Noctis was unconscious and unresponsive.

  Ignis was unconscious and unresponsive.

  Gladio spent most of his time standing outside their respective doorways, making sure that no uninvited guests visited the two. He used to stand guard at the Citadel, he said, he was used to it.

  Prompto didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Standing guard with Gladio just reminded him of the hours spent in a submissive bow waiting for Sir to notice him so he avoided that, but he seemed to just be in the way of the doctors when he was in either Noctis’s or Ignis’s rooms. Consequently, he found he spent a lot of time out in the city, trying to help where he could with the recovery effort.

  Now that the waters had receded, temporary shelter and body identification and disposal were the top priorities. Were they in Gralea and the bodies soldiers, Prompto knew that their barcodes would be scanned and recorded and the bodies burned. Simple, quick, easy, no chance for the bodies to rot or contaminate drinking water. Here, it wasn’t so simple. There were no barcodes, and the public wanted to have control of their own dead, to have funerary arrangements how they wanted them. To that end, a warehouse had been emptied of stock and all bodies recovered were laid out there. Prompto volunteered to use a separate memory card and spent the days taking photos of each of the recovered bodies. The photos were then used to help the relatives identify their missing family. Only when someone was identified would Prompto then go in and help get that body ready for transport to the family. His upbringing and familiarity with death and all its stages meant that the sights and smells were not new to Prompto. The people of Altissia on the other hand seemed ill-equipped to deal with how fast bodies began to decompose when the most basic utilities had been knocked out.

  Each evening he returned to the room he and Gladio shared, exhausted and smelling of rot. He would take long showers to try to rid himself of the smell and then visit Noct and Ignis to get an update. With Noctis, there was no change. Within the first day, his lungs had cleared, but he remained in a coma. The doctors could not determine why. They suggested that it was exhaustion and that he would wake soon, but Prompto wasn’t convinced.

  Ignis’s situation was more complicated. The doctors weren’t sure about his right eye. It was damaged, but might heal, they said. For now, bandages around his head kept him from trying to use it. His left eye was another story. The doctors had determined that it would never see again; the burns were too severe, the eye and eyelid damaged beyond repair. It had to be removed, else it cause a lifetime of pain.

  The day that surgery had taken place, Prompto had not gone down to the warehouses. He did not want to be around death when Ignis was going through that. Instead, he had stayed in the room, watching, heart in his throat and waiting. He could not see much past the doctors, though that was probably a good thing. It had been bad enough for Prompto when doctors insisted on stitching the wound on his head. For that, Gladio had remained by his side, a hand on his shoulder, a constant reminder that he wasn’t with the empire, that this was different. Seeing what they were doing to Ignis, though, while he lay there helpless and unconscious, a dear friend under their knife and at their complete mercy? He didn’t trust himself not to react to that, even as he couldn’t bear to be away.

  It was several days later before Ignis woke. Prompto had switched the memory cards over, leaving the one with the dead bodies on it on the bedside table, and was flicking through the photos he had taken. It was a soft groan that first alerted him to a change and, looking up, he saw Ignis starting to move, trying to raise his hand.

  “Ignis?” he said hesitantly.

  Ignis turned his head towards Prompto. “Prom?” His voice was croaky.

  Prompto smiled, relieved, and switched his camera for a glass of water. “Here, I’ve got some water for you,” he said. Slipping a hand under his head, he lifted it slightly and brought the glass to his lips so he could drink.

  Ignis only took a few sips though before he turned his head away and asked, “Noct, where-”

  “He’s alive,” Prompto cut in as he helped Ignis lay back down again. “He’s… in a coma, but doesn’t seem injured. It’s just like he’s sleeping.”

  “And you? And Gladio?”

  “We’re both alright. We’re in the Secretary’s offices. They’ve made it up as a kind of private hospital of sorts. She’s letting us stay here till you and Noct are both back on your feet. Speaking of, how’s your pain? They’ve been giving you a lot of elixirs to try to help with it.” Prompto didn’t mention that, as with everything else, the city was running low on all their curatives and he and Gladio had largely been pulling from their own personal store.

  “Smarts a little,” Ignis admitted, so Prompto helped him take another elixir.

  “Just… rest okay? I’ll let the doctors know you’ve woken up so they can give you a proper reporting of what’s going on, I’d probably just bungle it,” Prompto said though truth be told, he was chickening out; he didn’t want to be the one to tell Ignis that one eye was gone and the other may never see again.

  “Right. I’ll… do that,” Ignis said, his voice already sounding dazed from the elixir doing its job. Prompto waited until Ignis’s breathing evened out into sleep before he got up to tell the doctors and Gladio that he was awake.

  -l-l-l-

  A loud crash jerked Prompto awake and instantly his gun was in his hands, eyes darting around, searching for any sign of danger. But there was no danger in the room, only him and Ignis, and Ignis was leaning against a table, breathing heavily, shoulders shaking silently. Prompto sent his gun away when he realised what had woken him: Ignis had swept his arm across the table, knocking everything on it to the ground.

  “Iggy,” Prompto said quietly, standing up, but he froze when Ignis spun to face him with a surprised gasp. He had pulled the bandages from his face, they were hanging loosely around his neck, and his blind eye swung left and right, trying and failing to see him. What shocked Prompto, however, was the bloody tears running down Ignis’s cheeks from his right eye.

  Ignis closed his eye then took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. When he spoke, his voice was calm, but the words were clipped. “I’m sorry, Prompto,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “I do,” Prompto said simply. Walking over to where Ignis was standing, avoiding the broken glass, he took a hold of the bandages, unwrapping them from around his neck. “You got hit with the life fucking sucks stick, and now you’re trying to figure out how to handle it.” He used the edge of the bandages to gently wipe away the bloody tears before carefully winding them around Ignis’s head again.

  Ignis gave a bitter bark of laughter at that and said, “Nonetheless, it was uncalled for and I apologise for it. Had I known you were there, I would not have… I would have comported myself with more decorum.”

  It was Prompto’s time to snort with laughter at that. “Comported yourself with more decorum? Only you could quote an etiquette textbook when you should be raging against the astrals right now.” Taking Iggy’s arm, he guided the man to a seat, getting him to sit down. “Besides. I seem to remember you, all of you, telling me I wasn’t alone anymore, that I didn’t have to fight my Inurement alone. Well, this is no different. We’re here for you, one hundred percent. And we’ll help you with whatever you need.”

  Ignis didn’t respond, but he did accept a glass of water when Prompto offered it, and didn’t throw it in his face, so that was a start as far as Prompto was concerned. He started to gather up the broken glass, allowing Ignis to sit in silence but ensuring he made enough noise so that the man knew he was still there.

  “Noct is… still asleep, is he not?” Ignis said eventually, as Prompto was dumping the last of the glass into the bin.

  “Yeah,” Prompto replied. “He’ll stir a bit every now and then. And whimper as though he’s caught in a nightmare. But that’s it.” Truth be told, Prompto was just as worried about Noct as he was about Ignis. He hadn’t really shown any sign of waking and that scared Prompto; he was afraid that his friend might never wake again.

  As though predicting Prompto’s emotions, or perhaps just hearing his fears in his voice, Ignis said, “He has recovered from such bouts before.”

  “He has?” Prompto asked, unable to stop the small kernel of hope that latched on at the news.

  “The circumstances were different. Last time he was out this long, he was a child and had fractured his spine. He was unconscious even after the wounds themselves had healed,” Ignis said, his voice gaining in confidence as he spoke. “If he warp strikes too much, he can fall into what King Regis called Stasis and he could be unconscious for some time after that as well.”

  “Well, at least there’s hope,” Prompto said.

  Ignis nodded once.

  Prompto brushed his hands on his legs and said, trying to put optimism in his voice, “So. Do you want to go for a walk? Most of the debri has been cleared away now so if you keep your hand on my shoulder I can keep you out of trouble.”

  The corners of Ignis’s mouth twitched in an almost-smile as he said, “I think I would like that.” Prompto grinned and started to walk towards him, but was halted as Ignis held a finger out to him. “First, though. I need you to do a favour for me?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Sure,” Prompto replied; he would do anything to make Ignis’s life a little easier.

  “Take a shower first. To put it frankly, you smell.”

  Prompto laughed a little guiltily. “Ah, yeah, sorry about that. I meant to have one before I fell asleep. I’ll be right back,” he said, hurrying out of the room.

  -l-l-l-

  Ignis listened as Prompto hummed to himself in the shower. Were it not for the pain, an agony that throbbed in time with his heartbeat, he could even pretend that his eyes were just resting closed, that they were in a hotel somewhere and he had just scolded Prompto for trying to come to the table without showering after running with Gladio. He could pretend that Noct wasn’t lying in a bed somewhere, unconscious and unresponsive, but was instead being his normal moody self, playing on his phone and ignoring everyone.

  He could pretend that he wasn’t useless.

  And then he would try to do something, like this afternoon. Or this morning. Or this evening, he had no idea. All he had wanted was a glass of water and a sandwich. He had even managed to find the ingredients he wanted for the sandwich. But first he had dropped the knife and couldn’t find where it had fallen on the floor. And then he had knocked over the honey pot, spilling it. When he misjudged how full the cup was and overfilled it, he had just snapped. What was the point of surviving if he couldn’t even function on a basic level as a human being?

  But Prompto, Prompto was always bright and cheery. Ignis knew a lot of it was fake, put on for his benefit. He knew the gunman was hurting, was worried about them all, was trying to keep it all together and make everything normal when there was nothing normal about this situation. And, if what Gladio had told him in private was true, he had even faced his fear of doctors and surgeries to stay by his side when his eye had been removed. That took guts, more guts than Ignis had ever given him credit for. There was no Inurement that said he had to do that, no one had ordered him to and it wasn’t an act that could allow him to avoid pain. There was nothing in it for him, but he had done it, anyway. That was true friendship right there; such a soul was wasted in the Empire.

  “Alright! All pretty and smelling like roses just for you, Iggy,” Prompto said as he came out of the shower. Ignis had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t even heard the water stop. “Do you have a preference on where you’d like to go?”

  Ignis couldn’t help the bitterness that rose up at that question. “Does it matter? I won’t see it, anyway.”

  Prompto was silent for just a second too long, long enough for Ignis to regret his words, but before he could call them back, Prompto spoke again, a false levity in his voice. “Alright then. Well, if you don’t have any objections, I need to take this memory card to the records office. I said I would drop it over once I checked on you. I didn’t exactly mean to fall asleep.”

  “You’re donating your photos of Altissia before the Hydraean damaged everything?” Ignis guessed as he stood. Reaching out, he felt Prompto take his hand and rest it on his shoulder. As he always did, Ignis felt a lurch as he stepped forwards, needing to rely entirely on someone else to ensure he didn’t run into anything. He tried to focus on the steps, tried to draw a mental map of the area.

  “Ah, not exactly. This is a different memory card. It has… well, photos of the dead on it. For identification purposes,” Prompto said, his voice uncertain.

  “Ah,” was all Ignis said in return. “That would explain the smell.” Truth be told, he had thought Prompto had just gotten dirty. Not that he had been dealing with the dead.

  “I just felt like I had to do something, you know? We brought all this down on the people, I figured the least I could do was help out. And… well, I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before. Most people here haven’t. So if I can do it and spare them that…”

  Ignis gave the shoulder under his hand a squeeze. “You’re a good person, Prompto,” he said quietly.

  There was silence for a second or two, then Prompto said, “I’m grinning right now. Just so you know.”

  And Ignis laughed.

  -l-l-l-

  Gladio swung his fist and grinned in satisfaction when it connected with the face in front of him. It hurt, of course it hurt, but he barely felt the pain. This was better than just sitting around, though, waiting for something to happen. It was easier now that Ignis was awake and he could talk to him, but even that wore him down after a while, and he would always make his excuses and leave. He hated the thought, but maybe it would be better to leave Ignis here. Or even to send him with Cid back to Hammerhead; he was sure the old man and Cindy would look after him. And if his sight ever returned, he knew that Ignis would find them again.

  Gladio had tried bringing up these facts, this plan, with Prompto, had tried to convince the gunman that it was for the best, but Prompto had yelled at him. Actually yelled at him. He’d never seen the Nif yell at anyone before, especially since doing so seemed to cause him pain. Gladio had tried reasoning, had tried matching shout for shout, but nothing got through to him. So he had stormed out, looking for a fight to pick.

  He didn’t realise Ignis had heard it all.

  He didn’t realise Ignis had followed him, as though to prove he could.

  As citizens were slowly returning to Altissia there were bound to be those who took advantage of the controlled chaos. When looters started making the rounds, Gladio also made his own rounds, taking out any who dared to try something so low.

  This time he had scored big, a whole gang of them. They all tried piling on Gladio, but Gladio was among the elite, trained since childhood to be a member of the Crownsguard, the prince’s and then the king’s shield. He had not only fought, but survived fighting with Gilgamesh. These ruffians had no chance. Nonetheless, the fight was began to attract quite the crowd, and after knocking out the third person he spun around, grinning fiercely, arms open, welcoming. “Come on. You wanna piece of this?” he shouted.

  Then he spotted him. Ignis. He was standing among the crowd, eye wide open, trying to step back but unable to get past the push of people, mouth open, chest heaving as he began to hyperventilate. Gladio had seen that reaction once before, when Prompto had freaked over a particularly tight squeeze in a cave. He knew that the advisor was on the edge of a full-blown panic attack.

  One of the thugs decided to take advantage of Gladio’s distraction and used a piece of wood, slamming it against the back of Gladio’s shoulders, sending him stumbling forwards. With an animalistic growl, Gladio spun around and tackled the guy, slamming him into the crumbled side of the building. Striking his head against the wall, the thug was knocked out and Gladio turned in time to see Ignis break free of the crowd and start to run. “Shit, Iggy!” Gladio shouted, but other than stumbling and falling, Ignis acted as though he didn’t hear him, only getting up to continue running again.

  Growling in frustration, Gladio turned back to the thugs. No more games; he had to finish this. He knocked out the rest of the looters in just a few minutes and started to run down the street he had seen Ignis disappear down, but skidded to a stop when a young woman stepped in front of him.

  “Sir? Please, could you help? My husband, he’s being threatened. Please?”

  Gladio was about to turn her down—he had to find Ignis!—but then he saw her eyes, swimming with tears, desperate for help. He never could say no to a crying woman. “A minute,” he said, before pulling out his phone and dialling Prompto’s number.

  “Gladio? What’s up?” he asked after it had only rung once.

  ‘Bless your technology obsession,’ Gladio thought, figuring he must have been playing on his phone when he called. And also bless that there was no sign of a grudge from their earlier argument. “I need you to find Iggy,” he said urgently.

  “What? Why, where is he?”

  “If I knew that I wouldn’t need you to find him,” Gladio growled before he could help himself. He was pacing back and forth across the street. “He followed me into town and I didn’t realise. He saw- heard me get into a fight against some looters and panicked and ran off somewhere.”

  “I’ll find him, but don’t you think it would be better if you were to find him, to reassure him that you’re okay?”

  “I’m needed elsewhere. Just… just do this for me? Please.”

  “I’m leaving now. Where’d you see him last?”

  “East High Street. And Prom? Thanks.”

  “You owe me,” was all Prompto said in reply before he hung up.

  Gladio sighed and put his phone in his pocket before looking at the woman. “Lead the way,” he said.

  -l-l-l-

  As it turned out, Prompto didn’t need to go far to find Ignis. The man had somehow managed to make it back to the Secretary’s offices. Prompto saw him as he half ran, half stumbled through the door that led to Noct’s room.

  Prompto jogged after him, closing the door behind him to give them some privacy. He could guess what had caused the panic. First the sounds of fighting, a friend in danger and he couldn’t see to help, and then the noise of a pressing crowd, unable to tell what was what or where it was all coming from. That would terrify anyone. And yet, despite the circumstances, he couldn’t help but be impressed; somehow Ignis had followed Gladio when he wasn’t walking slowly or taking care to lead him along open streets and likely, knowing Gladio when he was angry, walking very quickly. And then, even amidst a full-blown panic attack, Ignis had somehow managed to find his way back here and retreat somewhere safe.

  “Ignis?” Prompto called softly.

  Ignis didn’t respond. He had sat himself on the carpeted floor in front of the fireplace and, were he not blind, Prompto would say he was staring into the flames. Prompto approached slowly, noting the man’s rapid breathing but knowing that he was aware of his presence by the way his head had turned slightly towards him.

  Prompto crossed the room and flopped down to sit behind him, leaning so his back was resting against Ignis’s back. Tilting his head up slightly, he closed his eyes and said, voice soft, “Close your eye, don’t try to use it; you don’t need it. Listen. Just listen.”

  He paused and listened himself, listened to Ignis and waited until his breath slowed somewhat, telling him he was calmer. Only then did he speak again. “Hear yourself breathing, your heart beating.”

  He paused again, waiting. Ignis’s breath slowed further, reaching a more normal rate, and Prompto allowed himself a small smile. “Expand it out and hear the sounds of the room. The crackling of the fireplace. Noct breathing, the way he snuffles in his sleep.”

  As though to help with their little exercise, Noct gave an unusually loud snuffle right then and Prompto bit his lip to stop from laughing. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he thought to himself. He let the silence stretch on, let Ignis just focus on what was in the room, to pick out the close sounds. Then, “Outside you can hear the water lapping against the buildings. Gulls crying to one another. The wind blowing in lines of laundry.”

  After the quiet of Cape Caem, Atissia had seemed loud to Prompto. Its nightlife rivalled Lestallum’s with the added water noise and gondoliers calling to each other. Even now, there were plenty of sounds to be heard and Prompto listed each of them one by one, allowing a pause between each to give Ignis a chance to pick them out.

  “The cacophony of voices are all individuals. Pick one out and listen to it for a bit, then change to listen to another,” he said.

  A minute stretched to five, which stretched to ten. Prompto didn’t mind; he was patient. And for Ignis, who did so much for him, who tended his wounds gently and carefully, who baked sweets whenever someone was having a hard time, who always made sure they had enough food and gil for hotels whenever they were near a town, for Ignis, he had all the time in the world.

  Finally, Ignis spoke. “I never realised before now how it was possible to pick out so many individual sounds,” Ignis said, voice quiet, a touch of wonderment in it that makes Prompto smile sadly. “Thank you, Prompto,” he said.

  “Sure thing. Seems sense deprivation training is good for some things,” Prompto said lightly.

  Ignis moved his hand, searching until it found Prompto’s. Resting over the top of it, he gave it a squeeze, then let go. Prompto stood and started moving around the room, checking on Noct, making sure he drank a little, then pulling out his phone to text Gladio, to let him know that Ignis was alright and to bring back some pizza. Ignis remained sitting on the floor, head tilted to the side slightly with his eye closed, just listening.