(may post to AO3 if anybody wants it there, otherwise, content to remain anon)
--
The news had stopped talking about it after what would have been his fifteenth birthday.
At first, it was the only thing anyone talked about. Assassination, accident, kidnapping, disappearance, illness, the tabloids and conspiracy theorists even concocted wild stories about Prince Noctis being some kind of urban legend that had never actually existed.
But the longer the world had to go without answers, no matter how many investigations were launched, no matter what political turmoil it stirred, the more clear it was that the prince was gone. For the average person, it became a sad story amid hundreds of others in the history of the world, with a creeping despair as they wondered, but didn't dare ask, what would happen now that the Crystal had no chosen king. For those parents whose children missed the quiet boy in black when they went to school, there was talk of building a new royal tomb, one whose sarcophagus would be much smaller and lighter than the others for having no bones to bury in it, a child's fishing pole in place of whatever noble sword he'd never have the chance to wield.
For those closer to the crown, it was a much less romantic tragedy. Regis had prepared himself for his son's death, not his disappearance; meditating upon the Crystal yielded nothing but that the prophecy that had named Noctis the King of Light still stood true. When the rumors of increasing military strength in Niflheim died down, a chilling thought had seized his heart and all but froze it in his chest: it only said who would save it, not when, not where. The cruelest irony of prophecy is that it must be interpreted, and the interpreters are human; if it was Noctis' task to retrieve the arms of his ancestors, perhaps it wasn't so simple as collecting them from their shrines. If it would cost Noctis' own life in the saving of the world, wouldn't it stand to reason that at least part of that task would be done in the hereafter? And wouldn't it be kinder in the long run to kill the boy before he knew enough about the world to miss it, still too innocent to be afraid or bitter about his own loss?
And with peace on the horizon, the Oracle safe in her kingdom and Niflheim no longer threatened by the presence of the promised prince, with the reigning King secure on his throne, the world continued on.
--
"Why do we go through this every year?"
"It's our responsibility to stay sharp: Study. Practice. Prepare." Ignis calmly turns to a new page in his notebook. "We serve the--"
"There's no prince to serve."
"He may not be here in the room with us, but so long as His Majesty insists that the prophecy stands and Noctis remains the King of Light, we have our duty to uphold. This is all we can do for him, so it's vital that we do it. Unless buttoning up your shirt is too much to ask, I suppose." The dress uniform looks good on him; the slim cut of the black silk jacket fits his frame beautifully despite the slightly-too-short sleeves. The adjustments had been made at the last minute, but adolescence is a swift bird, and Ignis had gone from overly-serious little boy to reasonably-serious young man almost overnight.
Gladio frowns, pacing like a caged lion as he fusses with his necktie. "Look. I've been keeping it to myself up until now, but even if the rest of the world can just go on hoping, you and I need to be realistic. We can't take the king at his word, not on this."
The look Ignis shoots him over the top of his glasses sends a stinging heat up the back of Gladio's neck. "If I were absolutely anyone else, what you just said would be enough to charge you with treason. But since it is me, you have a chance to explain. Don't waste it, or I'll run you out of the castle myself; words like that have no place on a Crownsguard's tongue."
"He's grieving." Gladio bristles at the threat, but there's no point in arguing about it. "And he's the only person who can commune with the Crystal on any level. We only think Noctis is still alive because Regis says he is. We can't prove he's being honest about what he senses, or that what he senses is actually what he senses and not just what he wants to believe. I'm not saying we should give up on it, just.. we need to have a plan ready if he--"
Ignis slams his hands on the desktop as he stands. He shoves the chair away and takes only a few short steps to confront the other boy directly. "That's enough. May the Six forbid anything happen to his Majesty, but if it does, that's the Kingsglaive's responsibility; we have our own."
"To Hell with our responsibility!" Gladio straightens, a very deep voice coming from a soon-to-be very deep chest rasping the back of his throat. "Don't you get it? Every year that passes is another year that he's not studying, not training, not... doing whatever it is that princes do to become kings. If he comes back-- If he came back today, do you know what he'd be? A sixteen-year-old who never finished the fourth grade! Every year that gap is going to get wider, and it's already bad enough as it is. We need a backup plan because this is a problem and ignoring it won't make it go away!"
"When."
"When... when what?"
Ignis snags a fistful of Gladio's lapel, and for a split second he thinks there's about to be a fight. His voice is so soft, it's barely audible over the faint sound of straining fabric in his grip ."You said if he comes back. You mean when."
For a few agonizing heartbeats, there's nothing, a yawning chasm of grief and silence, and then someone draws a shaky, watery breath, and it's over. There just aren't any words for it, and no reason to speak them aloud, the world that faces an endless night takes another trip around the sun.
"We should get going, or we're gonna be late."
"Mm."
--
"Same thing every year. I mean, jeez, just get over it already."
"Dude, don't jinx it. They let me skip detention for this."
"Yeah, well, I'm missing study hall, which means I'm also missing Valeria Lucernis in a skintight sweater, so you can go eat a bag of honey-dipped dicks."
"Why? Attendance isn't mandatory, you could have just gone to class."
"Not mandatory for you, maybe, but my mom's coming for the royal address, she'll kill me if she doesn't see me in the audience. She has this whole... thing about it, she always gets insanely over-protective and cries for a week afterward. Same thing every year, it's fucking stupid. How many funerals does one dead kid need?"
Claudius doesn't hear it until it's too late: the swing of a canvas bookbag as it slides off somone's shoulder, then a sudden impact between his shoulderblades and the copper bloom of blood in his mouth as his face hits the sidewalk.
"That's it, I'm not listening to any more of your crap. Not today."
The boy picks himself up off the ground and drags a red smear from his lip to his jawline as he wipes his face. "You better call the ambulance now, faggot, you're gonna be in the hospital for a month when I'm done with you."
Claudius Spatha is one of the worst people ever to set foot in a schoolyard. Six feet of corn-fed muscle, held back two years, hotly desired by every contact sport club in the district but too stupid to maintain the GPA to stay on a team, all wrapped up in violence and aggression like pork in a sausage casing.
Faced with two choices, either A, stand his ground and prepare to eat enough pavement to crap a parking lot, or B, run like the wind and get enough of a lead for Claudius to forget why he started in the first place, Prompto Argentum goes for a mix of both: he stands his ground and runs his mouth.
"I don't care what you do, so long as you shut the fuck up!" His voice only cracks a little bit. "Noctis wasn't just anybody, you know, he--"
The first punch knocks him deaf for a few seconds, all sound in the world replaced with a cloying buzz and little pops and sparks of color in the darkness. The second one lands in the pit of his stomach and leaves a sickened veneer over the pain of the impact; it makes his vision swim and pulls the sour taste of bile up out of his throat.
"Dude, just stay down." Blaseo, the boy missing the math test, backs away slowly; if he were a little braver, he'd be over there helping Prompto up, but they both know that's not on the table right now. Instead, he tugs on Claudius' sleeve, trying to urge him back on the path toward the elementary school. "Look, you made your point, okay? Let's just go."
"Fine, whatever. Y'hear that? I'm letting you off easy today on account of your dead boyfriend, so run along home, chickenhead. "
The two of them almost make it a good ten feet. Then there's the scuffle of shoes scraping the sidewalk, the patting of skinned palms being wiped on uniform slacks, and the thick sound of blood being spat into the grass. Prompto swallows, still clenched all over with pain. His eyes are brimming with tears, there's a sharp stitch in his chest when he breathes, and there are so many words still jamming his throat shut. She gets protective because the ceremony makes her worry about you. Not every parent gets to take their kid home from school, you asshole. They don't have this ceremony just for Noctis.
The image of a boy dressed all in black flits against his memory, too cool to be approached but never really acting like it; a laid-back little shadow that went where it pleased and didn't judge, and then.. disappeared. Prompto had given up on losing weight then, but he'd slimmed down a lot anyway; turns out leading a one-man search team is good exercise, especially if you do it every night and weekend for six years straight.
It's a bad idea. He knows it's a bad idea, and although his better judgment is screaming at him to quit while he's ahead, his body is sprinting forward almost of his own volition, closing the distance between him and the only problem in his life he can actually touch. After all the years of chasing a shadow he still can't find, getting two fistfuls of a uniform blazer is so satisfying that he barely feels it when he body-checks Claudius into a lamppost and shatters it. He stands over Claudius for only a few precious seconds, suddenly hyper-aware of his surroundings and the furious lummox scrambling to his feet. Blaseo is already gone, taken off running and hell-bent on getting as far away as possible. No allies this time, no mercy, no voice of reason. Just a big, stupid bully, and a skinny nerd who's finally had enough.
When Claudius is up and standing again, beading lines of blood from the broken glass are latticed across his forehead, and one cheekbone is starting to swell up. Tomorrow it'll be a black eye, and everybody is going to know how he got it. It's already his win, as far as Prompto's concerned.
It's an advantage he won't be able to press for long, so he cuts a split-lipped grin and tightens the wrist straps on his gloves. "You wanna complain about it? Fine, you're entitled to your shitty opinions. But from now on, you better do it where I can't hear you, 'cause I don't run from mama's boys."
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timeasmymeasure
[FILL] -- Same Thing Every Year 1/2
Date: 2017-03-07 10:00 am (UTC)--
The news had stopped talking about it after what would have been his fifteenth birthday.
At first, it was the only thing anyone talked about. Assassination, accident, kidnapping, disappearance, illness, the tabloids and conspiracy theorists even concocted wild stories about Prince Noctis being some kind of urban legend that had never actually existed.
But the longer the world had to go without answers, no matter how many investigations were launched, no matter what political turmoil it stirred, the more clear it was that the prince was gone. For the average person, it became a sad story amid hundreds of others in the history of the world, with a creeping despair as they wondered, but didn't dare ask, what would happen now that the Crystal had no chosen king. For those parents whose children missed the quiet boy in black when they went to school, there was talk of building a new royal tomb, one whose sarcophagus would be much smaller and lighter than the others for having no bones to bury in it, a child's fishing pole in place of whatever noble sword he'd never have the chance to wield.
For those closer to the crown, it was a much less romantic tragedy. Regis had prepared himself for his son's death, not his disappearance; meditating upon the Crystal yielded nothing but that the prophecy that had named Noctis the King of Light still stood true. When the rumors of increasing military strength in Niflheim died down, a chilling thought had seized his heart and all but froze it in his chest: it only said who would save it, not when, not where. The cruelest irony of prophecy is that it must be interpreted, and the interpreters are human; if it was Noctis' task to retrieve the arms of his ancestors, perhaps it wasn't so simple as collecting them from their shrines. If it would cost Noctis' own life in the saving of the world, wouldn't it stand to reason that at least part of that task would be done in the hereafter? And wouldn't it be kinder in the long run to kill the boy before he knew enough about the world to miss it, still too innocent to be afraid or bitter about his own loss?
And with peace on the horizon, the Oracle safe in her kingdom and Niflheim no longer threatened by the presence of the promised prince, with the reigning King secure on his throne, the world continued on.
--
"Why do we go through this every year?"
"It's our responsibility to stay sharp: Study. Practice. Prepare." Ignis calmly turns to a new page in his notebook. "We serve the--"
"There's no prince to serve."
"He may not be here in the room with us, but so long as His Majesty insists that the prophecy stands and Noctis remains the King of Light, we have our duty to uphold. This is all we can do for him, so it's vital that we do it. Unless buttoning up your shirt is too much to ask, I suppose." The dress uniform looks good on him; the slim cut of the black silk jacket fits his frame beautifully despite the slightly-too-short sleeves. The adjustments had been made at the last minute, but adolescence is a swift bird, and Ignis had gone from overly-serious little boy to reasonably-serious young man almost overnight.
Gladio frowns, pacing like a caged lion as he fusses with his necktie. "Look. I've been keeping it to myself up until now, but even if the rest of the world can just go on hoping, you and I need to be realistic. We can't take the king at his word, not on this."
The look Ignis shoots him over the top of his glasses sends a stinging heat up the back of Gladio's neck. "If I were absolutely anyone else, what you just said would be enough to charge you with treason. But since it is me, you have a chance to explain. Don't waste it, or I'll run you out of the castle myself; words like that have no place on a Crownsguard's tongue."
"He's grieving." Gladio bristles at the threat, but there's no point in arguing about it. "And he's the only person who can commune with the Crystal on any level. We only think Noctis is still alive because Regis says he is. We can't prove he's being honest about what he senses, or that what he senses is actually what he senses and not just what he wants to believe. I'm not saying we should give up on it, just.. we need to have a plan ready if he--"
Ignis slams his hands on the desktop as he stands. He shoves the chair away and takes only a few short steps to confront the other boy directly. "That's enough. May the Six forbid anything happen to his Majesty, but if it does, that's the Kingsglaive's responsibility; we have our own."
"To Hell with our responsibility!" Gladio straightens, a very deep voice coming from a soon-to-be very deep chest rasping the back of his throat. "Don't you get it? Every year that passes is another year that he's not studying, not training, not... doing whatever it is that princes do to become kings. If he comes back-- If he came back today, do you know what he'd be? A sixteen-year-old who never finished the fourth grade! Every year that gap is going to get wider, and it's already bad enough as it is. We need a backup plan because this is a problem and ignoring it won't make it go away!"
"When."
"When... when what?"
Ignis snags a fistful of Gladio's lapel, and for a split second he thinks there's about to be a fight. His voice is so soft, it's barely audible over the faint sound of straining fabric in his grip ."You said if he comes back. You mean when."
For a few agonizing heartbeats, there's nothing, a yawning chasm of grief and silence, and then someone draws a shaky, watery breath, and it's over. There just aren't any words for it, and no reason to speak them aloud, the world that faces an endless night takes another trip around the sun.
"We should get going, or we're gonna be late."
"Mm."
--
"Same thing every year. I mean, jeez, just get over it already."
"Dude, don't jinx it. They let me skip detention for this."
"Yeah, well, I'm missing study hall, which means I'm also missing Valeria Lucernis in a skintight sweater, so you can go eat a bag of honey-dipped dicks."
"Why? Attendance isn't mandatory, you could have just gone to class."
"Not mandatory for you, maybe, but my mom's coming for the royal address, she'll kill me if she doesn't see me in the audience. She has this whole... thing about it, she always gets insanely over-protective and cries for a week afterward. Same thing every year, it's fucking stupid. How many funerals does one dead kid need?"
Claudius doesn't hear it until it's too late: the swing of a canvas bookbag as it slides off somone's shoulder, then a sudden impact between his shoulderblades and the copper bloom of blood in his mouth as his face hits the sidewalk.
"That's it, I'm not listening to any more of your crap. Not today."
The boy picks himself up off the ground and drags a red smear from his lip to his jawline as he wipes his face. "You better call the ambulance now, faggot, you're gonna be in the hospital for a month when I'm done with you."
Claudius Spatha is one of the worst people ever to set foot in a schoolyard. Six feet of corn-fed muscle, held back two years, hotly desired by every contact sport club in the district but too stupid to maintain the GPA to stay on a team, all wrapped up in violence and aggression like pork in a sausage casing.
Faced with two choices, either A, stand his ground and prepare to eat enough pavement to crap a parking lot, or B, run like the wind and get enough of a lead for Claudius to forget why he started in the first place, Prompto Argentum goes for a mix of both: he stands his ground and runs his mouth.
"I don't care what you do, so long as you shut the fuck up!" His voice only cracks a little bit. "Noctis wasn't just anybody, you know, he--"
The first punch knocks him deaf for a few seconds, all sound in the world replaced with a cloying buzz and little pops and sparks of color in the darkness. The second one lands in the pit of his stomach and leaves a sickened veneer over the pain of the impact; it makes his vision swim and pulls the sour taste of bile up out of his throat.
"Dude, just stay down." Blaseo, the boy missing the math test, backs away slowly; if he were a little braver, he'd be over there helping Prompto up, but they both know that's not on the table right now. Instead, he tugs on Claudius' sleeve, trying to urge him back on the path toward the elementary school. "Look, you made your point, okay? Let's just go."
"Fine, whatever. Y'hear that? I'm letting you off easy today on account of your dead boyfriend, so run along home, chickenhead. "
The two of them almost make it a good ten feet. Then there's the scuffle of shoes scraping the sidewalk, the patting of skinned palms being wiped on uniform slacks, and the thick sound of blood being spat into the grass. Prompto swallows, still clenched all over with pain. His eyes are brimming with tears, there's a sharp stitch in his chest when he breathes, and there are so many words still jamming his throat shut. She gets protective because the ceremony makes her worry about you. Not every parent gets to take their kid home from school, you asshole. They don't have this ceremony just for Noctis.
The image of a boy dressed all in black flits against his memory, too cool to be approached but never really acting like it; a laid-back little shadow that went where it pleased and didn't judge, and then.. disappeared. Prompto had given up on losing weight then, but he'd slimmed down a lot anyway; turns out leading a one-man search team is good exercise, especially if you do it every night and weekend for six years straight.
It's a bad idea. He knows it's a bad idea, and although his better judgment is screaming at him to quit while he's ahead, his body is sprinting forward almost of his own volition, closing the distance between him and the only problem in his life he can actually touch. After all the years of chasing a shadow he still can't find, getting two fistfuls of a uniform blazer is so satisfying that he barely feels it when he body-checks Claudius into a lamppost and shatters it.
He stands over Claudius for only a few precious seconds, suddenly hyper-aware of his surroundings and the furious lummox scrambling to his feet. Blaseo is already gone, taken off running and hell-bent on getting as far away as possible. No allies this time, no mercy, no voice of reason. Just a big, stupid bully, and a skinny nerd who's finally had enough.
When Claudius is up and standing again, beading lines of blood from the broken glass are latticed across his forehead, and one cheekbone is starting to swell up. Tomorrow it'll be a black eye, and everybody is going to know how he got it. It's already his win, as far as Prompto's concerned.
It's an advantage he won't be able to press for long, so he cuts a split-lipped grin and tightens the wrist straps on his gloves. "You wanna complain about it? Fine, you're entitled to your shitty opinions. But from now on, you better do it where I can't hear you, 'cause I don't run from mama's boys."