Hey everyone! I, uh. I think I forgot to post this yesterday. Either that, or FFN is playing a trick on me (which is honestly also possible, the site has been a mess lately). But it's more likely that I genuinely just forgot to actually post the chapter - the document was prepared and everything, I just. Forgot I still had to post it. So sorry about that, please enjoy two chapters in a row!

This once again grew away from me, but I really like it! I have a lot of emotions about Gladio still, even more now that I've been thinking about him (along with the others) for like a month straight, so have a Gladio character study, kind of (I'm still not sure what deserves to be called a character study and what doesn't).

Prompts:

No. 28: "We might not make it to the morning; so go on and tell me now."
Bloody Knife | Sacrifice | "You'll have to go through me."

Warnings: Death of a parent, death in childbirth (no details)

Gladio is a protector, born and bred. It's hammered into his head from childhood, but he also takes to it naturally. He's a mama's boy through and through, and he's determined to protect her, something he never tires of telling her. She'll read him stories of brave knights saving a princess from a dragon, and he'll tell her, with all the sincerity his four-year-old self is capable of, that he'll save her from a dragon if necessary because he loves her so much. And she'll laugh and kiss his head and promise him that he'd make the most perfect knight who ever lived.

When she tells him he's going to be a big brother, he's over the moon. He spends hours with his head on her stomach, trying to hear his little sister's heartbeat even though his mother tells him she's too little to have a heartbeat yet. The last four months of the pregnancy, his mother has to spend on bedrest, and Gladio barely leaves her side during that time. At first, she reads to him to pass the time, but eventually, he can see that it's too exhausting for her to hold the book and focus on the words, even though she never outright tells him.

By now, Gladio is old enough to know that it's not dragons he'll protect his mother from, and he's starting to understand that what is happening to her is not something he can protect her from at all. But what he can do is keep her company and try to make her feel better, and so he applies his newly developed reading skills to read the stories to her instead. She often falls asleep during the story, earlier and earlier until she barely makes it through the first couple of pages, but it's alright - she used to read him stories to make him go to sleep, so it just means he's doing a good job.

One night, when his little sister is almost ready to come, Gladio says good night to his mother like always, standing on his toes so he can kiss her cheek, and then he goes to bed. He's barely been asleep for an hour when he's woken again by frantic voices, the sound of people running, and his father's voice that is tinted with an emotion Gladio has never heard from him before - fear.

He climbs out of bed and goes to investigate, but he barely makes it out into the hallway before Jared catches him and leads him to the living room instead. He keeps Gladio calm and distracts him long enough that he starts to think that everything is going to be alright after all, and when he hears the sound of a baby crying, he jumps up from the couch and takes off running towards his mother's room before Jared can stop him.

Gladio will never forget the look on his father's face that night, sitting next to the bed with the screaming baby in his arms and Gladio's mother, lying unmoving and paler than the sheets she's covered with.

Years later, his father confesses to him that he was afraid that Gladio would end up resenting his sister, blaming her for their mother's death, and were Gladio not Gladio but any other child, that might very well have happened. But Gladio takes to Iris in an almost obsessive manner, projecting all his love for his mother onto her and adding the love he's held for Iris herself from the day he learned of her existence.

A natural big brother, they call him, but to this day Gladio is not sure how much of his admittedly insane protective streak is the constant reminders of the job he was born with, how much is trauma and how much is really just instinct. It doesn't really matter, though, and he'll probably never find out either way.

What does matter is that he meets little Prince Noctis when they're both young children with poor emotional regulation and both of them have their fair share of issues to work through, so most of their encounters end in screaming matches and tears.

Gladio has met King Regis many times, and sometimes his mother's fairytales weren't fairytales at all but true stories of Dad and the King's adventures together, so he knows how impressive the man is. He's the archetype of a King, and when Gladio is told that he will one day be Shield to King Regis' son, he envisions himself serving a King much like Regis.

Noctis is not at all like his father, though, and for a long time, the thought of him fills Gladio with rage and despair because how is he supposed to protect someone who is so weak and helpless and doesn't seem to put the barest amount of effort into anything? Worse, he is supposed to die for someone like that?

He only enters an uneasy truce with Noctis when the Prince helps bring back lost Iris and even covers for her when she's about to be reprimanded. There's mutual respect between them, now, though their relationship continues to be rocky. But at least now, Gladio is able to make his peace with his role by Noctis' side, and he starts to feel similarly protective of the kid as he is of Iris.

Gladio doesn't really have time for deep, intimate friendships or other relationships that don't involve Noctis, which is probably a blessing because it seems that loud, protective part of him just latches onto everyone he starts to care about. It's something he starts to realise when he befriends the Prince's stuck-up advisor, Ignis Scientia, and makes it his personal mission to get the guy to loosen up and smile every once in a while.

Before he knows it, Ignis has somehow become his best friend, but in some ways, this friendship is even harder to navigate than his tentative friendship with Noct. The main problem is that Gladio instinctively tries to take care of Ignis the way he does with Iris and Noctis, but Ignis is notoriously hard to care for. It's something Gladio learns the hard way when polite, soft-spoken Ignis turns prickly and hissy and refuses to talk to him for a week only because Gladio suggested he go and have a chat with some of the council-assholes that have been needling Ignis endlessly over some non-issue for the past few weeks.

"I can fight my own battles, Gladio," Ignis says, and Gladio says, "I know," and perfections the art of taking care of Iggy in a subtle, plausibly deniable way. It comes in the form of casually backing up his suggestions during meetings with arguments of his own, of warm takeout boxes Gladio brings to Ignis' office because he was "getting lunch for himself and would appreciate some company while eating", of sparring matches coincidentally scheduled just as Ignis threatens to crack under the stress and desperately needs to blow off some steam.

Gladio is admittedly a bit of a hard-ass where Noct is concerned, but he'll turn right around and threaten to break some new recruit's nose who mutters something about the Prince being a spoiled brat. He hangs out with Iggy, drags him to bars every once in a while, makes sure he doesn't get crushed under the weight of the expectations and responsibilities piled onto his shoulders.

And it works, for the most part. Gladio loves them both as fiercely as he loves Iris and loved his mother, his entire world revolves around them, and yeah maybe that's not exactly the healthiest thing, but honestly, with the way this whole Shield business was beaten into his brain, who can really blame him?

What he doesn't expect is there to be a fourth person thrown into the mix. Gladio would have thought there to be a limit to how much love a person has to give, but Prompto makes himself at home in his heart right next to the others before he can even really notice it.

Prompto, in a way, is also hard to take care of. He's different from Ignis in the sense that he's desperate for approval and terrible at hiding it, but when he's offered any kind of support, he dissolves into a flushed, stuttering mess, and trying to freely hand anything out to him is a challenge. It's no secret that he's not that well off, financially speaking, and Gladio can tell that eats at him, especially surrounded by people who have more money than they can spend in one lifetime. But he absolutely refuses to let them buy him anything, and it takes Gladio a while to figure out where the line is - what he can just casually pay for despite Prompto's protests and what will make Prompto feel more miserable than if he just let him pay for it himself.

The kid soaks up affection like a sponge, and Gladio's always been tactile, so he makes it a point to initiate physical contact frequently, much like he does with Iris - headlocks, ruffled hair, one-armed hugs when they're joking around, and Prompto seems to thrive under the attention.

When they leave Insomnia for Noct's wedding, it's not long before their world crumbles before their eyes, and suddenly, Gladio has to come to terms with his father's death - and his own, subsequent promotion from Shield to the Prince to Shield to the King. The pain is raw and makes him angry - his sorrow has always manifested in the form of anger, in the end.

But after some time, the pain isn't quite so sharp anymore as it dulls into an ache, that's sometimes more or less noticeable, but almost always bearable. Despite their circumstances, Gladio feels more content than he ever has before, especially once he knows Iris is safe in Cape Caem. He has three of his four favourite people with him at all times, and he's always loved camping - it's really not all terrible.

That is, of course, until they get to Altissia and everything goes downhill faster than any of them can process. Within mere weeks, Ignis is blind, Prompto is gone and Noct is an empty shell of himself, and Gladio can feel everything he cares about crumble beneath his hands and run through his fingers like ash.

What use is he to them, he wonders, if he can't do a damn thing to protect them? Why would the Astrals - the universe, whoever - tie his heart to those people and then rip it apart within the blink of an eye by putting them through the most horrifying things Gladio can't even dream of protecting them from?

It eats at him for ten entire years until they get Noct back. By now, they all know about the prophecy, courtesy of Lunafreya's dead dog who showed Ignis a cruel prophecy as the last thing he ever saw before the ring burnt away his vision. And they all agree, of course, that they won't just stand by and let it happen, not on their watch. They inform Noct of that, briefly, because there's really not much to discuss there - they are going to save him, no matter what it takes.

Gladio is determined to finally make things right, and so they set out to Insomnia to reclaim Noct's throne. Ardyn sits on it like a content cat, sprawled out as he awaits them, expression warping into the grin of a predator when they approach him.

Ardyn hits them with some sort of spell, the three of them, and Gladio crumples to his knees, fighting to keep his consciousness. Next to him, Ignis and Prompto collapse to the ground and lie unmoving, and Gladio fervently hopes Ardyn didn't kill them - he'll tear the bastard's throat out with his bare hands if he did.

"What did you do!?" Noct demands, horrified as he stares at their bodies on the ground.

"They have no place in this, the battle of Kings," Ardyn purrs, and suddenly, he's no longer on the throne, instead standing on top of the rubble grinning down at Noct. "Come, Noctis!"

With all his remaining strength, Gladio struggles upright, sword in hand as he staggers forward.

"You'll have to go through me," he says, standing proud and unwavering, sword lifted in a protective stance in front of Noct - in front of all of them.

And this time, he's not going to fail.

I'm a little worried about all my Gladio stuff sounding a little repetitive (this is the third one about him that's done in the style of a character study), but I have a lot of thoughts and emotions about this guy so that just kinda happens. I hope you liked it!

There's slight canon divergence because I really wanted Gladio to get a shot at protecting them, and I wanted it to be meaningful, so I had to tweak some stuff. I imagined him resisting Ardyn's spell through sheer stubbornness, lol.

We're in the home stretch babeeey, only three more to go!

Thank you for being here, take care and have a nice rest of the weekend!