[ Ignis pulls away and it's its own kind of devastation. He pulls away and all warmth goes with him, and Noctis feels achingly, painfully cold. This is heartbreak, and he can't find it in himself to respond. But something clicks, sparks anger, and Noctis closes his hand over the box and slaps Ignis' hand away, snarling. ]
Don't say that to me ever again.
[ Don't say there could only ever be him and then leave him bereft and empty and unable to deal with everything that's broken apart before him. Don't say that it would only cause him more grief because how can there be more than this, when he's staring down at loss and has never been the worse for it? At least now he knows why his dad looks so sad -- had he foreseen this, had he known how it would hurt him? Noctis wants to hide away from him now, from Ignis and his dad and everyone who can see how brittle he is, how he is a touch away from breaking.
This is the last and only thing he could call his, the one thing that remains of his love while Ignis presses distance between them. It probably would hurt a lot less if Ignis was colder, if he wasn't so obviously trying to hold himself together, the pain reflected in his own eyes clear as day to Noctis. He would choke on it if he didn't choose to want to protect this piece of Ignis, this one thing lost to them. There is nothing as piercing as what could have been, if Ignis had proposed and Noct would have done everything possible to make it true -- and this ring would have been on his finger, bolstering his courage as he stands his ground.
But now he's on shifting sands, and he unfurls himself with a cat-like grace, feet planting on the ground as he straightens up, lithe and lean and shaky at first but as proud as he ever is. He doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to love Ignis now, not with all the intimacies they'd shared. It's hard to look at him, to know all his most intimate secrets and to love every inch of him and yet keep his distance. He swallows hard as he steps past him in silence.
He misses him already, misses how Ignis would take him to bed and how they would kiss, their hands warm and entwined and Noctis has never known happiness as profound as being in his arms, feeling the heat of his kisses and feeding his every desire. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and perhaps it seems fitting that Noctis now knows no worse, devastation given exquisite form in Ignis, and Noctis still loves him, a cold and broken realization that will haunt him every time he looks around, every time he reaches out and touches only glass.
Obligation has never been a more contemptible word. He will tear every word they've exchanged today apart in the nights to come, pick at Ignis' tenderness like a scab, and he feels wholly self-destructive as he squares his shoulders. ] I'm sure His Majesty's expected this.
[ Unfair, cruel. He loves his dad, he does, and he knows no parent takes pleasure in his child's pain. ] I hope you kept the receipt, the crown will make reimbursements.
[ Because if he cannot keep Ignis, then he can at least have this, slip it onto a chain and keep it close to his heart. And the damn crown can fucking pay for it. Then he says, so quietly it's almost inaudible. ]
I would have said yes, Ignis. And I would have fought anyone to keep you.
[ It's relieving when Noctis snaps out of his fugue at last, hot and overly adamant, patience butchered on the chopping block. If he executes him next, it'll be a mercy granted far too soon. Not enough time to sear the image of unholy vengeance into his retinas, far too much time to ponder how to outlive the minefield when everything he does has a fifty-fifty chance of backfiring. Frustration, at least, is something Ignis can expect, insofar that he can dig his heels in, hand stung with the divine and rightful retribution of the slap he's earned, and the affection of a few seconds prior he hasn't. Now that Noct's no longer shying away from confrontation again, Ignis can discern where the edges don't quite meet in his disbelief, where he's left his bruise on him, impressed a mark invisible to the seeing eye but no less indelible for it. The part of him that, possibly, wants him to retaliate in kind.
Noctis is everything to him. He can take comfort in the fact that he hasn't utterly annihilated his temper as it rushes to the surface, gleaming and vicious. Fighting long after Ignis has renounced him for a return to duty, scathing and abandoned, and it's an assumption not without some truth. King Regis hasn't the heart to look upon him since then; everything has been handled through intermediaries and secondhand accounts, and he's never sought to force his audience. ]
I can assure you that His Majesty only wishes the very best for you.
[ And it's not the end of everything, the ache isn't so irrevocable that he'll never be able to recover and try again with someone new. Resilience is a terrifying thing; even knocked down six ways to Sunday, Noctis can still find his footing in his confusion. Never mind that Ignis has stained him with his touch, learned the bumps of his vertebrae in his sleep. Life without Noct as the linchpin is still worth living, however lacking, missing the nerve of ferocity that's filling in the air right now, openly baiting him.
Ignis plucks at the conversational threads, avoiding the finer brutalities resurrected, as if the time he'd poured into his love was something he could get a return payment for. There's peacefulness even in the depths of evisceration, though, picking apart his words until they're carefully loosened from his throat. ]
... Noctis. You must realize I was wrong for ever believing it possible. There's no way it would have ended well. For you, especially, as the heir apparent. You've a duty to your people in succeeding the line, and I've overstepped my bounds.
[ It sounds rehearsed. Some of it is, practiced until he could hit the beats right, draw something resembling a natural flow for the eventuality of a talk like this. But it's no talk as much as it is a rebuke, flat and insipid. Ignis's hands drop by his sides, making no move to pursue Noctis. If he leaves, he'll let him go; he no longer has a right to do much more than ad-lib suggestions Noctis will fling back at him, unrepentant, but there's one thing he'll challenge here, no matter how the argument threatens to escalate. Ignis's voice is firm, leaving behind the farce. ]
You can't possibly keep me on as your chamberlain any longer if you keep the ring. To injure your spouse so acutely by my own hand is a slight I would resign my station for.
[ Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Noctis understands this better now than he ever has through any of his previous lessons. The pain of isolation, of loneliness is even harder to bear when he's already tasted of the kind of happiness that people spend all their lives seeking; blissful mornings melting into heated evenings in the arms of their beloved, believing (however wrongly) that it would never end. But here he is now, renounced by the love of his life, and the crown always wins. It must, even if the price is too high for Noctis to bear. Especially when the price is too high for him to bear.
He stares at the grain of the heavy oak door, and there is nothing now that does not hurt. He is only nineteen, still young in the ways of the world -- and what a cruel world it is, too. A part of him wonders if he will come awake soon, open his eyes in the darkness with tears on his face and Ignis wrapped around him, and maybe he'll tell him this is a nightmare, that it, too, will pass. But this is where he's wrong; this is where dreaming ends, when he is told again that this is for his own good, that his dad wishes the very best for him, and Noctis learns to despise words spoken by rote. ]
Of course. [ He says dully. He's learned his answer by rote, too. The vicious anger is submerged as quickly as it flares, because keeping it up is exhausting and already Noctis is barely holding himself together. He is the prince, he thinks, as if he could glean any comfort from the name, as if there is any to be found. Life with Ignis will be nothing short of torture now, to see the only man he's ever loved and wanted and to have him be the only one he can never have. To see him and know, every day of every minute in every moment that he once had all of him, had loved and been loved so deeply by him. The memory of sun-dappled smiles, bodies tangled in fine sheets and hands twined together, Ignis' sweet words of love warm in his ears, and Noctis loves him, loves him so fiercely he wishes he knows what to do.
But there is peacefulness in the depths of evisceration, when Ignis speaks with surgical precision and with infinite care speaks only to the king the boy would be, the boy excised from the conversation because in the name of duty he serves little purpose, and Ignis understands perfectly how the crown must always win. The boy, however, only listens, the flat and insipid rebuke falling upon the ears of one who has heard this so many times before. It occurs to him, in spite and unholy vengeance to keep the ring, to demand his resignation and take away the one thing Ignis had spent all his life working for, training for, so much a part of him that to cut him out from it would be the height of cruelty.
But it would serve Ignis right. It would serve his dad right. They can spend another ten fucking years finding him another chamberlain -- and failing, because there is no one like Ignis, no one Noctis would accept -- and Noctis will never see him again, and maybe, just maybe, things will begin to heal. He discards that thought as soon as it occurs to him. No matter how angry he is, he thinks, how scorned and roaring for vengeance, the truth remains is this: Noctis loves Ignis too much, too deeply, and the knife does not come down, after all.
The king says nothing (there is no challenge to be met when the fight is already over). The boy bends over to gently place the box beside the door. He straightens, wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, and takes a breath. The back of his hand comes away wet. He looks up, and takes a deep, silent breath. When he speaks, it's almost steady. Almost. The boy hasn't been bled out yet, but give it time. ]
Make arrangements for couriers to deliver your reports to me from today onwards. A cleaning service, as well. The palace kitchens can deliver all necessary meals.
[ Standing on the brink of all that he's gone and given up, it's not a particularly new realization that he hasn't spared Noctis the flash flood of hurt, after all. The unbroken, unrelieved wave still comes up over him, making him a victim of his agony. It's painful and devouring, but also horribly anticlimactic, the manner in which he knows Noctis will hunch into himself before he commits to the shuddering locomotion of it, drowning and slow to react. Even now, there's still time to pull him out of his despair, or sink into the quicksand of it without reservation and renounce all that he's committed to. All that could have been is squeezing at his lungs, intense and unremitting. There might be a part of him that'll always stand here waiting for the knife to come down, with everything and nothing to lose, all at once.
But Ignis is calm, even in brutalization, and the moment passes.
It is perhaps a testament to how much wretchedness Ignis can internalize that he doesn't break down when Noctis does. Not out of any lack of anguish; it's there, every contrived ounce of it funneling into his soul, clamoring against his ribcage when there's nothing more to be done, sick and trying to throttle his hands as they snare inwards. He meets the breadth of Noctis's obstinance with surrender, and tears it apart: abuse by way of blunt trauma, forcing Noctis renounce the one last thing binding them together.
In his shock, Noctis is selfish, but Ignis is endlessly, endlessly deceitful afterwards, quiet even with the sensation that he'd been gutted, so sickeningly pervasive that it was strange how he could still stay like this, standing perfectly upright. It's not the erosion of everything he's thrown away that serves as cause for alarm, but how he'd never gotten around to acknowledging what his life has ultimately amounted to, and what was and wasn't worth pursuing in the looming absence left afterwards. There hasn't been a day that's gone by where Ignis didn't want to see Noctis, until now. ]
As you wish, your Highness.
[ It's the collision course of strangers, that new unfamiliarity introduced when he politely rips his gaze away from Noctis when his tears grow irreconcilable. He can't see his face, but he doesn't have to. The oppressiveness of his hands, white-knuckled, as they come away from his face speak for themselves. They no longer fit together, and all of it— all of those years they've spent in each other's company have corroded in a matter of seconds, and it's odd, the weightlessness that remains, when it should render him incapable of standing. More bizarre, still, that only a few weeks ago that he'd kissed Noctis out on the apartment landing, fingers a resonating corollary to his pulse, one consequence bleeding into another, and the prince suckered into laughter, treacherously loud, betraying all that tenderness in him before he'd gone and joined in on the act.
Ignis eases past Noct— he broaches the space sideways, so that not even the cuff of their sleeves brush in passing, and takes up the ring box, pocketing it. ]
Then, if you'll excuse me.
[ Simplified down this much, there's no bleakness in being overly cordial. And just like that he's gone, his presence beside Noctis melting from the room as he slips out of the door, exits down the corridor. There's no last, rueful glance back for what might have been; truthfully, he'd rather forget this part, leaving Noctis and that rapidly dwindling window for remorse behind, the blinding sun of the prince's influence on him be damned.
If possible, he'd rather not remember this at all. ]
[ Just like that, he's gone. In the impersonal emptiness of the room, Noctis allows himself to quietly cry.
Fourteen months and three weeks pass, the devastation wrought upon both parties of this relationship having no bearing on time and tide. In the beginning, Regis gives Noctis space to mend his broken heart -- after all, no father takes pleasure in his son's grief. He receives word, as well, that Noctis will not be seeing his chamberlain in any capacity for the forseeable future. It is a matter of concern, of course; Ignis is an exceptional young man with many talents, a great asset to the crown, and his handling of the breakup had been above reproach. And Regis recommends a temporary change in duties, even if that particular decision has raised a few eyebrows.
That Ignis had been seeing his son was not a secret in the upper echelons of nobility; the abrupt severing of personal and professional relationship even less so. Regis had sent Noctis a query after a month, and his response had been polite but curt, and the king is uncertain if he should be proud or worried. His son, still nursing his wounds, and Regis offers the option of a diplomatic attachment in Altissia, shadowing the minister of foreign affairs and learning all he can.
It had been accepted, and without fanfare the separation is enacted. Regis receives word that Ignis is performing excellently, the clever young man having attracted much praise, affection and no small amount of attention. The foreign affairs minister himself is effusive with compliments for Ignis' competence and his intelligence, so much so that Regis secretly hopes that the man isn't thinking of poaching him for his cabinet.
Noctis, on the other hand. In the months that follow it's impossible not to notice the deep-set ennui, the unmistakable change in character not borne out of spite but something that runs much, much deeper. At least spite can be assuaged, reasoned with, negotiated. This is a different ballgame, subtle and almost insidious in the way his son withers. Not physically, but where Regis had cherished most. His heart grown cold by degrees, an immovable sadness in his bones, and smiles that don't reach his eyes anymore, if he even smiles at all.
Regis has dined with Noctis sixty-three times in the past fourteen months, and the number of occasions a smile occurred is more than adequately covered by a single hand. The number of occasions a genuine smile was wrought, none. He receives reports on Noctis' progress in other areas; he is doing well, even if his trainers have privately noted that the boy's temper, on the rare occasions it rouses, is sharper, more vicious. He receives reports, too, on the occasions that Noctis has had his eye on young ladies, each one clever and accomplished, elegant young women who, while not of royal blood, would have made a fine addition to the family and crown.
Each one of them end, and Regis hears whispers that the prince is emotionally distant, that he keeps them at arm's length, that there is no way to broach the distance no matter how they try. Things get worse with Noctis for a little while after that, but eventually Regis sees the vicious cycle. They rarely last more than three months, even though a particularly memorable one lasted four and a half (the shortest, five weeks), and while Regis doesn't care for the burgeoning reputation for philandering Noctis has somehow garnered despite the fact that he's done little with them, it's enough for him to worry.
Noctis is less than forthcoming, of course; his answers simple and to the point. He's not angry, the king notes. At least not in the way he can sense, and this is infinitely more difficult to handle when it's not a tantrum he can quell. Something as irrevocably changed in Noctis, and every time he sees his son he sees less and less of his boy, as if time and tide were eroding the heart of him. Clarus notices (likely because of Gladio, who has been one of Noctis' companions ever since), and of late had chosen to have a quiet word with Regis; a rarity when Clarus rarely involves himself with Noctis' personal business.
Perhaps, Clarus says privately to him one late evening after a particularly unsatisfying dinner with Noctis, it is too early to deal in absolutes. Regis says nothing, but he thinks.
A few weeks before Ignis' stint with Altissia concludes, Regis asks Noctis if he is amenable to have his chamberlain resume his duties. Noctis, eyes unreadable, offers a perfunctory response, and that is that.
Regis asks to see Ignis when he returns, cordial but troubled. My son withers in your absence whether he realizes it or not, he says, because in that private moment there is no space for lies, and he has been thinking about this for a long time. As the days pass it becomes increasingly more clear that Regis had miscalculated in necessitating the swift conclusion of their... dalliance. There is a sickness that has anchored itself in the core of his son, and Regis notes, with regret, that the demon that had come after Noctis when he had been a child had been far less efficacious compared to what Regis had done in the name of duty.
It is too early to deal in absolutes, Clarus reminds him again; the issue of succession can be explored by alternative means. And, Regis thinks with a heavy heart, the issue of succession is not worth sacrificing his son this way. After all, the king is no tyrant, and seeing Noctis the way he is sets him at a loss. He is amenable to your return, go to him. Regis tells him, eventually continuing. And -- if my son gives you his heart again, I will not demand that you return it. He will not stand in their way if it will restore Noctis to an approximation of himself, not a distant, cold and implacable shadow of the earnest, understated awkward warmth of what he had once been. Still, a part of him wonders if Ignis is too late.
Where Noctis is concerned, however, things are complicated. Things are complicated because they always fucking are, and he's trying. He's trying to move on, dating girls and working hard to be a good boyfriend -- a lot of them are smart, distinguished, with sharp features and an elegant (if sometimes dorky) wit, and Noctis liked them well enough. Things would always go well for awhile until it didn't, until they wanted more and Noctis found that he couldn't give it to them; he couldn't even love them properly, as if a part of him has permanently malfunctioned and somehow he can't actually do it again. Not since --
-- nevermind. Nobody cares, anymore.
Ignis comes back to Lucis today and Noctis is shoving gossip magazines into a box in his closet, each one of them bearing Ignis' face together with his partner, often a dark-haired pretty boy with spiky hair and eyes with varying shades of green or blue (the latest one had a vivid kind of blue, and at certain angles could have passed for Noctis; Noctis only knows this because that's what the fucking caption said, and he thinks he's going to be sick).
It's been more than a year, he thinks. He should be better now. Over it. He isn't, but nobody's looking that closely, and Noctis likes to think that he's faked it to an acceptable degree -- he doesn't break practice swords anymore during his training sessions. He's twenty now, and despite the low-key anxiety he's been fighting for the past couple of months ever since he'd first heard that Ignis was coming home, he has his shit together a little better now. More or less. Prompto tells him sometimes that he worries about him, asks him what's up because he didn't seem to be the same guy anymore (not verbatim, paraphrasing), and sometimes he doesn't believe it. Sometimes he does. He doesn't remember the last time something made him happy -- he doesn't remember the last time his heart raced and sang and he laughed and smiled. He can't remember it, when he looks at the shelf of fish-related paraphernalia that he still couldn't bring himself to dispose of ever since Ignis left. He had bought them for him, various trinkets and souvenirs, and Noctis had kept them all, treasured them and set them on a shelf.
It bothers him more than anything, today, that he hadn't fucking done a thing about it. It bothers him that he's both anticipating and dreading this, uncertain of what to say now that so much has separated them (fourteen months, and not even a word from Ignis -- although to be fair even if he said anything, Noctis probably wouldn't have trusted himself to respond), and if Ignis sees that stupid fucking shelf he's going to think Noctis is a lovesick idiot for keeping his shit. He's older now, a little harder even if he likes to think he hasn't changed much, and so much sadder even if he's stopped noticing it long ago, despair clinging to him like a shadow, a thing Noctis lives with, copes with; a thing everyone else but the prince sees. His face is a little more tired, darker circles under his eyes -- he's thinner than he'd once been, and there is a grim set to his mouth that had insinuated itself months ago. Stayed, too. But the apartment is relatively clean (although never quite to Ignis' standards). A few reports lie on the table, and underneath the reports, a magazine bearing Ignis' and his erstwhile flavor of the month's face is only half obscured (entirely overlooked in Noctis' harried last-minute sweep of the apartment).
Gladio calls to tell him that Ignis will be arriving. The doorbell rings ten minutes later, and swallowing, pretending that what's left of his heart is not in his mouth, he opens the door. ]
[ Far be it from him to quit this farce and come clean, even this late in his life. More than two decades have been spent and Ignis has nothing to show for it. He'll be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Noctis's side for today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and further, further, onto the rest of forever, and he hasn't raised up a single retort otherwise. He's brimming with despair and it's contaminating everything else he's done in preparation to leave the Citadel, but he's known all along that to serve the king is to give up many other things and grow to accept the burden cast, or be left behind. Noctis, too, knows that far too well.
His mind, previously so sharp and overly proud, has deserted him. Another betrayal, one of many over the past few days. But it's not so long of a drop from ego, not so long of a departure that he can't track where he'd gone off the tracks and railroaded himself into this perpetuation of good faith and his service to the crown, championing duty over all else. It's not a fall from some great, impassive height, just a matter of readjusting his priorities from the years he's spent together with one Lucian prince to serving the Altissian prime minister, which really isn't so divorced from the brand of professionalism he's wielded for so long. There's no huge difference.
Perhaps what makes it so horrible is the illusion of choice. Dying right now in some absurd mishap might be tragic, but it might not be so unpleasant if Noctis was by his side, holding his hand through it. But he's had to relinquish him, give all of him up for little more than sheer biological imperative, and nothing is worse than comprehending the awfulness of his loss for so small and benign a reason. It's not a life-or-death situation he's grappling with, just deprivation. There can be no desperation in something so asinine. To be angry at all is just another stupid consequence found in the very heart of selfishness, a ticking pulse on his conscience, when denied all else.
Either way, it doesn't matter. The crown prince never shows up on that last day, only King Regis, and Ignis leaves without fanfare. Noctis was right. Noctis was always right, all along, even when he didn't understand why, that trying to placate him hadn't gone any easier than if Ignis had struck him full in the throat with his ire. Things might've been different if Ignis only summoned his frustration, vile and inhumane, to the surface. But he turned away, from Noctis and the sobbing drip of his tears, and now he'll never know for sure. As such, he has no one to blame but himself for what inevitably comes to pass.
The months spent in Altissia stack upon themselves. In the beginning, he commiserates with Noctis's tendency for sleep. He's tired in a way no amount of subterfuge will unmake, much less suppress. Caffeine does nothing. Ebony is worthless. Ignis dozes off for too long, too indulgently, requiring far too many alarms in the morning to rouse. Maybe he understands him a bit better this way, left concussed from routine and the once-shrewd machinations of his mind. Spend too much time awake and he'll remember the ring burning its presence through his thoughts as it does the rest of his luggage. During the boat ride, he couldn't bring himself to hurl it into the ocean. It belongs to Noctis, after all. It was promised for him, although he's taken it back for himself.
Relief rolls through him eventually with the return to something resembling normalcy, once navigating the waterways. It's not the same as before, the reports and the meetings and the dignitaries, but tedium is tedium whether in Altissia or Insomnia. That, at least, never changes.
It's not very long afterwards that he relinquishes himself to pursuing Noctis as seen in other people. Only one person hadn't fit the bill for Noctis's mirrored counterpart, or doppelgänger (long red hair on her, blue eyes and a spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose), which was primarily because the way she threw her head and laughed back was just like the prince himself, peevish and moody in turns, but utterly genuine. She leaned into his hand the same way, the soft sweep of his cheek nestled in his palm, smiling so sweetly. It was all obscenely good for a long, long while, until he called her Noct by accident, a slip of the tongue, and watched how realization transmogrified her face, bewilderment morphing into pained disbelief. And then she pared herself from his side, swift as any blade, and that was the only time anyone left him of their own accord during his year-long stint in Altissia.
After that, he'd adjusted his priorities; better some weak facsimile of the prince for whom comparisons only went skin-deep than someone so close to resembling the truth of what he'd wanted that it could only render him inconsolable, counting the differences between.
It wasn't a hard benchmark to reach, even when rumors spread with the tabloids. None of the men and women who bore a strong resemblance to Noctis in physicality were never able to emulate him, that sullen and graceful and silly way about him, and he hadn't much wanted them to, after the first mistake. Staying with his last paramour was purely out of convenience, because of his eyes and dark, dark lashes and the breathy tenor he took up, calling out his name in the throes of orgasm. It held up to the last, when King Regis sent summons for him back to the Citadel. Maybe he'd known it was the end when he ingratiated himself in his lap while Ignis set about packing his belongings, looking every bit like Noctis, except in the ways that mattered. His voice was a chime, insistent, ringing away (you're leaving me for him, aren't you— I— Ignis, I love you, and he wouldn't, he couldn't ever do that for you, so that's why, I— you don't have to go, you can just stay here—).
Instead of affection, Ignis was left with the sobering knowledge that Noctis would never snivel and insult someone else in the same breath or assume that he was the one who was irreparably wounded when there's a severity about Ignis that only indicates cruelty now. Hindsight is only twenty-twenty; he wouldn't know if longing made itself apparent after spending too much time around Noctis's lookalikes, all of his despair clawing its shape within him. One time was already going too far to amend his mistakes; under repetition, it only serves as proof for the kind of man he is, breaking ties with his latest in a long line of sweethearts without batting an eye before making headway for Lucis.
The conversation with King Regis is, notably, a hollow one. However heralded, a year is far too long to factor in miscalculations so grievous, silently biting at anger to suffocate it from leaving his mouth. Philosophizing does nothing, but he yields, takes his mouth to it as if the answers have abided within him all along. Yes, I understand your concerns. I'll do what I'm capable of, your Majesty. I hope that Noctis's demeanor improves with my arrival.
But it's not a matter of capability, leaving the steps, entering the empty parking lot, easing into a car he hasn't driven for the upwards of a year. He carefully shuts the door behind him, fingers strangling the leather of the steering wheel awhile, silent, ascertaining that there isn't another soul around. And then he screams a deep, rending scream as he crumples down on the seat, feral and vicious and ghastly, an ugly, broken sound devolving fast into nothing but pure, unadulterated pain as it's shaken loose, compromising him. A deterioration of everything that's kept him blank and obliging; this whole year, he hasn't allowed himself to feel anything at all, and now there's too much raw-boned strength in his howling, like an animal learning mortality, languishing in the final throes of death.
Afterwards, he sinks into the chair, gasping, shuddering, clawing at the wheel with his hands, a collapse that thunders through him with impunity, when he tries to gather his wits as his breath comes hitching out in ribbons, irreparably broken. Gladio has left ten voicemails and five texts since he set off from Altissia; he answers the very last of them with a plain affirmative that he'll be over at the apartment soon enough. There's more still, from his colleagues and acquaintances alike, one even from Prompto welcoming him back, who's undoubtedly learned the news secondhand from the King's Shield. None from Noctis. He leaves the rest of the messages to sit. A glance in the rearview mirror confirms there isn't a hair out of place; slightly red eyes can be forgiven, chalked down to mere exhaustion from the journey, and so he turns the key into the ignition and readily sets off.
Twenty minutes later, he's at Noctis's doorstep, ringing the doorbell, standing solemn until it opens. When it opens, he can't help pausing uncertainly, taken aback, though his voice is no less smoothed-out for the small blip of hesitation. ]
Yes, well. I thought it rather unbecoming to go stealing in like a thief in the night, invited or not.
[ Noctis doesn't look like himself. Sadness has changed the geometry of his face; he's lankier than he's ever been, sloe-eyed and quiet, and Ignis directs his attention to easing the manila envelope and other present he's tucked beneath one arm. ]
Good afternoon all the same, your Highness. This is for you. [ Along with a draft of the latest report for him to file is a wooden box, a mockery of the engagement ring and its velvet box. There's no such sentiment carried in this gift, but Noct's perfectly allowed to pop the lid open and take a glance at the talisman lying inside, smooth and freezing cool to the touch, inscribed with a number of hieroglyphics. Though Noctis hasn't asked, Ignis goes about the small agony of explanation. ] From one of the minor island principalities just west of Accordo. According to the locals, it's said to bring good fortune to whomever should so possess it.
[ Noct's free to think he's taken up a burgeoning interest in shamanism, though the real reason is much more plain; merely a token he'd received in place of the prime minister during the celebration of the winter solstice and the Tidemother said to slumber kilometers below the waves of the ocean, like that's enough for fourteen months' worth of sentiment, anniversary and birthday and holidays gone by without a passing remark. Ignis remains stock-still, noting the state of the apartment that he can see from beyond the doorway without stepping over the threshold. ]
Not because he gets to see him -- oh, how it has been such a steady desire, this need to see him, to be with him -- all these things so ruthlessly pushed deep deep down that it became its own kind of pain. Pain Noctis allows himself to feel only when he's alone. He has lost count of guilty nights when he curls in on himself, when he thinks of Ignis, pretends he's still there with him, his name muffled into his pillow when he comes. There is ash in his mouth after, and Noctis has never hated himself more for his own weakness.
No, he regrets it because seeing Ignis again, painfully handsome and wretchedly elegant and looking better than he's ever see him brings all those memories crashing to the present, opening wounds that have never closed. He looks so good, polished and as stunning as he had been, and Noctis is acutely aware of the fact that he himself has seen better days.
Another embarrassment. Ignis, so impeccably put together that it makes Noctis' throat tighten and heart painfully twinge. And Noctis, barely managing to tread water and having Ignis see all of it. Ignis looks more closed off than usual; perhaps it's something he's learned in Altissia -- he's heard that he's done excellently for himself there, amidst the news of his dating life. Noctis tries very hard not to think of that, of how someone else now has the privilege of his love, receiving something that precious, being happy the way he once was and never can be again. He wonders if Ignis brought his lover here, too; invited him to stay in Insomnia. Noctis doesn't want to ask. ]
Ah, thanks.
[ He at least remembers to be gracious, forcing the words past the lump in his throat because how he's missed him -- the loss so deep and cutting, the absence of one who had been such a large part of his life and his presence again in it is near-overwhelming. In the face of this is his anger is a forgotten thing; long overtaken by equal measure of numbing and sadness. He looks down at the box, report tucked under his arm.
Something in his stomach winds tight at the box -- he doesn't forget, still, and moreso the day he learned what those words on the ring were, and had to abruptly excuse himself. Does he know love, still? Does he know it in the young man he takes as a lover, the one that looks so much like him? Noctis cannot claim the moral high ground, he realises. His girlfriends had almost all fit a similar Ignis-shaped mold, tall and willowy with intelligence -- always with striking green eyes. They were pleasant enough, compelling enough that Noctis liked spending time with them, but eventually not even the most forgiving could cope with the distance that is always unspoken between them, the inevitable loneliness he made them feel even when they were together.
Good fortune, Ignis says, and Noctis politely doesn't mention how that sentiment rings so absurdly hollow. He touches the hieroglyphics, allows himself to admire it for a few moments as he takes in the explanation. It's the first gift he's had from him in more than a year, and Noctis cannot deny that it's all the more precious for it. He hadn't expected him to remember the anniversary and birthday -- even though he had glanced at his phone more times than he ever had on other days, secretly hoping there would be a message. There wasn't. Noctis doesn't blame him. After all, Noctis was the one that refused contact after that.
He thinks he can handle it better now, with fourteen months between them. It's rapidly shaping up to be an unpleasant lie, but Noctis is nothing if not stubborn. ] Welcome back. [ He adds, awkwardly, and remembers not to blurt out that he misses him. That's not allowed, now. Closing the box carefully, he moves back and holds open the door. ]
Yeah, sure. I've been looking over the summary reports of the past week.
[ This exchange feels alien, feels wrong; but he has to try to keep it together, to quell the sudden surge of emotions in his chest. Ignis is here, he's asking to come in and Noctis is struggling to ignore the renewed ache in his chest. How is he supposed to govern a country if he can't even get something like this down?
He shuts the door behind him, remembers his manners. Ignis might as well be a stranger now, no matter how much Noctis doesn't want him to be. ]
[ His former lover is probably bawling his heart out and likely slandering his good name right now, selling the more egregious lines he's riffed off to any reporter that'll hear him out. Ignis wasn't particularly gentle in letting him down, and after serving the prime minister, most salacious details on him fetch a good price. It's likely that his phone will blow up tomorrow with yes-men and naysayers trying to gather his opinion on the latest tidbit concerning him added to the rumor mill, given how every sweetheart he's taken in Altissia echoes his former liege, now his king once again, in appearance.
None of that matters, honestly. Looking at Noctis, he's reminded of what he's left behind, what he thought he might never see again, however ill-kept and exhausted. Once upon a time, he would've rebuked Noctis for letting his health deteriorate this badly— pulled him into a tirade about proper habits and proceeded to wait hand and foot on him for the next few weeks, or until his complexion grew warmer, less like hell warmed over.
But the moment is in turns viciously uncomfortable and distant and Ignis leaves Noctis, lanky and subdued, open the door so he could enter, peering about the corridor. It's cleaner, much more than it'd been when they lived together, and Noctis would leave his clothes haphazardly strewn over the floor at random intervals. shoes always out of place. ]
Much obliged, if you wouldn't mind sparing the trouble.
[ And much obliged if he does mind. Ignis is a stranger now; he can't exactly put on the kettle and retrieve the cream the same way he's done a million times before, so he'll leave Noctis to it, detachedly gazing about. With some chagrin, he spots Noctis's souvenir shelf, clustered with all the little baubles and trinkets he'd gotten him over his travels. For some reason, he'd expected to find an empty spot where it resided, but Noct wasn't so malicious as to toss out every memento of him. Of course he'd keep them, even if the sight might cause him little more than pain now.
While Noctis busies himself with brewing a cup, Ignis's gaze sweeps over the table— then abruptly freezes in place at the sight. The reports alone are benign enough, the same brand he used to ferry over back when Noctis was still in high school, young and petulant about documenting his thoughts on foreign taxation and providing a weekly review of life outside the gilded cage of the Citadel, but it's the glimpse of the glossy face that has Ignis tugging out the magazine to stare, abruptly paralyzed, at the cover.
It's not the image itself that shocks him, neither ingenious nor particularly cruel— he's seen this cover often enough passing magazine racks in Altissia during his last week, given his proximity to the prime minister and the fact that his love life was apparently so illicit as to be examined with a fine-tooth comb. But it's the fact that it's here, inside Noctis's apartment, that he gives into the morbid curiosity of it, rifling through the cover for the page detailing the minor fallout of his next-to-last relationship with theories abounding from fetishism to the novel idea he harbored quite a liking for Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, hence the transfer. Ignis is so concentrated on it that he hasn't glanced up to confirm/deny where Noctis currently is in the room. ]
[ Coffee is easy enough to make, he can pretty much do it in his sleep. He subsists off this lately, catching up on various reports and keeping a close eye on the things that he has garnered a keen interest in -- the refugee resettlement programme, for one. Keeping busy makes Ignis' absence easier to bear, keeps him from giving into the pit of despair that seems to be perpetually yawning under his feet.
There is a strangeness to the apartment now, a profound tension he cannot ignore, but he supposes it isn't unexpected -- what does he expect where there is so much hurt still between them, a whole world of things unsaid and a bond that, while frayed, is not severed. Noctis' very nature is more boon than bane; no matter how much he pretends to the contrary, his heart, once given, is impossible to renounce. Perhaps it would have been better if he was more capable of moving on, better at guarding his heart. Now there is a canvas of nothing where it used to be, and the man who currently has it is leafing through the reports on his desk, currently engrossed in a magazine Noctis had accidentally neglected to sweep up.
He pauses at the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand. He can pretend not to notice, he can give him a way out and call him over to the kitchen, especially when it's obvious that Ignis is unaware of his presence. But Noctis is not all that kind, and he has less of a tolerance for skirting past elephants in the damn room. He's tired of so much, these days, and he's missed Ignis too much to play games.
So he sets his steaming hot coffee on the table right beside him, his expression carefully neutral despite the world of emotions heavy in his chest, whirlwind of thoughts and hopes and resentments buried deep. Best not to hope -- he's been hurt enough, he doesn't intend to look for more.
It's a curious thing, the look on Ignis' face, and as much as he hates the seeming line of lovers Ignis had taken in Altissia, covered with ravenous glee by hungry reporters, he cannot ignore the similarities. ]
I was going to toss that out. [ He comments, then says quietly. ] Are they right?
[ His face doesn't betray him in Noctis's company just yet. Not for slow-wrought agony or the defining, ephemeral moment when the cup of coffee is carefully set beside him, inveigling his attention, and Ignis keeps his expression unreadable, like it's become scribbled out, some inner darkness obscuring the normalcy in his face. Like a ring, barely understood in Latin. Like the hieroglyphics on a talisman for which no words are conjured to mind, scratches built upon obscurity.
Just like before, there's always a duality in things with a beginning and an end, and this beginning mirrors how it was toward the end, the part of him sealed under wraps saying yes. It's largely baseless speculation given ballpark figures, but there was once a row of them, one after the other, all of them despondent when they realized he was pursuing something that couldn't be found in them. Is it a lie if he's kept up artifice for several months now? Is it truth if he's sought out something irreplaceable, going through them even faster than Noctis has taken up each one of his potential fianceés? Regis was vague when he pressed for details, but he'd known Noct committed to the search, because he asked, and it'd likely gone down the same way, seeking women who took after him more than a potential love interest. ]
Would you take conjecture at face-value?
[ The words have wilted and withered. He's over chagrin, having made his intentions apparent long before, and even after. It doesn't affect him as it used to, when Noctis is the one to mutilate him, as always. Ignis is a a man worthy of so much spite that it's strange that he doesn't take after it properly, running himself ragged without entirely ruining himself in the process as he straightens to answer the way he couldn't, fourteen months before. ]
I can't force your trust, if it's my word weighed against a third party.
[ Heartlessness, again. But his shoulders are a mess of contradictions, shuddering and profane, but he steadies them. This is the part where he should bow out and apologize, but Ignis is exhausted by maintaining some distant, detached ideal for so long, like he can really be so unemotional when it comes to Noctis, and having every single one of their conversations boil down to remorse isn't really how he wants to live the rest of his life. His throat's still raw, scratchy from sobbing in the car, though he hides it so well that perhaps Noctis doesn't even detect the rasp. ]
[ There it is, finally, a proper response. Noctis doesn't know whether to throw a fucking party or wonder if something's fundamentally snapped in Ignis. For the first time since fourteen fucking months ago, this conversation is actually going somewhere without Noctis' prompting, but it feels disingenuous to call attention to that -- like a petulant child pointing out the obvious.
He doesn't, of course, but he does detect the rasp, an unfamiliar development perhaps pegged to the hint of red-rimmed eyes, the uncharacteristic hesitation in the first moments of their meeting. But then there is the impassive neutrality, the mask he still wears despite the fact that the tension and awkwardness can be cut with a knife right here in this room.
Something still crackles between them, a monster of unresolved proportions one just can't quite figure out how to slay, and he thinks I take faces at face value seems too flippant and inappropriate to say, a retort formed out of spite, but Noctis finds a perverse, grim sort of pleasure in withholding this from him even if he's too damn tired to play keep-away. Fourteen months is a long time, and the unrelenting reminder of Ignis' protracted absence (so much of it Noctis' own doing) does tend to wear one down to the bone. He's tried, Six knows he's tried to find Ignis in these women, to figure out if he could love them -- how cruel and selfish to think that he could -- and in every way they had only proven that love is as inexplicable as a ring, barely understood in Latin, as hieroglyphics on a talisman from a land associated with a giant sea monster. Surely there must be a lesson learned in this, but in his misery Noctis makes a poor student.
I don't trust you. He wants to say right to that carefully inscrutable face, and that's both true and untrue all at once. Noctis would trust him with his life, just not with his heart. What a strange discernment to make, but betrayal cuts deep even if Ignis had likely meant his renunciation for noble reasons. Well-being, was it? Look how well that turned out. He's not fool enough to believe that Ignis had walked out unscathed; Noctis can see it in his eyes. He looks at him like he's a man haunted, contradictory and mercurial but more honest than he's ever been, like he, too, is tired of this particular masquerade and -- well, here they are.
Why doesn't he ask him in his own words, is it? So here it is. ]
Did you see me in them? [ Did you find me in their eyes when you made love to them? ]
[ Somewhere deep and implacable, he's mourning. On the surface, he's a healthy contrast to Noctis, insufferably calm, like placidity itself is a maneuver that requires minimal effort on his part. The desolation is only visible when he extrudes his spine from where he's hunched over the table to something resembling upright, waspishly diligent in his suffering, except for how it shone out of his eyes, which always gave far too much away. Ignis laughs, halting and shaky. The sound of it that should crevasse his throat instead issues out silent, stung with the knowledge that despite his best interests, it's all gone down the shitter superbly. There couldn't have been anything more than this undercurrent of feverish, maddened disconsolation trying to lift itself out of his chest, unable to be reasoned or negotiated with.
Besides all of that, the magazine notwithstanding, his compunction notwithstanding, he's a masochist, invoking Noct's unhappiness and despair. Still, he'll be the death of Ignis, just like this, tender and hurting and imploring him for answers. He holds his gaze when the haggard noise in his throat, or lack thereof when shaped this hollowly, subsides. ]
Oh, I’ve tried. Again and again. None of them came remotely close to you. If I could be so easily placated by someone else’s touch, I‘m honestly not certain I’d be here right now. You wouldn’t believe how desperate I’ve become.
[ Apropos of nothing. Humorlessness becomes him, voice cracking open. Did he see Noctis in them? He couldn't have gone without him, the year he'd spent not in martyring grace, but in the weakness of despots. He's had fourteen months hammering down on his yearning, but twenty-two years have already gone by before he could never return to how he was, losing his fine-tuned control over his equanimity in Noctis's presence. There was never any going back. ]
Or perhaps you would. A year is a long time. I was hardly deserving of you long before I left. I’d known all along what kind of ingrate I was, and still am, but I suppose you do as well now. [ Alluding to promises he hadn't kept, all the complacency born of despicableness, when he's sunken so low that there's no reason to resist the plummet down. ] You kept everything I gave you, except for what I wouldn’t return. You haven’t been taking care of yourself in my absence, even though you’re more precious than this world, in and of itself.
[ Noctis, who slept so often in his company, looks in need of a thousand years more, thin and ragged around the edges. Caustic only out of necessity. Pained, in all other respects.
Now he knows: it was self-sabotage to come here unprepared. He's practiced no eloquent rehearsal of lies on-hand, driven as a man yearning for his beloved forgets restraint. But isn't that how love is? Gone amiss, with a perception so warped that it mirrors his own decline, responding to questions he has no answers for? ]
Would you like to talk to the man in this picture? He asked about you quite often, when I was with him. How much I cherished you. Why I left your side.
[ Noctis can see it; the desolation written in the stubborn line of his shoulders, forcibly masked -- how that pride doesn't extend to the look in his eyes, how it's a kind of devastation that mirrors Noctis' own with far too much familiarity that it hurts to look upon him. He should be pleased, a measure of schadenfraude wouldn't be out of line -- but what worth does it have for someone who knows all too well how he feels? He wishes he could muster up enough spite to be petty, to grind the knife deeper just because.
He can't. He hates that he can't. In this breakup there are no winners, and he stays his hand -- the laughter that Ignis issues, in turns distraught and self-destructive, has no place in his throat. It rouses something Noctis so desperately wishes he's buried, a wretched kind of sympathy that reminds him that Ignis' pain is not solely his own, and how fucked up is that?
He takes a moment to digest his answer, to keep it close as if it could give him more than cold comfort, as if it would one day inspire more than the question: then why didn't you fight harder for us?
The question knots in his throat, the confession reinforcing what he's known all along: there is no going back. In Ignis' absence he has done the same -- searched for him the way others search for divine revelation, and in the end disillusioned and all the more empty for it, but hope, hope always inspiring another, and another in the long line of disappointments and broken hearts. But you cannot break another heart to mend your own, and Noctis knows he's looking at pieces of Ignis' own, offered up to him in defeat, in crushing hopelessness. ] What you wouldn't return wasn't mine to have in the first place. And I don't see why you need to be grateful for anything, I didn't do you any favours.
[ Being loved by Noctis is not a privilege. He sees that now, reflected in Ignis' eyes. He's a collection of flaws and shortcomings, at times tempestuous and cutting, and of late, more caustic than he used to be. He looks at the photos in the magazine again, and there are so many candid shots of them -- and Noctis cannot help a flare of jealousy; they could hold hands, this person could stand by his side, could kiss his brow, his lips, to know the heat of Ignis' passion. How he would make him melt; seduction is an art form where his erstwhile lover and chamberlain is concerned.
He closes his eyes at the assessment, how he hasn't been taking care of himself, how Ignis tells him he's more precious than anything and this is what he wants to know: if he really is so precious, then why did he leave him, why did he walk away from Noctis' attempts to keep them from breaking away. If he is so precious, why did he let the crown win?
Difficult questions, and Noctis doesn't expect answers for any of it -- if it could be summed down into any one explanation, they wouldn't be here today.
Don't lie to me. He wants to say, but instead reaches out, traces over the line of the other young man's jaw. His eyes are so blue, those lashes so very long, his face perhaps an approximation of Noctis' own, perhaps not, he's not a good judge of it either way, but he is intimately familiar with the way this interloper is looking at Ignis. ]
He really loves you, you know. [ He says instead, because even in his own pain he's still capable of being aware of another's, and he cannot help a pang of sympathy despite the heat of his jealousy. Ignis is a man people could fall so easily, so deeply in love with, and be all the worse for it. They've broken up, the prince notices, and for the first time he can commiserate with an interloper's broken heart. ] He would have done anything for you.
[ He draws his hand away, looking over at Ignis, and it's a wonder he can even say what he does, a wry half-smile tugging at his mouth and none of it reaching his eyes. Still, Noctis loves him. He can't look away, can't help a strange little pang of warmth, twisted up into something far too complicated for him to decode. ] Sometimes I forget how cruel you can be. [ Not that he's in any position to critique when he's done the same, himself. ]
[ Cruel and malevolent, with an impossibly terrible soul; he's only grown worse in neglect, fondness withering into a self-fulfilling prophecy of hurt. Misunderstandings only come with the territory. He's barely able to stand being disingenuous, taking his cues from the lack in objectivity. What he carried back from Altissia was the burden of memory, unable to forget Noctis and all that he'd left behind. Ungrateful for being allowed the room, and the opportunity, and the privilege to amend where he'd gone wrong— whether in abandoning the prince much too soon, or much too late.
That's how all of this started. Whether it's treachery or jealousy, he still dug wounds in others like those could alleviate the ones wrought on him, lover after lover scorned. It's a very cutthroat sort of mutilation, but nothing intentional. Every time he tries again, there's always the hope that'll be enough to assuage this festering hurt that's taken to residing in him, keeping him from devoting himself to anyone properly, like he once was capable of. He hadn't begged for his feelings for Noctis to be trivialized to the some passing fancy, tasked with the sick and tired responsibility of systematically unraveling all that he ever cared about. Maybe that's when he grew incapable of any kind of fondness that wasn't selfishness at its very core.
But it's not resentment that's overcome him now, back to where he began, only so much worse. Vengeance doesn't motivate him so throughly when it's his own conceit that's undone him: he can't find fault with Regis for siding with a tradition spanning millenniums, or Noctis for believing impertinence could take him so far, that anything Ignis could've given him would've been enough to mitigate losing the last of his birthright's magic, snuffing all sense of hope out like candles burnt down to the wick. Fresh with loss, Ignis hadn't fought back. He hadn't even tried to.
Exhaustion's impelled itself down to his bones when Noctis gathers himself close, neither broken nor meek at his side, to sun his hands on the page, psychoanalyzing the latest in a long, long line of heartbreak. Ignis thumbs at the black print of the lettering, the garish allegations of political sycophancy, sexual deviancy. Though there was an overwhelming abundance of love, however superficial, in Altissia, it wasn't anything like this ravenousness seething up in him in Noct's company. In comparison, something so halfhearted as fleeting infatuation wouldn't survive here, in the spaces between their bodies and the mantra of all things that go unspoken. ]
I couldn't say for sure. You would need to inquire yourself. [ The steam on the coffee mug wafts briefly over his hand as he tugs it close to his side. ] I can only imagine he'd tell you how heartless I was. That I chose him because he was the closest I could allow myself to be with you.
[ Nothing so lukewarm and irreparably broken could ever last. It was a rough approximation of desire, brought about by the fact that the man he'd courted could've passed for Noctis in profile and silhouettes, but not thoroughly to damage him, render him unable to leave him when his stint in Altissia ended. When the prince's mouth is gripped by the coarseness of his own frown, worn through, Ignis's lips press into a flat, flat line. They're now close enough for him to reach out and brush over him, make contact— if he only held out his hand, he could scrape his fingers over the weariness in Noctis, knuckles soft over the cheek, a ruthless corollary to all that came before— but he turns away, instead, gaze averted, like he's become a stranger inured to anything resembling affection. ]
Were you able to find someone you treasure enough to spend the rest of your life with?
[ Every question he asks is just like wrenching a knife in a little further into his inflection, mangling all subtlety with each incising stab. ]
[ If this entire encounter is somehow a game of chicken, Noctis has just gone on ahead and broken its rules. His expression at the question posed is one that is both unfettered and jarringly genuine -- equal parts incredulous and irritated. ]
Are you fucking with me right now?
[ Because what kind of a question is that when he already knows the answer? It's a perverse kind of query in the context of their relationship, of a question that was never asked, and an answer given too late -- I would have said yes. Noctis' mouth thins, an unwitting mirror of Ignis' own, and he finds that he can't deny the assertion that cruelty seems the only way Ignis can be right now, hardened by loss and pain. For Ignis, Noctis was willing to risk snuffing out the bloodline. For him, he would consider other options (no one ever said that Noctis isn't selfish); surrogacy, for one, an heir only illegitimate by name but not blood. It's blood that determines legitimacy, and one finds that power tends to outstrip tradition, however narrowly.
He cannot help a flare of anger, the words he bites back but hangs between them anyway in the flash of blue, like lightning during a summer storm. I did, and then you left. ]
You wouldn't be here if I did. [ His words, just as sharp. Because he's not stupid. Fourteen months is not all that long under the tutelage of the prime minister of Altissia, no matter how brilliant and promising the student is, even if the student is Ignis Scientia himself, renowned as one of the brightest minds within Lucis. It's not difficult to put pieces together, to sense just what it is that Regis doesn't say -- he notices enough of it, increasingly, in the dinners they've shared. His concern underscores the silence between them, and the gulf between father and son only grows despite best intentions.
And Ignis wouldn't be here if he wasn't asked to come back. Noctis makes no progress in the farce that is courtship, each dalliance leaving him more unsatisfied than the last. He's aware of the distance Ignis puts between them again, the way he turns away like he's taken to doing of late -- Noctis, with no small amount of bitterness, remembers a time when Ignis sought him, when the man leans towards him instead of away, reaching for him instead of keeping him at a distance. He's angry, of course he's angry. But he's also sad, wistful, missing him so sorely that it hurts to think about -- that hurt is a constant thing these days -- and he supposes that love is something that encompasses all these things, more complication that childhood fantasies of perfect partners and happily ever afters.
No, love is convoluted, a churning, screaming mess that overstays its welcome and sinks its claws and teeth into imperfect throats.
He doesn't miss how Ignis is so close he could touch him, he could brush his knuckles over his cheek and Noctis could reach out and pull him close by his collar, and it would be so easy to angle his head just so and fit his mouth to his again, as if he never left. But love is not that easy; it fills the spaces between their bodies and remains the mantra of all things that go unspoken between them, encapsulated in talismans and rings, in the likeness of him but not, in the many facsimiles and failures they've accrued in the pursuit of the perfect substitute. ]
What did Dad ask you to do? [ Just as incisive -- Noctis' ennui often masks his shrewdness, that unforgiving perceptiveness, leveled now at Ignis. ] Talk me into a matchmaking session? Fix me up with someone from Altissia? Speed-dating? Because the outcome's still going to be the same, and I'm damn sure you know why.
[ If given the option to face down Noct's righteous wrath again as it rises octaves, he'd choose to go down this way, cutthroat, long-suffering. Far be it from him to get ahead of the equation made of two of Noct's hands as they might seek to him out unerringly, or his love to the despicable envy of all who have ever come this close to him, close enough to coax on a despair so intimate it's absurd. Common sense, subtracting itself with the time they've spent apart. Are you fucking with me right now?
Like he'd know. He's trapped in the cage he's made of unfulfilled longings, too maddeningly self-aware for anything but brutalization to take hold. It's easier to rip something apart than piece it back together. Corroborating with his sadness comes easier than defying it, even before the fractured carnage he's made out of Noctis, which is setting the precedent on all the other, singularly awful things he's committed since then, pining and reckless, self-destruction unto itself as it bleeds face-down. Ignis's gaze perceptibly sharpens to a needle's fine point. ]
You're sorely mistaken if you believe I came here to set you up with another contender for your affections. His Majesty would never be so callous.
[ So that's how his enmity is conceived, miring his voice to something ugly and distended when he rounds in on Noctis, eyes flashing, cheeks hot. Susceptible, after all this time, matching the tide of Noct's anger with his own, raking in the dividends. The prince can interpret it as a threat: it's there, latent, in the careful snap of Ignis's fingers, mug abandoned, magazine abandoned, turning savagely on his heel. Some of the report's sheets have gone fluttering down though, displaced, like so many birds raining down from a long, long flight, when the horror of the fall hasn't quite set in yet.
The worst part is how the impact of Noct's accusations don't strike him for impact as much as they resonate, so close to the truth and yet the farthest thing from it, that his expression transforms, from careful blankness to tired, concerned regret. Rather than sublimating it, he reaches out— one hand soft on Noctis's cheek, sundered with the damage and the offense even as it glides to fit to the shape, as if he's grown insensitive to suffering. If Altissia's taught him anything, it was that there was never ever leaving the stranglehold of Noct's influence over him, months and months compounding to nothing. ]
Do you think I'm unfeeling, Noct? That I've lost everything I've felt for you in the span of a year, even though I've devoted myself to you all my life?
[ He could handle being mutilated for lesser reasons, making a mockery of his own self-control; it's not all that difficult to pursue Noct, even to the degree of endless futility. But not this, when the softness of Noctis's body has given way to this emaciated look, thin and starved and wounded beyond repair, and the ramifications threaten to send him reeling, reeling back. ]
[ How can Ignis not know, how can he willfully not know or realize that there is no one else for Noctis but him, and Six know he's tried. He's attempted so fruitlessly so often to bury himself in tender kisses, to press himself to warm, willing bodies and to forget that they're not Ignis, to force himself not to remember that Ignis didn't taste like that, that Ignis kissed him in much, much better ways, that he'd always left him sated and warmed and not hollow, a fascimile of himself in the absence of another.
How can he not know what he's wrought with his silence and his departure, the wreckage of what's left that Noctis is still struggling to put together again? The way he had left things, the way they had handled it still stings, aches in the space in his heart where Ignis used to be, and oh how they had spiraled since then. Ignis to his parade of forgettable lovers and Noctis to his own. He forgets their names, who they were -- how can he remember when Ignis is all he sees when he closes his eyes, and his touch is everything that he craves when he presses against them?
His words are caught in his throat when Ignis advances on him, when he finally sees a glimpse of emotion, scorching and more real than he's ever seen -- Ignis, after all, is singularly talented at keeping his own emotions caged, so much so that by the end of it, Noctis is left all the more bereft of it, questioning and uncertain of the one fundamental truth: that Ignis loves him, too.
How can Noctis still believe that without question when he excises himself from his side so swiftly, like he couldn't wait to rid himself of Noctis and only needed his father's disapproval to do so? And like a fool, Noctis persists -- there is nothing else to do but love him, and by degrees his heart withers, unseen at first. Now, it seems like it's the only thing Ignis sees.
He should push him away when he touches him; how long had he craved for a moment like this, when Ignis returns to his side and touches him like he's never left, like he's never asked him to return that lost chance. How long had he sought his touch in his loneliness, with Ignis thousands of miles away and Noctis without the faintest idea how to nurse a broken heart. They say you learn how to get better at it, but what if you don't? Sometimes pain doesn't bring with it a profound transformation and understanding of life's truths. Sometimes pain just hurts.
He should push him away, and the wretched thing is that he cannot, that he resents and loves him in equal measure, and he fits himself to his palm like a soul starved while a spiteful part of Noctis thinks that maybe Ignis isn't so perfect after all, how he lets those precious emotions bleed through; threatening and assuaging in turns.
The prince closes his eyes, allows himself scant seconds to feel Ignis again, hating himself for how the warmth spans in his chest, something inside him fluttering with a hope that feels so much like a noose. ]
You tell me. [ An ugly, distended little sound that should have been a laugh, and he looks back at him, square in those stunningly beautiful green eyes, the depth of emotion in them now alien to him. ] You left me. So you tell me, Ignis, what was all the years of your devotion to the crown worth when you walked away?
[ It's anger, it's love, it's pain and heartache and loss distilled into a single question, and his hand comes up to rest over his, squeezing harder than he ought, as if he could map the lines of Ignis' palm on his cheek, and maybe this way his touch would last a little longer. Or maybe Noctis just needs to burn it all away.
Either way.
He raises his face to his, defiant. (Lost.) I did this to myself because I didn't know what else to do. ] Why did you come back?
[ Abrasiveness becomes Ignis in a manner that proves no tact on his part, translates itself into the cruelty as shallow and inviolable as fear. Over the months, he's relinquished his patience for a very disingenuous look, calm when he isn't, whole when he isn't, but even that's ebbing away, leaving this caricature of self-control, nonchalance wasting thin. The offense of it— that he hadn't let himself be consumed by love, or that he'd turned away at the last second purely because of it— that betrays the abstraction in Ignis's face as it gives way to clear, disconcerted pain. ]
Because you were killing yourself.
[ Hate's understandable. Hate simplifies things, occludes the throat with no small amount of insults to hurl or defamations to curse. Noctis should've figured it out. He's always been smarter than most, more belligerent than most— he'd hurt for a while, betrayed by his youth and his avoidant behavior around any problem that posed a risk, but he'd grow to spurn Ignis and find his happiness elsewhere, drowning out all the misery that came before in the affection of another.
But instead of fueling him with a noble vengeance, it ate into him, an unbridled devouring that shows its offense in the clamminess of his fingers, his eyes belligerent and sad. The heartbreak is there, hammering down, but none of the resolve to shake him off he'd expected, blinking open with a very absentminded hurt, like he'd grown used to it, acquainted himself to the scourge it posed on him, let it burn him with a conviction that was thoughtless at best, and devastating otherwise.
Ignis's fingers tremble where they're held to his face, grief and sinew and bewilderment all coalescing as one and the same. He shouldn't be able to detect the rattle in Noctis's jaw when it clicks around that mangled laugh, but he does, and it burns him, too— all those months of loneliness condensing into the sheer inability to leave on his own terms, to waste away as he chose.
Like he could've stayed away. ]
What should I have done? Eloped with you at the cost of all else? Left your father ailing sick with what must've become of you? Placed what I wanted above countless others for my own sake?
[ Giving in wouldn't be so bad; he's not so magnanimous a person that the thought never struck and clawed its way in, even for a moment. But debilitating Noctis with promises made under duress, whisking him away from the obligation they were both born to serve was an evil he couldn't reconcile with. Even if Noctis resented him for this agonizing lack of resolve— endlessly, endlessly— that would've come better than taking the Chosen away for the sake of his own interests. (Barely a child and already cursed; surely King Regis must have cried when the Crystal decided upon his son for its vessel, sealing his fate.)
Despondently, muscle memory fills in the blanks; holding Noctis today is just as deeply wounding as it'd been a year prior. Being with Noctis has never scattered his focus, only refined it; the only person who's ever mattered is the one standing before him. ]
[ Because you were killing yourself, he says, and Noctis softens before he knows it -- seeing the pain written on his face clear as day; as if he's shed one of his many masks along the way, reminding Noctis that he is evidently capable of great and deep emotion, after all. It's surprising all the same, Noctis expecting more of that disingenuity, the likes of which he had been privy to in the last days, weeks before it all imploded in their faces, setting them both of paths that served them little.
There's plenty Noctis should have figured out, chief of which is that love can be so easily turned to hate; when he may lay all the blame, the hurt and the rejection solely at Ignis' feet, spurning him as he could believe that he had been callously spurned. He could hurt Ignis the way he hurt him, but Noctis knows better than that, too.
He knows that at the end of the day, the pain is still lodged right there -- just in a different form and no less corrosive, no less unpalatable for it. Noctis would have hurt either way, and so would Ignis, and Noctis sees right through to the futility of hatred, cutting through the middleman, accepts the scourge like the lover that he no longer has, grown used to the heartbreak and the sheer, unadulterated agony of it because when you strip away all the excuses and scapegoats, all that's left is still the unrelenting devastation of love broken and bleeding.
Noctis has figured it out; he just went much farther with it, and in his love he still spares Ignis and he hates himself all the more for it. But all Ignis does is twist the knife, dragging muscle and sinew, severing even more of what little that keeps Noctis together, and he turns, batting his hand away. Whatever that had been softened is now hard, his jaw setting in anger, in grief. Ignis was never just his chamberlain; all his life he had been so much more than that, a fundamental part of Noctis that defies all conventional understanding, eclipsing and predominating the extent of Noctis' interpersonal relationships. He is so much more than a brother, a tutor, a friend. Ignis is partner and lover and soulmate, to extricate him is to kill a part of himself, and hasn't Noctis already tried it before? Hasn't Ignis?
Would giving in really have been so bad? ]
You weren't my chamberlain when you fucked me. [ His words, sharp enough to cut glass, and still it falls short of hate. ] When are you going to stop lying to yourself, Ignis? Did you think if you repeated that enough, it'll miraculously be true? We could have have figured out a middle ground my father could accept. You could have trusted me instead of doing whatever you thought was best.
[ It goes out of him, the subterfuge and the incising worries when Noctis sheds the last of his nuance for this brittle kind of almost-hate, paroxysms that never break all the way through, but still there, choleric and all-encompassing. It's familiar, by wonted habitualness; all he's seen of Noctis, months and months before, was his fury and his hurt, rising to his heels and begging for release from this pain, tell me how easy this is for you to do and I hope no one else falls in love with you. A sleeping, dormant sort of agony. Now it's externalized. Now it's fleshed out when Noctis bats his hand away, eyes flashing and impertinent, and it's more than despair, forlorn and waiting to be realized. Now he's roping him in, sending his frustration after him, and Ignis looks monstrous, still and quiet, like he's in the throes of tender understanding for what he's wrought. ]
Since I left, I haven't known what to do with myself.
[ That's a good place to start, like he's chosen this path; in many ways he has, forcing Noct's hand and stripping the ring he'd promised away to him. Is howling esoteric if it's never heard? Just some deep, wordless scream too deep to vocalize while he stares back, devoid of mirth or anger, worse off for it. Like this, he almost looks inhuman. But the wounds of it is in his eyes, so there's no hiding it. There hasn't been much use in hiding it for a long, long time now. ]
Continuing our relationship was an abuse of the promise I made when I began my life with you. You're more than I can bear to give up. What solace can that give every soul in Lucis if I've chosen you before the world?
[ And forgone all the rigors of a proper marriage and a proper wife and a proper nuclear family, when a whole hierarchy of power is at stake. Regis is hardly getting younger and he'd hate for a child to be born out of wedlock, but even worse still for a newborn infant with half of Noctis's genetic code readily given up like charity for the Crown like someone horribly unloved, a consigned life of duty with rumors of a more sordid past circulating. It's not the way to be; lives aren't so easily formed or replaced without repercussions, and weighing his own against Noctis, he knows that they aren't remotely equivalent. ]
I'd lost sight of the reason why your father entrusted me with you, why I could stay and live by your side. That's why I ended it.
[ Noctis looks so young. He's always been particularly immature for his age when not holding Prompto as the base standard, soft eyes and softer heart, even so gutted with frustration, and Ignis's hand drops down. This is why. He'd love him even like this, pained from the intensity, like it's defibrillating his viciously beating heart— stamping his pulse from him until it's dead in his ribcage. ]
I've become despicable, but I never stopped feeling for you. Most people want to see the one they love most safe and happy. I'm hardly an exception to the rule. You deserved more than I could grant you.
[ That's all. Ignis presses the frame of his glasses back up, blinks away the sting of wetness. He's not particularly given to crying; a year's gone by and he hasn't shed a tear. There's nothing to cry over, given the closest thing to King Regis's blessing, but he's as empty as he was before, reaching over the table to gently snap the magazine shut, bending down to retrieve the papers that've scattered to the floor, unable to look Noctis in the eye. ]
His Majesty mentioned that he'll no longer play a hand in your romantic engagements. You're free to do as you please.
[ Not knowing that to do with himself? Noctis thinks he's done pretty damn well, all things considered. He's followed his trajectory in Altissia, the golden Lucian boy that has the upper echelons of government enamored with him, poised, a high-flyer and talented, one of the brightest stars within the legislative arm. While Ignis thrives in Altissia, the darling of so many powerful men and women, Noctis is struggling to be the heir everyone looks for him to be. He means to say something cruel, but only swallows his words when the look in his eyes betray that near-inhuman visage of calm neutrality, a storm of agony too painful to overlook.
Good, he thinks viciously, his own chest twisting with the beginnings of a sympathy he hates himself for. Good, that at least he isn't spared the pain, that he can come to share at least a measure of what he feels, every damn day since the day Ignis stepped out of that door and left him behind. His rage is pain given purpose, an almost-hate that falls short of cold-blooded spite; and in return only churns and torments. He cannot look away from him, still hopelessly ensnared by Ignis and all that he still is to him, hollowed out for this love. Ignis is here now, and he's never been farther away, and he doesn't move when he shuts the magazine, picks up those papers. He doesn't miss the way he blinks more than he should -- and Noctis is intimately familiar with the mechanics of holding back tears that the sight of it paralyses him. How much deeper did his emotions run, wrenched ruthlessly behind the curtains for this unflappable pretense?
It's the next words that hurt more than help when the puzzle clicks back into place. Regis' message is why he's here -- his father had thought that Ignis being messenger could go some way towards mending what's been broken between them. ]
You don't get to decide what I deserve or what's best for me. [ He says at last, his voice almost shaking with anger unquelled, with all the understanding of what his dad's message means. What it could mean for the two of them. But they have problems not even the most blatant encouragement can smooth over -- Regis might no longer want to have a hand in Noctis' love life, but Ignis and Noctis have unwittingly discovered a schism between them all on their own that go beyond parental/royal consent. He takes a deep, slow breath, and fights hard not to scream. His grip tightens on the side of the table, and it's a wonder the wood hasn't cracked under the pressure. What is a proper marriage, a proper wife and a proper nuclear family worth when Ignis is the only one he wants? What is power worth when you give up all else to have it? ]
None of this is up to you. [ There's an edge to his words that continue to cut. ] You don't get to say you love me, and then leave because you think you're not enough. How is this happiness when I couldn't even stop loving you? Even now. Six, even fucking now. I want so much to hate you.
[ Some things are better left unsaid. Mildly, his hand stills where it's flung over each sheet fanned around the floor as the tirade starts. Noctis's dictations resemble every inch of imperialism, jaw working around condescension when it's really hurt thriving and well in him. Ignis's inclination is to pour another facade into the air— some drivel about another board room meeting or appointment like it ranks superlative over consoling Noctis— but he can't find the words. They were pried out of him in the same respect that hammers wrench out nails by their roots, not by their lacerating edges.
At the end, Ignis's height is his advantage, all of those inches he can stand above Noct, but he's below him now, knelt to scoop up reports. He's made to lower himself too quickly for finesse; thoughts stalled, mind stalled, hands a fixture of despair around the sheaf of papers.
Particularly, he can't blame Noctis for the anger crawling up the cavity of his chest, collateral damage harbored a year too long. It's fumigating the air, staining it, and he breathes it in, the ire, stopped dead in his tracks. Regret's got such a stench that lingers, all the heft and weight of a corpse to carry, a burden to shoulder.
How tired is he right now? Perhaps irreparably so, conflating failure for a chance to speak up, while Noctis's nails scrape at the wooden table, claw-like in his dereliction. Ignis left him in this state; taken the soft, gentle boy he loved and turned him into someone malevolent and prone to simmering bouts of outrage. Damnation, as it comes to him, is frighteningly human. ]
You're right. I was only meant to serve by your side. Nothing more.
[ Is it the beginning of compassion if he lies? If he should save Noctis from the trouble of proximity, the shallow grave for remorse he's dug out? So much of Ignis's life has been devoted to the intricacy of manipulation, and subterfuge, but he has neither at his disposal now. But that's just despondency at work, tricking itself into motion, out of fear of the unknown and what will come once this is over and through. There's nothing left to do. Years ago, he would've been afraid of this, losing his purpose and the last point of connection at his side.
Funny how things change. He knows better than this. Noctis was destined for greatness, but falls short of proper loathing. When he martyrs himself to self-abasement, Ignis's jaw steels until it's inimical in its rigidness. ]
You should hate me.
[ And if he needs another reason, he'll give him one freely. The realist in him knows how to conjure up a lasting wound, or cause a cataclysm when he stands, the papers promptly abandoned on the table, all of it wholly meaningless. The steps between aren't so long that he can't reach, incurring Noctis's hurt as his arms crisscross to wrap around him, curled up like a snake trying to obstruct the escape of its dying victim.
Capitulation, or egotism. That this arrogance holds just long enough to make a precedent for the wounds he's given him, the ones unseen, that have left him vulnerable to misery is horrible enough without acknowledging the rest of the evils he's done. Ignis's heart is hot in his chest, but his hands are cold. He hasn't touched the ceramic of the steaming mug again— hasn't grazed over Noctis's kindness as much as he's torn it to shreds, and his head bows, hands clung to Noct and up along his spinal cord, disabused of terror. There are worse things to dread than his own undoing. ]
Will you send me away?
[ Ignis closes his eyes from something akin to abject relief, or abject despair. ]
[ You should hate me, he says like Noctis hadn't tried, like he hadn't wanted with all his heart to do so, his pain and grief and confusion overwhelming, spilling over others and hurting them in his stead. Noctis wishes he could detest the way he cut him off and left without a word. It must be his own fault, surely, Noctis wakes up thinking so often, when the spot beside him is cold and Noctis still doesn't understand why Ignis had turned cold in a heartbeat, callously neutral in the face of hurt confusion, immovable in the face of heartbreak.
He still doesn't know why, and this might be the linchpin of the whole thing. Ignis left him with the ashes of what once was, having razed all that they've shared to the ground before Noctis even understood what was happening, devastation capped with trite platitudes, plucked from a lover's handbook of how to survive breakups. Or shake off a particularly pesky suitor. Even now, he wonders which one he is. End of the road, or dead weight? How had he not seen this? They could have done something, anything; it could have ended one hell of a lot better than this, and here Ignis is, silently absorbing his rage and his pain, and Noctis hates how he can't just claw into him, shred him the way he'd been shredded, hurt him all over again if not for the prince's own overdeveloped sense of empathy.
Ignis straightens up, and before Noctis realizes it his arms are around him, the warmth of him and the scent of his familiar cologne tipped with the saltwater breeze of Altissia and the worn leather of the car dispatched to take him home. Home. Ignis had scorched all that was left, is this still home for him? The answer to that dissipates in the unexpected warmth of his arms, and he's too paralysed to move, tucked once again in the familiar nook of his arms, pressed to the welcome crook of his shoulder.
His stomach churns, and he thinks he's going to be sick. ]
I tried. I can't, because I love you. [ He says, and it is no bold declaration of romance, only an acknowledgement of devastation wrought. It is dull, resigned; a malediction he cannot shed. His hands come hesitantly to his shoulders from below, digging into muscle as fingers curl and he wills himself not to cry. He is hollowed out and cold, the words damning when said aloud. ] You goddamn hypocrite.
[ And still I love you. He closes his eyes, silent tears burning through the fabric of his shirt as Noctis' grip threatens to break cloth to skin. Ignis' hands are cold, too, but they're splayed over his spine like they're fitting right into place, right there he belongs.
Welcome home. ] Do you want to be sent away? Answer me.
[ The boat ride, the trains, the long drive back— the year he spent letting Altissia stain his belongings with too much seawater— might have just been a precursor to coming home. There wasn't going to be a quick fix. As it is, there's barely anything left to salvage, returning to Noctis's unarticulated pain and the misery of the washed-up dreams he'd left him with, engagements and feverish ambitions and the ring he never gave him, the same one that burns holes through his mind when he sleeps. If Noct kept it, he might have been consoled, but possession of it would've accrued too much hope, already carrying so much desperation in the cavity of his chest. Noct loved too fiercely; there'd never be an end to it if he'd left even a fraction of his love for Noctis to cosset and rope around his neck, or hang off some nightstand, or find the strength to cast it away, once and for all.
Better still that Ignis smashed the ring to pieces before Noct ever caught sight of it; he couldn't resent something he didn't even know transpired.
Alas. Instead he's noosed in this slow rupture of love, and the ring's not on Ignis right now— he'd never be so fucking stupid after the first time— he hasn't yet tossed away that last proof that he'd take the prince for himself if he could, cherishing him to the detriment of all else. It goes against everything he's been raised to be, to live at the behest of the people and support his king, but his Majesty had to expected this: devote his whole life to one person and the rest of his priorities skew with the distortion. Caring for Noctis made it that much worse to leave him behind, between the greater good and the evil of leaving him behind.
The prince clings to him, tearing irascibly along his back, scoring lines even with the deterrent of fabric. His tears are soaking through his shirt, and Ignis folds Noctis to him, inhaling along the soft crown of his head like remembrance. So many times he's cradled him, but he never loses the soft curve of his body even when he's abjectly ferocious, mumbling his epiphanies just above his clavicles. Yes, he's a hypocrite. Yes, he knows Noctis loves him beyond hate.
Ignis presses his mouth to the top of Noctis's head, incongruous to the fitful grip of his hands over the backbone, clutching at him. He hasn't ripped away, so he might never wrench away now, always trapped in this embrace, punished for something he doesn't understand. Ignis hasn't even explained himself properly. There's no point to it anymore, though. He's done with it all. Done with the departure, done with the subterfuge, done with Altissia and its churning sea and everything he's given up. ]
I belong with you. There's nothing else I want but you, Noct.
[ It didn't have to be affection between them. It would've been enough to see Noctis grow into kinghood, persevere beyond such an unfair burden displaced onto him, and triumph. To know his life hasn't been spent in vain, that his oldest and dearest friend could find some measure of happiness in succeeding against all the odds stacked against him. But now that he knows what love is, he can't do without it. He can't be the shepherd singing to the flock and the shores of his unhappiness anymore. Ignis won't throw himself off a cliff out of hopeless abandon, but he'll do selfishly worse for it, lips pressing tenderness into Noctis's hair. ]
[ His words a hopeless snarl, heated against his clavicle. Clasped in the impossible warmth of his embrace, Noctis finds his mooring within Ignis once again. His Majesty should have foreseen this, too; love readily given in return for devotion, muddying the waters and now, look how they drown in it. He's not immune to the cadence of Ignis' pain, threaded in the strain of his words, the unfettered longing that tightens around Noctis' neck. How is he to wrench away when this is perhaps the most honest thing that Ignis has ever uttered? The prodigal lover, called to return, and Noctis is still reckless with what remains of his own heart, because there only ever is Ignis, for better or worse.
He can feel it, the weight of his lips against the crown of his head, and he knows now that he will love him to his own ruination -- has it not now been so, when he's cradled like something precious and Noctis clings to him like he's the last remaining lifeline, opened up once again to him. There is so much they have yet to work through, layers upon layers of hurt to uncover and excise, but for the moment Ignis is enough for the maelstrom of hurt and confusion. His words calm the storm but bring little relief to the devastation wrought.
But maybe, right now, calm is enough. He denies none of Noctis' vicious accusations and only holds him, and all he wants is to know how to tread water with him instead of dragging him down into the depths. How do they begin to fix this, to mend them both? Noctis doesn't think of the future the way Ignis does, he cares little for the long, winding road ahead; why fret when it's bound to be at your door anyway? All that matters is now, here, the culmination of lost chances and slow ruptures and the agony of a love that refuses to die. ]
Do better, and keep me. [ His grip on him loosens, and he finally looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes and a stubborn willfulness, strength shored up for the sake of his own pride. There are so many things he wants to say, so much more he's stored deep down without an outlet, but Ignis is here where he belongs, and Noctis discards decorum and propriety and bitterness, scours away rage to find what still pulses underneath. His shepherd, and Noctis, promised to no one else.
He raises himself and presses his mouth to his, tentative and unsure; the first vestiges of forgiveness. The devastation will still be there when they look again. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Don't say that to me ever again.
[ Don't say there could only ever be him and then leave him bereft and empty and unable to deal with everything that's broken apart before him. Don't say that it would only cause him more grief because how can there be more than this, when he's staring down at loss and has never been the worse for it? At least now he knows why his dad looks so sad -- had he foreseen this, had he known how it would hurt him? Noctis wants to hide away from him now, from Ignis and his dad and everyone who can see how brittle he is, how he is a touch away from breaking.
This is the last and only thing he could call his, the one thing that remains of his love while Ignis presses distance between them. It probably would hurt a lot less if Ignis was colder, if he wasn't so obviously trying to hold himself together, the pain reflected in his own eyes clear as day to Noctis. He would choke on it if he didn't choose to want to protect this piece of Ignis, this one thing lost to them. There is nothing as piercing as what could have been, if Ignis had proposed and Noct would have done everything possible to make it true -- and this ring would have been on his finger, bolstering his courage as he stands his ground.
But now he's on shifting sands, and he unfurls himself with a cat-like grace, feet planting on the ground as he straightens up, lithe and lean and shaky at first but as proud as he ever is. He doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to love Ignis now, not with all the intimacies they'd shared. It's hard to look at him, to know all his most intimate secrets and to love every inch of him and yet keep his distance. He swallows hard as he steps past him in silence.
He misses him already, misses how Ignis would take him to bed and how they would kiss, their hands warm and entwined and Noctis has never known happiness as profound as being in his arms, feeling the heat of his kisses and feeding his every desire. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and perhaps it seems fitting that Noctis now knows no worse, devastation given exquisite form in Ignis, and Noctis still loves him, a cold and broken realization that will haunt him every time he looks around, every time he reaches out and touches only glass.
Obligation has never been a more contemptible word. He will tear every word they've exchanged today apart in the nights to come, pick at Ignis' tenderness like a scab, and he feels wholly self-destructive as he squares his shoulders. ] I'm sure His Majesty's expected this.
[ Unfair, cruel. He loves his dad, he does, and he knows no parent takes pleasure in his child's pain. ] I hope you kept the receipt, the crown will make reimbursements.
[ Because if he cannot keep Ignis, then he can at least have this, slip it onto a chain and keep it close to his heart. And the damn crown can fucking pay for it. Then he says, so quietly it's almost inaudible. ]
I would have said yes, Ignis. And I would have fought anyone to keep you.
no subject
Noctis is everything to him. He can take comfort in the fact that he hasn't utterly annihilated his temper as it rushes to the surface, gleaming and vicious. Fighting long after Ignis has renounced him for a return to duty, scathing and abandoned, and it's an assumption not without some truth. King Regis hasn't the heart to look upon him since then; everything has been handled through intermediaries and secondhand accounts, and he's never sought to force his audience. ]
I can assure you that His Majesty only wishes the very best for you.
[ And it's not the end of everything, the ache isn't so irrevocable that he'll never be able to recover and try again with someone new. Resilience is a terrifying thing; even knocked down six ways to Sunday, Noctis can still find his footing in his confusion. Never mind that Ignis has stained him with his touch, learned the bumps of his vertebrae in his sleep. Life without Noct as the linchpin is still worth living, however lacking, missing the nerve of ferocity that's filling in the air right now, openly baiting him.
Ignis plucks at the conversational threads, avoiding the finer brutalities resurrected, as if the time he'd poured into his love was something he could get a return payment for. There's peacefulness even in the depths of evisceration, though, picking apart his words until they're carefully loosened from his throat. ]
... Noctis. You must realize I was wrong for ever believing it possible. There's no way it would have ended well. For you, especially, as the heir apparent. You've a duty to your people in succeeding the line, and I've overstepped my bounds.
[ It sounds rehearsed. Some of it is, practiced until he could hit the beats right, draw something resembling a natural flow for the eventuality of a talk like this. But it's no talk as much as it is a rebuke, flat and insipid. Ignis's hands drop by his sides, making no move to pursue Noctis. If he leaves, he'll let him go; he no longer has a right to do much more than ad-lib suggestions Noctis will fling back at him, unrepentant, but there's one thing he'll challenge here, no matter how the argument threatens to escalate. Ignis's voice is firm, leaving behind the farce. ]
You can't possibly keep me on as your chamberlain any longer if you keep the ring. To injure your spouse so acutely by my own hand is a slight I would resign my station for.
no subject
[ Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Noctis understands this better now than he ever has through any of his previous lessons. The pain of isolation, of loneliness is even harder to bear when he's already tasted of the kind of happiness that people spend all their lives seeking; blissful mornings melting into heated evenings in the arms of their beloved, believing (however wrongly) that it would never end. But here he is now, renounced by the love of his life, and the crown always wins. It must, even if the price is too high for Noctis to bear. Especially when the price is too high for him to bear.
He stares at the grain of the heavy oak door, and there is nothing now that does not hurt. He is only nineteen, still young in the ways of the world -- and what a cruel world it is, too. A part of him wonders if he will come awake soon, open his eyes in the darkness with tears on his face and Ignis wrapped around him, and maybe he'll tell him this is a nightmare, that it, too, will pass. But this is where he's wrong; this is where dreaming ends, when he is told again that this is for his own good, that his dad wishes the very best for him, and Noctis learns to despise words spoken by rote. ]
Of course. [ He says dully. He's learned his answer by rote, too. The vicious anger is submerged as quickly as it flares, because keeping it up is exhausting and already Noctis is barely holding himself together. He is the prince, he thinks, as if he could glean any comfort from the name, as if there is any to be found. Life with Ignis will be nothing short of torture now, to see the only man he's ever loved and wanted and to have him be the only one he can never have. To see him and know, every day of every minute in every moment that he once had all of him, had loved and been loved so deeply by him. The memory of sun-dappled smiles, bodies tangled in fine sheets and hands twined together, Ignis' sweet words of love warm in his ears, and Noctis loves him, loves him so fiercely he wishes he knows what to do.
But there is peacefulness in the depths of evisceration, when Ignis speaks with surgical precision and with infinite care speaks only to the king the boy would be, the boy excised from the conversation because in the name of duty he serves little purpose, and Ignis understands perfectly how the crown must always win. The boy, however, only listens, the flat and insipid rebuke falling upon the ears of one who has heard this so many times before. It occurs to him, in spite and unholy vengeance to keep the ring, to demand his resignation and take away the one thing Ignis had spent all his life working for, training for, so much a part of him that to cut him out from it would be the height of cruelty.
But it would serve Ignis right. It would serve his dad right. They can spend another ten fucking years finding him another chamberlain -- and failing, because there is no one like Ignis, no one Noctis would accept -- and Noctis will never see him again, and maybe, just maybe, things will begin to heal. He discards that thought as soon as it occurs to him. No matter how angry he is, he thinks, how scorned and roaring for vengeance, the truth remains is this: Noctis loves Ignis too much, too deeply, and the knife does not come down, after all.
The king says nothing (there is no challenge to be met when the fight is already over). The boy bends over to gently place the box beside the door. He straightens, wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, and takes a breath. The back of his hand comes away wet. He looks up, and takes a deep, silent breath. When he speaks, it's almost steady. Almost. The boy hasn't been bled out yet, but give it time. ]
Make arrangements for couriers to deliver your reports to me from today onwards. A cleaning service, as well. The palace kitchens can deliver all necessary meals.
no subject
But Ignis is calm, even in brutalization, and the moment passes.
It is perhaps a testament to how much wretchedness Ignis can internalize that he doesn't break down when Noctis does. Not out of any lack of anguish; it's there, every contrived ounce of it funneling into his soul, clamoring against his ribcage when there's nothing more to be done, sick and trying to throttle his hands as they snare inwards. He meets the breadth of Noctis's obstinance with surrender, and tears it apart: abuse by way of blunt trauma, forcing Noctis renounce the one last thing binding them together.
In his shock, Noctis is selfish, but Ignis is endlessly, endlessly deceitful afterwards, quiet even with the sensation that he'd been gutted, so sickeningly pervasive that it was strange how he could still stay like this, standing perfectly upright. It's not the erosion of everything he's thrown away that serves as cause for alarm, but how he'd never gotten around to acknowledging what his life has ultimately amounted to, and what was and wasn't worth pursuing in the looming absence left afterwards. There hasn't been a day that's gone by where Ignis didn't want to see Noctis, until now. ]
As you wish, your Highness.
[ It's the collision course of strangers, that new unfamiliarity introduced when he politely rips his gaze away from Noctis when his tears grow irreconcilable. He can't see his face, but he doesn't have to. The oppressiveness of his hands, white-knuckled, as they come away from his face speak for themselves. They no longer fit together, and all of it— all of those years they've spent in each other's company have corroded in a matter of seconds, and it's odd, the weightlessness that remains, when it should render him incapable of standing. More bizarre, still, that only a few weeks ago that he'd kissed Noctis out on the apartment landing, fingers a resonating corollary to his pulse, one consequence bleeding into another, and the prince suckered into laughter, treacherously loud, betraying all that tenderness in him before he'd gone and joined in on the act.
Ignis eases past Noct— he broaches the space sideways, so that not even the cuff of their sleeves brush in passing, and takes up the ring box, pocketing it. ]
Then, if you'll excuse me.
[ Simplified down this much, there's no bleakness in being overly cordial. And just like that he's gone, his presence beside Noctis melting from the room as he slips out of the door, exits down the corridor. There's no last, rueful glance back for what might have been; truthfully, he'd rather forget this part, leaving Noctis and that rapidly dwindling window for remorse behind, the blinding sun of the prince's influence on him be damned.
If possible, he'd rather not remember this at all. ]
no subject
Fourteen months and three weeks pass, the devastation wrought upon both parties of this relationship having no bearing on time and tide. In the beginning, Regis gives Noctis space to mend his broken heart -- after all, no father takes pleasure in his son's grief. He receives word, as well, that Noctis will not be seeing his chamberlain in any capacity for the forseeable future. It is a matter of concern, of course; Ignis is an exceptional young man with many talents, a great asset to the crown, and his handling of the breakup had been above reproach. And Regis recommends a temporary change in duties, even if that particular decision has raised a few eyebrows.
That Ignis had been seeing his son was not a secret in the upper echelons of nobility; the abrupt severing of personal and professional relationship even less so. Regis had sent Noctis a query after a month, and his response had been polite but curt, and the king is uncertain if he should be proud or worried. His son, still nursing his wounds, and Regis offers the option of a diplomatic attachment in Altissia, shadowing the minister of foreign affairs and learning all he can.
It had been accepted, and without fanfare the separation is enacted. Regis receives word that Ignis is performing excellently, the clever young man having attracted much praise, affection and no small amount of attention. The foreign affairs minister himself is effusive with compliments for Ignis' competence and his intelligence, so much so that Regis secretly hopes that the man isn't thinking of poaching him for his cabinet.
Noctis, on the other hand. In the months that follow it's impossible not to notice the deep-set ennui, the unmistakable change in character not borne out of spite but something that runs much, much deeper. At least spite can be assuaged, reasoned with, negotiated. This is a different ballgame, subtle and almost insidious in the way his son withers. Not physically, but where Regis had cherished most. His heart grown cold by degrees, an immovable sadness in his bones, and smiles that don't reach his eyes anymore, if he even smiles at all.
Regis has dined with Noctis sixty-three times in the past fourteen months, and the number of occasions a smile occurred is more than adequately covered by a single hand. The number of occasions a genuine smile was wrought, none. He receives reports on Noctis' progress in other areas; he is doing well, even if his trainers have privately noted that the boy's temper, on the rare occasions it rouses, is sharper, more vicious. He receives reports, too, on the occasions that Noctis has had his eye on young ladies, each one clever and accomplished, elegant young women who, while not of royal blood, would have made a fine addition to the family and crown.
Each one of them end, and Regis hears whispers that the prince is emotionally distant, that he keeps them at arm's length, that there is no way to broach the distance no matter how they try. Things get worse with Noctis for a little while after that, but eventually Regis sees the vicious cycle. They rarely last more than three months, even though a particularly memorable one lasted four and a half (the shortest, five weeks), and while Regis doesn't care for the burgeoning reputation for philandering Noctis has somehow garnered despite the fact that he's done little with them, it's enough for him to worry.
Noctis is less than forthcoming, of course; his answers simple and to the point. He's not angry, the king notes. At least not in the way he can sense, and this is infinitely more difficult to handle when it's not a tantrum he can quell. Something as irrevocably changed in Noctis, and every time he sees his son he sees less and less of his boy, as if time and tide were eroding the heart of him. Clarus notices (likely because of Gladio, who has been one of Noctis' companions ever since), and of late had chosen to have a quiet word with Regis; a rarity when Clarus rarely involves himself with Noctis' personal business.
Perhaps, Clarus says privately to him one late evening after a particularly unsatisfying dinner with Noctis, it is too early to deal in absolutes. Regis says nothing, but he thinks.
A few weeks before Ignis' stint with Altissia concludes, Regis asks Noctis if he is amenable to have his chamberlain resume his duties. Noctis, eyes unreadable, offers a perfunctory response, and that is that.
Regis asks to see Ignis when he returns, cordial but troubled. My son withers in your absence whether he realizes it or not, he says, because in that private moment there is no space for lies, and he has been thinking about this for a long time. As the days pass it becomes increasingly more clear that Regis had miscalculated in necessitating the swift conclusion of their... dalliance. There is a sickness that has anchored itself in the core of his son, and Regis notes, with regret, that the demon that had come after Noctis when he had been a child had been far less efficacious compared to what Regis had done in the name of duty.
It is too early to deal in absolutes, Clarus reminds him again; the issue of succession can be explored by alternative means. And, Regis thinks with a heavy heart, the issue of succession is not worth sacrificing his son this way. After all, the king is no tyrant, and seeing Noctis the way he is sets him at a loss. He is amenable to your return, go to him. Regis tells him, eventually continuing. And -- if my son gives you his heart again, I will not demand that you return it. He will not stand in their way if it will restore Noctis to an approximation of himself, not a distant, cold and implacable shadow of the earnest, understated awkward warmth of what he had once been. Still, a part of him wonders if Ignis is too late.
Where Noctis is concerned, however, things are complicated. Things are complicated because they always fucking are, and he's trying. He's trying to move on, dating girls and working hard to be a good boyfriend -- a lot of them are smart, distinguished, with sharp features and an elegant (if sometimes dorky) wit, and Noctis liked them well enough. Things would always go well for awhile until it didn't, until they wanted more and Noctis found that he couldn't give it to them; he couldn't even love them properly, as if a part of him has permanently malfunctioned and somehow he can't actually do it again. Not since --
-- nevermind. Nobody cares, anymore.
Ignis comes back to Lucis today and Noctis is shoving gossip magazines into a box in his closet, each one of them bearing Ignis' face together with his partner, often a dark-haired pretty boy with spiky hair and eyes with varying shades of green or blue (the latest one had a vivid kind of blue, and at certain angles could have passed for Noctis; Noctis only knows this because that's what the fucking caption said, and he thinks he's going to be sick).
It's been more than a year, he thinks. He should be better now. Over it. He isn't, but nobody's looking that closely, and Noctis likes to think that he's faked it to an acceptable degree -- he doesn't break practice swords anymore during his training sessions. He's twenty now, and despite the low-key anxiety he's been fighting for the past couple of months ever since he'd first heard that Ignis was coming home, he has his shit together a little better now. More or less. Prompto tells him sometimes that he worries about him, asks him what's up because he didn't seem to be the same guy anymore (not verbatim, paraphrasing), and sometimes he doesn't believe it. Sometimes he does. He doesn't remember the last time something made him happy -- he doesn't remember the last time his heart raced and sang and he laughed and smiled. He can't remember it, when he looks at the shelf of fish-related paraphernalia that he still couldn't bring himself to dispose of ever since Ignis left. He had bought them for him, various trinkets and souvenirs, and Noctis had kept them all, treasured them and set them on a shelf.
It bothers him more than anything, today, that he hadn't fucking done a thing about it. It bothers him that he's both anticipating and dreading this, uncertain of what to say now that so much has separated them (fourteen months, and not even a word from Ignis -- although to be fair even if he said anything, Noctis probably wouldn't have trusted himself to respond), and if Ignis sees that stupid fucking shelf he's going to think Noctis is a lovesick idiot for keeping his shit. He's older now, a little harder even if he likes to think he hasn't changed much, and so much sadder even if he's stopped noticing it long ago, despair clinging to him like a shadow, a thing Noctis lives with, copes with; a thing everyone else but the prince sees. His face is a little more tired, darker circles under his eyes -- he's thinner than he'd once been, and there is a grim set to his mouth that had insinuated itself months ago. Stayed, too. But the apartment is relatively clean (although never quite to Ignis' standards). A few reports lie on the table, and underneath the reports, a magazine bearing Ignis' and his erstwhile flavor of the month's face is only half obscured (entirely overlooked in Noctis' harried last-minute sweep of the apartment).
Gladio calls to tell him that Ignis will be arriving. The doorbell rings ten minutes later, and swallowing, pretending that what's left of his heart is not in his mouth, he opens the door. ]
Don't you still have a set of the keys?
no subject
His mind, previously so sharp and overly proud, has deserted him. Another betrayal, one of many over the past few days. But it's not so long of a drop from ego, not so long of a departure that he can't track where he'd gone off the tracks and railroaded himself into this perpetuation of good faith and his service to the crown, championing duty over all else. It's not a fall from some great, impassive height, just a matter of readjusting his priorities from the years he's spent together with one Lucian prince to serving the Altissian prime minister, which really isn't so divorced from the brand of professionalism he's wielded for so long. There's no huge difference.
Perhaps what makes it so horrible is the illusion of choice. Dying right now in some absurd mishap might be tragic, but it might not be so unpleasant if Noctis was by his side, holding his hand through it. But he's had to relinquish him, give all of him up for little more than sheer biological imperative, and nothing is worse than comprehending the awfulness of his loss for so small and benign a reason. It's not a life-or-death situation he's grappling with, just deprivation. There can be no desperation in something so asinine. To be angry at all is just another stupid consequence found in the very heart of selfishness, a ticking pulse on his conscience, when denied all else.
Either way, it doesn't matter. The crown prince never shows up on that last day, only King Regis, and Ignis leaves without fanfare. Noctis was right. Noctis was always right, all along, even when he didn't understand why, that trying to placate him hadn't gone any easier than if Ignis had struck him full in the throat with his ire. Things might've been different if Ignis only summoned his frustration, vile and inhumane, to the surface. But he turned away, from Noctis and the sobbing drip of his tears, and now he'll never know for sure. As such, he has no one to blame but himself for what inevitably comes to pass.
The months spent in Altissia stack upon themselves. In the beginning, he commiserates with Noctis's tendency for sleep. He's tired in a way no amount of subterfuge will unmake, much less suppress. Caffeine does nothing. Ebony is worthless. Ignis dozes off for too long, too indulgently, requiring far too many alarms in the morning to rouse. Maybe he understands him a bit better this way, left concussed from routine and the once-shrewd machinations of his mind. Spend too much time awake and he'll remember the ring burning its presence through his thoughts as it does the rest of his luggage. During the boat ride, he couldn't bring himself to hurl it into the ocean. It belongs to Noctis, after all. It was promised for him, although he's taken it back for himself.
Relief rolls through him eventually with the return to something resembling normalcy, once navigating the waterways. It's not the same as before, the reports and the meetings and the dignitaries, but tedium is tedium whether in Altissia or Insomnia. That, at least, never changes.
It's not very long afterwards that he relinquishes himself to pursuing Noctis as seen in other people. Only one person hadn't fit the bill for Noctis's mirrored counterpart, or doppelgänger (long red hair on her, blue eyes and a spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose), which was primarily because the way she threw her head and laughed back was just like the prince himself, peevish and moody in turns, but utterly genuine. She leaned into his hand the same way, the soft sweep of his cheek nestled in his palm, smiling so sweetly. It was all obscenely good for a long, long while, until he called her Noct by accident, a slip of the tongue, and watched how realization transmogrified her face, bewilderment morphing into pained disbelief. And then she pared herself from his side, swift as any blade, and that was the only time anyone left him of their own accord during his year-long stint in Altissia.
After that, he'd adjusted his priorities; better some weak facsimile of the prince for whom comparisons only went skin-deep than someone so close to resembling the truth of what he'd wanted that it could only render him inconsolable, counting the differences between.
It wasn't a hard benchmark to reach, even when rumors spread with the tabloids. None of the men and women who bore a strong resemblance to Noctis in physicality were never able to emulate him, that sullen and graceful and silly way about him, and he hadn't much wanted them to, after the first mistake. Staying with his last paramour was purely out of convenience, because of his eyes and dark, dark lashes and the breathy tenor he took up, calling out his name in the throes of orgasm. It held up to the last, when King Regis sent summons for him back to the Citadel. Maybe he'd known it was the end when he ingratiated himself in his lap while Ignis set about packing his belongings, looking every bit like Noctis, except in the ways that mattered. His voice was a chime, insistent, ringing away (you're leaving me for him, aren't you— I— Ignis, I love you, and he wouldn't, he couldn't ever do that for you, so that's why, I— you don't have to go, you can just stay here—).
Instead of affection, Ignis was left with the sobering knowledge that Noctis would never snivel and insult someone else in the same breath or assume that he was the one who was irreparably wounded when there's a severity about Ignis that only indicates cruelty now. Hindsight is only twenty-twenty; he wouldn't know if longing made itself apparent after spending too much time around Noctis's lookalikes, all of his despair clawing its shape within him. One time was already going too far to amend his mistakes; under repetition, it only serves as proof for the kind of man he is, breaking ties with his latest in a long line of sweethearts without batting an eye before making headway for Lucis.
The conversation with King Regis is, notably, a hollow one. However heralded, a year is far too long to factor in miscalculations so grievous, silently biting at anger to suffocate it from leaving his mouth. Philosophizing does nothing, but he yields, takes his mouth to it as if the answers have abided within him all along. Yes, I understand your concerns. I'll do what I'm capable of, your Majesty. I hope that Noctis's demeanor improves with my arrival.
But it's not a matter of capability, leaving the steps, entering the empty parking lot, easing into a car he hasn't driven for the upwards of a year. He carefully shuts the door behind him, fingers strangling the leather of the steering wheel awhile, silent, ascertaining that there isn't another soul around. And then he screams a deep, rending scream as he crumples down on the seat, feral and vicious and ghastly, an ugly, broken sound devolving fast into nothing but pure, unadulterated pain as it's shaken loose, compromising him. A deterioration of everything that's kept him blank and obliging; this whole year, he hasn't allowed himself to feel anything at all, and now there's too much raw-boned strength in his howling, like an animal learning mortality, languishing in the final throes of death.
Afterwards, he sinks into the chair, gasping, shuddering, clawing at the wheel with his hands, a collapse that thunders through him with impunity, when he tries to gather his wits as his breath comes hitching out in ribbons, irreparably broken. Gladio has left ten voicemails and five texts since he set off from Altissia; he answers the very last of them with a plain affirmative that he'll be over at the apartment soon enough. There's more still, from his colleagues and acquaintances alike, one even from Prompto welcoming him back, who's undoubtedly learned the news secondhand from the King's Shield. None from Noctis. He leaves the rest of the messages to sit. A glance in the rearview mirror confirms there isn't a hair out of place; slightly red eyes can be forgiven, chalked down to mere exhaustion from the journey, and so he turns the key into the ignition and readily sets off.
Twenty minutes later, he's at Noctis's doorstep, ringing the doorbell, standing solemn until it opens. When it opens, he can't help pausing uncertainly, taken aback, though his voice is no less smoothed-out for the small blip of hesitation. ]
Yes, well. I thought it rather unbecoming to go stealing in like a thief in the night, invited or not.
[ Noctis doesn't look like himself. Sadness has changed the geometry of his face; he's lankier than he's ever been, sloe-eyed and quiet, and Ignis directs his attention to easing the manila envelope and other present he's tucked beneath one arm. ]
Good afternoon all the same, your Highness. This is for you. [ Along with a draft of the latest report for him to file is a wooden box, a mockery of the engagement ring and its velvet box. There's no such sentiment carried in this gift, but Noct's perfectly allowed to pop the lid open and take a glance at the talisman lying inside, smooth and freezing cool to the touch, inscribed with a number of hieroglyphics. Though Noctis hasn't asked, Ignis goes about the small agony of explanation. ] From one of the minor island principalities just west of Accordo. According to the locals, it's said to bring good fortune to whomever should so possess it.
[ Noct's free to think he's taken up a burgeoning interest in shamanism, though the real reason is much more plain; merely a token he'd received in place of the prime minister during the celebration of the winter solstice and the Tidemother said to slumber kilometers below the waves of the ocean, like that's enough for fourteen months' worth of sentiment, anniversary and birthday and holidays gone by without a passing remark. Ignis remains stock-still, noting the state of the apartment that he can see from beyond the doorway without stepping over the threshold. ]
Would you mind if I had a look around?
no subject
Not because he gets to see him -- oh, how it has been such a steady desire, this need to see him, to be with him -- all these things so ruthlessly pushed deep deep down that it became its own kind of pain. Pain Noctis allows himself to feel only when he's alone. He has lost count of guilty nights when he curls in on himself, when he thinks of Ignis, pretends he's still there with him, his name muffled into his pillow when he comes. There is ash in his mouth after, and Noctis has never hated himself more for his own weakness.
No, he regrets it because seeing Ignis again, painfully handsome and wretchedly elegant and looking better than he's ever see him brings all those memories crashing to the present, opening wounds that have never closed. He looks so good, polished and as stunning as he had been, and Noctis is acutely aware of the fact that he himself has seen better days.
Another embarrassment. Ignis, so impeccably put together that it makes Noctis' throat tighten and heart painfully twinge. And Noctis, barely managing to tread water and having Ignis see all of it. Ignis looks more closed off than usual; perhaps it's something he's learned in Altissia -- he's heard that he's done excellently for himself there, amidst the news of his dating life. Noctis tries very hard not to think of that, of how someone else now has the privilege of his love, receiving something that precious, being happy the way he once was and never can be again. He wonders if Ignis brought his lover here, too; invited him to stay in Insomnia. Noctis doesn't want to ask. ]
Ah, thanks.
[ He at least remembers to be gracious, forcing the words past the lump in his throat because how he's missed him -- the loss so deep and cutting, the absence of one who had been such a large part of his life and his presence again in it is near-overwhelming. In the face of this is his anger is a forgotten thing; long overtaken by equal measure of numbing and sadness. He looks down at the box, report tucked under his arm.
Something in his stomach winds tight at the box -- he doesn't forget, still, and moreso the day he learned what those words on the ring were, and had to abruptly excuse himself. Does he know love, still? Does he know it in the young man he takes as a lover, the one that looks so much like him? Noctis cannot claim the moral high ground, he realises. His girlfriends had almost all fit a similar Ignis-shaped mold, tall and willowy with intelligence -- always with striking green eyes. They were pleasant enough, compelling enough that Noctis liked spending time with them, but eventually not even the most forgiving could cope with the distance that is always unspoken between them, the inevitable loneliness he made them feel even when they were together.
Good fortune, Ignis says, and Noctis politely doesn't mention how that sentiment rings so absurdly hollow. He touches the hieroglyphics, allows himself to admire it for a few moments as he takes in the explanation. It's the first gift he's had from him in more than a year, and Noctis cannot deny that it's all the more precious for it. He hadn't expected him to remember the anniversary and birthday -- even though he had glanced at his phone more times than he ever had on other days, secretly hoping there would be a message. There wasn't. Noctis doesn't blame him. After all, Noctis was the one that refused contact after that.
He thinks he can handle it better now, with fourteen months between them. It's rapidly shaping up to be an unpleasant lie, but Noctis is nothing if not stubborn. ] Welcome back. [ He adds, awkwardly, and remembers not to blurt out that he misses him. That's not allowed, now. Closing the box carefully, he moves back and holds open the door. ]
Yeah, sure. I've been looking over the summary reports of the past week.
[ This exchange feels alien, feels wrong; but he has to try to keep it together, to quell the sudden surge of emotions in his chest. Ignis is here, he's asking to come in and Noctis is struggling to ignore the renewed ache in his chest. How is he supposed to govern a country if he can't even get something like this down?
He shuts the door behind him, remembers his manners. Ignis might as well be a stranger now, no matter how much Noctis doesn't want him to be. ]
Coffee?
no subject
None of that matters, honestly. Looking at Noctis, he's reminded of what he's left behind, what he thought he might never see again, however ill-kept and exhausted. Once upon a time, he would've rebuked Noctis for letting his health deteriorate this badly— pulled him into a tirade about proper habits and proceeded to wait hand and foot on him for the next few weeks, or until his complexion grew warmer, less like hell warmed over.
But the moment is in turns viciously uncomfortable and distant and Ignis leaves Noctis, lanky and subdued, open the door so he could enter, peering about the corridor. It's cleaner, much more than it'd been when they lived together, and Noctis would leave his clothes haphazardly strewn over the floor at random intervals. shoes always out of place. ]
Much obliged, if you wouldn't mind sparing the trouble.
[ And much obliged if he does mind. Ignis is a stranger now; he can't exactly put on the kettle and retrieve the cream the same way he's done a million times before, so he'll leave Noctis to it, detachedly gazing about. With some chagrin, he spots Noctis's souvenir shelf, clustered with all the little baubles and trinkets he'd gotten him over his travels. For some reason, he'd expected to find an empty spot where it resided, but Noct wasn't so malicious as to toss out every memento of him. Of course he'd keep them, even if the sight might cause him little more than pain now.
While Noctis busies himself with brewing a cup, Ignis's gaze sweeps over the table— then abruptly freezes in place at the sight. The reports alone are benign enough, the same brand he used to ferry over back when Noctis was still in high school, young and petulant about documenting his thoughts on foreign taxation and providing a weekly review of life outside the gilded cage of the Citadel, but it's the glimpse of the glossy face that has Ignis tugging out the magazine to stare, abruptly paralyzed, at the cover.
It's not the image itself that shocks him, neither ingenious nor particularly cruel— he's seen this cover often enough passing magazine racks in Altissia during his last week, given his proximity to the prime minister and the fact that his love life was apparently so illicit as to be examined with a fine-tooth comb. But it's the fact that it's here, inside Noctis's apartment, that he gives into the morbid curiosity of it, rifling through the cover for the page detailing the minor fallout of his next-to-last relationship with theories abounding from fetishism to the novel idea he harbored quite a liking for Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, hence the transfer. Ignis is so concentrated on it that he hasn't glanced up to confirm/deny where Noctis currently is in the room. ]
no subject
There is a strangeness to the apartment now, a profound tension he cannot ignore, but he supposes it isn't unexpected -- what does he expect where there is so much hurt still between them, a whole world of things unsaid and a bond that, while frayed, is not severed. Noctis' very nature is more boon than bane; no matter how much he pretends to the contrary, his heart, once given, is impossible to renounce. Perhaps it would have been better if he was more capable of moving on, better at guarding his heart. Now there is a canvas of nothing where it used to be, and the man who currently has it is leafing through the reports on his desk, currently engrossed in a magazine Noctis had accidentally neglected to sweep up.
He pauses at the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand. He can pretend not to notice, he can give him a way out and call him over to the kitchen, especially when it's obvious that Ignis is unaware of his presence. But Noctis is not all that kind, and he has less of a tolerance for skirting past elephants in the damn room. He's tired of so much, these days, and he's missed Ignis too much to play games.
So he sets his steaming hot coffee on the table right beside him, his expression carefully neutral despite the world of emotions heavy in his chest, whirlwind of thoughts and hopes and resentments buried deep. Best not to hope -- he's been hurt enough, he doesn't intend to look for more.
It's a curious thing, the look on Ignis' face, and as much as he hates the seeming line of lovers Ignis had taken in Altissia, covered with ravenous glee by hungry reporters, he cannot ignore the similarities. ]
I was going to toss that out. [ He comments, then says quietly. ] Are they right?
[ About his preferences, his predilections. ]
no subject
Just like before, there's always a duality in things with a beginning and an end, and this beginning mirrors how it was toward the end, the part of him sealed under wraps saying yes. It's largely baseless speculation given ballpark figures, but there was once a row of them, one after the other, all of them despondent when they realized he was pursuing something that couldn't be found in them. Is it a lie if he's kept up artifice for several months now? Is it truth if he's sought out something irreplaceable, going through them even faster than Noctis has taken up each one of his potential fianceés? Regis was vague when he pressed for details, but he'd known Noct committed to the search, because he asked, and it'd likely gone down the same way, seeking women who took after him more than a potential love interest. ]
Would you take conjecture at face-value?
[ The words have wilted and withered. He's over chagrin, having made his intentions apparent long before, and even after. It doesn't affect him as it used to, when Noctis is the one to mutilate him, as always. Ignis is a a man worthy of so much spite that it's strange that he doesn't take after it properly, running himself ragged without entirely ruining himself in the process as he straightens to answer the way he couldn't, fourteen months before. ]
I can't force your trust, if it's my word weighed against a third party.
[ Heartlessness, again. But his shoulders are a mess of contradictions, shuddering and profane, but he steadies them. This is the part where he should bow out and apologize, but Ignis is exhausted by maintaining some distant, detached ideal for so long, like he can really be so unemotional when it comes to Noctis, and having every single one of their conversations boil down to remorse isn't really how he wants to live the rest of his life. His throat's still raw, scratchy from sobbing in the car, though he hides it so well that perhaps Noctis doesn't even detect the rasp. ]
Why don't you ask me? In your own words?
no subject
He doesn't, of course, but he does detect the rasp, an unfamiliar development perhaps pegged to the hint of red-rimmed eyes, the uncharacteristic hesitation in the first moments of their meeting. But then there is the impassive neutrality, the mask he still wears despite the fact that the tension and awkwardness can be cut with a knife right here in this room.
Something still crackles between them, a monster of unresolved proportions one just can't quite figure out how to slay, and he thinks I take faces at face value seems too flippant and inappropriate to say, a retort formed out of spite, but Noctis finds a perverse, grim sort of pleasure in withholding this from him even if he's too damn tired to play keep-away. Fourteen months is a long time, and the unrelenting reminder of Ignis' protracted absence (so much of it Noctis' own doing) does tend to wear one down to the bone. He's tried, Six knows he's tried to find Ignis in these women, to figure out if he could love them -- how cruel and selfish to think that he could -- and in every way they had only proven that love is as inexplicable as a ring, barely understood in Latin, as hieroglyphics on a talisman from a land associated with a giant sea monster. Surely there must be a lesson learned in this, but in his misery Noctis makes a poor student.
I don't trust you. He wants to say right to that carefully inscrutable face, and that's both true and untrue all at once. Noctis would trust him with his life, just not with his heart. What a strange discernment to make, but betrayal cuts deep even if Ignis had likely meant his renunciation for noble reasons. Well-being, was it? Look how well that turned out. He's not fool enough to believe that Ignis had walked out unscathed; Noctis can see it in his eyes. He looks at him like he's a man haunted, contradictory and mercurial but more honest than he's ever been, like he, too, is tired of this particular masquerade and -- well, here they are.
Why doesn't he ask him in his own words, is it? So here it is. ]
Did you see me in them? [ Did you find me in their eyes when you made love to them? ]
no subject
Besides all of that, the magazine notwithstanding, his compunction notwithstanding, he's a masochist, invoking Noct's unhappiness and despair. Still, he'll be the death of Ignis, just like this, tender and hurting and imploring him for answers. He holds his gaze when the haggard noise in his throat, or lack thereof when shaped this hollowly, subsides. ]
Oh, I’ve tried. Again and again. None of them came remotely close to you. If I could be so easily placated by someone else’s touch, I‘m honestly not certain I’d be here right now. You wouldn’t believe how desperate I’ve become.
[ Apropos of nothing. Humorlessness becomes him, voice cracking open. Did he see Noctis in them? He couldn't have gone without him, the year he'd spent not in martyring grace, but in the weakness of despots. He's had fourteen months hammering down on his yearning, but twenty-two years have already gone by before he could never return to how he was, losing his fine-tuned control over his equanimity in Noctis's presence. There was never any going back. ]
Or perhaps you would. A year is a long time. I was hardly deserving of you long before I left. I’d known all along what kind of ingrate I was, and still am, but I suppose you do as well now. [ Alluding to promises he hadn't kept, all the complacency born of despicableness, when he's sunken so low that there's no reason to resist the plummet down. ] You kept everything I gave you, except for what I wouldn’t return. You haven’t been taking care of yourself in my absence, even though you’re more precious than this world, in and of itself.
[ Noctis, who slept so often in his company, looks in need of a thousand years more, thin and ragged around the edges. Caustic only out of necessity. Pained, in all other respects.
Now he knows: it was self-sabotage to come here unprepared. He's practiced no eloquent rehearsal of lies on-hand, driven as a man yearning for his beloved forgets restraint. But isn't that how love is? Gone amiss, with a perception so warped that it mirrors his own decline, responding to questions he has no answers for? ]
Would you like to talk to the man in this picture? He asked about you quite often, when I was with him. How much I cherished you. Why I left your side.
no subject
He can't. He hates that he can't. In this breakup there are no winners, and he stays his hand -- the laughter that Ignis issues, in turns distraught and self-destructive, has no place in his throat. It rouses something Noctis so desperately wishes he's buried, a wretched kind of sympathy that reminds him that Ignis' pain is not solely his own, and how fucked up is that?
He takes a moment to digest his answer, to keep it close as if it could give him more than cold comfort, as if it would one day inspire more than the question: then why didn't you fight harder for us?
The question knots in his throat, the confession reinforcing what he's known all along: there is no going back. In Ignis' absence he has done the same -- searched for him the way others search for divine revelation, and in the end disillusioned and all the more empty for it, but hope, hope always inspiring another, and another in the long line of disappointments and broken hearts. But you cannot break another heart to mend your own, and Noctis knows he's looking at pieces of Ignis' own, offered up to him in defeat, in crushing hopelessness. ] What you wouldn't return wasn't mine to have in the first place. And I don't see why you need to be grateful for anything, I didn't do you any favours.
[ Being loved by Noctis is not a privilege. He sees that now, reflected in Ignis' eyes. He's a collection of flaws and shortcomings, at times tempestuous and cutting, and of late, more caustic than he used to be. He looks at the photos in the magazine again, and there are so many candid shots of them -- and Noctis cannot help a flare of jealousy; they could hold hands, this person could stand by his side, could kiss his brow, his lips, to know the heat of Ignis' passion. How he would make him melt; seduction is an art form where his erstwhile lover and chamberlain is concerned.
He closes his eyes at the assessment, how he hasn't been taking care of himself, how Ignis tells him he's more precious than anything and this is what he wants to know: if he really is so precious, then why did he leave him, why did he walk away from Noctis' attempts to keep them from breaking away. If he is so precious, why did he let the crown win?
Difficult questions, and Noctis doesn't expect answers for any of it -- if it could be summed down into any one explanation, they wouldn't be here today.
Don't lie to me. He wants to say, but instead reaches out, traces over the line of the other young man's jaw. His eyes are so blue, those lashes so very long, his face perhaps an approximation of Noctis' own, perhaps not, he's not a good judge of it either way, but he is intimately familiar with the way this interloper is looking at Ignis. ]
He really loves you, you know. [ He says instead, because even in his own pain he's still capable of being aware of another's, and he cannot help a pang of sympathy despite the heat of his jealousy. Ignis is a man people could fall so easily, so deeply in love with, and be all the worse for it. They've broken up, the prince notices, and for the first time he can commiserate with an interloper's broken heart. ] He would have done anything for you.
[ He draws his hand away, looking over at Ignis, and it's a wonder he can even say what he does, a wry half-smile tugging at his mouth and none of it reaching his eyes. Still, Noctis loves him. He can't look away, can't help a strange little pang of warmth, twisted up into something far too complicated for him to decode. ] Sometimes I forget how cruel you can be. [ Not that he's in any position to critique when he's done the same, himself. ]
What would he tell me about you?
no subject
[ Cruel and malevolent, with an impossibly terrible soul; he's only grown worse in neglect, fondness withering into a self-fulfilling prophecy of hurt. Misunderstandings only come with the territory. He's barely able to stand being disingenuous, taking his cues from the lack in objectivity. What he carried back from Altissia was the burden of memory, unable to forget Noctis and all that he'd left behind. Ungrateful for being allowed the room, and the opportunity, and the privilege to amend where he'd gone wrong— whether in abandoning the prince much too soon, or much too late.
That's how all of this started. Whether it's treachery or jealousy, he still dug wounds in others like those could alleviate the ones wrought on him, lover after lover scorned. It's a very cutthroat sort of mutilation, but nothing intentional. Every time he tries again, there's always the hope that'll be enough to assuage this festering hurt that's taken to residing in him, keeping him from devoting himself to anyone properly, like he once was capable of. He hadn't begged for his feelings for Noctis to be trivialized to the some passing fancy, tasked with the sick and tired responsibility of systematically unraveling all that he ever cared about. Maybe that's when he grew incapable of any kind of fondness that wasn't selfishness at its very core.
But it's not resentment that's overcome him now, back to where he began, only so much worse. Vengeance doesn't motivate him so throughly when it's his own conceit that's undone him: he can't find fault with Regis for siding with a tradition spanning millenniums, or Noctis for believing impertinence could take him so far, that anything Ignis could've given him would've been enough to mitigate losing the last of his birthright's magic, snuffing all sense of hope out like candles burnt down to the wick. Fresh with loss, Ignis hadn't fought back. He hadn't even tried to.
Exhaustion's impelled itself down to his bones when Noctis gathers himself close, neither broken nor meek at his side, to sun his hands on the page, psychoanalyzing the latest in a long, long line of heartbreak. Ignis thumbs at the black print of the lettering, the garish allegations of political sycophancy, sexual deviancy. Though there was an overwhelming abundance of love, however superficial, in Altissia, it wasn't anything like this ravenousness seething up in him in Noct's company. In comparison, something so halfhearted as fleeting infatuation wouldn't survive here, in the spaces between their bodies and the mantra of all things that go unspoken. ]
I couldn't say for sure. You would need to inquire yourself. [ The steam on the coffee mug wafts briefly over his hand as he tugs it close to his side. ] I can only imagine he'd tell you how heartless I was. That I chose him because he was the closest I could allow myself to be with you.
[ Nothing so lukewarm and irreparably broken could ever last. It was a rough approximation of desire, brought about by the fact that the man he'd courted could've passed for Noctis in profile and silhouettes, but not thoroughly to damage him, render him unable to leave him when his stint in Altissia ended. When the prince's mouth is gripped by the coarseness of his own frown, worn through, Ignis's lips press into a flat, flat line. They're now close enough for him to reach out and brush over him, make contact— if he only held out his hand, he could scrape his fingers over the weariness in Noctis, knuckles soft over the cheek, a ruthless corollary to all that came before— but he turns away, instead, gaze averted, like he's become a stranger inured to anything resembling affection. ]
Were you able to find someone you treasure enough to spend the rest of your life with?
[ Every question he asks is just like wrenching a knife in a little further into his inflection, mangling all subtlety with each incising stab. ]
no subject
Are you fucking with me right now?
[ Because what kind of a question is that when he already knows the answer? It's a perverse kind of query in the context of their relationship, of a question that was never asked, and an answer given too late -- I would have said yes. Noctis' mouth thins, an unwitting mirror of Ignis' own, and he finds that he can't deny the assertion that cruelty seems the only way Ignis can be right now, hardened by loss and pain. For Ignis, Noctis was willing to risk snuffing out the bloodline. For him, he would consider other options (no one ever said that Noctis isn't selfish); surrogacy, for one, an heir only illegitimate by name but not blood. It's blood that determines legitimacy, and one finds that power tends to outstrip tradition, however narrowly.
He cannot help a flare of anger, the words he bites back but hangs between them anyway in the flash of blue, like lightning during a summer storm. I did, and then you left. ]
You wouldn't be here if I did. [ His words, just as sharp. Because he's not stupid. Fourteen months is not all that long under the tutelage of the prime minister of Altissia, no matter how brilliant and promising the student is, even if the student is Ignis Scientia himself, renowned as one of the brightest minds within Lucis. It's not difficult to put pieces together, to sense just what it is that Regis doesn't say -- he notices enough of it, increasingly, in the dinners they've shared. His concern underscores the silence between them, and the gulf between father and son only grows despite best intentions.
And Ignis wouldn't be here if he wasn't asked to come back. Noctis makes no progress in the farce that is courtship, each dalliance leaving him more unsatisfied than the last. He's aware of the distance Ignis puts between them again, the way he turns away like he's taken to doing of late -- Noctis, with no small amount of bitterness, remembers a time when Ignis sought him, when the man leans towards him instead of away, reaching for him instead of keeping him at a distance. He's angry, of course he's angry. But he's also sad, wistful, missing him so sorely that it hurts to think about -- that hurt is a constant thing these days -- and he supposes that love is something that encompasses all these things, more complication that childhood fantasies of perfect partners and happily ever afters.
No, love is convoluted, a churning, screaming mess that overstays its welcome and sinks its claws and teeth into imperfect throats.
He doesn't miss how Ignis is so close he could touch him, he could brush his knuckles over his cheek and Noctis could reach out and pull him close by his collar, and it would be so easy to angle his head just so and fit his mouth to his again, as if he never left. But love is not that easy; it fills the spaces between their bodies and remains the mantra of all things that go unspoken between them, encapsulated in talismans and rings, in the likeness of him but not, in the many facsimiles and failures they've accrued in the pursuit of the perfect substitute. ]
What did Dad ask you to do? [ Just as incisive -- Noctis' ennui often masks his shrewdness, that unforgiving perceptiveness, leveled now at Ignis. ] Talk me into a matchmaking session? Fix me up with someone from Altissia? Speed-dating? Because the outcome's still going to be the same, and I'm damn sure you know why.
no subject
Like he'd know. He's trapped in the cage he's made of unfulfilled longings, too maddeningly self-aware for anything but brutalization to take hold. It's easier to rip something apart than piece it back together. Corroborating with his sadness comes easier than defying it, even before the fractured carnage he's made out of Noctis, which is setting the precedent on all the other, singularly awful things he's committed since then, pining and reckless, self-destruction unto itself as it bleeds face-down. Ignis's gaze perceptibly sharpens to a needle's fine point. ]
You're sorely mistaken if you believe I came here to set you up with another contender for your affections. His Majesty would never be so callous.
[ So that's how his enmity is conceived, miring his voice to something ugly and distended when he rounds in on Noctis, eyes flashing, cheeks hot. Susceptible, after all this time, matching the tide of Noct's anger with his own, raking in the dividends. The prince can interpret it as a threat: it's there, latent, in the careful snap of Ignis's fingers, mug abandoned, magazine abandoned, turning savagely on his heel. Some of the report's sheets have gone fluttering down though, displaced, like so many birds raining down from a long, long flight, when the horror of the fall hasn't quite set in yet.
The worst part is how the impact of Noct's accusations don't strike him for impact as much as they resonate, so close to the truth and yet the farthest thing from it, that his expression transforms, from careful blankness to tired, concerned regret. Rather than sublimating it, he reaches out— one hand soft on Noctis's cheek, sundered with the damage and the offense even as it glides to fit to the shape, as if he's grown insensitive to suffering. If Altissia's taught him anything, it was that there was never ever leaving the stranglehold of Noct's influence over him, months and months compounding to nothing. ]
Do you think I'm unfeeling, Noct? That I've lost everything I've felt for you in the span of a year, even though I've devoted myself to you all my life?
[ He could handle being mutilated for lesser reasons, making a mockery of his own self-control; it's not all that difficult to pursue Noct, even to the degree of endless futility. But not this, when the softness of Noctis's body has given way to this emaciated look, thin and starved and wounded beyond repair, and the ramifications threaten to send him reeling, reeling back. ]
Why haven't you been looking after yourself?
no subject
How can he not know what he's wrought with his silence and his departure, the wreckage of what's left that Noctis is still struggling to put together again? The way he had left things, the way they had handled it still stings, aches in the space in his heart where Ignis used to be, and oh how they had spiraled since then. Ignis to his parade of forgettable lovers and Noctis to his own. He forgets their names, who they were -- how can he remember when Ignis is all he sees when he closes his eyes, and his touch is everything that he craves when he presses against them?
His words are caught in his throat when Ignis advances on him, when he finally sees a glimpse of emotion, scorching and more real than he's ever seen -- Ignis, after all, is singularly talented at keeping his own emotions caged, so much so that by the end of it, Noctis is left all the more bereft of it, questioning and uncertain of the one fundamental truth: that Ignis loves him, too.
How can Noctis still believe that without question when he excises himself from his side so swiftly, like he couldn't wait to rid himself of Noctis and only needed his father's disapproval to do so? And like a fool, Noctis persists -- there is nothing else to do but love him, and by degrees his heart withers, unseen at first. Now, it seems like it's the only thing Ignis sees.
He should push him away when he touches him; how long had he craved for a moment like this, when Ignis returns to his side and touches him like he's never left, like he's never asked him to return that lost chance. How long had he sought his touch in his loneliness, with Ignis thousands of miles away and Noctis without the faintest idea how to nurse a broken heart. They say you learn how to get better at it, but what if you don't? Sometimes pain doesn't bring with it a profound transformation and understanding of life's truths. Sometimes pain just hurts.
He should push him away, and the wretched thing is that he cannot, that he resents and loves him in equal measure, and he fits himself to his palm like a soul starved while a spiteful part of Noctis thinks that maybe Ignis isn't so perfect after all, how he lets those precious emotions bleed through; threatening and assuaging in turns.
The prince closes his eyes, allows himself scant seconds to feel Ignis again, hating himself for how the warmth spans in his chest, something inside him fluttering with a hope that feels so much like a noose. ]
You tell me. [ An ugly, distended little sound that should have been a laugh, and he looks back at him, square in those stunningly beautiful green eyes, the depth of emotion in them now alien to him. ] You left me. So you tell me, Ignis, what was all the years of your devotion to the crown worth when you walked away?
[ It's anger, it's love, it's pain and heartache and loss distilled into a single question, and his hand comes up to rest over his, squeezing harder than he ought, as if he could map the lines of Ignis' palm on his cheek, and maybe this way his touch would last a little longer. Or maybe Noctis just needs to burn it all away.
Either way.
He raises his face to his, defiant. (Lost.) I did this to myself because I didn't know what else to do. ] Why did you come back?
no subject
Because you were killing yourself.
[ Hate's understandable. Hate simplifies things, occludes the throat with no small amount of insults to hurl or defamations to curse. Noctis should've figured it out. He's always been smarter than most, more belligerent than most— he'd hurt for a while, betrayed by his youth and his avoidant behavior around any problem that posed a risk, but he'd grow to spurn Ignis and find his happiness elsewhere, drowning out all the misery that came before in the affection of another.
But instead of fueling him with a noble vengeance, it ate into him, an unbridled devouring that shows its offense in the clamminess of his fingers, his eyes belligerent and sad. The heartbreak is there, hammering down, but none of the resolve to shake him off he'd expected, blinking open with a very absentminded hurt, like he'd grown used to it, acquainted himself to the scourge it posed on him, let it burn him with a conviction that was thoughtless at best, and devastating otherwise.
Ignis's fingers tremble where they're held to his face, grief and sinew and bewilderment all coalescing as one and the same. He shouldn't be able to detect the rattle in Noctis's jaw when it clicks around that mangled laugh, but he does, and it burns him, too— all those months of loneliness condensing into the sheer inability to leave on his own terms, to waste away as he chose.
Like he could've stayed away. ]
What should I have done? Eloped with you at the cost of all else? Left your father ailing sick with what must've become of you? Placed what I wanted above countless others for my own sake?
[ Giving in wouldn't be so bad; he's not so magnanimous a person that the thought never struck and clawed its way in, even for a moment. But debilitating Noctis with promises made under duress, whisking him away from the obligation they were both born to serve was an evil he couldn't reconcile with. Even if Noctis resented him for this agonizing lack of resolve— endlessly, endlessly— that would've come better than taking the Chosen away for the sake of his own interests. (Barely a child and already cursed; surely King Regis must have cried when the Crystal decided upon his son for its vessel, sealing his fate.)
Despondently, muscle memory fills in the blanks; holding Noctis today is just as deeply wounding as it'd been a year prior. Being with Noctis has never scattered his focus, only refined it; the only person who's ever mattered is the one standing before him. ]
I'm nothing more than your chamberlain.
no subject
There's plenty Noctis should have figured out, chief of which is that love can be so easily turned to hate; when he may lay all the blame, the hurt and the rejection solely at Ignis' feet, spurning him as he could believe that he had been callously spurned. He could hurt Ignis the way he hurt him, but Noctis knows better than that, too.
He knows that at the end of the day, the pain is still lodged right there -- just in a different form and no less corrosive, no less unpalatable for it. Noctis would have hurt either way, and so would Ignis, and Noctis sees right through to the futility of hatred, cutting through the middleman, accepts the scourge like the lover that he no longer has, grown used to the heartbreak and the sheer, unadulterated agony of it because when you strip away all the excuses and scapegoats, all that's left is still the unrelenting devastation of love broken and bleeding.
Noctis has figured it out; he just went much farther with it, and in his love he still spares Ignis and he hates himself all the more for it. But all Ignis does is twist the knife, dragging muscle and sinew, severing even more of what little that keeps Noctis together, and he turns, batting his hand away. Whatever that had been softened is now hard, his jaw setting in anger, in grief. Ignis was never just his chamberlain; all his life he had been so much more than that, a fundamental part of Noctis that defies all conventional understanding, eclipsing and predominating the extent of Noctis' interpersonal relationships. He is so much more than a brother, a tutor, a friend. Ignis is partner and lover and soulmate, to extricate him is to kill a part of himself, and hasn't Noctis already tried it before? Hasn't Ignis?
Would giving in really have been so bad? ]
You weren't my chamberlain when you fucked me. [ His words, sharp enough to cut glass, and still it falls short of hate. ] When are you going to stop lying to yourself, Ignis? Did you think if you repeated that enough, it'll miraculously be true? We could have have figured out a middle ground my father could accept. You could have trusted me instead of doing whatever you thought was best.
no subject
Since I left, I haven't known what to do with myself.
[ That's a good place to start, like he's chosen this path; in many ways he has, forcing Noct's hand and stripping the ring he'd promised away to him. Is howling esoteric if it's never heard? Just some deep, wordless scream too deep to vocalize while he stares back, devoid of mirth or anger, worse off for it. Like this, he almost looks inhuman. But the wounds of it is in his eyes, so there's no hiding it. There hasn't been much use in hiding it for a long, long time now. ]
Continuing our relationship was an abuse of the promise I made when I began my life with you. You're more than I can bear to give up. What solace can that give every soul in Lucis if I've chosen you before the world?
[ And forgone all the rigors of a proper marriage and a proper wife and a proper nuclear family, when a whole hierarchy of power is at stake. Regis is hardly getting younger and he'd hate for a child to be born out of wedlock, but even worse still for a newborn infant with half of Noctis's genetic code readily given up like charity for the Crown like someone horribly unloved, a consigned life of duty with rumors of a more sordid past circulating. It's not the way to be; lives aren't so easily formed or replaced without repercussions, and weighing his own against Noctis, he knows that they aren't remotely equivalent. ]
I'd lost sight of the reason why your father entrusted me with you, why I could stay and live by your side. That's why I ended it.
[ Noctis looks so young. He's always been particularly immature for his age when not holding Prompto as the base standard, soft eyes and softer heart, even so gutted with frustration, and Ignis's hand drops down. This is why. He'd love him even like this, pained from the intensity, like it's defibrillating his viciously beating heart— stamping his pulse from him until it's dead in his ribcage. ]
I've become despicable, but I never stopped feeling for you. Most people want to see the one they love most safe and happy. I'm hardly an exception to the rule. You deserved more than I could grant you.
[ That's all. Ignis presses the frame of his glasses back up, blinks away the sting of wetness. He's not particularly given to crying; a year's gone by and he hasn't shed a tear. There's nothing to cry over, given the closest thing to King Regis's blessing, but he's as empty as he was before, reaching over the table to gently snap the magazine shut, bending down to retrieve the papers that've scattered to the floor, unable to look Noctis in the eye. ]
His Majesty mentioned that he'll no longer play a hand in your romantic engagements. You're free to do as you please.
no subject
Good, he thinks viciously, his own chest twisting with the beginnings of a sympathy he hates himself for. Good, that at least he isn't spared the pain, that he can come to share at least a measure of what he feels, every damn day since the day Ignis stepped out of that door and left him behind. His rage is pain given purpose, an almost-hate that falls short of cold-blooded spite; and in return only churns and torments. He cannot look away from him, still hopelessly ensnared by Ignis and all that he still is to him, hollowed out for this love. Ignis is here now, and he's never been farther away, and he doesn't move when he shuts the magazine, picks up those papers. He doesn't miss the way he blinks more than he should -- and Noctis is intimately familiar with the mechanics of holding back tears that the sight of it paralyses him. How much deeper did his emotions run, wrenched ruthlessly behind the curtains for this unflappable pretense?
It's the next words that hurt more than help when the puzzle clicks back into place. Regis' message is why he's here -- his father had thought that Ignis being messenger could go some way towards mending what's been broken between them. ]
You don't get to decide what I deserve or what's best for me. [ He says at last, his voice almost shaking with anger unquelled, with all the understanding of what his dad's message means. What it could mean for the two of them. But they have problems not even the most blatant encouragement can smooth over -- Regis might no longer want to have a hand in Noctis' love life, but Ignis and Noctis have unwittingly discovered a schism between them all on their own that go beyond parental/royal consent. He takes a deep, slow breath, and fights hard not to scream. His grip tightens on the side of the table, and it's a wonder the wood hasn't cracked under the pressure. What is a proper marriage, a proper wife and a proper nuclear family worth when Ignis is the only one he wants? What is power worth when you give up all else to have it? ]
None of this is up to you. [ There's an edge to his words that continue to cut. ] You don't get to say you love me, and then leave because you think you're not enough. How is this happiness when I couldn't even stop loving you? Even now. Six, even fucking now. I want so much to hate you.
no subject
At the end, Ignis's height is his advantage, all of those inches he can stand above Noct, but he's below him now, knelt to scoop up reports. He's made to lower himself too quickly for finesse; thoughts stalled, mind stalled, hands a fixture of despair around the sheaf of papers.
Particularly, he can't blame Noctis for the anger crawling up the cavity of his chest, collateral damage harbored a year too long. It's fumigating the air, staining it, and he breathes it in, the ire, stopped dead in his tracks. Regret's got such a stench that lingers, all the heft and weight of a corpse to carry, a burden to shoulder.
How tired is he right now? Perhaps irreparably so, conflating failure for a chance to speak up, while Noctis's nails scrape at the wooden table, claw-like in his dereliction. Ignis left him in this state; taken the soft, gentle boy he loved and turned him into someone malevolent and prone to simmering bouts of outrage. Damnation, as it comes to him, is frighteningly human. ]
You're right. I was only meant to serve by your side. Nothing more.
[ Is it the beginning of compassion if he lies? If he should save Noctis from the trouble of proximity, the shallow grave for remorse he's dug out? So much of Ignis's life has been devoted to the intricacy of manipulation, and subterfuge, but he has neither at his disposal now. But that's just despondency at work, tricking itself into motion, out of fear of the unknown and what will come once this is over and through. There's nothing left to do. Years ago, he would've been afraid of this, losing his purpose and the last point of connection at his side.
Funny how things change. He knows better than this. Noctis was destined for greatness, but falls short of proper loathing. When he martyrs himself to self-abasement, Ignis's jaw steels until it's inimical in its rigidness. ]
You should hate me.
[ And if he needs another reason, he'll give him one freely. The realist in him knows how to conjure up a lasting wound, or cause a cataclysm when he stands, the papers promptly abandoned on the table, all of it wholly meaningless. The steps between aren't so long that he can't reach, incurring Noctis's hurt as his arms crisscross to wrap around him, curled up like a snake trying to obstruct the escape of its dying victim.
Capitulation, or egotism. That this arrogance holds just long enough to make a precedent for the wounds he's given him, the ones unseen, that have left him vulnerable to misery is horrible enough without acknowledging the rest of the evils he's done. Ignis's heart is hot in his chest, but his hands are cold. He hasn't touched the ceramic of the steaming mug again— hasn't grazed over Noctis's kindness as much as he's torn it to shreds, and his head bows, hands clung to Noct and up along his spinal cord, disabused of terror. There are worse things to dread than his own undoing. ]
Will you send me away?
[ Ignis closes his eyes from something akin to abject relief, or abject despair. ]
no subject
He still doesn't know why, and this might be the linchpin of the whole thing. Ignis left him with the ashes of what once was, having razed all that they've shared to the ground before Noctis even understood what was happening, devastation capped with trite platitudes, plucked from a lover's handbook of how to survive breakups. Or shake off a particularly pesky suitor. Even now, he wonders which one he is. End of the road, or dead weight? How had he not seen this? They could have done something, anything; it could have ended one hell of a lot better than this, and here Ignis is, silently absorbing his rage and his pain, and Noctis hates how he can't just claw into him, shred him the way he'd been shredded, hurt him all over again if not for the prince's own overdeveloped sense of empathy.
Ignis straightens up, and before Noctis realizes it his arms are around him, the warmth of him and the scent of his familiar cologne tipped with the saltwater breeze of Altissia and the worn leather of the car dispatched to take him home. Home. Ignis had scorched all that was left, is this still home for him? The answer to that dissipates in the unexpected warmth of his arms, and he's too paralysed to move, tucked once again in the familiar nook of his arms, pressed to the welcome crook of his shoulder.
His stomach churns, and he thinks he's going to be sick. ]
I tried. I can't, because I love you. [ He says, and it is no bold declaration of romance, only an acknowledgement of devastation wrought. It is dull, resigned; a malediction he cannot shed. His hands come hesitantly to his shoulders from below, digging into muscle as fingers curl and he wills himself not to cry. He is hollowed out and cold, the words damning when said aloud. ] You goddamn hypocrite.
[ And still I love you. He closes his eyes, silent tears burning through the fabric of his shirt as Noctis' grip threatens to break cloth to skin. Ignis' hands are cold, too, but they're splayed over his spine like they're fitting right into place, right there he belongs.
Welcome home. ] Do you want to be sent away? Answer me.
no subject
Better still that Ignis smashed the ring to pieces before Noct ever caught sight of it; he couldn't resent something he didn't even know transpired.
Alas. Instead he's noosed in this slow rupture of love, and the ring's not on Ignis right now— he'd never be so fucking stupid after the first time— he hasn't yet tossed away that last proof that he'd take the prince for himself if he could, cherishing him to the detriment of all else. It goes against everything he's been raised to be, to live at the behest of the people and support his king, but his Majesty had to expected this: devote his whole life to one person and the rest of his priorities skew with the distortion. Caring for Noctis made it that much worse to leave him behind, between the greater good and the evil of leaving him behind.
The prince clings to him, tearing irascibly along his back, scoring lines even with the deterrent of fabric. His tears are soaking through his shirt, and Ignis folds Noctis to him, inhaling along the soft crown of his head like remembrance. So many times he's cradled him, but he never loses the soft curve of his body even when he's abjectly ferocious, mumbling his epiphanies just above his clavicles. Yes, he's a hypocrite. Yes, he knows Noctis loves him beyond hate.
Ignis presses his mouth to the top of Noctis's head, incongruous to the fitful grip of his hands over the backbone, clutching at him. He hasn't ripped away, so he might never wrench away now, always trapped in this embrace, punished for something he doesn't understand. Ignis hasn't even explained himself properly. There's no point to it anymore, though. He's done with it all. Done with the departure, done with the subterfuge, done with Altissia and its churning sea and everything he's given up. ]
I belong with you. There's nothing else I want but you, Noct.
[ It didn't have to be affection between them. It would've been enough to see Noctis grow into kinghood, persevere beyond such an unfair burden displaced onto him, and triumph. To know his life hasn't been spent in vain, that his oldest and dearest friend could find some measure of happiness in succeeding against all the odds stacked against him. But now that he knows what love is, he can't do without it. He can't be the shepherd singing to the flock and the shores of his unhappiness anymore. Ignis won't throw himself off a cliff out of hopeless abandon, but he'll do selfishly worse for it, lips pressing tenderness into Noctis's hair. ]
I've only wanted you.
no subject
[ His words a hopeless snarl, heated against his clavicle. Clasped in the impossible warmth of his embrace, Noctis finds his mooring within Ignis once again. His Majesty should have foreseen this, too; love readily given in return for devotion, muddying the waters and now, look how they drown in it. He's not immune to the cadence of Ignis' pain, threaded in the strain of his words, the unfettered longing that tightens around Noctis' neck. How is he to wrench away when this is perhaps the most honest thing that Ignis has ever uttered? The prodigal lover, called to return, and Noctis is still reckless with what remains of his own heart, because there only ever is Ignis, for better or worse.
He can feel it, the weight of his lips against the crown of his head, and he knows now that he will love him to his own ruination -- has it not now been so, when he's cradled like something precious and Noctis clings to him like he's the last remaining lifeline, opened up once again to him. There is so much they have yet to work through, layers upon layers of hurt to uncover and excise, but for the moment Ignis is enough for the maelstrom of hurt and confusion. His words calm the storm but bring little relief to the devastation wrought.
But maybe, right now, calm is enough. He denies none of Noctis' vicious accusations and only holds him, and all he wants is to know how to tread water with him instead of dragging him down into the depths. How do they begin to fix this, to mend them both? Noctis doesn't think of the future the way Ignis does, he cares little for the long, winding road ahead; why fret when it's bound to be at your door anyway? All that matters is now, here, the culmination of lost chances and slow ruptures and the agony of a love that refuses to die. ]
Do better, and keep me. [ His grip on him loosens, and he finally looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes and a stubborn willfulness, strength shored up for the sake of his own pride. There are so many things he wants to say, so much more he's stored deep down without an outlet, but Ignis is here where he belongs, and Noctis discards decorum and propriety and bitterness, scours away rage to find what still pulses underneath. His shepherd, and Noctis, promised to no one else.
He raises himself and presses his mouth to his, tentative and unsure; the first vestiges of forgiveness. The devastation will still be there when they look again. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)