iwillshieldhim | The World We Fought For [for fieryknowledge]

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The World We Fought For [for fieryknowledge]

It was oddly calm in those last moments, a peace that came over him as he fought purely on muscle memory against the massive giant trying to smash him. Somewhere behind him, he could hear Prompto, not just the sound of gun fire, but it sounded like he was screaming, over and over, as he fought. Wordless angry shouts that if he had the time to think, to care beyond second to second of just surviving, would have torn him apart. The sound of pain, of loss, of anger. He'd lost track of Ignis, always so silent, and he feared the worst. He tried to look anyway, find his love in the chaos. Make sure he was still-

Second to second, he shouldn't have looked away. The giant found its opening as Gladio's eyes scanned the wreckage, trying to spot Ignis in all of it. The fear in his heart settled when he spotted the other, still up, still fighting, even as the massive blade slammed under his guard and sent him flying to hit the ground hard. A spike of pain screamed in his shoulder, but he barely noticed.

They had turned their back on Noct to let him die, walking forward to their fates knowing they would do the same. All they had to do was hold on long enough, just long enough to let him truly become the Chosen King. Gladio had accepted what would come, and while he thought Ignis knew, in a way, he was content with this. He had protected Noct until the end. Ignis might still live.

The giant raised its blade, and try as he might, Gladio couldn't get his own blade to lift. It wouldn't be possible on that broken shoulder. He stared up at his death, then let out a breath. ...I kept my promise.

I love you, Iggy.

Let there be light.

It came across the skies like a needle thrust into the heart of the darkness itself, a shaft of light so brilliant and golden that it hurt the eyes. The giants roar hurt almost as much, stabbing into his head until he was forced to close his eyes.

unconscious

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There was a drawn out pause from Ignis as he let Prompto's nervous fear sink in. Honestly, he'd be worried if the younger man wasn't afraid. He'd told him time and again that bravery wasn't the absence of fear, but it was doing what was necessary in the face of that fear. Sighing, he reached out and settled his hand on Prompto's arm in silent support.

"I won't be stitching close to your eye, if that's any consolation. Gladio managed to scrounge up a few bandages that should work to keep that part of the wound closed. Once we get it cleaned, I'll do my best to make it quick. First things first, though... cleaning it up will have to be your responsibility. I can't see if there's any leftover debris in the injuries and I don't want to dig into them too hard. It was bad enough to get mine cleaned out..."

There was a long silence from Prompto, his breath hitching in his chest, but after that, he only stood up and shifted to the sink. There, he was forced to look into the mirror, seeing the damage done. The bruise along his jaw and the ugliness of the claw marks.

It took more effort than he wanted to admit to drag his gaze from his reflection, but the tears threatening in his eyes blurred it enough that he could focus on getting the tap on and working on the cleaning process. It stung horribly, but it was easier to keep from crying from his emotions when it was instead of from pain. The last thing he wanted was to start crying. He had to be strong, even if deep inside he was terrified for all of them. For Noct. The image of the sword through him...

Prompto found himself gripping the edge of the sink hard, and he stood there, trembling ever so slightly as he worked to contain himself down. The others... they were always so composed. Sure and certain. Some things never changed.

"...it's the best I can do. Should be good." Quiet as he sat back down.

Ignis knew that struggle. If he could've, he would've cried. Many times over, in fact. While Prompto was cleaning out the wounds, he reached out to settle a supportive hand on his back. The trembling earned no comment or chiding from the blind man, nor would it ever. Just a quiet pride in the strength his brother had shown while so very afraid for so many reasons.

Once Prompto sat himself back down, Ignis took a moment to gently ruffle his hair and there was a quick flicker of a smile from him. It was a reminder of better days for both of them. Hopefully, they'd have more like them in the future. For now, though... more pain to bear so they could all spend some time healing.

Antiseptic came first to finish with the smallest of particles that Prompto couldn't have reached. That done, he let his fingers drift over the rise of Prompto's brow, checking for any sign of a break there before he reached lower and slowly, deliberately, traced along the nasty wound so close to his eye. His keen brain was working, fingers pausing here and there as if he were checking distance, mumbling something to himself here and there while he felt his way.

"... I should have enough bandages to seal close to the eye. Provided it heals clean and we find a way to keep the scarring down, it shouldn't affect your vision. Unfortunately... you won't escape scars."

As he spoke, he reached for the bandages he was speaking about, fingers patting for a moment to find them. It was delicate work, and slow going, but Ignis remained steady as he worked to ease the rent flesh together so he could place the bandages as they needed to be. Until the skin sealed up on its own, he'd have issues with his vision, but once they bandages could come off, he should easily be able to compensate for any minor flaw left behind.

".... needle next. Are you certain you want this? I can use the potion on the rest if you wish it."

The hand gave him a lot of the courage he needed in that moment, steadying him against the pain as his hand shook while it cleaned away. Ten years, with a lot of heartbreak and heartache and confusion and anger and pain all wound through them, but already it felt like the old days, always there for each other. Noct really had been their glue, hadn't he? They came apart with him gone, unable to handle their own pain. Things Prompto had thought about more than once in the past, but standing there, it surfaced again and almost made him laugh-sob. He kept it behind his teeth, with effort.

"...cool, so I'll match, Gladio, huh? Two scars?" Oh yeah, he was rambling, just letting words fall out of his mouth as he sat there and let Ignis feel his skin. He trusted Ignis, but the idea of having a needle near his face at all was so seriously frightening. He was terrified.

"Is- is the potion gonna leave my vision messed up, or... just make the scars less terrible?" Because honestly, he was really debating inside if he could deal with really terrible scars versus the pain.

Gladio had let his pain and anger run away with him. Ignis had bottled it up and tried to ignore it. They'd all been left adrift when Noctis had been taken from them and time had been cruel to them in his absence. He understood, though.

Ignis remained silent for a long few moments while his fingers kept searching out each shift in the tears in Prompto's skin. The injuries might be deep and ugly, but they were decently clean and even. When Ignis pulled back to wash his hands with a murmured apology if he'd hurt Prompto, there was a bit of a lighter tone in his voice.

"I think the potion will seal them up enough to let them heal on their own. If you keep it fastidiously clean, your vision shouldn't suffer much at all. The scarring will happen either way, I'm afraid. I'm afraid both of us will have scars that will rival Gladio's, but that's not so bad."

Once his hands were clean, he shuffled around for one of the full potion vials, giving it a quick sniff before he popped it open while his other hand moved to tip Prompto's face so he could have a better angle to work with.

"Be as still as you can. This potion is a good deal more potent than what you're used to so it'll likely feel rather odd while it works."

Prompto had wanted Noct back. It was selfish, horribly selfish, but he didn't care about the rest of the world for so long if it meant he could have Noct back. He had given up everything, more than willingly, to follow Noct into this adventure, with the belief that at the end of it all, he would watch the man he had fallen in love with get married to try and protect his kingdom. Instead, it had all ended in horror and loss that was almost worse than death. Death he could learn to move on. This... this was torture.

But now, now Noct was here. Home. Not awake but... one step in the right direction. It felt like a piece of him had been returned, but even that felt guilty.

"I'll keep them clean. Promise!" The last thing he wanted was his vision affected, after all, even though going through that again made him stomach churn. Not that there was anything left to throw up.

"...You're like a dog, you know. That great sense of smell." More babbling, but after that he froze, his fingers tight in his lap.

Now that they were all in the same place again, there was a chance at something resembling life again. It would never be like it was before, but Ignis never expected it to be. Too many walls between them all. Too much pain and distance. Ignis wasn't sure if those could ever be fixed or if he was incapable of it anymore.

In some ways, he just didn't have the strength.

Hearing Prompto compare him to a dog pulled a started laugh from Ignis. The sound was rough to his ears. Something uncommon now. It died away quickly enough, but let a little quirk of a smile on Ignis' face.

"I always pictured myself as more of a cat, to be honest. Relax. You tense up and your face does as well. Close your eyes and tell me about the first time you realized how much you loved our king."

He knew that getting him to talk and focus on something else was a good thing.

Hadn't there been a time when they all laughed? When even Ignis would smile and laugh with them, his voice dry and his jokes equally so but his tongue and wit sharp? Hearing Ignis laugh again, however stunted, still feels good inside and he would have smiled if he wasn't slightly terrified to even breathe too hard never mind move.

"Should I give you fish and scratch you behind the ears, then, kitty-kitty?" Prompto asked, his lips twitching despite himself, but his teasing still sounded weak. But what Ignis asked... it did force Prompto to think about something beyond the potion he was about to have applied.

"...is it stupid... to say the first time I ever saw him?"

"You could, but I might bite and I can't recall the last time I had my shots."

It was his own weak attempt at humor, but it was there which was more than he'd done in years. As Prompto spoke about Noctis, he started slow with the potion, a drop at a time over his finger as it gently traced along the injured flesh. That way, he could gauge how much he was using as well as see how much worked to start to heal the damage.

"... not really. I remember seeing you watching him several times when you were still too shy to speak to him. I think you needed him as much as he needed you."

"I thought cats were supposed to like being petted. Or does only Gladio get to do that?" He was trying to keep up with the back and forth, but it felt rusty on his tongue. Had it been that long?

Ignis would hear the breath in as the potion started to work. It felt as brisk as ice against his skin, but then warmed into something like sunlight on his face, tingling as it went. "...Whoa," in a whispered breath. It was rapidly doing its job, but the scar it was going to leave behind would be a wide one unlike Gladio's blade-thin kind or Ignis' burns.

"Needed me... I didn't even think I could talk to him, but... Lady Lunafreya wanted me to be his friend, so I wanted to be worthy of being a friend to him."

"It counts on the cat's mood."

Gladio... was a complicated subject. There was no doubt how deeply Ignis loved him, but the years spent watching anger eat away to the point that he would leave for weeks or months at a time had left Ignis weary and wary in so many ways. Now that the world wasn't dark anymore, he wasn't sure how things would end up between them now that Gladio would have a reason to run anymore... or would he?

Only time would tell and for now, Ignis was quietly avoiding thinking on that. He was afraid of the answer he might come up with.

"He's never been easy to get along with, especially when he was younger. She would've been proud of both of you, you know. I have no doubt of that."

They had never spoken to each other about it, about properly dealing with all of the anger inside of Gladio or Ignis' choice to turtle up to protect himself. Gladio knew what had come of his anger, how it burned until there was nothing left but to lash out. It scared him, how much worse it had gotten since Altissia, and the last thing he ever wanted to do was to let it lash out at Ignis. He still hurt the man he loved, but his mind justified it as a lesser hurt than what he believed himself capable of in his blind moments.

But things had changed. Perhaps he would, too. Maybe they all would finally work on the things that had barred them from each other, themselves, for all these years. Or Noct would snap them out of it.

"...I never did get to meet her," Prompto said softly, a real sorrow somewhere in his voice under the bit of laughter at the irony. "I kept her letter for all those years, you know? Did you even know she sent me one? Before I even got the courage to really talk to Noct. Did he ever tell you how I finally talked to him? I mean... really talked? Probably looked like I was completely nuts, but he went along with it."

A lesser hurt, yes, but still a hurt. The once brilliant spirit of Ignis' had dulled during the long night. His fire had been banked for so long that it was barely even burning now. When he'd walked into Insomnia with his beloved King, he was ready to go to his death. Hells, he'd been relieved that it was almost over. One more fight. One more stand with the men he'd long since realized were his family.

And now this. Waking up in a world of ruin. Ignis at eighteen could handle it and thrive. He didn't have that kind of strength anymore. Not on his own.

Now that he had an idea of how quickly the potion worked, he was more confident in how he used it. There was no real change in speed, but his fingers moved a bit, gentle as he eased more of the torn flesh closed with each trickle of potion. There was no doubt that Prompto would scar, but the scarring was something he could deal with.

"He didn't, actually. He was always been a quiet child and we were at odds often because of it."

Ignis wasn't alone in those thoughts. Gladio had been prepared to finally have an end to it, to the exhaustion and the pain and the loss. That final night, tucked around the campfire, with laughter and tears and the terrible, sure knowledge of it. Like a funeral, in a way.

To live hadn't been on any of their minds. Now they had a whole new series of problems, of lives to live that they hadn't even thought of.

"I just came up to him, like we'd been friends for years, even as I was introducing myself. I had no idea if he even remembered me or not and it's not like I looked the same. And that... was that. Like we had been friends for years. It felt just like that." Ignis would start to feel wetness against his fingers; Prompto was crying, even if it wasn't in his voice yet.

"You didn't let him say no."

A moment later and there was a pause, Ignis' head tipping just a little even as his free hand moved to brush away what he knew were tears. He remembered how easily Prompto had become a fixture in Noctis' life, then his and Gladio's by default. After some time, he'd taken the younger man under his wing and into his little makeshift family. It had been damn near seamless.

"... my uncle once told me that the Six gave us what we need even if we didn't realize that we need it. I always thought that meant my duty to the Crown and in a way, it did, but it because so much more. Perhaps he was right for all of us."

"I was pretty sure I would give up completely on life if he did." He sounded somehow joking and serious at the same time because he was serious. Noct, and Lady Lunafreya's letter, had become such a focus in his life that he wasn't sure there had been much of anything else in it.

He hissed softly as Ignis' fingers found a particularly sore spot, trembling faintly with the fight not to pull away. "Maybe you're Uncle was right. ...Noct... Noct's something." He almost laughed, the sound in his throat and choking. "We fell apart without him. What's wrong with us, Iggy?"

Well, that was the question... wasn't it?

He fell silent for a long time, his attention as focused on slowly coaxing Prompto's injuries to close up enough that they could safely heal on their own. Better to give him something to do, to think about, that he was good at. Tending to others. Better than thinking about his own hang-ups and screw ups oh, he could go on.

Once the first wound was sealed up, he let his hands fall away and for a moment, he looked as lost as he had when he'd first been blinded.

"... I wish I had an answer for you, Prompto."

He always had answers, even if they weren't what anyone wanted to hear.

"Yeah, me too." His fingers crept down and slid across Ignis', holding them tight. It felt like maybe Ignis needed that touch as much as he did, feeling the faint smear of the potion between their fingers. "I don't think there are any answers right now, but... all we've gotta do is get Noct up. After that, we'll do what we always did. Do this together."

He needed Noct to wake up. He wouldn't think more than the other two, but they had, for better or worse, each other through the last ten years. The utter feeling of being alone had crippled him, had made him sway more than once. There were things that would need to be talked about.

He had needed it just as much and he hadn't even realized it. There was just a breath of hesitation before his fingers tightened on Prompto's, returning that comfort. There was the faintest of tingles between their damp fingers and that was enough to make Ignis glance away. It wasn't avoidance, it was simply that something had jogged his mind.

Another quick squeeze to Prompto's hand and he bent back to his task, this time working on the injury that hadn't directly threatened Prompto's eye. This one felt more ragged, but the flesh was easy enough to coax back into place most of the way. Some of it... well. He'd be sporting a rather wicked looking set of scars once they were all healed up.

"I... there's another potion that we found. It's... different. I think it might help Noct but Gladio vehemently disagrees agree with me. It left me rather out of it when I tried it so I'll admit to being wary about it."

Prompto let Ignis work, thinking back to the terrible face he'd seen in the mirror, knowing there was no way it would be anything less than ugly. There was something like a poison in the knowledge that there would always be evidence of that last fight carved into his face; he had no idea how Noct would react to it. ...All three of them matched, now. With scars on their faces, gained in his name. It almost made Prompto laugh, or cry. He wasn't sure which.

Ignis' comment about this other potion was a good way to get his mind off the darker thoughts, though he wasn't sure what the advisor was talking about. "You tried it? What did it do?" What kind of potion would leave someone out of it after? Then again, this stuff Ignis was using on his face didn't feel like any other potion he'd used before, either.

Ignis had long since learned to accept his own scars. He'd never really been bothered by scars on others. Hells, he found Gladio's downright attractive when he thought about it, but in the end, they were important. They were signs of survival. Some saw them as badges of courage. Ignis simply saw his as something else he'd done in service of the Crown.

At Prompto's questions, the memory rushed back over him and it was still a heady reminder.

"I could see again. Just for a moment. The connections we had to the Crystal were tangible. I could see and feel them. I could see you, curled up with Noctis even though we weren't even in the same room. It was... incredible and a bit frightening."

"You could see-!" Prompto's eyes went wide, unable to believe it. How? One of Ignis' eyes was quite literally sealed shut and the other visibly damaged. What kind of potion could make it so any of this was visible to someone?

He looked down at himself briefly, thinking about what his particular connection to the Crystal might look like, then his chin snapped up again as he realized he shouldn't be looking down. "...what did it all look like?" Just trying to imagine it. Even in his imagination, the concept seemed overwhelming.

There was a chiding click of the tongue from Ignis when he felt Prompto moving, but he figured he knew why he was moving. What he'd just told him was shocking, after all. Not often did a man blind for a decade get a chance to see again. Hells, he'd been just as shocked.

Once Prompto had settled again, Ignis went back to work, fingers easing along the slow mending of his brother's skin.

"You all looked terrible."

An attempt at humor? Perhaps.

"They were... shining threads that connected all of us. I think the potion was drawn directly from the Crystal, which is why I think it could help Noctis."

The attempt got a quiet snort out of Prompto. Not quite a laugh but something approaching it. "Gee, thanks," he muttered, but he was far more fascinated by the concept of these shining threads. Still, to him, it made perfect sense.

"Isn't that who we are? All.. connected? But... the Crystal... after what it did last time?" The idea that Noct had been absorbed into it, that it had taken him from them, what could this potion do? Prompto bit his lip, found it had been split slightly during the fight, and sighed.

"You know I'll do anything to help him. If... you think this will really help him, then I'll trust you on that."

"It was in Regis' private stores. I think he was using it to bolster his strength for as long as he could."

There was a pause as Ignis gritted his teeth at the feel of a ragged patch of skin under his fingers. Neither scar would be pretty, but this one would likely be one that even Gladio would wince at to see at first. Still, with careful patience, he managed to coax the skin back together and a bit heaver application of the potion sealed it closed. He was almost done with this part and then, just a simple clean up.

"... would you be willing to try it?"

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