It was called a Y-Frame for the rather obvious reason that it was shaped like the letter Y. Made of metal, it restrained whatever unfortunate soul was in it with adjustable metal braces around the chest and ankles and locks that connected to wrist cuffs that were worn. And currently, that unfortunate soul was Prompto.
He had only been put in the Y-Frame once before, after the one time he had not completed his assigned patrol and gone exploring instead. He had gotten lost in the sprawling city and when he was found and brought back, he had been locked up here, in this. Prompto couldn't remember a lot of what had happened, but he knew that the urge to explore never rose in him again, even after joining Noctis. He would admire what was around him, marvel and take photos, but he never felt the need to wander off and to look, content to just follow. He didn't know if this was the same cell, had no way of knowing, but with Ardyn involved and his sick, twisted sense of humour, it was likely.
Already his hands were cold, numb, though that was a kind of blessing. When the MTs had come for him, he hadn’t fought at first—he wanted to wait for the most opportune moment when he would most likely be able to escape—but when he saw the Y-Frame, he fought. That was how he knew the ones escorting him were just well programmed MTs instead of real people; he had punched the head of one clean off. It was only a temporary victory, of course, but Prompto was proud to call it his own.
“Tell me, C1094.” The voice preceded the man as Ardyn strode down the hallway towards him. “How do you like your new accommodations?” Ardyn spread his arms wide, encompassing the cell block around them.
“Pretty drab, really. Could do with a fresh coat of paint,” Prompto said, putting on a false bravado.
Pain laced through his body. Prompto’s body arched and strained against the bonds that held him. He screamed and through it, he heard Ardyn’s voice. “Magitek soldiers have no opinions.” A pause. The pain didn't let up. “Magitek soldiers show no pain,” Ardyn drawled.
Prompto closed his mouth and grit his teeth. He knew this procedure; the pain wouldn't stop until he stopped screaming.
It stopped. Prompto slumped against his restraints, breathing heavily, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose.
“Good,” Ardyn said. “Seems there's some hope for you yet.”
Prompto didn't bother answering; he didn't have the breath even if he had the words. Back here, restrained like he was, hearing those words, it was all too easy for his training to come rushing back.
“Tell me,” Ardyn said. He was in front of Prompto now, he could see his perfectly polished shoes. “What was it like, believing you had friends?”
“It wasn't a belief,” Prompto said, voice breathless. “They are my friends.”
“Really? Even dear Noctis?”
Prompto had nothing to say to that, the memory of Noctis and Ardyn standing practically shoulder to shoulder as Prompto fell, still fresh in his mind.
“You know, I was digging through the old records of your early training and I came across one particular entry. You had friends before.”
Arvid. There was a record of that? “He wasn't my friend,” Prompto said, the answer instinctive. Pain flared as electricity arced, his body having no way to escape. He didn't scream, he didn't dare, just squeezed his eyes shut, grit his teeth, and rode it out.
“Really?” Ardyn continued once it stopped, as though nothing had interrupted him. “I believe his name was Nicca.”
Prompto gasped as the memory came flooding back. Nicca had been a friend, an actual friend, his first when he was only six or seven years old. How had he forgotten?
“Just a child, and you killed him in cold blood.”
Tears streaming from bright blue eyes. Eyes the same colour as his own. Head explodes like a dropped melon. Bone shards and flesh fly outwards. One eye, strangely whole, hangs from its socket. It was bright blue. The same colour as his own.
“It wasn't me,” Prompto whispered. Pain. Again. His body thrashed and jerked, but he made not a sound. And it was gone.
“Oh, but it was. You reached out and befriended him, so he had to die. It was your fault. Your next friend, sorry, comrade, specifically requested reassignment to be in the same unit as you and he was killed on your first mission together. A failed mission, I might add.”
“What?” Prompto stared at the polished shoes in front of him. Was that true? Had Arvid really requested that? Prompto had assumed he had failed in some way, he had to, to be reassigned C-Grade. He didn’t know where—Arvid was perfect at everything—but there had to be somewhere he fell down to be reassigned. Prompto had never questioned it, hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t thought about much of anything at that point.
“What was that little song he always sang to you?” Ardyn adopted a considering pose. “Oh, yes.” He sings. “I want to ride my chocobo all day .”
As though summoned by Ardyn’s song, Prompto’s pocket started to vibrate, that very tune singing merrily from it.
Prompto felt the blood drain from his face as Ardyn’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What’s this?” he said, walking forwards. There was phone service here. Of course there was, they were in the heart of the Niflheim Empire, the most advanced nation on Eos. Prompto couldn’t reach it, but Ardyn could. He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled it out, looking at it. He grinned and turned the phone around to show Prompto who it was: Gladio. That goofy grin and classic thumbs up lighting the screen. “Let’s answer it, shall we?”
“No,” Prompto started, but it was too late; a swipe and a tap answered the phone and put it on hands free so he could hear.
“Prompto? Where are you?” Gladio’s frantic voice came through.
“Not now,” Ardyn drawled. “You’re ruining our fun.” He clicked something in his hand and the Y-Frame flared to life. Caught off-guard, Prompto cried out before he bit it off. It didn’t last long this time, at least.
“What the hell are-” Gladio was shouting, but Ardyn hung up on him, cutting off the call with a low chuckle.
“So demanding,” he said. He turned the phone around, seeing the embossed bird on the back. “A chocobo? Really? How childish.” Prompto watched wordlessly as Ardyn pulled the phone cover off and dropped it to the ground. “You need retraining. Not interruptions,” he said and, holding the phone in one hand, squeezed. Prompto’s eyes widened as the phone cracked, and then shattered in Ardyn’s hand and he tossed it aside to fall against the corner of the room. The phone that had survived the destruction of Altissia, explosions in a train, and then falling from said train, was now nothing more than a tangled mess of wires and broken glass. And Ardyn had done it one handed.
Ardyn remained quiet while Prompto stared, then said, “I think I’ll leave you to rest for now. We have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. You’ll need your strength.” His tone was mocking.
Turning on his heel, Ardyn walked two steps, then very deliberately stepped on the discarded case, a crack spreading directly across the chocobo’s head. He continued walking, not bothering to shut the cell door, knowing Prompto couldn’t escape, humming the chocobo song as he strode down the corridor.
Prompto stared at the broken phone cover.
“I want to ride my chocobo all day!” Prompto sang loudly and off key.
“Someone’s having fun,” Gladio commented behind him.
“Hell yeah!” Prompto exclaimed. “Come on, Noct!”
The wind whipped through his hair and Prompto and Noct raced neck in neck. It wasn’t a true race, they hadn’t got the chance to go to the racetrack yet, but they were roaring down the road as fast as their birds could go, regardless. In many ways, this was more fun, as they had to dodge traffic as well.
“You’ll never beat me, Noct!” he shouted joyfully as he overtook the king. “You may be King of Lucis but I am King of the Chocobos!”
“You’d never even seen a chocobo until last week!” Noct teased back as he nudged his bird back in front.
“That doesn’t mean anything!” Prompto protested and, though he kept trying to nudge his bird faster, she had clearly had enough and was refusing to speed up. “No fair!” he protestd playfully.
Prompto stared at the broken phone cover, the chocobo and its silly cartoon grin staring back at him.
All the muscles down C1094’s back cramp and he arched back, mouth open in a silent scream he dared not give voice to. Vaguely he can hear a familiar voice, humming and softly singing a familiar tune. It’s a happy tune, very out of place here, but comforting nonetheless. A hand uses the corner of the blanket to gently wipe his forehead soothingly.
“Prompto, Prompto, you can do this Prompto,” a voice said. Arvid’s voice, repeating the name he called him, his name. He started to sing again, that same song.
The cramps ease and C1094, Prompto, is left lying on his side, head cradled in Arvid’s lap, breathing heavily. The scientists had given him something, a drug of some kind, then returned him to his dorm. Someone had looked at him, a threat, and he had attacked. Arvid had stepped in between them. He couldn’t fight Arvid, he was his-
The cramps had hit then, muscles contracting, spasming, and he had collapsed. Arvid held him, stopped him from hurting himself, rubbed the muscles until they relaxed, singing that stupid song.
“I want to ride my chocobo all day.”
Prompto stared at the broken phone cover, the chocobo and its silly grin staring back at him, a crack right through its head. Tears ran down Prompto’s cheeks for the first time since he was a child.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
-l-l-l-
The cut off call left all three of them and Aranea staring stunned at Gladio’s phone. Without a word, Gladio tried dialling again, but it didn’t connect. Ardyn must have turned it off or something.
“That over-dramatic, dressed up, son of the whore of Ifrit!” Aranea fumed. Under different circumstances, Gladio would have found her swearing hilarious.
“At least we know he’s alive,” Ignis said slowly.
Noctis spun around to face him. “Alive? He’s in the hands of that.. that monster!” he cried. “He doesn’t even see Prompto as a person, but as a thing! A machine! We have to find him. Can’t you trace the call or something?”
Ignis sighed. “That only works in movies, Noct. The chancellor has been driving us along this whole time, it stands to reason that he’s in Zegnautus Keep, with the crystal and Prompto. We shall continue on our way there.”
Gladio glanced at one of Aranea’s dropships longingly, then dismissed it. There were a lot of people on the train they had to get to safety. They would likely fill all available dropships to capacity just to allow them to leave, not to mention the refugees from the burning Tenebrae. No, it would be better for everyone except perhaps Prompto that they take the train. And as much as he had grown to like the Nif, he couldn’t endanger hundreds of lives for one.
“He’s been playing us for fools this whole time, and now he’s practically daring us to do what he wants, to rush into the keep,” Gladio said.
“And yet, what choice do we have?” Ignis replied. “That is where the crystal is which, according to you,” he tilted his head towards Aranea, “is the only thing that has a chance of purging the world of daemons.”
“Hey, I said it was possible, not definite.”
“Nonetheless, it makes sense and would explain why daemons never bothered Insomnia,” Ignis continued.
“I don’t care about any of that!” Noctis exclaimed, ignoring the pained “Noct!” from Ignis. “That’s where Prompto is. That bastard killed Luna, I’m not going to let him kill Prompto too!”
“Well, get going then,” Aranea said. “Biggs ‘n Wedge’ll take care of ya. And Ignis,” she called, as the three started to make their way back to the train. “Take care of yourself. Don’t let the next time I see you be without your ears or something.”
“I shall endeavour to keep my ears intact,” Ignis replied, and Gladio snorted at the small smile the adviser wore; Prompto really hadn’t been kidding when he described the sparks between those two. He wondered what smart-arse comment the gunman would have had at the most recent interplay between them. He hated that he hadn’t been there to help, to protect Prompto, especially since he had needed protecting from those he should have been able to trust.
Shoving those useless feelings aside, Gladio stomped up the stairs of the train just as it started to snow. Glancing back, he saw Noct standing on the platform, staring up at it. “Get your arse on board!” he snapped.
“Yes, sir,” Noct replied, only a hint of surliness to his voice as he boarded the train and they began to continue their way to Gralea.
-l-l-l-
Noct sent his sword away and straightened. That was the last of them on the train. Damn daemons were definitely getting stronger as the days got shorter. He knew it was happening, but it was another thing to have to actually fight them.
“Hey Noct!” Gladio called, hanging out the doorway.
“What’s up?” Noct said, wandering over.
“You better get in here. Something’s not right,” he said before going back inside.
“Got it. There in a sec,” Noct said as he heard Gladio guiding Ignis.
Climbing up through the doorway, Noctis froze. Ardyn just walked past!
“No way,” Noct said to himself. He heard again Ardyn’s voice on the phone, Prompto’s scream. He had no idea how Ardyn was both here and with Prompto, but he didn’t care. “You! Hold it!” He ran to the top of the stairs and looked around. Ardyn had vanished. “That son of a bitch.” How the hell did he keep doing that?! Well, Ardyn had been walking towards the front of the train, so Noctis went the same way. The carriage he walked into had thick fog swirling around the chairs. It must have been what Gladio had meant when he said something wasn’t right.
Noct hesitated only a moment before he started striding through the fog. There was no sign of Ardyn here. Maybe the next carriage. He threw the door open and nearly fell backwards again as a blast of icy air hit him. It pierced through his clothes, stealing the breath from his lungs. Arms over his face, trying to protect it, to give him a chance to actually breathe, Noct forced his way in, first one step, then another. He could see Ardyn standing, waiting for him at the other end.
“Where is he? Where’s Prompto?!” he shouted over the wind, voice torn.
“Oh, there you are,” Ardyn said, turning to face Noctis, seemingly unaffected by the unrelenting, icy wind. “I am worried about your friends. They’ve fallen and they can’t get up.” Noct looked past Ardyn and saw that he was right about that, Ignis and Gladio were both laying on the carriage floor unconscious, though whether it was from the cold or from something Ardyn had done to them he had no way to know. “Why don’t you lend them a hand?”
Noctis was trying, but his limbs were slowing down, getting heavier. Everything was getting harder until his legs gave out under him. “A coldness that can only be hers,” Ardyn said, but Noctis wasn’t paying him any attention. He looked past Ardyn at another figure behind him, sauntering towards them. A figure that eventually revealed itself to be familiar to Noct. Ardyn, seeing that Noctis was ignoring him (again!), looked behind him and his eyebrows shot up in the first expression of genuine surprise Noctis had seen. It soon changed to a more familiar smile, however.
“Ahhh,” he drawls, “the face you wore the day you-”
Gentiana touched a finger to his lips, and the man froze solid. She didn't even stop to look at him, continuing her slow, swaying walk to stand in front of Noctis.
“Let it be done… as promised to the oracle,” she said. Noctis can only watch as she spread her arms wide and changed before him. Snow swirled, and she became paler until her true form was revealed: Shiva, the glacian.
“Gentiana… it’s you,” Noct said, somewhat stupidly. “You’re the glacian.”
Gentiana, or Shiva, didn’t respond to that. Instead, she spoke the words of prophesy: “O King of Kings, restore Light unto the world.” The snow died down and, with her hands out, she summoned a trident before her.
Noct, warmer now, regained his feet and reached out to touch the trident. The weapon changed, moved, and flew into him, joining his armiger with all the others, and Noctis felt the rush of its power as he did so. Noctis didn’t see it, though. He was shown a vision. Of Luna. She was standing in a field of sylleblossoms, blue petals blowing gently in the breeze. It was the same as when she had died and Noctis felt tears prick his eyes, then freeze to his lashes. She was talking to Ravus, wishing that she had more time to spend with Noctis. After Ravus left, Gentiana appeared and spoke to her.
“I promise you, it will be so,” she said. “Not as you imagined it, perhaps, but it will be.”
“How?” Luna cried, tears streaming down her face. “I already feel my body failing. A covenant with the Hydraean will be all it can handle and I… I won’t even get to tell him…”
“What will be will be. And you will yet be able to guide the King of Light. I will ensure it.”
The vision faded in a blinding white light and Noctis became aware of the real world once more, of the icy train. Gentiana was gone, but Ardyn was not. Feeling the rage boil inside him, fury at the destruction he had wrought, the lives he had taken, the torture he inflicted on Prompto every chance he got, Noctis summoned his newly acquired trident and slammed it into the frozen chancellor. Dozens of shards of ice shot out in every direction as he shattered. Noctis let out a breath. Finally. It was done. Now they could go to Gralea in peace, contending only with daemons, regain the crystal, rescue Prompto, and retake their home. No big deal. But at least the main antagonist was taken care of.
“Hey, wake up,” he said to Gladio and Ignis, giving Gladio’s boot a kick.
They stirred as the ice began to melt away.
“The hell happened?” Gladio asked as he sat up.
“You alright?” Ignis asked.
“Yeah,” Noctis replied. “I saw the glacian. It’s okay though, she’s gone now. You guys should check on our drivers. I just need to… catch my breath a little.”
“Got it,” Gladio said. He held a hand out to help Ignis, who was holding his elbow as he stood. “You good?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Ignis said as the two left, walking towards the front of the train.
Noctis remained sitting where he was, thinking, pondering what he had seen. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a vision of what Luna had been doing when interacting with one of the astrals, but it was the first he had seen since her death. He was staring at the metal floor, trying to think what it may mean when he smelled it. Sylleblossoms.
With a gasp, he looked up. There were sylleblossom petals floating around him and, there before him, stood Lunafreya.
“Luna,” he gasped, and she smiled at him. He got to his knees, but as he did so her smile faded and she pointed behind him. Noct turned as the sylleblossoms faded away and he saw Ardyn standing there.
“No way,” he muttered as he climbed to his feet. He was dead! He was supposed to be dead, Noctis had killed him himself! He had seen the icicles that had been the chancellor shatter! There were still pieces of it on the ground that had yet to melt!
And yet there he stood, rolling his head as though to relieve a crick. “Hello Noct,” he said. “I feel I’ve earned the right to call you Noct.”
He rolled his head to look at Noct and took a few steps forwards. Noct, unable to help himself, backed up a little. There was no way!
“For a moment, I felt death’s chill wind. Such is the might of the gods,” Ardyn was saying. “But then I remembered. Oh yes, I’m immortal.” The look in his eyes, eyes that bored right into Noct, was pure fury, a dangerous anger that made Noctis recoil a little. “Such is my blessing. And my curse.” He began to walk away a few steps, but turned to look at Noct over his shoulder. “Your attack hurt me, nevertheless. My feelings, at least,” he said with a nasty scowl. “And after all the memories we shared.”
Ardyn summoned a gun, and Noct’s eyes widened, recognising it as Prompto’s. He loved that gun. It was Niflheim make, but he had modified it along their journey, improving it. He was never without it; at least not until Noctis had struck it from his hands. Ardyn pointed it at Noctis. “Remember this?” He rose it, simulating a recoil the gun didn’t give off when fired. “Ah, but I should ask if you remember it, your pet MT, especially considering how often you tried to kill it.”
Ardyn pushed the gun against Noct’s shoulder. Noct made to grab it, only to have Ardyn pull it away. “Ah ah ah! You mustn’t take what’s not yours. A lesson your little gunman really needs to learn.”
“Where is he?” Noct demanded, finding his voice at last.
“‘He’?” Ardyn repeated. “Don’t you mean ‘it’? It’s not a person, Noct. Just a machine, or will be soon enough.” He pointed. “The little gunman’s a short shot away.”
“Where?” Noct growled again.
“Where else but Gralea, the seat of the empire? I’m sure it’ll be delighted to see you. If it remembers you, of course. And you might even find your crystal. With all these daemons about, you certainly could use it.”
He brushed past Noctis, and he had to resist the urge to strike him down again. There was no point if he would just come back. He had to find out a way to kill him for good first.
“Off you go then,” Ardyn said, waving a hand. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your friend.” He held a hand up with something in it and clicked a button. Noct half expected an explosion to ring out, but nothing happened. He stared after Ardyn as he walked away, then turned on his heel to find Gladio and Ignis, hoping they would have some idea of how to proceed.
-l-l-l-
Prompto was so thirsty. Inurement always left him thirsty, but he had always known he would be able to drink, eventually. Even if the very thing he was being innured against was dehydration, he knew they wouldn’t let him die of it. He didn’t have that knowledge now. He didn’t know what was involved in decommissioning, or if that was even what was happening to him. Ardyn was trying to ‘fix’ him, that was all he knew.
Another wave of pain as the Y-Frame sparked to life, lighting the cell in a brief, eerie blue light. He slumped against his restraints when it stopped. It felt like it lit up every few minutes. Just long enough for him to start to doze off, then the pain would hit. He had tried counting it, counting how many times it happened and counting the seconds between each burst to try to tell the passing of time. He had never been great with numbers, though, and it was hard to focus. He lost count. He started again. He lost count again. Days. It felt like days.
At some point, he had wet himself. At another, he had vomited. The smell of himself reeked. All the while the Y-Frame stop-started his agony.
There was a light off to the side of the room, golden, gentle. Wearily, Prompto turned his head towards it, but as he looked at it, it was gone. He let his head hang forward again, eyes closed. Blue light lit the room once more and his head was flung backwards, slamming into the metal of the frame behind him before it flopped forwards again as the light faded. He thought, while the pain had arced through his body, that he had seen something, or someone. A figure. A smell too, one unfamiliar to him. But once more, when he actually looked for it, both were gone.
Rest. He needed rest. He was hallucinating. Usually when he hallucinated from lack of sleep, he saw dark shadows and imagined threats and never actually smelled anything. This was different, but no less just a figment of his imagination. He closed his eyes. There was a warmth against his cheek, softness. A hand? It didn’t matter if it wasn’t real, it was nice all the same.
“Rest,” a whispering voice said, and he did.
