May 18, 2021
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
<3 <3 <3
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
<3 <3 <3
(Slaps table) give me Nox angst. Like—Nox having a Verg Very Bad Quiet Day, and he's like trying to get away from people to /hide/ somewhere—but some snobby noble comes across him and says something snide, something horrible, that it breaks Nox's already fragile headspace and he just—crumbles. Regis/Cid/whoever you want, coming around the corner just beside the snide comment and just—seeing Nox breaking apart, falling like loose seams on a patched hole, glass shattering on marble floor.
....
.......
Ohhhh boy. Oh dear. Welp. OKAY. BUT YOU ASKED FOR THIS. Also this went majorly sideways. Yay for angst and medical side-effects of magic.
-Nox is already having a bad day. He woke up having a bad day, because the nightmares had been horrible, horrible enough that Noctis had come and curled against him, but even that hadn’t helped much. And he’s tried to put it behind him, and wear his masks, and smile nicely, because he’s not a coward and he’s not lazy, so he’ll suck it up and deal like a big boy.
-Until eventually he just- can’t.
-He can feel himself on the very, very edge of a Quiet Day, can feel his words leaving him behind and the world getting grey around the edges as memories whisper-whisper-whisper, so he excuses himself and retreats, aiming to go ... somewhere. Anyway. Away from people, away from prying eyes. Maybe the garden. The garden is usually empty this time of day and there are plenty of hidden nooks where he can just sprawl out and doze his Quiet Day away until his headspace settles again.
-“Ah, young Lord Nox,” no-no-no-not-now-please-not-now Nox ducks his head and tries to swerve around the nobleman, he doesn’t know which one he is, doesn’t care. The man steps into his way and Nox is forced to stop or run him over. Nox tries to focus on the man’s face, because eye contact is polite, but he can’t. He can’t and the world is getting grayer and the man is talking but Nox can’t quite hear him, let alone muster the mental energy to respond. A shaky glance upward and he sees the man’s lips are pursed and something cruel is glittering in his gaze.
-Past the whispering in Nox’s ears, somehow- somehow he still hears the man’s next words with perfect clarity, “Just the lack of manners and intelligence I would expect from a by-blow.” A sniff and the world still, crystalizes like old, brittle glass in Nox’s head as the man’s nose tilts upward and he sneers, “It must be such a burden on the king, to have to keep you around and smile like he actually cares about you. As if that will fool the rest of us into trusting a half-blood welp.”
-And Nox.
-Shatters.
-“The king entrusted the role of protector to you.”
-“Then why didn’t he tell me that? Why did he stand there smiling as I left? Why ... did he lie to me?”
-Empty words broken words broken time lost time shame-shame-liar-liar- sad eyes knowing eyes what do you know why-are-you-looking-at-me-like-that-whywon’tyoutrustme-
-Why didn’t you tell me?
-Are you ashamed of me?
-“Dad...”
-Sword and armor and glowing ghosts. Magic and memory and the agony of a father’s hand shoving the blade through his heart to the hilt
-Do you at least...
-“Trust me.”
-enough to sit still and die for our people?
-Dying and dead and gone, heart stopped breathing stopped everything stopped as the Void drags him in and he doesn’t have time to do more than wonder-
-Are you proud of me now?
-And then he’s under and gone and lost and there is no air he needs no air he is dead and gone and the blue is all around and he doesn’t need to
-“-breathe! Nox you need to-”
-breathe because what use is air to a dead man dead king dead prince shameful prince who at least was useful when he sat still and let others kill him so that others could
-“Breathe! Come on, snap out of it and-”
-breathe in the light of a new dawn. The least he could do was follow his father’s last orders to
- “My son. Breathe.”
-.....
-Dad?
......
-Cor has no idea really what just happened. He was on his way to deliver some paperwork to Clarus when he rounded the corner and found Nox, shoulders hunched and expression rapidly blanking with that fragile way that meant he was sliding into a Quiet Day and some lesser nobleman standing in his way saying, “-burden on the king, to have to keep you around and smile like he actually cares about you. As if that will fool the rest of us into trusting a half-blood welp.”
- Over the nobleman’s shoulder, Cor has the perfect view of all the blood rushing out of Nox’s face. He sees Nox’s face twist into something broken and lost and terrible, and even as he drops all his paperwork to the floor to angrily drag the nobleman away from Nox and throw him against the wall he knows that he’s too late to stop whatever damage the man intended to cause.
-He flings the man away from Nox with a snarl that doesn’t cover the strangle, gasping cry that drags out of Nox’s throat as the boy staggers back like he’s been physically struck. He half turns toward the nobleman to do far worse than throw him against the wall but an instant later Cor is whirling and diving for Nox as the boy just-
-Drops. Like a puppet with cut strings, his magic surging into the air without control, strong enough to knock paintings off the wall and rattle teeth, but Cor doesn’t care about that, about the potential damage or the way the world turns cold because Cor can FEEL Nox’s magic now.
-He can feel it shattering into a thousand glass shards, twist and writhe like the trembling death cry of a mortally wounded animal before it crumbles away and pulls so tightly into Nox’s core that Cor can’t feel any trace of it even through their skin contact as he frantically keeps Regis’s eldest son from cracking his head open on the marble flooring.
-Cor dimly hears the nobleman (scum) saying something but doesn’t know or care what it is, because Nox has gone deathly pale and he’s shaking and gasping with vacant eyes, like he’s drowning deep underwater. There’s a glassy, empty look to Nox’s eyes that even the worst of his previous Quiet Days never gave him, and some instinct has Cor speed dialing the Citadel medical floor and roaring for a medic.
-He’s right to call for a medic.
-Something in Nox’s frame twitches, like the flinch from being stabbed.
-And Nox.
-Stops breathing.
-Cor’s memory gets fuzzy after that from panic. He remembers yelling at Nox, he remembers slapping the boy’s cheek only to gain no response, frantically feeling for a pulse and finding one going too fast and too slow by turns like his heart is struggling to pick a rhythm and then helping that rhythm as best he could with CPR. He remembers the medics arriving, with Regis on their heels, positively flying down the hall despite his bad knee, drawn from ten floors away by the pulse of magic Nox had given out before collapsing.
-He thinks he remembers, amid the frantic flurry of medics and their tools, one of them saying that something was trying to stop Nox’s heart.
-The nobleman, now pinned down by furious crownsguard and loomed over by a screaming Axis, insists he didn’t even touch Nox, Cor can reluctantly confirm.
-It’s Ardyn, who just arrived in a furious pulse of magic, who goes pale and says, “His magic.”
-No one understands until Ardyn whirls on Regis and snarls, “His magic! It’s reacting to a flashback! It’s keeping him from breathing!”
-A medic looks up, halfway saying that they’ve never heard of magic doing anything like that in all the records of caring for Lucis Caelums but Ardyn snaps a hand out and growls, “It’s rare but it happens, believe me. Magic is will and memory and he is remembering something that was killing him. His magic is trying to protect from a threat that isn’t there, that continues to assault him no matter how tightly it guards and in the trying his magic is smothering him. Regis, you need to drag his magic out of his body. Out of his core, I’d do it myself but I’ll just make it worse. You are his father, his magic will respond to you.”
-Regis’s face loses all color, Cor feels sick, then Regis is pushing his way past the medics to clutch Nox’s hand. Magic rises and pulls and tugs with a desperation Cor can taste, “My son, my son wake up,” Regis begs.
-Nox does not respond. His eyes are vacant, so deep inside his own head that Cor fears any moment he will be dead and Cor won’t even be able to see a difference.
-Regis’s grip firms, and something unravels in the air between them, “My son. Breathe.”
-And with a stuttering wheeze, Nox’s magic suddenly unspools from his core (from his heart, Cor realizes with a lurch of his stomach, Ardyn had been right, his magic had been curled so tight around Nox’s heart and lungs and throat it had been keeping them from functioning). It unspools and Cor can physically feel the cracks in it, the shivering aches and cold memories trapping Nox in whatever nightmare caught him through the nobleman’s words.
-Ardyn sags in relief as Nox very slowly begins to breathe again, and Regis is shaking as he keeps his hands on Nox’s, keeps gently dragging Nox’s magic out into the air until the world is tinted blue and crystalline shards swirl around them like gently falling snow. Nox doesn’t react as the medics strap an oxygen mask to his face and load him onto a stretcher that Regis follows the entire way to the medical wing.
-Cor swallows his own heart back down to where it belongs, then straightens and turns to the nobleman with vengeance humming in his veins.
-Nox wakes up in the medical ward three days later, aching and sore and disorientated, but breathing on his own and free of the oxygen mask. He looks over dazedly and sees Regis slumped over in a chair, dozing lightly with Nox’s hand clutched in his own and their magics so tangled together that it takes a minute to figure out where his magic ends and Regis’s begins.
-Ardyn is on Nox’s other side, stretched out on another medical bed fast asleep with dark bags under his eyes, and Nox will later learn that Titus drugged Ardyn’s tea to make him sleep.
-When Regis wakes up and finds Nox awake, he starts to cry and Nox stares in confusion.
-Medics fuss and people explain what they know. Nox refuses to say what flashback drove him to such a dangerous low.
-Ardyn watches him rub fitfully at his chest over his heart and already knows.
-Much later, days later, after Regis finally calms enough to return to being king rather than hover at Nox’s side everywhere he goes, Ardyn murmurs, “He is proud of you, you know. And he loves you greatly. And he did back then as well.”
-Nox thinks of the Regis of this time, who smiles and laughs, who goes out of his way to spend time with him for any reason. He thinks of fishing trips with him and Regis and Noctis, happy memories that were so much fewer in his past life. He thinks of the corners of Regis’s eyes crinkling in amusement at some joke or story, so much lighter when he looks at Nox than he used to look at Noctis.
-But he also thinks of a last smile on sprawling stone steps, last minute advice that could never cover everything he wanted to say. He remembers asking for trust and getting a sword through his heart.
-“I know he did.” He whispers back, and for once Ardyn is kind enough not to call out his lie.