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1
“That’s him?”
“Yes,” Clarus confirms. Gladiolus wrinkles his nose in thought and puts his hands on Clarus’ side, preparing to push off to slide down from his grip. At five, he’s still small enough for Clarus to hold him on one hip, because Clarus is a big man. At five, he’s getting too old to want to be held like this, and Clarus’ heart is already breaking, knowing that sooner or later he will set his son down and never pick him up again.
“He’s a baby.”
“He is,” Clarus agrees after a moment because, well, he is. Maybe not in the strictest definition, but in the eyes of a five-year-old, a two-year-old would be very babyish indeed.
Noctis Lucis Caelum sits on the floor in the nursery playroom, studiously pushing cars back and forth with his father. Regis has situated them so Noctis has his back turned and can’t see Clarus standing with Gladio in the doorway, but Regis can. He’s watching them even as he coaxes Noctis into rolling a car across the carpet towards him. Protective, prepared to intervene.
It hadn’t been like this for them. Clarus remembers it, even if Regis doesn’t- he’d been nine to Regis’ four. They’d simply been chucked into a room together and told to entertain each other while the adults tended to business elsewhere, and that had been it. Then again, back then Mors had been not young but also not the withered specter of impending death that he had become in his later years, and the queen had been pregnant again, and they had all thought they had breathing room. An heir, a spare, a Wall that could not be broken, an army that could not be defeated.
Then the queen had lost the pregnancy, and the one after that took her with when it failed, and Mors stopped talking to Regis and started haunting the halls of the Citadel like a ghost. And now, of course, the war, the MTs, Aulea- they can’t take risks, these days.
Regis had said something about it once, when the exhaustion had overwhelmed him, when Noctis was a few weeks old and would only sleep calmly when cradled to his father’s chest. Clarus remembers Regis slumped low in the chair in his study with his son in his arms, saying what do you think is wrong with us, that we keep poisoning our mothers in the womb, and Clarus had sent Noctis away with a nanny and dragged Regis off to bed and climbed in after him to make damn sure he stayed there this time.
Here and now, Regis is looking at him with clear eyes, his grief distant. Maybe he’s thinking along the same lines as Clarus, or maybe he’s remembering better days. Either way, he crooks a finger in invitation, and Clarus comes into the playroom.
Noctis hears them, of course- he’s been hearing them, he’s just already used to people talking over him. He turns to look, and brightens at the sight of good ol’ Uncle Clarus, but shuts down again when he sees Gladio. He twists around and scoots back until he’s pressed against Regis’ leg and huddles there, looking even smaller than he already is. This shyness is just a stage most kids this age go through, the nanny had reassured them, and had given Clarus a dirty look when he’d protested that Gladio never had.
“Be nice,” Clarus says warningly before letting Gladio slide down to the floor. Gladio hesitates, a rare show of nerves- Regis radiates the power of his ancestors when he’s feeling defensive, and he’s not trying to but he’s doing it a little bit now, the air around him ever so faintly staticky with incorporeal weapons waiting to be drawn upon.
Still, a king will have his manners, and Regis nudges Noctis gently and makes the boy sway a little. “Say hello, Noctis.”
Noctis breathes something that might have been a hello. He’s two and a bit, walking fine and only sometimes tripping over himself when he runs, talking short sentences with a decent understanding of the words he’s actually saying. He is, in all ways that matter, still a baby, and Gladio very much is not. He’s big for his age and already pretty rough and tumble, and has little experience with kids younger than himself.
Clarus circles the boys and crouches next to Regis in order to catch him by the shoulder and reel him back a bit. No need for His Overprotectiveness to loom like this, the worst Noctis will suffer if all goes wrong is hurt feelings and light bruises. He’d have had worse already, if he were allowed to act in any way like a normal kid his age. Regis complies after a moment of resistance and leans back so he’s no longer looming quite so much, though he’s still watching like a hawk.
Gladio dares to approach Noctis after that, when Clarus is positioned as a buffer between his own son and Regis. He comes over and drops to his knees near the tiny prince.
“Hi Noctis,” he says quietly, subdued. He doesn’t know what to do, and the odd tension coming off the adults in the room is unnerving him.
Regis leans forward again, though not for looming purposes this time. He speaks into Noctis’ ear for a moment, then leans back again, and Noctis slowly, reluctantly uncurls from his protective huddle.
“Hi ‘Ladio,” he says to the carpet between his feet. He’s darting quick curious glances at the other boy, but not letting his gaze linger long and refusing to make any eye contact at all.
“Guh-ladio,” Gladio corrects, and shoots a look at Clarus, who shakes his head a little. Let the baby mispronounce his name, it won’t hurt anything. Gladio huffs a deeply put-upon sigh and turns back to Noctis. “You’re really the prince?” he asks, casting a critical eye over Noctis. “You’re kinda small.”
Regis snorts and glances at Clarus, who smirks in answer. Ever the fate of the Lucis Caelums, to stand next to an Amicitia and feel stupidly small. At least this dynamic is familiar.
“Who’re you,” Noctis says, not quite a question.
“I’m your Shield,” Gladio says proudly, thumping a fist to his chest.
“What’s that?”
He knows, he’s had it explained to him. He’s just too young to fully absorb it. Regis starts to sit forward again and Clarus drapes an arm around his shoulders and leans back, using his weight to keep Regis trapped and keep him out of this.
“It means I’m gonna protect you,” Gladio says. “I’m gonna fight off bad guys for you, okay? Like my dad does for your dad!”
Noctis twists to look at the two men behind him, wide-eyed, his world rocked by this. He turns back to Gladio and peers at him suspiciously. A man of few words, their prince. Fortunately Gladio already feels no shame in filling a silence when needed.
“Yeah, we’re gonna be best friends and we’re gonna be together forever! Just like…” Gladio trails off, nose wrinkling as he sinks into thought. He looks to Clarus after a moment of consideration. “Is this… are we…”
“Spit it out,” Clarus says, and Gladio looks between him and Regis.
“Are we gettin’ married?”
Regis makes a noise royalty should never make, and claps a hand to his mouth to muffle any more. He clearly won’t be any help, so Clarus answers.
“No. What? No.”
“We gettin’ married,” Noctis echoes, as a small child will do, and Regis makes that noise again. It’s taking all his courtly training not to burst out laughing, Clarus can tell.
“It’s your duty to your king and your country,” Clarus says sternly. He’s explained this to Gladio about a dozen times this week alone, preparing for this first meeting, so where-? “Where’s this coming from?”
“When Aunt Evangeline got married, the lady up front in the blue dress said stuff like that,” Gladio says.
“My sister-in-law,” Clarus says to the curious look Regis shoots him. “Got married last month. Lia took Gladio.”
“She said,” Gladio insists, “that getting’ married means being best friends forever, and always being there for each other, and some other stuff.” He peers suspiciously at Clarus and Regis, pressed together side-to-side, Clarus’ arm wrapped around Regis’ shoulders in a hold too restrictive to be purely friendly. “Aren’t you two married?”
Regis has gone very still against him. Clarus can’t see his face well enough to read his mood and has to focus on his son. “No,” he says. “I’m married to your mother. Remember her?”
“We gettin’ married,” Noctis says. So apparently that’s going to be a thing now. Great.
“You can only be married to one person at a time, Gladio,” Regis explains patiently. Thankfully he sounds like he’s steered away from the darker waters this topic could very well set him adrift in.
“You can only have one friend at a time?” Gladio demands, scandalized.
“No-”
“We gettin’ married.”
Regis sags against Clarus and lets the laughter spill out of him. It’s not that funny, not really, but Clarus supports him and lets him get it out of his system. Of all the ways they had predicted this going, this had never been one of them.
“Why don’t you and Noctis play with the cars?” Clarus says, grabbing for the nearest one and shooting it across the carpet to Gladio. He takes it and, with a mighty frown, turns to Noctis. Clarus watches them compare toy cars, watches Noctis halfheartedly shove one towards Gladio.
“I’ll explain it to him on the way home,” Clarus says tiredly. Well, that almost went okay. Probably what they deserve for letting a five-year-old do all the talking.
“Think they’ll manage to break tradition?” Regis asks tiredly, and Clarus looks at him. Leaning against Clarus’ shoulder, slumped boneless against him, having carved out his own place in Clarus’ space and fully comfortable there. Like he belongs, like there is nowhere else he would rather be.
He looks, and looks away. They might, Noctis and Gladio, but that ship sailed for their fathers years ago.
“Maybe,” he says, and thinks to himself no, of course not.
The boys play with the cars, hesitant and awkward, and their fathers watch, and nothing else is said.
2
Cor notices them because they’re singing. Loudly, very obviously drunk, and at least one of them is singing poorly. It’s the kind of thing that makes the sparse crowd that’s out on these streets at this time of night give you plenty of space, if only to avoid blown-out eardrums.
He looks, and sighs when he spots them, and alters his course. He’d been hoping for a nice quiet dinner in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant he knows, but now the crown prince and his new best friend are staggering down the sidewalk together, arms around each other’s shoulders as if they are the only thing keeping the other up, and Cor’s seeing no sign whatsoever of any guards. No Gladio, no Crownsguard, not even a Kingsglaive on punishment detail tagging along. There’s gonna be bloodshed over this tomorrow, but for now-
Cor gets ahead of them and slows down, letting the bubble of solitude break around him as the boys catch up. They reek of cheap beer and cheaper alcohol, tequila too aromatic to be any good and what smells like bottom-shelf whiskey. Cor’s estimation for how the next few hours are going to go is getting worse and worse.
“Evening, Your Highness,” he says when the boys finally draw even with him. Noctis stops singing midword and wheels around, dragging his friend with him as neither boy lets go of the other.
“Oh, hi Cor,” he says, and now Cor knows he’s smashed, because he sounds pleasantly surprised and even a little happy to see him, and that hasn’t been Noctis’ response to anything royalty-related for a few years now.
“Cor?” the other boys demands. His face is tomato red with a worrying greenish tinge to it and he’s clearly thrown up at least once already, some of it dribbled down his shirt. He’s wearing what looks like a naval captain’s hat from centuries ago molded out of hard plastic, a fake tiara with glass gems the size of his thumbnail on his forehead, and one of those stupid elastic sticky hands wrapped around his neck like a scarf. Noctis has five Kenny Crow keychains clipped in a row to the collar of his shirt, and he’s wearing a cheap pair of sunglasses that has a palm tree on the outside of both lenses.
Prompto Argentum, the other boy. A file the size of a novel hit Cor’s desk the day Prompto approached Noctis at school to befriend him. He’s completely average, utterly unremarkable in every way, which in itself is incredibly remarkable, considering he’s Niflheim clone stock. Which- whatever, he’d passed all the security checks and Noctis desperately needs a friend, so Cor’s been pushing back hard against all arguments to remove this kid from Noctis’ circle.
“Like, Cor Marshal Leonis?” Argentum asks, and Cor grunts. Close enough.
“It’s Prompto’s birthday,” Noctis tells the whole street very loudly.
“Yeah, happy birthday!” Argentum cheers. He seems much further gone than Noctis. They’re both slurring pretty badly, but Argentum can’t even seem to stand up without Noctis’ help. “Six sweetteen, baby!”
He’s carrying a bottle of beer, and goes to take a swig of it in celebration. Cor reaches past Noctis and tips the bottom up so it spills across him instead, none of it making it into his mouth.
“On a bar crawl?” Cor asks Noctis while Prompto whines and plucks at his now-soaked shirt.
“Yup.” Noctis tips his head to look at Cor over the lenses of his sunglasses. “Prompto’s parents suck so we hit up the arcade for presents and then we went to the bar next door.”
“We went through the back door,” Argentum tells him, spilled beer already forgotten and mood as mercurial as his namesake. He giggles at the innuendo in his own words. Cor doesn’t remember being like this at sixteen, though really, he probably could have stood to be a bit more of this and a lot less of the whole challenging ancient swordsmaster spirits thing.
“Yeah, so don’t, like, kill anyone, okay? We ducked them on purpose,” Noctis adds. He is aware enough to know that Cor will not be happy about them having no guards, so he’s aware enough for Cor to try floating a bit of common sense.
“Think it might be time to call it a night?”
“We can’t we haven’t gotten married yet!”
Cor lets that one sit for a moment. “What?” he asks, when it continues to make no sense after several seconds.
“We got-” Argentum unhooks his arm from Noctis’ shoulders and immediately divebombs into the wall of the nearest building. He slaps at his own pockets, completely unaware that he’s smashed his shoulder into solid stone and is probably scraping the skin off his arm below the hem of his sleeve. After a bit of fumbling he produces a little plastic reward capsule and holds it aloft with a triumphant jingle.
Inside the capsule is two rings, gold-foiled and cheap as shit, already battered and flaking. They might, might, fit halfway down a scrawny teenage boy’s pinkie finger.
“You have rings, so you’re getting married?” Cor asks. Thank fuck they clearly haven’t encountered condoms at any point this evening.
“And a captain’s hat,” Noctis says solemnly, nodding towards the plastic monstrosity perched on Argentum’s sculpted hair. “Captains can marry people.”
This feels about as well thought-through as could be expected. Cor stares at the boys as he weighs his options. On the one hand, they’re so plastered Argentum probably needs his stomach pumped. On the other hand, they’re so plastered they’re talking about getting married with pinball machine prizes. He’d rather get them off the street and worry about what to do after that from a safe location, which means-
Argentum’s eyes are going wide as a thought slowly occurs to him. It’s having to fight for its life, after how thoroughly he’s pickled his brain. “Hey, wait,” he says, “maybe you could-”
“No,” Cor says firmly. He reaches into the Armiger and slaps a hand against Argentum’s shoulder, magic glass shattering around his fingers and viscous fluid soaking quickly into both his skin and Argentum’s.
“Ow?” Argentum asks, like he needs to check in with Cor and see if that actually did hurt. “Whazzat for?”
“A remedy. It won’t sober you up, but it will take the edge off the alcohol poisoning.” Cor looks between them again and sighs. Fine, fine. Why the hell not. At least he won’t have to skip dinner over this. “I’m not going to marry you, but I know someone who will.”
“Score!” Argentum springs up off the wall, punches the air in celebration, falls forward with his momentum and crashes into Noctis, who is smiling so soft and warm and fond. He really is good for the lonely prince, Cor thinks with a twinge of guilt.
“Lead the way, Marshal,” Noctis says with far too much dignity for a boy wearing palm tree sunglasses.
It’s easier for Cor to take Argentum rather than try to match their pace, so he does, circling around the boys and wrapping an arm around Argentum’s waist to encourage him to lean his weight on Cor. His face is less red and the worrying green tinge is fading as well. Now all Cor has to do is keep these idiots away from any more alcohol, and tonight might not end with an emergency room visit after all. That’s always a plus.
“Come on,” he says, and turns and drags Argentum along the street in the other direction, Noctis tagging along at his heels.
He takes them to his little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where the bartender casts a judging eye across the boys and nods when Cor expresses pointed remorse that all the alcohol in the bar has mysteriously run out. Their waiter is absolutely delighted to put a hat-shaped lump of plastic on his head and fake-marry the crown prince and his best friend, at least, which distracts the boys from the lack of booze. A flustered Ignis and a deeply chastised Gladio are summoned, as Cor doesn’t have a car to transport the newlyweds, and Ignis promises that he will take them to Noctis’ apartment and look after them for the evening and make sure they don’t die choking on vomit in their sleep. Cor doesn’t need to say that this will not happen again- Gladio is clearly furious with himself, deeply flushed with humiliation over his failure to his charge, and unable to make eye contact with Cor. No, it won’t happen again.
If there happens to be pictures taken of Noctis and Argentum squashed together, holding their ringed hands up to the camera, well. The boys certainly won’t remember anything of this night, so someone needs to preserve the memories. And if one of those pictures is sent to Regis with no context- at least now he has to talk to his son, to try and reach out and bridge the gap between them.
All in all, not the worst night Cor has ever had after all.
3
Kinda embarrassing, but Cindy had immediately pegged them as city boys who’ve never set foot outside of Insomnia in their life, and marked up the map she’d given them before she let them go out into the desert. Ignis had done even more in the diner, with Takka the cook pointing out interesting spots, but it’s Cindy’s messy scrawl that guides them to the nearest Haven as the shadows slant long and the golden haze of sand in the air tints red.
“-so so so cool,” Prompto’s saying as he climbs up the shallow stone ramp to the Haven. He goes briefly to his knees, tracing his fingers over one of the glowing glyphs in the stone. “And it repels daemons and varmints? How’d they do that?”
“The Havens were blessed a long time ago with the light of the Oracle,” Ignis says. Gladio looks past him and catches Noct’s eye, and they share an eyeroll. Prompto’s gotta learn to stop leaving that door open, Ignis will come through with a lecture every single time. “The protective magics will fade over time, so the Oracle must occasionally complete a journey to renew the wards-”
Gladio ducks over to Noct. “You get the chairs, I’ll handle the tent,” he says, and Noct nods, clearly grateful for an excuse to escape.
Cid had let them take all their camping gear from the Regalia’s trunk and shove it into the Armiger before confiscating the car, thankfully. Gladio hauls the tent bag out and unzips it and dumps the poles out first. He’s done this before- he likes camping, which makes him the only one- and there’s a sort of meditative peace to be found in twisting poles together and driving stakes into the ground. He’s faster at it than Noct is at figuring out how to arrange four chairs in a semi-circle, which is even more pathetic than he’d expected. Ignis has the camp stove out and Prompto’s hovering around snapping pictures with that camera of his, and Gladio maybe poses and flexes a bit for a couple. He looks good and he knows it, why pretend otherwise?
Once the tent is up, Gladio shoves the sleeping bags at tweedledee and tweedledum with the order to try and be useful for a change, and he sits in a chair and watches Ignis fuss about at the camp stove. They don’t have much in the ways of food supplies and there’s only so much magic he can work when his ingredients all come out of MREs and tin cans. They don’t even have instant ramen, to Gladio’s unspoken dismay.
“Pizza?” Ignis offers eventually, a man out of ideas and fallen to his last recourse. He’s holding a bag of frozen pizza dough in one hand and a jar of premade sauce in the other.
“Good enough for tonight,” Gladio agrees. Maybe the bloodhorn they’re on the hunt for will be good to butcher, to give Ignis some attempt at variety. Ignis makes a noise of disgust at the bag of frozen dough and slaps it down on the small table attached to the grill, and dramatically folds himself into the chair nearest the grill. Yeah, they’re gonna need to get him better stuff to work with, if camping is gonna start being a regular thing.
The chair next to Gladio groans quietly and he glances over to see Noct sitting beside him. “It’s gonna be tight,” he warns unhappily.
“This thing says it sleeps six?” Prompto adds as he ducks out of the tent. He’s sweated the product out of his hair in the Leidan heat and now it’s all wilted and sand-crusted. Noct and Ignis are only doing a little better. Gladio’s feeling pretty good about certain aesthetic choices right now.
“The car also seats six,” he says. “All depends on how cozy you plan on getting.”
“Uh, no thanks,” Prompto says lightly, and he’s lucky he’s so pale, the sunburn almost hides the blush crawling across his cheeks. He turns and pokes at the bag of dough. “So! What’s for dinner?”
“Pizza, when the dough thaws, which shouldn’t take long in this heat,” Ignis says. “All premade ingredients, as we have no fresh.”
“The store at Hammerhead looked like it had produce, we can pick some up tomorrow,” Noct says soothingly, sweet for Ignis as he never is for anyone else.
Ignis starts to answer, but they all fall silent instead as a noise rolls across the desert. A long, echoing groan, punctuated by a sharp crack that Gladio would describes as a tree falling, except the only trees out here a scrubby little things undeserving of the name. They all stare off into the distance, but the noise doesn’t repeat, and the source doesn’t reveal itself to them.
“Anyone needs to take a dump, you got five minutes before you lose the light,” Gladio says warningly. The world’s gone a weird umber color as the sun sinks lower and lower on the horizon. The wards still glow a peaceful whitish-blue, but they’re weak against the darkness that is coming, and more eerie than comforting anymore.
“Perhaps a fire, Gladio,” Ignis says, and Gladio grunts in acknowledgment and pushes out of his chair to head over to the circle of rocks in the center of the Haven. No one protests that it’s too hot for that.
“So, uh,” Prompto says, scared and trying not to show it, clearly casting about for anything to talk about. He settles on, “how’s the wedding planning going?”
Gladio reaches into the Armiger. He has firestarter logs and that’s it, no kindling or proper fuel. They’ll need to get into the habit of picking up decently-sized branches and stuff, if they’re gonna be spending any more nights in the backwoods. He takes one of the firestarters out and tosses it into the rock circle. The fire will go out within a couple of hours tops unless he gets something more substantial.
“It’s… not?” Noct says, confused. “I’m not in charge of planning anything.”
So many things to say to that. Gladio bites his tongue and says none of them, setting a lighter to the firestarter instead. The paper wrapper catches light easily and he pulls away as the fire flares up.
“It’s gonna be fancy, right?” Prompto pushes. Keep him talking, keep him entertained, don’t make him sit there in silence, people, come on. “I mean, royal wedding in Altissia, that’s like, super high-class, right?”
“Have you ever been to a wedding before, Prompto?” Ignis asks.
“Nope,” Prompto says, popping the p. “Have you?”
There’s a bush about ten feet off the Haven. Gladio considers it. Now would be the time, if he’s going to.
“Well,” Ignis says, and Gladio looks up. All three of the others are exchanging awkward glances. Prompto looks over the other two, then looks at Gladio, the question clear on his face.
“Nah,” he says. “Went to my aunt’s wedding when I was five, but that was it.”
“Wow,” Prompto says. “So we’re all just completely clueless, huh?”
“Sylleblossoms,” Noct says, and shrinks into himself a little when they all stare blankly at him. “Luna likes sylleblossoms. She’ll probably want them,” he mutters defensively.
Gladio gets up and circles the fire, approaching the edge of the Haven. He’s so used to the ambient light of a big city at night that the total darkness rapidly settling in beyond their shallow little circle of light feels huge and intimidating, like some vast living thing waiting to pounce.
He’s already approached the edge, he can’t turn back now. Can’t let the kids see him scared. He lowers himself down and drops off the edge of the Haven and heads over to the bush. It’s within the range of the firelight, but only just, and his eyes strain for any sign of anything in the darkness beyond as he reaches it. The branches crunch and crack under his hands, the bush dehydration-dry. He summons his greatsword and cleaves through the nearest limb, then snatches it up as it falls and walks- casually walks, not scrambles back like a scared kid- to the Haven.
Noct’s waiting at the edge, hand out. Gladio passes the branch up and he makes a face and pulls it up and tosses it aside. His hand comes out again, and Gladio humors him and takes it, and lets Noct help pull him up onto the raised rock platform.
“What about you?” he asks as Gladio picks up the branch and starts breaking pieces off of it. They’re scrawny and brittle and won’t feed the fire well, but it’ll be enough to tide them over until well past bedtime.
“What about me?” he asks.
“You have to get married too, soon, right?” Noct asks. He slants an uncertain look towards Ignis, who had gotten up to keep an eye on Gladio and is now poking at the bag of dough and pretending he hadn’t been concerned at all. “Or is that not gonna be a thing anymore, with the war over?”
He should, technically. It’s been tradition for who-even-fucking-knows-how-long that the Shield is older than their King by a handful of years. Makes it easier to build up the right rapport, train together and learn how to move with one another. No one’s expecting Luna and Noct to get right to popping out kids, but Gladio knows his bachelor days were cut down severely as soon as the engagement was announced. Several noble ladies and Councilor’s daughters have already approached him about it.
“Sure,” he says. “I’m sure there’ll be a whole list of eligible ladies waiting for me when we get back home.”
He doesn’t look at Ignis. No need to rub salt in that wound. They had always known it could only end one way, no point in being shocked that it’s happening exactly as predicted.
Noct is looking at Ignis, and then back to Gladio, his brows furrowed and his expression guilty. Hah, and Gladio’d told Ignis that Noct knew about them. Not often he knows something mister know-it-all didn’t.
“Gotta grow up and do our duty sooner or later,” Gladio says, voice lowered. Prompto and Ignis won’t get it. Ignis knows all about duties and loyalties, but no one is telling him who to marry, and Prompto is a nobody, which makes him the freest of them all.
“Right,” Noct mutters, gaze downcast. He rallies after a moment. “I’ll be your best man,” he says, and it only sounds like an offer. Like he thinks he needs to protect Ignis from this.
“When I’m not yours? Hell nah, I have other friends. You can be one of the groomsmen.”
“Other friends? Name one,” Noct says, purely offended now, and that’s better than whatever it was he was trying to do a moment ago.
“I got a kid sister who’d fight you for it,” Gladio says, sidestepping the little issue of him absolutely lying about other friends. Other people he’s friendly with, sure, but actual friends? Not really a luxury someone in his position can afford.
Noct scoffs but doesn’t argue- she would, and he knows it. He retreats instead, reclaiming his chair and leaning over to start talking with Prompto. Ignis is still at the grill and has his back to them all, and they leave him to it.
Gladio tosses a handful of broken branches into the fire, giving it something to chew on besides the fast-burning firestarter. He stays there beside the fire for a moment, even as its heat bakes into his skin and raises a sheen of sweat across his chest and neck. He’d never really considered his own marriage, too caught up in all that had to happen for Noct’s. So was everyone else, he had assumed, but it was still strange that even his own father hadn’t said anything about it.
A noise echoes behind him, a screech, a faint cackle. It sounds far away. Prompto sits up like a dog hearing its name and stares wide-eyed into the darkness. Gladio stacks his branches into a pile near the fire pit and heads back over to the chairs.
“Sylleblossoms, huh,” he says as he sits down. “Think they’ll have a photographer?”
Of course they will. There’s dozens of people in Altissia ironing out every last detail as they speak. But the question works as intended, distracting Prompto from the sounds beyond the faint glow of the wards. He looks to Noct in sudden, startled hope.
“Dunno,” Noct says lazily. “Guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
“I mean,” Prompto says, hanging onto his nerves by his fingernails but powering through it all the same. They can keep him distracted until he chills out, it’s fine. “Not that I’m saying I’m good or anything…”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Noct says.
Something moves close by, and Gladio looks the other direction, to Ignis who has gathered himself and rejoined them. “We’ll work something out, I’m sure,” he says.
“Right,” Prompto agrees, and grits his teeth as the cackling rings out again, and says, “so what kind of music do they play at weddings?”
They keep him, and each other, safely distracted, and eat pizza, and go to bed and fall asleep long before the fire burns out, and Gladio forgets by morning and doesn’t think about his own inevitable wedding again.
4
She is in a white dress, simple and shimmery like satin. Not at all the fancy dress in the window, but still impractical for- she shouldn’t be wearing that she should be wearing something more-
She is in a white dress and standing at the altar. A circle arches high over her, studded with flowers- no, naked stone, the circle incomplete. There is no white rug leading up the steps to the altar, only slick stone, wet with churning waves. His boots slip. She is wearing heels and stands steady but only so long as she doesn’t move, he thinks.
She is in a white dress and standing at the altar and waiting for him. Turned to face away from him, her hair up in a simple ponytail and not the elaborate style he had expected. No veil over her face, no bouquet in her hands, no long train draped across stone steps behind her. She has a trident in her- she has his ring in her hand and she is holding it out to one side as if waiting for him to come up and take it.
She is in a white dress and standing at the altar and before her is a goddess, there to grant her blessing. Pale skin and dark eyes and terribly cold hands that do not dare touch- no. Long and serpentine, hissing and roaring with jagged words that echo through the city behind them. She is not here to witness, she is here to punish, and she washes the altar with waves and smashes it out from under them and he is drowning drowning drowning-
She is in a white dress and standing at the altar and he is running to her, reaching for her-
“It was so very much like a wedding,” the voice says, and he yells and swings out with an empty hand, with his father’s sword, with a spell borne from the crushing power of all his ancestors-
Ardyn falls away, shoved, cut, burned and decayed- falls away and laughs.
“The closest thing to a wedding either of you will ever know, I’m afraid,” he says, sympathetic, as though he is not the entire reason for that. “A shame it went the way it did.”
“It’s not done yet,” Noctis growls-
-but it is, he knows it is-
-she is in a white dress and it is torn and tattered and her hair is loose and soaking wet and plastered to her face and her hand is pressed to the red spreading across her stomach and Noctis knows- he knows- she wastes her healing on Ardyn, glowing gold sinking into seething darkness, spares none for herself when it might have saved her-
-she is in a white dress and she is waiting for him at the altar-
Noctis jerks awake with a gasp. Rolls away from some imaginary threat with a hoarse shout, right hand flashing out- twisting pink-red magic coiling in his palm and lingering there before fading, having nowhere to go, no target to wither into dust. He slams into a wall with his shoulder and twists to put his back flat to it and stays there, gulping for air, hand at the ready.
He’s alone. No Ardyn, no altar, no- no Luna. Only him, in one of the dormitories littering Zegnautus Keep. His father’s sword is lying on the very edge of the bunk he’d crawled into. He’s having to carry it by hand until he can figure out what’s interfering with his magic and reconnect to the Armiger. He had never appreciated how much a weapon weighed before, never realized the inconvenience of its long blade and the danger of its sharp edges in moments of exhausted carelessness. His arms were burning with carrying it, to say nothing of the drain of actually using it.
Between that and the Ring, heavy with the power of a hundred dead kings, and the poisoned air in the hallways and the monstrous daemon pursuing him in the darkness and Ardyn talking jeering laughing, Noctis had needed a break. He had simply… sat down for a spell on one of the bunks in the next dormitory he’d passed by. The lights kept the daemons away and the MTs didn’t seem cognizant enough to open doors anymore, so he’d let himself relax, slip down to one side, pull the pillow up over his eyes to block out the light. Fall asleep, as much as he’d sworn he wouldn’t do that. He needs to find Ignis and Gladio, find Prompto, and instead here he is, sleeping in like always.
The intercom system clicks quietly as the speakers activate. Normally he doesn’t hear it over the ambient sounds of distant MTs dragging their wrecked bodies over metal floors and daemons cackling to themselves, and the voice startles him every time. Now, though, he hears it and can brace.
“It was such an honor to attend your wedding,” Ardyn says, and Noctis’ breath lodges in his chest. “So sad the bride had to leave early.”
How did he know, Noctis wants to demand. He bites his tongue instead. He couldn’t have- how could he have- it had been a lucky guess, a shot in the dark that scored a direct hit. He hadn’t been in Noctis’ dream, that would be...
...about par for the course for the powers Ardyn has been demonstrating recently, actually.
“Shut up,” he growls through gritted teeth. Not his best, but the best he can manage just now. There is a staticky noise that might be Ardyn clucking his tongue before the intercom clicks off again.
He slides off the end of the bunk, staggers a step and leans his shoulder against the wall to recover his balance. He won’t be falling asleep again anytime soon, that’s for sure.
He picks up his father’s sword and settles it in his hand, fast-familiar and heavy and uncomfortable, and pauses. Lifts his arm again, looks at the hand wrapped around the hilt of the sword. At the ring on his finger.
He can’t offer her anything but vengeance, now, and he’ll make sure she has it soon enough. He won’t let the darkness she fought so hard against take over, not after everything.
Not exactly the most romantic wedding gift, but it’s the best he can do for her.
He leaves the dormitory and slips deeper into Zegnautus Keep.
5
The elevator ride to the royal quarters is long and quiet. Not tense, thankfully. Not that Ignis can tell. Admittedly, his ability to interpret such things has been undermined by his blindness, so he is operating at least partially on hope here, but still.
Noct inhales a little deeper than usual, preparing to speak. He lets the breath back out again a moment later in a sigh. No words needed.
“I didn’t know,” Ignis says quietly, answering the question Noct didn’t ask.
“Specs-”
“I had heard some talk,” he continues, overriding the protest. “No more than the usual discontent, I assumed. There are those who see an opportunity for power and will pursue it no matter what stands in their way.”
“I know.”
“But I did not know,” Ignis says, barely tempering his tone away from a hiss. He didn’t know, and he should have. This should not have blindsided them like it had.
Noct puts a hand on Ignis’ wrist. “Now we do,” he says, hearing what Ignis is not saying. “And we can prepare better for next time.”
It stings, it is humiliating- he had sat in front of the Council no doubt looking a fool, and he can only imagine how Noct had looked. Councilor Tranneus had sounded so smug when he put the motion on the table and Ignis had sat there like a useless lump as the whispers broke out around him and-
The hand on his squeezes, and he turns his wrist to intertwine their fingers. They sit too far apart at the Council table to touch, even accidentally, so he had not been able to before now. There is precious comfort in that strong grip.
“They can’t make me get married,” Noct says serenely. He is not asking Ignis, he is not stating a hope- he is simply saying a basic fact of the universe. Gravity pulls things down, water is wet, the Council cannot do this.
He is forty-seven, their King, and the world is moving on from the horrors he had sacrificed so much to defeat. It has been longer now since the Night than the Night itself had lasted, and people are starting to forget. All the Council cares about is that they are being denied the opportunity for one of them to tie their family to the Lucis Caelum name.
“Leila Iustus tried to warn me, I’m pretty sure,” Noct is saying thoughtfully, unaware of the directions Ignis’ mind is spinning out in. “She asked me to tea this afternoon before the Council session and seemed pretty worried when I told her I didn’t have time, and she really wasn’t happy when Tranneus started talking.”
Forty-seven and unmarried is older than Regis was by more than a decade, older than Mors was. Older than many of his ancestors were, if one were to trace the generations back. Kings needed to secure their line, especially kings from a bloodline as prone to fertility struggles as the Lucis Caelums.
“Should see if we can fit her into the schedule soon, sound her out a little.”
Sooner or later it will become clear that Noct has no intention of securing his line at all, and then things will get very difficult indeed. They have a plan, a goal, a desperate dream that will secure Lucis’ future for generations to come, but it will require a change Ignis is sure the Council will not approve of, as it will strip many of them of their power. They haven’t even hinted at it, for fear of whatever retribution the Council may cook up, but the longer Noct delays the more clear it will become that something like this is in the works.
“And also maybe I should just marry Prompto, since he is my favorite.”
“What?” Ignis asks, distracted but still listening, partially.
Noct moves, and the elevator judders to a halt abruptly, creaking on its cables as an alert chimes softly from the button panel. He must have pushed the emergency stop button.
“Something wrong, Your Majesty?” a tinny voice comes through the speaker on the panel.
“Just need a moment in private to discuss something, thanks,” Noct says, and the whispering feedback of an active intercom line shuts off. He turns back to Ignis. “I knew you weren’t listening to me,” he accuses lightly.
“I am listening,” Ignis protests.
“You’re spiraling, which is Prompto’s job, not yours.” Noct steps further into Ignis’ space, further again, pushes him back gently until his back presses against the wall of the elevator car behind him. Noct stands close enough for Ignis to feel the warmth of him, feel the faint brush of his breath across his neck. It is so unbelievable still, that he is here, warm and solid against Ignis. It takes his breath away sometimes.
“I am…” Ignis begins, and closes his less damaged eye and sighs. He is spiraling, which is galling.
“Leila Iustus,” Noct repeats patiently. “Start with her. If we can get a few sympathetic Councilors on our side…”
“Begin redirecting responsibilities and minor powers away from the Council to dismantle their power base,” Ignis says, finding traction under his metaphorical feet once more. They’ve talked about this, plotted this out in great detail.
“There you are,” Noct says warmly. “We got this, Specs. You’ve been getting ready for this for years now, and I know you’ve got this.”
His utter confidence in Ignis is sweet, if a bit alarming in its totality. He still will not acknowledge that Ignis is only human, capable of mistakes and misunderstandings just as much as anyone else.
“And if all else fails, we can just run away to Caem and never come back,” Noct adds. As though he would ever do something like that.
Ignis squeezes Noct’s hand again, and Noct, sensing capitulation, leans even further into him, letting Ignis take some of his weight.
“We got this,” he repeats, and now he sounds a bit overwhelmed. This will be a massive change for everyone, but no one more than the king who is about to begin dismantling his own throne.
Ignis lets Noct lean against him for a long moment, not speaking, simply finding peace in each other’s presence. This sort of comfort is usually more Gladio’s area of expertise, but he can adapt.
Still. He can’t quite help himself. “Shall we plan for a summer wedding, then?”
Noct understands immediately, and sighs to cover the laugh that wants to come out. “I was only checking if you were listening.”
“Is Prompto aware you’ve proposed, again?”
Noct draws his hand away from Ignis’ grip and puts both palms on Ignis’ face. They’re close enough in height that he only needs to stand up straight, Ignis only tipping his chin down, for them to kiss.
“Sorry,” Noct says against his lips, “but I have higher standards these days. It’s all three of you or nothing.”
He’s keeping it sweet, chaste. Ignis soaks in the warmth of his words and lets them kindle inside him, and skates a hand up Noct’s back to curl in his hair tight enough to pull his head back with a sharp gasp, and the next kiss is long and deep.
Ignis pulls away eventually- Noct never will, not without prompting- and pushes him away gently. “We ought to retire to our quarters, if we want to continue with this,” he says.
“Uh-huh,” Noct wheezes, and clears his throat, and Ignis smiles to himself. Half a lifetime of doing this, and he can still kiss Noct stupid. Noct steps away and a moment later the elevator whirs back to life, continuing back upstairs.
Ignis takes a step away from the wall and reaches out, and Noct takes his hand immediately, and Ignis thinks- it will not happen, it can’t happen- but this is good enough.
+ 1
“You don’t have to leave Insomnia,” the newly elected Prime Minister Emilia Advoca says as she follows Noct through what was once the royal quarters. She doesn’t sound fully convinced of her own words.
“I want to,” Noct says reassuringly, and shoots her a quick, apologetic smile. “And if I don’t, they won’t ever take you seriously.”
“Well,” she says, and can’t go further. He’s right and they both know it.
He’s still the King of Light, no matter who actually wears the crown, no matter if there even is a crown anymore. If the new governing body of Lucis wants people to listen to them, and not constantly turn to Noct, then he needs to go. Fade away, like all the other relics of the past.
It’s fine. It’s what he wants, what he’s been working towards for years now. It’s a change so huge and fundamental that he still feels like he’s falling, like he’s missed a step and stumbled and can’t find the ground beneath his feet again. No more king, no more kingdom. No more responsibilities, no more titles or positions. Everything he has known since the day he was born was gone. He had traded it all away for a house on a secluded cliff and the promise of a better, more secure future for Lucis.
He goes into his office, Advoca on his heels every step of the way, like she doesn’t want to be left alone in this space that is still very much his. He’d scheduled a renovation team to come in and strip this place to bare bones next week, as a final farewell gift. She and her ministers can decide what to do with it then.
The pictures are gone, already up on the walls in that house on the cliff. So are Gladio’s plants, which had grown from a minor assortment in the bedroom window to a veritable jungle in every room that had decent lighting. So are the cats, and Ignis’ cooking supplies, and that very big bed they’ve made so much use of over the years. Umbra is at his heels as always, not a spot of grey on him in spite of the decades he’s spent at Noct’s side, and off to the right of the desk-
He wraps his hand around the hilt and lifts his father’s sword from its rack on the wall. It has been long enough, the memories settled enough, that he feels only fondness and affection. Zegnautus was a lifetime ago. He sends the sword into the Armiger with a starburst of blue sparks and Advoca barely stifles a gasp- magic is becoming rare these days, with the Crystal gone and the Oracle’s blessings fading.
He turns to face her properly, as the last of it is done and there is nothing more for him to do but leave. Gladio’s got the car running downstairs and Prompto and Ignis are at Caem no doubt engaged in a silent war over furniture arrangements, and Noct wants to get moving. Get on to living his life, for once.
“I wanted to thank you, Noctis,” Advoca says. She uses his name pointedly, very obviously not using the title that he abdicated. “I know this was not an easy thing for you to do, but it was the right thing for you to do. You will always be welcomed here, and Lucis will not forget what you have done for it. If you ever need anything from the Ministry, you only need ask.”
That sounds rehearsed. She means it, probably, but she also wants him gone so she can start doing her job properly.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” Noct says, and glances at the window. It’s small, but it’s positioned just so someone sitting at the desk can look up and see Insomnia sprawled out before them. “Just, take care of them.”
Advoca’s practiced expression softens into something a bit more raw and real. She’s young enough, she had likely been raised on stories of the King of Light and his heroic defeat of the eternal darkness. Facing him now, she is looking upon a legend, and it looks very much like a tired old man.
“Of course,” she says, and puts a hand on his arm, apparently unthinking. She withdraws quickly, her eyes widening as she turns away- she touched him, the King of Light- and leads him out of the office.
They reach the ground floor without another word shared between them, and walk through the lobby that the Fierce had once smashed to pieces and out the front doors to the Citadel’s drive. The Regalia Type-F is sitting at the bottom of the stairs. Her paint job is an obnoxious pink-purple-gold that shines like an oil slick, and she’s got chocobo and cactuar and Carbuncle decals slapped all over her just to make sure she looks nice and trashy. Gladio’s leaning against the driver’s door, phone in hand. He glances up and jerks his chin in a come on gesture when Noct comes through the doors.
He’s still easily the most breathtaking of the four of them. His hair’s all silver now but it looks ruggedly handsome on him, and he’d pared down the muscle gracefully instead of letting it go to flab as normally happens to big men his age, and the tattoo’s gone a little weird and faded as his body’s changed, but he can still cleave a seadevil in half with that bigass sword of his, and he’s still the hottest guy Noct knows. Noct pauses to admire him, because he can, because it doesn’t matter anymore if anyone figures it out.
He hesitates, and looks to Advoca, who had said something about seeing him to his car and apparently meant it literally.
“Actually,” he says. “I do have a favor to ask.”
---
They’re seven weeks at Caem when Noct gets a call from a restricted number- Advoca’s aide, not the Prime Minister herself. He ceased being important to her as soon as he was out of Insomnia and his influence went with him. Politicians never really changed.
The house at Caem is very different now. It’s still royal property, which these days means just private property. A storm had damaged the old house after years of standing stalwart, so Noct had had it taken out and rebuilt with a clearer purpose in mind. No longer one large room with a sliver of a kitchen and shitty wood paneled walls, it is a proper house now, with bedrooms and a gym and a darkroom. It’s still small, still perched on a clifftop, still tucked away on a backroad with the nearest grocery store in Old Lestallum, but it’s been designed with its current occupants in mind and so suits them perfectly.
He gets the phone call, gets the news early, thanks the aide and asks they pass along his appreciation, and goes to the dresser that is his alone and opens the top drawer that no one else looks in.
He won’t have much time- Ignis in particular keeps on top of the news, old habits that won’t break. He’d prepared in advance, just in case, hoping against hope.
“Hey, guys, can you come here for a minute,” he calls as he comes out into the living room. Another change- the house is mostly single story, as Noct’s back pitches a fit at stairs these days, and Gladio’s knees aren’t too keen on them either. The two guest bedrooms and Prompto’s darkroom are upstairs and that’s it.
“Why,” Prompto yells back from whatever room he’s in, as he always does. He’s finally fully comfortable with his place in their group and is allowing himself to be the lazy, inconvenient brat he was always meant to be.
“ ‘Cause I said so,” Noct yells back, smiling in spite of himself. Lazy and inconvenient, sure, but also- his smile widens when Prompto sighs dramatically but gets up, his chair scraping over the wooden floorboards- always willing to indulge Noct in whatever whims move him, no matter how weird, as Noct does for Prompto.
“What’s up, Noct?” Gladio asks as he blows into the living room, Ignis’ arm hooked in his. Noct waits another few seconds until Prompto comes in from a different doorway and all three gather around him. The star they all orbit, Prompto had once said, and Noct still doesn’t like it but has long since learned to live with it.
Gladio tips his chin down and nods to Noct’s hand, which is clenched tight around a small box. “What’ve you got there?”
Rings, four of them, each one a simple band of silver and gold woven together, because they’ll never agree on anything else. He doesn’t usually like rings but he’ll like this one, and Prompto rarely needs to shoot anything with guns anymore so it won’t be a bother to him too much, and Ignis and Gladio have worn plenty of jewelry over the years.
Ignis- bravest, most selfish, the one who looked at all four of them and said I want this and made it happen- reaches out. Noct turns his hand over and lets Ignis slide his fingers over the box, trace its edges, but doesn’t let him take it.
He has no regrets, no hesitations. They’ve already given him so much of their lives, they’re hardly going to turn him down and kick him out now. He only wishes he’d prepared better, found a way to separate Ignis from his phone for the day and done this right, arranged for a fancy dinner, a nice day at the beach. Instead he’s just standing here in the living room.
“Noct,” Ignis says, gentle and coaxing, dragging Noct out of his own head like always.
“When I left Insomnia last time, I asked Advoca if she’d move the multiple-partner marriage item to the top of the Ministry’s docket.”
Ignis sucks in a sharp breath, his fingers clenching down tight on Noct’s hand. Prompto opens his mouth and makes no noise, and Gladio grins bright and wild.
“No shit,” he says.
He’d pushed for it, of course, as King with his Council. But they’d never settled the debate, always pushed it further and further down the list, and Noct couldn’t drag it back up to the top without making it clear that he had a personal investment. And now- he wasn’t even sure it would happen at all, let alone that the vote would go the way it did-
He passes the ring box into his free hand and tangles his fingers with Ignis’, holding him close. Opens the box so Prompto and Gladio can see its contents, and fumbles one of the rings free and presses it to Ignis’ palm and wraps his fingers around it.
“They voted on it today,” he continues, though Prompto is making alarming squeaking noises and Gladio’s already taking his own ring from the box and Ignis doesn’t seem to be hearing much of anything at all, if the look on his face is anything to go by. “And it passed. So.”
Gladio slings an arm out and hooks it around Prompto’s neck and reels him in. Noct takes that as a cue and drags Ignis in closer as well, so they are a circle of four instead of three sides of a triangle around one central point. Ignis is putting his ring on with a dreamy expression on his face, and Prompto’s is on and he’s sliding Gladio’s on for him. They probably should have waited to do this at the actual ceremony, whatever that is going to look like, but Noct can’t blame them for getting ahead of themselves. Never once, not ever, had any of them ever thought they’d get to have this.
“So, guys,” Noct says, braver now that it is done in all but words, now that Gladio’s holding his hand and Prompto is slipping a ring down his finger and Ignis still hasn’t let go of his other hand, holding on like he never will let go ever again, and it’s perfect, it’s all so perfect.
“Wanna get married?”