Noctis' sleep that day was, for once, dreamless and restful. So according to the laws of fate, karma, and the universe, it was bound to be interrupted by, say, an earthquake and/or an army of chocobos shrieking in his ear in unison.

As it so happened, both of the aforementioned scenarios seemed to describe his current state of affairs exactly.

Whipping aside his blanket, Noctis threw himself into a roll followed immediately by a low, defensive crouch. His sore and stiffened muscles complained at the sudden rough treatment; his bare feet dug painfully into the gravel of the cave floor. He blinked rapidly as he peered into the late afternoon shadows for the source of his peril, hand flexing around a weapon that no longer existed.

Instead of a thundering band of diabolical poultry, he found Prompto staring back at him, frozen mid-shout.

"Uh…sorry man," the blonde said, cringing slightly. "Didn't really mean to shake you so hard…or yell in your ear like that. I'm just used to it being a lot harder to wake you up…"

Noctis stared at him a second longer, then flopped gracelessly back onto the grit-dusted stone as his brain finally caught up with his body. His adrenaline receded, leaving him shaky. He pressed his fingers between his eyes, hoping the contact would somehow serve to re-order his sleep-garbled thoughts. "You needed something, Prompto?" he slurred, voice thick with fatigue.

"Well actually, yeah. Ignis, Gladio, and I were shopping around at the dockside markets—sorry, you were completely zonked out so we decided to let you catch a couple more hours—when we saw some Niffs poking around at the resort."

"What?" Noctis exclaimed, shooting up so fast he almost knocked Prompto in the chin.

"Yeah—they didn't see us, but Iggy says we're outta here anyway," Prompto said, hurriedly backing out of range. "He and Gladio are busy renting a couple of chocobos, leaving you and me to pack up all our crap. Guess it's a good thing we hadn't gotten around to affording a tent yet."

Noctis peered anxiously back toward the resort, his grogginess fled. "How long do you think we have? It's not gonna take too much time to gather up the blankets and cookware but Ignis might insist we return the chairs we…wait, is that them?"

Prompto squinted toward where Noctis was pointing, shielding his eyes against the sungold-tinted waves. "Yeah, that's them. Crap, they're running. Crap, crap, crap, that's a dropship behind them…"

"C'mon." Noctis threw his tackle box, along with their sparse collection of potions and cookware, onto a blanket and wadded it all up into a ball. The Sword of the Father, wrapped tightly in Ignis' Glaive jacket, was shoved beneath an arm.

Then, snatching up his boots, his borrowed Imperial blade, and the rest of the bedding, he began running clumsily up the beach toward the two figures on chocoboback. A third bird, a large, yellow-white rooster, dashed riderless behind them. And, just as Prompto had said, the blinking red eyes of a Magitek engine trawled the sky beyond. It was still fairly distant for the moment, but dropships could be deceptively fast.

"Where's the fourth?" Prompto called, breathless.

Gladio and Ignis' mounts skidded to a stop before them, leaving trenches in the sand. "They only had three, so you featherweights get to share," Gladio brusquely replied. "C'mon—we don't think the ship's actually spotted us yet, but that'll change in about thirty seconds. And you can bet your ass they've got more where that came from."

"Here," Noctis said, dumping one blanket bundle into Gladio's lap and another into Ignis'. "Prompto, get on."

Despite their hurry, Prompto faltered as he approached the spare bird, stopping altogether to hover warily outside of pecking range. "Not sure this 'bo likes us, Noct, are you sure—"

Noctis was on the verge of grabbing his friend and lifting him bodily into the saddle. Then he caught sight of the rooster's expression and slowed, taken aback. He didn't think he'd ever actually seen a bird sneer before…

A low, familiar droning caught his attention; the transport was close enough now to make out the painted SAF on its hull. And it appeared to be bearing straight for them.

"Go, Prom!" he said, bulldozing the blond forward.

Prompto glanced up at the sky, then gamely vaulted into the saddle. Reaching down, he hauled Noctis gracelessly up behind him, still gripping his boots and Imperial blade. Off-balance, Noctis fumbled awkwardly for the stirrup, but his bare foot met only air. Prompto let out a soft "oof!" as Noctis' free arm flew around his waist, clutching at him tightly before he could slide off the other side and faceplant back into the sand.

Gladio was hollering something, and before Noctis could finish settling himself among the tail feathers, Prompto made a distinctive chirping sound. With a cry that was more like a bennu with indigestion than the conventional trilling wark, their chocobo took off.

Noctis spent more of the next hour fearing death by a broken neck than from any manner of Imperial weaponry, as the three birds and their four riders took the wild foothills of Galdin at a full sprint. It was all he could do to stay seated as his and Prompto's mount meandered, weaved, and bounced (seemingly as much as possible). Eventually, the droning hum of the ship was swallowed up by the wind, but they didn't slow.

Ignis, steering his sleek bronze into the lead, took them into a scrubby forest of windbent shorepine. It provided them cover from above, but hindered their progress significantly. Even leaning all the way forward, Prompto caught a branch to the face more than once, and Noctis was bludgeoned with the rebound more often than not.

Still, they drove their birds on, glancing back over their shoulders periodically as afternoon deepened into evening. No sign of pursuit was immediately evident, but that didn't mean an ambush couldn't be waiting just around the bend. The wind picked up considerably, swooping in from the sea and making it difficult to listen for signs of attack. Though the ocean grew more distant by the hour, its brackish drafts continued to slip up over the cliffs, forcing their way inland. The result was a perpetual brine of salt, sweat, and humidity, a sensation whose unpleasantness only progressed with time.

Finally, just as the remains of the sun were swallowed up in twilight, Ignis called a halt.

Prompto urged their bird up alongside its companions. It sulkily went, attempting to rub its riders off on a bent cypress along the way. Noctis set about prying his arms free of Prompto's middle, his muscles having stiffened into a semi-permanent embrace. His shirt was wrinkled and sweaty where he had been stuck to his friend's back.

"I think we've managed to lose them, assuming they ever caught sight of us at all," Ignis said, slightly breathless, his hair blown askew. "I thought it prudent to put as much distance between us as possible before sundown, as—with no havens to retreat to—we've got a full night's work of daemon slaying ahead of us."

Prompto groaned at the reminder. "Ugh, I feel like I've already been up for a week. Flipping schedules blows. And we haven't even eaten breakfast yet." Scowling, he slapped at a cloud of mosquitoes, the tiny bloodsuckers determinedly continuing to swarm even as the wind demolished their ranks.

"Our more immediate concern is where we go from here," Gladio said from atop his female, a beefy, fluffy thing with an excessively cheerful countenance. "The whole stretch of coastal inland between here and Caem is nothing but wilderness."

"Taelpar," Noctis said. He leaned sideways to lever on a boot, his body bending at a precariously awkward angle, his other hand fisted in Prompto's shirt. "It's remote, but still established enough for us to resupply."

"I was thinking along similar lines," Ignis agreed. "It will be a few days' ride, but once there, we can regroup, and ideally decide upon our next base of operations."

"Yeah, and I wanna check in with Iris," Gladio said. "We should probably give Cor a call too, though damned if I know what we're gonna tell him." The wind gusted noisily, sending the trees around them creaking and groaning; he shoved a mess of hair impatiently from his eyes.

"Do we have enough gil for phones yet?" Prompto mournfully asked. "Or even a phone? If anybody challenged me to King's Knight right now, I wouldn't even remember how to get past the start menu. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty over this whole Swampmeister Joe of the Vesperpool lifestyle."

"Specs isn't," Noctis volunteered, yanking a second boot into place. His accent devolved into a terrible imitation of a slightly better imitation of a northern twang. "Ol' Joe is hiding just there beneath the surface, fixin' to pop out at a moment's notice."

Gladio guffawed, his face splitting into a toothy grin. "Yeah he is. Just top Iggy with an 'I'd Rather Be Fishing' hat and add a sprinkling of bog water, and poof—our own personal deep woods gentleman, rubbing shoulders with big-time kings and backwoods yokels alike since 734 ME."

"Ohemgeee I've been needing closure on this for ages," Prompto burst out, nearly sobbing in relief. "I thought we would never get the chance to talk about this! I need to know how Sir 'Unsuccessful in Lookin' For Fish But Also Ain't Lookin' For Trouble' was living behind that Ignis-Bougie veneer all this time and none of us even knew." He leaned forward intently, oblivious to Noctis' sudden arm-flailing as he nearly dislodged his friend from the back of their mount. "To be completely clear on this: The only thing that saved us on the boat that night was the fact that I was too distracted with being flattened by amazement—otherwise I totes would have said something brainless to that Niff commander and given us all away."

"Think of how I felt," Noctis said, regaining his balance long enough to resume his hold on Prompto's t-shirt. "Twenty-six years I've known him, never suspecting what was lurking in there all along."

"If you are all finished with your inanities," Ignis broke in, thoroughly unamused, "might I request we return to a topic that's actually relevant? Yes, we'll likely be able to afford a phone. Of course," he continued in a mutter, "we'd be able to afford far, far more, should some of us happen to never live to see another day."

There was a short silence, broken only by the bad-tempered hissing sound that seemed to be their chocobo's equivalent of breathing.

Then Gladio said, "All right, back to business. Iggy, have we got enough in the budget for a wardrobe extension once we get to Taelpar? These duds are getting pretty ripe."

"Yes, I imagine we will, though we may have to forfeit the motel stay I'm sure some of us will be clamoring for," Ignis replied, his indignant glare smoothly superseded by what Prompto liked to call his Advanced Planning Face. "Still, we've turned a modest profit in the course of our latest hunts, and will bolster our funds even more once we sell some of the rare items we've collected in the process."

"Okay, good." Gladio paused, long enough for Noctis to begin a mental shopping list.

Then he continued, "Because I saw a 'Kiss My Bass' hat in there once that would really bring out your eyes."

Noctis snorted violently and inhaled a bug in the process, while Prompto's cackle was so loud it succeeded in annoying a distant Arachne that had just bubbled to life from the forest floor. The two of them doubled over, hooting with laughter, clutching handfuls of their mount's feathers to keep from sliding off. Their chocobo flared its nostrils with displeasure. Gladio grinned widely, meeting Ignis' eyes fearlessly and without remorse.

"I know where all of you sleep," Ignis noted, his voice brightly conversational.

The threat lying in wait within that statement was enough to cow even the wind, which had, up to that point, been whistling quite raucously through the trees. Gladio's smile wavered and he cleared his throat, struck with a sudden need to survey their surroundings for danger. Ignis' mount side-eyed him, some survival instinct kicking in that had her seemingly wondering if she needed to begin scoping out a chin-level branch or two for her possibly homicidal rider.

"Now that that's settled," Ignis said briskly, leaving them all to wonder what exactly had been, "shall we continue on?"

Pointing his chocobo in a northwesternly direction, he flounced away, his shoulders squared in haughty pride.

Exchanging a guarded look with Gladio, Prompto urged their own mount forward—albeit at an extremely safe distance.

Noctis leaned toward Prompto's ear. In a (very quiet) whisper, he narrated, "And he vanished into the darkness, his quest for the elusive mummyfish leaving a powerfully flavorful recipeh forever un-hankered."

Prompto guffawed, the sound blaring noisily through the woods. Calling it a night, the Arachne melted back into the ground.

xxx

Nighttime in forests tended to be exceptionally dark.

They had spent so many weeks on the ocean that Noctis had momentarily forgotten this fact—that the sky wasn't always going to be so vast and unrestrained, the stars thick and close and almost touchable. Even so, there was a part of him that was relieved to be leaving the sea behind—at least for now. Leviathan had been popping up in his dreams since Altissia, a fact he wouldn't have been thrilled about even when she had been on their side. Perhaps a change of scenery would allow the memories to settle.

Despite their earlier levity, a pensive, even grim mood had overcome them. Wind and cricketsong and even the mosquitoes had disappeared, replaced by an almost unnatural stillness. It felt strange to be deliberately heading so deep into uncharted territory; most of their above-ground adventures in the past had never taken them more than a day's walk from a highway. Now they would be several. Meanwhile, a damp, mossy smell had crept into Noctis' sinuses and stayed there, like weeping sap and decaying logs untouched by sunlight.

Something about the closeness of the wood, the heaviness of the air felt…familiar…

…but Noctis knew they'd never ventured into this area before, not even in their pre-Night travels. A strange anticipation materialized in his chest and lodged there, cutting through the background buzz of disquiet.

He fingered the stolen Imperial blade lying bare across his lap, the strip of blanket he'd been using as a scabbard having fluttered away at some point during their flight. His gaze moved to stare absently at his friends' backs, their forms merging into a similar scene from another time, another place.

Noctis frowned. Or…had it been another? But when would—?

Gladio, in the lead, called a break, and Noctis jerked back to the present. Prompto squirmed uncomfortably, and Noctis realized the arm he'd had looped around his friend's waist had tightened. He let go, pulling it quickly back against his side.

"Well this is rather melancholy country, now isn't it?" Ignis remarked, his voice instinctively hushed. "I daresay it's causing even the chocobos to feel out of sorts."

"Ours was just born that way," Prompto assured him, as their rooster turned one assessing, bloodshot eye in their direction. Gladio's mount danced restlessly, though her textbook chocobo geniality still seemed firmly intact. Ignis' rattled her tail feathers and scraped nervously at the dirt.

"At least we've remained daemon-free thus far," Ignis noted. "I suspect some activity over the next several days will be inevitable; being as the creatures prefer more populated areas, though, we should find ourselves in for rather a nice break."

"You had to go and say it," Gladio sighed as miasma bubbled before them, the telltale sound of groaning earth muted by the suffocating darkness that surrounded them. A Red Giant reared up out of the forest floor; its metallic skin refracted the light from its blade in a scattered chaos of orange reflections.

"No more jinx-inducing pronouncements from you, Igster," Prompto said. He craned his neck as the daemon straightened, its head rising level with the wooded canopy. "Next thing we know you'll be accidentally inviting the frikken Omega weapon out to pl—aaah!"

The last of his thought was aborted as their chocobo, with a put-out screech, tipped its riders onto the ground. Without a backward glance, it bolted off into the trees.

Noctis found himself landing back-first on a log, pain shooting up his spine and down again into his legs at the assault to his old childhood injury. Groaning through tightly clenched teeth, he instinctively rolled away, just in time for the Giant's blade to slice through the space he had only just occupied. He came to an ungainly stop on his side, even as a hail of rotten splinters pummeled his body.

Wresting his arm up to shield his face, Noctis squinted against the heat that emanated from the immense weapon. It was lodged in the earth just next to his elbow, crackling and humming, singeing the ends of his hair and blasting against his face like a freshly opened oven door. Through the flames, he met Prompto's wide-eyed stare, the gunman sprawled in an awkward tangle of limbs across the now-bisected log's counterpart.

But in an instant the blond was up and back on his feet, weapon in hand, aiming for the giant's weak points with a collected, deadly professionalism that the happy-go-lucky, twenty-year-old kid Noctis had known would only have dreamed of. Ignis and Gladio, meanwhile, were already dancing a controlled routine about the giant's feet, guarding each other's flanks with an ease brought about by years of repetition as they took turns darting in for a strike.

There was something…so familiar…

"Noct!" Gladio yelled, and Noctis snapped back to the present, ignoring the throbbing in his back. Scrabbling across the forest loam, moss staining his knees, he snatched up his blade just in time to deflect a glancing blow from the Giant's backswing. Even undirected—not to mention fairly weak—the hit was enough to send him reeling several steps, his back slamming into the trunk of an ancient tree. The new surge of pain nearly had him right back on the ground.

The Red Giant reared, roaring in triumph. Or anger from one of his friends' hits—Noctis wasn't sure which. Either way, its throat was momentarily exposed.

The old power called to him. It whispered for him to seize the moment, to bring his birthright to bear in the heady devastation of a warp strike. Clenching his fists, Noctis stretched toward it, calming his thoughts, preparing his body for that sudden violence of bent physics with the same routine familiarity he felt when getting ready for bed.

But it dissolved as mist beneath the groping reach of his mind. Evaporated like memories, having never been more than one to begin with.

He nearly cried in frustration. It had been right there…Or…or had it?

Noctis blinked hard. He was wandering again. It felt as if his vision had taken on a strange, offset quality, as if one eye was registering what he saw a microsecond behind the other. The daemon was rampaging through the trees, a nexus of corrupted light, its glowing blade leaving a trail of drifting sparks, gouging and destroying. The smell of wet, smoldering wood entered his awareness by degrees, small fires burning sullenly in patches. His friends continued to counter and retreat, patiently wearing it down with a persistence that spoke of years of practice. The battle seemed to be going well.

Taking a deep breath, Noctis shoved himself off the tree. He lunged for the Giant, his feet churning up the sickly sweet smell of rotting vegetation as he tore across the ground. The monster was distracted with Prompto, swiping ineffectually as the blond dodged and rolled. Bringing his blade to bear, Noctis went for the thick meat of its leg.

But his precisely aimed stab skidded up and over the metallic skin, barely leaving a scratch.

Noctis growled and tried again, ducking from pure habit as a massive arm flew overhead. His blade screeched as it slid off to the side, once again having no effect.

"Dammit," he hissed, grinding his teeth.

He was hit with the sudden, sinking realization that he'd never actually faced a Red Giant with unenhanced weaponry before. Such mass-produced hunks of steel like his stolen blade were fine against the weaker daemons, but Giants were a task for far more serious firepower. Much later in their journey, they'd had their specialized favorites, usually obtained through significant effort or expense: Noctis' Balmung, the Ziedrich paired with the Apocalypse for Gladio, Prompto's Death Penalty, and of course the Zwill Crossblades for Ignis. But even in the early days, Noctis had still had his fledgling arsenal of Royal Arms to fall back on; even his inexperienced, clumsy attacks of those first few weeks had been sufficient to weaken the monsters enough for his friends and flasks to take care of the rest.

They'd weakened Noctis too, of course, but the gods knew that's what he was for. Born to die.

Born to sacrifice for all…

Noctis rubbed at his eyes and shook his head. Mired in memories, he'd found himself attempting to call for a flask. He ignored the phantom pull and rushed forward again, bent on doing his part in taking this monster down—even if it were only through death by a thousand scratches. Already the thing was beginning to look somewhat worse for wear, staggering about in a lopsided manner and lashing out with savage, uncontrolled swings. Gladio blocked one of these on his MT-acquired blast wall of a shield, the sound ringing through the woods with the discordant peal of metal on metal. Ignis seized advantage of the opening to launch himself at its good leg, his Zwills doing more damage in one swipe than Noctis' would if he'd sat at the campfire whittling at it for an hour. Prompto piled on with a volley of concentrated gunfire. And finally, at long last, the Red Giant toppled.

That was when the second appeared.

[Bursting through the trees, it swings its blade in sweeping, deadly arcs that send branches hurtling through the air like javelins and the canopy exploding into pine-scented shrapnel. All three men are suddenly down, their fallen forms littered with splinters and debris. The daemons advance.

Noctis laughs—a dark, humorless sound. They will never take his friends. Not while he wields...]

He blinked and swiped at his eyes, the world blurring, but one glance at his companions brought it back into focus.

[Strolling into the newly formed clearing, Noctis plants himself directly between the two Giants. "Take me," he whispers. Magic hums in the air, nudges at the edges of his awareness, calling to him. But he knows his true power lies in his death. It will save his friends, and then he'll come right back to life to do it all again. And again. And again.

"Take me," he repeats, presenting his own weak spots—his throat and heart—to their blades.

Obligingly, the daemons advance. Closing his eyes and stretching his arms wide, Noctis smiles.]

And suddenly Gladio was shoving him roughly to the ground—Gladio, who was standing above him, alive and well. The big man grimaced as his shield and greatsword together absorbed the blows in Noctis' stead. His shield folded inward at the impact, but he stood firm, muscles bulging against the two immense swords, face red and tight with the strain. Noctis reeled in confusion, the events that raged around him no longer making sense. There were explosions, and fire, and somewhere in there he'd lost some time (again) because suddenly the Giants were gone, he was back on his feet, and Gladio was standing over him (again), but facing him now, and as angry as Noctis had ever seen him.

Noctis gripped the hilt of his blade so tightly his knuckles bulged pale and knobby against the skin—struggling to wrap his fingers, toes, anything that could give him any sort of grip—around reality. Had he just…?

He reeled, frantically trying to sort the present from his tangle of nightmares. Desperate for purchase, his gaze darted back to his Shield.

He immediately regretted it. Gladio's eyes might as well have been burning as hotly as the Giants' blades as he stood there, inches away, staring down at him between heaving breaths. He was shaking. Noctis tensed, bracing himself for the imminent shouting match.

But Gladio only snapped his mouth shut. Face taut, he whirled and stalked away into the dark.

Eyes flickering between Noctis and the retreating Shield, Ignis turned and strode after him, the tension in his body palpable. "I'll go with him. You two, stay together," he ordered over his shoulder. Noctis didn't miss the significant glance he cast at Prompto, jerking his head in Noctis' direction in a silent command that wasn't very difficult to decipher.

Silence fell on the newly formed clearing, small, smokey fires sputtering down to embers in the mossy loam. Damaged branches groaned and snapped, crashing into the brush around them. Noctis didn't look up, didn't move.

Finally, Prompto turned to face him. His lips were tight, unsmiling with a severity that would have looked alien on Young Prompto, but somehow fit this soul-weathered version of his friend.

"Noct…what the hell?" was all he said. The last word was swallowed up by an explosive exhale, brimming with bewilderment and heartache.

"I…I don't…"

Nausea overwhelmed him, and Noctis suddenly found himself on hands and knees, heaving up the contents of whatever meal he had eaten last—he'd missed several, evidently, as all he could produce was bile. The muscles of his shoulders and back contracted as his stomach clenched against his will. He was vaguely aware of Prompto coming to crouch mutely next to him, resting a cautious hand on his back.

But all Noctis could think about was a fact he simply couldn't continue to ignore: that his memories were no longer just that. His decade in Reflection had crossed over into his dreams, his reality.

He'd seen it coming, if he were completely honest with himself, even before the incident with Prompto's attacker back in Claustra's Estate. There was no way anybody could live through a thousand forced deaths at one's own hand—not to mention the slaughter of all of humanity—without serious fallout. But in the heady aftermath of having the people he loved most in the world returned to him—alive and whole—he'd been able to pretend it had all been nothing more than a spell of bad experiences, buried away with the newly restored light of day.

Then the nightmares got worse—more frequent, more intrusive. And now he was living them. The Draconian still haunted him, even safe in the past.

And he still couldn't tell them. If the Bahamut of their time ever found him…if that monster ever discovered that he'd revealed the truth…

"I'm sorry," he gasped, shaky with the aftereffects of his retching. "I don't know. I don't know…"

Prompto sat beside him for a long time, even after he'd finally brought his stomach under control. Then he slipped his arm around Noctis' waist and helped him carefully to his feet, as if he were made of cracked glass. "It's okay, Noct," he said, though they both knew it wasn't.

After a beat of troubled silence, Prompto suggested, in a somewhat lackluster impression of his typical enthusiasm, "What say we go round up the birds? Make ourselves useful while we wait for the others?"

Noctis could do nothing but numbly agree. He followed his friend into the wood, still thick with the last remnants of night, his steps listless.

It didn't take them long to track down the chocobos; all three were gorging on what might have once been a voretooth, recently deceased. Gladio's mount popped brightly upright to greet them, a large clump of bloodstained fur hanging from her beak. Ignis' shook her tail feathers haughtily, as if daring them to protest. Their own bird gazed at them with a look that promised a fate similar to the voretooth's.

"Huh," Prompto muttered. "Sometimes I kinda think our chocobos might be broken."

Some of Noctis' despair, clinging to him like the fine dust of the deserted farmhouses they'd encountered so often throughout their journey, eased at his friend's remark.

"I read once that they're actually omnivores," he volunteered, hesitantly. His voice rasped like the engine of a disused car.

"Well, that's a, um…a… Let's just settle on that's," Prompto replied, his eyes fixed on the arc a steaming liver made as Gladio's bird tossed it playfully through the air.

Noctis smiled wanly, an expression that never made it past his best intentions and therefore didn't actually reach his lips. But it helped. Prompto's optimism wasn't indestructible, but it was infectious. Between his friend's ever-running commentary and the onset of the dawn—which was washing out the few stars visible beyond the forest canopy, even as he watched—his own darkness had brightened, ever so slightly.

They returned to the site of the demolished clearing just as the sun's first rays flooded the woods. Prompto veered away with the chocobos, leading them down an embankment to a cold, rushing little stream at its base. Noctis waited up top, leaning tiredly against a tree. From the far end of the clearing, he heard voices, rapidly growing nearer.

Which meant Gladio and Ignis had returned. He tensed, not wanting to listen to their worry as they discussed him behind his back.

"…did seem stronger than usual," Ignis was saying. "All its standard weak points appeared better armored, much like the Red Giants we encountered in Insomnia. Do you suppose these are a different breed?"

Some tension in his chest eased, just a bit. Red Giant tactics—he could handle that.

"Maybe. Would be easier to take 'em down if Noct had a functional blade," Gladio groused. "Oh wait, he does."

Noctis froze, his relief unceremoniously crushed to death by a mountain of anxiety.

Ignis, barely visible through the trees, stopped.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Gladio," he said quietly, "but it seemed as if you were about to suggest Noct wield the very blade he died on—the one his own beloved father drove through his heart."

For a moment, the look Gladio returned him was prickly with rebellion. But it quickly died. Sighing, he leaned back against a tree, his face gone tired and—startlingly—vulnerable.

"No," he relented. "No, I'm not. I hate that thing. I'd just as soon we'd left it behind."

"But you're angry at Noct."

"I'm not that either," Gladio replied. He didn't elaborate.

Ignis was quiet a moment. Then he murmured—softly enough that Noctis had to strain to hear, "That was a post-traumatic reaction if I've ever seen one, and you know it too. In fact, it wasn't overly dissimilar from your own episode the other day."

What? Noctis frowned, his mind casting about for what Ignis could possibly be referring to.

Then it tripped on a memory—something inconsequential, or it had seemed so at the time. They'd had difficulty pulling Gladio out of the end of a battle with a pack of Hobgoblins. For several moments after the creatures had dissolved into miasma, he had continued to whirl around, eyes wild and distant and blade at the ready. Noctis and Prompto had gotten distracted with new arrivals and had forgotten about the whole thing; but now that he thought back, he could vaguely recall Ignis somewhere off behind him, speaking slowly and softly, easing their friend gently back into the present.

And Noctis had utterly failed to notice—had gone on with his day as if his were the only cares in the world; as if his friends hadn't also lived through a decade of hell. Shame filled him.

"He was caught in the past," Ignis was continuing. "It was almost as if he were reliving his death on the throne."

"Yeah," Gladio replied lowly. "I know. Took me a few minutes to get there, but I saw it too."

Noctis had to clamp his hand over his mouth to keep a slightly unhinged laugh from spilling out, realizing how deranged he would appear to anybody who might be watching. But he couldn't help the mad relief that rushed through his body. Relief that they hadn't guessed, and a bleak, bitter humor.

How surprised would they be if they had known—when all was said and done—that he had almost welcomed that final death, there on the throne. It had been a finishing; a mercy; a deliverance.

Or so he had thought at the time, anyway.

But they hadn't guessed. That was what was important.

Noctis took a few deep breaths, forcing himself steady.

Then he arranged himself back into the casual, generally unbothered individual his friends had always known, and stepped into the clearing to rejoin them.

xxx

A/N: Feel free to revisit Noct's opening dream scene back in Chapter 11 (R&R) if you need to.