest of them—despite having been asleep in the crystal all those years.
And when Noct was twenty, he'd been alive, vibrant—smiling and scowling and everything in between. This Noct was horrifyingly still.
Ignis scrabbled at where the edges of the armiger should be, desperate for a phoenix down, anything— even as he knew Gladio had already tried. Sure enough, he found only a great, shivering emptiness. He could do nothing but watch in paralyzed despair as Gladio counted to himself in short, half-formed whispers, each accompanied by a sharp thrust of his arms, before dipping to tilt Noct's head and breathe for him. The Shield had torn the front of Noct's shirt open to better position his hands, and Ignis caught a brief glimpse of the thick, white scar set sickeningly over his heart before Gladio's hands returned. Over and over he cycled through the refrain: compressions, followed by breaths, followed by compressions, Ignis sitting frozen as Shiva and Prompto trembling nearby. As the seconds slipped by Gladio began to swear—the words emerging fragmented and vicious between his heaving breaths—then yell.
And then Noct breathed—one strangled gasp of air. It was followed by several more, oxygen sweeping into his lungs, his heart returning to a gratifyingly regular cadence that forced life back through his veins.
Gladio had already snatched Noct up into his arms, pressing his upper body tightly to his chest as he panted and trembled. Noct, in turn, slumped bonelessly against his Shield, blinking slowly with dazed incomprehension. Ignis lunged through the grass to latch himself around Noct's middle as Prompto piled onto whomever and whatever he could grab. They stayed that way for some time, rocking back and forth ever so slightly and simply listening to each other breathe.
Finally Gladio stirred. "That damn dog," he said, his voice hoarse. "I don't know whether I want to kiss him or kill him."
"Umbra is not a dog either," Ignis replied distractedly, and barely suppressed the urge to dissolve into sudden, slightly wild laughter. He choked it back, instead reaching out to gently turn Noct's face from side to side. His oldest friend appeared sluggish and disoriented, his gaze vacant and unfocused. But he was alive. So very much alive.
"Guys, company," Prompto suddenly croaked, turning toward the house and hastily scrubbing the tears from his face.
Down the hill, a fifteen-year-old Iris—still clad in her moogle-patterned pajama shorts—had stepped out onto the porch, rubbing tiredly at one eye. She caught sight of them and froze, the widening of her coffee-brown gaze visible even from a distance. Within seconds, she had leapt down the stairs and broken into a headlong, barefooted run, charging straight for them.
"Prompto, let's get him inside, shall we?" Ignis murmured urgently, ducking under Noct's arm and shouldering his drooping form to its feet. Prompto hurried to brace Noct's free side while Ignis rearranged his ruined shirt in a hasty attempt to cover the scar. Gladio, looking severely out of his depth, nevertheless stood and strode fixedly forward to intercept the rampaging streak of dismay that was his ten-years-from-the-past little sister.
Iris skidded to a halt just past the garden, jaw hanging open as she took in their ragged uniforms, their inexplicably rain-damp hair, the bloodstains, the tattered—but still resplendent—trappings of Noct's kingly raiment, and most of all Noct himself, sagging between Ignis and Prompto with half-lidded eyes.
"Six, what happened to you!" she cried, her gaze darting frantically from man to man. Rushing forward, she reached for Noct's face.
"Don't touch him," Gladio barked, grabbing her by the elbow and hauling her back.
Iris whirled on him, yanking her arm away. Her eyes blazed as she glared into his. "Gladiolus Amicitia, what the fu—"
Abruptly, she trailed off. Ignis had heard Iris swear, but had never witnessed her address her brother by the entirety of his name. He had also never beheld the sudden, stricken uncertainty that washed over her now.
"Who—" she whispered, and broke off, backing away a step as she stared up at her brother.
Ignis and Gladio's eyes met over her head, exchanging strained looks.
Then, as Gladio's attention returned to his sister, his entire posture changed. The set of his shoulders slumped ever-so-slightly into the unbothered complacency of a twenty-three-year-old who has yet to experience true horror or despair. He cocked his head in the arrogant list of an Amicitia who cannot comprehend failure; who still views the world in black and white.
"Just me, sis," he said, with a rugged smile Ignis hadn't seen (or heard) in over a decade.
Iris blinked, then stuttered, "O-oh yeah, duh. You just seemed kinda weird there for a sec. Almost like a stranger, or something…" Her eyes flitted briefly back to his face, still troubled, but whatever she might be thinking had tucked itself away.
Instead, she asked anxiously (and with lingering irritation), "Seriously though Gladdy, what happened to you? Is Noct okay? You guys are all covered in blood and mud and stuff."
"Yeah, the kid'll be fine. Just got into a tangle with some singularly bitchy sahagin down by the beach. Nothing a couple potions won't clear up."
Ignis caught Prompto's eye and the two of them began edging toward the house, Noct in tow, as Gladio waylaid Iris with soothing words and a heavy arm draped around her shoulders.
Much to Ignis' relief, the living area was empty—whether the remainder of the household was still in bed or Monica and Dustin were out on assignment, he didn't know. Frankly, he didn't care either, provided nobody else popped up out of the floorboards to interrogate them about Noct's condition when Ignis was painfully aware of just how close he, himself, was to falling off the proverbial rocker. Besides, somewhere between the garden and the front door Noct had lost consciousness again, and all Ignis wanted to do was get him up into their old dorm room, and from there into a bed, and stare at him fretfully until he woke up.
But as they shuffled up the stairs and through the door, carefully maneuvering Noct's dead weight, the deluge of memories nearly brought him up short.
For the past decade, this cozy little haven on the sea had resided only in fading recollections. Once, it had represented safety, even a sort of innocence. Though they had been far from carefree in the wake of Insomnia's destruction—to say nothing of their subsequent homelessness and heartache—the months they had spent poking into every crack and corner of Lucis in pursuit of Royal Arms, frogs, and all the things in between had come to represent a happy interlude, sunshine between the hurricanes. Those months had become the forging fire of their brotherhood, cementing into permanence what they had begun during the years of ease and plenty back in Insomnia. This old, weatherbeaten house on the hill had evolved into something of a home base—their center of operations or vacation retreat, depending on what they most needed on any given day. It was the sacred bearer of their last untarnished, happy memories before their world was yanked out from beneath them in Altissia, and then again in Gralea, and one final, terrible time in Insomnia.
Glancing over at Prompto, Ignis saw his own thoughts magnified in his friend's ever-revealing expressions. "All right, Prompto?" he queried softly.
Prompto blinked hard a few times, then blew out an explosive breath. His gaze roved about the room, both wistful and haunted. "I heard it was basically a swampland of miasma out here, the daemons were so thick," he quietly replied. "Talcott said it was all jammed up with Arachne nests, the house rotted with Scourge. I thought about coming out and seeing what I could do, but nobody could have survived it." A strange expression flitted across his face. "Thought about going anyway."
Ignis reached up Noct's back to gently grip Prompto's arm, and a moment of total understanding passed between them.
Then he said, "Let's get Noct settled."
They set him on the closest bed and began stripping off his bedraggled dress blacks. Reaching toward the armiger for the clean sleepwear they always carried, Ignis again found himself groping at nothing. More than nothing: a resounding emptiness, so vacuous as to be nonexistent. His hand darted out to check Noct's pulse, his own momentarily skyrocketing, but blessedly Noct was still breathing, and steadily at that.
"Strange," Ignis muttered. As long as Noct lived, the armiger should be accessible…but now was hardly the time for sleuthing. "Prompto, would you be so kind as to fetch some spare clothes from the cupboard?"
"Yeah," Prompto replied, but remained in place, hovering. "Is Noct…okay?"
"I believe he's merely sleeping now," Ignis reassured him. "His body and mind have been through a good deal of trauma. For now, we must be patient."
Prompto nodded and headed for the closet. As he began to rummage through the modest wardrobe they had stashed throughout the course of their many stays, Ignis tipped Noct carefully forward to remove his shirt. He couldn't help but wince at the twin scars now residing on his chest and back. The Sword of the Father's exit had caused perhaps even more damage than its entry, adding to the collection of old twisted gouges from his childhood "accident." And that was to say nothing for the deep blackish bruises that were blooming freely across his ribs, the painful aftermath of Gladio's life-saving efforts.
Ignis nearly snatched the clothing from Prompto's hands in his sudden need to hide it all away—to not have to contemplate for at least a few moments just how much injury had been inflicted on his friend—but not before Gladio strode through the door, releasing a stress-filled breath. The Shield glanced at the swelling discoloration on Noct's chest, and his face twitched in a minute grimace.
But all he said was, "Think I managed to waylay Iris for the moment. I called in some favors in exchange for a hot breakfast and less questions asked, but it won't keep her long." He leaned against one of the exposed support beams that latticed the walls, crossing his arms and shifting his weight to his hip in a stance that was one-hundred percent invincible Amicitia. But Ignis recognized the deep exhaustion that lurked in both body and soul.
…A body that belonged to a twenty-three-year-old youth raised in the sun, and the soul of a man who had spent a decade more suffocating in darkness, like the rest of them. A man Ignis had never actually seen. It was jarring, and he nearly said so.
"You've kept tally of favors your teenage sister owed you…for over ten years?" he asked instead, raising an eyebrow as he pulled a clean shirt over Noct's head.
"Mind like a trap," the Shield replied, tapping his head and smirking, ever so slightly, in a manner that went a long and relieving way in reconciling the two Gladios in Ignis' mind. "Don't be jealous."
"Of you? That would indeed be a day to remember."
Gladio's smirk widened, and Ignis' heart warmed along with it.
"Anyhow, we will need to discuss what we're going to tell her," Ignis murmured more seriously, tugging the last of Noct's sleepwear into place.
"Yeah, and how you already seemed to know the way Noct was gonna die," Prompto added.
Ignis froze, before carefully resuming his task of gathering up the last of Noct's discarded clothes. Then he straightened to meet Prompto's gaze.
The gunman stood next to the door, arms folded loosely across his stomach, but the look he returned Ignis was steady and unflinching. "We really need to discuss that, because I sure as Ifrit's flaming ass didn't realize that 'so must the king sacrifice for all' crap Noct told us about actually meant 'Stab Dad's Sword Violently Through Ribcage,' and I'm pretty sure Gladio didn't either. I was banking on it being a 'led peacefully off into the heavens by the gods' kind of thing, and Noct, if he even knew, sure did just merrily let me keep on thinking that. But you didn't seem all that surprised. So I'm left wondering what it was the rest of us apparently missed."
Another beat of silence passed, punctuated only by a slight creak of the wall as Gladio shifted his weight. His lack of comment hung as heavily as Prompto's question had.
Ignis sighed, long and resigned. "Well, I hardly suppose it matters anymore. All right then. It happened in Altissia, on the altar of the Tidemother. I received a vision where I s-saw…" He took a deep breath. "—where I saw the Thirteen kings and queens drive each of their weapons into Noct's heart as he sat on the throne. As he sat and willingly took it. Concluding with his own father. And shortly after that cheering little premonition, Ardyn attempted to slit Noct's throat as he lay helpless on the altar. So I donned the Ring. The Lucii gave me their power in exchange for my sight and it was a price I was willing to pay."
He had never before volunteered those precious, painful details of how he had lost his vision, and didn't know why he suddenly felt so inclined to provide the information now, after all these years, when he could just as easily have left well enough alone. Perhaps it was simply as he had said: it hardly mattered now.
Prompto had gone pale beneath his freckles, his solemn reproof from a moment before disintegrated into horror. "I…I always assumed…your blindness had been some sort of souped-up daemonic attack of Ardyn's. I never imagined it would have been…Noct's ancestors…both with you and him and…and thirteen times? Astrals!"
As Prompto attempted to string together his disjointed thoughts, Gladio had gone still.
"…Gladio?" Ignis spoke haltingly but without any real surprise, knowing what was coming.
"You knew? All that time."
His voice was soft. Long ago it would have been bristling with aggression, rising with clear anger. The darkness had changed them all, but Ignis thought perhaps it had changed Gladio the most.
And now he found himself unable to meet his friend's eyes. "I…didn't recognize it for what it was. Not for a long time. There was my blindness to adapt to, and Lunafreya's murder, and our loss of Noct to the crystal. And afterward the Long Night, of course, and survival, and losing the two of you.
"But I digress," he said, finally looking up into his friend's scarred face, his gaze frank. "It was easy to pass it off as a byproduct of brushing shoulders with gods, a vision of a could-have-been rather than the inevitable. But I knew in my heart of hearts its true nature, and was not strong enough to face up to that until there was nothing left to do at all. For that, I can do nothing but beg your forgiveness. I am sorry."
His words finally freed of a prison they had been festering in, unacknowledged, for years, Ignis found his eyes burning for what seemed the hundredth time in as many minutes. He began to turn away, but Prompto launched himself from the wall to grip his hands in his own, his gaze unusually intense.
"Ignis, don't say that. You gave more for Noct than anyone." He seemed suddenly and deeply ashamed. "There's not even anything to forgive. Sorry for being such a douchenozzle about it. It's just that….well…."
He spoke with sudden heat. "What good are the gods when they can't even alter their own prophecy, anyway? What good are they when they're the ones who made that crappy destiny to begin with? Arbitrarily deciding that xth person born to y lineage could be the only one to save the world from some plague he had nothing to do with, not by putting away the guy who's spreading it—nope, for some ass-backward reason that couldn't be enough—but he'd also be obliged to go wait calmly on his throne while his family geared up to murder him? I mean what the hell is that?"
Prompto was breathing heavily, and Ignis could only dully return his stare, bereft of words. Gladio's expression had darkened even further as he listened to Prompto's tirade, a shadow of the backburner fury Ignis had witnessed when he'd dropped the bloodied Sword of the Father from the dais only hours before. Once upon a time, he would have attempted to comfort his friends with platitudes of the incomprehensibility of Bahamut's wisdom and reminders of the Six's longrunning favor of the Lucis line. Now he found himself grasping.
"I don't know," Ignis finally said. "I don't know. But we're here now, and we have Noct back, and we should begin to consider our plans going forward. And I assume you've both noticed our continued lack of an armiger?"
There was a short silence, and for a moment he feared his friends wouldn't permit the obvious—not to mention graceless—subject change.
Then, after a conspicuous struggle to rein himself in, Prompto tersely replied, "Yeah, I noticed. I was hoping you'd know how to fix it. Aside from all our curatives and camping gear and pretty much our everything, my camera's in there. And also, did you guys know we'd be coming back to our Baby Chocobro bodies, because I can't say I love being fun-sized Prompto again."
"You really didn't get all that much bigger, Prompto," Gladio said. A certain darkness still lurked on the edges of his voice, but he was tidily tucking it out of sight, just as he had with Iris earlier.
"Dude, I filled out! Cindy said she dug my shoulders."
"Right along with that pom-pom you grew on your chin, no doubt."
"Low blow, Gladio, low blow," Prompto complained, some of his tension finally beginning to bleed away. "I'm just saying I was a late bloomer and it's pretty much the worst. I'm gonna be stuck with acne again, man. Acne. After ten years of daemon slaying badassery, that's what I get."
"Can't say I'm complaining," Gladio grunted, abruptly pushing himself off the wall. "Knees feel a whole lot better. I'm gonna go see if there are any potions in the house."
He turned to stride out the door. Ignis suddenly found himself reaching out to grab his elbow, but quickly withdrew as his friend halted and looked at him, eyebrows raised.
"Apologies," Ignis muttered. "Carry on, I don't know why I…"
Gladio wavered a moment, then turned to grip Ignis' arms, looking him fully in the face.
"Iggy. I said I got your back, didn't I? Always have, always will." Then he turned and left the room.
Ignis knew it wasn't the same as forgiveness—not yet. Gladio was a brooder, and would need time to process all the implications of Ignis' admission. Of what it could have meant in relation to Gladio's own failures. But it was a start.
Even so, he sighed from what felt like the depths of his soul and collapsed onto the bed beside Noct, feeling suddenly drained beyond reason.
"Ignis," Prompto said, sitting hesitantly beside him and twisting to stare at their sleeping friend. "Will Noct really be okay?"
For many moments Ignis couldn't answer. Then he murmured, "I hope so, Prompto. I hope so."
Once he felt as if he could halfway function again, he and Prompto moved Noct to a bed that wasn't stained and muddied. Prompto curled up alongside him, ostensibly to sleep, but Ignis saw the way he gripped Noct's wrist in his hand, his fingers tight around the pulse point to be sure his heart was still beating.
Gladio walked in some time later with breakfast. Ignis' bone-deep exhaustion had rooted itself within him like a weed, however, and he found he couldn't eat. So, as Gladio stood watch, he collapsed into the nearest empty bed and fitfully slept, Prompto's question trailing him into his dreams.
xxx
A/N: Shout-out to the guest reviewer for Chapter 1, since FFnet doesn't allow replies. Your kind review totally made my day.
Thanks, all, for reading!