Work Text:
They find him on the outskirts of Leide, just a few miles from Insomnia’s gate.
Beaten, bruised, bloodied.
Surrounded by a few dozen fallen MTs, their armor smoking, limbs twisted and broken. All of them broken--except one boy, who sits on the edge of the carnage, eyes wide and pale as the moon. He wears the same armor, the same helmet as the others, only his lies on its side next to him.
Cor, arriving with the other Crownsguard, tells him not to move, stay where he is.
The boy doesn’t move. The Crownsguard unit sifts through the other MTs, searching for hostile survivors and well, any sort of survivors. He doesn’t move as his gun is kicked out of reach, or as Cor bends to meet his eyes.
“What is your name?”
Cor is certain the boy doesn’t actually see the Marshall, or any of them. Only the fallen MTs. The battle in replay, maybe. Definitely the piercing shrieks the MTs release when killed. Cor knows, has heard them enough himself, late at night.
But the boy opens his mouth, and the word that spills from his throat is gravel. Mechanical. “NH-01987.” There’s nothing in his eyes as he says it.
This is definitely above Cor’s pay grade. Whatever experiments the Empire conducted that brought this boy here well, Cor isn’t sure he wants to know. But he calls for a medic unit and the boy doesn’t say any anything or resist.
Cor stays with him, a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
It’s later the boy finally snaps into movement. Not speaking, not anything useful the Citadel Royal Infirmary can use for his identification.
Screams.
Echoing, lingering, painful screams.
It’s deep in the night, but no one sleeps as those screams fill the infirmary, as the boy thrashes in his bed, reluctantly restrained until his nurses rush in with a sedative.
The screams quiet, his body relaxing, and he falls into a dreamless sleep. The cold sweat remains, his white skin gleaming with it, evidence of his resurfacing horrors.
The nurses, tense with fear and concern that keeps them awake, whisper amongst themselves.
During the day he lays in his bed, gripping his sheets, eyes darting and watching everything that moves.
His meals are brought to him and he stares at those too, wide eyed, but doesn’t touch them. His hospital gown hangs on him in loose drapes, but still he doesn’t touch the food before him. It’s not until a nurse sits next to him with a kind smile and offers him the fork that he does, eyes going glassy as he takes small and careful bites.
He flinches at the needles but goes slack when his medication is administered, his eyes widening for a brief moment before he tenses, and goes blank again.
It’s a shame, they whisper. It’s monstrous what the Empire did to him. He’d be so cute, with his blonde hair and violet eyes. They’re sure, from the way the sun floods through the windows and on his bed, that’s he’s prone to freckles. It’s so easy to imagine him as any other teenager in Insomnia.
But the barcode. The black bile he sometimes vomits. He’s so young.
The nurses are certain, with the way he leans into their touch when they cut his hair or change his bandages, and with the way he eagerly starts to accept food, that he deserves better. Always has.
When he stops flinching at the needles and starts watching the nurses work with open curiousness, they talk him through it until soon they’re telling him about their lives outside of the infirmary.
He likes their pictures best, taking long moments to take in the images, and he listens in fascination to everything they say. They don’t miss it when he figures it out, that they don’t have barcodes. When he starts covering his, they chip in for a nice leather band, and the smile they give him is full and grateful.
Prince Noctis finds him a few weeks later, when he visits the infirmary for his bi-annual exam.
The boy has recovered physically from his ordeal, the bruises faded, the cuts sprinkled along his body closed, and the black bile gone. He’s filled out in his cheeks, and the hesitant smile he sometimes gives the nurses is radiant.
He sits in a chair in the patient’s lounge, facing the window. Still as a statue. Captivated--his body practically leaning out of his chair, eyes taking in every detail of the courtyard beyond.
Noctis stops in his tracks at the sight, the boy new to him among people he’s known all his life.
“Who is he,” he asks Ignis, who is recovering from almost walking into the prince.
“The lone survivor of a Niflheim attack,” Ignis straightens his tie. “The Marshall thought it best he be brought here.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
Ignis notes the tone of gentle curiosity in Noctis, the concern as he watches the boy.
“No doubt he has seen many horrors,” Ignis replies. “The mind sometimes takes longer to recover than the body.”
Noctis is still looking over his shoulder at the boy after Ignis puts a hand to his elbow and pulls him away, reminding him of his appointment.
The prince comes again after school the next day. The infirmary is slow in the later afternoon and the nurses notice Noctis immediately. The low of their activity silences and Noctis pauses in the hall, loosens his tie in more of a nervous tic than actual comfort.
The boy is sitting by the window again. It’s a nice view, a tidy courtyard with a few trees and flower beds.
Noctis bites his lip, eyes a few nurses who give him encouraging smiles, and walks over. All eyes are on him as he takes a seat next to the boy. Noctis settles into the chair, hefts his school bag on the wooden table surface, and says, “hey. I’m Noct.”
The boy doesn’t say anything but he turns--looks at Noctis and the bag stuffed with books and notebooks. His mouth pops open and he sucks in a breath. “Hi.”
His voice is so raw, so raspy that it barely counts as a voice, but there it is.
Noctis comes every day. Sometimes he naps in the chair while the boy visits his doctor. Sometimes he does his homework so that not even Ignis can complain about his time spent there.
Noctis finds himself looking forward to the visits. The boy doesn’t speak much, only a few words here and there. It’s peaceful though, those few hours in the patient’s lounge, as he lets the boy look through his textbook.
He doesn’t miss the way the boy’s finger’s brush across the grainy pictures while he struggles with his set of math problems. The textbook is being just vague enough that he doesn’t quite grasp it. The table surface surrounding his worksheet is a minefield of eraser shavings.
The Prince tangles a hand in his hair as he squints at the worksheet and then--it’s being pulled away, slowly. His pencil is taken from his grasp. Noctis looks up to the see the boy has moved to the chair beside his and is scribbling away at the math problems.
Noctis learns several things at once: the boy is right handed; he writes in neat and precise lines; he sticks his tongue out ever so slightly in concentration; he’s smart.
When the paper is pushed back to him with a trembling hand, Noctis is gaping. “Dude. That was--you’re--holy shit.”
“Sorry,” is the hoarse response, quiet and directed at the table.
Noctis has already flipped to the answer section of the textbook and he looks up and frowns. “Don’t be sorry. Thank you, for helping.”
It is helpful. The textbook tells him what he already knows: every answer on the worksheet is correct. So, Noctis goes over the boy’s written calculations and works out how he did it, asking questions along the way.
Bad nights happen, though. Try as the nurses and doctors might, they can’t keep the nightmares from plaguing the boy’s dreams. They can only whisper soothing words to him when the nightmares wrench him awake. They leave a warm light on, so he doesn’t have to wake in blackness. But even still, sometimes the bad nights carry on into the day.
Noctis’s homework lies forgotten on the table as he watches the boy’s closed door. Sometimes he’s not screaming. Sometimes he’s just...somewhere else, whispering incoherent words or numbers.
Sometimes, Noctis gets restless for not being allowed to see him. He knows why; he knows about post-traumatic stress, about being triggered. He knows about the doctors that visit him daily...so he waits for a good day.
His father finds him there one day, a few weeks after Noctis’s first visit. It’s another bad day, the third in a row.
The whole infirmary pauses at the King’s entrance and the head doctor is waved off by Regis, silently assuring everyone he’s not there for himself. Noctis is relieved at that but still helps his father to sit at his table.
“Math giving you trouble again,” Regis inquires mildly, taking in Noctis’s half hearted attempts at his worksheet.
“Accounting isn’t part of the job, is it?” Noctis rolls his eyes but they settle back on the closed door a few feet away.
Regis chuckles. “Sometimes, I’m afraid. How is our friend?”
Noctis can’t help the little smile that forms when Regis says our friend. “Bet you know more than me.”
Cor had brought him here, after all, and Cor reports to the King. Noctis knows there’s been an investigation about the boy’s origins, but he doesn’t know what the reports contain, what’s been pieced together from the doctor’s tests and evaluations. Noctis knows there’s stacks of paper on what the boy says. Not that any of it matters; he’s here now.
“I have an inkling,” Regis replies as he fixes Noctis with a look that makes him squirm. “But he responds to you. You give him a taste of normal life.”
“Ironic,” Noctis snorts. “I’m the least normal person here, besides you.”
Noctis shifts in his seat again, the old wood creaking as he does. The King’s presence is usually a soothing, safe one for Noctis but the restlessness won’t leave him. He’s not sure what answers his father is nudging him toward but he’s not sure if they’re the ones he wants.
“It’s just...Dad, I get it,” Noctis continues, shifting away from his father’s eyes. “He was hurt--maybe not quite like me, but still. Hurt. And he’s...not okay. But I am--Luna helped. You helped.”
“And you think he has no one.”
Noctis shakes his head, sharp and determined. “He has me, us.”
“He does. You’re a great friend, son.”
Noctis looks at his father, the soft eyes, how kind and proud he looks. His own eyes sting and he shakes his head again. “He needs a name. He’s a person, he should have a name. Not a number.”
“Perhaps,” Regis says, and Noctis leans into the words, “You should ask him.”
Noctis tries not to let his face fall at the suggestion. “He doesn’t really...talk much.”
Regis’s mouth quirks into the smallest of smiles. “Well, that has never stopped Lunafreya.”
Noctis looks startled, his ears tinting the slightest of pinks as his father pushes his notebook toward him. His mouth pops open and a light dings in his head because--there it was. The answer to Noctis’s restlessness.
Noctis’s note is short, though he spends more time writing it than he really wants to admit.
Homework isn’t the same without you.
Feel better soon.
I’ll be waiting for you.
It’s a little embarrassing when he looks at it, and he wants to erase it like he did the other dozens of notes but he always comes back to this. It’s genuine in a way that feels right. So Noctis gives it to the nurse, who whisks it away. There might even have been a hopeful gleam in her eyes as well.
Noctis only has to wait an hour before she comes back, a pleased smile spread over her face, and the note in her outstretched hand.
I’LL TRY.
The boy is back the next day, in the patient’s lounge, in his usual chair from Noctis. He has rings around his eyes like someone who hasn’t slept in days and maybe he hasn’t. But he twirls his thumbs and stills when he sees Noctis. Smiles. Sunlight falls over his face and he looks--happy.
The sight is a relief to Noctis, the kind he feels when he saw his father after a health scare, weightless and warm.
“Welcome back,” Noctis says, a little breathless as he sits down.
The boy’s violet eyes are steady, fixed on him, round but keen. His shoulders are tense but he’s leaning forward. He offers the smallest of smiles which Noctis immediately returns.
“No homework today,” Noctis says. “I want to...talk to you instead.”
Noctis unloads his bag, his hands brushing over a doodled-upon notebook, before opening it up and ripping out a page and passing it to the boy.
The boy eyes the paper, angling to him with a pale hand, eyes darting across the page as he reads what Noctis has written on it.
“Erm,” Noctis coughs, pink flushing his cheeks. He’s aware of the nurses watching them. “These are writing prompts, starts of a sentence. Think about them...can you tell me when you’re ready.”
It’s an idea he got from Luna, who sometimes grows frustrated at his lack of responses. After years of correspondence, she had given up directly asking how his days were going. More often than not, now, she goes the indirect way to coax deeper thought from Noctis. It’s helped, but Luna is forever cursed to have a lazy pen pal. Noctis is hoping the boy won’t take after him.
“I want to know about you,” Noctis says slowly, when the boy doesn’t move or say anything.
The boy stares at the paper, at the short prompts Noctis carefully wrote out during his classes, choosing from what he knew about him, about his days in the infirmary. There aren’t many but Noctis doesn’t want to over do it.
Noctis tries not to stare as the boy’s violet eyes dart over the paper, reading and rereading every word and sentence. He looks up at Noctis, and then at the nurses beyond them, and receives encouraging nods.
Looking out the window makes me feel like… “I can’t move because it’ll disappear.”
His voice is so raw, barely a whisper, and he ducks his head down as he says it, like it’s a terrible confession. He plays at his wrist band.
Something inside Noctis squeezes and he says, “you know it won’t right? You’re safe here.”
The boy nods, blinks rapidly for a moment, and then goes back to the paper.
When I see the flowers in the courtyard, I… “I didn’t know there was so much color. Everything...before was gray. Dark. And now there’s so much. I don’t even know the names to the flowers or their colors.”
His cheeks flush deeper, another confession. Noctis is barely breathing for the words that are coming from him. His voice is lighter than he expected. And gods, Noctis wants to help him get rid of the shame of not knowing everything around him.
“It’s okay,” Noctis says, “we’ll teach you.”
The boy looks like he can’t wait but he goes back to the paper.
The most boring subject Noctis studies is… “Math,” the boy looks up at Noctis, and he swears there’s teasing in his violet eyes. “No pictures and you’re really bad at it. I don’t learn anything.”
“Dude,” Noctis coughs as his cheeks flush again but he laughs, even while he’s pretending scowl.
The boy’s mouth twists, like he’s holding back, but his own laugh wins out anyway, spilling from his upturned lips. It makes Noctis laugh harder and somehow, they’re two boys giggling over nothing and it just feels--perfect.
If I could choose my name, it’d be…
The boy doesn’t say anything this time. His laugh cuts off and he looks startled. He looks up from the paper, pinning the back wall of the lounge with a thoughtful look. Noctis thinks he won’t answer, but he looks back down at the paper, and then back at Noctis.
“Prompto.”
There’s a theme in Prompto’s answers and by now Noctis has spent so much time sitting with him that he picks up on it. He’s attuned to what’s important about Prompto. Ignis is outright amazed and inquires why he hasn’t picked up on their suggestions to eat his vegetables, but Noctis flatly ignores the jab.
Still though, the advisor is more than happy to accompany Noctis to the bookstore the next day. The two are hardly in there for more than ten minutes before Noctis finds exactly what he’s looking for, and then the two are on their way to the infirmary.
The nurses have decided, lately, that Prompto needs exercise and so they’ve started taking him for walks around the courtyard he spends so much time watching. It’s lucky, in a way, because Insomnia is thawing from the harsh winter so it’s filled with lush spring blooms.
Noctis finds Prompto there, wandering with small steps until he crouches beside a patch of flowers. The blue flowers, muted in comparison to Prompto’s bright eyes, sway lightly in the breeze, and Prompto takes in every movement.
When he hears the crunch of gravel under Noctis’s feet, however, he looks up and his face splits into a grin. “What are these?”
Noctis drops onto the ground beside him, ignoring the damp grass seeping into his pants. “Sylleblossoms. They’re not native here. My friend sent me the seeds but they’re better in Tenebrae, brighter. Fields of them.”
Noctis knows Prompto is trying to imagine it. He’s staring at the flowers, his brow furrowed and his head tilted a few inches. He pushes the bag from the bookstore toward him, practically right under his nose.
“Got you something,” Noctis helpfully says as Prompto takes the bag. “Open it.”
Prompto looks confused, maybe even a little suspicious as he blinks at Noctis. The bag crinkles in his hands but he slides a hand in. When he finally looks down and sees the gift, he freezes. His hands tremble slightly, but his grip is strong on the book, his knuckles turning white.
“It’s mine?” Prompto is so, so quiet. He runs a finger over his wristband, over the book on his lap, and Noctis blinks as something occurs to him because of course.
“It’s yours,” he replies, “Only yours. Here, let me show you.”
The Great Landscapes of Lucis captivates Prompto.
The two boys spend hours pouring over the photographs, Prompto running revered fingers over the colors and imagines, as if he can feel the textures of the world on the page. Noctis tells him everything he knows about each location and anything he doesn’t know, he outsources with other books.
It’s not long at all before Prompto has a mini library of photography books, gifted by both Noctis and the nurses. He learns the names of the flowers he loves to watch, learns the different subtle colors that fascinate him. He studies alongside Noctis, his own books propped up beside Noctis’s as he devours everything he can about the landscapes.
Noctis is only some what surprised when, one day, Prompto sets down one of his books, this one of flower marcos, and sighs. He doesn’t look troubled and now that he thinks about it, Prompto hasn’t had a bad night or day in...maybe weeks. At least not that he’s heard.
Maybe it’s because his mind is so full of color when he falls asleep. Maybe he’s healing. Whatever it is, Noctis feels a rush of warmth at the thought--that Prompto will really, actually be okay one day.
“Something wrong?”
Prompto chews his lip thoughtfully now and he paws at each of his books. “I just...how can I make my own?”
Noctis smiles, grabs his phone from his pocket. “I can show you.”
A breeze picks up across the park, rustling the trees and plucking a few unlucky leaves from their branches. The air is cool but there’s a crispness to it; it’s rich with spices and the smoke from the city’s farm suburbs.
Prompto stands in the middle of it all, in the swirl of colorful leaves as the wind pulls through his hair as well. He’s sporting a freckled but fading tan, a result from the summer spent with Noctis as he fished. Prompto had once overheard Gladio grumbling something about boredom during those trips but Prompto never had time to be. Those trips were the best.
It was the feeling of being outside of the infirmary, a strange mix of free and terrifying, that kept him close to Noctis’s side but that also coaxed him away, armed with a camera the infirmary staff had pitched in to gift him.
He could never be bored on those fishing trips, not with all he learned with that camera, the one that was a solid weight in his hands.
The things he learned...they were a tether to his life now. Everything before this moment, before he woke up in the infirmary were...well, not squarely in the past, but just...past.
Nothing was gray anymore; light wasn’t leached by the darkness that swallowed him each night in the past. He had color now, the names of things, and he stood amongst them all.
Autumn was better in person than he could have imagined. He likes the large sweater Noctis brought him; it’s warm like he’s never been in the cooler months. He likes the sugary drinks and spicy scents. He likes the trees that look like they’re burning. It all takes his breath away, and makes his eyes sting.
“You okay, Prom,” Noctis says next to him, and Prompto turns to him, blinking. His friend--his friend--doesn’t comment on his red eyes but he does offer him a small smile, like he knows anyway.
“Yeah,” Prompto says with a large breath and a smile of his own. He lifts his camera and an idea comes to him just as he does. “Let’s get a picture together.”