[ I'll always be honest with you, he remembers promising years ago, when they were too little to understand the impact of their words or the weight such a promise would hold. As the years crept on, it became more evident; Ignis would be horribly honest at first until he learned how to blunt his words, how to soften them so they weren't an attack without meaning for them to be.

This, though. This is a whole other level of honesty. It's one thing to pledge yourself to your liege lord, one thing to devote yourself to their service, but it's something else entirely to look at a scale with Noctis on one side and the entirety of the world on the other, and to find the world lacking, light. To find that Noctis' worth weighs so heavily that there's never, ever been a question about it.

Then, for Ignis to tell him that? It's a great deal more than he's admitted in a long time, and part of him braces for the fact that Noctis won't accept it. That it's too much, that he never asked for this level of terrifying devotion from a childhood friend turned lover. He doesn't flinch at you idiot but it's a close thing as Ignis tries to decide if he ought to check on the water or fetch one of the bath bombs that was brought in with the latest shipment of supplies, some gaudy, glittery yellow ones that smelled like cloves. He needs to do something other than just stand there basically naked, tearing his chest open to hold his heart out and ask is this enough? ]

I didn't say I was-- proud of it. But Ardyn was - I couldn't let him. I wouldn't let him. If you weren't in it, it wasn't a world I wanted to be in, either.

[ Unsaid is that it's not just because of the prophecy, not just because Noctis was supposed to save all of them.

Ignis drags in a shuddering breath and meets Noctis' eyes through sheer force of will. ]

As I said. It's dangerous.