Work Text:
“Hey, do you remember that promise you made when we were kids?”
“… I’m afraid I don’t… quite follow, Noct.”
“I hope you’ll remember it soon. But Ignis, once you do...”
“...”
“Well, we’ll see. I’ll ask again later. But try to remember, will you? It’s kind of… important.”
Ignis Scientia was not a person to make promises. Something about those always felt wrong – like he was unable to keep them no matter what.
Still, when he was introduced to Prince Noctis, something about that shifted. It wasn’t very apparent to him first, but his uncle commented on it once or twice. How the withdrawn child was starting to be a little more friendly; at first he had believed that it was about the extraordinarily shy prince. But after half a year, Ignis realised that these comments had been about him. He had been withdrawn ever since the day his parents died. He had only spoken when spoken to, and now Prince Noctis was managing to make him act like the child he was again.
He decided to enjoy this for as long as the gods saw it fit to let him have this friend, this person he could pour his heart out to.
They nearly took Noctis, and Ignis spent terrifying hours, days, weeks beside the prince when his father was not there to sit beside him.
They nearly took him again after they already robbed him of his happiness – and Noctis refused to speak about Tenebrae. At least he came out of his shell again, and Ignis was trembling with fury.
“Hey, Iggy?”
They were sitting side by side at a window, the prince wrapped in two blankets. It was dark in his room, and Ignis closed the book slowly.
“Yes?”
“Can you… promise me something?”
He was not a person to make promises, he had never been. For a split moment he thought he saw the curtains catch on fire, he thought he heard someone whisper about promises broken. Ignis closed his eyes and nodded slowly.
“What is it, Noct?”
“Can you promise me you’ll be there when the sun rises?”
What a silly request. Still he put his arms around the prince and pulled him close.
“I’ll be there for every sunrise.”
The sun rose, and Ignis opened his eyes. He had made a habit of being awake at the crack of dawn over the last few years – he had started doing it for school mostly, but even when he had later classes he woke with the rising sun. Something about what King Regis and Clarus had said when he had been fifteen was likely related to this. His birthmark, the one that Noctis had always pointed out as looking like Carbuncle – something about this thing kept him waking at dawn and expecting something to happen. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was.
Perhaps it was related to how he somehow knew how Noctis’ friend Prompto would react to things. Related to how he could parse the Marshal of the Crownsguard Cor Leonis when barely anyone else in the Citadel could. Related to the fact that something was missing no matter what.
Years had passed since that talk and still it haunted him. All those books he kept at home, all those terrifying realisations that he had had.
The person beside him groaned and slung an arm around him, effectively locking him in place.
Sleeping in the same bed as the Prince of Lucis was very unbecoming of a noble like Ignis Scientia, but he had still done it. No matter how much his thoughts raced when he was on his own, something about Noctis’ presence immediately calmed him down. They had grown up together, after all. They were close, closer than most people would assume. Ignis woke with the light of the rising sun because he had promised that he would be there when the sun rose. That and his confusing, terrifying dreams often made sleeping hard even when he was not officially on duty or currently not at school.
He didn’t remember how exactly he had ended up in bed together with Noctis, but this was fine. He wouldn’t have minded waking up like this every morning for the rest of his life.
Still, there were duties to be fulfilled on this marvellous day, and Ignis wiggled in Noctis’ almost crushing embrace.
“Noct. Get up. You have a meeting to attend at the Citadel at noon.”
“No… don’t wanna.”
“You promised you would get up with me. And I am awake – so wake up and get ready.”
“No… you’re a freak awake before the sun rises… lemme sleep...”
A soft snore, and all Ignis could do was laugh. He had been expecting that; he knew Noctis after all. Better than anyone else.
For a second he felt a spark of doubt. Was it really Noctis that he knew best?
The sun rose. Ignis opened his eyes.
The country was as beautiful as he had thought it was, but the group was still grieving. The Crown City. Their families.
He knew that he would never see his uncle again. He had died, much like any other person in the council. Like any other person in the Citadel that day. For a split moment he thought the tent was on fire, but Ignis was long since used to these visions. There was nothing here. They were not about to burn, even if the campfires seemed to all-consuming, familiar. Fire, his friend and bane. The thing he had been named after. Why, out of all things in the world, was it fire that both scared him to death and comforted him more than anything else?
He rose with dawn as usual, left the tent as quietly as he could. The others needed the sleep after yesterday’s hunt.
About five minutes later he was tossing one of his daggers up into the air. The blade itself was on fire, something that Ignis had been playing with for the longest time. Fire gave way to ice, and then sparks danced across the weapon, but still fire was the most comfortable of these.
“Huh. That’s new.”
The dagger hit the haven with a loud clatter. The sound was so piercing that Ignis feared he had woken the other two, but as he turned around to look, only Noctis was awake and sitting in the entrance to the tent. The prince looked like he had barely slept, dark shadows under his eyes and pale. Ignis reckoned they all looked like this at this point, but it was most visible on Noctis.
“I knew you liked playing with fire, but seeing your entire weapon aflame without burning yourself? You’re getting really good at this, Ignis.”
“… You…”
“Yeah. I woke at dawn the last few days. I’ve been watching you train that and your improvement… damn, Iggy. If you master that in combat you’ll be a one-man-army.”
Ignis was fairly certain that he would be able to use it without ever having to test it. Something about the way this felt was too familiar. He knew what it meant – he had used it in the past, sometime during another life. So many lives and he had no idea what to make of them, how to force himself to remember. All that information could have been useful, but still Noctis merely laughed.
“Hey, Iggy? Why are you still waking up at the crack of dawn anyway?”
“I… promised I would. That I’d be there when the sun rises.”
“You’re a big old sap sometimes, you know that? It’s cute.”
“Do you have anything constructive to say other than calling me cute, Noct, or do you want to help me prepare breakfast now that you’re awake?”
The sun rose. Ignis didn’t wake.
He was lost in a maelstrom of horribly chopped up memories that made no sense whatsoever, while pain dulled his senses. Everything burned, burned like the ring he had slammed on his hand to drive Ardyn away from Noctis. Burned like Altissia had, burned like his enchanted daggers had for a long while. His skin was screeching, and chopped up voices of other people, distorted beyond recognition, played over whatever pieces of his past lives that he lived through in his sleep.
Unconsciousness, more likely.
He couldn’t move.
The sun rose again, and still Ignis did not wake.
The realisation that Noctis would die was less surprising than it should have been. It still broke his heart into a million pieces, over and over and over, until there was nothing left but ashes. He had known that the Chosen would die in a past life. He still had that memory, buried somewhere underneath this heap of garbled nonsense that his subconscious was not projecting all around him. And throughout these pieces of memories there was Noctis, a hundred times over. All those smiles. All those promises they made.
“Promise me… the sun rises?”
He only sunk to his knees before those apparitions that repeated the same question over and over. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream at them that he did not want the sun to rise if it meant that everything he had ever known had been for nothing.
“Open your eyes, Ignis. Seeing or not, you should not spend your time in this abyss before it is your time.”
The sun didn’t rise. Ignis woke.
According to Gladiolus, shortly after they had left Tenebrae the sun had simply no longer come up. Niflheim was wrapped in an eternal shroud of darkness – this time Ignis knew why.
He still reached for Noctis’ hand in the dark. A small gesture, but one that calmed him down from the nightmares he had just awoken from. He knew now. He knew everything.
The weight almost crushed him, and much like Alacris before him, all he could do was choke back laughter. This time it was laced with despair, with the memories crashing in over and over and over. He’d lived a hundred times. A thousand times. Noctis only had that one life and he was doomed to die, no matter how many times Carbuncle interfered because of the Mark of Royalty. Eventually his luck would run out, like it had for King Regis. For King Mors. For all those people, right down to King Emil. King Izunia. Prince Ardyn.
Fire ate its way through his heart, and for once he wished he could see the sun rise.
The sun never rose. Ignis was left alone with the flames dancing on his dagger as the train closed whatever distance there was left between them and Gralea. Them and the Crystal.
Them and the very reason Noctis would have to die.
The sun didn’t rise. Nobody expected it to as they entered the Crown City together, four men and naught but Daemons between them. But Ignis was wide awake.
Screaming on the inside perhaps. Ten years of darkness, and every single day reminded him of the fact that one day Noctis would wake. One day Noctis would die. At the very least it would mean that Ignis, too, would be able to die if he wanted to – it ended with Ardyn’s death, as far as he knew. Carbuncle would release him and the other three, their duty finished and their dream ended. The Mark of the Dreamer would burn out like it had for Iris after she found Aranea and spoke her part. That was all she had wanted, and her dream had helped civilisation survive until now.
Ignis wondered if he had impacted anything.
Noctis would leave one, that much was clear. He would be heralded as saviour rather than the person he had been. It took Ignis a good amount of willpower to not start screaming.
And then, when they rested, Noctis reached for his hand. Squeezed it gently.
“Ignis, do you remember now? What you promised me?”
“I do.” That was not a lie. Through hundreds and thousands of layers, through memories upon memories of other lifetimes, eventually Ignis remembered the reason why he woke at dawn throughout most of his life. “I promised you.”
Noctis leaned forwards and pressed his forehead against Ignis’. “Please. Promise me one more thing before we go.”
“Anything. Anything, Noct.”
“Be there at sunrise. For me. For as long as you can.”
The words haunted him. Children who had made a silly promise, and even as his strength left him he carried on. Prompto and Gladiolus did too, though in a different way than he did. Ignis was still acting out of desperation.
When he next opened his eyes, he still did not see. But he felt the sun on his face, heard Talcott tell Aranea and Loqi that Ignis was awake.
Oh, how dearly he would have loved to cry.
“Hey, Iggy?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks. For trying, I mean. You were there for so many sunrises even though you… you didn’t have to.”
“I made the promise with the intention of keeping it. Every sunrise, for as long as I lived. … Though it got harder without you.”
“Well… y’know. Now we can both be there for every sunrise. Together.”