caelumdevium / noctis lucis caelum.
THE RING FEELS ALMOST … WARM, in his pocket. noctis hardly understands what’s happening, eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks, feeling suddenly so faint —— he blacks out, briefly, and comes to in that same split second.
and he’s in the throne room, stands at the threshold. with ignis. his ancestors. his father, in his spectral form ————
and himself. older, certainly by more than a few years ; hair longer, let down, with facial hair. noctis feels his skin crawl, watching his future self as he sits tall, determined, not quite so much resigned to his fate as he is welcoming it, even when the first blade pierces his chest. it’s not in the same way that these ancestral arms had once bestowed upon noctis their power.
this time, his future self is visibly weakened by them. they’re killing him.
noctis’s eyes widen, and he sees ignis then lurch forward, pained, lashing out. he cries out for him, but he can hardly hear himself.
another blade pierces his older self’s chest, through ignis —— through his father. he hears ignis begging for it to cease, and yet more and more blades come, and noctis suddenly feels sick. he hears his father’s voice once again, hears him speaking with ignis, about him, and his eyes once more well up with tears.
please, ignis. take care of my son. continue to love him. it is not such a terrible thing.
“ dad. ” spoken in a sob, and he feels like a helpless child again, the scared little eight - year - old who had hardly stood a chance against a daemon.
trust in me, dad. please.
his voice —— that of his older self, at least. but it’s not that noctis who his father looks at. for his father makes eye contact with him, instead, acknowledges his presence, a simple nod, and a smile. and, then, he stands before the throne, the final blade at the ready.
that blade pierces through his chest, and this time, noctis feels it, cries out as he is suddenly thrown back into reality, back against ignis, the man held tightly in his arms, stunned into silence, sobbing quelled.
his father had known the entire time. his father had sent him away from insomnia so that he could come back —— for this. and he finds himself unable to maintain the resentment he once felt for his late father’s decision to withhold his motives from him.
how could anyone expect a father to explain to his son that he was fated to die ?
ignis’s voice breaks him from his thoughts, unleashes a new steady stream of tears down his cheeks —— i love you, too. gods, it feels so good to say it —— and he feels ignis begin to move, presses lips to his throat, makes his way up his face. and noctis doesn’t move, lets him explore until they’ve found his lips.
and noctis kisses him back, just as desperately, grabs hold of his shirt with fists again and suppresses the whine that’s building at the back of his throat, and hiccups on a sob once ignis has broken it to speak again.
i’m with you, my heart. until the end.
and noctis inhales, sharply, is immediately reminded of that moment between them in the hotel room, ignis sitting upon the chair beside him as he laid, defeated, in his bed.
perhaps it might be best if we brought our journey to a close.
he realizes, in this moment, that ignis had known back then, too. and the more he allows himself to think, the more he quiets, calms himself. not quite yet ready to resign himself to his fate —— but he reckons if he can just allow himself to not think of it for a moment …
then ignis kisses him again, continues to explore his face, kisses away tears, kisses his eyes closed, and he’s slowly allowing himself to relax when ignis requests that they retire to the sleeping car. noctis draws in a calming breath, nods his assent.
i believe we’ve both had more than our “ daily recommended dose ” of gladio.
noctis snorts. yeah, he’s still pissed at gladio, whether he’s right or not —— but when ignis smiles at him like that, he finds it hard to keep his shell from melting. even still, he’s far too distracted by that vision to relax entirely.
“ ———— yeah. ” and his hands relax, too, unfurl from their fists and find their way to ignis’s free hand. “ up and at ‘em. ” he helps him up, slowly, and once ignis is on his feet he takes one of his hands away from ignis’s to settle it upon the small of his back, walking him back in the direction of the sleeping car.
by some stroke of luck, they don’t run into gladio or prompto at all —— he’s not particularly in the mood to speak with gladio, either, and prompto would ask more questions than he’s in the mood to answer —— and he leads ignis to a free cabin, slides the door closed behind them, and sits him down upon the bed.
the walking stick is propped against the wall ; he removes his shoes first, then helps ignis with his own ; and then the two of them lay down, noctis still facing ignis — a hand raised to carefully stroke the man’s cheek, traces the bottom of his scar, where it fades into the rest of his cheek.
it makes him wonder if ignis could still see when he’d found out. it makes his chest hurt, a phantom pain from his father’s glaive. he swallows glass.
gods, he’s not ready to die.
and finally, he breaks his silence.
“ ———— h - how long have you known ? how did you find out ? ” he knows the question is kind of vague. he tries to explain. “ a - about … about … ” and he can’t bring himself to say it. to speak his inevitable death into existence. he swallows more glass, stifles a whine ( scared — he’s still so scared ).
he feels small. and his voice can’t help but reflect it.
“ about … what happens —— t - to me ? ”
he can’t quite put his finger on why it bothers him so much every time that Prompto and Gladio offer him assistance, every time that he feels a foreign hand upon his shoulder or bicep or the small of his back, and yet he is so willing / so eager to relinquish all of himself to Noctis — to hold his hand as a counterbalance to his rising weight, to allow Noctis to settle his hand so perfectly within the small of his back that he cannot imagine existing without it.
( Prompto and Gladio are his friends, are they not? which is precisely why he knows that they now see him as a weak link. It hurts, but he supposes there’s nothing to be done about it. He supposes they might even be right. )
He loves and trusts Noctis above anyone else because Noctis doesn’t “lead” him — only walks beside him, at a considerately slow pace, wordlessly halts him more than once upon discovery of some obstacle in the walkway.
Gods, I’m so sorry! I---I didn’t realize —
❝ No apology necessary, ❞ he replies to an audibly distraught woman, all charming and amicable. ❝ I ought to have been watching where I was going. ❞
( He loves and trusts Noctis above anyone else because he knows that Noctis will recognize the bitterness beneath the wit. )
Finally, they’re rounding a corner, stepping over a threshold, and Noctis is patting his back in an “okay” to sit down — takes the walking stick from his searching hand and props it against a wall ( which Ignis hears with the softest onomatopoeia, and notes for later retrieval. ) He trails fingers along the bed cover, tries to discern the bed’s size / where, precisely, Noctis has deemed he sit / cants his head left and right in what he can only presume is a very foolish-looking attempt to gauge the size of the room by the ambient sounds reverberating from the walls.
He hears a rustling of clothes that he cannot identify, which sends a jolt of fear through him, and he’s just about to ask Noctis to say something when he feels fingers untying his shoelaces / hands gently slipping his shoes from his feet and setting them aside. Noctis sits beside him, urges him to lie down, and it occurs to Ignis as he does so that Noctis is blocking the edge of the bed with his body so that he does not lie too close to it.
He loves and trusts Noctis above anyone else —
and, he knows that he could never deserve him.
Somehow, he manages to center his head atop a pillow, feels Noctis lie beside him and move in close until their breaths break against each other and their noses brush. Noctis traces the wide circle of the scar around his left eye, and there’s a passing moment in which he wonders if Noctis finds it unattractive ——— finds him unattractive.
He might have asked, if only to get rid of the damnable silence ———
but, then, Noctis asks something that stops his heart.
How long have you known? How did you find out?
❝ ——— known what? find out about what? ❞ he asks, with a furrowed brow and a frown, confused. ❝ Noct? P---Please, my heart, speak to me. Tell me what’s upset you. ❞
— about what happens to me.
He freezes, a hand halfway through smoothing Noctis’s hair away from his face, slowly withdraws as the realization dawns upon him.
❝ Regis? You ... saw that, too? How? ❞
He knows that the real question is: how did he see Regis?
and, why do the gods keep speaking to him?
❝ — in Altissia, shortly before I found you; shortly before ——— ❞ Well ... Noctis knows what happened after that. ❝ I ... had a vision — much like the one that we ... evidently shared — except, your father wasn’t there, and I wasn’t quite so ... intimately involved with it, either. Noctis, I — ❞
— I can’t live without you, I would die a hundred thousand deaths in your stead, if the gods demand a sacrifice so urgently then they can have me because I cannot and do not exist without you —
He has been selfish enough today — and, if Noctis now knows the truth, then this is no longer about him, and he must do everything in his capability to support Noctis and comfort him without reservation. ( There is room only for one martyr on this journey ——— and, it would seem that the position has been filled. )
❝ I am so sorry. I---I couldn’t tell you — not after everything that had already come to pass. I beg your forgiveness. Even in this ... interminable darkness that I have found myself in, you are still the brightest light in my life. I have only ever wanted for you to be happy, and safe. I am ... so sorry that it has come to this, but I swear to you that you do not carry this burden alone. I am here, my sweet. Although I do not anticipate that this is a great relief, I hope that it is at least a small one. I am here. ❞
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