Prompt Post

[ffxv_kinkmod]

 Welcome to Round One of the FFXV Kink Meme!

CLOSED for prompts | OPEN for fills

Please have a look at the extended rules here.

The important rules in short:

• Post anonymously.
• Negative comments on other people's prompts (kink-shaming, pairing-bashing etc.) and personal attacks of any kind will not be tolerated.
• One prompt per comment. Warnings for common triggers and squicks are encouraged, but not required.
• Prompts should follow the format: Character/character, prompt.
• Keep prompts to a reasonable length; prompts should not be detailed story outlines.
• Fills should have the word "Fill:" at the start of the subject line.
• Otherwise please avoid changing the subject line.

Please direct any questions or report any problems to the Ask a mod post.

Prompt, write, draw, comment, and most importantly have fun!

(You can also check out our Pinboard for Filled or Unfilled prompts)

UPDATE 12/30/16: I'm looking for some help! Details here.  (I'm always looking for more pinners; this is an open invitation.)

I've added/clarified some rules to make life easier to my pinners. Please refrain from changing the subject lines except when filling or updating a fill. It makes it easier for us to keep track of what we've already looked at. Thank you so much!

UPDATE 1/28/17: We've opened up a Drabble Tree post! Go check it out. 

UPDATE 2/21/2017: ROUND ONE IS CLOSED FOR PROMPTS. Please feel free to continue posting fills. Round Two will open for prompts and fills on 3/1/2017.

 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Fam, I got you. I'm working on a fill right now and hoping to post within the week. I dunno how often you check this though, since you posted this prompt like a month ago, but I'll post it on AO3 too and link it here.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP but still so excited for your fill!

[(Anonymous)]

OP here and still checking back!

I am so excited now, looking forward to seeing what you write!

[(Anonymous)]

Right, so - this is quite a few weeks later than I said it would be, and I have to apologise for that first. I never intended for this piece to be more than 3k, and instead it kept growing and I've rewritten it a few times trying to keep it from getting too long and I'm not quite happy with it, but I decided to stop dithering and fussing over it and just post it now. So yeah, hope it's ok:

~~

When Ignis is five years old, he is placed under the care of his uncle, a steward at the palace. HIs parents are killed on a research outing, studying the formations of old Lucian ruins in the valleys of Cleigne, while Ignis sleeps in the spare room of his uncle's apartment in Insomnia: this is the first time that tragedy visits Ignis in his slumber, without his knowing or sensing. The aftermath is, after all, what is left to live with.

The loss isn't something he completely understands for a while because his parents simply do not return. A Behemoth, he hears them say at the funeral. He's only heard of them in stories. He finally understands they are not coming back when he hears the priest and all the guests speaking about them in past tense and he holds his uncle's hand and cries. They're gone.

But children are resilient and life goes on even after the worst of things and so does Ignis. This is his first lesson in resilience.

--

When Ignis is six years old, he meets royalty. He does not understand the enormity of the occasion, or how it will change his life, but he is impressed by the grandeur of the Citadel which is grander even than his own home. He is taken to a large room with tall windows over-looking an open courtyard. The furnishings are all child-sized and there are toys strewn across the sun-dappled floor. There are some people seated in the corner of the room - a woman dressed as a maid and a robed man, later introduced as the Royal Nursemaid and the Shield to the King respectively - and two others sat on the floor, one of whom is the most impeccably dressed man Ignis has ever seen (and Ignis had never thought anyone could dress more impeccably than his uncle, even living in the palace and surrounded by well-dressed members of the court and servants alike).

It is this man who rises from the floor to greet him with a kind smile. He has dark hair and twinkling eyes and a regal bearing that makes Ignis think of the storybooks he likes to read; the ones his father had always read to him. His uncle tells him to bow and introduce himself and Ignis does in exactly the way his mother had taught him - one hand over his heart.

The man tells him Ignis is a fine, strong name indeed - one to live up to - and turns to show them a younger boy behind him who looks like a porcelain doll, small and pale, sprawled over a puzzle and looking utterly confounded.

"Noctis and I are a little stuck. But your uncle tells us you're exceptionally clever and might help us, young Ignis."

He feels a little sceptical at that, but his teacher has told him he's clever too, so maybe he can help. He'll do his best, certainly, because Ignis is a curious soul and likes to try everything if he can and puzzles are his favourite.

"Hello, I'm Ignis." He tells the little boy and recieves a wide-eyed stare and an offer of a puzzle piece in return.

"Iggy."

"No, it's Ignis. Ig-nis. Ignis." He even sounds it out slowly, but the response is the same, so he despairs. He's just a baby, he supposes, and babies aren't very good at saying names. So he takes the puzzle piece and examines all the pieces and shows the smaller boy what he's doing as he does it. "See: you put this bit here and this bit here and you turn this one around like this. And then we can press the button."

The thing lights up when he completes it and Ignis feels terribly proud of himself for figuring it out, and prouder still when the boy beside him laughs and claps in delight. The adults around him are beaming and his uncle ruffles his hair and Noctis pulls him over to look at something else with an imperious "Iggy, look".
He is nearly twenty when he learns that moment was a test, from an offhand comment his uncle makes, and that he had passed with flying colours.

--

From that day forward, Noctis is a steady fixture in his life. He is given a room in the palace, attached to the Prince's quarters through a private door, though most of the time he goes home with his uncle. The woman from that day is Myrna - his nanny, he learns, and now Ignis' too - and she cares for the both of them alike. She and his uncle strike up an easy friendship when he drops Ignis off with her in the morning before he attends to his own work in the palace and the days fall into a routine when Ignis starts school when leaves turn green on the trees.

He has breakfast with her and a sleepy, fussy Noctis and he makes sure he has what he needs in his bag as he listens to her cajole the Prince into eating everything on his plate (it never works). He tries to help her sometimes, tries to impart his wisdom as the older wiser one (he thinks it would be more fun to be the older wiser one if Noctis listened to him more) but that works as often as it doesn't.
He goes to school - the same one that all the noble's children go to in the innermost district of Insomnia, many of whom will inevitably fill the court and the ranks of the Crownsguard. As such, while the first few years of school are the normal elementary learning, the schedules become more flexible to allow for students training for family responsibilities.

In the year above, there is an Amicitia - a wild-haired boy of striking athleticism that Ignis recognises from his resemblance to the King's right hand, Lord Clarus Amicitia, who is as familiar to him as the King. His name is Gladiolus and Ignis sees him pass in hallways and during physical education lessons, hears of his antics through the schoolyard grapevine, and while he becomes a familiar face in the halls of both the school and palace, they remain friendly acquaintances for years, with different friends and different schedules and circles that overlap only occasionally.

Ignis likes school, likes the things he learns, likes the teachers who always seem pleased with his work, likes his classmates, the games they play together (particularly when he wins with some inherent competitiveness) and being around others his own age. He makes friends with others whose families have also served the monarchs of Lucis for generations, though as children, these things hold little relevance to them except for a vague awareness of their environment.

He has special lessons too, a tutor who teaches him how to play chess, alongside the usual classes at school - he ends up trying to play against everyone he knows (Myrna and his uncle mostly) and even tries to teach Noctis, though that doesn't take at all. His favourite subjects are history, much of it borne of the tales his uncles tells him about the origins of many of the palace's relics and paintings, and geography - his uncle buys him a giant map of Lucis to pin on his wall and he pores over it, wondering where his parents visited before their deaths.

And when he comes back, Myrna and Noctis are there: Myrna helps him with his homework and Noctis does his best to distract him because he wants to play.
Always, "Iggy, let's go outside" or "Iggy, read me this" and once even "Iggy, can I come to school with you?"

Most of the time, Ignis gives in in the end (not for the last one, of course, and Ignis is glad for it because having to look after Noctis at school too would be too much) and it makes life interesting. He thinks it must be what it's like to have a little brother, from what he hears other classmates say: Noctis is as cute and annoying and exasperating as they describe their own siblings to be (though Gladiolus says all his sister does is cry, poop and sleep). He is always there when Ignis is trying to do anything, always curious about all of Ignis's things, always following him around and demanding attention.

But Ignis enjoys reading to him under a fort they make of blankets until they fall asleep; playing whatever games his wild imagination could come up with; bubble-baths with toys; sneaking out from under Myrna's watch with him to look at the stars from the tower and match them to the constellations in his book. He likes to feed the cats that Noctis finds behind the royal stables and sneaking into the kitchens to steal sweet-treats as they wait for the King to finish his meetings (they get caught more often than not, though rarely punished, but it is a game) - so Noctis might as well be his brother.

Besides, Ignis doesn't mind indulging him. He can understand Noctis' loneliness, with as much time as he comes to spend sitting outside meeting rooms with him waiting for his father - at least Ignis could go to school and be around others instead of having to spend all day in the Citadel with Myrna, as fun as she could be.

And Myrna is exceedingly fun - she always has a hundred different ways to keep them both entertained. She doubles as Noct's governess and knows about lots of interesting books that Ignis looks forward to burying his nose into. She tells them both hilarious stories, both disturbingly real and outrageously fictional. She also believes in practical learning and she and Noctis go on 'expeditions' - Ignis finds out about most of them after the fact from various souvenirs that Noctis brings home (that Myrna allows him to keep), but he joins them on occasion and has fun learning about even the things he already knows about doing things like catching tadpoles to look at them in a jar and conducting science experiments with supplies stolen from the kitchen. Noctis has a love for animals and gentle hands, which she indulges as a keen naturalist herself - they spend hours watching all sorts of creatures and she shows them how to approach them. Once, Ignis finds a baby bird fallen out of its nest and they take care of it together - it heals well and comes back from time to time and Noctis laughs when it lands in Ignis's hair and tries to groom him (and it is Ignis' turn to laugh when it poops on Noctis' shoulder).

She has a passion for fishing, which she bestows upon Noctis too (Ignis finds it unbearably boring, but it is the only time Noctis manages to actually sit still for longer than a few minutes, so it has some merits).

At times…at times, when she speaks, Ignis is reminded painfully of his mother who is. Was. A geologist. She used to have books upon books and a vast collection of samples - rocks, stones, geodes, crystals - that she used to tell Ignis about in a voice so similar to Myrna's. And her hands are just as rough, her touch just as gentle and Ignis can't help but love her like one.

--

When Ignis is eight years old, he sees the King cry. It is the first time he sees an adult cry in his life.

It is an accident - Ignis is retrieving some of his things from the Prince's quarters - but a moment that stays with him forever: the sight of the most powerful man in the world hunched over his child with tears in his eyes, weeping silently. When he looks, Noctis is tucked into his bed and sleeping soundly - he does not seem hurt and so Ignis does not understand why. And indeed, noone acts like anything is wrong after that day or tells him that it might be.

And though he closes the door and silently tiptoes back to his own room, feeling like an intruder on an extremely private moment, that moment disturbs his eight year old view of the world and leaves him with a sense of foreboding and a deep-seated fear. For Noctis, he thinks.

--

Ignis is nine years old when Noctis nearly dies and it is the second time tragedy visits him in his slumber. They had organised a fishing expedition, he remembers, [to catch a Lucian catfish]. He remembers Drautos telling them there was a particularly good place to catch them to the south of the city, though that meant they would need to travel slightly further out on a road that would take them near the edge of the wall.

But Ignis wakes up fevered that day and Myrna insists he rest and sleep. Noctis looks forlorn as he leaves, telling him he'd bring him back a souvenir, but Ignis is glad to stay in bed. His days are often so full that being able to do so is a luxury even in sickness. He will see them later, he thinks, with Noctis probably impatient to show him the spoils of his adventure.

Instead he wakes to a nightmare.

[(Anonymous)]

There was an attack, he is told. A demon somehow infiltrated the wall, he is told. What he finds is that Myrna is dead and Noctis is close to it, comatose from grievous wounds and blood loss.

His rushes to the hospital with his uncle in the early hours of the morning, the sun still below the horizon and the sky fading into pink. They meet the King there, flanked as always by his Shield, and Ignis finds his eyes drawn past the troubled looks on the faces of the Crownsguard to the bloodstains on his normally pristine clothes. He should have been there, he thinks. It makes him feel sick and numb and small.

Noctis lays small and pale in the hospital, washed out like the sheets on which he lies, hair an ink-like stain across the pillow. He is surrounded by the glow and hum and beeping of machines, connected to them at the centre of a web of tubes and wires, like the unfortunate prey of some giant spider. Ignis has always had a good imagination and he thinks the oxygen mask looks like it is swallowing his small face. He has never seen Noctis be so still.

Time feels frozen, a baited breath of hope and fear as they wait for Noctis to wake. Or that is how Ignis pictures it. They bury Myrna as Noctis sleeps but none of it feels real: her funeral is held in the morning and there is hazy fog that hangs low on the ground making everything hazy and dreamlike. It soaks Ignis's clothes in a fine mist and the cold of it reminds him that it isn't a dream at all.

But there is a cotton-like fuzz in his head that is stopping him from feeling anything but numb - he doesn't feel like there is any room for other thoughts in his head. He sits with his books in the private hospital room where Noctis lies, reading out loud to fill the silence (he dithers over the book they were reading together, unsure if reading ahead would be a betrayal and instead just re-reads a favourite), leaving only occasionally for basic needs or when the King comes, to allow him some time alone with his son. After his second visit, a little Carbuncle charm appears on the bedside table.

More often than not though, Ignis just moves to the corner of the room, vacating the seat by the bed for the King who sits with his son's small hand in his - the TV flickers to newscasts reporting on the Prince's precarious condition and the nation's concern for him, then back to some cartoon that Noctis normally enjoys. Once, there is a spokesperson from the palace trying to sound calm and reassuring while giving nothing away and Ignis finds it makes him even more anxious.

Noctis wakes after five days. It doesn't last long - his eyes flutter open for a few moments, then shut again, but the sleep he falls into then is much more natural. The kingdom breathes a sigh of relief, but for Ignis it feels like a dam has broken. The frozen feeling in his chest makes way for an avalanche of emotions with the thunderous realisation of how close Noctis had come to dying and the fact that Myrna had. She's gone. She was gone she was gone she was gone. He shuts himself in the playroom where they had spent most of their time and cries, surrounded by the books and puzzles they had been working on before she left that day. When his uncle finds him crying, he buries his head in his uncle's chest and wraps his arms around him, wails until his eyes are puffed and red, 'til his head hurts and he desperately wants to sleep.

Instead, he dries his eyes and washes his face and goes back to the hospital where Noctis is being seen to by a crowd of doctors while the King stands resolutely by the side of the bed. When he approaches the bed, Noctis murmurs confusedly at them both, slurring his words slightly as he mumbles about a dream and Carbuncle - Ignis hums at him, not particularly wanting to explain what has happened. To him or Myrna. Looking across the bed, the King looks similarly disinclined, but they are spared when his eyes close.

Noctis sleeps, wakes then sleeps again, gaining a little more lucidity each time. Over the course of the next few weeks, he is slowly untangled from the web of machines around him. He is still weak, still recovering, but no longer in critical condition. And at first it seems like it will be smooth sailing from there, even if progress is slow. Noctis asks about Myrna just once on one particularly lucid day, and since it is only Ignis in the room at the time, it is Ignis who must answer, though he does not want to. Saying it out loud is something he can't quite bear and the silence stretches out until he forces the words past his lips with only the slightest tremble in his voice (he has some faint memory of the way his uncle had explained things to him all those years ago and tries his best to mimic that). It is Ignis who gets to watch the concoction of grief play across his small face, his large dark eyes a transparent window to all of his thoughts. Ignis is practised at reading all of it and he can recognise much of what he felt - still feels - when he learnt of the accident. What he isn't sure of is the guilt he thinks he sees flickering underneath, but he recognises that too. He should have been there.

Noctis becomes withdrawn after that: quiet and somber and watchful in way that he has never been before. It isn't a manner that Ignis recognises on him, given the way Noctis was before. His gaze is downturned, where before it was wide and bright, like something inside has flickered and gone out. And he isn't sleeping well - Ignis knows this because he stays with him overnight and watches his restlessness turns and the droop of his eyes are mirrored on Ignis's face. It makes Ignis feel helpless, but he finds sleep just as hard to come by, keeps tiptoeing to look at Noctis in the night to reassure himself that he is still there until Noctis tires of his coming and going and they end up falling asleep together as the sun rises.

As soon as his condition is stable enough, the King has Noctis moved back to the palace, wanting him to recover in familiar surroundings. For a while, he is essentially bedbound. When the doctor comes to check that he is well enough to get out of bed, they find more complications. Noctis cries out when the doctor turns his legs a certain way and then again when he examines his back. In addition, he seems perpetually exhausted, tiring quickly after small bouts of activity. Ignis watches from the corner of the room, listens to the murmurs between the King and the physician, the slant of their eyes and shake of their heads, the way Noctis hunches against the pillows propping him up. He feels helpless, opens his mouth to say something comforting and realises he doesn't know what to say. He tries to think of what Myrna would say, but the thought only makes his voice stick in his throat, so instead he clambers onto the bed and sits close so their shoulders touch.

The next day they bring in a wheelchair, child-sized to fit, and the King lifts Noctis into it, strokes his hair and asks Ignis if he would like to join them for a stroll in the garden. Ignis volunteers to push and the King passes the handles to him and walks beside them instead, making small talk with him about his progress in various lessons. Noctis doesn't particularly seem to care to join the conversation, but he perks up a little during their walk - after weeks of being stuck indoors, the fresh air and surroundings of the beautifully cultivated royal gardens do him a considerable amount of good.

It is not long after that the King and Noctis leave for Tenebrae - his uncle explains to Ignis that Queen Sylva was descended from the line of Oracles, as were all their royal line, and was learned in the art of healing. Tenebrae has some of the best doctors in the world, better even than Insomnia - so if there was anywhere in the world that Noctis could get better, it was there.

And so, for months, his life falls into a strangely empty routine of which Noctis had always been the centre and Myrna had always been the accompaniment. Without them there, things are…quiet. Quiet in a way that makes Ignis restless. His friends make a good effort at distracting him, but there is an uncomfortable weight that sits in his stomach that stops his smile from stretching too wide, his laughter from being too loud. So learns to sharpen his focus and quiet his thoughts on the sports field to the praise of his teachers and friends as a gifted athlete.

There is little word from Tenebrae for a long while, until there comes a letter in a childish scrawl that he recognises - in the envelope there is a hand-drawn picture of two people in a field of flowers, (there is also a dried, wilted blue flower that must have been fresh when it was put in there but is now not quite pressed between pages of heavy paper) and another talks about the Princess Lunafreya of Tenebrae, her dogs, the hills blooming blue and the scent of salt in the air. Ignis stares at the loopy, shaky writing and remembers how Noctis' right hand was still heavily bandaged before he had left and wonders if that means the healing is working with hope blooming in his heart. He picks up the flower from where it has fallen, drooping on the table, and holds it to his nose to see if there is any scent left to it (it's faint, but there, a sweet, light fragrance that fades quickly and Ignis that if the hills were covered in this, then the whole of Tenebrae must smell this way). He sleeps a little lighter that night.

His birthday comes while Noctis is away and Ignis spends it with his schoolfriends - they go out for burgers and arcade games and Ignis wins at most of them. His friends from his sports teams give him a challenge on the dance machine where his footwork takes a considerable amount of concentration - he wins nine times consecutively and is defeated on the tenth round, tired and sweaty and high on victory. His cake is a royal special, baked by the palace chef as a favour to his uncle, who gives him a book of advanced chess tactics that Ignis can't wait to try. And he finds another letter from Tenebrae waiting for him that rains glitter and confetti when he opens it, a card with more childish figures (one of them with his own sandy hair and glasses before a cake with an enormous candle) and another blue flower pressed between the pages so that it scented the paper itself. It makes him smile because Noctis has never been a gifted artist, but has always put forth the effort. It must have taken him a while.

There is also a beautiful golden lapel pin and a post-script that says: 'Luna helped me pick this when I told her you always dress smart :)'. Underneath, in rather beautiful cursive is a note from the Princess wishing him a happy birthday and hoping to meet him one day. Ignis thinks the Princess of Tenebrae must be a gracious person indeed to be so thoughtful.

--

News of Niflheim's attack on the royal party in Tenebrae comes when Ignis is in class. The lesson is stopped when an aide comes running into the classroom to tell them to gather in the assembly hall and teachers and students from all over the school listen in terse silence to the news being played on the screen over the podium. Ignis feels his heart leap into his mouth and the crowd around him shifts, exchanging looks between because no-one knows what this means for Insomnia (across the seats, Ignis meets the eyes of Gladiolus Amicitia, who is white as a sheet). Both members of the royal house are reported missing, along with the First Minister Amicitia and a retinue of the personal guard, but the Wall still held over the city which meant that the King, at least, was still alive. If it fell, they would be prey to all the dangers it held at bay, from Niflheim and the daemons alike and secondary defence measures would have to be taken. At worst, it meant evacuation - an outcome that was unbeaarable for Insomnians who had enjoyed centuries of peace and safety, conflict far from its walls. As long as it stood, there was hope.

They are sent home after that, and the school gates are crowded with various cars sent to pick the children up. Ignis finds himself next to the Amicitia heir and finds himself meeting his eyes again as they wait. From what he sees, he thinks Gladiolus is the only one in the entire city who is feeling the same things he is - his father is there after all.

"My father's strong," It's an announcement made into silence, but Ignis understands him immediately. Gladiolus's fists are clenched tight, his forever bruised and cut knuckles white from the pressure. His eyes are wide and dark and alight with some belief that Ignis can feel stirring in his own chest. "He'll get them back here."

With his gaze so fierce and expectant, Ignis can only nod in response, as if his belief is transferable through a look. But Gladiolus turns with a satisfied grunt towards a car by which a silver-haired man holds open the door. He doesn't know what makes him put his faith in those words, but he sits by the radio for the next few days with a stubborn kind of prayer in his heart. The nation waits for more news with bated breath.

As difficult as it was to get news out of Tenebrae, even the latest reports were old information by at least a day if not more. Media reports veer between urgency, telling people to keep emergency supplies ready in case of a mass evacuation and a surreal serenity that urges citizens to keep calm and carry on as normal. Then it comes: the King and Prince are alive and are on their way home, accompanied by the First Minister and a few surviving members of the guard, but Queen Sylva of Tenebrae is dead and the territory of Tenebrae is annexed by Niflheim, with the Prince and Princess spared and taken as wards of the empire.

Ignis feels relief most of all, so strong that it drowns the worry and everything else, makes his body sag as his body releases the tension he didn't know he was holding. They're ok. They're coming home.

--

[(Anonymous)]

The Noctis that comes home after Tenebrae is even more withdrawn than he was after the Marilith attack. He is quiet and haunted and Ignis thinks something must have broken inside of him, because Ignis cannot see the brightness in his eyes anymore, just a gaze that seems miles away from the present. He is disinterested in everything and Ignis watches him from the corner of the room during his physio sessions as he struggles through his exercises silently, then sits quietly in his room without moving until he eventually falls asleep.

The creeping feeling of helplessness is almost suffocating and reaches its peak when darkness falls and Noctis has a night-terror so vicious, he does not stop screaming even when he wakes.

Ignis is the first to hear it, sleeping in the next room when he is startled awake by the desperate sound of the Prince's voice. He fumbles with the handle of their connecting door, wild with panic, and enters to the sight of Noctis struggling with the sheets around him. He is followed by guards bursting through the main doors of the suite some scant moments later and when they try to wake him, they are knocked aside with blue bursts of magic. One of the guards manages to get behind him and pin him against his chest, but Noctis does not stop writhing and kicking, and his eyes are wide open now, though unseeing. Another guard goes for help, calls the doctor, calls the King, and Ignis can't stop shouting Noctis' name, pleading with him to wake up.

In the end, they have to sedate him, but the sight haunts Ignis for days after and stays with him always from then. He tries asking about it, in increasingly roundabout ways, but Noctis never wants to talk about it, becomes distant when Ignis tries to probe about what happened the day of the attack on Tenebrae, and Ignis wonders what he saw. But after surviving the violence of the Marilith and Niflheim's Magitek troopers, he supposes to himself that the trauma can manifest in many ways.

So he stays away from that subject from then, feeling that it was better for Noctis to want to talk about it, than be forced to, and thinks of asking about other things. Thinks, but does not ask, because for a few days after the terrible nightmare, Noctis is not open to anything and Ignis just sits beside him doing his own homework, hoping that at least companionable silence is better than nothing. It is as if Noctis is a boat unmoored, he thinks, drifting away from them all. He does not know how to bridge that distance, but thankfully something happens.

It is as they sit in the tea room, which opens out into the Queen's garden, that he hears it through the open patio door: a soft barking, movement rustling the flowering Duscaean lilac-bushes. Noctis turns, the first time he has shown such alertness in days and Ignis wonders in the back of his mind why none of them had thought to draw Noctis out of himself with his soft spot for animals. Noctis gets out of his seat with care and wanders slowly to the slowly to the doorway, lingering there until the sight of a small pale-furred dog with distinctive markings makes him run outside.

Sudden concern, and not a little curiosity, makes Ignis follow him, but the dog seems more than friendly, gambolling around Noctis's legs and jumping at him, and Ignis stops. His ears must be deceiving him, he thinks, because he can hear Noctis laughing. It's the first time he's heard that sound in nearly a year.

Noctis doesn't even seem to remember Ignis's presence though, and Ignis watches him laugh with the dog till he falls onto the lawn exhausted, chest heaving and smile fading. The dog curls around him and Noctis buries his face in its fur and begins to cry. The dog raises its head to look at Ignis then and that's when Ignis approaches the pair, sitting as close as he dares, fingers itching to stroke the soft looking fur.

"Noct?"

He doesn't receive an answer straight away, lets the silence go because it isn't uncomfortable, just curious and a little worried - when Noctis does answer, his voice is muffled by fur.

"…this is Pryna. She's a messenger, sent by Luna. Luna's ok."

He lifts his face away from the dog's - Pryna's - chest, but doesn't look up, just plays with Pryna's ears. "Luna's ok." he whispers it softly to himself, and though his cheeks are tear-stained, he is no longer crying. Ignis hopes he has reached some catharsis.

There is a red notebook in his hand and Ignis wonders where he got it from. "This is a secret." he tells Ignis when he opens it. Noctis doesn’t lean it towards him but just the act of opening it in front of Ignis is a show of trust, so Ignis does not look over his shoulder to read it. He just watches the flicker of each emotion as it passes over his face as he reads it: the way his eyes widen, his lips purse, his nose scrunches. When he's done, he looks to Ignis and his eyes look a little clearer than they did before. Still unmoored perhaps, but drifting to shore rather than further out to sea.

"What is she like?" Ignis asks. He is thankful for her, he thinks, if not a little jealous that she has the power to ground Noctis through words on a page when Ignis and all the people of the palace have been struggling for so long. But he wants to meet her, to thank her, to know more about her.

And that seems to be the best way to get Noctis to open up - after such a long silence, it is like a dam. They sit until darkness falls, just like that on the lawn with Pryna curled between them, talking they way they hadn't since before the Marilith's attack, seeming so long ago now. And he's glad, because he's been missing Noctis and he's been missing Myrna, and there's no chance for one of them to come back.

But with Noct - it's just a matter of time. Ignis can wait.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, but this is an AMAZING Ignis character study. It genuinely feels like it could be a prequel novel to canon. A++, would fave and consider canon forever.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, that is high praise indeed - I'm really happy you liked it and felt it was canon-consistent, because I have so many head!canons :D

[(Anonymous)]

OP here!

Just, thank you? This is beautiful and everything I hoped for? From the beginning with Myrna and Noctis' backstory in the fine art of frog-catching to the end and him trusting Ignis enough to show him the diary and everything of Ignis and his thoughts and feelings, it was perfect.

(Also thank you for bonus Tiny Gladio, that was also great)

[(Anonymous)]

Aaah, I'm soooo happy you liked it - I dithered over posting it so much! Honestly, I could have kept adding to this forever, I have so many head!canons that wanted to be included, but then this would never have been posted. (Probably would have helped me to have a beta reader too, lol, cos I just noticed some bits now I've posted and can't edit ^^;)

(I kind of really want to do companion pieces for Gladio and Prompto now too, because I feel like canon has so many bits we can explore and fill in. But I'm glad you liked the cameo)

[(Anonymous)]

Man I would LOVE to see more from this verse, it's just a really rich time-period for the bros and you write them so well as kids?

Anyway, thank you again for the fill. I know anonfills are hard 'cause there's no kudos system and no way to edit so I really appreciate your awesome, awesome fic <3