Gladio lay in the dark, staring up at the ceiling to lose himself in the flickers of light reflecting off the shifting surface of the canal just outside his window. There was a capriciousness to the way they danced, flitted and flew across the cerulean ceiling like a sky, and Gladio envied their carelessness.
In his hand, lay the onerous weight of his father’s medal in the palm of his hand. His thumb passed over the cabochons of rubies and red diamonds, across the brilliantly-cut baguettes of stunning clarity, of volutes and scrolls wrought in dark, alloyed gold.
The Order of the Lucentine was an award meted for exceptional valor, and was the only commendation his father earned out of direct service to the king. The riband had been lost, but Gladio remembered it from portraits of his younger father: a wide, crimson sash edged in gold, fastened regally across his chest. He was reminded, somewhere within his tormenting contemplations of the ceiling, that his father had been his age when he’d earned it.
It was too much. The quiet, the solitude, the intrusive memories that flooded him, the phantom voice of his father humming thickly, indiscernibly in his ears, though his skin knew he weight and warmth of his muted wisdoms. In his recollections, Gladio could only remember his father speaking to him in aphorisms and witticisms, taking every opportunity to import his encyclopedic knowledge of a thousand eruditions. Like he was a robot more than he was father. Gladio had always wondered if he was anything more than a Shield. Had even scorned him a little for being so single-minded. Now he wished he could remember every adage and axiom he’d ever said, and cherish them as he should have.
But these were regrets that weighed too heavily on his chest, and he knew he’d go mad without reprieve. So he threw off his covers and padded over to the door that adjoined their rooms, opening it as quietly as he could to slip inside. “Hey,” Gladio whispered as he crawled into bed beside him, pulling the covers up and tucking them back around Prompto’s shoulders. Gladio’s arm slid around his waist pulling him closer, his dampened cheek pressed to his temple as he nosed at his sunny hair. “Sorry. I just didn’t want to be alone tonight. I’ll go, I just .... needed this for a minute.”
