Prompto gritted his teeth, fingernails biting into the palms of his hands as he struggled not to make a sound. The medical bed he was strapped to was turned on its side and hot wax was being poured into his ear. It wasn’t hot enough to raise blisters but it still hurt! When it had cooled and solidified, he was flipped over and the process repeated on the other side, effectively blocking all hearing.

  The table was righted once more and the straps holding him in place removed. People around him were talking, but Prompto couldn’t hear what they were saying. He could hear his breathing, much louder than normal, but that was it. One of the guards gestured that he was to follow and Prompto did so, though his step faltered when he recognised where he was being led.

  No. Oh no. Not again!

  Ahead of him were those storage containers. And this time he wouldn’t be able to listen, to hear when someone walked along the corridor in front of him, or hear the conversations that careless B Grades made.

  It was no use, of course. They needed to see how far they could push him, what his body and mind could tolerate, to determine where best to reassign him. A gun barrel pushed into his spine and forced him to step forward until his nose touched the back of the container. And then they sealed it behind him, leaving him in total darkness.

  For a while he was okay; even with his ears blocked, he wasn’t in complete silence since he could hear his breath. But time stretched on. He didn’t know if his eyes were open or closed, as there was no difference in what he could see. His nose itched, but there wasn’t enough room to lift a hand to scratch it. Sparks started dancing before his eyes, and his breathing began to quicken. Air. There wasn’t enough air! Gasping for breath, Prompto started to push, to try to move his arms, to get more room! The container was getting smaller, he was sure of it! And the smaller it got, the harder it was to breathe. He screamed as he felt as though he were being crushed alive. Or was he dead? Was he already dead and that was why he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear couldn’t see? He screamed until his throat was raw, but it made no difference. No one came.

  He was alone.

  Prompto woke with a strangled cry in the darkness, feeling as though he were being smothered. He kicked the light blanket off him and stumbled from the couch where he had fallen asleep, throwing open the doors to the balcony and almost falling outside to lean against the railing.

  Looking down at the lights reflecting on the water, he started to calm himself down. He could breathe out here. He could move, he could hear, he wasn’t trapped, he wasn’t locked inside that hated container.

  “Prompto? Are you alright?”

  Prompto jumped at the sound of Ignis’s voice. Looking across, he could see the man seated on a chair on the balcony next to him; he hadn’t even realised he was sitting there. “Yeah, sorry. Just… just a nightmare,” he said breathlessly, running a hand through his sweaty hair. “Seems the less I need to rely on my Inurement, the more it haunts me,” he added wryly. Or maybe it was just the pending foreboding of what was to come next, of returning home when every instinct screamed to run as far away as he could. He couldn’t share that, though; it was the only chance for his friends to get their home back, for Prompto to make a new life for himself in a new country. Instead, he said, “Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude on you.”

  Ignis smiled slightly. “It’s quite alright. I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to listen to the sounds of Altissia once more. I doubt we will be back here once we leave tomorrow.”

  Prompto nodded, then realised Ignis wouldn’t be able to see that so said, “Right.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to calm his racing heart down. There was a slight breeze blowing, and it cooled his sweat soaked body as he turned to lean back against the railing and look back inside the room.

  A week ago, they had learned that Luna’s body had been found. She was dead. Prompto had even been able to see her then. Her body, at least. He was requested to take photographs for the official records, though such photos would not be released to the public, of course. He had taken back the memory card he thought he was done with, taken the required photographs, handed it back, and left. He thought about keeping one of the face—apart from being pale, it was otherwise unmarked—but decided it was likely best not to; Noct would probably rather remember his beloved alive.

  Noctis had woken that same day, while Prompto was out, leaving Ignis to be the one to tell him about Luna. Prompto remained somewhat uneasy around his commander; he was so quiet and sullen, barely even speaking two words to Prompto, or anyone else for that matter. It made Gladio furious—the man had ranted about his childish reactions on more than one occasion to both Prompto and Ignis—but Prompto just wanted to be near. Needed to be near. That was why he was sitting in Noctis’s room when he fell asleep, though he didn't know who had put the blanket over him.

  “Permit me to ask a question, if I may,” Ignis said, his voice cutting through Prompto’s reminiscing.

  “Shoot,” he replied.

  “Why does the empire teach their soldiers to handle sense deprivation? It is not something normally faced in combat.”

  Prompto smiled slightly; Ignis had been practising focusing on his hearing since their little talk. He had a cane now that helped him tell if there were any debris or slope changes in front of him, and Prompto and Gladio had been helping him adjust to that. They had also bought him a pair of dark glasses, which seemed to make him more comfortable going out in public. They didn’t hide the scars entirely, of course—the wounds were far too large for that—but Ignis had always worn glasses. He wanted to world to be crystal clear, Prompto remembered with a pang when he bought them. So having them now were a source of comfort to the man. He was getting better at being able to tell what was around him, didn’t panic any more and, if he got himself lost, he called Prompto’s phone; Prompto had found a little sticker and stuck it on the screen so that Ignis could feel where his fast dial icon was. All in all, he seemed to be coping well. Which was why his question surprised Prompto.

  “It’s not so much that they teach us how to deal with it, but that we learn how to deal with it through exposure,” Prompto said, then shook his head. “That didn’t come out right. I mean, they use the sense deprivation to test our limits, to see how much we can handle before we snap, to determine what grade we should be reassigned to.”

  “Your reassignment was when they decided to make you a sniper instead of melee?” Ignis asked.

  Prompto nodded. Then said, “Yeah.”

  Prompto was sitting on his bed in the dorm room, waiting. There was no one else there, everyone else was still in training or Inurement, like he was supposed to be. There were rumours: if you were unsuitable for reassignment, if you were decommissioned, you were designated D Grade, that D Grade really stood for Decommission rather than a simple alphabetical scale. D Grades weren’t human, they were all monsters, harvested for the Empire to experiment on in secret. There was no way a human could be designated D Grade, even so, Prompto worried. He was B Grade now, so reassignment meant either C or decommissioned, D Grade. Reassignment itself was bad enough; C Grades were cannon fodder, but at least he would still have a purpose. He wouldn’t be a monster.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The door to his dorm opened, and Prompto immediately stood at attention. His knee throbbed at the sudden movement, but he dared not shift his weight from it; he couldn’t give them any more of a reason to find him defective.

  One of the men, a scientist with a walking stick, looked him up and down, circling him. Prompto carefully kept his gaze forward. “Hmm, yes, it could do. Good scores in shooting, you said?”

  “Yes,” Sir replied. “That’s about all it excels in, though it may make it worth the cost of upkeep.”

  Was Sir… defending him? Prompto never thought he would hear such things from Sir’s mouth; he thought the man hated him!

  “Hmmm, maybe. I’ll have to see how it goes with a few of chemicals we’re developing. If its body can withstand that, then it may have some use. As a training dummy for the A Grades, at the very least.” The walking stick shot out then and slammed into Prompto’s sore knee. It buckled, but he managed not to make a sound as he straightened once more to stand back at attention.

  “Very well. Unit, follow me,” the scientist said, leading the way out. Prompto followed and was flanked by Sir.

  “They had these… storage containers. Black metal things, tall enough that you would fit in, but not so wide enough that Gladio’s shoulders would fit. Magitek soldiers don’t tend to be as broad. I was… put in one of them while they were working out what to do with me,” Prompto said.

  Ignis, for his part, said nothing. But he did reach into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Prompto stared as he lit one and took a drag. He had never seen him smoke before, didn’t think he was the type who would.

  After the silence stretched out for some time, Ignis said, “That was where you learned your listening technique?”

  Prompto shook his head. “No. That was where I learned that I really, really don’t like small spaces,” he said with a laugh. “Like, you remember that time when we were getting the royal arm behind the waterfall? How… how Gladio and I had stayed behind and found another route cause he said that he was too big to fit through?”

  Prompto stared at the narrow gap in the cave wall with a growing sense of unease. Noct led the way, turning sideways to squeeze through, and Ignis followed. Gladio was last and, with a wave forward, gestured that Prompto should go first. He stared at the gap a second longer, the lights from the two in front of him growing dimmer, before he took a breath and forced himself forward. He had been Inured against this, he could do it. And besides, Noct cared a lot more for him than his Niflheim superiors ever did.

  He took one step to the side, and then another, back pressed against one wall, hands in front of him against the other. Another step. Another. It was getting narrower, he was sure of it, and he instinctively started pushing against the walls, trying to force it wider.

  “Hey guys? I think it’s a bit narrow for these guns. You go on ahead, me and Prom here will look for another way around,” Gladio called out.

  “I don’t think splitting up is a very good idea,” Ignis said, his voice echoing strangely in the cave.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a very good idea being stuck tight in a gap only wide enough for skinny arses like yourselves, blocking the way out,” Gladio shot back as he took a hold of Prompto’s forearm and started pulling him back the way they came.

  “Point taken,” Ignis said.

  Ignis gave a single nod, remembering it.

  “He wasn’t… he lied about that. He could have fit through. Even started to do so behind me,” Prompto said, “but then he saw that I was panicking so came up with that excuse to get me out of it.”

  “It reminded you of your reassignment. Of your Inurement,” Ignis guessed.

  Prompto nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He wrapped his hands about his arms, leaning over slightly, chilled despite himself. “I had my hearing in the cave, of course, and it wasn't completely dark, but it was still tight, I still couldn't move my arms in front of me properly. Usually I manage okay, I probably could have then too if I'd been given the time, but I think Gladio didn't want to take that chance.” He paused, thinking, remembering. He had been so embarrassed at the time, but Gladio had just sat him down and forced him to bend his head over his knees until his breathing slowed down, and he was able to enact what he had remembered, the listening technique, counting what he could see and hear.

  “Back in Zegnautus,” Prompto continued, “I overheard some older guys talking in the showers of listening to individual sounds, of counting them. One of them had just come out of a sense deprivation Inurement, the other was telling him about this technique to handle it so that they wouldn’t be reassigned. When they took me and did it again, I tried it and it worked,” he said with a shrug. “Figured if it worked for me, it might help you, too.”

  Ignis was silent for a few moments, turning over what Prompto said. He took a drag from his cigarette, then put it out on the balcony railing. “It has,” he said eventually. “Thank you.”

  “Any time, Iggy,” Prompto replied.

  -l-l-l-

  Noct stared at the darkened ceiling as he listened to the muted conversation outside. It made him guilty that he had dragged Prompto through those caves when they terrified him so much. He never realised it, Prompto had never let on, at least to Noct. Yet another thing he had screwed up.

  Well, he couldn’t fix that. He couldn’t heal Ignis’s blindness, or take away the pain of Prompto’s Inurement, or make Gladio understand how he felt. But maybe he could at least show his friend how much he meant to him, show him how much he appreciated all he had done for Ignis while Noct had been unconscious.

  Decision made, he rolled over and buried himself in the blanket, trying to get what little sleep he could before morning.

  -l-l-l-

  “So, do you wanna talk about it?”

  Prompto slid himself into the seat opposite Noct and watched his friend cautiously. Five days had passed since they left Altissia, travelling first by boat, then by car, and now by train. And through all that time Gladio had ground his teeth while Noct moped in silence, Ignis stumbled and Prompto helped as best he could while at night a growing sense of unease crept up on him.

  “Not really,” Noct replied, not looking at him, his chin propped on his hand with his elbow on the table. He was staring out the window, though there wasn’t much to see at the moment. Prompto didn’t push, merely sat back and looked out the window, too. After a while, he sighed and spoke, as Prompto knew he would. “When your friend, Arvid, was killed did you… I don’t know, feel something?”

  “No,” Prompto answered honestly. “But I was conditioned not to. If I showed that I cared about someone, I was ordered to kill them. Or they could be ordered to kill me.”

  “Sometimes I wish I could be conditioned not to feel anything,” Noctis muttered bitterly.

  Prompto laughed a little despite himself. “No, you don’t,” he said with certainty.

  “Well, maybe not,” Noct allowed. “But it would make things easier, to do what I have to do.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring, staring at it. “She gave up everything for me. Her life, her health, her safety. Everything. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” Noctis’s voice hitched slightly at that last word and he closed his fist, squeezing it tight.

  “Because she believed in you, Noct,” Prompto said quietly.

  “Maybe I’m sick of people dying for me!” Noctis suddenly shouted.

  Prompto smiled sadly, ignoring the stares the outburst gained them. Gladio thought that Noctis didn’t care about his position, that he’d never make a good king because he was apathetic about what that position entailed. Even Ignis had confessed worries in private about what kind of king Noctis would make, his sloppiness and unwillingness to even attempt the political reports he had presented him with before they left Insomnia. Prompto, though, thought that Noctis cared too much, too deeply, about everyone.

  “Maybe it's because I'm just an outsider looking in, but Noct, it's okay. You can't protect everyone. You can just do the best you can with the situations presented to you, ya know? And I think you're doing just fine at that.”

  “But what if ‘just fine’ isn't good enough?” Noctis asked quietly. “What if ‘just fine’ gets even more people killed?”

  “Then you get up, brush yourself off, and keep trying.”

  Noct gave a mirthless laugh. “Just like that, huh?”

  “Yeah, just like that.”

  -l-l-l-

  Gladio was angry. He was always angry lately, all the damn time. He was angry at Noct for not putting the past behind him, for not getting on with his job in taking back their home. He was angry with Prompto for allowing himself to be put through the crap that he was put through, for the wincing he still sometimes witnessed, for pretending to always be so damn happy all the time. He was angry with Ignis for being blind, for insisting on coming along with them when the wounds on his face had only just healed, for acting like he was okay with everything. But most of all, he was angry with himself, angry with his failures, failures that it felt like were constantly being slapped in his face.

  Sitting with Iggy, he tried to hide it, but he knew that the other man was aware of it, was aware of the simmering resentment boiling just below the surface. And watching Noct and Prompto a few seats down from him just made it all the worse.

  Gladio was angry, and it was only a matter of time before he lost it completely.