[ The hardest thing to do is to watch Ignis pack all his things. Before that, Noctis' apartment had borne many little signs that another lived there with him, this sleek, lonely apartment that's gained another occupant and is all the more welcome for it. It's the neatly-folded clothes Noctis had haphazardly made space for, it's the neatly arranged books on an unused shelf, a recipe book on the counter, the heartwarming smell of home-cooked food and the sweet richness of baked pastries and confections. It's the way Ignis occupies that space, a presence that lends life to a place Noctis has no real attachment to, because at the end of the day he will return to the Citadel, with all its magnificence and finery and long, long corridors.
It is Ignis who turned this apartment into a home, a place they've spent countless evenings curled up with each other; Ignis fitting himself into his heart, carving his name into the space between his ribs, occupying the silence between heartbeats. And one day, it's Ignis that takes it all away.
A relationship is built on the smallest things, and that is why when it ends, it's not the person-shaped hole in your chest that kills you; it's the thousand little papercuts that comes after he's gone. It's the many little reminders of a presence gouged out, and nothing is more pronounced than an empty space where something beloved used to be. The bed, colder. The kitchenette, waiting to be used. The bathroom sink, missing one toothbrush. The mobile phone, silent, bloated with messages that were read but not responded to, and Noctis never did have the heart to command his responses no matter the degree of hurt, girded by the wind of his anger.
For Noctis, a lesson in love.
For George, a Pyrrhic victory.
And so he turns up today, curtly informs him of his arrival when he steps foot onto the grounds -- princes, after all, reserve the right not to inform the royal retinue of their intentions to return, no matter the inconvenience caused. After all, Noctis eschews royal receptions, as if they don't already have enough to do in the day-to-day running of the household. He feels rather like a thief in his own house when he slips into the grounds, and makes his way immediately for Ignis' room. His father would be disappointed, surely, but Noctis is a wounded animal, the days without Ignis' warmth wrapped around him lending itself to more sleepless nights, and Noctis is all the more resentful for it.
His room is pristine, carefully arranged to be entirely bereft of any human touch save for the one small black velvet box sitting on the table. Noctis is not normally the invasive sort, but then again, these are not normal circumstances, and against his better judgement he picks it up, opening it to reveal the ring that glitters inside, cloaked in royal colors, designed and crafted by someone whose workmanship could command a king's ransom and then some. This is not a ring to be worn casually, the make of it too masculine to mistake it for a gift to the opposite sex. This box is not brand new, the edges gently smoothed out by long periods of time tucked into a pocket. He pulls out the ring to inspect it, and in doing so stops breathing, staring down at the words gilded onto the band. His name, and more latin he wishes he had paid attention to during one of Ignis' many lessons on the language.
His name.
Noctis stares at it blankly, seating himself on the nearby rolly chair as it hits him all at once, the weight of revelation clenched around his heart. This is -- or perhaps, was -- meant for him. He pulls his legs up and curls around the box and its extracted content, a world of thoughts whirling in his head in a haze of white noise. Shock, fury, sadness, a hope he doesn't allow himself to feel, the reminder that this can never happen, the realisation that perhaps Ignis had not stopped loving him, after all, that once upon a time he had wanted --
-- he looks up from the box when Ignis enters, and if there ever is an astute reimagining of the adage about deers caught in the headlights of resentfully loving speeding vehicles, this moment would be the top contender. Ignis, still so fucking beautiful standing there like that, now unreachable, and no longer his.
Noctis wishes it doesn't still hurt. ]
Sorry, did I ruin your escape plans?
[ These words, with all the potential for exceptional amounts of venom only now half-fulfilled, worn down by a heartache Noctis refuses to acknowledge. The gilded knife of his frustration is halted, just for these few moments. ] Tell me what this is supposed to be.
[ There's nothing but ruthlessness to Noctis in times like these, possessed by defiance and capable of brutality that could tear Ignis apart, if allowed. He wouldn't need a weapon when he's only ever needed himself. Retaliation needs little beyond a steady, throttling hand to get the job done, and Noct wields the gravitas for even the most intimate of homicides, commanding his attention where he's seated, unmoving, eyes prickling and truculent.
But the veneer's already cracked, hurt shining on through. It refracts through him as light on glass does, his glare shattered and misting up. It's unbearable. Ignis's hand snags on the doorframe, gone rigid, the bones in his knuckles aching taut. There's nothing else to do for misjudging distance when detaching himself didn't undo the damage. If he handled this earlier on in their relationship, still fresh and newfangled, perhaps that would've mitigated the worst of it. (Except that's a lie, isn't it? Except that Ignis never does anything in half-measures. After swearing fealty to Noctis, he'd never devote himself so irresolutely.)
A lot can change, given time. There's no reason he shouldn't have expected the same to apply here. Noct has never been anything but resilient, even when battered down and lost, grasping for control. It's the same rhetoric governing Latin, studying a dead language no one else speaks, going so far to hunt down a jeweler to fine-tune the ring, paycheck after paycheck poured into it. Ignis is sentimental to an unjustifiably hurtful degree, so it only makes sense he'd be heavy-handed with his affections.
If Noctis thinks back far enough, maybe he remembers Virgil's works, the eight eclogue he'd covered in what might as well be a lifetime ago: the anecdote of the shepherd proclaiming his tenderness for his beloved, already promised away to someone else. The passage was a touch so brusque that he'd wanted Noctis to smile at the despotism of it in recall, poke fun at a yearning so selfish that it'd expect reciprocation or hurl itself down against the waves and drown. Nunc scio quid sit Amor. Now I know what Love is. Back then, he hadn't been the scorned lover willfully dashing himself on the rocks.
It's all so profanely foolish now.
The shock in him subsides, winding down. Ignis shuts the door behind him; there's no need for anyone else to bear witness. If Noct's gone and sought him out like this, then the suffocation of the moment is a privilege he can enjoy in all of its horribly emphatic misery. ]
Isn't it blatant enough? Do you really need me to say it?
[ His voice is calm and clear when he poses the conditional, even when he's talking around the awful desperation writhing in him. Stiffly, Ignis drapes a hand on the desk, fist closing over the wood. With his ambitions sieved down to nothing, there are no conditionals. There's nothing else to lose. ]
Highness. What do you think you'll accomplish by rummaging through someone else's belongings?
[ Say it, because he needs to hear it, because in his own pain and loneliness he wants to hear Ignis speak it, because they're both self-destructive in their love for each other and Noctis can barely breathe through the way the unspoken sentiment throttles him, another demon to add to his nightmares. If Ignis had chosen the honourable way out, the sensible way, then Noctis will rend it to shreds and tear through the well-meaning lies put up between them.
Does he truly not love him anymore? It haunts him, how Ignis had maintained his dispassion from the moment Noctis had told him up until now, ten, fifteen, twenty of a thousand papercuts Noctis allows because he doesn't know how else to take it. His love cannot be promised to another when it still belongs to Ignis, cruel but not capricious, vicious but painfully unceasing, a noose around Ignis' neck and his own.
He swallows, and perhaps if he were older and more experienced he would be more adept that masking the pain, the heartbeat short of capitulation -- say you love me again -- and if he were a better person he would have held himself back, given Ignis a way out the way he had done so for him.
But here they are, Noctis ruthless in his pursuit of him, eyes the color of a midnight storm, raging and roiling. His hand closes around the box, and Noctis finds that he has never hated that word more. Highness, he says, like his name hasn't fallen from his lips like desperate prayers, like his name hasn't invoked absolution, provoked a litany of confessions as their bodies moved together, cleaved to the other and made whole.
Now, now he's empty and wanting and his words are brittle. He cannot claim what is not his, but what if they once belonged to him? Ignis' heart, and this, too, this road not taken, an abandoned possibility. He raises his voice, because all they do is hurt each other, but what else is there to do but bring the knife down? ]
Say it, Ignis!
[ His voice cracks on his name, his fingers digging into the precious box so hard that he fears he will shatter it. ]
[ It's selfish to play keep-away with his anger, isn't it?
Then yes, he's angry. Yes, he's irascible and just barely holding himself together when Noctis combusts in a short-circuiting wave of poorly-masked outrage, trying to force his compliance. It hardly needs externalization, all of this frustration running rampant that Ignis has carefully bottled up and sealed away; he's seething mad and riled and well and truly upset, enough that slowly extricating himself from Noct's life strikes him as a better option than waiting for him to the last, poignant blow to fissure him open. It may have all started out of obligation, but now it's become much more than that.
A score of illegitimate children, some bastardized, unhappy marriage— surely Noctis understands more than anyone to grow up lonely and smothered in turns without vicious rumor coming into play. It's no way to live for a child, reared up in whatever environment will coax on self-hatred, so this is the easiest way out. This is the only way out, the only one he's remotely complacent with.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Ignis doesn't let the burn of anger invasively carve its way over his face, but tiredness, like he's grown exhausted of the ploy of it. Noctis calls him by name, and it's not stupid exaggeration to think himself responsible for the way he's caved in, his hand white-knuckled on the desk. It's the kind of exhaustion that doesn't leave, even after a full night's rest, condensing in on itself. ]
What good would that do? Would that truly help you?
[ All these languorous, awful questions might get him somewhere if he just keeps asking until he's compelled to answer, taking away the soft warmth of compassion until the only thing left is this seeping coldness, devouring and ill-managed. His voice sounds so odd, unchanging in pitch or tone, as he avoids the trajectory of Noct's wrath, making a show of straightening up, like he's preparing for a proper conversation instead of this messy, one-sided pretense at one. ]
I can't begin to say how sorry I am for hurting you. I never intended to cause you so much pain.
[ I never meant to hurt you. I'm sorry. All of this and more, the first and last bastion of a lover's defenses. All of this, hollow sentiment that does nothing to alleviate the pain shared by the both of them, and here Ignis looks at him, so beautifully, damnably dispassionate, he might as well be crafted by Michelangelo himself. He's half torn between laughing and laughing and laughing and lunging towards him, as if doing so could rend the pristine, perfect veneer asunder, digging into what Ignis has so jealously protected for himself.
He was wrong, he thinks now, as the deliberately calm questions sink in, designed to reiterate distance, not to allay. He hadn't lost Ignis the day he walked out of the apartment with his belongings carefully packed. He lost Ignis the moment he told him about Regis. That Noctis' suspicions of a similar hurt Ignis endures remains nebulous; white-knuckled fists on desks can have a world of interpretations, and perhaps if Noctis were more cynical he would have jumped right on them and cut the cord for good.
But he's a young man hopelessly in love, devastated and enraged in equal measure and he settles for a harsh bark of laughter, the sound so cruel and alien coming from him -- it's not a sound he's meant to make, shoulders wracked with something so close to a sob. Not quite, not quite. Princes don't cry.
He rubs the heel of his palm against his eyes, curled over the box now, as if protecting it bring everything back, as if he could smudge out all that's happened in the past few weeks. Sorry, he says, like it could stem the bleeding. ]
Did you get that from a book? What are you going to say next, "It's not you, it's me"? Do you think that helped? What good does that do?
[ He flings the unanswered questions back in his face, vicious and unruly and hurting, and he wants nothing more than to curl his hand around Ignis', right there on the desk. He wants nothing more than to provoke him, to see if there's more underneath that porcelain, tranquil mask. Ignis looks tired, a small voice observes, exhaustion set deep beyond the reach of the most cultivated front, which is the only reason why Noctis hasn't seen fit to brush past him and slam the door shut on this encounter.
Surely he must feel something. ] Tell me how this is so easy for you to do.
[ Anything he says will set off a tremor; he couldn't injure Noctis worse than if he'd planned this down to colliding efficacy, the confrontation he'd been straining to avoid and how it'll dismantle him, mind flickering like a candle on the verge of being snuffed out. It's already ruining him, already in the process of unmaking his resolve, that Noct might give in more to sullen, moody ire than this distress as it comes thrashing awake and sears his voice. The next breath Ignis takes snags in his throat, damp and guttural, nerveless, momentarily struck dumb.
The worst part, though, is the laughter that issues out of Noctis shortly afterwards, the sharp dissolve into mirth when he demolishes the rest of his patience for the ragged heave of his hand against his eyelids, smudging out the nascent beginning of tears. It's just like this that he remembers Noctis has a tender throat; that all of him bruises so easily, that he's being wounded right now. The dozens and dozens of times before have proven that he's carrying those outlines still, however unseen, the places where he'd guided his hands and left his mark on Noctis, indelibly. He's perched on the precipice of something terrifyingly inscrutable, so vulnerable that Ignis speaks up at last, words scraping dry, harsher for it. ]
It's not. It wouldn't be fair to you if I approached you so halfheartedly.
[ He'd told himself it was enough just to be happy for such a short, short while. And it was, initially, absence numbing the sick jealousy that's rearing its head at the notion of Noctis pouring all of his affection onto someone else like it's inexhaustible, trapped by the ludicrousness of it. But this is why Ignis can't look away now, or else Noct'll realize just how long he's spent pining, the ache that lashes its way in, displaced in his own skin. This is, perhaps, what it is to gouge out his rank longing, keep it held right between his teeth. Noct is so young, shrinking down where he's folded on the seat, renouncing self-preservation. It still isn't too late for Ignis to go on his hands and knees and prostrate himself before the king, beg for Noct's hand in marriage when he's near-hysterical and closer to choking him than falling haplessly into his arms, but he won't. He won't even fight it, which is where the crux of agony starts. If that's the case, then—
His palm finds Noct's shoulder, clamping down tight. Warm, even though he's insufferably cold otherwise. ]
You haven't been sleeping well.
[ This is the first time he's touched him in weeks, wrist so close that his heartbeat pulses in tandem with the one enshrined in Noctis's throat. ]
[ It's not, and Noctis would find it impossible to believe him if it isn't for the rawness of his response, sandpaper-rough and raw, the formal cadence scrubbed out in the seconds between his last questions and Noctis' impassioned outburst. It seems like neither one of them are ready for this mess of a conversation, and Noctis notes, with a measure of tired spite, that Ignis' collected front seems to be fraying at the seams. That he doesn't seem as immune to sentiment as he looks -- and sometimes appearances are fucking everything.
It's not fair. It's not fair at all; to Noctis, and especially to Ignis. Ignis, who had poured in so much for this ring, the meaning behind which he wouldn't yet say, but deep in the depths of memory he vaguely recollects shepherds and foolishness, even if the specific threads of it evade him still. Love, he thinks. He knows enough of latin to pick out that word, and his eyelids prickle and burn all the same. If he had approached Noctis halfheartedly, would it have hurt less? Would Noctis have learned not to pour all of himself to a venture that would never have a happy ending nonetheless? If Ignis had been less heavy-handed with his affections, if Noctis had not so recklessly, so passionately fell into him the way he did, would they have this moment still?
Irrelevant thoughts. Ignis would never have applied himself so half-heartedly, and Noctis would have given his heart to him all the same, and still be the worse off for it. There is a profound cruelty in Ignis' kindness, in the love he bears for Noctis that the prince is aware he hasn't yet noticed. It's right here in the warmth of his hand, paralysing Noctis, stilling the instinctive, prideful desire to wrench free of him. It's as if Ignis' very own affections corrode the sense of his own self-preservation, renders Noctis so helpless and small before him, his weaknesses displayed in full view. He looks away.
He hates this. He hates how he is with him, when that simple observation steals the incandescence of his rage, and Noctis is still under his hand, so touch-starved that he would let him continue this farce, so silently yearning for something, anything, that he would willingly accept this touch, nerves raw and heart aching for what he can never have again. ]
Neither have you. [ And he wonders if he suffers from the same, already accustomed to the heat and warmth of a willing body, of long limbs and tender kisses stolen in the deep of night, sweet whispers and even sweeter touches, intoxicating pleasure always within easy reach and love even more so.
His hand comes to rest over his, tentative at first, and he steels himself for the inevitable retreat. He shifts, his cheek pressing against Ignis' wrist as he remembers the kisses he'd lavished over it, soft and chaste as he sampled him, memorised him. ] I hope nobody else ever falls in love with you.
[ You, so capable of tearing down kingdoms with your kindness. Your love is what slaughters kings. ]
[ It's growing increasingly pertinent for Ignis to channel his hurt into a very manageable kind of ugly. Everything inside of him will immolate otherwise, lulled into complacency by the slow, wretched burn of despair as it piles into him, forcing its contours to fit. A very unprecedented sort of agony, but not altogether an unwarranted feeling. Better this wretchedness than the undue affection stealing its way into the outline of his grip as he takes Noctis's shoulder hostage in a fit of self-destructive pique. The problem comes not with the abduction of any part of Noctis, but the repercussions afterwards— like the prince is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, ripped from his rebukes, sitting quietly underneath his grasp.
If he only recoiled, Ignis could accept the grieving hurt that'd come with the reasoning in Noctis's anger, prop himself up with the immediacy of someone painlessly spurned. Even brandishing the unveiled breadth of his fury and lunging to throttle him to death, Noct could never wound him in a way that'd well and truly matter. It'd take indifference to tear his chest from the inside-out and pour unmitigated damage where his ribs would've busted open. And Ignis knows him, has known him, ever since he was a mere boy standing under the intimidating shadow of his father's presence, clasping his fingers around his hand, smiling in earnest; it's impossible for Noct to detach himself from anything when he's emotional to a maddening fault.
And yet it's infinitely worse like this, under the aching moment Noctis's shoulders hunch to accept his grip, gaze slanting away in defeat. It's too much. ]
There could only be you.
[ There's no one else who'd love him with such bruising audacity. No one else who could wound him so thoroughly. For all he's known Noctis, he's been moody and capricious and occasionally confrontational, but he sleeps easier if someone else beside him in bed. He likes it when they're snap-tangling their hands together— a habit dating back to when they were children and Noctis was deathly afraid of what nightmares would prey on him in the dark, ordering him to keep a vigil until he could succumb to exhaustion where he'd scrunched in on himself. And then later on, sweet and cajoling, when their bodies would mingle in the blistering heat of skin-to-skin contact, when he'd liken his lips to Noctis's spine, kiss his desperation into damning reciprocity. Noctis presses his cheek against his wrist, hand over his knuckles, and it's a double-edged blade, the softest he's ever felt, but no less injuring for it. Ignis's hand twitches once, reflexive, in his grasp. Bones prominent, sorrow prominent. Then he tugs away, making a bid for the ring box still in Noct's clutches. ]
Holding onto that will only cause you grief.
[ There's a logical flaw in making a half-hearted bid to reach and pry those slender, tapering fingers off the box and retrieve what doesn't entirely belong to him, (like trying to lift the burden he bestowed upon Noct himself), but Ignis is, as always, helpless in his own vices. An attempt's made, however successful or unsuccessful, when he reaches out to take the last thing Noctis could possibly call his own, then sparing a glance toward the door. ]
Would you come with me? I’ll see you to somewhere more suitable to rest. [ To the prince's bedroom, to one of the cots in the hospital wing, even back to the apartment, a token reminder of the life they once shared, if allowed. Not here, although his own mattress is perfectly serviceable. Stir any more rumors of ingratiating his way back into the prince’s mercies and Ignis will ruin the distance he's been carefully introducing into their relationship as it's devolved back into plain obligation. ] Your father would be worried sick if you appeared before him like this.
[ Ignis pulls away and it's its own kind of devastation. He pulls away and all warmth goes with him, and Noctis feels achingly, painfully cold. This is heartbreak, and he can't find it in himself to respond. But something clicks, sparks anger, and Noctis closes his hand over the box and slaps Ignis' hand away, snarling. ]
Don't say that to me ever again.
[ Don't say there could only ever be him and then leave him bereft and empty and unable to deal with everything that's broken apart before him. Don't say that it would only cause him more grief because how can there be more than this, when he's staring down at loss and has never been the worse for it? At least now he knows why his dad looks so sad -- had he foreseen this, had he known how it would hurt him? Noctis wants to hide away from him now, from Ignis and his dad and everyone who can see how brittle he is, how he is a touch away from breaking.
This is the last and only thing he could call his, the one thing that remains of his love while Ignis presses distance between them. It probably would hurt a lot less if Ignis was colder, if he wasn't so obviously trying to hold himself together, the pain reflected in his own eyes clear as day to Noctis. He would choke on it if he didn't choose to want to protect this piece of Ignis, this one thing lost to them. There is nothing as piercing as what could have been, if Ignis had proposed and Noct would have done everything possible to make it true -- and this ring would have been on his finger, bolstering his courage as he stands his ground.
But now he's on shifting sands, and he unfurls himself with a cat-like grace, feet planting on the ground as he straightens up, lithe and lean and shaky at first but as proud as he ever is. He doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to love Ignis now, not with all the intimacies they'd shared. It's hard to look at him, to know all his most intimate secrets and to love every inch of him and yet keep his distance. He swallows hard as he steps past him in silence.
He misses him already, misses how Ignis would take him to bed and how they would kiss, their hands warm and entwined and Noctis has never known happiness as profound as being in his arms, feeling the heat of his kisses and feeding his every desire. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and perhaps it seems fitting that Noctis now knows no worse, devastation given exquisite form in Ignis, and Noctis still loves him, a cold and broken realization that will haunt him every time he looks around, every time he reaches out and touches only glass.
Obligation has never been a more contemptible word. He will tear every word they've exchanged today apart in the nights to come, pick at Ignis' tenderness like a scab, and he feels wholly self-destructive as he squares his shoulders. ] I'm sure His Majesty's expected this.
[ Unfair, cruel. He loves his dad, he does, and he knows no parent takes pleasure in his child's pain. ] I hope you kept the receipt, the crown will make reimbursements.
[ Because if he cannot keep Ignis, then he can at least have this, slip it onto a chain and keep it close to his heart. And the damn crown can fucking pay for it. Then he says, so quietly it's almost inaudible. ]
I would have said yes, Ignis. And I would have fought anyone to keep you.
[ It's relieving when Noctis snaps out of his fugue at last, hot and overly adamant, patience butchered on the chopping block. If he executes him next, it'll be a mercy granted far too soon. Not enough time to sear the image of unholy vengeance into his retinas, far too much time to ponder how to outlive the minefield when everything he does has a fifty-fifty chance of backfiring. Frustration, at least, is something Ignis can expect, insofar that he can dig his heels in, hand stung with the divine and rightful retribution of the slap he's earned, and the affection of a few seconds prior he hasn't. Now that Noct's no longer shying away from confrontation again, Ignis can discern where the edges don't quite meet in his disbelief, where he's left his bruise on him, impressed a mark invisible to the seeing eye but no less indelible for it. The part of him that, possibly, wants him to retaliate in kind.
Noctis is everything to him. He can take comfort in the fact that he hasn't utterly annihilated his temper as it rushes to the surface, gleaming and vicious. Fighting long after Ignis has renounced him for a return to duty, scathing and abandoned, and it's an assumption not without some truth. King Regis hasn't the heart to look upon him since then; everything has been handled through intermediaries and secondhand accounts, and he's never sought to force his audience. ]
I can assure you that His Majesty only wishes the very best for you.
[ And it's not the end of everything, the ache isn't so irrevocable that he'll never be able to recover and try again with someone new. Resilience is a terrifying thing; even knocked down six ways to Sunday, Noctis can still find his footing in his confusion. Never mind that Ignis has stained him with his touch, learned the bumps of his vertebrae in his sleep. Life without Noct as the linchpin is still worth living, however lacking, missing the nerve of ferocity that's filling in the air right now, openly baiting him.
Ignis plucks at the conversational threads, avoiding the finer brutalities resurrected, as if the time he'd poured into his love was something he could get a return payment for. There's peacefulness even in the depths of evisceration, though, picking apart his words until they're carefully loosened from his throat. ]
... Noctis. You must realize I was wrong for ever believing it possible. There's no way it would have ended well. For you, especially, as the heir apparent. You've a duty to your people in succeeding the line, and I've overstepped my bounds.
[ It sounds rehearsed. Some of it is, practiced until he could hit the beats right, draw something resembling a natural flow for the eventuality of a talk like this. But it's no talk as much as it is a rebuke, flat and insipid. Ignis's hands drop by his sides, making no move to pursue Noctis. If he leaves, he'll let him go; he no longer has a right to do much more than ad-lib suggestions Noctis will fling back at him, unrepentant, but there's one thing he'll challenge here, no matter how the argument threatens to escalate. Ignis's voice is firm, leaving behind the farce. ]
You can't possibly keep me on as your chamberlain any longer if you keep the ring. To injure your spouse so acutely by my own hand is a slight I would resign my station for.
[ Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Noctis understands this better now than he ever has through any of his previous lessons. The pain of isolation, of loneliness is even harder to bear when he's already tasted of the kind of happiness that people spend all their lives seeking; blissful mornings melting into heated evenings in the arms of their beloved, believing (however wrongly) that it would never end. But here he is now, renounced by the love of his life, and the crown always wins. It must, even if the price is too high for Noctis to bear. Especially when the price is too high for him to bear.
He stares at the grain of the heavy oak door, and there is nothing now that does not hurt. He is only nineteen, still young in the ways of the world -- and what a cruel world it is, too. A part of him wonders if he will come awake soon, open his eyes in the darkness with tears on his face and Ignis wrapped around him, and maybe he'll tell him this is a nightmare, that it, too, will pass. But this is where he's wrong; this is where dreaming ends, when he is told again that this is for his own good, that his dad wishes the very best for him, and Noctis learns to despise words spoken by rote. ]
Of course. [ He says dully. He's learned his answer by rote, too. The vicious anger is submerged as quickly as it flares, because keeping it up is exhausting and already Noctis is barely holding himself together. He is the prince, he thinks, as if he could glean any comfort from the name, as if there is any to be found. Life with Ignis will be nothing short of torture now, to see the only man he's ever loved and wanted and to have him be the only one he can never have. To see him and know, every day of every minute in every moment that he once had all of him, had loved and been loved so deeply by him. The memory of sun-dappled smiles, bodies tangled in fine sheets and hands twined together, Ignis' sweet words of love warm in his ears, and Noctis loves him, loves him so fiercely he wishes he knows what to do.
But there is peacefulness in the depths of evisceration, when Ignis speaks with surgical precision and with infinite care speaks only to the king the boy would be, the boy excised from the conversation because in the name of duty he serves little purpose, and Ignis understands perfectly how the crown must always win. The boy, however, only listens, the flat and insipid rebuke falling upon the ears of one who has heard this so many times before. It occurs to him, in spite and unholy vengeance to keep the ring, to demand his resignation and take away the one thing Ignis had spent all his life working for, training for, so much a part of him that to cut him out from it would be the height of cruelty.
But it would serve Ignis right. It would serve his dad right. They can spend another ten fucking years finding him another chamberlain -- and failing, because there is no one like Ignis, no one Noctis would accept -- and Noctis will never see him again, and maybe, just maybe, things will begin to heal. He discards that thought as soon as it occurs to him. No matter how angry he is, he thinks, how scorned and roaring for vengeance, the truth remains is this: Noctis loves Ignis too much, too deeply, and the knife does not come down, after all.
The king says nothing (there is no challenge to be met when the fight is already over). The boy bends over to gently place the box beside the door. He straightens, wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, and takes a breath. The back of his hand comes away wet. He looks up, and takes a deep, silent breath. When he speaks, it's almost steady. Almost. The boy hasn't been bled out yet, but give it time. ]
Make arrangements for couriers to deliver your reports to me from today onwards. A cleaning service, as well. The palace kitchens can deliver all necessary meals.
[ Standing on the brink of all that he's gone and given up, it's not a particularly new realization that he hasn't spared Noctis the flash flood of hurt, after all. The unbroken, unrelieved wave still comes up over him, making him a victim of his agony. It's painful and devouring, but also horribly anticlimactic, the manner in which he knows Noctis will hunch into himself before he commits to the shuddering locomotion of it, drowning and slow to react. Even now, there's still time to pull him out of his despair, or sink into the quicksand of it without reservation and renounce all that he's committed to. All that could have been is squeezing at his lungs, intense and unremitting. There might be a part of him that'll always stand here waiting for the knife to come down, with everything and nothing to lose, all at once.
But Ignis is calm, even in brutalization, and the moment passes.
It is perhaps a testament to how much wretchedness Ignis can internalize that he doesn't break down when Noctis does. Not out of any lack of anguish; it's there, every contrived ounce of it funneling into his soul, clamoring against his ribcage when there's nothing more to be done, sick and trying to throttle his hands as they snare inwards. He meets the breadth of Noctis's obstinance with surrender, and tears it apart: abuse by way of blunt trauma, forcing Noctis renounce the one last thing binding them together.
In his shock, Noctis is selfish, but Ignis is endlessly, endlessly deceitful afterwards, quiet even with the sensation that he'd been gutted, so sickeningly pervasive that it was strange how he could still stay like this, standing perfectly upright. It's not the erosion of everything he's thrown away that serves as cause for alarm, but how he'd never gotten around to acknowledging what his life has ultimately amounted to, and what was and wasn't worth pursuing in the looming absence left afterwards. There hasn't been a day that's gone by where Ignis didn't want to see Noctis, until now. ]
As you wish, your Highness.
[ It's the collision course of strangers, that new unfamiliarity introduced when he politely rips his gaze away from Noctis when his tears grow irreconcilable. He can't see his face, but he doesn't have to. The oppressiveness of his hands, white-knuckled, as they come away from his face speak for themselves. They no longer fit together, and all of it— all of those years they've spent in each other's company have corroded in a matter of seconds, and it's odd, the weightlessness that remains, when it should render him incapable of standing. More bizarre, still, that only a few weeks ago that he'd kissed Noctis out on the apartment landing, fingers a resonating corollary to his pulse, one consequence bleeding into another, and the prince suckered into laughter, treacherously loud, betraying all that tenderness in him before he'd gone and joined in on the act.
Ignis eases past Noct— he broaches the space sideways, so that not even the cuff of their sleeves brush in passing, and takes up the ring box, pocketing it. ]
Then, if you'll excuse me.
[ Simplified down this much, there's no bleakness in being overly cordial. And just like that he's gone, his presence beside Noctis melting from the room as he slips out of the door, exits down the corridor. There's no last, rueful glance back for what might have been; truthfully, he'd rather forget this part, leaving Noctis and that rapidly dwindling window for remorse behind, the blinding sun of the prince's influence on him be damned.
If possible, he'd rather not remember this at all. ]
[ Just like that, he's gone. In the impersonal emptiness of the room, Noctis allows himself to quietly cry.
Fourteen months and three weeks pass, the devastation wrought upon both parties of this relationship having no bearing on time and tide. In the beginning, Regis gives Noctis space to mend his broken heart -- after all, no father takes pleasure in his son's grief. He receives word, as well, that Noctis will not be seeing his chamberlain in any capacity for the forseeable future. It is a matter of concern, of course; Ignis is an exceptional young man with many talents, a great asset to the crown, and his handling of the breakup had been above reproach. And Regis recommends a temporary change in duties, even if that particular decision has raised a few eyebrows.
That Ignis had been seeing his son was not a secret in the upper echelons of nobility; the abrupt severing of personal and professional relationship even less so. Regis had sent Noctis a query after a month, and his response had been polite but curt, and the king is uncertain if he should be proud or worried. His son, still nursing his wounds, and Regis offers the option of a diplomatic attachment in Altissia, shadowing the minister of foreign affairs and learning all he can.
It had been accepted, and without fanfare the separation is enacted. Regis receives word that Ignis is performing excellently, the clever young man having attracted much praise, affection and no small amount of attention. The foreign affairs minister himself is effusive with compliments for Ignis' competence and his intelligence, so much so that Regis secretly hopes that the man isn't thinking of poaching him for his cabinet.
Noctis, on the other hand. In the months that follow it's impossible not to notice the deep-set ennui, the unmistakable change in character not borne out of spite but something that runs much, much deeper. At least spite can be assuaged, reasoned with, negotiated. This is a different ballgame, subtle and almost insidious in the way his son withers. Not physically, but where Regis had cherished most. His heart grown cold by degrees, an immovable sadness in his bones, and smiles that don't reach his eyes anymore, if he even smiles at all.
Regis has dined with Noctis sixty-three times in the past fourteen months, and the number of occasions a smile occurred is more than adequately covered by a single hand. The number of occasions a genuine smile was wrought, none. He receives reports on Noctis' progress in other areas; he is doing well, even if his trainers have privately noted that the boy's temper, on the rare occasions it rouses, is sharper, more vicious. He receives reports, too, on the occasions that Noctis has had his eye on young ladies, each one clever and accomplished, elegant young women who, while not of royal blood, would have made a fine addition to the family and crown.
Each one of them end, and Regis hears whispers that the prince is emotionally distant, that he keeps them at arm's length, that there is no way to broach the distance no matter how they try. Things get worse with Noctis for a little while after that, but eventually Regis sees the vicious cycle. They rarely last more than three months, even though a particularly memorable one lasted four and a half (the shortest, five weeks), and while Regis doesn't care for the burgeoning reputation for philandering Noctis has somehow garnered despite the fact that he's done little with them, it's enough for him to worry.
Noctis is less than forthcoming, of course; his answers simple and to the point. He's not angry, the king notes. At least not in the way he can sense, and this is infinitely more difficult to handle when it's not a tantrum he can quell. Something as irrevocably changed in Noctis, and every time he sees his son he sees less and less of his boy, as if time and tide were eroding the heart of him. Clarus notices (likely because of Gladio, who has been one of Noctis' companions ever since), and of late had chosen to have a quiet word with Regis; a rarity when Clarus rarely involves himself with Noctis' personal business.
Perhaps, Clarus says privately to him one late evening after a particularly unsatisfying dinner with Noctis, it is too early to deal in absolutes. Regis says nothing, but he thinks.
A few weeks before Ignis' stint with Altissia concludes, Regis asks Noctis if he is amenable to have his chamberlain resume his duties. Noctis, eyes unreadable, offers a perfunctory response, and that is that.
Regis asks to see Ignis when he returns, cordial but troubled. My son withers in your absence whether he realizes it or not, he says, because in that private moment there is no space for lies, and he has been thinking about this for a long time. As the days pass it becomes increasingly more clear that Regis had miscalculated in necessitating the swift conclusion of their... dalliance. There is a sickness that has anchored itself in the core of his son, and Regis notes, with regret, that the demon that had come after Noctis when he had been a child had been far less efficacious compared to what Regis had done in the name of duty.
It is too early to deal in absolutes, Clarus reminds him again; the issue of succession can be explored by alternative means. And, Regis thinks with a heavy heart, the issue of succession is not worth sacrificing his son this way. After all, the king is no tyrant, and seeing Noctis the way he is sets him at a loss. He is amenable to your return, go to him. Regis tells him, eventually continuing. And -- if my son gives you his heart again, I will not demand that you return it. He will not stand in their way if it will restore Noctis to an approximation of himself, not a distant, cold and implacable shadow of the earnest, understated awkward warmth of what he had once been. Still, a part of him wonders if Ignis is too late.
Where Noctis is concerned, however, things are complicated. Things are complicated because they always fucking are, and he's trying. He's trying to move on, dating girls and working hard to be a good boyfriend -- a lot of them are smart, distinguished, with sharp features and an elegant (if sometimes dorky) wit, and Noctis liked them well enough. Things would always go well for awhile until it didn't, until they wanted more and Noctis found that he couldn't give it to them; he couldn't even love them properly, as if a part of him has permanently malfunctioned and somehow he can't actually do it again. Not since --
-- nevermind. Nobody cares, anymore.
Ignis comes back to Lucis today and Noctis is shoving gossip magazines into a box in his closet, each one of them bearing Ignis' face together with his partner, often a dark-haired pretty boy with spiky hair and eyes with varying shades of green or blue (the latest one had a vivid kind of blue, and at certain angles could have passed for Noctis; Noctis only knows this because that's what the fucking caption said, and he thinks he's going to be sick).
It's been more than a year, he thinks. He should be better now. Over it. He isn't, but nobody's looking that closely, and Noctis likes to think that he's faked it to an acceptable degree -- he doesn't break practice swords anymore during his training sessions. He's twenty now, and despite the low-key anxiety he's been fighting for the past couple of months ever since he'd first heard that Ignis was coming home, he has his shit together a little better now. More or less. Prompto tells him sometimes that he worries about him, asks him what's up because he didn't seem to be the same guy anymore (not verbatim, paraphrasing), and sometimes he doesn't believe it. Sometimes he does. He doesn't remember the last time something made him happy -- he doesn't remember the last time his heart raced and sang and he laughed and smiled. He can't remember it, when he looks at the shelf of fish-related paraphernalia that he still couldn't bring himself to dispose of ever since Ignis left. He had bought them for him, various trinkets and souvenirs, and Noctis had kept them all, treasured them and set them on a shelf.
It bothers him more than anything, today, that he hadn't fucking done a thing about it. It bothers him that he's both anticipating and dreading this, uncertain of what to say now that so much has separated them (fourteen months, and not even a word from Ignis -- although to be fair even if he said anything, Noctis probably wouldn't have trusted himself to respond), and if Ignis sees that stupid fucking shelf he's going to think Noctis is a lovesick idiot for keeping his shit. He's older now, a little harder even if he likes to think he hasn't changed much, and so much sadder even if he's stopped noticing it long ago, despair clinging to him like a shadow, a thing Noctis lives with, copes with; a thing everyone else but the prince sees. His face is a little more tired, darker circles under his eyes -- he's thinner than he'd once been, and there is a grim set to his mouth that had insinuated itself months ago. Stayed, too. But the apartment is relatively clean (although never quite to Ignis' standards). A few reports lie on the table, and underneath the reports, a magazine bearing Ignis' and his erstwhile flavor of the month's face is only half obscured (entirely overlooked in Noctis' harried last-minute sweep of the apartment).
Gladio calls to tell him that Ignis will be arriving. The doorbell rings ten minutes later, and swallowing, pretending that what's left of his heart is not in his mouth, he opens the door. ]
[ Far be it from him to quit this farce and come clean, even this late in his life. More than two decades have been spent and Ignis has nothing to show for it. He'll be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Noctis's side for today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and further, further, onto the rest of forever, and he hasn't raised up a single retort otherwise. He's brimming with despair and it's contaminating everything else he's done in preparation to leave the Citadel, but he's known all along that to serve the king is to give up many other things and grow to accept the burden cast, or be left behind. Noctis, too, knows that far too well.
His mind, previously so sharp and overly proud, has deserted him. Another betrayal, one of many over the past few days. But it's not so long of a drop from ego, not so long of a departure that he can't track where he'd gone off the tracks and railroaded himself into this perpetuation of good faith and his service to the crown, championing duty over all else. It's not a fall from some great, impassive height, just a matter of readjusting his priorities from the years he's spent together with one Lucian prince to serving the Altissian prime minister, which really isn't so divorced from the brand of professionalism he's wielded for so long. There's no huge difference.
Perhaps what makes it so horrible is the illusion of choice. Dying right now in some absurd mishap might be tragic, but it might not be so unpleasant if Noctis was by his side, holding his hand through it. But he's had to relinquish him, give all of him up for little more than sheer biological imperative, and nothing is worse than comprehending the awfulness of his loss for so small and benign a reason. It's not a life-or-death situation he's grappling with, just deprivation. There can be no desperation in something so asinine. To be angry at all is just another stupid consequence found in the very heart of selfishness, a ticking pulse on his conscience, when denied all else.
Either way, it doesn't matter. The crown prince never shows up on that last day, only King Regis, and Ignis leaves without fanfare. Noctis was right. Noctis was always right, all along, even when he didn't understand why, that trying to placate him hadn't gone any easier than if Ignis had struck him full in the throat with his ire. Things might've been different if Ignis only summoned his frustration, vile and inhumane, to the surface. But he turned away, from Noctis and the sobbing drip of his tears, and now he'll never know for sure. As such, he has no one to blame but himself for what inevitably comes to pass.
The months spent in Altissia stack upon themselves. In the beginning, he commiserates with Noctis's tendency for sleep. He's tired in a way no amount of subterfuge will unmake, much less suppress. Caffeine does nothing. Ebony is worthless. Ignis dozes off for too long, too indulgently, requiring far too many alarms in the morning to rouse. Maybe he understands him a bit better this way, left concussed from routine and the once-shrewd machinations of his mind. Spend too much time awake and he'll remember the ring burning its presence through his thoughts as it does the rest of his luggage. During the boat ride, he couldn't bring himself to hurl it into the ocean. It belongs to Noctis, after all. It was promised for him, although he's taken it back for himself.
Relief rolls through him eventually with the return to something resembling normalcy, once navigating the waterways. It's not the same as before, the reports and the meetings and the dignitaries, but tedium is tedium whether in Altissia or Insomnia. That, at least, never changes.
It's not very long afterwards that he relinquishes himself to pursuing Noctis as seen in other people. Only one person hadn't fit the bill for Noctis's mirrored counterpart, or doppelgänger (long red hair on her, blue eyes and a spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose), which was primarily because the way she threw her head and laughed back was just like the prince himself, peevish and moody in turns, but utterly genuine. She leaned into his hand the same way, the soft sweep of his cheek nestled in his palm, smiling so sweetly. It was all obscenely good for a long, long while, until he called her Noct by accident, a slip of the tongue, and watched how realization transmogrified her face, bewilderment morphing into pained disbelief. And then she pared herself from his side, swift as any blade, and that was the only time anyone left him of their own accord during his year-long stint in Altissia.
After that, he'd adjusted his priorities; better some weak facsimile of the prince for whom comparisons only went skin-deep than someone so close to resembling the truth of what he'd wanted that it could only render him inconsolable, counting the differences between.
It wasn't a hard benchmark to reach, even when rumors spread with the tabloids. None of the men and women who bore a strong resemblance to Noctis in physicality were never able to emulate him, that sullen and graceful and silly way about him, and he hadn't much wanted them to, after the first mistake. Staying with his last paramour was purely out of convenience, because of his eyes and dark, dark lashes and the breathy tenor he took up, calling out his name in the throes of orgasm. It held up to the last, when King Regis sent summons for him back to the Citadel. Maybe he'd known it was the end when he ingratiated himself in his lap while Ignis set about packing his belongings, looking every bit like Noctis, except in the ways that mattered. His voice was a chime, insistent, ringing away (you're leaving me for him, aren't you— I— Ignis, I love you, and he wouldn't, he couldn't ever do that for you, so that's why, I— you don't have to go, you can just stay here—).
Instead of affection, Ignis was left with the sobering knowledge that Noctis would never snivel and insult someone else in the same breath or assume that he was the one who was irreparably wounded when there's a severity about Ignis that only indicates cruelty now. Hindsight is only twenty-twenty; he wouldn't know if longing made itself apparent after spending too much time around Noctis's lookalikes, all of his despair clawing its shape within him. One time was already going too far to amend his mistakes; under repetition, it only serves as proof for the kind of man he is, breaking ties with his latest in a long line of sweethearts without batting an eye before making headway for Lucis.
The conversation with King Regis is, notably, a hollow one. However heralded, a year is far too long to factor in miscalculations so grievous, silently biting at anger to suffocate it from leaving his mouth. Philosophizing does nothing, but he yields, takes his mouth to it as if the answers have abided within him all along. Yes, I understand your concerns. I'll do what I'm capable of, your Majesty. I hope that Noctis's demeanor improves with my arrival.
But it's not a matter of capability, leaving the steps, entering the empty parking lot, easing into a car he hasn't driven for the upwards of a year. He carefully shuts the door behind him, fingers strangling the leather of the steering wheel awhile, silent, ascertaining that there isn't another soul around. And then he screams a deep, rending scream as he crumples down on the seat, feral and vicious and ghastly, an ugly, broken sound devolving fast into nothing but pure, unadulterated pain as it's shaken loose, compromising him. A deterioration of everything that's kept him blank and obliging; this whole year, he hasn't allowed himself to feel anything at all, and now there's too much raw-boned strength in his howling, like an animal learning mortality, languishing in the final throes of death.
Afterwards, he sinks into the chair, gasping, shuddering, clawing at the wheel with his hands, a collapse that thunders through him with impunity, when he tries to gather his wits as his breath comes hitching out in ribbons, irreparably broken. Gladio has left ten voicemails and five texts since he set off from Altissia; he answers the very last of them with a plain affirmative that he'll be over at the apartment soon enough. There's more still, from his colleagues and acquaintances alike, one even from Prompto welcoming him back, who's undoubtedly learned the news secondhand from the King's Shield. None from Noctis. He leaves the rest of the messages to sit. A glance in the rearview mirror confirms there isn't a hair out of place; slightly red eyes can be forgiven, chalked down to mere exhaustion from the journey, and so he turns the key into the ignition and readily sets off.
Twenty minutes later, he's at Noctis's doorstep, ringing the doorbell, standing solemn until it opens. When it opens, he can't help pausing uncertainly, taken aback, though his voice is no less smoothed-out for the small blip of hesitation. ]
Yes, well. I thought it rather unbecoming to go stealing in like a thief in the night, invited or not.
[ Noctis doesn't look like himself. Sadness has changed the geometry of his face; he's lankier than he's ever been, sloe-eyed and quiet, and Ignis directs his attention to easing the manila envelope and other present he's tucked beneath one arm. ]
Good afternoon all the same, your Highness. This is for you. [ Along with a draft of the latest report for him to file is a wooden box, a mockery of the engagement ring and its velvet box. There's no such sentiment carried in this gift, but Noct's perfectly allowed to pop the lid open and take a glance at the talisman lying inside, smooth and freezing cool to the touch, inscribed with a number of hieroglyphics. Though Noctis hasn't asked, Ignis goes about the small agony of explanation. ] From one of the minor island principalities just west of Accordo. According to the locals, it's said to bring good fortune to whomever should so possess it.
[ Noct's free to think he's taken up a burgeoning interest in shamanism, though the real reason is much more plain; merely a token he'd received in place of the prime minister during the celebration of the winter solstice and the Tidemother said to slumber kilometers below the waves of the ocean, like that's enough for fourteen months' worth of sentiment, anniversary and birthday and holidays gone by without a passing remark. Ignis remains stock-still, noting the state of the apartment that he can see from beyond the doorway without stepping over the threshold. ]
Not because he gets to see him -- oh, how it has been such a steady desire, this need to see him, to be with him -- all these things so ruthlessly pushed deep deep down that it became its own kind of pain. Pain Noctis allows himself to feel only when he's alone. He has lost count of guilty nights when he curls in on himself, when he thinks of Ignis, pretends he's still there with him, his name muffled into his pillow when he comes. There is ash in his mouth after, and Noctis has never hated himself more for his own weakness.
No, he regrets it because seeing Ignis again, painfully handsome and wretchedly elegant and looking better than he's ever see him brings all those memories crashing to the present, opening wounds that have never closed. He looks so good, polished and as stunning as he had been, and Noctis is acutely aware of the fact that he himself has seen better days.
Another embarrassment. Ignis, so impeccably put together that it makes Noctis' throat tighten and heart painfully twinge. And Noctis, barely managing to tread water and having Ignis see all of it. Ignis looks more closed off than usual; perhaps it's something he's learned in Altissia -- he's heard that he's done excellently for himself there, amidst the news of his dating life. Noctis tries very hard not to think of that, of how someone else now has the privilege of his love, receiving something that precious, being happy the way he once was and never can be again. He wonders if Ignis brought his lover here, too; invited him to stay in Insomnia. Noctis doesn't want to ask. ]
Ah, thanks.
[ He at least remembers to be gracious, forcing the words past the lump in his throat because how he's missed him -- the loss so deep and cutting, the absence of one who had been such a large part of his life and his presence again in it is near-overwhelming. In the face of this is his anger is a forgotten thing; long overtaken by equal measure of numbing and sadness. He looks down at the box, report tucked under his arm.
Something in his stomach winds tight at the box -- he doesn't forget, still, and moreso the day he learned what those words on the ring were, and had to abruptly excuse himself. Does he know love, still? Does he know it in the young man he takes as a lover, the one that looks so much like him? Noctis cannot claim the moral high ground, he realises. His girlfriends had almost all fit a similar Ignis-shaped mold, tall and willowy with intelligence -- always with striking green eyes. They were pleasant enough, compelling enough that Noctis liked spending time with them, but eventually not even the most forgiving could cope with the distance that is always unspoken between them, the inevitable loneliness he made them feel even when they were together.
Good fortune, Ignis says, and Noctis politely doesn't mention how that sentiment rings so absurdly hollow. He touches the hieroglyphics, allows himself to admire it for a few moments as he takes in the explanation. It's the first gift he's had from him in more than a year, and Noctis cannot deny that it's all the more precious for it. He hadn't expected him to remember the anniversary and birthday -- even though he had glanced at his phone more times than he ever had on other days, secretly hoping there would be a message. There wasn't. Noctis doesn't blame him. After all, Noctis was the one that refused contact after that.
He thinks he can handle it better now, with fourteen months between them. It's rapidly shaping up to be an unpleasant lie, but Noctis is nothing if not stubborn. ] Welcome back. [ He adds, awkwardly, and remembers not to blurt out that he misses him. That's not allowed, now. Closing the box carefully, he moves back and holds open the door. ]
Yeah, sure. I've been looking over the summary reports of the past week.
[ This exchange feels alien, feels wrong; but he has to try to keep it together, to quell the sudden surge of emotions in his chest. Ignis is here, he's asking to come in and Noctis is struggling to ignore the renewed ache in his chest. How is he supposed to govern a country if he can't even get something like this down?
He shuts the door behind him, remembers his manners. Ignis might as well be a stranger now, no matter how much Noctis doesn't want him to be. ]
[ His former lover is probably bawling his heart out and likely slandering his good name right now, selling the more egregious lines he's riffed off to any reporter that'll hear him out. Ignis wasn't particularly gentle in letting him down, and after serving the prime minister, most salacious details on him fetch a good price. It's likely that his phone will blow up tomorrow with yes-men and naysayers trying to gather his opinion on the latest tidbit concerning him added to the rumor mill, given how every sweetheart he's taken in Altissia echoes his former liege, now his king once again, in appearance.
None of that matters, honestly. Looking at Noctis, he's reminded of what he's left behind, what he thought he might never see again, however ill-kept and exhausted. Once upon a time, he would've rebuked Noctis for letting his health deteriorate this badly— pulled him into a tirade about proper habits and proceeded to wait hand and foot on him for the next few weeks, or until his complexion grew warmer, less like hell warmed over.
But the moment is in turns viciously uncomfortable and distant and Ignis leaves Noctis, lanky and subdued, open the door so he could enter, peering about the corridor. It's cleaner, much more than it'd been when they lived together, and Noctis would leave his clothes haphazardly strewn over the floor at random intervals. shoes always out of place. ]
Much obliged, if you wouldn't mind sparing the trouble.
[ And much obliged if he does mind. Ignis is a stranger now; he can't exactly put on the kettle and retrieve the cream the same way he's done a million times before, so he'll leave Noctis to it, detachedly gazing about. With some chagrin, he spots Noctis's souvenir shelf, clustered with all the little baubles and trinkets he'd gotten him over his travels. For some reason, he'd expected to find an empty spot where it resided, but Noct wasn't so malicious as to toss out every memento of him. Of course he'd keep them, even if the sight might cause him little more than pain now.
While Noctis busies himself with brewing a cup, Ignis's gaze sweeps over the table— then abruptly freezes in place at the sight. The reports alone are benign enough, the same brand he used to ferry over back when Noctis was still in high school, young and petulant about documenting his thoughts on foreign taxation and providing a weekly review of life outside the gilded cage of the Citadel, but it's the glimpse of the glossy face that has Ignis tugging out the magazine to stare, abruptly paralyzed, at the cover.
It's not the image itself that shocks him, neither ingenious nor particularly cruel— he's seen this cover often enough passing magazine racks in Altissia during his last week, given his proximity to the prime minister and the fact that his love life was apparently so illicit as to be examined with a fine-tooth comb. But it's the fact that it's here, inside Noctis's apartment, that he gives into the morbid curiosity of it, rifling through the cover for the page detailing the minor fallout of his next-to-last relationship with theories abounding from fetishism to the novel idea he harbored quite a liking for Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, hence the transfer. Ignis is so concentrated on it that he hasn't glanced up to confirm/deny where Noctis currently is in the room. ]
[ Coffee is easy enough to make, he can pretty much do it in his sleep. He subsists off this lately, catching up on various reports and keeping a close eye on the things that he has garnered a keen interest in -- the refugee resettlement programme, for one. Keeping busy makes Ignis' absence easier to bear, keeps him from giving into the pit of despair that seems to be perpetually yawning under his feet.
There is a strangeness to the apartment now, a profound tension he cannot ignore, but he supposes it isn't unexpected -- what does he expect where there is so much hurt still between them, a whole world of things unsaid and a bond that, while frayed, is not severed. Noctis' very nature is more boon than bane; no matter how much he pretends to the contrary, his heart, once given, is impossible to renounce. Perhaps it would have been better if he was more capable of moving on, better at guarding his heart. Now there is a canvas of nothing where it used to be, and the man who currently has it is leafing through the reports on his desk, currently engrossed in a magazine Noctis had accidentally neglected to sweep up.
He pauses at the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand. He can pretend not to notice, he can give him a way out and call him over to the kitchen, especially when it's obvious that Ignis is unaware of his presence. But Noctis is not all that kind, and he has less of a tolerance for skirting past elephants in the damn room. He's tired of so much, these days, and he's missed Ignis too much to play games.
So he sets his steaming hot coffee on the table right beside him, his expression carefully neutral despite the world of emotions heavy in his chest, whirlwind of thoughts and hopes and resentments buried deep. Best not to hope -- he's been hurt enough, he doesn't intend to look for more.
It's a curious thing, the look on Ignis' face, and as much as he hates the seeming line of lovers Ignis had taken in Altissia, covered with ravenous glee by hungry reporters, he cannot ignore the similarities. ]
I was going to toss that out. [ He comments, then says quietly. ] Are they right?
[ His face doesn't betray him in Noctis's company just yet. Not for slow-wrought agony or the defining, ephemeral moment when the cup of coffee is carefully set beside him, inveigling his attention, and Ignis keeps his expression unreadable, like it's become scribbled out, some inner darkness obscuring the normalcy in his face. Like a ring, barely understood in Latin. Like the hieroglyphics on a talisman for which no words are conjured to mind, scratches built upon obscurity.
Just like before, there's always a duality in things with a beginning and an end, and this beginning mirrors how it was toward the end, the part of him sealed under wraps saying yes. It's largely baseless speculation given ballpark figures, but there was once a row of them, one after the other, all of them despondent when they realized he was pursuing something that couldn't be found in them. Is it a lie if he's kept up artifice for several months now? Is it truth if he's sought out something irreplaceable, going through them even faster than Noctis has taken up each one of his potential fianceés? Regis was vague when he pressed for details, but he'd known Noct committed to the search, because he asked, and it'd likely gone down the same way, seeking women who took after him more than a potential love interest. ]
Would you take conjecture at face-value?
[ The words have wilted and withered. He's over chagrin, having made his intentions apparent long before, and even after. It doesn't affect him as it used to, when Noctis is the one to mutilate him, as always. Ignis is a a man worthy of so much spite that it's strange that he doesn't take after it properly, running himself ragged without entirely ruining himself in the process as he straightens to answer the way he couldn't, fourteen months before. ]
I can't force your trust, if it's my word weighed against a third party.
[ Heartlessness, again. But his shoulders are a mess of contradictions, shuddering and profane, but he steadies them. This is the part where he should bow out and apologize, but Ignis is exhausted by maintaining some distant, detached ideal for so long, like he can really be so unemotional when it comes to Noctis, and having every single one of their conversations boil down to remorse isn't really how he wants to live the rest of his life. His throat's still raw, scratchy from sobbing in the car, though he hides it so well that perhaps Noctis doesn't even detect the rasp. ]
[ There it is, finally, a proper response. Noctis doesn't know whether to throw a fucking party or wonder if something's fundamentally snapped in Ignis. For the first time since fourteen fucking months ago, this conversation is actually going somewhere without Noctis' prompting, but it feels disingenuous to call attention to that -- like a petulant child pointing out the obvious.
He doesn't, of course, but he does detect the rasp, an unfamiliar development perhaps pegged to the hint of red-rimmed eyes, the uncharacteristic hesitation in the first moments of their meeting. But then there is the impassive neutrality, the mask he still wears despite the fact that the tension and awkwardness can be cut with a knife right here in this room.
Something still crackles between them, a monster of unresolved proportions one just can't quite figure out how to slay, and he thinks I take faces at face value seems too flippant and inappropriate to say, a retort formed out of spite, but Noctis finds a perverse, grim sort of pleasure in withholding this from him even if he's too damn tired to play keep-away. Fourteen months is a long time, and the unrelenting reminder of Ignis' protracted absence (so much of it Noctis' own doing) does tend to wear one down to the bone. He's tried, Six knows he's tried to find Ignis in these women, to figure out if he could love them -- how cruel and selfish to think that he could -- and in every way they had only proven that love is as inexplicable as a ring, barely understood in Latin, as hieroglyphics on a talisman from a land associated with a giant sea monster. Surely there must be a lesson learned in this, but in his misery Noctis makes a poor student.
I don't trust you. He wants to say right to that carefully inscrutable face, and that's both true and untrue all at once. Noctis would trust him with his life, just not with his heart. What a strange discernment to make, but betrayal cuts deep even if Ignis had likely meant his renunciation for noble reasons. Well-being, was it? Look how well that turned out. He's not fool enough to believe that Ignis had walked out unscathed; Noctis can see it in his eyes. He looks at him like he's a man haunted, contradictory and mercurial but more honest than he's ever been, like he, too, is tired of this particular masquerade and -- well, here they are.
Why doesn't he ask him in his own words, is it? So here it is. ]
Did you see me in them? [ Did you find me in their eyes when you made love to them? ]
[ Somewhere deep and implacable, he's mourning. On the surface, he's a healthy contrast to Noctis, insufferably calm, like placidity itself is a maneuver that requires minimal effort on his part. The desolation is only visible when he extrudes his spine from where he's hunched over the table to something resembling upright, waspishly diligent in his suffering, except for how it shone out of his eyes, which always gave far too much away. Ignis laughs, halting and shaky. The sound of it that should crevasse his throat instead issues out silent, stung with the knowledge that despite his best interests, it's all gone down the shitter superbly. There couldn't have been anything more than this undercurrent of feverish, maddened disconsolation trying to lift itself out of his chest, unable to be reasoned or negotiated with.
Besides all of that, the magazine notwithstanding, his compunction notwithstanding, he's a masochist, invoking Noct's unhappiness and despair. Still, he'll be the death of Ignis, just like this, tender and hurting and imploring him for answers. He holds his gaze when the haggard noise in his throat, or lack thereof when shaped this hollowly, subsides. ]
Oh, I’ve tried. Again and again. None of them came remotely close to you. If I could be so easily placated by someone else’s touch, I‘m honestly not certain I’d be here right now. You wouldn’t believe how desperate I’ve become.
[ Apropos of nothing. Humorlessness becomes him, voice cracking open. Did he see Noctis in them? He couldn't have gone without him, the year he'd spent not in martyring grace, but in the weakness of despots. He's had fourteen months hammering down on his yearning, but twenty-two years have already gone by before he could never return to how he was, losing his fine-tuned control over his equanimity in Noctis's presence. There was never any going back. ]
Or perhaps you would. A year is a long time. I was hardly deserving of you long before I left. I’d known all along what kind of ingrate I was, and still am, but I suppose you do as well now. [ Alluding to promises he hadn't kept, all the complacency born of despicableness, when he's sunken so low that there's no reason to resist the plummet down. ] You kept everything I gave you, except for what I wouldn’t return. You haven’t been taking care of yourself in my absence, even though you’re more precious than this world, in and of itself.
[ Noctis, who slept so often in his company, looks in need of a thousand years more, thin and ragged around the edges. Caustic only out of necessity. Pained, in all other respects.
Now he knows: it was self-sabotage to come here unprepared. He's practiced no eloquent rehearsal of lies on-hand, driven as a man yearning for his beloved forgets restraint. But isn't that how love is? Gone amiss, with a perception so warped that it mirrors his own decline, responding to questions he has no answers for? ]
Would you like to talk to the man in this picture? He asked about you quite often, when I was with him. How much I cherished you. Why I left your side.
[ Noctis can see it; the desolation written in the stubborn line of his shoulders, forcibly masked -- how that pride doesn't extend to the look in his eyes, how it's a kind of devastation that mirrors Noctis' own with far too much familiarity that it hurts to look upon him. He should be pleased, a measure of schadenfraude wouldn't be out of line -- but what worth does it have for someone who knows all too well how he feels? He wishes he could muster up enough spite to be petty, to grind the knife deeper just because.
He can't. He hates that he can't. In this breakup there are no winners, and he stays his hand -- the laughter that Ignis issues, in turns distraught and self-destructive, has no place in his throat. It rouses something Noctis so desperately wishes he's buried, a wretched kind of sympathy that reminds him that Ignis' pain is not solely his own, and how fucked up is that?
He takes a moment to digest his answer, to keep it close as if it could give him more than cold comfort, as if it would one day inspire more than the question: then why didn't you fight harder for us?
The question knots in his throat, the confession reinforcing what he's known all along: there is no going back. In Ignis' absence he has done the same -- searched for him the way others search for divine revelation, and in the end disillusioned and all the more empty for it, but hope, hope always inspiring another, and another in the long line of disappointments and broken hearts. But you cannot break another heart to mend your own, and Noctis knows he's looking at pieces of Ignis' own, offered up to him in defeat, in crushing hopelessness. ] What you wouldn't return wasn't mine to have in the first place. And I don't see why you need to be grateful for anything, I didn't do you any favours.
[ Being loved by Noctis is not a privilege. He sees that now, reflected in Ignis' eyes. He's a collection of flaws and shortcomings, at times tempestuous and cutting, and of late, more caustic than he used to be. He looks at the photos in the magazine again, and there are so many candid shots of them -- and Noctis cannot help a flare of jealousy; they could hold hands, this person could stand by his side, could kiss his brow, his lips, to know the heat of Ignis' passion. How he would make him melt; seduction is an art form where his erstwhile lover and chamberlain is concerned.
He closes his eyes at the assessment, how he hasn't been taking care of himself, how Ignis tells him he's more precious than anything and this is what he wants to know: if he really is so precious, then why did he leave him, why did he walk away from Noctis' attempts to keep them from breaking away. If he is so precious, why did he let the crown win?
Difficult questions, and Noctis doesn't expect answers for any of it -- if it could be summed down into any one explanation, they wouldn't be here today.
Don't lie to me. He wants to say, but instead reaches out, traces over the line of the other young man's jaw. His eyes are so blue, those lashes so very long, his face perhaps an approximation of Noctis' own, perhaps not, he's not a good judge of it either way, but he is intimately familiar with the way this interloper is looking at Ignis. ]
He really loves you, you know. [ He says instead, because even in his own pain he's still capable of being aware of another's, and he cannot help a pang of sympathy despite the heat of his jealousy. Ignis is a man people could fall so easily, so deeply in love with, and be all the worse for it. They've broken up, the prince notices, and for the first time he can commiserate with an interloper's broken heart. ] He would have done anything for you.
[ He draws his hand away, looking over at Ignis, and it's a wonder he can even say what he does, a wry half-smile tugging at his mouth and none of it reaching his eyes. Still, Noctis loves him. He can't look away, can't help a strange little pang of warmth, twisted up into something far too complicated for him to decode. ] Sometimes I forget how cruel you can be. [ Not that he's in any position to critique when he's done the same, himself. ]
[ Cruel and malevolent, with an impossibly terrible soul; he's only grown worse in neglect, fondness withering into a self-fulfilling prophecy of hurt. Misunderstandings only come with the territory. He's barely able to stand being disingenuous, taking his cues from the lack in objectivity. What he carried back from Altissia was the burden of memory, unable to forget Noctis and all that he'd left behind. Ungrateful for being allowed the room, and the opportunity, and the privilege to amend where he'd gone wrong— whether in abandoning the prince much too soon, or much too late.
That's how all of this started. Whether it's treachery or jealousy, he still dug wounds in others like those could alleviate the ones wrought on him, lover after lover scorned. It's a very cutthroat sort of mutilation, but nothing intentional. Every time he tries again, there's always the hope that'll be enough to assuage this festering hurt that's taken to residing in him, keeping him from devoting himself to anyone properly, like he once was capable of. He hadn't begged for his feelings for Noctis to be trivialized to the some passing fancy, tasked with the sick and tired responsibility of systematically unraveling all that he ever cared about. Maybe that's when he grew incapable of any kind of fondness that wasn't selfishness at its very core.
But it's not resentment that's overcome him now, back to where he began, only so much worse. Vengeance doesn't motivate him so throughly when it's his own conceit that's undone him: he can't find fault with Regis for siding with a tradition spanning millenniums, or Noctis for believing impertinence could take him so far, that anything Ignis could've given him would've been enough to mitigate losing the last of his birthright's magic, snuffing all sense of hope out like candles burnt down to the wick. Fresh with loss, Ignis hadn't fought back. He hadn't even tried to.
Exhaustion's impelled itself down to his bones when Noctis gathers himself close, neither broken nor meek at his side, to sun his hands on the page, psychoanalyzing the latest in a long, long line of heartbreak. Ignis thumbs at the black print of the lettering, the garish allegations of political sycophancy, sexual deviancy. Though there was an overwhelming abundance of love, however superficial, in Altissia, it wasn't anything like this ravenousness seething up in him in Noct's company. In comparison, something so halfhearted as fleeting infatuation wouldn't survive here, in the spaces between their bodies and the mantra of all things that go unspoken. ]
I couldn't say for sure. You would need to inquire yourself. [ The steam on the coffee mug wafts briefly over his hand as he tugs it close to his side. ] I can only imagine he'd tell you how heartless I was. That I chose him because he was the closest I could allow myself to be with you.
[ Nothing so lukewarm and irreparably broken could ever last. It was a rough approximation of desire, brought about by the fact that the man he'd courted could've passed for Noctis in profile and silhouettes, but not thoroughly to damage him, render him unable to leave him when his stint in Altissia ended. When the prince's mouth is gripped by the coarseness of his own frown, worn through, Ignis's lips press into a flat, flat line. They're now close enough for him to reach out and brush over him, make contact— if he only held out his hand, he could scrape his fingers over the weariness in Noctis, knuckles soft over the cheek, a ruthless corollary to all that came before— but he turns away, instead, gaze averted, like he's become a stranger inured to anything resembling affection. ]
Were you able to find someone you treasure enough to spend the rest of your life with?
[ Every question he asks is just like wrenching a knife in a little further into his inflection, mangling all subtlety with each incising stab. ]
[ If this entire encounter is somehow a game of chicken, Noctis has just gone on ahead and broken its rules. His expression at the question posed is one that is both unfettered and jarringly genuine -- equal parts incredulous and irritated. ]
Are you fucking with me right now?
[ Because what kind of a question is that when he already knows the answer? It's a perverse kind of query in the context of their relationship, of a question that was never asked, and an answer given too late -- I would have said yes. Noctis' mouth thins, an unwitting mirror of Ignis' own, and he finds that he can't deny the assertion that cruelty seems the only way Ignis can be right now, hardened by loss and pain. For Ignis, Noctis was willing to risk snuffing out the bloodline. For him, he would consider other options (no one ever said that Noctis isn't selfish); surrogacy, for one, an heir only illegitimate by name but not blood. It's blood that determines legitimacy, and one finds that power tends to outstrip tradition, however narrowly.
He cannot help a flare of anger, the words he bites back but hangs between them anyway in the flash of blue, like lightning during a summer storm. I did, and then you left. ]
You wouldn't be here if I did. [ His words, just as sharp. Because he's not stupid. Fourteen months is not all that long under the tutelage of the prime minister of Altissia, no matter how brilliant and promising the student is, even if the student is Ignis Scientia himself, renowned as one of the brightest minds within Lucis. It's not difficult to put pieces together, to sense just what it is that Regis doesn't say -- he notices enough of it, increasingly, in the dinners they've shared. His concern underscores the silence between them, and the gulf between father and son only grows despite best intentions.
And Ignis wouldn't be here if he wasn't asked to come back. Noctis makes no progress in the farce that is courtship, each dalliance leaving him more unsatisfied than the last. He's aware of the distance Ignis puts between them again, the way he turns away like he's taken to doing of late -- Noctis, with no small amount of bitterness, remembers a time when Ignis sought him, when the man leans towards him instead of away, reaching for him instead of keeping him at a distance. He's angry, of course he's angry. But he's also sad, wistful, missing him so sorely that it hurts to think about -- that hurt is a constant thing these days -- and he supposes that love is something that encompasses all these things, more complication that childhood fantasies of perfect partners and happily ever afters.
No, love is convoluted, a churning, screaming mess that overstays its welcome and sinks its claws and teeth into imperfect throats.
He doesn't miss how Ignis is so close he could touch him, he could brush his knuckles over his cheek and Noctis could reach out and pull him close by his collar, and it would be so easy to angle his head just so and fit his mouth to his again, as if he never left. But love is not that easy; it fills the spaces between their bodies and remains the mantra of all things that go unspoken between them, encapsulated in talismans and rings, in the likeness of him but not, in the many facsimiles and failures they've accrued in the pursuit of the perfect substitute. ]
What did Dad ask you to do? [ Just as incisive -- Noctis' ennui often masks his shrewdness, that unforgiving perceptiveness, leveled now at Ignis. ] Talk me into a matchmaking session? Fix me up with someone from Altissia? Speed-dating? Because the outcome's still going to be the same, and I'm damn sure you know why.
[ If given the option to face down Noct's righteous wrath again as it rises octaves, he'd choose to go down this way, cutthroat, long-suffering. Far be it from him to get ahead of the equation made of two of Noct's hands as they might seek to him out unerringly, or his love to the despicable envy of all who have ever come this close to him, close enough to coax on a despair so intimate it's absurd. Common sense, subtracting itself with the time they've spent apart. Are you fucking with me right now?
Like he'd know. He's trapped in the cage he's made of unfulfilled longings, too maddeningly self-aware for anything but brutalization to take hold. It's easier to rip something apart than piece it back together. Corroborating with his sadness comes easier than defying it, even before the fractured carnage he's made out of Noctis, which is setting the precedent on all the other, singularly awful things he's committed since then, pining and reckless, self-destruction unto itself as it bleeds face-down. Ignis's gaze perceptibly sharpens to a needle's fine point. ]
You're sorely mistaken if you believe I came here to set you up with another contender for your affections. His Majesty would never be so callous.
[ So that's how his enmity is conceived, miring his voice to something ugly and distended when he rounds in on Noctis, eyes flashing, cheeks hot. Susceptible, after all this time, matching the tide of Noct's anger with his own, raking in the dividends. The prince can interpret it as a threat: it's there, latent, in the careful snap of Ignis's fingers, mug abandoned, magazine abandoned, turning savagely on his heel. Some of the report's sheets have gone fluttering down though, displaced, like so many birds raining down from a long, long flight, when the horror of the fall hasn't quite set in yet.
The worst part is how the impact of Noct's accusations don't strike him for impact as much as they resonate, so close to the truth and yet the farthest thing from it, that his expression transforms, from careful blankness to tired, concerned regret. Rather than sublimating it, he reaches out— one hand soft on Noctis's cheek, sundered with the damage and the offense even as it glides to fit to the shape, as if he's grown insensitive to suffering. If Altissia's taught him anything, it was that there was never ever leaving the stranglehold of Noct's influence over him, months and months compounding to nothing. ]
Do you think I'm unfeeling, Noct? That I've lost everything I've felt for you in the span of a year, even though I've devoted myself to you all my life?
[ He could handle being mutilated for lesser reasons, making a mockery of his own self-control; it's not all that difficult to pursue Noct, even to the degree of endless futility. But not this, when the softness of Noctis's body has given way to this emaciated look, thin and starved and wounded beyond repair, and the ramifications threaten to send him reeling, reeling back. ]
[ How can Ignis not know, how can he willfully not know or realize that there is no one else for Noctis but him, and Six know he's tried. He's attempted so fruitlessly so often to bury himself in tender kisses, to press himself to warm, willing bodies and to forget that they're not Ignis, to force himself not to remember that Ignis didn't taste like that, that Ignis kissed him in much, much better ways, that he'd always left him sated and warmed and not hollow, a fascimile of himself in the absence of another.
How can he not know what he's wrought with his silence and his departure, the wreckage of what's left that Noctis is still struggling to put together again? The way he had left things, the way they had handled it still stings, aches in the space in his heart where Ignis used to be, and oh how they had spiraled since then. Ignis to his parade of forgettable lovers and Noctis to his own. He forgets their names, who they were -- how can he remember when Ignis is all he sees when he closes his eyes, and his touch is everything that he craves when he presses against them?
His words are caught in his throat when Ignis advances on him, when he finally sees a glimpse of emotion, scorching and more real than he's ever seen -- Ignis, after all, is singularly talented at keeping his own emotions caged, so much so that by the end of it, Noctis is left all the more bereft of it, questioning and uncertain of the one fundamental truth: that Ignis loves him, too.
How can Noctis still believe that without question when he excises himself from his side so swiftly, like he couldn't wait to rid himself of Noctis and only needed his father's disapproval to do so? And like a fool, Noctis persists -- there is nothing else to do but love him, and by degrees his heart withers, unseen at first. Now, it seems like it's the only thing Ignis sees.
He should push him away when he touches him; how long had he craved for a moment like this, when Ignis returns to his side and touches him like he's never left, like he's never asked him to return that lost chance. How long had he sought his touch in his loneliness, with Ignis thousands of miles away and Noctis without the faintest idea how to nurse a broken heart. They say you learn how to get better at it, but what if you don't? Sometimes pain doesn't bring with it a profound transformation and understanding of life's truths. Sometimes pain just hurts.
He should push him away, and the wretched thing is that he cannot, that he resents and loves him in equal measure, and he fits himself to his palm like a soul starved while a spiteful part of Noctis thinks that maybe Ignis isn't so perfect after all, how he lets those precious emotions bleed through; threatening and assuaging in turns.
The prince closes his eyes, allows himself scant seconds to feel Ignis again, hating himself for how the warmth spans in his chest, something inside him fluttering with a hope that feels so much like a noose. ]
You tell me. [ An ugly, distended little sound that should have been a laugh, and he looks back at him, square in those stunningly beautiful green eyes, the depth of emotion in them now alien to him. ] You left me. So you tell me, Ignis, what was all the years of your devotion to the crown worth when you walked away?
[ It's anger, it's love, it's pain and heartache and loss distilled into a single question, and his hand comes up to rest over his, squeezing harder than he ought, as if he could map the lines of Ignis' palm on his cheek, and maybe this way his touch would last a little longer. Or maybe Noctis just needs to burn it all away.
Either way.
He raises his face to his, defiant. (Lost.) I did this to myself because I didn't know what else to do. ] Why did you come back?
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It is Ignis who turned this apartment into a home, a place they've spent countless evenings curled up with each other; Ignis fitting himself into his heart, carving his name into the space between his ribs, occupying the silence between heartbeats. And one day, it's Ignis that takes it all away.
A relationship is built on the smallest things, and that is why when it ends, it's not the person-shaped hole in your chest that kills you; it's the thousand little papercuts that comes after he's gone. It's the many little reminders of a presence gouged out, and nothing is more pronounced than an empty space where something beloved used to be. The bed, colder. The kitchenette, waiting to be used. The bathroom sink, missing one toothbrush. The mobile phone, silent, bloated with messages that were read but not responded to, and Noctis never did have the heart to command his responses no matter the degree of hurt, girded by the wind of his anger.
For Noctis, a lesson in love.
For George, a Pyrrhic victory.
And so he turns up today, curtly informs him of his arrival when he steps foot onto the grounds -- princes, after all, reserve the right not to inform the royal retinue of their intentions to return, no matter the inconvenience caused. After all, Noctis eschews royal receptions, as if they don't already have enough to do in the day-to-day running of the household. He feels rather like a thief in his own house when he slips into the grounds, and makes his way immediately for Ignis' room. His father would be disappointed, surely, but Noctis is a wounded animal, the days without Ignis' warmth wrapped around him lending itself to more sleepless nights, and Noctis is all the more resentful for it.
His room is pristine, carefully arranged to be entirely bereft of any human touch save for the one small black velvet box sitting on the table. Noctis is not normally the invasive sort, but then again, these are not normal circumstances, and against his better judgement he picks it up, opening it to reveal the ring that glitters inside, cloaked in royal colors, designed and crafted by someone whose workmanship could command a king's ransom and then some. This is not a ring to be worn casually, the make of it too masculine to mistake it for a gift to the opposite sex. This box is not brand new, the edges gently smoothed out by long periods of time tucked into a pocket. He pulls out the ring to inspect it, and in doing so stops breathing, staring down at the words gilded onto the band. His name, and more latin he wishes he had paid attention to during one of Ignis' many lessons on the language.
His name.
Noctis stares at it blankly, seating himself on the nearby rolly chair as it hits him all at once, the weight of revelation clenched around his heart. This is -- or perhaps, was -- meant for him. He pulls his legs up and curls around the box and its extracted content, a world of thoughts whirling in his head in a haze of white noise. Shock, fury, sadness, a hope he doesn't allow himself to feel, the reminder that this can never happen, the realisation that perhaps Ignis had not stopped loving him, after all, that once upon a time he had wanted --
-- he looks up from the box when Ignis enters, and if there ever is an astute reimagining of the adage about deers caught in the headlights of resentfully loving speeding vehicles, this moment would be the top contender. Ignis, still so fucking beautiful standing there like that, now unreachable, and no longer his.
Noctis wishes it doesn't still hurt. ]
Sorry, did I ruin your escape plans?
[ These words, with all the potential for exceptional amounts of venom only now half-fulfilled, worn down by a heartache Noctis refuses to acknowledge. The gilded knife of his frustration is halted, just for these few moments. ] Tell me what this is supposed to be.
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But the veneer's already cracked, hurt shining on through. It refracts through him as light on glass does, his glare shattered and misting up. It's unbearable. Ignis's hand snags on the doorframe, gone rigid, the bones in his knuckles aching taut. There's nothing else to do for misjudging distance when detaching himself didn't undo the damage. If he handled this earlier on in their relationship, still fresh and newfangled, perhaps that would've mitigated the worst of it. (Except that's a lie, isn't it? Except that Ignis never does anything in half-measures. After swearing fealty to Noctis, he'd never devote himself so irresolutely.)
A lot can change, given time. There's no reason he shouldn't have expected the same to apply here. Noct has never been anything but resilient, even when battered down and lost, grasping for control. It's the same rhetoric governing Latin, studying a dead language no one else speaks, going so far to hunt down a jeweler to fine-tune the ring, paycheck after paycheck poured into it. Ignis is sentimental to an unjustifiably hurtful degree, so it only makes sense he'd be heavy-handed with his affections.
If Noctis thinks back far enough, maybe he remembers Virgil's works, the eight eclogue he'd covered in what might as well be a lifetime ago: the anecdote of the shepherd proclaiming his tenderness for his beloved, already promised away to someone else. The passage was a touch so brusque that he'd wanted Noctis to smile at the despotism of it in recall, poke fun at a yearning so selfish that it'd expect reciprocation or hurl itself down against the waves and drown. Nunc scio quid sit Amor. Now I know what Love is. Back then, he hadn't been the scorned lover willfully dashing himself on the rocks.
It's all so profanely foolish now.
The shock in him subsides, winding down. Ignis shuts the door behind him; there's no need for anyone else to bear witness. If Noct's gone and sought him out like this, then the suffocation of the moment is a privilege he can enjoy in all of its horribly emphatic misery. ]
Isn't it blatant enough? Do you really need me to say it?
[ His voice is calm and clear when he poses the conditional, even when he's talking around the awful desperation writhing in him. Stiffly, Ignis drapes a hand on the desk, fist closing over the wood. With his ambitions sieved down to nothing, there are no conditionals. There's nothing else to lose. ]
Highness. What do you think you'll accomplish by rummaging through someone else's belongings?
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[ Say it, because he needs to hear it, because in his own pain and loneliness he wants to hear Ignis speak it, because they're both self-destructive in their love for each other and Noctis can barely breathe through the way the unspoken sentiment throttles him, another demon to add to his nightmares. If Ignis had chosen the honourable way out, the sensible way, then Noctis will rend it to shreds and tear through the well-meaning lies put up between them.
Does he truly not love him anymore? It haunts him, how Ignis had maintained his dispassion from the moment Noctis had told him up until now, ten, fifteen, twenty of a thousand papercuts Noctis allows because he doesn't know how else to take it. His love cannot be promised to another when it still belongs to Ignis, cruel but not capricious, vicious but painfully unceasing, a noose around Ignis' neck and his own.
He swallows, and perhaps if he were older and more experienced he would be more adept that masking the pain, the heartbeat short of capitulation -- say you love me again -- and if he were a better person he would have held himself back, given Ignis a way out the way he had done so for him.
But here they are, Noctis ruthless in his pursuit of him, eyes the color of a midnight storm, raging and roiling. His hand closes around the box, and Noctis finds that he has never hated that word more. Highness, he says, like his name hasn't fallen from his lips like desperate prayers, like his name hasn't invoked absolution, provoked a litany of confessions as their bodies moved together, cleaved to the other and made whole.
Now, now he's empty and wanting and his words are brittle. He cannot claim what is not his, but what if they once belonged to him? Ignis' heart, and this, too, this road not taken, an abandoned possibility. He raises his voice, because all they do is hurt each other, but what else is there to do but bring the knife down? ]
Say it, Ignis!
[ His voice cracks on his name, his fingers digging into the precious box so hard that he fears he will shatter it. ]
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Then yes, he's angry. Yes, he's irascible and just barely holding himself together when Noctis combusts in a short-circuiting wave of poorly-masked outrage, trying to force his compliance. It hardly needs externalization, all of this frustration running rampant that Ignis has carefully bottled up and sealed away; he's seething mad and riled and well and truly upset, enough that slowly extricating himself from Noct's life strikes him as a better option than waiting for him to the last, poignant blow to fissure him open. It may have all started out of obligation, but now it's become much more than that.
A score of illegitimate children, some bastardized, unhappy marriage— surely Noctis understands more than anyone to grow up lonely and smothered in turns without vicious rumor coming into play. It's no way to live for a child, reared up in whatever environment will coax on self-hatred, so this is the easiest way out. This is the only way out, the only one he's remotely complacent with.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Ignis doesn't let the burn of anger invasively carve its way over his face, but tiredness, like he's grown exhausted of the ploy of it. Noctis calls him by name, and it's not stupid exaggeration to think himself responsible for the way he's caved in, his hand white-knuckled on the desk. It's the kind of exhaustion that doesn't leave, even after a full night's rest, condensing in on itself. ]
What good would that do? Would that truly help you?
[ All these languorous, awful questions might get him somewhere if he just keeps asking until he's compelled to answer, taking away the soft warmth of compassion until the only thing left is this seeping coldness, devouring and ill-managed. His voice sounds so odd, unchanging in pitch or tone, as he avoids the trajectory of Noct's wrath, making a show of straightening up, like he's preparing for a proper conversation instead of this messy, one-sided pretense at one. ]
I can't begin to say how sorry I am for hurting you. I never intended to cause you so much pain.
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He was wrong, he thinks now, as the deliberately calm questions sink in, designed to reiterate distance, not to allay. He hadn't lost Ignis the day he walked out of the apartment with his belongings carefully packed. He lost Ignis the moment he told him about Regis. That Noctis' suspicions of a similar hurt Ignis endures remains nebulous; white-knuckled fists on desks can have a world of interpretations, and perhaps if Noctis were more cynical he would have jumped right on them and cut the cord for good.
But he's a young man hopelessly in love, devastated and enraged in equal measure and he settles for a harsh bark of laughter, the sound so cruel and alien coming from him -- it's not a sound he's meant to make, shoulders wracked with something so close to a sob. Not quite, not quite. Princes don't cry.
He rubs the heel of his palm against his eyes, curled over the box now, as if protecting it bring everything back, as if he could smudge out all that's happened in the past few weeks. Sorry, he says, like it could stem the bleeding. ]
Did you get that from a book? What are you going to say next, "It's not you, it's me"? Do you think that helped? What good does that do?
[ He flings the unanswered questions back in his face, vicious and unruly and hurting, and he wants nothing more than to curl his hand around Ignis', right there on the desk. He wants nothing more than to provoke him, to see if there's more underneath that porcelain, tranquil mask. Ignis looks tired, a small voice observes, exhaustion set deep beyond the reach of the most cultivated front, which is the only reason why Noctis hasn't seen fit to brush past him and slam the door shut on this encounter.
Surely he must feel something. ] Tell me how this is so easy for you to do.
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The worst part, though, is the laughter that issues out of Noctis shortly afterwards, the sharp dissolve into mirth when he demolishes the rest of his patience for the ragged heave of his hand against his eyelids, smudging out the nascent beginning of tears. It's just like this that he remembers Noctis has a tender throat; that all of him bruises so easily, that he's being wounded right now. The dozens and dozens of times before have proven that he's carrying those outlines still, however unseen, the places where he'd guided his hands and left his mark on Noctis, indelibly. He's perched on the precipice of something terrifyingly inscrutable, so vulnerable that Ignis speaks up at last, words scraping dry, harsher for it. ]
It's not. It wouldn't be fair to you if I approached you so halfheartedly.
[ He'd told himself it was enough just to be happy for such a short, short while. And it was, initially, absence numbing the sick jealousy that's rearing its head at the notion of Noctis pouring all of his affection onto someone else like it's inexhaustible, trapped by the ludicrousness of it. But this is why Ignis can't look away now, or else Noct'll realize just how long he's spent pining, the ache that lashes its way in, displaced in his own skin. This is, perhaps, what it is to gouge out his rank longing, keep it held right between his teeth. Noct is so young, shrinking down where he's folded on the seat, renouncing self-preservation. It still isn't too late for Ignis to go on his hands and knees and prostrate himself before the king, beg for Noct's hand in marriage when he's near-hysterical and closer to choking him than falling haplessly into his arms, but he won't. He won't even fight it, which is where the crux of agony starts. If that's the case, then—
His palm finds Noct's shoulder, clamping down tight. Warm, even though he's insufferably cold otherwise. ]
You haven't been sleeping well.
[ This is the first time he's touched him in weeks, wrist so close that his heartbeat pulses in tandem with the one enshrined in Noctis's throat. ]
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It's not fair. It's not fair at all; to Noctis, and especially to Ignis. Ignis, who had poured in so much for this ring, the meaning behind which he wouldn't yet say, but deep in the depths of memory he vaguely recollects shepherds and foolishness, even if the specific threads of it evade him still. Love, he thinks. He knows enough of latin to pick out that word, and his eyelids prickle and burn all the same. If he had approached Noctis halfheartedly, would it have hurt less? Would Noctis have learned not to pour all of himself to a venture that would never have a happy ending nonetheless? If Ignis had been less heavy-handed with his affections, if Noctis had not so recklessly, so passionately fell into him the way he did, would they have this moment still?
Irrelevant thoughts. Ignis would never have applied himself so half-heartedly, and Noctis would have given his heart to him all the same, and still be the worse off for it. There is a profound cruelty in Ignis' kindness, in the love he bears for Noctis that the prince is aware he hasn't yet noticed. It's right here in the warmth of his hand, paralysing Noctis, stilling the instinctive, prideful desire to wrench free of him. It's as if Ignis' very own affections corrode the sense of his own self-preservation, renders Noctis so helpless and small before him, his weaknesses displayed in full view. He looks away.
He hates this. He hates how he is with him, when that simple observation steals the incandescence of his rage, and Noctis is still under his hand, so touch-starved that he would let him continue this farce, so silently yearning for something, anything, that he would willingly accept this touch, nerves raw and heart aching for what he can never have again. ]
Neither have you. [ And he wonders if he suffers from the same, already accustomed to the heat and warmth of a willing body, of long limbs and tender kisses stolen in the deep of night, sweet whispers and even sweeter touches, intoxicating pleasure always within easy reach and love even more so.
His hand comes to rest over his, tentative at first, and he steels himself for the inevitable retreat. He shifts, his cheek pressing against Ignis' wrist as he remembers the kisses he'd lavished over it, soft and chaste as he sampled him, memorised him. ] I hope nobody else ever falls in love with you.
[ You, so capable of tearing down kingdoms with your kindness. Your love is what slaughters kings. ]
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If he only recoiled, Ignis could accept the grieving hurt that'd come with the reasoning in Noctis's anger, prop himself up with the immediacy of someone painlessly spurned. Even brandishing the unveiled breadth of his fury and lunging to throttle him to death, Noct could never wound him in a way that'd well and truly matter. It'd take indifference to tear his chest from the inside-out and pour unmitigated damage where his ribs would've busted open. And Ignis knows him, has known him, ever since he was a mere boy standing under the intimidating shadow of his father's presence, clasping his fingers around his hand, smiling in earnest; it's impossible for Noct to detach himself from anything when he's emotional to a maddening fault.
And yet it's infinitely worse like this, under the aching moment Noctis's shoulders hunch to accept his grip, gaze slanting away in defeat. It's too much. ]
There could only be you.
[ There's no one else who'd love him with such bruising audacity. No one else who could wound him so thoroughly. For all he's known Noctis, he's been moody and capricious and occasionally confrontational, but he sleeps easier if someone else beside him in bed. He likes it when they're snap-tangling their hands together— a habit dating back to when they were children and Noctis was deathly afraid of what nightmares would prey on him in the dark, ordering him to keep a vigil until he could succumb to exhaustion where he'd scrunched in on himself. And then later on, sweet and cajoling, when their bodies would mingle in the blistering heat of skin-to-skin contact, when he'd liken his lips to Noctis's spine, kiss his desperation into damning reciprocity. Noctis presses his cheek against his wrist, hand over his knuckles, and it's a double-edged blade, the softest he's ever felt, but no less injuring for it. Ignis's hand twitches once, reflexive, in his grasp. Bones prominent, sorrow prominent. Then he tugs away, making a bid for the ring box still in Noct's clutches. ]
Holding onto that will only cause you grief.
[ There's a logical flaw in making a half-hearted bid to reach and pry those slender, tapering fingers off the box and retrieve what doesn't entirely belong to him, (like trying to lift the burden he bestowed upon Noct himself), but Ignis is, as always, helpless in his own vices. An attempt's made, however successful or unsuccessful, when he reaches out to take the last thing Noctis could possibly call his own, then sparing a glance toward the door. ]
Would you come with me? I’ll see you to somewhere more suitable to rest. [ To the prince's bedroom, to one of the cots in the hospital wing, even back to the apartment, a token reminder of the life they once shared, if allowed. Not here, although his own mattress is perfectly serviceable. Stir any more rumors of ingratiating his way back into the prince’s mercies and Ignis will ruin the distance he's been carefully introducing into their relationship as it's devolved back into plain obligation. ] Your father would be worried sick if you appeared before him like this.
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Don't say that to me ever again.
[ Don't say there could only ever be him and then leave him bereft and empty and unable to deal with everything that's broken apart before him. Don't say that it would only cause him more grief because how can there be more than this, when he's staring down at loss and has never been the worse for it? At least now he knows why his dad looks so sad -- had he foreseen this, had he known how it would hurt him? Noctis wants to hide away from him now, from Ignis and his dad and everyone who can see how brittle he is, how he is a touch away from breaking.
This is the last and only thing he could call his, the one thing that remains of his love while Ignis presses distance between them. It probably would hurt a lot less if Ignis was colder, if he wasn't so obviously trying to hold himself together, the pain reflected in his own eyes clear as day to Noctis. He would choke on it if he didn't choose to want to protect this piece of Ignis, this one thing lost to them. There is nothing as piercing as what could have been, if Ignis had proposed and Noct would have done everything possible to make it true -- and this ring would have been on his finger, bolstering his courage as he stands his ground.
But now he's on shifting sands, and he unfurls himself with a cat-like grace, feet planting on the ground as he straightens up, lithe and lean and shaky at first but as proud as he ever is. He doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to love Ignis now, not with all the intimacies they'd shared. It's hard to look at him, to know all his most intimate secrets and to love every inch of him and yet keep his distance. He swallows hard as he steps past him in silence.
He misses him already, misses how Ignis would take him to bed and how they would kiss, their hands warm and entwined and Noctis has never known happiness as profound as being in his arms, feeling the heat of his kisses and feeding his every desire. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and perhaps it seems fitting that Noctis now knows no worse, devastation given exquisite form in Ignis, and Noctis still loves him, a cold and broken realization that will haunt him every time he looks around, every time he reaches out and touches only glass.
Obligation has never been a more contemptible word. He will tear every word they've exchanged today apart in the nights to come, pick at Ignis' tenderness like a scab, and he feels wholly self-destructive as he squares his shoulders. ] I'm sure His Majesty's expected this.
[ Unfair, cruel. He loves his dad, he does, and he knows no parent takes pleasure in his child's pain. ] I hope you kept the receipt, the crown will make reimbursements.
[ Because if he cannot keep Ignis, then he can at least have this, slip it onto a chain and keep it close to his heart. And the damn crown can fucking pay for it. Then he says, so quietly it's almost inaudible. ]
I would have said yes, Ignis. And I would have fought anyone to keep you.
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Noctis is everything to him. He can take comfort in the fact that he hasn't utterly annihilated his temper as it rushes to the surface, gleaming and vicious. Fighting long after Ignis has renounced him for a return to duty, scathing and abandoned, and it's an assumption not without some truth. King Regis hasn't the heart to look upon him since then; everything has been handled through intermediaries and secondhand accounts, and he's never sought to force his audience. ]
I can assure you that His Majesty only wishes the very best for you.
[ And it's not the end of everything, the ache isn't so irrevocable that he'll never be able to recover and try again with someone new. Resilience is a terrifying thing; even knocked down six ways to Sunday, Noctis can still find his footing in his confusion. Never mind that Ignis has stained him with his touch, learned the bumps of his vertebrae in his sleep. Life without Noct as the linchpin is still worth living, however lacking, missing the nerve of ferocity that's filling in the air right now, openly baiting him.
Ignis plucks at the conversational threads, avoiding the finer brutalities resurrected, as if the time he'd poured into his love was something he could get a return payment for. There's peacefulness even in the depths of evisceration, though, picking apart his words until they're carefully loosened from his throat. ]
... Noctis. You must realize I was wrong for ever believing it possible. There's no way it would have ended well. For you, especially, as the heir apparent. You've a duty to your people in succeeding the line, and I've overstepped my bounds.
[ It sounds rehearsed. Some of it is, practiced until he could hit the beats right, draw something resembling a natural flow for the eventuality of a talk like this. But it's no talk as much as it is a rebuke, flat and insipid. Ignis's hands drop by his sides, making no move to pursue Noctis. If he leaves, he'll let him go; he no longer has a right to do much more than ad-lib suggestions Noctis will fling back at him, unrepentant, but there's one thing he'll challenge here, no matter how the argument threatens to escalate. Ignis's voice is firm, leaving behind the farce. ]
You can't possibly keep me on as your chamberlain any longer if you keep the ring. To injure your spouse so acutely by my own hand is a slight I would resign my station for.
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[ Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Noctis understands this better now than he ever has through any of his previous lessons. The pain of isolation, of loneliness is even harder to bear when he's already tasted of the kind of happiness that people spend all their lives seeking; blissful mornings melting into heated evenings in the arms of their beloved, believing (however wrongly) that it would never end. But here he is now, renounced by the love of his life, and the crown always wins. It must, even if the price is too high for Noctis to bear. Especially when the price is too high for him to bear.
He stares at the grain of the heavy oak door, and there is nothing now that does not hurt. He is only nineteen, still young in the ways of the world -- and what a cruel world it is, too. A part of him wonders if he will come awake soon, open his eyes in the darkness with tears on his face and Ignis wrapped around him, and maybe he'll tell him this is a nightmare, that it, too, will pass. But this is where he's wrong; this is where dreaming ends, when he is told again that this is for his own good, that his dad wishes the very best for him, and Noctis learns to despise words spoken by rote. ]
Of course. [ He says dully. He's learned his answer by rote, too. The vicious anger is submerged as quickly as it flares, because keeping it up is exhausting and already Noctis is barely holding himself together. He is the prince, he thinks, as if he could glean any comfort from the name, as if there is any to be found. Life with Ignis will be nothing short of torture now, to see the only man he's ever loved and wanted and to have him be the only one he can never have. To see him and know, every day of every minute in every moment that he once had all of him, had loved and been loved so deeply by him. The memory of sun-dappled smiles, bodies tangled in fine sheets and hands twined together, Ignis' sweet words of love warm in his ears, and Noctis loves him, loves him so fiercely he wishes he knows what to do.
But there is peacefulness in the depths of evisceration, when Ignis speaks with surgical precision and with infinite care speaks only to the king the boy would be, the boy excised from the conversation because in the name of duty he serves little purpose, and Ignis understands perfectly how the crown must always win. The boy, however, only listens, the flat and insipid rebuke falling upon the ears of one who has heard this so many times before. It occurs to him, in spite and unholy vengeance to keep the ring, to demand his resignation and take away the one thing Ignis had spent all his life working for, training for, so much a part of him that to cut him out from it would be the height of cruelty.
But it would serve Ignis right. It would serve his dad right. They can spend another ten fucking years finding him another chamberlain -- and failing, because there is no one like Ignis, no one Noctis would accept -- and Noctis will never see him again, and maybe, just maybe, things will begin to heal. He discards that thought as soon as it occurs to him. No matter how angry he is, he thinks, how scorned and roaring for vengeance, the truth remains is this: Noctis loves Ignis too much, too deeply, and the knife does not come down, after all.
The king says nothing (there is no challenge to be met when the fight is already over). The boy bends over to gently place the box beside the door. He straightens, wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, and takes a breath. The back of his hand comes away wet. He looks up, and takes a deep, silent breath. When he speaks, it's almost steady. Almost. The boy hasn't been bled out yet, but give it time. ]
Make arrangements for couriers to deliver your reports to me from today onwards. A cleaning service, as well. The palace kitchens can deliver all necessary meals.
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But Ignis is calm, even in brutalization, and the moment passes.
It is perhaps a testament to how much wretchedness Ignis can internalize that he doesn't break down when Noctis does. Not out of any lack of anguish; it's there, every contrived ounce of it funneling into his soul, clamoring against his ribcage when there's nothing more to be done, sick and trying to throttle his hands as they snare inwards. He meets the breadth of Noctis's obstinance with surrender, and tears it apart: abuse by way of blunt trauma, forcing Noctis renounce the one last thing binding them together.
In his shock, Noctis is selfish, but Ignis is endlessly, endlessly deceitful afterwards, quiet even with the sensation that he'd been gutted, so sickeningly pervasive that it was strange how he could still stay like this, standing perfectly upright. It's not the erosion of everything he's thrown away that serves as cause for alarm, but how he'd never gotten around to acknowledging what his life has ultimately amounted to, and what was and wasn't worth pursuing in the looming absence left afterwards. There hasn't been a day that's gone by where Ignis didn't want to see Noctis, until now. ]
As you wish, your Highness.
[ It's the collision course of strangers, that new unfamiliarity introduced when he politely rips his gaze away from Noctis when his tears grow irreconcilable. He can't see his face, but he doesn't have to. The oppressiveness of his hands, white-knuckled, as they come away from his face speak for themselves. They no longer fit together, and all of it— all of those years they've spent in each other's company have corroded in a matter of seconds, and it's odd, the weightlessness that remains, when it should render him incapable of standing. More bizarre, still, that only a few weeks ago that he'd kissed Noctis out on the apartment landing, fingers a resonating corollary to his pulse, one consequence bleeding into another, and the prince suckered into laughter, treacherously loud, betraying all that tenderness in him before he'd gone and joined in on the act.
Ignis eases past Noct— he broaches the space sideways, so that not even the cuff of their sleeves brush in passing, and takes up the ring box, pocketing it. ]
Then, if you'll excuse me.
[ Simplified down this much, there's no bleakness in being overly cordial. And just like that he's gone, his presence beside Noctis melting from the room as he slips out of the door, exits down the corridor. There's no last, rueful glance back for what might have been; truthfully, he'd rather forget this part, leaving Noctis and that rapidly dwindling window for remorse behind, the blinding sun of the prince's influence on him be damned.
If possible, he'd rather not remember this at all. ]
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Fourteen months and three weeks pass, the devastation wrought upon both parties of this relationship having no bearing on time and tide. In the beginning, Regis gives Noctis space to mend his broken heart -- after all, no father takes pleasure in his son's grief. He receives word, as well, that Noctis will not be seeing his chamberlain in any capacity for the forseeable future. It is a matter of concern, of course; Ignis is an exceptional young man with many talents, a great asset to the crown, and his handling of the breakup had been above reproach. And Regis recommends a temporary change in duties, even if that particular decision has raised a few eyebrows.
That Ignis had been seeing his son was not a secret in the upper echelons of nobility; the abrupt severing of personal and professional relationship even less so. Regis had sent Noctis a query after a month, and his response had been polite but curt, and the king is uncertain if he should be proud or worried. His son, still nursing his wounds, and Regis offers the option of a diplomatic attachment in Altissia, shadowing the minister of foreign affairs and learning all he can.
It had been accepted, and without fanfare the separation is enacted. Regis receives word that Ignis is performing excellently, the clever young man having attracted much praise, affection and no small amount of attention. The foreign affairs minister himself is effusive with compliments for Ignis' competence and his intelligence, so much so that Regis secretly hopes that the man isn't thinking of poaching him for his cabinet.
Noctis, on the other hand. In the months that follow it's impossible not to notice the deep-set ennui, the unmistakable change in character not borne out of spite but something that runs much, much deeper. At least spite can be assuaged, reasoned with, negotiated. This is a different ballgame, subtle and almost insidious in the way his son withers. Not physically, but where Regis had cherished most. His heart grown cold by degrees, an immovable sadness in his bones, and smiles that don't reach his eyes anymore, if he even smiles at all.
Regis has dined with Noctis sixty-three times in the past fourteen months, and the number of occasions a smile occurred is more than adequately covered by a single hand. The number of occasions a genuine smile was wrought, none. He receives reports on Noctis' progress in other areas; he is doing well, even if his trainers have privately noted that the boy's temper, on the rare occasions it rouses, is sharper, more vicious. He receives reports, too, on the occasions that Noctis has had his eye on young ladies, each one clever and accomplished, elegant young women who, while not of royal blood, would have made a fine addition to the family and crown.
Each one of them end, and Regis hears whispers that the prince is emotionally distant, that he keeps them at arm's length, that there is no way to broach the distance no matter how they try. Things get worse with Noctis for a little while after that, but eventually Regis sees the vicious cycle. They rarely last more than three months, even though a particularly memorable one lasted four and a half (the shortest, five weeks), and while Regis doesn't care for the burgeoning reputation for philandering Noctis has somehow garnered despite the fact that he's done little with them, it's enough for him to worry.
Noctis is less than forthcoming, of course; his answers simple and to the point. He's not angry, the king notes. At least not in the way he can sense, and this is infinitely more difficult to handle when it's not a tantrum he can quell. Something as irrevocably changed in Noctis, and every time he sees his son he sees less and less of his boy, as if time and tide were eroding the heart of him. Clarus notices (likely because of Gladio, who has been one of Noctis' companions ever since), and of late had chosen to have a quiet word with Regis; a rarity when Clarus rarely involves himself with Noctis' personal business.
Perhaps, Clarus says privately to him one late evening after a particularly unsatisfying dinner with Noctis, it is too early to deal in absolutes. Regis says nothing, but he thinks.
A few weeks before Ignis' stint with Altissia concludes, Regis asks Noctis if he is amenable to have his chamberlain resume his duties. Noctis, eyes unreadable, offers a perfunctory response, and that is that.
Regis asks to see Ignis when he returns, cordial but troubled. My son withers in your absence whether he realizes it or not, he says, because in that private moment there is no space for lies, and he has been thinking about this for a long time. As the days pass it becomes increasingly more clear that Regis had miscalculated in necessitating the swift conclusion of their... dalliance. There is a sickness that has anchored itself in the core of his son, and Regis notes, with regret, that the demon that had come after Noctis when he had been a child had been far less efficacious compared to what Regis had done in the name of duty.
It is too early to deal in absolutes, Clarus reminds him again; the issue of succession can be explored by alternative means. And, Regis thinks with a heavy heart, the issue of succession is not worth sacrificing his son this way. After all, the king is no tyrant, and seeing Noctis the way he is sets him at a loss. He is amenable to your return, go to him. Regis tells him, eventually continuing. And -- if my son gives you his heart again, I will not demand that you return it. He will not stand in their way if it will restore Noctis to an approximation of himself, not a distant, cold and implacable shadow of the earnest, understated awkward warmth of what he had once been. Still, a part of him wonders if Ignis is too late.
Where Noctis is concerned, however, things are complicated. Things are complicated because they always fucking are, and he's trying. He's trying to move on, dating girls and working hard to be a good boyfriend -- a lot of them are smart, distinguished, with sharp features and an elegant (if sometimes dorky) wit, and Noctis liked them well enough. Things would always go well for awhile until it didn't, until they wanted more and Noctis found that he couldn't give it to them; he couldn't even love them properly, as if a part of him has permanently malfunctioned and somehow he can't actually do it again. Not since --
-- nevermind. Nobody cares, anymore.
Ignis comes back to Lucis today and Noctis is shoving gossip magazines into a box in his closet, each one of them bearing Ignis' face together with his partner, often a dark-haired pretty boy with spiky hair and eyes with varying shades of green or blue (the latest one had a vivid kind of blue, and at certain angles could have passed for Noctis; Noctis only knows this because that's what the fucking caption said, and he thinks he's going to be sick).
It's been more than a year, he thinks. He should be better now. Over it. He isn't, but nobody's looking that closely, and Noctis likes to think that he's faked it to an acceptable degree -- he doesn't break practice swords anymore during his training sessions. He's twenty now, and despite the low-key anxiety he's been fighting for the past couple of months ever since he'd first heard that Ignis was coming home, he has his shit together a little better now. More or less. Prompto tells him sometimes that he worries about him, asks him what's up because he didn't seem to be the same guy anymore (not verbatim, paraphrasing), and sometimes he doesn't believe it. Sometimes he does. He doesn't remember the last time something made him happy -- he doesn't remember the last time his heart raced and sang and he laughed and smiled. He can't remember it, when he looks at the shelf of fish-related paraphernalia that he still couldn't bring himself to dispose of ever since Ignis left. He had bought them for him, various trinkets and souvenirs, and Noctis had kept them all, treasured them and set them on a shelf.
It bothers him more than anything, today, that he hadn't fucking done a thing about it. It bothers him that he's both anticipating and dreading this, uncertain of what to say now that so much has separated them (fourteen months, and not even a word from Ignis -- although to be fair even if he said anything, Noctis probably wouldn't have trusted himself to respond), and if Ignis sees that stupid fucking shelf he's going to think Noctis is a lovesick idiot for keeping his shit. He's older now, a little harder even if he likes to think he hasn't changed much, and so much sadder even if he's stopped noticing it long ago, despair clinging to him like a shadow, a thing Noctis lives with, copes with; a thing everyone else but the prince sees. His face is a little more tired, darker circles under his eyes -- he's thinner than he'd once been, and there is a grim set to his mouth that had insinuated itself months ago. Stayed, too. But the apartment is relatively clean (although never quite to Ignis' standards). A few reports lie on the table, and underneath the reports, a magazine bearing Ignis' and his erstwhile flavor of the month's face is only half obscured (entirely overlooked in Noctis' harried last-minute sweep of the apartment).
Gladio calls to tell him that Ignis will be arriving. The doorbell rings ten minutes later, and swallowing, pretending that what's left of his heart is not in his mouth, he opens the door. ]
Don't you still have a set of the keys?
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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 doppelgänger (long red hair on her, blue eyes and a spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose), which was primarily because the way she threw her head and laughed back was just like the prince himself, peevish and moody in turns, but utterly genuine. She leaned into his hand the same way, the soft sweep of his cheek nestled in his palm, smiling so sweetly. It was all obscenely good for a long, long while, until he called her Noct by accident, a slip of the tongue, and watched how realization transmogrified her face, bewilderment morphing into pained disbelief. And then she pared herself from his side, swift as any blade, and that was the only time anyone left him of their own accord during his year-long stint in Altissia.
After that, he'd adjusted his priorities; better some weak facsimile of the prince for whom comparisons only went skin-deep than someone so close to resembling the truth of what he'd wanted that it could only render him inconsolable, counting the differences between.
It wasn't a hard benchmark to reach, even when rumors spread with the tabloids. None of the men and women who bore a strong resemblance to Noctis in physicality were never able to emulate him, that sullen and graceful and silly way about him, and he hadn't much wanted them to, after the first mistake. Staying with his last paramour was purely out of convenience, because of his eyes and dark, dark lashes and the breathy tenor he took up, calling out his name in the throes of orgasm. It held up to the last, when King Regis sent summons for him back to the Citadel. Maybe he'd known it was the end when he ingratiated himself in his lap while Ignis set about packing his belongings, looking every bit like Noctis, except in the ways that mattered. His voice was a chime, insistent, ringing away (you're leaving me for him, aren't you— I— Ignis, I love you, and he wouldn't, he couldn't ever do that for you, so that's why, I— you don't have to go, you can just stay here—).
Instead of affection, Ignis was left with the sobering knowledge that Noctis would never snivel and insult someone else in the same breath or assume that he was the one who was irreparably wounded when there's a severity about Ignis that only indicates cruelty now. Hindsight is only twenty-twenty; he wouldn't know if longing made itself apparent after spending too much time around Noctis's lookalikes, all of his despair clawing its shape within him. One time was already going too far to amend his mistakes; under repetition, it only serves as proof for the kind of man he is, breaking ties with his latest in a long line of sweethearts without batting an eye before making headway for Lucis.
The conversation with King Regis is, notably, a hollow one. However heralded, a year is far too long to factor in miscalculations so grievous, silently biting at anger to suffocate it from leaving his mouth. Philosophizing does nothing, but he yields, takes his mouth to it as if the answers have abided within him all along. Yes, I understand your concerns. I'll do what I'm capable of, your Majesty. I hope that Noctis's demeanor improves with my arrival.
But it's not a matter of capability, leaving the steps, entering the empty parking lot, easing into a car he hasn't driven for the upwards of a year. He carefully shuts the door behind him, fingers strangling the leather of the steering wheel awhile, silent, ascertaining that there isn't another soul around. And then he screams a deep, rending scream as he crumples down on the seat, feral and vicious and ghastly, an ugly, broken sound devolving fast into nothing but pure, unadulterated pain as it's shaken loose, compromising him. A deterioration of everything that's kept him blank and obliging; this whole year, he hasn't allowed himself to feel anything at all, and now there's too much raw-boned strength in his howling, like an animal learning mortality, languishing in the final throes of death.
Afterwards, he sinks into the chair, gasping, shuddering, clawing at the wheel with his hands, a collapse that thunders through him with impunity, when he tries to gather his wits as his breath comes hitching out in ribbons, irreparably broken. Gladio has left ten voicemails and five texts since he set off from Altissia; he answers the very last of them with a plain affirmative that he'll be over at the apartment soon enough. There's more still, from his colleagues and acquaintances alike, one even from Prompto welcoming him back, who's undoubtedly learned the news secondhand from the King's Shield. None from Noctis. He leaves the rest of the messages to sit. A glance in the rearview mirror confirms there isn't a hair out of place; slightly red eyes can be forgiven, chalked down to mere exhaustion from the journey, and so he turns the key into the ignition and readily sets off.
Twenty minutes later, he's at Noctis's doorstep, ringing the doorbell, standing solemn until it opens. When it opens, he can't help pausing uncertainly, taken aback, though his voice is no less smoothed-out for the small blip of hesitation. ]
Yes, well. I thought it rather unbecoming to go stealing in like a thief in the night, invited or not.
[ Noctis doesn't look like himself. Sadness has changed the geometry of his face; he's lankier than he's ever been, sloe-eyed and quiet, and Ignis directs his attention to easing the manila envelope and other present he's tucked beneath one arm. ]
Good afternoon all the same, your Highness. This is for you. [ Along with a draft of the latest report for him to file is a wooden box, a mockery of the engagement ring and its velvet box. There's no such sentiment carried in this gift, but Noct's perfectly allowed to pop the lid open and take a glance at the talisman lying inside, smooth and freezing cool to the touch, inscribed with a number of hieroglyphics. Though Noctis hasn't asked, Ignis goes about the small agony of explanation. ] From one of the minor island principalities just west of Accordo. According to the locals, it's said to bring good fortune to whomever should so possess it.
[ Noct's free to think he's taken up a burgeoning interest in shamanism, though the real reason is much more plain; merely a token he'd received in place of the prime minister during the celebration of the winter solstice and the Tidemother said to slumber kilometers below the waves of the ocean, like that's enough for fourteen months' worth of sentiment, anniversary and birthday and holidays gone by without a passing remark. Ignis remains stock-still, noting the state of the apartment that he can see from beyond the doorway without stepping over the threshold. ]
Would you mind if I had a look around?
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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 badly— pulled him into a tirade about proper habits and proceeded to wait hand and foot on him for the next few weeks, or until his complexion grew warmer, less like hell warmed over.
But the moment is in turns viciously uncomfortable and distant and Ignis leaves Noctis, lanky and subdued, open the door so he could enter, peering about the corridor. It's cleaner, much more than it'd been when they lived together, and Noctis would leave his clothes haphazardly strewn over the floor at random intervals. shoes always out of place. ]
Much obliged, if you wouldn't mind sparing the trouble.
[ And much obliged if he does mind. Ignis is a stranger now; he can't exactly put on the kettle and retrieve the cream the same way he's done a million times before, so he'll leave Noctis to it, detachedly gazing about. With some chagrin, he spots Noctis's souvenir shelf, clustered with all the little baubles and trinkets he'd gotten him over his travels. For some reason, he'd expected to find an empty spot where it resided, but Noct wasn't so malicious as to toss out every memento of him. Of course he'd keep them, even if the sight might cause him little more than pain now.
While Noctis busies himself with brewing a cup, Ignis's gaze sweeps over the table— then abruptly freezes in place at the sight. The reports alone are benign enough, the same brand he used to ferry over back when Noctis was still in high school, young and petulant about documenting his thoughts on foreign taxation and providing a weekly review of life outside the gilded cage of the Citadel, but it's the glimpse of the glossy face that has Ignis tugging out the magazine to stare, abruptly paralyzed, at the cover.
It's not the image itself that shocks him, neither ingenious nor particularly cruel— he's seen this cover often enough passing magazine racks in Altissia during his last week, given his proximity to the prime minister and the fact that his love life was apparently so illicit as to be examined with a fine-tooth comb. But it's the fact that it's here, inside Noctis's apartment, that he gives into the morbid curiosity of it, rifling through the cover for the page detailing the minor fallout of his next-to-last relationship with theories abounding from fetishism to the novel idea he harbored quite a liking for Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, hence the transfer. Ignis is so concentrated on it that he hasn't glanced up to confirm/deny where Noctis currently is in the room. ]
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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 fianceés? Regis was vague when he pressed for details, but he'd known Noct committed to the search, because he asked, and it'd likely gone down the same way, seeking women who took after him more than a potential love interest. ]
Would you take conjecture at face-value?
[ The words have wilted and withered. He's over chagrin, having made his intentions apparent long before, and even after. It doesn't affect him as it used to, when Noctis is the one to mutilate him, as always. Ignis is a a man worthy of so much spite that it's strange that he doesn't take after it properly, running himself ragged without entirely ruining himself in the process as he straightens to answer the way he couldn't, fourteen months before. ]
I can't force your trust, if it's my word weighed against a third party.
[ Heartlessness, again. But his shoulders are a mess of contradictions, shuddering and profane, but he steadies them. This is the part where he should bow out and apologize, but Ignis is exhausted by maintaining some distant, detached ideal for so long, like he can really be so unemotional when it comes to Noctis, and having every single one of their conversations boil down to remorse isn't really how he wants to live the rest of his life. His throat's still raw, scratchy from sobbing in the car, though he hides it so well that perhaps Noctis doesn't even detect the rasp. ]
Why don't you ask me? In your own words?
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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, I’ve tried. Again and again. None of them came remotely close to you. If I could be so easily placated by someone else’s touch, I‘m honestly not certain I’d be here right now. You wouldn’t believe how desperate I’ve become.
[ Apropos of nothing. Humorlessness becomes him, voice cracking open. Did he see Noctis in them? He couldn't have gone without him, the year he'd spent not in martyring grace, but in the weakness of despots. He's had fourteen months hammering down on his yearning, but twenty-two years have already gone by before he could never return to how he was, losing his fine-tuned control over his equanimity in Noctis's presence. There was never any going back. ]
Or perhaps you would. A year is a long time. I was hardly deserving of you long before I left. I’d known all along what kind of ingrate I was, and still am, but I suppose you do as well now. [ Alluding to promises he hadn't kept, all the complacency born of despicableness, when he's sunken so low that there's no reason to resist the plummet down. ] You kept everything I gave you, except for what I wouldn’t return. You haven’t been taking care of yourself in my absence, even though you’re more precious than this world, in and of itself.
[ Noctis, who slept so often in his company, looks in need of a thousand years more, thin and ragged around the edges. Caustic only out of necessity. Pained, in all other respects.
Now he knows: it was self-sabotage to come here unprepared. He's practiced no eloquent rehearsal of lies on-hand, driven as a man yearning for his beloved forgets restraint. But isn't that how love is? Gone amiss, with a perception so warped that it mirrors his own decline, responding to questions he has no answers for? ]
Would you like to talk to the man in this picture? He asked about you quite often, when I was with him. How much I cherished you. Why I left your side.
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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 wrong— whether in abandoning the prince much too soon, or much too late.
That's how all of this started. Whether it's treachery or jealousy, he still dug wounds in others like those could alleviate the ones wrought on him, lover after lover scorned. It's a very cutthroat sort of mutilation, but nothing intentional. Every time he tries again, there's always the hope that'll be enough to assuage this festering hurt that's taken to residing in him, keeping him from devoting himself to anyone properly, like he once was capable of. He hadn't begged for his feelings for Noctis to be trivialized to the some passing fancy, tasked with the sick and tired responsibility of systematically unraveling all that he ever cared about. Maybe that's when he grew incapable of any kind of fondness that wasn't selfishness at its very core.
But it's not resentment that's overcome him now, back to where he began, only so much worse. Vengeance doesn't motivate him so throughly when it's his own conceit that's undone him: he can't find fault with Regis for siding with a tradition spanning millenniums, or Noctis for believing impertinence could take him so far, that anything Ignis could've given him would've been enough to mitigate losing the last of his birthright's magic, snuffing all sense of hope out like candles burnt down to the wick. Fresh with loss, Ignis hadn't fought back. He hadn't even tried to.
Exhaustion's impelled itself down to his bones when Noctis gathers himself close, neither broken nor meek at his side, to sun his hands on the page, psychoanalyzing the latest in a long, long line of heartbreak. Ignis thumbs at the black print of the lettering, the garish allegations of political sycophancy, sexual deviancy. Though there was an overwhelming abundance of love, however superficial, in Altissia, it wasn't anything like this ravenousness seething up in him in Noct's company. In comparison, something so halfhearted as fleeting infatuation wouldn't survive here, in the spaces between their bodies and the mantra of all things that go unspoken. ]
I couldn't say for sure. You would need to inquire yourself. [ The steam on the coffee mug wafts briefly over his hand as he tugs it close to his side. ] I can only imagine he'd tell you how heartless I was. That I chose him because he was the closest I could allow myself to be with you.
[ Nothing so lukewarm and irreparably broken could ever last. It was a rough approximation of desire, brought about by the fact that the man he'd courted could've passed for Noctis in profile and silhouettes, but not thoroughly to damage him, render him unable to leave him when his stint in Altissia ended. When the prince's mouth is gripped by the coarseness of his own frown, worn through, Ignis's lips press into a flat, flat line. They're now close enough for him to reach out and brush over him, make contact— if he only held out his hand, he could scrape his fingers over the weariness in Noctis, knuckles soft over the cheek, a ruthless corollary to all that came before— but he turns away, instead, gaze averted, like he's become a stranger inured to anything resembling affection. ]
Were you able to find someone you treasure enough to spend the rest of your life with?
[ Every question he asks is just like wrenching a knife in a little further into his inflection, mangling all subtlety with each incising stab. ]
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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 out— one hand soft on Noctis's cheek, sundered with the damage and the offense even as it glides to fit to the shape, as if he's grown insensitive to suffering. If Altissia's taught him anything, it was that there was never ever leaving the stranglehold of Noct's influence over him, months and months compounding to nothing. ]
Do you think I'm unfeeling, Noct? That I've lost everything I've felt for you in the span of a year, even though I've devoted myself to you all my life?
[ He could handle being mutilated for lesser reasons, making a mockery of his own self-control; it's not all that difficult to pursue Noct, even to the degree of endless futility. But not this, when the softness of Noctis's body has given way to this emaciated look, thin and starved and wounded beyond repair, and the ramifications threaten to send him reeling, reeling back. ]
Why haven't you been looking after yourself?
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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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