Noctis felt that he was a fairly patient individual. He had sat through countless meetings with droning delegates when everybody else his age was at the arcade. He had endured interviews with The Insomnian Times, Lucis Daily, and even Teen Mode—all asking the same tiresome questions. He had listened to Ravus' poetry, conquered the ruins of Pitioss, and pursued the regal arapaima through the murky waters of the Vesperpool. And he had lived in a rock for ten years.
So when he found himself standing battered and bloodied at a Coernix station's glass door—his rapidly deteriorating Shield draped limply across his shoulders—on the verge of publicly throttling the balding shopkeeper that stood sentry at the entrance, it was truly a moment for the books.
"All…I…need…is an antidote," he growled, over-emphasizing each word in a desperate bid to delay the moment he became the first Lucian king in (recorded) history to instigate a fistfight with one of his commoner subjects.
The shopkeeper was unimpressed. "No shirt, no shoes, no service," he repeated, crossing his arms and staring pointedly at Noctis' bare, mud-caked feet.
"Do you see this man?" Noctis hissed between clenched teeth, shifting Gladio on his shoulders. "He's been badly poisoned and is going to die if I don't get him help. I swear to you I'll pay you whatever you want, but I just. Need. An antidote."
The shopkeeper rolled his eyes. "If I only had a gil for every poor bastard who came in here with a friend on his back crying about him being dead. Sorry, kid. Rules are rules. There's a hose out back if ya want it."
Noctis growled audibly, a guttural sound that gave him the microscopic satisfaction of watching the man edge backward. "Look," he said. "I have money. Enough to restock all the antidotes in your store, with more to come later if you want it." Balancing Gladio precariously, he reached clumsily into his pocket, the effects of the energy drink making his movements jerky and uncoordinated.
And that was the heart-stopping moment he realized he didn't. Have money, that was. Of course he wouldn't—these were his sleep pants. His wallet was somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, feeding some overweight grouper that would one day end its life on Noctis' fishing line, completing the cycle by then becoming his dinner. Noctis would be eating his own gil.
"Er…that is…I did have money…" he amended, frantically turning the pocket inside out to reveal old lint, crumpled gum wrappers dating from before First Altissia, and a fishhook. Reaching into the other, he rifled feverishly through it as well, knowing he would be met with the same results but delaying the inevitable for as long as he could. "Uh…if you'll just give me a second…I'm sure I'll be able to find it here in a moment…"
"Is that a Big Blaze Bahamut lure?" the shopkeeper interrupted, his tone shifting markedly.
"Um. Yeah?" Noctis said, the object in question hanging loosely from his fingers.
"Boy, if you tell me the story of how you got that thing—and help me put the stock out on the shelves while you're doing it—I will happily give you an antidote," the man said, suddenly all smiles.
"You don't…you wouldn't just want to keep it?" Noctis asked, distractedly picking at the mess of pocket threads that had become tangled around its hooks.
"Naw, I'd never demand payment with a gem like that. A story's good enough. C'mere, kid, bring your friend inside. Just put him on the floor, right there. Take this antidote—yep, tilt his head back, just like that…there. Should kick in and start fixin' things right away, but it'll be about twenty minutes afore he wakes, feeling like he's been backed over by a truck. Good? All right, now let's hear it."
Noctis smiled, relief and the chemicals from Prompto's Power-EX combining to imbue him with a distinctly giddy surge of energy.
"Well," he said, grinning sloppily. "Let me tell you about the time I went head-to-head in single combat with what the locals liked to call the Liege of the Lake…"
xxx
Gladio woke from poisoned-induced fever dreams to a reality that was much worse.
In this particular version of what was now apparently his life, Noct seemed to have been transformed into a peppy, upbeat shop boy, whistling old cartoon ditties as he stacked sardines on a shelf. A rounded, middle-aged shopkeeper emerged from a room behind him, his hand brimming with curious, colorful objects.
"Now this one," the guy was saying, his voice awash with the enthusiasm of a kid at Yuletide, "got me the pink jade gar. Y'ever land one a'those, boy? Two sunsets I hounded that thing, just me and the swamp and the fish. Nearly caught my death from the bug bites alone. But I wasn't about to let sumthin like that distract me from the crowning glory of my life, ya feel me?"
"Yeah I do," Noct breathily replied, rapt with attention.
"Here, I gotcha one even better. Stand by a moment and I'll be back in a jiff."
"Better than a Big Master Typhon?" Noct called to the man's retreating back. "Not possible." Returning his attention to the display, he flipped a can of tomatoes in his hand and perched it jauntily on the shelf.
"Daemons," Gladio breathed. He flopped his head back and stared up at a ceiling interlaced with exposed piping and a lazily turning ceiling fan, flies buzzing sluggishly about. "They look like us now. This is hell."
"Don't be stupid, Gladio," Noct said from behind his display. "If this were hell, Ardyn would be here in his douchemobile and two-thousand-year-old scarf making us listen to him recite weird poetry while Ignis popped in from the Afterlife to remind us all to put on our sunscreen."
"Fair," Gladio muttered.
A bell rang from somewhere behind him. Craning his neck, Gladio belatedly realized he must be lying on the floor of…a convenience store? —A Coernix, from the looks of its merchandise. A pair of customers was now standing in the glass doorway, peering at him uncertainly.
Grunting, he attempted to roll over onto his stomach, but stopped as the ceiling fan began whirring like a chopper rotor, the piping revolving around it in a sickening fashion. After a moment, the new arrivals simply stepped over him, casting little glances at him from the corners of their eyes but otherwise appearing largely unrattled. Gladio tried to remember in which part of Lucis it was the most normal for half-dead people to lie sprawled across gas station floors.
Finally achieving a state of proneness, he pushed himself up to his knees. Breathing harder than the exercise warranted, he watched as the blood-streaked, pajama-clad King of Lucis built a pyramid out of canned soup, humming the brand's jingle beneath his breath as he worked.
"You look like crap," Gladio informed him.
"Your friend's right, boy," the storekeeper agreed, reemerging from the back of the shop. "Probably shoulda' had you clean some of that blood off afore you scare the customers. Here, take this paper towel I was using earlier, tidy yourself up a bit."
Noct accepted the stiff, slightly rumpled, partially used, one-ply square and began disgruntledly scrubbing at his forehead. "Me? I'm the one scaring the customers. Not this whacking great shithouse lying on the floor here," he muttered, the paper scrap utterly failing to improve his face.
Gladio's eyes narrowed. "Noct. Are you drunk? You seem kind of…chatty."
Noct stopped to think about that a moment, his eyes bleary and unfocused. A sheen of sweat covered the back of his neck, unwarranted for the mild fall afternoon. "I think…maybe? I had two of Prompto's kupoberry gutter sludge drinks. For the record, I don't think a kupoberry ever even set foot in the same factory as those things."
"You drank two?" Gladio repeated, aghast. "Two Power-EXes."
"How else was I supposed to get your twelve-ton ass into this nice gentleman's store? MTs don't exactly keep a well-stocked supply of curatives in their Magitek engine cupboards," Noct retorted.
Gladio grabbed hold of the nearest countertop, hauled himself to his feet, and crossed the aisle to take firm hold of Noct's elbow. "Come on. We need to start pumping that crap out of your system."
"Bathroom's outside 'round the corner," the shopkeeper volunteered, a rainbow of bobble lures spilling from his hands. "Did I mention we have a hose?"
"Thanks for everything," Noct called, waving unsteadily over his shoulder as Gladio dragged him out the front door. "Gladio, I can walk on my own, I'm not a toddler. Not really sure what you're freaking out about, anyway, you're the one who's poisoned. I feel completely fine—"
Suddenly he stopped, his face going pale and green in turns. "Uh…" he said, wiping away the sweat beading on his forehead. "Really, I'm okay. If you'll wait, I'm just gonna step in here for a sec…"
Abruptly shoving Gladio away, Noct burst into the gas station bathroom, slamming the door behind him. The sounds of severe illness floated out seconds later.
Sighing, Gladio leaned against the wall and settled in for a long wait.
xxx
"So let me get this straight. You hijacked a dropship."
"Yep," Noctis replied tiredly, significantly more subdued than he had been roughly two hours ago. Stumbling over a half-buried log, he waved Gladio away as his Shield eyeballed him, probably wondering if it'd be easier just to pluck him up by the scruff of his neck and tuck him under an arm for the remainder of the walk back to the ship. Never mind the fact that he'd been the one hanging unconscious from Noctis' shoulders not all that long ago.
"You hijacked a dropship."
"That's what I said," Noctis ground, straining to keep his irritation in check.
"After driving the Regalia off the top of a godsdamned arch."
Noctis winced. He hadn't meant to tell Gladio about that part, but after spending the better piece of an hour on a dirty concrete floor puking out his guts into a gas station toilet—which, by its very sight and smell made him puke even more—he'd been feeling a tiny bit weak-willed and vulnerable and had spilled everything to his Shield. Figuratively, this time.
"Then you took out a couple of MTs, landed the ship, and carried me over two miles, barefoot, to get help. That about right?"
" 'Landed' is a bit generous," Noctis muttered. "You're not going to be so impressed when you see it."
Gladio was gawking at him openly now, his own bootless feet seemingly impervious to the sharp sticks and rubble that lay scattered about in the brush. Noctis uncomfortably ignored him, ducking through a bush and wearily flicking away a multi-legged creature that had gamely accepted its sudden new home in his hair.
Finally Gladio looked away, muttering obscenities in such a mixed tone of irritation and awe that Noctis couldn't decide if he were being complimented or chastised.
They continued doggedly onward, the hulking bluff and its companion arches casting long shadows in the late afternoon sunlight. Entering a field of rust-colored rubble, they fell into silence, redirecting their attention to ensuring they made it to the far side with their toenails intact—something Noctis hadn't been overly concerned with on the trip out, and which he was certainly paying for now. The calls of the wildlife began to die down, most animals retreating to the safety of their lairs before the daemons came out to hunt. And though Noctis didn't think he could so much as even annoy a Goblin right now—much less take one out—he was confident he and Gladio could be back on the ship well before dark.
And, in fact, he could see it even now, its boxy, metallic shell looking alien among the organic curves of the red sandstone canyon. Noctis cringed at the sight of it, tilted precariously like a drunken catoblepas.
"See?" he said, ostensibly stopping to survey the scene, but taking advantage of the break to warm his chilled, stinging feet against each other. "Not much of a landing."
Gladio studied the ship for a few moments before turning to consider Noctis with a look he didn't entirely understand.
"Getting a dropship on the ground in one piece at all is usually a miracle in and of itself—the hardest part of a pilot training course. Where exactly did you learn how to fly Magitek craft, Noct?"
From watching you—thirty-one times, Noctis didn't say. Shifting uncomfortably, he mumbled instead, "I didn't. It was all educated guesses and adrenaline. Kind of amazing what your brain can cook up when all of Duscae is hurtling up to meet you at a hundred twenty-five knots."
Gladio's gaze hadn't left his face. Fidgeting, Noctis suggested, rather snippily, "Well, should we get onboard, or were we thinking of practicing our hand-to-hand combat with the daemons tonight?"
"Huh," was all Gladio said, but he started forward again nonetheless.
It only took them another twenty minutes to pick their way down the hill and into the canyon, then up into the shadowed confines of the ship. Gladio looked like the family dog had just died when he caught sight of the crippled Regalia, but passed by without comment. Planting himself in front of the dropship's control panel, he flipped a few knobs and switches until the cabin power hummed to life.
"Well, she's still alive," he said, turning to face Noctis. "I think she's even flyable, though I won't know for sure till I go through all the system checks. It's been a minute since I've flown one of these, so it might take some time."
Leaning back against the console, the big man folded his arms. "Assuming I get her up off the ground, then, I guess our next question is where we go from here."
"Hammerhead," Noctis replied.
"Thought you'd say that. I'm assuming you never got ahold of Iggy or Prompto?"
"The spare phone went into the poison pit with you," Noctis reminded him. A sudden thought occurred to him, and he groaned. "Ugh, I should've asked to borrow the shopkeeper's back at the Coernix. Can't believe I didn't think of it."
"You were busy expelling all your vital organs in the bathroom, and I was recovering from poison," Gladio pointed out. "How 'bout we give ourselves a pass this time, eh? If everything checks out, we'll be airborne in the next few hours." He leaned forward to impatiently tap at an indicator, leaning back again in satisfaction as it flickered sluggishly to life. "From there it's only two more to Hammerhead, max. If Iggy and Prompto are waiting, we'll see them by morning. If not, I'm sure Cindy'll let us borrow her phone."
"You, anyway," Noctis said. "It'd probably be better if I kept my distance from her. Just in case."
"Yeah," Gladio said after a short pause. "Probably so."
The big man set to work checking systems and running diagnostics. Noctis scowled as his friend slid a stack of checklists from a thin, easily-missable drawer beneath the console, recalling his own harried search for an instruction manual. Then again, he more than likely would have taken out an arch or two in the process of reading it; he had to admit he'd been rather shocked to discover them all still intact.
Noctis sagged into the copilot's seat as Gladio busied himself around the ship, his eyes glazing as he stared unseeingly across the cockpit. The effects of the Silence spell, though an indisputable improvement from listening to Titan all day, made him feel slightly fuzzy, and his body's attempts to expel its own poison from his system had completely done him in. Propping his chin up on his hand, he felt his eyes grow heavy.
[Aranea has been teaching Gladio how to fly. They make a cute pair, really, and any other time Noctis would think it sweet.]
[But he already knows how this story ends.]
"No…" Noctis mumbled into his hand, struggling to wake. He could hear Gladio muttering over the circuit breaker panel behind him, but he couldn't open his eyes, and the dream swallowed him up, and he became it.
[All right, bigshot, you think you're so smart, tell me this: What's max airspeed with the ramp down?]
[Gladio sits in the pilot seat of Aranea's dropship, easing the stick back into an unhurried climb. Oily dark clouds skim past the windscreen as he replies, One twenty-five, but only because you modified the door. Otherwise we'd be running slower than snot as opposed to, say, a geriatric snail.]
[Careful what you say about that 'snail,' or she'll dump you and that witty ass of yours straight into the Nebulawood—]
A thick stack of checklists slammed onto the console in front of him. Noctis gasped and jumped, staring around with wild eyes.
He found Gladio looking back at him, his expression slightly sheepish. "Sorry," he apologized. "Didn't mean for that to be so loud. You okay?"
"Yeah," Noctis hoarsely replied, his heart still racing. "I'm good. Just dozed off for a sec."
"Was more than a second," Gladio said. "Been a few hours. Everything checks out and we're good to go."
That would explain why his arm was numb. Noctis blinked, then rubbed at his eyes. They felt gummy, like the whole inside of his head was coated in a fine translucent film. It was hard for him to see clearly through it, hard to wake up.
But now Gladio's gaze was lingering, watching him with that assessing expression of his. He had to wake up. Shoving himself to his feet, Noctis swayed slightly, but finally felt a modicum of focus return. "So I didn't burn out the engines?"
"Nah," Gladio replied. "Pretty hard to do that, honestly. Looks like all you did was engage the thrusters without disengaging the standard flight controls first. Turboprops didn't like running in both modes at once. Next time you just need to remember to run the stability actuators—"
"Gladio," Noct interrupted. "There will never be a next time. Ever. When we land in Hammerhead, that's the last time you'll see me willingly set foot in one of these things ever again. You can go hobnob with the clouds and birds and whatever all you want, but the only way you're getting me back into one of these is if I'm dead. Or incredibly inebriated." He pulled himself up to his full height, still (much to his annoyance) barely enough even to clear Gladio's shoulder. "And I'm letting you know right now that I'm never touching any alcohol you give me ever again so you might as well not even think about trying to get me drunk is that fully understood?"
Gladio grinned. "Roger that, Your Majesty. Too bad—if I'd known it was your final flight I'd've brought along the party. Guess we'll just have to settle for you strapping into your seat instead…"
"Oh. Right." Noctis settled back into his chair, tightening the lap belt around his waist.
Gladio flicked a few switches and the engine began to spin up. It rose into a high-pitched keen before something bigger and more heavy-duty kicked in, imbuing the ship with that steady, lulling vibration Noctis had noticed on his first boarding.
Pulling back on the stick, Gladio took them up into the night sky. Moonlight glinted off the arches as they passed, but the darkness allowed for no other frame of reference. It was a bit of a gut-churning sensation, to feel himself pass through space so quickly without being able to see anything move. But his stomach settled soon enough, bringing with it an increasingly familiar lassitude. Gladio punched a button and eased the throttle back, and Noctis felt his eyes ease closed along with it.
[He releases pressure on the stick and they level off, maintaining a steady altitude between a pair of heavy cloudbanks. Otherwise invisible in the darkness, the lurking storms are only made discernible by the ship's red and green nav lights glancing off their shifting surfaces—]
"I think one of the breakers popped," Gladio said. "Wanna go back and flip it for me?"
Blinking sleep from his eyes, Noctis unbuckled his seatbelt before groggily stumbling back to the breaker panel. Locating the offending circuit, he punched it back in, then turned to stare blankly through the grill into the darkness.
[He looks fixedly through the windshield into the black, eyes wide and sightless. Waiting for the inevitable.]
[And soon enough: something huge and dark slams against the windscreen, fracturing the plexiglass and pitching the nose off course. Gladio and Aranea both swear viciously, fighting for balance. Aranea has the stick, and is bringing the ship back under control. But it's already too late: an impossibly long appendage—mostly just a tentacle tipped with claws—punches clear through the windscreen and then her chest, sending blood splattering across the cockpit. She doesn't even make a noise as she crumples to the floor.]
[Fires have flared to life along the circuit breaker panel, and showers of sparks are now the only light source in the cockpit. The control panel has gone dark and they are falling. Or are they rising? Up or down, the thick blackness makes orientation impossible. Gladio is still and silent. The daemons are boiling into the cockpit now, and Noctis woodenly turns his head to look.]
[Bahamut stares back at him, looming until his remote, off-human face is all Noctis can see.]
Found you…
"…oct…Noct!"
Noctis blinked, surprised to find himself staring not at Bahamut, but Gladio.
"Uh, yeah…yeah, what is it? I popped it back in," Noctis said, scrubbing a hand across his face. How long had he been gone? Apparently only a few seconds, as Gladio hadn't even left his seat yet. He was poised and ready to, for sure—he'd turned all the way around and was watching him closely. His expression was even, but there was a pinched sort of edge to it.
"I know," Gladio replied quietly, unblinking. For a moment he looked like he wanted to say something else, before abruptly changing his mind. "I asked if you could hand me a screwdriver."
"Oh yeah…of course," Noctis said, leaning over to rifle through the kit. He tossed the tool at his Shield, who swiped it easily from the air. Swinging himself beneath the console, the big man stretched out on his back, his legs sprawled across the cockpit floor.
"So who's flying the ship?" Noctis asked. "Autopilot?"
"Yeah." Gladio's voice was indistinct, swallowed up by the unrelenting din of fans and electronics. "I activated it once we hit altitude. Figured I'd fix a couple of these dead connectors while there's nothing else to do."
"It's really incredible you're able to do that, you know," Noctis mumbled, rubbing listlessly at his eyes. "You all picked up so many skillsets during the Long Night. All I did was learn how to die."
He realized his mistake the moment the words left his mouth. His catastrophic, fatal mistake.
Panic bloomed as his lethargy fled, leaving him rigid with terror.
Calm down act normal maybe he didn't notice… Gladio would think he was talking about his sacrifice on the throne. It would be okay. He would be okay.
Gladio slid out from beneath the panel and slowly sat up. He pinned Noctis with a stare, the screwdriver forgotten in his hand.
"Noct," he said.
Noctis forced himself to look his Shield in the eye, twisting rigid face muscles into as neutral an expression as he could manage. "What?"
"You weren't really sleeping, were you."
Noctis let out a sickly sounding laugh even as his terror soared. Casual casual be casual— "According to you I was out for a few hours, though you could've fooled me—"
"Don't," Gladio snapped, suddenly angry. "Don't do that. Don't lie to me."
His Shield stood, unfolding to his impossible height, and strode toward him across the cockpit. Neither fight nor flight was an option; Noctis felt rooted in place, his mind numb, fear buzzing in his head. It was as if he were eight years old again, crippled and trapped in a chair. Gladio came to a stop less than an arm's length away, towering over him.
But when he spoke again, his voice was level, even gentle. Dragging his eyes up to Gladio's face, Noctis was bewildered to see nothing there but pained concern.
"Talk to me, Noct. Please. All those years in the crystal. What really happened?"
Gladio didn't do gentle. Noctis felt himself begin to come undone. His breath came in shallow gasps now, his fear impossible to hide.
His Shield reached out and gripped Noctis' arms in his huge hands. "Noct," he repeated quietly, firmly, holding his eyes.
"If…I tell you…Bahamut will kill you," Noctis choked out between gasps. He was trembling, falling apart, snapping at the seams.
A few beats of silence passed.
When Gladio spoke again, his voice was low and calm, but there was a lethal edge to it. Noctis had only heard him sound this way on a few occasions—like when they'd gone to pick Iris up from school once just in time to see a classmate shove her roughly off her feet. Or another instance when a tabloid had printed salacious lies about Gladio's late mother. And then again with the news of Insomnia's fall and their fathers' deaths. Noctis had been floundering too deeply in his own grief and shock at the time to internalize it, but he'd remembered.
His Shield's voice was soft, but there was murder in it.
"What did he do to you?"
Noctis let out a low moan. All the deaths, all the agony, all the shattered pieces of himself; the twisting of his mind and his soul as he burned and stabbed and cut into his own flesh, forcing himself past the instinctive abhorrence of it all because if he didn't, the people he loved would die; witnessing things nobody should ever have to see, telling himself he was okay, he'd seen worse when it wasn't and he hadn't; bracing the fate of the entire world on his shoulders, believing that if he ever weakened, if he ever stopped, if he ever disobeyed, he would be personally responsible for the eradication of all of humanity; and most of all, bearing it all alone alone alone…
He couldn't hold it anymore. The weight of it pushed him to his knees, there on the dropship's deck. He was made of sand, crumbling beneath the load. But he had to keep it together. He had to, because—
Then Gladio's arms wrapped around him, his Shield following him down to the floor, pulling him against his broad chest, and he couldn't remember why it was so important to pretend anymore.
Noctis broke right there, fracturing into pieces in his Shield's embrace. He wailed, a sound that turned into a raw scream from ten years of remembered pain and horror, muffled by Gladio's shirt as he pressed his face deep into the fabric.
"What did that son of a bitch do…" Gladio growled, and now the tears came, snapping apart anything that was left of him to break. Noctis disintegrated into sobs; his shoulders convulsed with the force of them, all the misery and ugliness of an entire decade tearing from his chest as if from an open wound.
After a time, by slow degrees, he began to come back to himself. As the thrumming of the engine and the sounds of his own hitching breaths entered his awareness once more, he realized he was on the floor, collapsed halfway across Gladio's lap, his Shield's tattooed arms holding him tightly. They were gently rocking, back and forth, and Noctis realized belatedly that he'd gotten snot and tears all over his friend's shirt. Some voice in the back of his mind—the one that was constantly driving him to be strong, to act like a king, to save everyone—barked at him to get up and pull himself together. But he couldn't seem to bring himself to move. An exhaustion unlike anything he had ever known settled on him, as if the wretchedness and suffering and despair he had just hemorrhaged all over his Shield and the floor were the only things that had been holding him up.
Sensing Noctis' return, Gladio made a quiet noise. "Okay?" he murmured.
Noctis nodded against his chest, even though he didn't think he was. He still couldn't comprehend the thought of standing, the mountain of effort it would entail. Gladio didn't press him, instead maneuvering them both back to settle more comfortably against the bulkhead.
And, with a long, shuddering sigh, Noctis began to talk—haltingly, at first, his voice hoarse. But soon the words were pouring from him in a rush. He told Gladio about Reflection and the distorted version of reality he'd been made to live and relive, year after year—that Bahamut's proclaimed "time to reflect on his destiny" had, in fact, meant auditioning for his own end. He described the Draconian's twisted games, and how they had gradually reshaped him from selfless defender of humanity to a dying, hollowed-out shell, allowing the god more of his soul to feed on with every passing year. He revealed the thirty-one flights he'd taken in Aranea's dropship, present but not, and the increasingly creative ways in which he'd been compelled to end his own life until he'd finally stumbled upon her secret compartment, and Bahamut's chosen death along with it. He talked about Prompto and Ignis and the cave full of Nagarani. He spoke of how he'd been forced to watch their fathers die, and to witness what the Ring had done to Ignis. And he talked of Angelgard, and the Draconian's punishments for disobedience, and the horror of being forced to watch the slaughter of each individual human on Eos as the price of his failure.
Because he couldn't seem to stop, he spoke in detail of many of his own self-inflicted deaths. Others he left out, still unable to acknowledge them even to himself. And he recounted that final moment with his dad—how he had watched that familiar, beloved figure wind back for the strike, right before he drove the Sword of the Father through Noctis' heart. And the terrible, convoluted mix of desolation and dark joy he had felt at what he thought was finally, at long last, an end—only to learn of Bahamut's plans for him in the god's own bleak and desolate corner of the Afterlife.
Partway through the torrent of words, Gladio had stopped rocking. Now, as Noctis finally sputtered to a stop, his friend sat motionless, muscles stiff.
Cautiously, Noctis disentangled himself from his Shield's hold to glance tentatively up into his face.
But Gladio was already levering himself to his feet. Woodenly, he stalked over to the console, his back to Noctis. Once there, he simply stood, palms pressed against the table so hard they'd gone white, his muscles rigid and protruding from his back.
"Gladio?" Noctis tried, keeping his voice even and careful, as if he were approaching a wounded animal. Grabbing the frame of the breaker panel, he pulled himself clumsily to his feet.
Gladio took a long, shuddering breath. He didn't turn around. "I should've been there."
"Been where?" Noctis asked guardedly, wiping at his still-running nose with the back of a dirty sleeve. He didn't think he liked the direction this conversation was suddenly going.
Gladio finally turned to face him. "With you. Protecting you." He laughed darkly, his eyes shining. A vein was throbbing in his forehead. "I failed you. Over and over. A Shield shouldn't outlive his king. You died, what—hundreds? Thousands of times?" He leaned back and crossed his arms, staring at Noctis almost challengingly. His eyes were haunted.
"Most Shields don't have to protect their kings from gods, Gladio," Noctis pointed out wearily. He was tired…so tired.
"What does it matter if it's a god or a garula?" Gladio retorted. "It was bad enough that I let you go off to some mystical fate that we didn't even fully understand. But now this…" His voice grew strangled and he paused, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he collected himself. "It was my duty to guard you with my life. I should've died before letting any of this happen."
"And then I'd be down a Shield," Noctis snapped. "Worse, a brother! And what good would that have done, huh? I'd be exactly where I am now, screwed up and totally falling apart, but you'd be dead."
After a thick moment of silence, broken only by the soft chimes of the flight monitoring equipment, Noctis pushed himself off the panel and made his slightly unsteady way across the cockpit. Halting in front of his friend, he looked up into his scarred, drawn face.
"Gladio," he said, now earnest, pleading. "It's like I told you before. I'm not a king anymore. Your obligation ended in Insomnia. I ended in Insomnia. Noctis Lucis Caelum died ten years from now, in another world. Here, I'm just Noct—a stranger in a strange land, like Umbra said. Not a king. Shields die for kings—not me."
Gladio's gaze swung down to meet his. It was filled with an intensity so profound that Noctis nearly stepped back out of sheer reflex. But it caught and held him, forcing him to acknowledge and accept it.
"You think that even matters?" Gladio said, his voice soft. "You think I wouldn't have either way?"
Noctis went still. His mouth fell open slightly, but he couldn't seem to remember what he'd wanted to say.
He loved his friends. And he knew that they loved him. He would die for them in a heartbeat—and had, repeatedly.
But it had simply never crossed his mind that they would do the same for him. Not just Prince Noctis, or King Noctis Lucis Caelum, 114th heir to the Lucian throne.
For him.
His throat tightened, and he was left blinking quickly as Gladio finally moved, stepping over to slump tiredly into the pilot's seat. After a moment, Noctis followed suit, shuffling back to the copilot's position. Sinking into the chair's cracked, weathered cushions, he pulled his knees up to his chest and stared unseeingly down at the control panel.
After a time, in which all that could be heard was the ever-present droning of the engine, Noctis stirred. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a bent, partially opened Cocoa-Choco Crunch, courtesy of the Coernix shopkeeper.
Tearing away what was left of the wrapper, he passed a piece to Gladio. "Candy bar?"
Gladio snorted, but accepted the chocolatey offering. "It's got lint on it."
"Fine, give it back," Noctis halfheartedly demanded, holding out his hand.
"Too late; no backsies," Gladio replied, and polished it off in one bite.
Noctis finished off his own portion and brushed the chocolatey crumbs from his hands. Avoiding his friend's eyes, he finally asked, "How long had you known? That I wasn't actually sleeping in the crystal, I mean."
Sensing Gladio's appraising look, he continued, "You'd already figured it out before I stupidly gave it away, hadn't you?"
Gladio didn't reply right away, his gaze also fixed on the darkness outside. Eventually, he replied, "If I didn't know exactly what I was looking at just yet, I was getting there real quick."
"So it was pretty obvious, huh?" Noctis asked, pulling his knees back up to his chest.
Gladio turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. " 'One hundred twenty-five knots,' Noct? Your brain just 'cook up' that number too?"
Noctis shifted in embarrassment. He really needed to get more sleep.
"So, besides the part where you suddenly knew specific airspeed limits of Imperial dropships and a whole lot more than you should about its flight controls," Gladio said, warming to the subject, "how 'bout we talk about last night in the cave when I found you digging godsdamned glass out of your arm with a godsdamned knife? You were tough, Noct, and you weren't usually a whiner, but there's no way the kid I knew would've sat quietly through that. No shame in it—most people wouldn't.
"More than that, though, we could tell something was off right from the start." He tilted his head, again regarding Noctis with that penetrating gaze of his. "Iggy's been with you your whole life, me for most of it, and Prompto long enough that the difference doesn't matter. You really think we'd be so thoughtless, so removed that we wouldn't notice any of the changes—and there were a lot of 'em, by the way—and worry?"
"No," Noctis softly replied.
Gladio grunted and turned back to the control panel. He ran a quick sweep of the gauges, occasionally glancing down to consult his checklist.
After a time, he said, "Noct. I'm sorry."
"What for now?" Noctis asked, turning to peer at him from behind folded arms, his elbows and head resting on his knees. "I'm telling you, Gladio, there's nothing you could've even done—"
"Iggy and Prompto and I drifted apart during the Night because of me," Gladio interrupted, swiveling in his chair to face him. His eyes were dark. "I couldn't come to terms with the fact that I was a Shield without a king—even if it was supposedly only temporary—and the sense that because I wasn't there, I was failing you.
"But more than that," he said, his gaze candid, "I was coming to the realization that I'd been a shitty Shield, plain and simple. I'd seen the way Regis and my dad worked together so seamlessly. As a kid, I glorified that. So when my time came, I assumed that was how things would be with you and me, right from the start. And that if it wasn't, it was a failure on both our parts. So, I'm sorry."
Noctis straightened, dropping his feet to the floor. He smiled gently. "You weren't a shitty Shield."
Gladio made a dismissive noise and turned back to the console.
"Gladio," Noctis said, quietly commanding, and his friend halted, his eyes returning to meet Noctis' own. "You were a man full of honor given an impossible task. You were made to figure out how to help your prince become a king of destiny in a matter of days when your entire support structure had been ripped out from under you. You were dealing with grief and loss of your own but determined to focus on getting your king through his. All this while giving him as much freedom as you could. Because you weren't just a good Shield, you were a good friend.
"And then," Noctis continued, still holding his eyes, "just when you thought things were coming together, you were told your entire life's purpose had been to raise that king—that friend—for the slaughter. That about right?" he finished, smiling wryly.
Gladio just stared back at him, his face unreadable.
"My dad would tell me about how he and Clarus used to fight," Noctis said thoughtfully, turning to look back out the grill. "Like coeurls and voretooths. Dad actually stabbed Clarus once, when they were teenagers. With a letter opener."
"That right?" Gladio asked, intrigued despite himself.
"Yeah. Got sick of him telling him to stand up straighter and act like a king." Noctis' mouth curled up into a knowing grin. Gladio didn't exactly follow suit, but his face relaxed slightly. "As they grew and changed together, shared crappy times and amazing ones, said things they regretted and then said they were sorry, they also grew into an understanding, over time, about which parts of it mattered and which didn't. But the main thing was that they did it together—both the good and the bad. Because they were brothers, and they knew that was more important than anything else that could—and would—come between them."
Gladio's expression had softened, and he was now studying Noctis with an odd mix of consternation and respect.
"Yeah, so, another thing that tipped us off," he said gruffly. "You dispensing wisdom right and left like a sage old man."
Now it was Noctis who turned away, faintly embarrassed, but Gladio reached out to swivel his chair back to face him. "You don't get that from sitting around doing nothing in a crystal, magical powers or no. You came out of there a king, Noct, like it or not. Not just in name—but in heart and soul. And there's not anything that's ever gonna change that."
Again Noctis found himself blinking away tears. It felt like crying was all he'd been doing, all day. The relief of sharing his terrible, soul-eroding burden had utterly drained him. Combined with his brush with Titan earlier that morning and spending the rest of the day fearing for Gladio's life, the emotional and physical toll of it all was threatening to overwhelm him.
On top of that, the voice at the back of his mind was growing more insistent, reminding him that Bahamut had promised to kill his friends if he told. And he had. He had dragged them into the Draconian's crosshairs with him, and now they would pay.
But for now, just for these precious few moments, Noctis let it rest. He let the fear and the guilt roll over him, collecting outside the doors to deal with later.
For now, he let himself be safe with his Shield.
xxx
A/N: Happy almost-2023, everyone!
For those who haven't already seen it, please do yourself a favor and head over to Tumblr to check out Boosify's fantastic art she made for this fic (and her other stuff too)!
xxx
Replying to Guest 1: You seriously know how to make a writer swoon – thank you! This is definitely meant more as a straight-through read than all broken up the way it is—a lot of the important details are lost when it's stretched out over so many months. Alas, 'tis the nature of the fanfic. But I'm so pleased you took the time to read it all (and then to let me know about it).
Sorry about the gut punch, though – it's definitely not my intention to make anyone feel disturbed. Based on the nature of what Noct's been through, though, some scenes in upcoming chapters are inevitably going to get a little sad. I'll try to include chapter warnings as needed.
Again, thanks so much for the lovely review!