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ignoctuous2017-06-25 09:41 pm
bolstered) wrote in ignoctuous2017-06-25 09:41 pm
to ascend you must die ( you must be crucified );
The body they carry from the throne room is one they all bear the weight of, even if it's the largest ( and arguably strongest ) of them that holds it close against his chest — him, not it — much like this image right here, with a gloved hand at his knee and another stroking through the dark ends of his hair. There have been times before that he's been informed of his peripheral awareness lacking, in a sense, and this is not much different than any time before, unless one takes into account that he should be dead.
Was, for the proper tense. He had been dead. And while the whole of him has yet to come around to the thought that it isn't anymore, his mind is a slowly-spinning carousel of what and how and why and every single question he might have found himself asking in the span of a lifetime, without much hope of an answer, at least in that very moment just because they're still in his head head, muddied and mixed in with everything else that he's still trying to make sense of, and the most that he can grasp is quite possibly the simplest thing.
I was dead, he thinks, and a tiny muscle at the corner of his mouth twitches. Whether in recognition or that pressing need to come back to full awareness is anyone's guess — but it's there, and it's something. I was dead, and now I'm not.
Relatively speaking, of course. For now.
That first twitch of muscle isn't the only one, though it is the most noticeable in those first few, long moments; there's a small, near-inaudible breath taken in and held, almost like his lungs have forgotten how to expand even in such a short span of time, and while they don't yet burn with the need to release what they've taken in, it's still a bit longer than it otherwise would have been for that same breath to give to exhale, slow, soft, still so quiet that only one that has been attuned to every part of his being from the tender age of six years would pick up on it —
If he does. If that hand on his knee moves even a fraction to indicate that he's heard it, time will tell, because by the gods they have a long way back to. Wherever it is they're going. ( Hammerhead? Lestallum? Where does one take the body of one's king, when his own throne is no longer fit to hold him? )
His throat is dry. His chest aches. The fingers of the hand that rest against the point at which his body bends in Gladio's arms give the smallest bit of movement, more like the waking of nerves after a long expanse of dormancy; his left arm hangs limp, swaying almost gently with the fall of each footstep, and it might be a moment before his eyes crack open, but when they do, the night still remains heavy around them, still thick, but … maybe not quite as ominous.
( Another breath. This one, a bit deeper, this one given to exhale a bit more normally than the one that had come before it, and it's in that moment that he chances a clearing of his throat, voice cracking and breaking even before he tries to open his mouth, but at the very same time as that one hand that has found movement again reaches for the fingers curled against his knee. )
It's a subtle thing, a soft thing, a just-between-them thing that could have probably spanned miles — but there it is, the brush of a fingertip over the back of a knuckle, and even if his voice is in shards, splinters, it doesn't keep him from what they might all expect from him.
"… Hope you haven't already gotten the funeral planned." I was dead. "At least let me write my own eulogy."
I was dead, and now I'm not.
Was, for the proper tense. He had been dead. And while the whole of him has yet to come around to the thought that it isn't anymore, his mind is a slowly-spinning carousel of what and how and why and every single question he might have found himself asking in the span of a lifetime, without much hope of an answer, at least in that very moment just because they're still in his head head, muddied and mixed in with everything else that he's still trying to make sense of, and the most that he can grasp is quite possibly the simplest thing.
I was dead, he thinks, and a tiny muscle at the corner of his mouth twitches. Whether in recognition or that pressing need to come back to full awareness is anyone's guess — but it's there, and it's something. I was dead, and now I'm not.
Relatively speaking, of course. For now.
That first twitch of muscle isn't the only one, though it is the most noticeable in those first few, long moments; there's a small, near-inaudible breath taken in and held, almost like his lungs have forgotten how to expand even in such a short span of time, and while they don't yet burn with the need to release what they've taken in, it's still a bit longer than it otherwise would have been for that same breath to give to exhale, slow, soft, still so quiet that only one that has been attuned to every part of his being from the tender age of six years would pick up on it —
If he does. If that hand on his knee moves even a fraction to indicate that he's heard it, time will tell, because by the gods they have a long way back to. Wherever it is they're going. ( Hammerhead? Lestallum? Where does one take the body of one's king, when his own throne is no longer fit to hold him? )
His throat is dry. His chest aches. The fingers of the hand that rest against the point at which his body bends in Gladio's arms give the smallest bit of movement, more like the waking of nerves after a long expanse of dormancy; his left arm hangs limp, swaying almost gently with the fall of each footstep, and it might be a moment before his eyes crack open, but when they do, the night still remains heavy around them, still thick, but … maybe not quite as ominous.
( Another breath. This one, a bit deeper, this one given to exhale a bit more normally than the one that had come before it, and it's in that moment that he chances a clearing of his throat, voice cracking and breaking even before he tries to open his mouth, but at the very same time as that one hand that has found movement again reaches for the fingers curled against his knee. )
It's a subtle thing, a soft thing, a just-between-them thing that could have probably spanned miles — but there it is, the brush of a fingertip over the back of a knuckle, and even if his voice is in shards, splinters, it doesn't keep him from what they might all expect from him.
"… Hope you haven't already gotten the funeral planned." I was dead. "At least let me write my own eulogy."
I was dead, and now I'm not.
no subject
In truth--in truth, that's a lie he can't even tell himself, let alone use to stonewall anyone else. He's never stopped expecting Noct would come home, a feeling too sure and solid and heavy for anything so gentle as hope, that thing with feathers. Expectation has weight to it, demands a man get back to his feet no matter how many times he gets knocked down. It has blood in its teeth and on its knuckles, and it was that Ignis clung to when it seemed like his heart would stop if he let go.
And then it had happened. Noct has been the miracle that Happened to Ignis since he was a child, and--there he was, Happening all over again. The particular muscle that is his heart has been through such a workout since he felt that hand to his shoulder ( and it was that touch that made it real, not Talcott's announcement ) it feels exhausted. To have Noct returned to him, to sit by his side all too aware of every second that drew the shadows closer even chasing its tail toward dawn--well. They all feel it. He'd not claim to feel the most for their loss, only--the others could move on, and perhaps if he applied himself steadily enough Ignis could too, but he doesn't want that, after a point. There will never be anyone so wound in his heart as Noctis Lucis Caelum was, and it seems right it stay that way. No one else would fit.
To have him and then lose him again...yes, Ignis' heart is tired. Morning is stirring somewhere, the sun with it, and when he feels that light on his face he'll know all of this has been worth it, but until then--even then, he may know it, but he can't be sure he'll ever feel it.
In times like these, his four remaining senses have been honed to such heightened sensitivity, it's sometimes a little difficult to sort out if he is processing something the average sighted person wouldn't, or just experiencing the same flotsam and jetsam of imagination. Especially in times like these, when he so desperately wants to imagine he's felt a twitch, or heard the intake of breath--it's a razor-width away from more than he can bear. But the aggrieved sound he makes as he pulls his shoulders in on himself and tightens his grip on Noct's knee can easily be explained. No one questions it. Not until he feels just that ghost of touch and stops stock still right in the middle of the darkened street, pulse a catastrophe of sound in his own ears.
"Gladio, stop--" is as far as he gets out before Noct speaks up, or as much up as he can, really, but Ignis himself wasn't much louder. And that's it for trying to convince himself it isn't happening; he has to know, right now, if he can stop breathing through broken glass. "Put him down, immediately."
It's nonsense, not even knowing if Noct can stand on his own ( irrelevant; Ignis will hold him up, like he's always done ); he might go on to say other equally foolish things, but frankly he won't be able to identify any of the foolishness coming out of his mouth an hour from now.
no subject
He's always worried, wondered if he really could be the man that everyone expected. The king that prophecy chose, ready and willing to forfeit his own life for the good of absolutely everything else, and it might have taken him a decade locked in suspended space, but he. Likes to think that he had performed this last act admirably, willfully, without a single thought to what he would have been leaving behind for the sake of the greater good.
The sun with rise again. The Scourge has gone. It's done.
There had been the knowledge, of course, of having to give up that which he'd just gotten back again — the Night Before, sat around the campfire like they had so damned many times before that he's lost count, looking at his friends and Ignis and knowing that it would be the last time they would do this. It. Really had been more than he could take, and there had been a fleeting thought that he couldn't have asked them to come with him, even if there could be no one else that he would trust to follow him into the deepest part of the darkness. ( And of course they would have had none of it, anyway, even if he'd tried to make light of it. ) Losing them was one thing, but.
Losing Ignis.
Every man reserves the right to be selfish. Once in his life, for one damned thing. Like a free pass, so to speak. But there is always going to be something unfair about that last thought, because what gives him the right when the other man himself had spent an entire decade in the dark without him. Had spent every day of those ten years without him.
He doesn't have the right to be that damned selfish. And yet.
To Gladio's credit, he stops abruptly at the first sound of his king's voice, scratchy and rough and muffled as it is, and they must look like some divine sort of comedy, stood out in the middle of the street as they are, even as Noct himself is gently and slowly and carefully lowered to the cracked concrete. One hand braced against any part of his shield's person that he can manage to get a good grip on, the other still outstretched to keep constant contact with his advisor. His legs are weak, the whole of his frame unstable, and he can't quite bring himself to raise his head just yet, to look at any of them, because his heart might just break all over again, and it's still too damned soon.
What does one say as a follow-up to hope you didn't already plan the funeral? Miraculously, he hasn't quite made up his mind just yet. Focusing on breathing, on the rise and fall of his own chest and the familiar warming presence of his friends surrounding him are more than enough to capture the whole of his attention, and words are always going to be a bit difficult.
no subject
Now, every ounce of silver on his tongue has deserted him; he can't speak, he is frankly unsure he's even breathing--until he's close enough to feel the King's lungs expand, contract, out and in, their heartbeats synching up effortlessly. Maybe all four of their hearts, he can't tell. As close as all of them were, the three left behind now so linked they can move as a unit without conscious thought, without particularly needing to spend time together to refresh that seamlessness--Noct has, by virtue of Ignis' position and sheer number of years between them--he's been the thing Ignis held above all others, and so as grateful as he is to have them there, their friends become a backdrop of comforting white noise, all Ignis' awareness focused in on what should not be, yet is: biorhythms as infinitely, intimately familiar as his own.
Really, of all of them there he's the one who ought to have a clever follow up. He means to go to Noct all the way, take him in his arms and lend that shaky frame all the strength he can summon, but what happens, really, is that when he reaches out he gets two fistfuls of Kingly Raiment, and just--stops there. Just clings, unable to pry his hands open, turned to stone by the insane conviction that if he lets go even long enough for a more solid embrace he'll find his hands empty, grasping only at shadows and the monstrosity of hope.
His head drops forward as if he can't keep it up any more, made too heavy by the tumult of love lost and found and lost and found again, somehow; it's too much, or would be if he couldn't feel his forehead contact the curve of Noct's shoulder, visor knocked askew. "Noct--Noctis," is all he manages there; it's ragged and rough and ripped open to an extent not even the King can have heard him like before.
no subject
… Now that narration has gotten that out of the way, let us please continue with the most important matter at hand of a no-longer-dead-king.
He doesn't expect any measure of silver to fall from any tongue present now — though he might have expected it from Ignis' own before, that so many years have distanced them and so much has been lost and so little found in its place finds him nearly paralyzed once he finds his feet on the ground, once his Shield has even allowed him to find his feet under his own power ( even if it's under the command of his chamberlain ) and while he doesn't stumble, doesn't expressly need the aid of the others around him he finds his own hands reaching for familiar shoulders when they draw near. When that form stops in front of him and brings hands up to fist in fabric, but go no further, he's just as lost as the other for both words and physical purchase in the sense that he wants nothing more than to sink against that comforting presence, rest his weight against that which has caught him so damned many times before, but.
He's a king, now. Gone and come back from the dead like some distant fairytale his father might have told him as a boy, some immeasurably impossible outcome that finds them all here and whole and real, though he has to stop and think about this all having come together as it had, the last ten years amassing into some unknowable thing that he's missed out on, skipped over like the unwanted middleground.
It doesn't keep him from knowing that he needs to stand tall, to walk tall as his father instructed in the face of everything that had been standing in front of him, even if there is nothing left standing now but the broken ruin of a once-great city and the skeletal frame of the bonds he'd somehow managed to keep. These friends, this family, his and theirs alone.
He rests a hand first, firmly on Ignis' shoulder, but then it betrays him and slides around to the back of his neck like it has so many times previously. Muscle memory never dies. "Hey," he says, like it's their meeting in Hammerhead all over again, like he hasn't just been gone for ten years and then left dead on the throne of his father. Hey, I'm here, and I'm never leaving again.
Hey, I'm here, and I love you.