Chapter Text
The explosion rips through the gathering evening, ten minutes before sunset- a blossom of fire that spreads along the glittering curve of the Wall, which would- under any other circumstance- take the beating. It’s endured far worse. Except this time-
-a private dinner with a one-trusted acquaintance from Tenebrae, a knife flashing silver, and Shield Clarus Amicitia does his ancestors proud, but not before the blade finds his King’s skin and leaves a souvenir in its wake-
-and the Wall flickers, fades- and as the poison floods through Regis’ system and his body collapses- falls.
Cor is home when it happens, four hours into what was promised to be a full twenty-four hours off. He’s asleep facedown on his couch, all the further he got into his apartment, when the explosion comes, and is thundering down the stairs to his building’s garage by the time the sirens start.
He takes his cell phone out of his jacket pocket as he’s going. He can already tell it’s going to be a waste of time, since no one’s reaching out to him- there had been about six blissful months where Crownsguard and the King’s immediate circle had been the only cell phone owners in the city, but then Libraphone flooded the market with that flip-phone monstrosity that everyone and their aunt now owns. The network carrier keeps promising a dedicated service for Crownsguard to use in times of crisis but so far Cor’s gotten nothing but excuses when he asks about progress on that front. And unsurprisingly, when he goes through his contact list, he gets loud grating beeps and an automated voice, we’re sorry, your call cannot be completed at this time, until he gives up with a growl and throws the phone back into his pocket. Welcome to the future, and all that shit.
He reaches into the Armiger next and produces a hand-held shortwave radio, and turns the dial as he reaches his target floor and breaks into a run through the garage. He gets chewed-up static, a faint garble of voices, until he ducks out through the garage’s street entrance and has the radio under open sky. It’s not a secure channel, which this radio can’t access, but it’s better than nothing.
There are people on the street, of course, looking around, craning their necks and staring up at the sky, talking, asking each other what’s happened, what do you know. They’re nowhere near the explosion, they can’t even see the smoke pillar over the buildings yet- what are they looking at? Cor looks up for himself and doesn’t see it, no smoke, orange light that’s probably fire, stars and the moon-
-and no Wall.
He finds the appointed channel and brings the radio up. “Leonis,” he barks. “Report.”
With the way today’s been going, one of Drautos’ mouthy Glaives will be manning the comms desk- but no, it’s a far more familiar, welcoming voice that answers him. “Marshal,” Monica Elshett says, a downtick of volume as she practically exhales the second syllable- toneless and emotionless to casual listeners, a sigh of profound relief to those who know her well enough to know what to listen for. A moment later she’s all business again. “It’s a busy channel, sir.”
Civilians camped on the channel, listening in. Fantastic. Exactly one thing has gone right so far, one more than Cor had honestly expected, and so of course it comes with thorns. Cor abandons his daydreams of getting a proper sitrep and adjusts his expectations.
“What can you tell me?”
“Front door is locked,” Elshett reports. So the Citadel, at least, is secure.
“Front gate’s sitting wide open,” Cor observes. His blood is ice in his veins, fear gathering as sweat along his spine, goosebumps on his arms. Is Regis alive.
“Not for long,” Elshett says, answering the spoken question, not the silent one, and it’s Cor’s turn to give that little exhale. That’s all the confirmation they can give him, with civilians listening in- it’s all the confirmation he needs. Whatever happened to Regis, they’re sure they’ll have him back on his feet soon.
And then-
“Sir,” Elshett says, a note of urgency in her voice. “We can’t see the North Star.”
Cor freezes on the spot, that ice flooding right back.
Noctis.
“Where?” he demands.
“Where else?”
Towards the explosion, of course. Cor turns on the spot and looks, and the first smudge of smoke is staining the western horizon an ugly greyish-orange. Noctis had been going to some new science museum, hadn’t he? The Scientia boy, Ignis, had been excited for it and Noctis had picked up on that, and Cor had had to rearrange schedules and post assignments four times as the exact date and time of the museum visit kept changing due to the crowds as frequent rain drove people indoors. They’d settled on an after-hours visit, so- yeah. Yeah, he’s at the museum. Which means there’s at least two of them, possibly three if Clarus decided to use their escort as free babysitting and sent Gladiolus with them. Cor doesn’t know, he’d been sent home by the time Clarus would have made that decision.
Assume the worst. Three boys, with an escort that is not responding, in close proximity to an explosion that probably damaged the physical wall, with the Wall down.
“Heading there,” Cor says to Elshett. He’ll be more useful there than at the Citadel, with everything there apparently mostly under control. “I’ll need pickup.”
“I’ll arrange it.” She doesn’t bother to ask where.
Cor is already turning to go back into the garage. He has a nice, unremarkable, Crownsguard-issued grey sedan. He walks past it. He’s going towards the incident site, towards the chaos, in the direction that lookie-loos and emergency crews are headed. A car isn’t going to get him where he needs to go. “I’ll keep this radio on me. Inform me if anything changes.” If they can’t get Regis back on his feet after all.
“Understood,” Elshett says, and the channel goes quiet. Cor cranks the volume way down and fumbles with the radio until he manages to hook it onto his belt securely enough that he’s confident it won’t fall during what he’s about to put it through.
Then he picks his helmet up off the handlebars of his motorcycle and puts it on, and slings a leg over the seat.
A moment later the motorcycle screams out of the garage, whips onto the street, and roars away into the night.
The sun sets in the time it takes Cor to navigate the streets- and the sidewalks and the footpath through a public park and that brief detour through the underground. He doesn’t notice, doesn’t care. It’s hard to tell when it’s nighttime in this city, drenched in artificial light as it is. Insomnia truly does live up to its name.
He would say it doesn’t matter- except it does.
He hits the wave of counter-traffic, finally- people coming towards him, panicked and fleeing, rather than heading the same way as him, curious and staring. A few people are bloody, many of them are dusty and coughing from the smoke. Cor has to slow down, ducking and weaving between cars abandoned and blocking the road, since the foot traffic on the sidewalk won’t be able to move out of his way fast enough. A few hasty barricades have been put up, more to stop vehicles than people, and he has to actually stop and shift one aside to fit his bike through. It’s not quite a wide enough gap and leaves a jagged scratch in the pristine black paint of the fuel tank, but Cor isn’t worried about it. He’s going to have to abandon the bike as soon as he gets to the museum, and the odds of it still being there when he has the opportunity to send someone to collect it later will be pretty low. May whoever steals it find more time to ride it than Cor ever managed.
He runs into a clear patch after that, a section of road with one lane emptied out and no sign of incoming traffic, either vehicle or on foot, and he takes advantage of it. Two blocks- he can see the damage ahead now, roaring fires, a building crumbled into the street in the distance. The power’s out here, the city strangely dark, lit only by distant fires. He takes a right, riding parallel to the city’s outer wall, heading away from the blast damage- he’s remembered the museum’s address now, and doesn’t need to check street signs to know where he is. He’s about five minutes out.
In the next intersection, an ambulance has set up a rough first-aid station. One of the EMTs sees him coming and stands in the middle of the intersection, waving their arms. Cor doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow down, just leans gently to one side to swerve around them, hears them yell fucking stop after him as he blows past.
The ambulance is facing towards the explosion site, high beams on, the light just bright enough to keep the daemons at bay. Cor realizes this when an imp bounces into the street ahead of him.
He has enough time to very clearly think, I was expecting MTs. Then he cuts the throttle, swerves, and somehow manages to not gutterball both himself and the bike when he pulls his katana from the Armiger and relieves the imp of its head with one swing.
He straightens back up and corrects the wobble that tries to topple him, but there’s something large moving in the smoky darkness a block ahead of him. He debates it- controlled dismount now and fight his way through whatever’s out there, or risk wiping out?- and sighs and brakes. He’s of no use to Noctis if he’s reduced himself to a smear on the road.
The radio is buzzing on his hip as he steers his bike up onto the curb and into the doorway of one of the buildings, as if that will protect it. He banishes his helmet into the Armiger and takes the radio off his hip and cranks the volume back up.
“Report, Elshett,” he says.
“Sir!” Monica barks in startled reply. She says something, quiet and distant, sounding like she’s talking to someone standing right next to her, before returning to the radio. “Are you there yet?”
“Had a delay, I’m ten out.” He presses his back to the wall of the building and eyes the smoke billowing in the road ahead.
“We’re getting reports of daemons in the city,” Monica tells him, and Cor snorts.
“That’s the delay,” he says.
“Glaives and Crownsguard en route to the source. I can send you backup in thirty.”
Thirty, fuck. Unfortunate, but understandable- as much as they’re at war, they trust their King and their Wall. They’re not prepared to defend their home on anywhere near this level. Organizing a response to something like this is doubtless a mad scramble this time- and only this time, Cor’s not getting caught with his pants down like this again.
“Have we heard anything yet?”
“No sir.”
She’s quiet after that, not knowing what to say. Cor glances up- still no Wall- and decides that no news is good news, just now. If something had happened and the Prince was the only one they had left-
It wouldn’t matter. At his age, Noctis can’t even wear the Ring, let alone summon the Wall. It would kill him instantly.
She breaks protocol, because why not. “Be careful, sir.”
He doesn’t have a response to that- even you too isn’t valid, she’s safe in the nerve center of the Citadel- so he just grunts and turns the volume down and hooks the radio back on his belt.
He steadies his katana on his hip and prowls forward, sticking to the wall as he peers into the smoke. A flash of scale, a hiss- a naga. Tanky bastards, with hide thick enough to repel even a sharpened katana and spit with curse-inflicting properties. They’re primarily sight-based hunters, so if it can’t see him, it won’t even know he’s here. Better for him to avoid it rather than provoke an unnecessary fight. He pushes on, slow and stealthy, pressed against the building and crouched low. It’s frustratingly slow, he’s keenly aware of every second ticking past, but he can’t rush. He has no idea what else is out there and he cannot bring every daemon in the streets down on Noctis.
He passes the naga, and once he hears its hissing fade away behind him, he celebrates a little by quickening his step until he’s almost at a normal walking pace. He does the math as he goes- how big the explosion was based off of the damage he’s seen, how badly the wall was compromised, how far he is from any potential breach, how fast various daemons move and what he’s likely to be seeing.
He comes up to the last intersection, and tucks down against the corner of the building he’s been using for cover, and blows out a long steady breath.
The museum stands alone on its plot of land, surrounded by yearling trees and manicured bushes. It’s shaped like a lopsided pentagon. Two of the outer walls, the ones facing west and southwest, are made entirely of stained glass, an abstract pattern of reds and oranges and pinks and deep purples. It probably looks stunning when the western sunlight catches it in the afternoon. Right now it’s lit up hellishly, glittering red back at the flames Cor can’t see from his angle, and all he can think about is how massively unsecure that building is. Daemons have no respect for aesthetics. They’ll break right through that.
The smoke is billowing up again- firefighters can’t get near the fires, not with daemons pouring through the breach in the wall. Half the square between Cor and the museum is poor or no visibility. He taps two fingers against the radio on his belt, but leaves it be. He’ll have to get somewhere more secure before he risks the noise.
He reaches into the Armiger instead, fetches out someone’s scarf and a bottle of water, soaks the scarf through and ties it around his face so his mouth and nose are covered. He stands up and steps away from the wall. Hitches his katana up to brace it on his hip, one hand holding it, one hand flexing near the hilt.
And crosses into no man’s land.
He finds the escort car first.
It’s like mud mixing into water, the smoke surging around him. It comes in eddies and retreats in billows, sometimes not giving him enough distance to see further than his hand held out in front of his face, sometimes leaving him in a localized clear area big enough for him to see several feet around him. But it always returns, crowds tight around him, layering its greasy metallic taste on his tongue in spite of the scarf, stinging at his eyes.
Once, it clears enough for him to spot the looming shape of the museum again- and parked on the curb in front of it, an unremarkable grey sedan. He adjusts his path, approaching the vehicle- if nothing else, they’ll have proper earpieces on them, and he won’t have to rely on that eavesdropper-riddled shortwave anymore.
There is, he sees as he comes close enough that the car fades into view before him, a road sign sticking through the windshield straight into the driver’s area. The flat metal sign itself is inside the car, the base of the metal pole sheared off and sticking out the windshield. Cor pauses, looks around, crouches down and creeps in slowly- they’re too far from the blast site for this to be shrapnel from the explosion, so at the very least there’s something nearby capable of hurling road signs like javelins.
He presses his side to the front bumper of the car, rises up onto his toes to peek inside through the windshield, checking for the driver. It takes him a good four or five seconds to properly process what he’s seeing, and as soon as he does, he stands up and turns and takes a few steps away. He is surprised to find he has to swallow back bile.
You think you’ve seen the worst there is. Then the universe comes along with a well-aimed stop sign and proves you wrong.
He moves away from the car after composing himself- no point in checking for an earpiece. Heads up the path towards the museum, and the second body. It’s a charred mess, twisted into a tortured shape in a still-smoldering crater edged with geometric lines of char that Cor recognizes as the work of a thunder grenade, a galvanade. He gives it a wide berth and continues on his way to the museum.
The guard killed by the galvanade had been heading towards the car, judging by the direction they had fallen. Probably running out to see why the driver wasn’t responding and to get the car ready themself if nothing else. He follows the guard’s path straight back to the museum, hoping against hope that there will be a door conveniently there for him to enter through. He hadn’t been the one poring over these blueprints, memorizing the building- he’s the Marshal, as Regis likes to keep reminding him, he has subordinates for that now, he doesn’t need to do everything himself.
They’re going to have a talk about jinxes, him and Regis, when this is all over.
There’s no door on the wall he’s approaching, of course, so he turns the corner and follows the outside of the building. And- there- door, propped open by something. A hand, he realizes as he gets closer, and he swings the door open outward slowly, prepared to stop in case it squeaks, and leans around it to look at the body and see if there’s anything to be done.
There is nothing. There is no body, only the arm, severed mid-bicep and left in a pool of blood, thick messy streaks of it leading away into the darkness inside the museum. The arm is way too big to belong to a child, at any rate, so that’s something. Cor flattens a sigh into a soundless exhale and steps over it and into the museum, and pauses again.
It’s a natural science museum, apparently- he cranes his neck back and sees what looks like an adolescent bennu skeleton hanging from the ceiling, posed as if swooping down on the people below. It has exhibits and various stations for kids to interact with, information screens gone dark with the power outage. A massive bandersnatch skull sits center stage, pride of the museum. There’s what looks like an aquarium stretched along one of the walls. The only light comes from sullenly glowing red emergency lights stationed along the walls, not nearly enough of them for the size of the building, and the hellish orange glow from the fires outside, cast into bizarre colors from the stained glass.
It is completely open. From his spot at the door, Cor can see clear across the building to the stained glass walls. There’s no rooms he can see, no interior walls, no doors to close and lock. And up, the bennu, a balcony circling it on each floor, and beyond it the ceiling of the whole building. Nowhere to hide.
Well, shit.
How many guards had been assigned to this little field trip?- six, seven, if Gladio came with. Two for Noctis’ personal guard, one each for the Scientia boy and Gladio if he’s there, two for additional security, and the driver. He’s only confirmed two dead, though the amount of blood here means whoever lost this is out of commission at best. He crouches down and picks up the arm, checks it- neatly severed, not ripped off- and sets it aside. The door shuts and latches without that in the way. Cor presses his side to the wall and creeps forward, aiming towards the aquarium and away from the glass walls.
At least one daemon in the building. The odds that he’s still on search and rescue and not body recovery are plummeting by the second.
He reaches the corner, and it is an aquarium, the water stirring as brightly-colored fish dart close to him to investigate, then away again. He doesn’t know much about aquariums, but he knows that the bigger the tank, the more space the water circulation system needs. They’re not going to have the filter and pump and all that out in the open where little kids can mess with it. So there’s at least one back room, one place that can be closed off from the public.
He picks up speed a little. The next corner comes up and it’s too short, too soon compared to the walls outside. And ten feet beyond that- he smiles, a silent crow of victory- a door. He tests the knob and finds it locked, unsurprisingly. More tellingly, there’s no blood anywhere near it. So not this room- not this floor, rather. He takes a step away from the wall, two, ten, looks up again. The emergency light is a red glow on the second floor balcony above him, and- yes. Another door.
The stairs are two broad staircases flanking either corner touching the glass walls. Cor dares to dart across the open space of the center of the museum, wasting no time as he beelines towards the nearer one and takes it three stairs at a time. He reaches the third to last stair-
-and drops instantly, sliding back down one or two steps so he’s laying on his side up the stairs, left foot bracing himself, head ducked down.
Movement. The wrong kind of movement to be the kids or one of his guards, all wrong to be human even. He recognizes it, though.
He slides himself up one stair, peeks over the last step in the staircase. The ronin is pacing along the balcony, lurching and swaying and occasionally moaning in its alarmingly human voice, lit up with the garish red light above the door it’s patrolling in front of. As he watches, it reaches out and scrapes its long nails along the door, peeling up curls of wood with a nerve-shredding ssskkkkkrrrrrrrrch.
Ronins aren’t really the sort to kick down doors, but if it can scare them into opening the door even an inch, it’s all over. For his purposes, though, they are notoriously easy to- he rises to one knee, prepares- sneak up on-
The ronin completes its pass and turns away from him, and Cor is moving, pushing up from the stairs, ghosting soundlessly along the walkway. It gets a warning, a single instant of awareness- it turns its head, he sees it tense as it spots him- before he’s swinging his katana up in an arch and bisecting its torso.
The ronin wails, collapses forwards into two pieces with the momentum of his strike, dissolves into black smoke and purple sparks before fading away. Cor hefts his katana, but nothing else stirs, nothing comes charging at him from the darkness.
He turns on the spot and sidesteps, puts his back to the wall right next to the door. Reaches a hand out and tests the doorknob. Locked, and resistant to even turning, still new enough to be fresh and not worn down yet.
Most importantly, at the sound of the doorknob rattling against the lock, a small voice gasps on the other side of the door.
Not yet. Not yet, dammit, not until he lays eyes on them. He raps one knuckle against the door in a specific pattern. It’s answered a moment later, and a hiss, “What’s the password?”
Unless they changed it in the time Cor was off-duty, all four hours of it, then the password was last chosen by Regis, which is why it’s- “Maagho.”
The lock clicks and the door creaks open the tiniest amount. It swings inward, so Cor puts a hand flat against it and pushes it open. There’s resistance- there’s a lot of resistance. He pushes until it’s open just enough for him to duck through the gap- and step over the body behind it. One of his guards, sitting with her back to the door, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. A physical barrier between her liege and his enemies, even in death.
The door clicks shut and locks, and Cor looks, and Gladiolus Amicitia stares back at him with wide, wary eyes. There’s an emergency light in this room too, bathing them both in light the color of blood.
“Marshal?” Gladio asks, slow and uncertain, eyes flicking to the katana and back to Cor’s face. He sounds like he’s trying to channel his father’s professional voice, cool and calm.
What is- Gladio knows him, why- oh. Cor grabs at the scarf still wrapped around his face and pulls it down, letting it drape around his neck. And the change is immediate, Gladio’s tough front collapsing entirely. He rocks up onto his toes and back on his heels, eyes wide and fingers twisting into the hem of his shirt, before he makes some sort of decision and darts forward and collides with Cor, arms around his waist, face pressed against his stomach. Cor banishes his katana into the Armiger and lowers himself to one knee, and Gladio rearranges his hold on him to both arms around his neck and face against his shoulder. He needs, he needs to know about Noctis, but he can’t just push Gladio away either. He lets Gladio hug him, fierce and already so strong, for a good ten seconds before he has to lean back.
“Noctis?” he asks.
“He’s in there,” Gladio says, pointing behind him. “Iggy ‘n me didn’t want him seeing…” He trails off, looks at the body against the door, then in the other direction.
Beyond him is another figure lying on the floor, a large cloth draped haphazardly over them. Cor can see the blood pool. He’ll check, but he’s not holding out hope. Four of seven confirmed, three MIA but unlikely to pull a miraculous reappearance.
Cor stands up and moves over to the guard against the door. She’d been skewered by the ronin’s sword, the bloodstain starting in the center of her chest and pouring down her stomach. She would have had just enough time to get the boys in here and lock the door before she bled to death. He’ll have to put her up for a special commendation for her dedication to duty. Her family might appreciate the gesture, if nothing else.
She’s freshly dead enough that she’s still loose-limbed when Cor picks her up. He carries her over to the body on the floor and lays her gently beside it, and closes her eyelids with a sweep of his thumb. Then he turns and lifts the cloth covering the body. This guard, unsurprisingly, has a stump instead of a right arm. The ronin clearly got the drop on them, most likely when they’d been gathered at the door, waiting for the signal to make a run for the car. One second of surprise is all it takes for one of those bastards to wreck shop.
Cor pulls the cloth up and shakes it out, starting to cover both bodies with it, and hesitates. The second guard’s earpiece has been taken out and left sitting a few inches away from his head. He picks it up, slants a quick look at Gladio.
“Marta said something was wrong with the channel.” Gladio points at the female guard. Cor nods- he knows her name. “I keep trying but I can’t get through.”
Cor takes it anyway, tugging the transmitter carefully free of the guard’s uniform, and tucks it into his jacket pocket. He pulls the cloth over the two bodies, covering at least their faces and wounds.
“Come on,” he orders as he stands up. “Let’s get back to His Highness.”
Gladio nods, a look of stubborn determination- pure Amicitia- settling over his face. He turns and leads the way, guiding Cor to a door with a sign that reads Break Room, and rattles the knob. It doesn’t have a lock.
“It’s me,” he whispers into the room beyond.
“Gladio?” another young voice whispers back, and Gladio pulls the door open and hurriedly gestures Cor into the room.
There’s another light source in here, white instead of the ember-red he’s grown used to, searingly bright. It sweeps over them both, scorching into dark-adjusted eyes, and Cor and Gladio both recoil with noises of protest. A flashlight.
“Marshal!” The Scientia boy- Ignis, call him Ignis, they’re going to be here a while. The flashlight shines on the ceiling, darting around erratically, until it suddenly shuts off and Cor can see again. He blinks tears out of his eyes, waits for the electric blue afterimages to fade. “I’m so sorry!”
“Uncle Cor!”
It’s all the warning he gets before something slams into his leg, with enough force and at just the right angle to nearly buckle his knee. He grunts in surprise, catches himself against the doorframe, looks down.
The small, tear-stained face of Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum peers back up at him.
Now he lets the relief hit, cresting over him like a wave on the beach. He drops his hand and cups the back of Noctis’ head. Alive, alive, warm and solid under his hand, his little chest working against Cor’s leg as he breathes. Alive.
“Are you all right?” Cor pans his gaze over all three boys to start with, then focuses on Noctis. “Your Highness?”
Noctis’ answer is muffled by Cor’s belt as he presses his face to Cor’s hip.
“Noct,” Ignis scolds before Cor can even try to translate that. He flashes Cor a worried look. “We’re all right, sir.”
Cor nods at that. He takes a step, two, gently tows Noctis along with him away from the doorway so Gladio can close the door again. Ignis turns the flashlight back on, but facing away into the far corner this time, casting diffused light across the room without blinding anyone.
“What’s going on?” Gladio asks, half a step behind Cor. Not clinging, not quite, but wanting the comfort of his presence. He had spent, what, twenty-five minutes in a room alone with two corpses? People he had known and watched die, no less. Hard enough on an adult, never mind a child.
He is nine, Cor thinks- he is nine, and Noctis is six, and Ignis is a month shy of eight. He cannot talk to them like they’re adults. He has to remember that they are children.
“There’s been an incident,” Cor says, which is honestly just about all he knows. He can make educated guesses, but it’s all supposition, and not helpful in this situation.
Which, of course, is the wrong thing to say to a trio of kids.
“What incident,” Ignis says. He’s wringing his hands and has bitten his lower lip raw, and he’s the only one not crowding Cor.
“We heard-”
“There was a bomb,” Noctis wails against Cor’s hip.
“Is anyone hurt?”
“It blew up-”
“And the radios don’t work.”
“Who’s attacking us?”
“-we got attacked by a zombie-”
“Is my dad okay? Is Noct’s dad okay?”
“-the lady ran away-”
“How bad’s the damage?”
“Is the Wall down?”
“-I want my daddy-”
“Is it the Empire?”
“- an’ I wanna go home!”
“Enough,” Cor barks on the tail end of that royal proclaiment, trying to regain control without outright yelling at scared children. And for a moment they’re all silent, the three boys startled into it and Cor without a clue on what to do next.
He is not a kid person. The youngest age he consistently deals with is sixteen, the minimum age for Crownsguard recruitment. He looks after Gladio and sometimes Noctis if their parents are occupied and he’s convenient, but it’s only ever one at a time, and never anything more than twenty or so minutes in the Citadel, where there’s plenty of people to call on if he needs help. This is the first time he’s been the only adult in a room of children.
Well, he’s trained to adapt. He can do this.
“Your Highness,” he says to Noctis, who is sulking but still firmly attached to his leg. “I need to check in and let them know you’re safe. Then I can tell you what I know. Okay?”
Noctis thinks about it. Nods against Cor’s hip. Does not actually let go or move.
“Noct.” Ignis comes over, takes Noctis’ hand in his and draws him gently away. He flashes Cor a worried look. “I’m sorry, Marshal. He’s tired.”
“ ‘M not tired,” Noctis argues immediately.
“It’s an hour past his bedtime,” Gladio reports, with the smug glee of a boy whose own bedtime has not arrived yet.
“ ‘M not tired!”
“All right,” Cor says calmly, and Noctis settles down, albeit with a pout. Cor eyes him for a moment before he steps away.
He takes the earpiece out of his pocket first, checks the transmitter, puts the earpiece in. He gets nothing, not even static. He checks the other channels, even the nonsecure ones, but he knows what he’s going to get. Something wrong with the radios, indeed- they’re being jammed.
He puts the earpiece in the Armiger and takes his cell phone out of his pocket next. Searches his contacts and calls Elshett, since she’s on comms duty, and gets the same message about the service being down. He tries Clarus, just for shits and giggles, and hangs up when that stupid message starts playing again. He puts his cell phone away and takes the shortwave off his belt, and thinks about it.
They’re jamming the military channels but leaving the civilian alone- no. They’re jamming the channels they can’t access and listening in on the ones they can. He hasn’t seen any indication of direct Imperial presence here, but unless he wants to find out the hard way that there’s a squadron of MTs nearby just waiting to deploy, he’s going to have to do this delicately.
He turns the volume up and presses the button. “Elshett.”
“Sir.” She’s there instantly.
“Target found.” He looks over at Noctis, who is already forgetting his sulk and staring at Cor with wide eyes.
If Monica has any sort of response to that, she wisely keeps it off the air. She does take a moment, but when she returns, her voice is as steady and professional as ever. “Pickup location?”
“Where we said we’d be.” She knows about this little field trip, or can easily find out from someone close at hand. “We have company outside.”
“Is your position secure?”
Cor glances at the door. The lock had held against the ronin, but… “Define secure.”
Monica doesn’t answer that. She came up with him through the ranks, one of the few who never got disgruntled or resentful of his youth and apparent royal favoritism. She knows him well enough to know what he really means when he falls back on sarcasm.
“Pickup ETA eleven minutes,” she says a minute later.
Eleven? Cor doesn’t respond, doesn’t let it show on his face- a lot can change in eleven minutes. She hears his complaints anyway.
“The best I can do, sir.”
“Understood.” It’s not her fault. They’re not even forty minutes into an attack on their city, on their King. The Prince is safe for now and, frankly, having Cor with him makes him a much more difficult target and therefore a lower priority.
He only turns the volume halfway down when he clips the radio back on his belt this time. He’ll need to be able to hear it, in case the plan changes.
When he turns around, three boys are all staring at him. He sighs- right. Eleven minutes, and it’s someone else’s turn to be the adult, and he can go back to being just Marshal Leonis.
“All right,” he says. It’s a break room, so there’s a couple of tables with chairs, a vending machine, a microwave. If they were going to be here longer he’d consider breaking into the vending machine- he’s running on four hours’ sleep and a late lunch of two protein bars and the questionable bag of spicy chips he’d found in his desk, and now that he’s reached his objective and ostensibly accomplished his mission, his body is relaxing and trying to enter post-mission rest mode.
He goes over to the nearer table and takes the chair closest to the door. The boys follow, except instead of simply sitting in the chairs where they are, one on each side of the square table, they quibble for a few seconds before dragging chairs around and sit, Gladio to Cor’s immediate right, Noctis and Ignis squished together on one chair at the corner to Gladio’s right. Cor briefly wonders if this is what people mean when they like to talk about all the things he missed out on, not having friends his age as a child.
Noctis sits forward on the edge of the chair so he can glare at Cor. “You promised,” he accuses.
He sort of had. It had been more a peace-keeping bargain, but splitting hairs won’t get far with a six-year-old. A sheltered, privileged six-year-old who has never once in his life laid eyes on a daemon. Careful editing will be the name of the game, here.
“I don’t know much,” he says. “I was at home when it happened, and I’ve only talked to Monica.”
Noctis stares at him. His eyes are so big.
“She told me that they lost you, so I came to find you.”
“Is my daddy okay?” Noctis asks.
What are the odds that Regis will have the Wall back up sometime in the next eleven minutes? Cor cannot afford to be caught in an outright lie, not now.
“I don’t think so.”
Astrals damn royalty and their fucking propriety, that a six-year-old boy gets the news that his only living parent is not okay, and instead of immediately freaking out, he is visibly fighting not to react to that. Tears in his eyes that he’s blinking back, a wobble in his chin, one hand clawing tightly at Ignis’ arm until the other boy winces with a soft ow, Noct. He sniffles, but he doesn’t cry, and Cor hates himself a little bit more.
“He’s at the Citadel,” he says. Anything, anything, to make Noctis feel better. “The doctors are with him. Clarus is with him. He’ll be okay.”
“You promise?” Noctis asks. His voice is shaking.
Six years ago, Cor had been in a recovery room in the Citadel’s private medical wing, holding an hour-old baby in his arms. Regis had been so proud, had dragged Cor into Aulea’s recovery room, had pressed Noctis into Cor’s arms after positioning them for appropriate baby-holding posture. Cor had been the fourth person in the world to hold Noctis, after his parents and the royal doctor, and he’d stood there at parade rest, frozen, hissing demands at that asshole Regis to stop laughing at him and take the child back before Cor did something to inadvertently hurt the heir to the throne- and then Aulea had gone sickly pale and started seizing on her bed. Cor with his precious cargo had been gently shoved into the corner of the room while a medical team descended and quickly took her away for emergency surgery, Regis taken along as her medical proxy. And he had been left there for half an hour, a nurse occasionally checking in but never staying long enough for him to pass Noctis off to her, the baby asleep in his arms and unaware of the tragedy unfolding. Unaware of Cor talking to him, promising him that she would be okay, that everything would be okay.
Lying to him.
“I promise.”
Noctis sniffles again, but nods. He has no way of knowing Cor is merely continuing a six-year trend of talking out of his ass. Cor glances at the older boys, fully expecting awareness, judgment- but they’re both looking relieved as well. They trust Marshal Leonis not to be lying to them.
“Now, I have some questions too, if that’s okay,” Cor says.
Noctis doesn’t look to be in any frame of mind to be answering questions. Squished next to Ignis, beaten down by what he had just heard, he looks terrifyingly small. But Gladio nods, and Ignis wraps an arm around Noctis’ shoulders and meets Cor’s gaze head-on.
First things first.
“A zombie attacked you?”
“We saw them in the movie and now they’re here,” Noctis says, and twists in the chair in order to press himself against Ignis. He’s usually such a bright, happy child, it hurts to see him so withdrawn. Understandable, under the circumstances, but still.
“The movie?”
“Lord Amicitia let us watch a zombie movie this afternoon,” Ignis reports.
“Ah.” Oh yes, Clarus’ first love- shitty old horror movies. He’s fond of cornering Cor when he’s stuck in the hospital and can’t escape and making him watch them with him, so Cor’s seen a zombie movie or two, or twenty. The ronin, with its almost-human body and terrifyingly human voice, would certainly seem like a zombie to a scared young boy who already has the undead on the mind.
Gladio scoots his chair back and hops down and comes over to Cor’s side. Cor leans over so they’re more of a height.
“I know it wasn’t,” Gladio says quietly. “But zombies are less scary to him.”
Well, any zombie movie Clarus let them watch would- hopefully- be relatively free of gore and have a happy ending. So Noctis is already inclined to think this is a fight they can win, as opposed to daemons, which he’s been taught to fear unconditionally. Cor would rather the boy continue to think zombie than shut down entirely from fear of daemons, so he gives a nod.
“Well done.”
Gladio grins and darts back to his chair. Ignis frowns at him, and leans over when Gladio climbs into his chair and waves him over, and they whisper for a moment. Noctis clings to Ignis the whole time, unaware.
“What lady ran away?” Cor asks once the impromptu meeting is over.
“The museum lady-”
“The docent.”
“-yeah, her. When the zombie attacked us at the door, she ran outside.” Gladio frowns. “She had the keys, so Marta said we had to come up here ‘cause this was the only door that was unlocked.”
Doubtful she would have slowed the ronin down any, but Cor would have given a year’s salary to have a child-friendly adult here with him, so he briefly curses her cowardice.
“Do you,” he begins, and pauses, looking at Noctis. Ignis frowns at him for a moment before he catches the hint and turns to Noctis, speaking softly to him, and Gladio gets down from his chair again and comes back over to Cor’s side. “Do you know what happened to the other Crownsguard that were with you?”
Gladio flinches, looks down at the ground, shakes his head. “Marta told ‘em to slow it down so we could get up here,” he says. “But it caught up to us real fast, so I don’t think they did.”
They did, just not enough. It tells him what he needs to know, at least- ronins don’t leave survivors.
Cod turns away and glances at his watch. Five minutes down, six to go. “All right, Your Highness. Are you ready to go home?”
Noctis nods. He seems mostly recovered from the shock of the news of his father, which cannot be healthy, but is a problem for a later time.
“There are going to be some rules,” Cor begins.
“Like in the movie?”
“Yeah, Noct,” Gladio says quickly. “Like in the movie. You remember them?”
Noctis nods.
Rules. Kid-friendly zombie movie. Clarus showed it to them. It is vaguely, distantly ringing a bell. He usually spends movie time with Clarus taking the piss out of his friend for his shit taste in entertainment, not paying attention to the actual film, but he thinks he might know which one they’re talking about. He absolutely does not remember the rules.
“Was one of them be very, very quiet?”
Noctis nods again.
“Good,” Cor says.
He is planning it out in his head- go the way he came, down the stairs and around the bandersnatch skull to the aquarium wall to the door, there are no dead bodies along that path- he can head out there first and do a quick sweep-
The radio on his belt bursts into staticky life. “Sir, we have a problem.”
Cor pushes away from the table immediately. “Stay here until I say so, no matter what happens,” he says, and heads out of the break room and into the room with the two corpses. Monica saying we have a problem in that specific tone is just shy of the world is ending.
“Sir,” Monica is saying, even as he takes the radio off his belt.
“What?” He goes over to the door, puts his back to the wall next to it. Silence outside. He'd almost think it peaceful, except-
“There’s a red giant headed straight for you.”