Chapter Text
The fight for the dawn is a messy affair, by all accounts.
They’re fighting to stall for time, holding off the waves of daemons that the Starscourge breeds from the earth. Knowing what they know now about what these creatures used to be, Ignis feels less like a soldier protecting his king and more like a murderer. Every daemon he sinks a dagger into could have been his favorite florist, or the owner of that arcade Noctis and Prompto used to be so fond of, or the military surplus store owner that Gladio liked. Every one of them could have been a boy like Prompto, raised to live and die for Niflheim.
But he doesn’t let that stop him, and he kills them all the same.
Gladio leaps from his side with a savage roar, and Ignis feels suddenly off guard; they’d been fighting back to back for a few minutes now, and the loss of warmth at his back is jarring. But he readjusts his stance and makes a wide sweep in a circle around himself with his radiant lance, hoping that he’ll catch anything that’s edged into his area while he was off guard. The tip of the lance catches against something gelatinous and thick, and he shoves the spear in deeper, relishing the bubbling scream of the creature as the holy weapon burns it from the inside out.
It’s like a dance, really, and he times his moves to the rhythm of Prompto’s gunshots. They haven’t done this in a long while, at least not together. They’ve always had a wonderful melody that they’ve hammered out in steel and flesh, connected by the Crystal as they are. But after having gotten the chance to fight with Noctis at their side again, the triumph of their trio reuniting is dampened. Like getting the chance to drive the Regalia and then being given the keys to a rental car. Lackluster and empty.
Prompto screams from across the plaza, and his gun goes off in rapid succession, without rhythm or finesse. Ignis turns towards the sound and starts running. He almost runs headlong into a daemon on the way there, but he summons a spear and skewers the thing where he figures its heart is, and he continues unhindered, recalling the lance to his hands as he goes. If he had vision, it’d be all tunnelled, focused on getting to Prompto as soon as humanly possible.
He falls to his knees where the scent of iron and fear is the strongest, and Prompto whimpers into his ears when he gets close, “Iggy, help.”
“Where is it? What is it?” Ignis begins patting at Prompto’s limbs, trying to find the source of the blood on his hands.
“It’s my leg, it’s - behind you, Iggy!”
Ignis whirls and calls up his lance again, aiming it backwards. Prompto reaches out and steadies his hand, pointing the lance in the right direction, and Ignis takes the shot. He hears an answering screech of pain, feels the familiar burst of twisted heat on his face, and turns back to Prompto. “Your leg, Prom?”
“Thigh,” Prompto grits out between his teeth. “Hurts so much, Iggy.”
Ignis carefully traces his fingers along one of Prompto’s thighs and comes across the gash. It’s not too deep, from what he can tell, but when he prods at it clumsily Prompto screams in his ear and there’s a burning feeling on his fingertips. Poison, then. “Do you have an antidote?” he asks, and he feels the whisper of hair on his face when Prompto shakes his head. “Damn,” he hisses. He doesn’t have one either. Without the prince’s magic or people with the right know-how, they’d run low on the precious stuff within a few years. “We’ll have to treat it later.”
Prompto groans and nods against Ignis’s shoulder. “I’ll just- I’ll sit tight for now.”
“You do that.” Ignis pats him gingerly on the shoulder, mindful of the blood of his hands, and he stands, calling a set of daggers to his hands in a shower of sparks. He hovers near Prompto, though, fending off anything that would try to come their way.
Gladio makes his way over to them with grim sureness, and he brushes shoulders with Ignis to let him know he’s there. “Holding up?” he calls down to Prompto, voice distant and hard.
“Well enough,” Prompto squeaks, and he fires off a round that whistles between their bodies and lodges itself in something off to Ignis’s left.
It feels like they’ve been like this for hours or for heartbeats. Ignis’s arms are getting tired, but he has a feeling that even if he took one of the muscle stimulants he’s accumulated over the years, it won’t help. The leaden tiredness in his bones feels like more than just exhaustion. In the back of his mind, there’s a nagging voice telling him that no matter what they do to kill these daemons, it won’t matter. They’ll still lose.
They’ll still lose Noct.
He tries to push it down, but the feeling remains no matter how hard he ignores it. He tries to bury it in the chest of a Ronin alongside his dagger, but it returns to him all the same. There’s something like anticipation burning in the magical connection that holds them together, and it crackles with the sheer volume of energy. Something is happening, and they aren’t there. Noctis is in danger, and they aren’t there .
There’s a force that knocks him down, ringing in his ears like a concussion, and Ignis sees light .
It’s so white that it’s shocking amid all of the blackness that Ignis has grown used to, and he staggers for a moment. A sound like a shout tears itself from his throat in surprise. He finds himself on his hands and knees, sprawled out on the plaza with his daggers skittering with metal music away from him. There are cuts on his palms and they sting .
And then he realizes-
It’s quiet.
The daemons are gone all at once. Gladio is on the ground beside him, and Prompto pants in agony behind them, but their breathing is the only thing he hears. They all know what it means. They all know what their king has done.
They wait in stunned silence for a few long moments. Without the daemons, the entirety of Insomnia feels empty. Ignis is suddenly incredibly aware of just how much Insomnia has fallen, that it would be silent without daemons to fill it.
And then-
There’s a hint of warmth on his face, and without thinking he turns his face to it. He hasn’t felt something like that in years, and not even the massive floodlights in the greenhouses of Lestallum could replicate the feeling of the sun on his face. He’d know it anywhere. Something blooms in his chest that might be a sob, and he lets it come out in a great heave, greeting the first dawn with the dew of his tears. He might be rejoicing, but they all know the cost.
Beside him, Prompto staggers to his feet, groaning in more than just pain. “The dawn,” he gasps out, weak and desperate. “He did it. Noct did it.”
“He’s gone,” Gladio says, and Ignis has never heard his voice sound so soft.
Ignis reaches out with one of his hands, letting a dagger fall to the ground. It doesn’t spark into the armiger. He tries to ignore it. Prompto catches his hand, holding tightly to it with fingers slick with blood and poison. He’s shaking, or maybe they both are. “We have to go,” Ignis manages past the knot in his throat that threatens to unravel into weeping. “We have to go inside.”
“Inside,” Gladio echoes.
“To get Noct.” Yes, that’s it. Nothing matters but Noct. This is all that Ignis has ever known. Even during the ten long years of waiting, they had all been waiting for him. For the king. Ignis cannot possibly let him go now.
“Ignis,” Prompto says softly, and his voice warbles with tears. “Ignis, he’s dead.”
“And we’re getting him!” Ignis snaps.
Prompto recoils like he’s been shot.
Ignis heaves a shuddering sigh. “I will not leave Noctis to be in there alone. Not again.”
“I hear you, Iggy,” Prompto mumbles. “Let’s go.” He tightens his grip on Ignis’s hand, and then shifts. “Gladio, please.”
Gladio moves to life beside them, like a statue moved to action. He must gather up Prompto somehow, because Ignis’s hand is being pulled upwards, and then they’re all shuffling up towards the Citadel together. Gods, they must look a mess. Ignis stumbles a bit on one of the stairs, and one of Gladio’s hands shoots out immediately to steady him, but it’s gone again before he can even utter a thank you.
The elevator ride, this time, is silent.
When they enter the throne room, it feels cold and unwelcoming despite the hints of the sun creeping in from the shattered walls. Ignis turns his face forward to where he knows Noct is, and something like dread sinks into his heart. He doesn’t want to go up the stairs. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t.
He climbs them anyway.
Already, Noct’s gone still and cold. The remnants of the endless night and tomblike chill of the throne room have locked Noctis on the throne like a statue.
“How does he look?” Ignis asks softly.
“Iggy, you-“ Gladio’s voice is strangled and miserable. “You don’t want to know.”
“Gladio.” He has to know.
“Regal. Like his father.” He makes a sobbing, choking noise. “Gods above, that’s his sword.”
Like a man underwater, Ignis reaches out with molasses slowness. The hitch in Prompto's breath tells him he's close. So he extends his fingers until they brush against something metallic and freezing. It's ridged and elegant, and Ignis realizes that it's a wing. King Regis's sword. In its position, facing the throne, that can only mean one thing.
“Oh, Noct,” he breathes, and that’s enough to send Prompto into heaving, wracking sobs against his shoulder.
They stand there, at the throne, for however long it takes to get themselves under control. It must be a while, because Ignis can feel the soft warmth of the newborn sun creeping up along his arms where they’re wrapped around one of Prompto’s arms and part of Gladio. But they break apart eventually, and they know that it’s time.
They take him down carefully. Even the way that that sounds in Ignis’s head makes him flinch. Noctis is not a trophy. Gladio carefully loosens the sword from where it’s lodged in the back of the throne - and in Noct, but none of them think it, they don’t - and brings the king down from his throne and into their waiting arms. Ignis cannot see the scene that they make, but he can imagine how small Noctis must look, cradled in Gladio’s arms. Not thirty, but small, like the child he had been when Ignis had first met him. And somehow, that image, the thought of his prince being born to die like this, alone and terrified, has Ignis shaking.
He doesn’t know what possesses him to reach for his pocket, but his hand finds its way there anyway, pulling something out like he’s in a trance.
It’s a phoenix down. Ignis had been saving it for…a special occasion? Maybe that’s the term. Over the ten year period of Noct’s rest in the Crystal, they’d all become better hunters and fighters. He can barely remember the last time he’d used one, but somehow he’s packed it for this final battle.
Better now than ever before.
“Will it work?” Prompto asks softly. “Now that the Crystal and Noct-”
“We’ll have to try,” Ignis interrupts. “We have to, for Noct.”
He wraps his hands around Noct’s - they’re so cold, so still - and keeps the plume of down clenched between his freezing fingers. He sends a prayer to whichever one of the Six is listening, and then he crushes the down with their hands.
For a few breathless seconds, nothing happens. The throne room remains cold and silent. There is no hum of magic in their bones, and the lack of blueness makes the Citadel feel like even more of a tomb. Gladio lets out a stuttering breath that might be the beginning of a sob.
But then-
Noct gasps.
And then he coughs, wet and frantic, and he stirs in Gladio’s arms. His hands, still clutched in Ignis’s own, turn warm in a near instant, almost hot to the touch.
He’s alive , Ignis thinks in wonder. It worked, we saved him, he’s back.
“Sh, Noct,” Prompto soothes, and his voice is shockingly steady. Trust him to be their rock. “Noct, you’re hurt-”
“I’m dead .”
Noct’s voice is raspy and wrecked, like he’s been screaming for years. He’s shaking and panicking in their arms. “I’m dead, I should be dead, where’s Luna -” His voice is rising to a sickening wail, high and desperate and destroyed.
Ignis finds his voice again, tracing circles along one of Noct’s knuckles. “You’re with us in the Citadel. You’re with me and Gladio and Prompto. You remember, Noct. We won.” Somewhere, deep in his heart, something cold is sinking with heavy sureness. This is wrong, all wrong.
Noct is still struggling in their arms. “I should be dead ,” he whispers again, and then he falls still.
“Oh, gods,” Ignis whispers. “What have we done?”