#as a cover up for spilling the beans that the crowned prince is missing to thw whole kingdom | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asidian · 7 years

Note

I... woke up with a prompt? @_@ One of the bros dies at some point in the journey, but the spirit of this bro follows the group around and is still able to influence the surroundings. (like he can still move things with the same strength as when he was alive) However, Noctis is the only one who can see/hear this spirit.

Author’s Notes: Thank you for this lovely prompt. I… kind of got carried away with it, and it ended up a bit longer than drabble length. >.>

===

Someone to Watch Over

===

It only takes a second.

In a single missed strike – in a single call for backup on the radio – the tide turns.

The metal soldiers of Niflheim arrive, and they stream out of their drop ships like water from a faucet. Standing on the edge of Insomnia, backed up against a cliff overlooking the city that used to be their home, the crown prince of Lucis and his retainers struggle to stay alive.

They keep it up until Noct's arms tremble when he tries to lift his sword. They keep it up until Prompto asks for a potion and Ignis calls back, "I'm afraid we've reached the end of our supply."

They keep it up until Gladio says, "We can't stay here," and starts cutting his way through the snipers blocking the narrow canyon they came through.

They all follow. Prompto is bleeding – stumbling – barely on his feet. Noct is scraping the very end of his magic reserves, so exhausted he can scarcely put one foot in front of the other.

Gladio clears the path, and Ignis brings up the rear, and they almost make it.

Almost.

But the next drop ship holds a swarm of MT assassins and a mech the size of a small house, and in a flurry of screaming missiles and the heat of the ensuing explosion, everything changes for good.

===

The first night is the hardest.

They set up camp outside Hammerhead, three where there used to be four.

"I could, uhm," says Prompto, hovering by the empty cook station. "I know how to make salad?"

No one answers, and finally he sits back down.

At quarter till midnight, Gladio adds some hot water to a pack of Cup Noodles and shoves it Noct's way.

He stares at it until it goes cold, and they throw it out in the morning.

===

They get lost in the Weaverwilds, out in the hot dusty desert.

None of them know the lay of the land, and Ignis had the map.

They spend the better part of a day out there, wandering across the packed, parched earth, and by the time they stagger into the hotel room at Longwythe, they're all footsore and filthy.

They drop their clothes onto the scruffy hotel carpet and leave them where they fall. They take turns in the shower, one after the next, and then they crawl, exhausted, into bed.

No one bothers to pick up the clothes.

But in the morning, when the sun's rays first peek in through the battered hotel blinds, the discarded shirts and pants make a trim line across the table, folded crisp and careful.

===

Prompto's sitting cross-legged in his camp chair, hunched over his phone, when the paper bag falls off the cook station and into his lap. It tips too far before he can grab it; a pot lid clangs out onto the stone ground of the haven, and a cascade of spoons follow.

Prompto jumps – yelps – knocks his phone onto the ground and manages to get his arms around the bag before anything else spills.

"Hey," says Noct, barely glancing up. "Tone it down."

"It wasn't me," says Prompto. "It just fell."

Gladio snorts. "What, like the wind blew it over?"

"I guess," says Prompto, uncertainly.

He kneels down and repacks the paper bag, one piece of cutlery at a time. He sets it back up by the cook station, and he ignores the fact that there's not so much as the hint of a breeze.

Five minutes later, the bag's in his lap again, and this time half of what's inside is spread across the glowing runes, stretching out toward the campfire.

"Okay," says Prompto. "Dude. That was not the wind."

Noct's tapping at the screen of his phone. He makes a quiet "hm" sound, noncommital, without so much as looking up.

Gladio rolls his eyes and says, "No one cares if you knocked it over. Just pick it up again."

Prompto opens his mouth to say that he didn't knock it over, but one look at his friends' faces makes him change his mind.

Careful hands reach to retrieve Ignis' cookware from the ground. He tucks away pots and spoons, and he wonders how Iggy always made it look so easy to find space for everything.

Prompto's just trying to cram in the last frying pan when he catches sight of the scrap of paper.

It's nothing special – just the torn out page of a notebook, covered in small, immaculately neat handwriting. At the sight of the letters, so painstakingly formed, Prompto's eyes well up with tears. He ducks his head so that Noct and Gladio won't see, and he reads through a recipe for chilli that Ignis never got to make.

Then he scrubs the back of his hand across his eyes, and he says, "Hey, guys. I'm gonna try and make dinner tonight."

He gets no answer from Noct, and Gladio fixes him with a strange, lingering look. But no one says not to, so Prompto stands up with the paper bag.

He unpacks the pots and the spoons. He digs out the meat and the beans. He follows the directions with more care than he's ever spent on anything in his life.

The chilli's not great. He burns it a little, and it sticks to the pot.

But it's the first real meal they've had in a week and a half, and nothing else knocks itself over for the rest of the night.

===

"Okay," says Gladio. "Which one of you assholes touched my sword?"

Noct shoots him the kind of dirty look he used to reserve for getting woken up at 6 am on a weekend. He says, "You think I'm gonna do weapon maintenance for you?"

And Prompto puts his hands up, the universal gesture for "I'm unarmed, please don't kill me," and says, "Don't look at me, dude. If it doesn't have a hammer and a barrel, I don't know how to clean it."

"Well, it had to be someone," snaps Gladio. "I sure as hell didn't do it in my sleep."

Noct's still scowling down at his phone, but Prompto's got this bemused sort of expression on his face. "Could've been the wind," he says, and the corners of his lips creep up a little.

"You get weirder every damn day," says Gladio. "You know that?"

===

They can't afford a hotel room, not really – but it's been a rough couple of weeks, and Noct says they can make it up by taking a hunt or two.

No one has the heart to argue with him. He doesn't really insist on much of anything anymore.

But even with a clean bed calling, he plunks himself down in one of the room's chairs and bows his head toward the faint white light from his phone's screen.

Hours slip by. Gladio finishes his book and calls it a night, and not much later, Prompto finally gives up on staying awake and crawls under the covers.

"Dude," he calls, half muffled by the pillow. "Come to bed already. You know your back's gonna kill you in the morning if you fall asleep there."

But Noct just says, "In a little bit," and hunches over further.

He drifts off around 2 am, still stretched out in the hotel room chair, chin on his chest and legs sprawled out, like a child who couldn't handle being up past his bedtime.

When Prompto wakes in the morning, the first one to greet the new day, he finds that the spare blanket from the top of the closet is draped over Noct's sleeping form.

===

"Just one," says Prompto. "Come on, dude. I haven't asked for a photo op in like a month and a half."

He hasn't asked for a photo op since Galdin Quay, that day when all four of them stood on the overlook by the ocean. He still has that picture, with the sky wide and blue behind them, smiles on their faces. The water stretches away into the distance, light shining on the placid surface, and Ignis is raising a can of Ebony as though in salute.

Maybe Noct remembers, too, because his face goes shuttered and still, the way it always gets when he thinks about Ignis, these days.

That would have been enough to make Prompto wish he'd kept his mouth shut all by itself, but then Gladio's turning toward him with a flat sort of look, the kind of stare that could wilt a cactus.

"You know what?" says Prompto, all in a rush. "Nevermind, it's cool. We've got places to be, right?" He's already fumbling to put the camera away, fingers clumsy.

"It's fine," says Noct, and his tone has just enough of an edge that Prompto knows very well it isn't fine. "Just take the picture."

Prompto ducks his head and bites at his lip. "It's really – it's no big deal. The lighting's no good, anyway."

"Prompto," says Noct, and he sounds so tired.

Prompto cringes a little, because he did that. He made Noct sound like he needs to lie down and nap for the next century and a half. He opens his mouth again, to try and wave it off, but Noct says, "Just do it already," and the words feel like shards of broken glass.

The last thing Prompto wants anymore is a stupid picture.

But Noct's watching him, and so's Gladio, and trying to back out is only making it worse. Better to get it over with.

So he gets the camera out, and he props it up on a nearby outcropping of rock so he doesn't have to waste time fiddling with the tripod. He sets the timer, and he tries for a smile, and he says, "Okay, guys. We're go in fifteen seconds."

Then he darts around to join Noct and Gladio, standing there with the Duscaen arches stretching away behind them.

The camera clicks, and whirs, and Prompto circles back around to get it.

"Sorry for the holdup," he says.

Noct inclines his head in acknowledgement and turns to start walking. Gladio falls in behind him him.

And Prompto brings up the rear, still cradling the camera. Usually, he checks the shot – but this time, he doesn't want to look.

This time, he wishes he'd never asked.

===

"How was it?" says Noct, three days later, sometime close to midnight.

His voice seems too loud in the quiet dark of the campsite; gone are the nights when they filled their idle hours with poker and King's Knight. Now there's only the silence, and the endless echoes of their own thoughts, and – very occasionally— Prompto's awkward, hopeful attempts at making conversation.

Prompto glances up at the words, blinking owlishly. "How was what?"

"The picture," says Noct, and holds his hand out, expectant.

Prompto doesn't know. He still hasn't looked at it. He hasn't turned the camera on at all, since then.

But he fishes it out and hands it over – tries for a smile. "You tell me," he says.

Noct rolls his eyes and presses the on button.

Prompto waits. He expects some kind of comment on the scenery, maybe, or the light.

He doesn't expect Noct's voice, low and shaking, to say, "Is this some kind of joke?"

He doesn't expect Noct to look up at him, jaw set and eyes bright with rage.

He doesn't expect that anger to disappear in the space of a single heartbeat, or for Noct to scramble to his feet so fast he knocks over his own camp chair, eyes wide and shocked, face so pale he looks like he's been struck.

"What?" says Gladio, looking up from his book for the first time. "What is it?"

"There," says Noct, and Prompto looks where he's pointing – sees only the forest surrounding the haven, half lost in the darkness. "Don't you see him?"

"See who?" says Prompto, but he thinks of the wind, and he watches Noct press a trembling hand to his mouth, and he knows the answer to that already.

===

Things are better, after that.

Noct talks again. He stirs himself out of the depths of his phone, and he engages in conversation, and sometimes, when they need to make a decision, he'll pause for a bit too long before laying out a plan that's actually quite tactically brilliant.

Prompto cooks, most nights – follows the instructions on scraps of paper that always seem to be tucked away in the bag with the cooking implements. He's not good at it, but before long the notes start to include helpful pointers for the things he struggles with. In time, the burned sauces and lopsided pastries become edible.

Gone is Gladio's perpetual scowl. He doesn't point fingers, now, when he wakes to find that his swords are cleaned and sharpened, set all out in a row. And every night, when they make camp, he unfolds the fourth chair.

===

The light of dawn streams in through the high windows in a wash of brilliance.

It catches the dust motes in the throne room, soft and lovely; it paints the two men standing before the throne like something from a book of children's fairy tales, picking out their Crownsguard insignia in glittering strands of silver.

Gladio's face looks carved from granite, somber and stern. Prompto's cheeks are wet with tears.

Noct watches them for a long moment.

It will be harder for them, he thinks. His part is over, but theirs – theirs has just begun.

"Highness," says a voice, softly.

Noct knows that voice. He's known it since childhood, when it tried without success to talk him out of kitchen raids and late night expeditions into the gardens.

When he glances up, past the place where two of his friends are mourning, he sees Ignis: prim and proper, eternally twenty-two. He's wearing the button-up and suspenders that he died in, and his glasses, broken on impact after that long-ago missile launch, are clean and whole.

"Hey, Specs," says Noct, and he's proud when his voice only wavers a little. "I was wondering if you'd show up."

"Honestly," says Ignis. In his tone there's a mild, fond sort of reprimand. "You know as well as I do that I've been here all along."

He takes the stairs to the throne at a stately pace – comes to stand in between Gladio and Prompto, the final missing piece of an incomplete puzzle. He holds out his hand, an offer of assistance, and Noct hesitates only an instant before he reaches out to take it in his own.

When he rises, the remnants on the throne stay behind, still pinned by his father's sword.

"Shall we?" says Ignis.

Noct glances back to where Gladio and Prompto stand, heads bowed, paralyzed in their grief. "Will they be okay?"

Ignis' hand settles on his shoulder, warm and reassuring. "We're quite capable of checking in on them from time to time, you know."

"Yeah," says Noct, and his smile is crooked and uncertain. "I guess I knew that already."

He spares one last, lingering look for the two they'll leave behind. He swallows, hard, and he silently wishes them well.

Then he says, "I'm ready," and he follows Ignis down the stairs and out the Citadel doors, into the bright light of the dawn.

#ffxv #ignis scientia #Noctis Lucis Caelum #prompto argentum #gladiolus amicitia #drabble

126 notes · View notes