A/N: There's a story behind why this update is so late, and it's actually a pretty good one.
But you came here for chocobros. So without further ado…
xxx
For several moments, Noctis could do nothing but look—really look—at Luna, radiant as she stood framed in a window glowing with sunset, and the smile that bloomed to life on her face in return.
It was so different seeing her like this, real and in the world. Of course he had "seen" her on various other occasions over the past ten years—but as memories, images, reflections, and nearly all of them from inside Bahamut's otherworld. Even when the two of them had come face to face in the hours before he'd died, she hadn't been quite Luna; some untouchable plane of existence had lingered, clinging to her like dew. To see her now, in the flesh, after all they'd endured…
Noctis blinked against the sudden moisture springing to his eyes. She was looking at him, trapping his gaze, and it was as if all the space between them—ten years, plus the twelve before that—didn't matter. He recognized, suddenly and more clearly than ever, the immense hardship and strife she had suffered all throughout her life: forced to watch as her mother was murdered, her home occupied, her brother corrupted. Raised as an unacknowledged hostage. Trading her health for the whims and favors of uncaring gods. For him.
And, as they stood there, eyes locked, Noctis knew she was seeing his years of darkness in return. Somehow, she could see everything—his sacrifices, his deaths, the limping kind of wisdom that had emerged with him from his decade of agony and isolation. She knew it all.
He watched her eyes swim with tears, marring the joy, but it was joy nonetheless. She stepped forward, reaching for him.
Then something changed. Her face twisted—first in confusion, followed quickly by pain. Crying out, she collapsed to her knees, her hands pressing against her temples.
Noctis hadn't even realized he'd been running when suddenly Gentiana was in front of him, her eyes no longer closed, but wide open and flashing. He stumbled to an inelegant stop as his breath clouded, his skin prickling with goosebumps. Behind Gentiana, Prompto was kneeling beside the fallen Luna, while Ignis sprinted full-tilt up the lobby toward Noctis and the goddess, shoving whatever guardsman was unfortunate enough to step into his path bodily out of the way.
Before he could close even half the distance, though, Gentiana flicked her finger. A wall of ice crackled into existence, chiming and tinkling as it grew. Within seconds, it had enclosed the two of them completely. The temperature plunged, the air stiffening with rime.
"What evil has the King delivered upon the Oracle?" she spat, leaning in close.
Noctis had never heard her gentle, musical voice sound so savage, and for the first time he realized she was significantly taller than him. At his back, someone was beating forcefully against the walls of their enclosure; Gladio, most likely. Noctis drew his mantle tightly around his arms and attempted to speak, but his body was shuddering uncontrollably with the chill.
Eyes snapping, Gentiana shot out an icy hand to grip his chin. If his teeth hadn't been clacking together so violently, Noctis would have laughed at the irony of Shiva, of all of them, being the one to take him out in the end. Perhaps he even felt a hair relieved.
But then she paused, and her expression shifted. Tilting her head in confusion, she stared into Noctis' face, holding his gaze for a long, drawn-out moment.
"You…you are…" she finally said, but trailed off, her eyes narrowing. Noctis realized, from some distant, detached corner of his mind, that it was the first time she had ever referenced him in anything other than the third person.
Their frozen cage abruptly dissolved into snowflakes, which drifted away on the currents of the Estate's environmental control system.
Gladio, in the process of assaulting the ice with a heavy oak chair, was caught mid-swing; swearing, he twisted awkwardly to the side before he could accidentally flatten his king with Claustra's lobby furniture. Ignis slowed, his stance wary, but still poised to kill. Claustra's Guard stood at the ready, their gazes flickering and unnerved but set in grim lines as their hands moved to rest on the hilts of their sabers. They didn't seem to care who they needed to kill, so long as no harm came to their Secretary. And Gentiana didn't move at all, her eyes trained on Noctis' own. The air crackled with winter and violence.
Something scratched at the lobby door.
Noctis blinked. Gentiana's hand fell from his face to her side, and she half turned.
The scratching came again, more insistently this time. Prompto, kneeling by the window with Luna—now unconscious—cradled in his lap, glanced nervously between the entryway and their group.
"Uh…can someone get that? I'm kinda…" He trailed off, staring at them helplessly.
Gentiana turned and walked with measured, delicate tread back to the entrance. Noctis, surreptitiously trying to rub feeling back into his face, would have marveled at the sight of a god performing such a banal task as answering the door, if his jaw hadn't already been effectively frozen in place.
The entryway swung to, revealing Umbra, waiting patiently outside. He sauntered into the lobby, his tail sending snowflakes whirling about in playful little eddies. Planting his hindquarters emphatically on the floor, he regarded them all with a doglike grin.
Gentiana stared at him for a long moment, before turning slowly back to Noctis. Her eyes were wide, alight with sudden understanding.
"One King," she murmured. "The prophecy…it has been fulfilled."
Some buried tension, dark and ugly and living deep within his chest, released at the words. He'd believed his friends when they'd told him what Umbra had revealed, of course, but it was another thing entirely to hear it straight from the Six's mouth, so to speak.
Noctis returned her scrutiny, finding himself suddenly terrified to voice the next question. He swallowed, then asked, softly, "And does the Draconian agree?"
I will destroy all those close to his heart.
Gentiana paused, oddly hesitant. She had not yet closed her eyes, even to blink, and her gaze had never left his face.
"The Glacian does not profess to know the mind of the Great One," she hedged, "but why should he not?"
Noctis cast a furtive glance at his friends. Ignis was watching him strangely, his brow furrowed.
"Please, just tell me the sacrifice won't be needed again," he begged, lowering his voice.
"The prophecy has passed away, O King," she confirmed. "Its purpose has been satisfied. The gods require no other sacrifice. Such has been decreed since the gifting of the crystal. Though the Glacian must confess wonder at the revelation of its fulfillment." Her eyes flickered over to Umbra, who, watching sedately, suddenly whirled around to dig furiously at an itch near his tail.
Noctis exhaled heavily. "And Luna? Will she be all right?" As the question left his mouth, he felt a sudden, inexplicable sadness settle over him.
Gentiana leveled him with that penetrating gaze. "The Oracle sleeps, but is tugged into a remade reality in which she cannot exist—one brought into being by the wishes of a wandering king and his knights. The Oracle cannot survive in such a space, nor can others."
Umbra, back on his feet, drifted past. As his tail brushed Noctis' knee, visions flashed through his head: 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. A roving pack of dogs.
"Strangers in a strange land," Ignis murmured, and Noctis knew his friends had seen too. "Bound to one another, but islands to all others."
And Noctis had known. Somehow he had known that the universe would never allow him and Luna to be. He had known it since the moment he'd decided to go to Altissia.
His gaze rested on the woman in Prompto's arms. On the elegant curve of her jaw, the fatigue written in the hollows of her eyes, the kindness that emanated from her soul.
He turned back to Gentiana. "Please, Gentiana. Shiva. Take her somewhere safe, away from here, to a place where she can lead a happy life. You don't need her anymore. The prophecy has been fulfilled, the Scourge halted. She has given so much to the world already. So much to the gods." He left the statement hanging, not so much accusatory as reproachful.
Gentiana finally blinked, gazing off into some space Noctis couldn't see. At last, her eyes fluttered closed.
"The Glacian will grant this boon to the King," she said. "She confesses it is a favorable arrangement for herself as well."
Noctis released a long, shaky breath, and nodded.
Without further ado, Gentiana turned, eyes still sedately closed. Crouching beside Prompto, she lifted Luna easily in her arms, as if she weighed no more than the glittering particles of mist that surrounded them. Then she stood and glided toward the door.
With one last breath of winter, they were gone.
Noctis stood looking after them, his hands hanging lifelessly at his sides despite the chill that still sat heavy in the room. Ignis and Gladio moved quietly in beside him. Prompto, still crouched next to the window, scrubbed at his eyes, his face pink and blotchy from the cold and unshed tears.
And then, suddenly, there was no more time to grieve.
Shouts of alarm floated down the hall, followed by the heavy tread of many pairs of feet—all growing rapidly closer. Gladio and Ignis moved forward as one, Gladio reaching for his discarded chair and Ignis stepping into a defensive stance, the glint of a knife Noctis had no idea he'd been carrying suddenly visible at his wrist. Prompto leapt to his feet just as the door flew open.
Several squads of Imperials, human and MT alike, poured into the lobby. They were trailed by a number of Claustra's Guard, all of them noticeably upset. No weapons had yet been drawn, but a score of Imperials split from the larger group to flank the room and its occupants. Noctis stood rigid as half a dozen human troopers, a few of them officers, encircled him, their hands resting in a laughably casual manner on the shoulder stocks of their rifles.
Amongst the whirl of humans, nonhumans, and general confusion, a familiar figure ambled in.
The dreadnought commander, just as cool and collected as she had been nearly twenty-four sleepless hours earlier, glanced inquisitively around. One eyebrow hitched upward at the ice-coated windowpanes, rapidly melting to slush, but her attention quickly moved on. It lingered on Ignis and Prompto for a heartbeat before fixing on Claustra's captain, his face tight as he rushed from the Secretary's office to meet her.
Noctis' heart dropped. To most others, the commander might have appeared apathetic, even bored, but he had seen recognition there. She knew exactly who the backwater fisherman and his brother were. And who they represented.
She knew who he was. She knew.
And here the four of them stood, rooted in foreign soil, hardly a weapon to their names, alone and without friends. Primed for the slaughter. He may as well have tied them all up in a bow and parked them in Gralea's city square holding a gift tag that read, "To Aldercapt, Love Noct."
"Commander," the captain said, his voice tight and clipped. He shouldered aside a pair of troopers to face her. Impressively, he displayed no fear—only strain. "I'm afraid First Secretary Claustra was not expecting a meeting tonight. If you return in the morning, I'm sure she'll be able to accommodate you into her schedule at that time."
"I do apologize for the intrusion, Captain," the commander replied in neutral tones, "but the Secretary won't be making any more appointments for some time. She is, in fact, under arrest for colluding with a fugitive king, a known enemy of the Empire she claims to serve. Under Executive Order Two-Five-Oh Dash Six, she holds no more jurisdiction here."
Realization hit Noctis with more bitterness than Shiva's destroying winds. Not only had the Imperials known full well who he was…but they had been looking for a war.
He laughed harshly beneath his breath, the sound entirely without humor. Of course. They would run with anything that would allow them an even vaguely legitimate justification to break their treaties with Accordo, reclaim their power over the Oracle without alienating the entire world's populace in the process, and gain total control over not just a formidable island nation, but the seat of a god. All they had needed was the excuse, and he, renegade ruler of the ailing kingdom of Lucis, had gamely volunteered.
He had been so naïve. The commander had probably spotted his mantle in the hold, complete with its identifying insignia and royal trappings, and immediately recognized it for what it was. Maybe she'd even known from the moment she'd caught sight of the Royal Vessel. From there, it had been simple enough to bide her time and see whether the accommodating young king would clear her way himself. And he hadn't left her waiting very long, he reflected scathingly.
At least he had managed one thing: they would never get their hands on Luna. Gentiana loved her, and with no more prophecy to uphold, he knew she would keep her word.
To his credit, Claustra's captain didn't rage or sputter at the commander's declaration. His eyes simply narrowed. "The Secretary is not well, Commander. I'm afraid you will simply have to return at another time."
If anybody had thought it possible for the ice-glazed room to defrost anytime soon, their hopes were dashed as it seemed to cool a few degrees more. The very air between the captain and commander practically crackled with the chill.
Noctis abruptly stepped forward, shouldering aside the officer that barred his way.
"Commander," he said, full of quiet authority. "I was not here at First Secretary Claustra's invitation. In fact, I imposed myself on her. I suggest you take up your argument with me."
Claustra's men stirred. His friends tensed.
The commander didn't even spare him a glance. Replying to the captain, she said, "While your loyalty is to be commended, Captain, I'm afraid your accolades will be short-lived." Turning to her men, she ordered, "Seize the Secretary."
Finally glancing Noctis' way, she continued, almost offhandedly, "And be sure to clean up the Lucian problem."
Noctis stiffened. The officers' hands fell to their pistols. Claustra's Guard reached for the scabbards of their ceremonial blades.
And the room erupted into chaos.
Growling in defiance, the captain and his men yanked their sabers free. In response, the troopers brought their rifles about, wielding them as clubs in favor of the more deadly alternative of a close-quarters shootout. Not even the Niffs seemed to be up for wholesale slaughter today.
But Noctis wasn't seeing them. He didn't even cast a glance at the officer who had stepped up beside him, indifferently grabbing his arm and raising the cold metal barrel of a handgun to his head.
He was watching the one taking aim at Prompto, unarmed and alone next to the window. He was watching a man about to casually take one of his friends from him. As if he meant nothing. As if he wasn't one of his brothers, whom Noctis had died to save—not once, but hundreds of times. Whom he would die for, without thought, hundreds of times more.
A cold, calculating fury overtook him. He could no longer warp, but with the power and speed that seemed to suddenly thrum through his veins, it made no difference.
Ignoring the pistol jabbing into the side of his head, ignoring the struggling bodies all around him, Noctis yanked his arm free. Then, hurling himself forward, he zeroed in with murderous precision at the soon-to-be dead man gunning for his friend. He hardly felt the pain that burned a line across the back of his skull, never felt the impact as he full-body tackled the officer targeting Prompto, steel-plated armor and all.
He could have called it there; could have brought the man to the floor and dispatched him quickly. But he needed to end it—needed to make sure this wretch never hurt his friend again.
And Bahamut had shown him there was only one way to achieve that end.
And so, driving his shoulder into the man's torso, Noctis continued their forward trajectory. They smashed straight through the window, Prompto's face a study of shock as he flew past.
Time lagged as Noctis found himself hurtling out into open air, shards of glass scintillating around him in a halo of pinks and oranges as they refracted the last of the setting sun. For a moment, all the world seemed spread out beneath him: the tiered cascades and dark blue coves of the city, its falls spilling down into Leviathan's deepest lairs. On to the flickering electric storms of Angelgard, to the sultry hot crater where the Archaen crouched. Out to the deserts of Leide, to his own destroyed Insomnia, and even into the snow-capped peaks of the lands far to the north. To the blue-violet Beyond, where something began to stir…
Where something…woke.
Noctis' mind recoiled in fear, and he snapped back into his body like an overstretched rubberband. He gasped, his eyes opening wide. And now he was no longer floating, but simply falling headfirst out a four-story window into the churning basin of a waterfall while an armored Imperial officer clung to him, screaming in terror.
Something clamped around his ankle, cutting short the arc of his flight. Above him, he heard a pained grunt, and now he was swinging hard into the brick siding of the manor. The officer hit first, but the impact stunned them both. The other man's arms loosened and he dropped onto the narrow walk far below, his body rebounding into the turbulent waters that ran alongside it.
Noctis wheezed, all the breath expelled from his chest. Unable to do much more than hang upside down and gasp like a landed Alstor bass, he eventually reached up, clumsily attempting to shove the mantle out of his face. Blinking hard, he trained his blurry vision on the window, now somewhere up near his feet.
Amidst the shouts and flying bodies crashing around back in the lobby was Gladio, draped halfway across the sill, one hand wrapped tightly around Noctis' ankle. The other was grinding painfully into the broken glass jutting from the frame as he clutched it in a white-knuckled grip. Gritting his teeth, his Shield appeared to be literally stretched to his limits, shoulders straining, the sinews of his arms standing out in sharp relief beneath the battered sleeves of his Glaive jacket. Sweat began to roll down his face as he attempted to manhandle Noctis back into the room. But even Gladio couldn't pull in a full-grown man's weight, one-armed, while hanging most of the way out a window himself without any sort of leverage to fall back on. Panting and snarling in frustration, he collapsed back onto his stomach, his fingers digging hard into Noctis' calf.
His Shield would pursue this course of action until either an Imperial shot him in the back or they both fell out the window, Noctis knew. And besides, most of the blood in his body was now pooling in his head, the rest seemed to be leaking from it, and his ankle was really starting to hurt, even through the relative protection of his combat boot.
He was also fairly certain he had a better chance of surviving a four-story drop into the waterfall basin—provided he missed the concrete walk on the way down—than continuing to hang out a window volunteering for Imperial target practice. He could now see, rather fuzzily, a number of troops running through the nearby streets. It was only a matter of time before they glanced up and caught sight of the fugitive king of Lucis flapping from an upper story window like a flag in the wind.
Gathering all the breath he could muster, Noctis wheezed, "Drop me!"
Either Gladio didn't hear or pretended not to (most likely the latter). Noctis saw his muscles bulge as he readied himself for another one-armed lift.
"Gladio!" he hissed. "Let me go!"
Catching sight of a trooper bearing down on his Shield from behind, Noctis panicked. He struggled against his friend's hold, his body revolving awkwardly as he scrabbled for purchase against the rough white brick.
Gladio swore viciously. In a rather jaw-dropping sequence of maneuvers, he released the windowframe, kicked the approaching trooper's legs out from under him, and then managed to re-anchor his own against something solid as both he and Noctis lurched sickeningly downward. Gladio's free hand, slick with blood, swung forward to redouble his hold on his leg. Noctis' heart sank.
"Dammit, Gladio!" he shouted, his voice hoarse and thick from his prolonged inversion. "If you don't let go now I'll kick your moronic, loutish, excessively jacked ass so hard I swear to the Six you'll—"
The world exploded. Flame and noise enveloped him, then faded as something went wrong with his hearing. He was flying again, and then freefalling, chunks of masonry plummeting along with him. He had no time to twist himself into an even remotely acceptable diving form and hit the water hard on his side.
The next few moments were nothing but chaos, confusion, and pain as the powerful undercurrents of the falls pulled him under and cartwheeled him across the basin's floor. He flailed ineffectually, eyes wide in the murky depths, unable to comprehend the dim glow of the marine lamps or the broken debris that rolled past. He was carried this way for long moments of darkness—tumbling and out of control, hands outstretched and clawing for any sort of purchase at all—until suddenly he was slammed up against something solid, his already-bruised ribs screaming at the impact.
Desperate for air, Noctis kicked for what he guessed was the surface, only to realize his mantle was pinned beneath a slab of broken wall. Frantic, he tugged at it—then yanked. It held firm. He panicked. His mouth opened, his body forcing him to inhale, but there was only water, flooding into his throat and lungs.
He had drowned before. It had been the requirement of saving Reflection Prompto from a rampaging Serpentess, once. He'd also attempted it on several other occasions throughout the course of Bahamut's games. It didn't mean it ever got any easier. He thrashed, suffocating, his mind overcome with primal, white-hot terror.
But then someone was pulling the mantle from his shoulders, undoing the straps and buckles with a deftness that was beyond Noctis. Even as he was freed, he felt his body begin to convulse. He flailed weakly, spasmodically, a last reflexive bid for survival, as that same pair of arms batted his own away. Moving to his waist, they latched tightly around his middle and began hauling him up toward the surface.
The two of them broke free just as Noctis' vision began to spot and darken. He attempted to take a great, gasping breath, but the inrush of air was met by his lungs' violent need to expel everything else. Hunching in pain, Noctis clung helplessly to his rescuer, barely conscious as he heaved up a seemingly endless quantity of water. He trembled and coughed, hardly cognizant of the muffled explosions now booming over the bay. His benefactor merely held him tight, and Noctis realized they were still moving—the other pulling him urgently along through the choppy waves.
He also realized, with some surprise, that his rescuer was Ignis—not Gladio, as he had expected. Squinting back over his friend's shoulder toward the Estate, Noctis saw a blackened crater in the wall, peppered with bullet holes, only a few feet from where he'd been hanging. Crumbling, smoldering mortar slumped from the gaping hole that remained, sloughing off in layers to splash into the waters below. The lobby itself appeared to still be intact, as was the battle within, but his Shield was nowhere to be seen.
Fear filled him. "Where's Gladio?" He could barely get the words out between the wracking coughs that still gripped his body. His voice was hardly recognizable, hoarse and grating as it emerged from his salt-chafed throat.
Ignis hiked Noctis further up, keeping his head as far above the waves as he could. "I believe he's all right," he said, "but I'm afraid we must move out of the open before we discuss this further."
He sounded winded, barely able to keep his own chin free of the white-tipped swells. Noctis noticed for the first time that his friend had lost his glasses, and a smear of blood, now diluted pink with saltwater, covered his ear and the side of his jaw.
Noctis, completely done with being dragged through every body of water between here and Lucis like a princeling in distress, began paddling with his free arm, trying to bear some of the load. Ignis, meanwhile, steered them out of the open bay and into a disused canal. Winding through the sheltered backstreets near the manor grounds, it was smaller than most, shielded from view by a riot of climbing trumpet flower vines.
Readjusting his grip around Noctis' waist, Ignis pulled them beneath a moss-coated archway, its entrance partially blocked by a portcullis that appeared to have been rusted in place for the better part of a decade. He boosted Noctis up onto a narrow, submerged ledge, then clambered up alongside him. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the stonework as he fought to regain his breath.
Noctis drew his arms up against his chest, shivering and coughing as the water lapped at his shoulders. He stared back into the bay from which they'd come. Now lit by both the city glare and the growing bombardments, the cloud cover had trapped the light to cast the entire scene in a sallow glow. Burgeoning fires reflected from the water's surface in a riot of angry oranges and reds; a waning moon rose tentatively to the east, its lopsided disk glinting anemically through the occasional hole in the clouds. Noctis realized the currents had dragged him some distance from the falls, which he supposed was fortunate; he could have easily been caught up in the eddies and whirlpools of the basin and drowned. Again. Only in that case he most likely would have taken Ignis with him.
"What happened? Where's Gladio?" he asked again, sounding like he'd been gargling gravel. His voice echoed hollowly in the darkness of the tunnel. The swelling of the waves held an odd, stifled quality to it, his ears still ringing from whatever blast had knocked him from the window. An insistent pain was starting to make itself known at the back of his head. He touched his hand to it gingerly, and was unsurprised when it came away wet with blood and water. He seemed to remember being grazed by his would-be executioner's bullet as he'd charged to Prompto's rescue, but the sensation had been buried beneath his fear and adrenaline and subsequent inhalation of the bay.
"I'm not entirely certain, but I do believe he escaped," Ignis reassured him, sounding less than sprightly himself. "An Imperial gunship appeared out of heavens-know-where and launched a missile into the side of the building. Both of you fell, but I did see Gladio surface close to the manor before I jumped in after you. You were thrown farther out."
"A gunship?" Noctis repeated, aghast. He peered back over the basin. Part of the manor was burning now, and somewhere behind it he could just make out the telltale flashing of heavy air artillery. "What, did the commander just have it ready in her pocket or something? And where's Prompto?"
"Enthusiastically alive, I should imagine, thanks to your…intervention," Ignis replied, casting him an unreadable look. "Last I saw, he was able to requisition one of our attacker's firearms."
"Last you saw?" Noctis exclaimed. "Ignis, he could still be up there—"
"Prompto is doubtless in a far sounder situation than we are just now," Ignis interrupted. As Noctis opened his mouth to argue, his friend again cut him off, but gently. "Noct. The Prompto you remember was unseasoned and insecure. From someone who has witnessed him in action for much of these past ten years, rest assured that from the moment he picked up that weapon, the Imperials became the ones for whom I feared."
Noctis closed his eyes and, after a moment, nodded. It wasn't like he hadn't watched Prompto fight from inside Reflection, or noticed the little transformations, but…it was still difficult to get used to. His friends had changed. They had deepened, evolved. And they had done it wholly without him.
He turned his gaze back toward the manor, stunned at the scope and acceleration of the destruction. Half the city was suddenly a battlefield, shouts in the Altissian brogue clashing with Niflheim accents as combatants from both sides clashed only a few streets away. He could hear the distant screams of civilians, while the growing frequency of earth-shattering blasts hinted at the possible addition of the Accordan navy into the fray. Between the pyrotechnics and the general uproar, one could almost believe it was festival season, if not for the chunks of ancient architecture that occasionally careened through the air.
And it was all because of him.
"They wanted this," he whispered. "They were ready for it. They didn't even need Leviathan as an excuse this time. Just the right moment to act."
"Yes," Ignis sighed, wiping water from his eyes as an errant wave slapped him in the face. "They did. But you mustn't think it your fault, Noct. Your intentions in coming here were pure. I am certain this would have happened either way, in one form or another."
A bit of flying debris pattered into the water near the mouth of the archway. Ignis instinctively moved them both farther back, before continuing, "Niflheim's attack on Insomnia was wholly appalling to the other nations of the world; yet the Empire ploughed ahead anyway, with little to no consequence. In Altissia's case, the only reason they bothered with a justification at all was due to the high regard the world holds for the Oracle."
He settled back tiredly into the wall, drawing his own arms tight against his chest. "So you see: if Niflheim hadn't found an alibi in us, they certainly would have in someone else. They were the ones who wanted war, not you. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time does not make it your fault."
"Be that as it may," Noctis replied, "Umbra warned us about coming." The smile on his face was slightly wild, bleak with bitterness. "I couldn't be bothered to listen."
"Noctis, please," Ignis implored. Noctis could barely see him in the darkness of the tunnel, but he knew his friend was staring intently into his face; Ignis rarely called him by his full first name anymore. "Self-recrimination will do us no good, particularly in a situation for which we had very little knowledge or control. As for the…unpredictable repercussions our presence here seems to trigger, such as what we saw with Lady Lunafreya…the most we can do now is remove ourselves from the equation as best we can, along with whatever strange effects we bring to this timeline."
Ignis uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, a trickle of leaked moonlight accentuating the planes of his face. "But timeline volatility aside," he said, "I believe we both know the Imperials would have found their way onto this path regardless. And as you can see, the Accordans were never going to simply roll over and take it."
Noctis nodded noncommittally, his face expressionless as he stared off into the darkness. There was nothing for it but to salvage the situation to the best of their abilities. Even if that meant leaving Altissia behind and never looking back. Much as he had left his kingly raiment scattered and discarded across the bottom of the ocean. As obsolete as King Noctis Lucis Caelum himself.
xxx
Two hours later found Noctis—damp and cold and stiff—slinking up a stone stairway into yet another open-air plaza, the picturesque primroses that carpeted its banister belying the scattered planter boxes, crushed globelights, and blasted stone he knew would greet him just above.
In fact, he was hard-pressed to be certain that he and Ignis hadn't been here before; after a seemingly endless evening of skulking through alleys and esplanades in search of a safe route back to their boat, one charming little Altissian patio was beginning to look much like another. Noctis was even willing to admit (though not in front of Gladio) that they might be lost, aside from a vague sense of where the Colosseum was—he had spotted its distinctive spires somewhere off in the distance about eight city blocks ago.
Ignis, padding stealthily up behind him, touched his elbow. "How many?" he whispered.
Crouching to his hands and knees, Noctis poked his head around the bend of the railing and promptly rammed his nose into a forest of armored legs. Fortunately, the MTs were all facing the other way, and apparently frozen in one of their eerie standby modes. Reversing direction, he crept furtively back down the stairs, rubbing his face as he pulled Ignis along with him.
"Twelve assassin MTs and half a squad of axemen," he reported.
Ignis growled softly in frustration. "As I suspected. I fear we may be delving deeper into what is quickly becoming Imperial-occupied territory. Our best option from here may be to take to either the rooftops or the canals."
"Please not the canals," Noctis moaned, trying and failing to rub warmth back into his arms through the sodden fabric of his dress shirt. His ankle throbbed, probably wrenched when Gladio had interrupted his four-story swan dive, and his head, ribs, and just about everything else ached ferociously. The rain had started up again, a fine nighttime drizzle, ensuring he wasn't likely to dry out again anytime soon. His fingers and toes had gone numb to the point that they were no longer a distraction. He wondered if he should be worried about that.
At least his hearing was losing that muffled quality it'd had since the Estate—a small miracle, considering the fact that the Empire had essentially lobbed a bomb at them.
"I agree," Ignis replied, his hand moving absently to his face to adjust his glasses, then quickly altering course to card through his hair when he remembered he wasn't wearing any. "The rooftops present us as more visible targets, should anyone care to look, but we'd become easy prey if we were to be spotted in the canals."
"So how're we gonna get up there?" Noctis asked, seating himself tiredly on a tipped-over magazine stand. He glared up at the parapets and cupolas scattered along the roofline. Life would be so much easier if his magic were still intact. "Most everybody's barricaded their doors, if they're still around at all. I suppose you can boost me up to a fire escape and I can let it down."
"No, I believe I may have a better idea," Ignis murmured, a strange expression crossing his face. "Let's find one of those axemen we dispatched previously. There were three of them total, two stories down and one street back."
Noctis frowned, but dragged himself back to his feet. He awkwardly sheathed the blade he'd pillaged from an assassin earlier in the night, missing the easy dismissal to the armiger they had enjoyed all throughout their travels. The weapon was heavier than he liked, but it would get the job done. He supposed he had Gladio's training sessions with those absurdly overcompensating greatswords of his to thank for that.
Hooking his arm through Ignis', he led the way down another flight of steps. Noctis guessed that his friend hardly needed the help—though Ignis could make out only blurs and shapes without his glasses, his years of blindness had allowed him capabilities that the others couldn't touch.
For instance: having arrived at the indicated location, the man was already rifling through the fallen MT bodies with relaxed confidence. He'd closed his eyes, having abandoned the fallibility of sight and all its ambiguities in favor of what he often described as the more truthful visuals of touch and sound. Noctis watched curiously as his friend twisted an armored gauntlet free, then fiddled with it for several moments. Once finished, he passed it over, then began on a second.
Noctis turned the hunk of metal over in his hands, his forehead creased in bemusement. He looked up. "Specs, broke as we are, I'm not sure now is the time to be selling Imperials for spare parts."
"Just watch," Ignis replied, casting him a Look.
Noctis did, interested despite himself, as Ignis buckled the unwieldy contraption to his forearm, the MT's clawed metal hand still hanging from it disconsolately.
Then he raised his arm, pointed it at a steeple, and, with a weird little snap-hiss, vanished.
Alarmed, Noctis stepped back into the somewhat questionable shelter of a decorative bonsai. He peered around anxiously, hand resting on his pilfered blade. "Specs?" he whispered.
Hearing no response, he tried again. "Ignis!"
"Above you," replied a disembodied voice, pitched low and quiet.
Noctis looked up to see his friend crouching on a turret like he'd been born there, his arm wrapped casually around its steeple, limned in a fleeting fragment of moonlight as if he were some sort of well-tailored gargoyle.
He waved—rather cheekily—with the flopping mechanical hand. "Try it yourself."
Noctis stared down at his own contraption, mouth hanging open, a world of possibilities unfolding before him. Tentatively, he slipped it around his wrist, inspecting it carefully for the mechanism that discharged the Ignis-modified hookshot hand.
Then, with slightly more confidence, he raised it toward the base of the steeple and flicked the release.
His head snapped back from the acceleration as the clawed hand embedded itself into the plaster, then summarily yanked him forward along its connecting wire. And next thing he knew he was tearing through the air—flying—just like a warp.
He was warping again. And despite the exhaustion, the pain, and the looming sorrow of all he had lost this night—for one burning second, he was happy.
Noctis had just opened his mouth to let out an extremely ill-considered whoop when he hit the steeple. All the breath left him in a rush as he clipped one of its corners, sending himself careening off at an angle and straight down the turret's other side. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Ignis making a grab for him, complete with an un-Ignislike swear. He missed, and Noctis tumbled off the edge.
For the third time that night, he was free falling—a flight that came to an end soon enough as he hit the catwalk just below, his body glancing off the railing on the way.
Noctis lay on the iron grating for some time, wheezing as his lungs struggled to expand. Spots bloomed before his eyes; the leaden sky swam above him, musty-tasting water dripping into his face from the metal framework above and running up into his nose.
And then, he laughed. He laughed so hard the walk vibrated, as sparkles and starbursts swam in his vision. Eventually he became aware of Ignis kneeling next to him, apparently confident he was looking at someone who'd finally fallen the rest of the way off the trolley.
Noctis burst into a fresh round of chortles at the thought, slapping a hand over his mouth to keep from attracting any Imperial attention. Unfortunately, this only served to muffle his hysterics into a stream of less-than-kingly snorts.
"Noct," Ignis hedged, reaching out a tentative hand and then appearing to think better of it. "Are you…quite all right?"
Having managed to scale himself down to mere snickering, Noctis replied between gasps, "Ignis…it hurts…so bad. Think I busted my leg or something." He grinned happily up at his friend.
Ignis merely stared at him, his expression flat.
"Specs," he said again, clutching the man's shirt from his crumpled position on the walkway. "It was like warping again. I'd happily break half my bones for that. Thank you for giving that back to me."
"…Anything for you," Ignis muttered skeptically. "Right, then, if you're quite ready to reclaim your senses, might we carry on?"
With Ignis' assistance, Noctis hobbled to his feet. His leg didn't actually seem broken, per se, but he'd probably sustained a fair amount of deep tissue bruising. He'd definitely be feeling it for a while; he supposed it was convenient, at least, that it was on the same side of his body as his twisted ankle. And now that he was in possession of Ignis' ingenious hookshot, he figured he'd hardly need his legs anyway.
xxx
Two dozen rooftops and one surprise Imperial encounter later, Noctis was beginning to rethink many of his life choices as his body started to demand payment on the debts he'd been foisting on it for over twenty-four hours. The congealed blood that had been damming up his graze wound reopened and was now seeping steadily down his neck. A debilitating lassitude had settled deep into his joints, making him sluggish and clumsy. Ignis, meanwhile, strode forward with a strange confidence, seeming to know exactly which rooftops and balconies would take them where they needed to go. It wasn't until Noctis had lumbered straight into his back that he realized his friend had stopped to wait for him. He was so exhausted he wouldn't have known the difference if an MT had taken him by the hand and led him off the side of the bell tower.
Ignis gave him a once-over. "Let's take a break, shall we?"
Noctis could do nothing but woodenly nod as his friend led him into a darkened rooftop garden, partially obscured behind a drooping clothesline that hung heavy with rain-soaked laundry. They both collapsed alongside a row of weedy planter boxes, Noctis failing to care when he missed and found himself halfway in a bush. Breathing heavily, he closed his eyes, hanging limply as Ignis grabbed the front of his sodden shirt and repositioned him into a more foliage-free space.
"How d'you know your way around so well, Specs?" he asked after a while, eyes still closed. "I don't remember you spending a lot of time up on the roofs our first go-around. Or any."
He received a short breath of almost-laughter in reply. "That, my friend, is because you were asleep."
Noctis cracked an eye open and stared at him, tiredly demanding answers.
Ignis only smiled softly. "Another time, perhaps. You know the plot already. But one day I'll supply the details, if you wish. Though I must warn you: they're rather melancholy."
"But we rewrote the ending," Noctis murmured, tipping his head back into the rail.
Ignis went quiet so long that Noctis finally roused, studying him through half-lidded eyes. His friend was staring out across the bay, his thoughts obviously somewhere else entirely.
Following his gaze, Noctis felt it like a blow to the gut when he caught sight of the object of Ignis' attention: jutting out into the water, surprisingly diminutive in comparison to the grand pillars and domes of the city around it, was the altar of Leviathan.
For obvious reasons, Noctis didn't recall much of his own time spent there. But thanks to Bahamut, he knew it intimately through Ignis' eyes. Before he'd lost them, that is—Ignis' sight traded away for Noctis' life.
He swallowed down sudden nausea at the memories, the recollection of his friend's agonized cries as the Ring seared him from the inside out reverberating through his head. Of Noctis' own, there in Reflection, as he pleaded with the Draconian to make it stop.
Noctis curled over, resting his forehead in his hands until the city stopped reeling around him. You are a boulder in a stream. The current flows on all sides, but you remain unmoved.
He had been so afraid it would all happen again. That Leviathan would wake. That Luna would die. That Ignis would get himself grievously injured for his sake, forfeiting a staggeringly accomplished and meaningful life as Noctis lay uselessly on the ground.
But it hadn't. Luna was safe with Gentiana. Ignis was right here beside him, whole and unmarked. The gods slept.
(Shards of glass…a world spread out beneath him…something beginning to stir…)
Noctis shook his head and breathed deeply, forcing his thoughts back to the boulder in the stream. Feeling the world settle back into place—albeit slightly unsteadily—he straightened, carefully catching his friend's hand in his own. Ignis finally broke from his trance, inhaling suddenly as if surfacing from a pool. He looked over at Noctis, surprise and a bit of confusion marring his features.
"I…apologize," Ignis murmured. "My memories of this time…well, they aren't the best."
Noctis made a sound that was half laughter, half sorrow. He knew only too well.
Ignis' eyes were still on him. "Sometimes," he said, very softly, "I get the feeling you know the details already. Why is that, do you think?"
The old anxiety flared. But now, sitting with his oldest friend beneath the sky, destruction and violence spreading all around them while the site of a nightmarish crossroads of their lives lay calm and serene among the waves, suddenly made impotent by a time of second chances—now was not the time for deception.
Noctis smiled gently. "Maybe someday…I'll tell you a story. But I should warn you. It's kinda melancholy."
Ignis studied him, his gaze searching. He opened his mouth as if to inquire further, but hesitated.
"C'mon," Noctis said, squeezing his elbow. "Let's go find our boat."
xxx
A/N: If anyone's still confused about what the heck is going down with the timeline interactions, the next chapter should pretty well address it. But if not, feel free to hit me up with your thoughts.
...Or, you know, reviews, which sustain me and fill me with life.