Summary: In small moments, Ignis agonizes over things he can’t know. Written for Day 4 of @ignyxweek for the prompt “charcoal grey.”
Grey. The color of storm-ridden skies, the color that blended into blue to make a unique hue that Ignis knew so well. A color he could see sparkle and flash in his mind if he closed his eyes for just a moment.
The color of the soft scrap of coeurl pelt that Ignis kept carefully tucked away. It had been pressed into his hands, fervently, just before he left. Over Ignis’ own protest, his head shake, his insistence that things weren’t this dire, didn’t need to be this final.
Nyx had known better.
He’d sensed it, maybe; who knew. The newspaper sitting on the table next to him taunted Ignis with all the things it didn’t say, all the information left out, everything that would remain unknowable to him for the foreseeable future.
Ignis leaned forward, hands on his knees, for a long moment, before picking up the newspaper and returning to the room to talk with the others.
Guilt, cresting like a wave. At the finality of the news for Noct, and then of course for Gladio, at the feverish sweaty grip Ignis held on his own lack of certitude, clenched deep in his secret heart.
Protectiveness, surging up in its wake. A desire for control, for a way forward. To be able to shape some small part of their fate while so much had been ripped away from them.
The rest - the rest was his alone, and he shoved it to the side until later. Pushed it away to avoid thinking about it too hard. He didn’t want to let himself puzzle it out, because he knew the answer he’d find.
Gone.
Like Clarus, like the rest of the Glaive. If the city was destroyed, they should all be gone. They’d want it that way.
Still.
He had time, hours and hours later, after the others had pushed through the raw hollow blankness enough to find sleep. Ignis didn’t turn on a light - didn’t need to, didn’t want to wake anyone. In the darkness, Ignis took out the small scrap of fur and ran it between his fingers, chest twisting in pain. He didn’t know if it hurt more to give up hope or to let it fester and swell, torturing him with possibilities.
He’d never needed to know something unknowable so badly. He’d always been able to find answers, dig deeper, make a solution, see a path.
This, though - there was a truth, hiding on the other side of this suspension, this not knowing. The uncertainty was tearing him apart. And yet he couldn't give it up.
That morning, Ignis had sent an idiotic, useless text. As if there were any towers, any charging ports left in the city. He'd sent it anyway.
He’d sent another one after dinner.
He’d probably keep sending them.
Ignis bowed his head in the dark and allowed his chest to collapse in on itself, if only for a moment. He felt his face break and twist, keeping things silent to preserve what little sleep the other three had been able to get.
Ignis heard a small, muffled noise from the tent, and his head pulled up instinctively.
He dashed errant wetness from his cheeks and shoved the small scrap back in his bag, burying his searing emotions along with it.
Collecting himself, Ignis readied a calm hand and a soft voice. He ducked back into the tent to do what he could.
(you know what? I have three days off, I have fannish things to do, I have time to write, and I have things I want to write. also, I have exactly 97 fic/lets in my Quick Fic Pick tag. you know what that means: time to go for the century!)
(and in honor of @ignyxweek and my best @stopmopingstarthoping, here’s the first one.)
(writing inspiration: here. the song is called “araw-gabi”, which translates roughly to “day and night”.)
Quick Fic Pick 98: threw away ten thousand songs
The last drops of rain slide a chilly path down the back of his neck and it’s all he can do to fight off the sheer prey-animal fear that rolls sickening down his spine -- he hates the feeling of having to look over his shoulder even in these places, in these corridors, all these rooms of stone and fortified glass and -- out beyond them, shivering on the edges of the city -- blue-light protection.
Best not to think about the source of that protection, either, or he’ll find himself having to fight off the dry-heaves as well, and just as he’s ducking into a quiet alcove, just as he’s reaching to turn off one bank of distant overhead lights so he has more shadows to hide in -- he hears it. Tentative, in the whistle of night-scented wind along the cold floors. In the draft and the lingering scents of the last of the autumn blooms, the bracing sea-breezes --
He would gladly fill up his lungs with that brine-scented breeze, but he’s drawn to the piano, to the rising music: and it starts out almost gentle, almost tentative, almost drowned out in these dark cavernous halls.
No way he’s letting it go, when it calls to him, when it sets the hooks of sweet powerful melodies into his skin, into his heart, and he takes off almost at a run, trusting his battle-honed senses to send him not into the the raging heart of the fight, but into something far gentler, far far quieter, and even as he runs the notes falter and almost trail off, and then rise again --
Open door, and one single shaft of wavering light, that he crosses in his headlong rush.
When he hears the voice, the startlingly tuneful words in the voice that he knows as a refined accent, calling out strategy and tactics or otherwise swearing up a strangely profane song -- he stops dead, whirls, doubles back.
And Nyx Ulric fetches up in that deserted chamber, wide-eyed on the threshold, eyes straining to pick out the lit candles. The graceful shadowed bulk of the piano, the graceful broad shoulders of the man at the piano, singing, his voice filling in between the notes, as the music is caught between wistful and steadfast.
Arch of that neck, sweep of an arm thrown out to the treble end of the instrument, hair fallen down from its spikes to brush gently against a still-crisp collar. Glint of candlelight catching on crystal-points in the otherwise plain white sleeve, the sparks of reflected light as delicate as the music and the rising voice --
It must be his gasp, reverent and quiet though he tries to keep it down, that catches the attention of Ignis Scientia: and the music stops mid-measure, mid-stanza, and Nyx nearly jolts himself to attention, apologetic. Still whispering, still hoping not to break the spell any further -- he turns away, and says, “I’ll -- leave you to it.”
“Wouldn’t you rather hear the whole thing? I’d like to hear your opinions.”
Quiet, unsteady, careful: all of these things, in Ignis’s voice.
The same voice that had been singing -- that Nyx badly wants to hear again.
He clears his throat. Scrapes his boots along the floor as he moves closer -- he stops a few feet away out of respect for Ignis’s space -- but that means he gets a closer view of Ignis’s shoulders falling into their easy grace once again, and the music starts over.
The voice starts over: and Nyx still doesn’t understand the words.
But does he need to, when Ignis motions him around in a pause of his left hand -- when Ignis’s mouth pulls into a small but pleased smile, the moment they can see each other. When Ignis’s eyes light up as he sings one more phrase, that’s only become familiar because it seems to be part of the refrain of the song, repeated and finally drawn out into a gentle aching descant.
Echoes falling away into a shivering anticipation of a silence.
He watches Ignis bow his head and --
Impulse, instinct, propelling his feet along and he -- can’t fight the pull any more. Can’t fight the insistent line that has led him into Ignis’s orbit, that has left him helplessly orbiting Ignis, that has gotten him into this here and now and he takes a breath, and doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s done with the movement, with falling all into Ignis’s back, the entire front of him onto the breadth of Ignis’s back and shoulders -- and Ignis, the bastard, doesn’t even catch his breath, doesn’t even feel surprised -- only pushes back a little, enough that Nyx feels nothing more or less than caught and known.
Pinned, now, where there’s no more escape and no more room to hide, and he mutters, “This was all you, wasn’t it? You wanted this? You -- ”
“As you wanted me,” is the equally quiet response. “You stole it from me. The truth. The part of my heart I could give away. You stole it from me, and you just -- I fully expected you to throw it all away and laugh and -- that wasn’t what you did at all.”
“I stole it back,” he says. “You had already taken the heart that I still had. That I didn’t know I still had. You took it and I stole your heart back. Fair trade.”
“Is it?” But Ignis is laughing, is moving, is rising -- Nyx doesn’t have time to protest the dislodging because Ignis is somehow clearing the piano bench -- he’d love to know if it was magic or something else altogether, those powerful legs maybe -- except that then Ignis is falling onto him, is kissing him, and Nyx gasps loudly and clutches at any part of him he can reach.
Fists in Ignis’s shirt, over his heart and his shoulder-blade, hanging on for dear life as the tempest builds and builds and builds between them -- razing him, Nyx, all the way down into his smallest thoughts, his faintest hopes -- he throws his entire heart and his entire mind into the conflagration, and if there’s salt on his cheeks afterwards, if there’s a broken-gentle echo of the song on his mouth, only Ignis will know, and they can keep each other’s secrets and each other’s hearts.
*
(fast-forward, to a tragedy)
Line of flash-fire, and Ignis falls to his knees and screams, the world blurring into ash and dust -- he sees the face of a child, wide-eyed, blue-eyed, brightest smile in the world -- he weeps, then, tasting the bitterness of this thing that might not even be a victory, this everlasting curse of the world he’s about to lose --
More than enough to tear him down and -- he’ll die, he knows this, he’ll die and be judged again -- and be found wanting again -- but first: Ardyn Izunia -- and he gets to his feet. He throws out his hand, throws the wrath of the Lucian Kings and Queens out, scouring him, watching as Ardyn mocks the flame and -- backs away, backs down slowly step-by-step --
“Don’t die.”
Even this strange other-world is falling away from him, dripping away in tears shaped like flame, like ashen stars, and he turns his head.
Shock roars through him, then: not the bravado that he’d mustered to challenge the Lucii and the Ring. Something more profound. Something that leaves him even more shaken.
Braids and ink-lines nearly lost in tangling lines of burned scars and blasted flesh, and a smile that nearly drives him down to his knees again.
But that is indisputably Nyx, holding him, propping him up, and the swirling lines of purple-hued flame adding to his own.
“Don’t die,” says that ravaged ghost. “I won’t forgive you, if you came to me like this, if you came to me now. You have a duty.”
“All I am now is duty,” and Ignis doesn’t even have the rage to power the words. He only has himself. He only has those broken truths.
“I’m sorry, Ignis, I’m sorry this all happened the way it did, but -- ”
“But. I know,” he says, bitterly. “I know. So -- there’s nothing else for it. Help me, Nyx, help me, guide me, I think I know what the price is -- don’t leave me.”
“Never, Ignis, never leave you, not now -- ”
The Ring’s power flares out then, last time, last light, and Ignis laughs and cries and -- sings, as Ardyn retreats, the edges of him and the Scourge blurring into ash -- even the memory of the bright child Noctis had been blurs out, too -- but the last thing he ever sees is a tear-stained smile, and ink-arrows in burned skin.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Final Fantasy XV
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Ignis Scientia/Nyx Ulric
Characters: Ignis Scientia, Nyx Ulric
Additional Tags: Lunafreya Nox Fleuret (mentioned), Aranea Highwind (mentioned), Prompto Argentum (mentioned), Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Spy Ignis Scientia, Double Agent Nyx Ulric, Double Agents, Sickfic, tradecraft, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Anger born of worry, but that's a secret, Black Humor, Inspired by Music, Ignyx week 2018
Summary: Even if they play the layered and dangerous games of spy vs. spy, this -- isn't the first time Ignis finds Nyx in his bed, wracked with pain, cracking wise even as he burns away.
Written for @stopmopingstarthoping and as my story for the prompt “kissing” at @ignyxweek -- why is it that I write angst for these pretty pretty boys more often than not?
