They spent the next week aggressively exploring, starting with the black sand beaches north of Ravatogh and continuing south around Lucis to the tiny, nameless islands that were scattered all over the sea, much like the muddy raindrops on the Regalia's leather upholstery when one of them had left the door open and Umbra stood too close to the car to shake rain out of his fur. Not that that ever happened or anything—and there was no way Prompto's future grandkids would ever believe him even if it had, as apparently Umbra was some sort of god/dog/delightfully fluffy Messenger spirit thing and would definitely never smell like he'd been rolling in a sabretusk that had been dead on the side of the road for three years.
Prompto had to admit—first to himself, but volubly to the group shortly thereafter—that he was getting heartily sick of fish for dinner. Ignis reminded him that they had left Caem in a hurry and had no money or armiger and therefore must rely on whatever they hunted and foraged, plus the canisters of dehydrated potato flakes they had found in a musty old storage compartment that they all suspected might have been stashed there by Cid during the first roadtrip—i.e., before Noct was born. Ignis had then sent him and Noct off across some scrubby, treeless islet to dig up some sort of shriveled-looking root that he promised was edible. And though Prompto wouldn't exactly describe it as a gift to the senses, it certainly fit the bill better than the thirty-year-old can of dried "potatoes" that had probably never met any real vegetables in its life.
Most of their mornings were spent reveling in their newfound freedom—whether it was traipsing the length of uncharted islands, or combing windswept beaches that sparkled with agates, or clambering through tidepools overgrown with scraggly sea moss. They passed their afternoons like fish, anchoring in lagoons and swimming the day away in the rippling shallows. Sometimes, when they moored close to a town, they could hear the keening of foghorns floating out to sea. It was a steadying sound, and for all his complaining otherwise, Prompto found it reassuring. They all did, really. Nothing like the end of civilization to rearrange one's mindset about what exactly it means to "get away from it all."
They did dock at Galdin Quay once to refuel, using a small supply of cash Gladio had borrowed from Iris. As the big man bartered with the local attendant, Prompto, Ignis, and Noct beelined through the heart of the swanky resort, dutifully ignoring the call of the luxuries found within and moving ahead to the less pricey vendors' huts on the edge of town. (Ignis beelined, anyway. Prompto more or less crabwalked, distracted by all the missed photo ops and thoroughly mourning the loss of his camera, and Noct had to be all but dragged when he caught sight of a particularly beefy barrelfish gliding through the lagoon.)
Eventually they did arrive, though, Ignis gripping one man's arm in each hand, and carefully counted out the remainder of their cash to replace the handful of essentials they had forgotten in their hurried dash out the door. And some chocolate. Which, in Prompto's book, was an important member of the Essentials club.
Life was terrifically improved after that. Though, to be honest, just being able to see the sky again—to relish the sight of dazzlingly bright clouds overhead, knowing that the dimming light was due to their passage and not some photon-eating pathogen that would turn everyone he loved into daemons— already felt like a dream. And sometimes he was terrified he would wake up.
One day, not too long after their Galdin pitstop, Ignis banished them from the boat and onto a largish island somewhere in the Accordan archipelago, ostensibly to find some dinner. Having been the only one without a weapon in hand when they'd lost the armiger, Noct grumbled about his inability to help with the hunts, and was stoically unappreciative of Gladio's offer to throw him as a distraction. There was still the Sword of the Father, of course, which Ignis'd had the foresight (hindsight?) to drag back in time with them, but Noct seemed to have a few hangups about using it. Prompto could hardly blame him; he harbored a few himself, though he suspected for slightly different reasons—those being less to do with using a beloved father's heirloom blade for menial chores like cracking crab and more about having seen his best friend impaled on the end of it.
Noct made to protest again—this time in regards to leaving Ignis all alone—but the man's eyes widened in that slightly deranged way that Prompto knew hinted at future pain for all if they didn't get out of his hair for a few hours so he could "clean up their sodding mess already." Ignis got like that sometimes.
And so they set out, wading through low, scrubby brush and clambering over lichen-coated rocks as they glanced around for signs of things that looked like dinner.
"Hey Gladio, thanks for being willing to sacrifice your pride so I could finance this Cocoa-Choco Crunch," Prompto said, pulling a slightly bent candy bar wrapped in shimmering foil from his pocket. "That probably dried up the last of the favors Iris owed you, didn't it?" He squinted against the morning fog that enveloped them; despite the fact that it was nearly noon, it had yet to burn away. From what little he could see beyond the gloom, though, it seemed a lineup of afternoon thunderstorms was primed to replace it. Prompto broke his candy bar in two and offered half to Noct.
Gladio scoffed, crouching for a moment to do that hunter-tracker thing where he gazed knowingly at the dirt before launching to his feet and leading them confidently off in the direction of their quarry. "'Favor' had nothing to do with it," he said. "She's charging me more interest than a loan shark in a pawn shop."
Launching to his feet, he began to lead them confidently off in the direction of their quarry. Which, in this case, seemed to be somewhere off in the vicinity of a dismayingly distant rise, just barely visible through the fog.
"What about that time when she was ten and you let her drive your dad's car until she crashed it into the Central Square reflecting pool and you told Clarus it was you? That's gotta be worth something," Noct suggested, his mouth full of chocolate.
"No good," Gladio grunted. "Turned that one in six months later for cover for a party down in the warehouse district that Clarus thought was beneath my station. Besides, she only gave me partial credit for it, since he would have kicked my ass for letting a ten-year-old touch his car in the first place."
"Whoa, gangster! Who knew Iris kept her big, scary brother so totally in her pocket!" Prompto admiringly declared.
"I did," Noct said, raising his hand, then quickly lowering it again as he stepped on a loose boulder that nearly dumped him down the hill.
Gladio grabbed hold of Noct's collar and replaced him on solid ground. "Traitors."
"Not me, man," Prompto said, waving irritably at a tendril of mist. "You know I've got your back, ass-kicking sisters or no. But I'll tell you who's a real— snake!"
"Uh, who?" Noct asked.
"No, a snake. Right here in this— aughh!" Something slithered at his feet and he most definitely did not screech like an astonished chocobo as he instinctively launched himself at the nearest elevation, which unfortunately happened to be Noct. The two of them disappeared into the bushes.
Seconds later, a pair of meaty hands hauled them back out. Gladio's face warred between annoyed and indecorously amused as he pulled half a bird's nest from Noct's hair. "Seriously, Prompto, what the hell?"
"You're right," Prompto said, his eyes darting across the ground distractedly. "Sorry, Noct. Gladio makes a much better emergency exit and I should have used him now where did the little bugger go?"
Gladio crouched to examine something on the ground, half his face scrunched up with incredulity. "You talking about this sweet little thing? It's called a garden snake, Prompto. It eats bugs, which should make you its number one fan."
"Do you see any gardens around here?" Prompto shot back. "No? Exactly. It's already on shaky ground, being the fact that it's a snake; now it's all shadily lurking outside its snakey jurisdiction, too. Thanks anyway."
"I've seen you look a midgardsormr straight in the eye and shoot it in the face mid-strike," Noct said, shaking twigs out of his shirt. "And that thing was like, four thousand times bigger than this little guy."
"Noct," Prompto replied, with utmost patience, "nobody's scared of a midgardsormr. It's the things that can hide in your shoes you need to worry about."
There was a beat of silence. "…While I agree with you on principle," Gladio said, somewhat guardedly, "I can think of several people who are scared of midgardsormrs. At least five."
"All right, fine, 'nobody' might have been a smallish understatement…"
"Iris, Dustin. Talcott. Me."
"Yeah, yeah, just working the ol' hyperbole…"
"A couple of the Glaives. My dad. Wiz."
"All right! What I said was wildly inaccurate! A misrepresentation to rule them all! Happy?"
"Biggs. Dave's cousin Roy. The kebab guy in Lestallum—Problems, Noct?"
Noct froze midway through…whatever he had been doing…and blinked up at them like a Tonberry caught in daemon-repelling headlights. "Yeah, there's a thing in my pants."
The silence that followed this statement was vast.
"You know, like a stick? Twig? A branch, that's what I mean." He squirmed uncomfortably, trying to shake the alleged shrubbery down the leg of his fatigues.
"…Sorry, but you're on your own with that one, kid," Gladio finally said, his face eminently unreadable.
"I'm thirty, Gladio."
"Sure you are."
That jogged loose something Prompto had been thinking about for a while, actually. "Can you really call yourself thirty when you've been asleep since you were twenty? I kinda hope so, because it'd be uber weird if my best friend is, like, practically half my age."
Noct regarded him from the corner of his eyes, slightly disgruntled. "Yeah, Prom. Still older than you."
"What, didn't fancy babysitting?" Gladio smirked.
"Aw, c'mon man, you know I didn't mean it like that," Prompto protested. "Just trying to recalibrate, is all—"
Abruptly drawing himself up to his full height, Noct leveled them with a look. Suddenly regal, annoyed and imperious, he reminded Prompto, with the force of a bucket of ice water to the face, that he was Noctis of the Armiger, of quiet confidence and nobility. The man whose unflinching resolve had somehow convinced them of the unthinkable. The king who had disdainfully ordered evil incarnate off his throne. The one who had walked to his death, his shoulders squared, a terrifying power hidden just beneath his skin. The one who had singlehandedly saved the world.
He was also the man who was still trying to dislodge sagebrush from his pants, but the brief—if unintended—reminder had been enough. Prompto retrieved his default grin, trying to ignore the part of him that was feeling a tad rattled. It had been surprisingly easy these past two weeks to pretend things were as they'd been before—long before, when he and Gladio still fought over the radio and Ignis fussed about sunscreen and Noct still perched on the top of his seat as they careened down the highway at sixty miles per hour.
But in reality they'd changed. All of them. Including—especially—Noct, which was a real mystery when you thought about it.
Gladio offered Noct his arm to grab while the latter extricated the remainder of the local flora from his clothes, and Prompto could see that the Shield, too, had sobered. Nobody would ever have accused Gladio of being a quiet man. They still wouldn't; but there was a certain stillness to him now that had never existed before. Prompto knew he and Noct had never formally resolved their fallout from the train; events had simply unfolded far too quickly in the days that followed, right up until the moment Noct was unceremoniously dragged into the crystal. He also knew it didn't matter to Noct, who sincerely adhered to a philosophy of "forgive and forget."
But it mattered to Gladio. He'd had a decade to ruminate on what he might have done differently—how his own fears and preconceptions had influenced the degree to which he'd pushed Noct—and Prompto knew the man had made full use of every year. He would never forget the stricken look on Gladio's face when, mere hours after his return, Noct had disclosed the prophecy in full. When their king, friend, and brother had revealed to them the staggering price tag attached to the return of the light. When it became clear that their time was up, the moment for reparations having passed away long ago.
Prompto sighed. Gladio was quiet. Noct, back on his feet and foliage-free, glanced back and forth between the two. "Someone die?" he teased.
Gladio twitched. Prompto choked on the last bite of chocolate he'd hastily shoved into his mouth.
"Just my appetite," he replied, after he'd gotten his breath back, "if it turns out all we have to eat for dinner tonight are garden snakes. C'mon, let's go find some of those chubster crabs Ignis hates so much."
Noct gave him a lingering look, but nodded. "All right. Storms are getting closer, though, so we should hurry."
xxx
By late afternoon, a humid ocean breeze had indeed sprung into existence, dispersing the fog that hung over the island and revealing darkening skies beyond. Still, after a couple hours of wading through stiff, prickly brush and scrambling up stony embankments and not a single raindrop had yet been felt, Prompto could only assume the bulk of the weather had stalled somewhere out at sea. Honestly, he was feeling a tad hamstrung himself. The potato flakes were sounding—not exactly good, yet, but survivable. Maybe.
"Hey fellas, think we should consider calling it?" he panted, halfway up a near-vertical incline of scree. "It's almost four o'clock, it's still, like, a six mile walk back to the boat, and, after doing the math, I've confirmed that my stomach will be cannibalizing my liver before we're even close."
An object not unlike a gift-wrapped brick hit him in the chest, nearly toppling him back down the slope. Prompto wheezed, fumbling with the olive green wrapping.
"There's easier ways to kill me, Gladster, than brutalizing me with a—" he peered at the grim, no-nonsense font stamped across the package. "—'Glaive-A-Live Emergency Ration Bar.' Seriously, Gladio? Glaive-A-Live?"
"It's a military-grade survival ration. Some of the hunters and I salvaged them from an outpost back on the old Northern Front. About twelve-hundred cal in one of those babies." Gladio ascended the near-cliff with the grace of Shiva floating up an escalator of clouds, keeping one eye fixed on Noct, clambering on ahead.
"And you just…keep these on you?" Prompto paused to wedge himself between a literal rock and hard place, breathing heavily as he peeled away the seemingly bulletproof wrapping that encased Gladio's offering. The lump of generic, chalky foodstuff inside looked like what Prompto imagined the potato flakes would somewhere along the course of their evolutionary lifespan, once they were exposed to a few more years of damp ocean air and then left out to shrivel in the most parched of all deserts.
"On second thought," he said, "I can see why. This could totes double as a deadly weapon—multipurpose, even, with a choice between bludgeoning, inhalation, or dehydration! What's on the ingredients list—powdered oats and sandstone? If I stick one in my mouth right now, do you think my head would turn into a raisin?"
"If it did, we wouldn't know the difference," Gladio retorted, not breathing hard at all. "There was a time not that long ago when you, me, and Ignis would have considered a ration bar good eating."
Prompto refused to feel guilty. "And that's a period of my life I'm working reaaaalllly hard to forget, G-man. I came back for Noct, but I'm not gonna feel bad about enjoying food and sunlight and life again in the process." He coughed, then gulped in a few deep breaths as his lungs finally began to get their act together.
"Never said you couldn't," Gladio replied, lowering his voice. They both glanced up at Noct, who'd reached the top of the ridge. Staring out at the horizon, he didn't appear to have heard them, though Prompto secretly hoped it was because his friend was too busy also wheezing like Teenage Prompto's deflating air mattress after Teenage Noct had invited all the local alley cats into his apartment because they were "freezing to death" in the sixty-degree summer night air.
"But," Gladio continued, "that's also my very last one. So you're gonna enjoy it."
Prompto peered at the lumps of chalky rubble in his hand. "Define 'enjoy'? Because no offense, dude, but men like you tend to include terms like 'pain' and 'suffering' in that description—right, okay, I'm eating it now." Prompto shoved a handful in his mouth and immediately aspirated half of it. Still, it was a better fate than what Gladio's expression had promised.
The man in question wordlessly passed him his water canteen, then helped him off the rock. "C'mon. Let's catch up with Noct already."
"Okay," Prompto would have replied, had his mouth not been glued shut.
They scrambled up the last of the scree, heaving themselves over the lip of the ridge on hands and knees. Prompto face-planted in the patchy weeds and gravel, giving himself a moment both to recuperate and attempt to dissolve the cementlike substance that now coated his teeth.
Fortunately, all his years of running and fighting made his recovery relatively quick. Pitching himself to his feet, he sidled up alongside Noct.
"Killer view, eh?" he remarked, still breathing somewhat unevenly as he took in the rather daunting sight of the sea going on forever, eventually bending into a sky that went equally on forever. "I gotta say, though, we're lucky those thunderstorms never…whoa."
The island they were currently touring was one in a chain of islets and atolls that peppered the seas between Galdin and Altissia. Theirs was one of the larger ones, rivaled only by an oddly shaped landform Prompto had noticed in the distance on their way in.
…Which now seemed to have inexplicably become some sort of crazy weather vortex. The sunlight that shone against their backs was patchy, but at least it was warm. Just above that strange, far-flung island, though, towered mountains of black-bottomed thunderheads, virga like paintbrush trails streaking from their depths and into the land below. Lightning illuminated the clouds from within, never making a sound. It seemed as if all the storms in the sea had congregated on that one island—which, in fact, now that Prompto was actually paying attention, looked a lot like—
"Angelgard," Noct murmured.
Prompto glanced at him, then back to the island, thrown by his own surprise. Angelgard wasn't exactly inconspicuous. But it had been so long since he'd seen it in the light, the Galdin and Altissian regions having become near-unapproachable during the Long Night. He turned back to Noct, a question ready on his lips, but faltered at the curiously strained expression on his friend's face.
"Um…Noct? Noct buddy? You in there?"
Noct didn't appear to hear him, his gaze locked on the island with a faraway stare. Eyes wide, jaw clenched, his body may have been standing right there next to them, but his mind was somewhere else entirely.
Prompto frowned, the nagging worry he'd squashed into submission these past few weeks of almost utopian reprieve bubbling back to life.
At Noct's other side, Gladio was watching him too, hints of disquiet evident in what was usually a fairly solid poker face. "Noct," he said sharply, though the shake he gave their friend's shoulder was cautious.
Noct came to, breathing in a draught of air like he'd forgotten how. Blinking rapidly, he spoke as if nothing was amiss.
"Ramuh. He lives there," he said, as though he were only sharing some vaguely curious piece of trivia.
Prompto exchanged a look with Gladio over Noct's head. This was news to them. "He does?"
"Yeah. He's the god of judgment, and Angelgard is a…prison." He faltered, then quickly continued. "Luna came here to covenant with him before I gained his blessing in Duscae, which is why we never saw him here before."
"Soooo, what, does the fact that he's running around his island again and not in your head…or, wherever he was before…mean he's taken his blessing back? 'Cause we'd already gotten him and Titan at this point in our original timeline, right?" Prompto asked.
"Yeah. I think he's forgotten," Noct said softly.
They absorbed that in silence. Then Gladio muttered, "Well, good riddance. Maybe they can all just leave us the hell alone this time around."
"You don't think we should go check it out?" Prompto asked. He frowned as a shaft of electricity darted out, brushing one of the isle's winged rock formations. "Not that I love the idea of charging over there and inviting ourselves to dinner with Ramuh, but maybe when he's out running errands or something we should take a look? We are kind of hurting for elixirs and stuff now. If there's an ancient prison there might be other ancient things too, mainly of the blingy treasure variety, and—"
"No," Noct cut in sharply. "We shouldn't."
Abruptly, he turned and began making his way down the slope. "I'm heading back."
Prompto shared another look with Gladio. The Shield's eyes were unreadable.
Then Gladio, too, retreated, trailing Noct to the boat.
Prompto sighed. "So much for crab," he muttered, and forlornly swallowed the rest of Gladio's ration bar.
xxx
"I want to go to Altissia," Noctis said.
Ignis halted mid-scrub, the partially cleaned cast iron forgotten in his hands. Gladio looked up from scraping bits of dinner from the propane stove and closed the lid. Prompto, sprawled facedown on a couch with a flashlight as he leafed through one of Gladio's books, lost his place and righted himself, looking anxious.
"I…believe that would be a bad idea," Ignis carefully replied. "I fear we've been pushing the limits of Umbra's admonition already." The lamp flickered as he carried it from their makeshift kitchenette to the "living room" Noctis and Prompto currently occupied, adding to the halfhearted ring of light that pooled around Prompto's flashlight.
"Luna's still alive here," Noctis pressed, forcing himself to speak calmly. He'd known this would be a battle. Altissia was not a place of happy memories for any of them. "If there's something we can do to help her, we should."
"But does she need it?" Ignis pointed out gently. "Ardyn is no more, and I assume battling Leviathan is not on your list of considerations this time. If Cor's behavior is any sort of pattern to go by, Lady Lunafreya won't even recall the covenants she's made with the gods."
"The Empire's still after her. You've heard the news broadcasts."
"Yes, but she is also still under Claustra's protection. And I'm sure you don't need reminding how very capable she is on her own. Noct—" Ignis raised a hand to forestall further argument— "you know I care deeply about Lunafreya's safety as well, but Umbra strongly suggested we keep a low profile. He also implied potential dire consequences if we interact with the denizens of this time period to any great extent. I'm afraid a visit with her would be in firm opposition to both those directives."
"Nothing 'dire' has happened so far. You guys spent a whole day interacting with Iris."
"Nothing dire yet," Gladio rumbled, but he sounded subdued.
"Just because the effects aren't currently visible doesn't mean we're not causing harm," Ignis carefully replied. He perched on the corner of the forward couch and turned around to face Noctis and Prompto on the aft one, lanternlight glinting off his glasses.
Noctis felt his fear and frustration rising, and called on every shred of his erstwhile diplomatic training to push it back down. Taking a deep breath and letting it out again, he looked them each in the eye and said levelly, "So what would you have us do? Lie around in Caem idling our days away while the world burns? I'm still king in this time, even if I'm a homeless one, and I can't sit and do nothing."
Only the sounds of the waves sloshing against the hull followed this declaration. Gladio, seated next to Ignis, was seemingly engrossed in picking a loose thread from the seams of the couch, but Noctis caught a glint of approval in his expression. Approval, and—to his surprise—pride.
"Well," Prompto hazarded, "Maybe when Umbra was dishing out that whole bit about strangers in a strange land, he just meant we'd be alone in our knowledge of a different future? And not, like, literally alone?"
"No," Ignis firmly replied. "Umbra wasn't strong on the specifics, but he was about that. Still…" he sat back and stared intently at Noctis, clearly conflicted.
Then he sighed. "If you are determined to pursue this course of action, Noct, I will support you, as I have ever done. But for the record, I do find it worrisome."
"We may as well test the limits a little," Gladio said. "Feel out the boundaries. Seeing as Umbra hasn't exactly been around to ask."
Noctis felt his heart brim with gratitude for them, even as he knew what he had to say next would go over with Ignis about as well as a slug in his garden salad.
"Ignis…I also want you to stay behind."
To no one's surprise, Ignis was unimpressed. "Come again?" he said, his tone ominously polite.
Noctis looked at him steadily. "I won't risk letting what happened to you last time happen again."
"Well that's a load of hot air," Ignis replied scathingly, abandoning all pretenses at cordiality, "as well as a massive logical fallacy. There is no reason to believe the events of before will play out in an even remotely similar fashion this time through. The Ring doesn't even exist here, so it's hardly likely to burn my eyes out, now is it?"
Noctis took a number of deep, calming breaths, letting the cool night breeze steady him. Despite Ignis' outburst, Noctis wasn't supposed to know how he had lost his sight, as his friend had never seen fit to reveal the details of that particular ordeal. Bahamut, on the other hand, had been more than happy to fill him in. After his latest surge of rebellion, the Draconian had played the scene for him in luridly graphic detail, featuring every microsecond of his friend's agony, until Noctis was past begging. Somehow it was supposed to remind him of the importance of his sacrificial duty.
"Please, Ignis," he implored, once he'd found his way back into his head. "I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but…what if there's some sort of—I don't know, symmetry—to time? Where we're doomed to relive the same major events no matter how the details have changed?"
"Then I daresay we're doomed either way—though I'd like to point out that Umbra hinted at nothing of the sort, and might I suggest that you and Prompto spent too much of your youth on hackneyed science fiction films?"
"Whoa, don't go dragging me into it!" Prompto yelped.
Gladio glanced up from where he'd been worrying at the cushion. "Believe it or not, Iggy, I agree with Noct."
"Fortunately, nobody asked you," Ignis snapped, at the same time Noctis muttered, "What do you mean, 'believe it or not'?"
Gladio threw his hands in the air, the gesture placating, and suddenly developed a great interest in removing all the fuzz bits from a throw pillow.
"Look, I just don't want you to get hurt again," Noctis said, his voice sharp.
He and Ignis stared at each other, the stalemate hanging oppressively between them.
Finally Ignis deflated. With a sigh, he said, "Noct. I appreciate what you're trying to do. What you're trying to protect me from." He reached out and rested his hand on Noctis' own. "But if anyone is in danger here, it's you. If Leviathan wakes and catches wind of your presence, she may well try to kill you again—to say nothing of the Empire. And this time you'd be without the benefit of your magic.
"Whether or not I accompany you is my own choice. Thus I am coming with you, and that is my final word."
Noctis knew he was defeated. Ignis rarely put his foot down so forcefully, but once he did, there was no uprooting him. He stared down at his hands, clenching his fists and desperately trying to herd the memories back into the darkness.
Ignis' hand tightened around his. He leaned forward, gazing at him intently, until Noctis was forced to look up into his eyes.
"Noct," he said gently. "All will be well. I promise."
Noctis nodded mutely and took a deep, unsteady breath.
With a reassuring squeeze, Ignis released his hand and stood. "Well then. If we are to go to Altissia, we will all require baths and a change of clothes. Or a burning of them, in some cases."
"Aw, c'mon Ma," Prompto whined. "We've already got a bath right here!" He gestured expansively at the darkened sea.
"First off, I am not your 'ma,' " Ignis retorted. "And secondly… No. There is no secondly. I am ignoring you now." He turned to march purposefully back into the kitchenette, scrub brush in hand.
"And thus ends the Saving of the World Afterparty Brocation Tour," Prompto sighed.
xxx
A/N: Before I get anybody's hopes up (or down...or neither, since maybe nobody really cares either way), this isn't a Noct/Luna-focused fic.
For the record, I love Luna's character. But this story is about the bros.