[ 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 doppelgƤnger (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 youā Iā Ignis, I love you, and he wouldn't, he couldn't ever do that for you, so that's why, Iā you don't have to go, you can just stay hereā).
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 badlyā 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 tableā 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 cruelā 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.
[ 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, Iāve tried. Again and again. None of them came remotely close to you. If I could be so easily placated by someone elseās touch, Iām honestly not certain Iād be here right now. You wouldnāt believe how desperate Iāve 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. Iād 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 wouldnāt return. You havenāt been taking care of yourself in my absence, even though youāre 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 wrongā 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 contactā 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 beforeā 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 outā 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 itā that he hadn't let himself be consumed by love, or that he'd turned away at the last second purely because of itā 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 mostā 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, tooā 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 resolveā endlessly, endlesslyā 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 heartā 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 airā some drivel about another board room meeting or appointment like it ranks superlative over consoling Noctisā 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 againā 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 backā the year he spent letting Altissia stain his belongings with too much seawaterā 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 nowā he'd never be so fucking stupid after the first timeā 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. ]
[ He'd known this wasn't something Noctis could forgive him for. This was hardly anything he could get away with, for the crushing sense of loss or how it'd crippled him afterwards, left him with a phantom ache like there'd been something cut out of his side, and he could only mourn its absence. It wasn't a loss of agency; it wasn't that he hadn't believed in anything, but that he'd believed too much in his own fallibility. That there wasn't a way for it to function, when Noctis belonged to more than himself and Ignis, he'd seen himself loftier than the world, but far, far below decency. At the core of it all, it was a matter of rising to the occasion, or succumbing to it, and at a standstill, he'd chosen escape, and he has no well-meaning defense to justify the year he's spent apart from him. ]
I caused you so much trouble. I'm sorry, Noct. I know. I left you alone for far too long.
[ And Noctis cries a lot when he's alone, emotional to his own detriment. The maids used to take on matronly airs around him when he was a child, motherless and forlorn. His face would take up a certain dimming resignation when his father couldn't join him in the courtyard for soccer, kicking the ball between his feet. As his advisor, Ignis was well-aware Noct used to cower underneath the sheets during a lightning storm, and that sickness pulled the same from him, fever in his lungs and tears in his eyes. It wasn't always unhappyā sometimes he laughed to the point of tears, diaphanous and sweet, but most of it was frustration, leaving him absently tilting his head away. He must've cried in the room that used to be Ignis's after he'd left, sobbing and quiet.
Sadness was beneath the prince, but his eyes are angry and bruising with tears when he looks up, prideful, and Ignis doesn't pull away from the kiss, coercing Noct's mouth into another, then another. Again, until the tear streaks have wept into the space between their mouth, and coerced, he nudges up to press his mouth over each damp eyelid. ]
I love you.
[ Ignis takes up one of Noctis's fists as they've loosened, his fingers caressing his knuckles to open and expose the heart of his palm, face-up. Then he hangs his head low, temple against Noctis's shoulder, kissing at his fingers and the creases between, penitent. Never has he apologized like this, his soul distilled into lavishing attention on Noct, trying vainly to cure him of his grief. But then, he's never had to leave his purpose behind and grow accustomed to loss, so there's no use in hiding his grief. ]
[ Noctis could only stare when his lips press against the heart of his palm, branding it with an apology that impels forgiveness, stealing his breath and his anger -- contrition is a terrible thing, it smothers anger and silences hurt, and Noctis thinks of all the moments Ignis had been by his side; all the times he had been more companion than guide, brother than assistant. His company had been absolute, a time-tested truth to all the times his father had broken appointments and missed important dates, a genuine, treasured constant in the vicissitudes of royalty. His absence then had knocked his world off-kilter, taken away the sturdiest pillar of his life, and Noctis understands now the sheer worth of the man who stands before him, lips pressed against his hand in his single-minded desire to ameliorate grief, his temple resting against his shoulder.
Intimate, once again, for wholly different reasons this time.
His fingers curl and gently urges his face up to meet his. Enough crying -- he's shed enough tears; how embarrassing it must be for others to witness it, the ones he cannot help but shed in secret, the weight of his own emotions overwhelming, begging curation, discipline. He had been lonely all his life, lonelier still with Ignis on the other side of the world and too far from his reach, and with the tender coercion of Ignis' earlier kisses still burning on his lips, he shakes his head in silence and kisses him again, lips parted and inviting him in. More than his own pain, he senses Ignis' as well, a raw and wounded thing that needs mending, and the man is wont to rend himself to shreds in self-flagellation if Noctis lets him.
He doesn't know what to do next, only to hold him, his other hand coming to curl around the back of his neck, cradling him close. ]
I'm sorry I hurt you. [ He'd said callous, cruel things, and in the wake of his rage Noctis understands this. I hope no one else falls in love with you, he'd said once before, intended to cut -- and so many things now, one after another. Ignis takes them in some sort of penitence, and he feels guilt curled low in the pit of his stomach. ] How do we fix this? How do we fix us?
[ His longing predates his grief, so maybe it'd always turn out this way, trying to outrun the sort of yearning that could only be loosely defined, that defied explanation and belief. None of it's tactful or rehearsed when his heart's doing its damnedest to clamber right out of his chest and falling just short of brutalizing itself against his own ribs. Grief's a point of complication that won't subside, mirrored in Noctisā this snapshot of a boy with his hair in his eyes and his heart on his sleeve, saddened beyond repair. The frown's touching more than Noct's mouth, lunging in his fingers where he fits them over his cheekbone, and Ignis blinks again, the palm on his face scraping over his jaw and the shuddering locked therein in comparative benevolence.
Outrage might've absolved him; if Noctis lunged out with a vicious slew of anger on display, outrage for his own sake, he might've been able to disentangle, given the prince to sort out his arrival and each confession on the ground at his feet. But all his life, all he's known is Noct, so it shouldn't be all that shocking that the same is true in reverse, when he beats down at resignation instead of wallowing in its shape, pressing their mouths together. Missing him so much that he couldn't tamp down the sob.
When he comes away from it, speaking soft and savagely gutted, Ignis is bleakā eyes crazed and miserable with some nameless ache. It's never the wound that debilitates, but the pain that comes with it, so caustic to render him insensible, and there's no longer that blockade in his throat and stopping up his heart, a ripcord pulled and the rest of him spilling out, unhinged. ]
Nothing was worth losing you. [ And that's when his voice breaks into some corrosive, disjointed mess, rushing out in a flood. ] You tried to fight, and I drove you away. I convinced myself that was your choice, instead of mine, if only to let you go. I'd convinced myself that you were better off for it.
[ There's no fix-it solution, just the gaping wounds he's left, how raw and bruised and fragile Noctis is in his arms. There's no dignity to it, either, but he's past grace and subterfuge, arms pulled around him like the currents of a swirling tide. ]
Noctis. We can only do what we can and keep moving forward.
[ Keep pushing onward, like the past is already some distant star; the apology's a heavy and implicit thing, clawing up his throat even when the weight grows unbearable, and he's either tearing up in earnest or dying trying to find a solution for that agony bottled up in Noctis for so long. ]
The blame rests solely on me. I never considered your feelings, nor a future without you.
[ Keep pushing onward, because that's all they can bear to do right now -- that's the only thing that matters. Noctis needs time, he needs it to mend, and perhaps so does Ignis, who sounds so wrecked and destroyed that he cannot help but squeeze him tighter, as if he'd slip away if he lets go. He's never seen him like this, given over to bleakness, to grief, the hard set of his jaw and his eyes; when had he become like this, ever since Noctis has told him about his dad knowing? No, even before that, when reality had set in and Ignis had chosen to drive him away, carving out a piece of himself in the exchange.
Ignis had excised a part of himself along with Noctis, and the prince hadn't realized -- only having seen it as cruelty, the height of indifference and callousness, all other words from his mouth mere lip service in the absence of affection. It's nearly destroyed them, and there they are, bleeding and struggling to hold on, and there is no one free of blame.
Nothing was worth losing you, and Noctis feels his heart ache along with him, because there is nothing about this that's easy, when they're both hurting and Ignis understands this too late, his confessions spilling out one after another, and Noctis listens to all of it and loves him anyway, because there's nothing else to do but that.
They do what they can, and he is silent for a moment before he raises his head from where he'd pressed his cheek against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart the way he always had a lifetime ago, in his arms and languidly resting in quiet nights, never knowing that a day like this would come. Remaining tears, burning through the fabric of his shirt as he closes his eyes, and even in his apologies they find little reprieve.
But maybe this is enough. Maybe this is all they need to be able to move forward, and his hand comes to splay over his back in a bid to comfort Ignis, to swallow whole the sob his chamberlain couldn't hold back. They're both a mess, and Noctis abandons logic for emotion, and he grimaces against his chest, his heart -- once freely given over to him. ]
Don't do that again. Once is -- once is enough. For me, and for you. [ He's reaching up to cup his cheek despite himself, studying his face, how it seems to be chiseled from marble for all the severity his gaze now holds, as if h's divorced himself from his emotions for far too long and is only just beginning to come back around to them again. ] I don't think what's left of you can survive it.
[ Crushed to his chest, Noct's breath is cloying and uneven, hot on his chest with each shaky exhale, holding itself aloft. It's born out of a thousand altercations and Ignis has a thousand more in wait as he holds him thereā fever-warm with the contagion that's trying to climb out of his skin, the desperation trying to cast him off and come unwound, or wound him.
Noct cries into his shirt for a while, and Ignis's backbone digs against the table when he digs to support him, suppressing the worst of the tears that wreak havoc on him. First comes the trembling, then the unkindness of Noctis's hand reaching up for scrutiny, and he stays there, paralyzed, stung by his words and then the inexactness of the pain glimmering its way across. His eyelashes flicker for all they've clumped together, wet, and Ignis shakes his head, the movement near-imperceptible. ]
What's left of me is with you.
[ What's left of him is rattled and beyond any repairing, but that's how it is to be alive: the winsomeness of hurt and how it proves he's still standing even when Noct doesn't see the despicableness in him yet. He might never see it when he's like this, past the verge of tears, snared with pain.
And that's all, as his hand folds over the one trapping his cheek, folding in over the shudders cascading down the thin set of his fingers, sitting in his knuckles. ]
I don't wish to cause you anymore grief.
[ Outside, the raucousness comes backā a dog barking on the street, the sound of people loudly conversing on a balcony a few floors downā and he doesn't so much as pull away from Noctis as he turns to guide him, walking through a room that's so-little changed from his memory, from the furniture to the immaculate state of it, proof that Noct's gone on living without him, that he's entirely capable the way Ignis couldn't be in his absence. Sinking onto the couch, he affords Noctis the choice: to sit beside him or stand a ways away, remain close or keep his distance, when he trains his gaze on him, eyes red behind his glasses. ]
What have you been up to, as of late? I confess I haven't had much of a life outside of work, but I'm sure you must haveā questions, for me.
[ The long line of lovers, the minor scandals of politicians and their miserable affairs, how cruel he'd become in Noctis's absence (how much he's changed for the worse). ]
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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 doppelgƤnger (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 youā Iā Ignis, I love you, and he wouldn't, he couldn't ever do that for you, so that's why, Iā you don't have to go, you can just stay hereā).
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?
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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?
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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 badlyā 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 tableā 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 cruelā 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. ]
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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. ]
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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 fianceƩs? 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?
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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? ]
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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, Iāve tried. Again and again. None of them came remotely close to you. If I could be so easily placated by someone elseās touch, Iām honestly not certain Iād be here right now. You wouldnāt believe how desperate Iāve 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. Iād 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 wouldnāt return. You havenāt been taking care of yourself in my absence, even though youāre 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.
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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?
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[ 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 wrongā 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 contactā 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 beforeā 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. ]
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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.
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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 outā 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?
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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?
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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 mostā 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, tooā 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 resolveā endlessly, endlesslyā 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.
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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.
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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 heartā 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.
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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.
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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 againā 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. ]
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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.
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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 nowā he'd never be so fucking stupid after the first timeā 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.
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[ 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. ]
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I caused you so much trouble. I'm sorry, Noct. I know. I left you alone for far too long.
[ And Noctis cries a lot when he's alone, emotional to his own detriment. The maids used to take on matronly airs around him when he was a child, motherless and forlorn. His face would take up a certain dimming resignation when his father couldn't join him in the courtyard for soccer, kicking the ball between his feet. As his advisor, Ignis was well-aware Noct used to cower underneath the sheets during a lightning storm, and that sickness pulled the same from him, fever in his lungs and tears in his eyes. It wasn't always unhappyā sometimes he laughed to the point of tears, diaphanous and sweet, but most of it was frustration, leaving him absently tilting his head away. He must've cried in the room that used to be Ignis's after he'd left, sobbing and quiet.
Sadness was beneath the prince, but his eyes are angry and bruising with tears when he looks up, prideful, and Ignis doesn't pull away from the kiss, coercing Noct's mouth into another, then another. Again, until the tear streaks have wept into the space between their mouth, and coerced, he nudges up to press his mouth over each damp eyelid. ]
I love you.
[ Ignis takes up one of Noctis's fists as they've loosened, his fingers caressing his knuckles to open and expose the heart of his palm, face-up. Then he hangs his head low, temple against Noctis's shoulder, kissing at his fingers and the creases between, penitent. Never has he apologized like this, his soul distilled into lavishing attention on Noct, trying vainly to cure him of his grief. But then, he's never had to leave his purpose behind and grow accustomed to loss, so there's no use in hiding his grief. ]
I'm sorry. I could only love you.
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Intimate, once again, for wholly different reasons this time.
His fingers curl and gently urges his face up to meet his. Enough crying -- he's shed enough tears; how embarrassing it must be for others to witness it, the ones he cannot help but shed in secret, the weight of his own emotions overwhelming, begging curation, discipline. He had been lonely all his life, lonelier still with Ignis on the other side of the world and too far from his reach, and with the tender coercion of Ignis' earlier kisses still burning on his lips, he shakes his head in silence and kisses him again, lips parted and inviting him in. More than his own pain, he senses Ignis' as well, a raw and wounded thing that needs mending, and the man is wont to rend himself to shreds in self-flagellation if Noctis lets him.
He doesn't know what to do next, only to hold him, his other hand coming to curl around the back of his neck, cradling him close. ]
I'm sorry I hurt you. [ He'd said callous, cruel things, and in the wake of his rage Noctis understands this. I hope no one else falls in love with you, he'd said once before, intended to cut -- and so many things now, one after another. Ignis takes them in some sort of penitence, and he feels guilt curled low in the pit of his stomach. ] How do we fix this? How do we fix us?
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Outrage might've absolved him; if Noctis lunged out with a vicious slew of anger on display, outrage for his own sake, he might've been able to disentangle, given the prince to sort out his arrival and each confession on the ground at his feet. But all his life, all he's known is Noct, so it shouldn't be all that shocking that the same is true in reverse, when he beats down at resignation instead of wallowing in its shape, pressing their mouths together. Missing him so much that he couldn't tamp down the sob.
When he comes away from it, speaking soft and savagely gutted, Ignis is bleakā eyes crazed and miserable with some nameless ache. It's never the wound that debilitates, but the pain that comes with it, so caustic to render him insensible, and there's no longer that blockade in his throat and stopping up his heart, a ripcord pulled and the rest of him spilling out, unhinged. ]
Nothing was worth losing you. [ And that's when his voice breaks into some corrosive, disjointed mess, rushing out in a flood. ] You tried to fight, and I drove you away. I convinced myself that was your choice, instead of mine, if only to let you go. I'd convinced myself that you were better off for it.
[ There's no fix-it solution, just the gaping wounds he's left, how raw and bruised and fragile Noctis is in his arms. There's no dignity to it, either, but he's past grace and subterfuge, arms pulled around him like the currents of a swirling tide. ]
Noctis. We can only do what we can and keep moving forward.
[ Keep pushing onward, like the past is already some distant star; the apology's a heavy and implicit thing, clawing up his throat even when the weight grows unbearable, and he's either tearing up in earnest or dying trying to find a solution for that agony bottled up in Noctis for so long. ]
The blame rests solely on me. I never considered your feelings, nor a future without you.
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Ignis had excised a part of himself along with Noctis, and the prince hadn't realized -- only having seen it as cruelty, the height of indifference and callousness, all other words from his mouth mere lip service in the absence of affection. It's nearly destroyed them, and there they are, bleeding and struggling to hold on, and there is no one free of blame.
Nothing was worth losing you, and Noctis feels his heart ache along with him, because there is nothing about this that's easy, when they're both hurting and Ignis understands this too late, his confessions spilling out one after another, and Noctis listens to all of it and loves him anyway, because there's nothing else to do but that.
They do what they can, and he is silent for a moment before he raises his head from where he'd pressed his cheek against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart the way he always had a lifetime ago, in his arms and languidly resting in quiet nights, never knowing that a day like this would come. Remaining tears, burning through the fabric of his shirt as he closes his eyes, and even in his apologies they find little reprieve.
But maybe this is enough. Maybe this is all they need to be able to move forward, and his hand comes to splay over his back in a bid to comfort Ignis, to swallow whole the sob his chamberlain couldn't hold back. They're both a mess, and Noctis abandons logic for emotion, and he grimaces against his chest, his heart -- once freely given over to him. ]
Don't do that again. Once is -- once is enough. For me, and for you. [ He's reaching up to cup his cheek despite himself, studying his face, how it seems to be chiseled from marble for all the severity his gaze now holds, as if h's divorced himself from his emotions for far too long and is only just beginning to come back around to them again. ] I don't think what's left of you can survive it.
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Noct cries into his shirt for a while, and Ignis's backbone digs against the table when he digs to support him, suppressing the worst of the tears that wreak havoc on him. First comes the trembling, then the unkindness of Noctis's hand reaching up for scrutiny, and he stays there, paralyzed, stung by his words and then the inexactness of the pain glimmering its way across. His eyelashes flicker for all they've clumped together, wet, and Ignis shakes his head, the movement near-imperceptible. ]
What's left of me is with you.
[ What's left of him is rattled and beyond any repairing, but that's how it is to be alive: the winsomeness of hurt and how it proves he's still standing even when Noct doesn't see the despicableness in him yet. He might never see it when he's like this, past the verge of tears, snared with pain.
And that's all, as his hand folds over the one trapping his cheek, folding in over the shudders cascading down the thin set of his fingers, sitting in his knuckles. ]
I don't wish to cause you anymore grief.
[ Outside, the raucousness comes backā a dog barking on the street, the sound of people loudly conversing on a balcony a few floors downā and he doesn't so much as pull away from Noctis as he turns to guide him, walking through a room that's so-little changed from his memory, from the furniture to the immaculate state of it, proof that Noct's gone on living without him, that he's entirely capable the way Ignis couldn't be in his absence. Sinking onto the couch, he affords Noctis the choice: to sit beside him or stand a ways away, remain close or keep his distance, when he trains his gaze on him, eyes red behind his glasses. ]
What have you been up to, as of late? I confess I haven't had much of a life outside of work, but I'm sure you must haveā questions, for me.
[ The long line of lovers, the minor scandals of politicians and their miserable affairs, how cruel he'd become in Noctis's absence (how much he's changed for the worse). ]
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