Chapter Text
“Don’t you ever want to talk about it?”
His voice is quiet enough that it wouldn’t have woken Nyx if he was sleeping. A moot point; Ignis knows he’s awake. He can tell from the sound of his breathing, every minute little fidget that Nyx makes, the kind of thing so easy to tune out before, all the background noise that has become his entire world. Like the iron giant, stomping heavy somewhere out in the night, goblins clamoring around its feet. And part of that is the world they live in now, the darkness making the daemons bold, but mostly it’s him. And all the things he never noticed before.
Quiet. The stilted kind when someone is trying to be too still, and Ignis thinks his comment will be ignored, the way that Nyx likes to ignore all the things that trouble him, and willing them to ignore him back. Another hunt with just the two of them, another night spent wondering what he should say and what he shouldn't. But it was easier with Nyx somehow, to pick himself back up and start again from scratch. Easier than it had been with Gladio or Prompto at least, weary of their constant comparisons to who he was before, knowing now he could only come back lacking. Prompto perhaps had more honesty behind the good intentions, but it made him too soft to point out hard truths, always afraid of hurting feelings. Gladio carried the sting of words he’d said before. There was no way for Ignis to not feel like a burden.
With Nyx it’s almost a feeling of anonymity. A blank slate of someone that only knew him tangentially before, had never seen him fight or cook, could not make the comparison and see his current deficiencies. But that feeling is one to fight, when it makes him was to spill it all, tell everything, including the terrible and repugnant because it's somehow easier to do with someone he's only barely getting to know. Their conversations have been balanced on the edge, just ready to be pushed off and plummet into the personal, the trap that Nyx, somehow, keeps avoiding.
Even if, every time on the rare occasion that they briefly touch hands, Ignis feels the myriad of scars, thick and raised, feels his heart speed up because of it thinking, you know, you know, you understand, you know what it’s like.
Ignis hears him turn, that soft tug of a blanket, so that they are no longer back to back. Nyx is facing him, and Ignis almost thinks he can feel the hard stare at the back of his head. There’s a touch, fleeting and barely there, Nyx’s finger on his back, starting to trace a line up the center of his spine before it gets pulled away.
“No,” Nyx says, “I don’t.”
He smells booze.
Distinct and pungent on Nyx's breath, and it's a blessing and a curse because that impaired judgement is probably what finally led him to open the door. But Nyx is an unknown, a ghost, by most accounts. And Ignis doesn't know if all the heavy drinking he's been doing will help or hurt in the end.
"The fuck do you want?"
Ignis can picture it; eyes pink and watery, the little bit of sway as he stands. There's a slight smell coming from inside the apartment. Not terrible, but enough. Garbage that hasn't been taken out in a while, left to sit in the Lestallum heat. He knows that Libertus has been living in the tiny basement residence as well. But Libertus has been gone on hunts and checking in at outposts for the last two weeks, and that means too much time alone. This was not a coordinated interference, but just maybe Libertus had let slip his plans a little too casually because he knew Nyx a little too well.
It's not a pretty image that Ignis puts together in his mind, but at least the first question Nyx had asked him hadn't been who the fuck are you and that's something. He may not have much dignity left, but it's still worth trying to preserve. They hadn't had much interaction at the Citadel, and in the grand scale of time, not much has passed, but enough has happened to them both to change everything.
"Nyx Ulric," he says, "may I come in."
He half expects to get a door slammed in his face, but the second victory of the day is hearing the creak of the hinges and the shuffle of feet on the floor as Nyx, after too much hesitation, decides to let him inside.
He follows the sounds Nyx makes walking the short distance to the kitchen and he listens to the slosh of liquid in glass as Nyx takes another sip of whatever he's been drinking directly from the bottle. "What," he says again, awkward like he hasn't spoken to anyone in a while, "the fuck do you want."
There is a chance this will go terribly, but Ignis has to know. Has been trying to know since the day he saw the first headlines back in Galdin Quay.
"I've been asking the Insomnian refugees what happened. When the city fell. They've had some interesting things to say about you."
Interesting and glorifying and unflattering all at once. The good and the bad. But Nyx was a ghost and they treated him as such, explosions of whispers every time he showed his face on a hunt or errand until he started to disappear all together. Ignis couldn't find Nyx, no matter who he spoke to no matter how hard he looked, the task consuming all his free time since coming to Lestallum, Noctis gone and daylight going. Who he found was Libertus. Oh, and how he'd laughed and laughed in Ignis's face and wouldn't give up a thing, but the longer they spoke, the more Ignis went to see him the more he felt the uncomfortable prick of eyes staring him down, trying to get a better look at the scars he kept hidden behind dark glasses.
"He won't tell me," Libertus had finally said, "but you're welcome to try. Just leave my name out of it."
Another slosh of the bottle.
"So you listened to a bunch of rumors from some traumatized civilians and decided to bother me about it." There's a pause, "Why even ask.The Glaives are nothing but liars and traitors, or haven't you heard?"
"No," Ignis says, frustration boiling over at Nyx's flippant denial, "I hear everything."
What had he been expecting, that he walk in and Nyx, a near stranger, tell him it all, despite his avoidance at every other turn and every warning from the people that knew him. Yes. Yes he'd expecting something more than this because Nyx and him are the same and Nyx has to know that. He wants to grab Nyx's face, hold it in place, make Nyx stare unblinking at the wreckage of his eyes he wants to say look at me
Look
At
Me
He wants to say stop lying because he can hear the truth in Nyx's voice, sure as Nyx must know. He must know. Nothing leaves a mark as ugly as the ring, nothing does so much damage to those not birthed to wield it.
“Get the fuck out,” Nyx says, “and don’t come back.”
Ignis leaves, as requested.
And he comes back the next day.
It's more difficult than he wants to admit.
Breathing hard, he clenches his jaw, hands gripping tight on the handles of his daggers and he tells himself again.
Again until you get it right.
He's circling a training dummy, standing in the center of the room and it's a test. Move, throw a dagger, move, hope you hit something. He has to get better at this. He has to learn, he has to relearn all the things that used to come natural and that's the easy part. He has to relearn all the things that came harder and that's worse.
He has to be able to know where everything is around him at any given time, he has to know how to fight. He can't do Lucis any good if he can't fight for fear of hitting someone friendly, he can't be of any use to Noctis if he can't... He can't keep missing easy shots from a target that can't even fight back. He can't keep failing.
He can't ask for help. He can't let anyone see how poorly things are going. Gladio would just try to talk him out of it. Prompto would find too many ways to let him down easy.
He hears a door slam, the noise of the lights flickering on. He's been coming to the makeshift training hall at night, when no one else is there and no one has to see him fumble. During the day new initiates to the hunters come to train and Glaives come to sharpen their skills. Sometimes the Marshal watches over them- he'd been the one to suggest the training hall in the first place. He knows what Ignis has been doing, even if he's polite enough not to bring it up, all all the potential questioning discouragement along with it. Ignis assumes its him, or maybe Gladio, until he speaks.
"Didn't think anyone else would be here."
"Nyx," Ignis says, acknowledgment and greeting.
"Don't think I would have come if I knew it'd be you." Ignis decides that's fair. He's most likely been nothing short of a pain, with daily visits to Nyx once his foot was in the door. Sometimes Nyx let him inside, sometimes he doesn't, and more often than not there's booze on his breath, and he never answers any of Ignis's questions. But it's a start. It's someone new to talk to, that can tell Ignis things he doesn't already know. There's none of that tiptoeing around Ignis and his new... condition. A welcome difference, even if it's only the alcohol making Nyx blunt.
"What are you doing here?"
He can imagine Nyx's shrug, "The Marshal said I could use the place at night. Going on a hunt. I'm out of practice."
Ignis decides the Marshal can be a bastard when he wants to be, and of the many things Nyx is, out of practice is not one of them. At least, not physically. It occurs to him that this may be just as much a mental exercise for Nyx as it is for him. Ignis has heard he only goes on hunts alone now, tired of prying eyes and too many people that can't keep their mouths shut. It sometimes seems like Nyx would try to disappear entirely if he could.
"Wanna spar? If you're here we might as well fight."
"Very well," Ignis says. Moving targets make noise, at least.
The most successful part of his first hunt is the fact that Ignis doesn't die. It feels like something worth commemorating- once the anger wears off.
Oh, and there is anger.
He should have gone alone, he thinks. He thinks it before, when Nyx shows up as he's leaving as if it's some kind of coincidence, he thinks it during the long ride and longer hike through the underbrush, he thinks it after, with bitterness and frequency, as Nyx drags him away from the cluster of daemons and back to the protection of the campsite to force a potion on him, even as Ignis spits I'm fine.
He's not fine. But that has nothing to do with the hunt.
HQ said there was a cluster of goblins wreaking havoc that he could take care of, something quick and easy because despite how foolish he often feels these days, he is not stupid. The same reason and practicality that does not turn Nyx away when it's clear he plans on coming along, as much as it bruises his ego to have a human trainwreck thinking he needs babysitting. The unfortunate truth is that they spar with enough frequency to make them familiar fighters. He knows how Nyx moves.
HQ said nothing about a mindflayer.
In the moment, he feels the shift in the air, like static electricity, but he's underestimated how much the noise of battle can lead to confusion, particularly with the number of goblins that appear. He thinks, again, he should have gone alone because with Nyx somewhere around him the chance of making a mistake is high and one stray dagger and the Glaives will be short another one of their number. It makes him hesitate despite the feeling that they're about to get overrun and then he hears the sounds of more daemons spawning, crawling up from the ground and that putrid smell that comes with them. He hears Nyx yell, something that registers a half of a second too late and something hurts and then-
Nyx. Unceremoniously slamming him into the ground and out of the way from an elemental attack. That's when it seems he decides that they best abandon the fight, even if it means dragging Ignis away kicking and screaming.
"We should have kept fighting. We should go back."
"And everyone says I'm the one with the death wish." Nyx's irreverence is grating. He hates it and he believes for a short while that part of him hates Nyx. He's wrong, of course, all caught up in misplaced anger. He should be grateful; Nyx saved his life.
"You should have left me then. I was fine to keep fighting."
He hears the anger in Nyx's voice then, finally something that's not flippant, "Maybe you're good with some useless self sacrifice, but I can't exactly show back up with a dead body unless I want to get accused of murder."
"We can't leave the hunt unfinished." Ignis shivers, sweat drying on his back. He wonders if he'd really gotten so used to the Lestallum heat, or if the rest of the world just feels colder now, all bathed in darkness for the better part of every day and soon to be even longer. He's told there's a hazy sort of cloud cover settling its way down, and he feels the damp chill. He takes a breath and when he speaks again he hates how desperate he sounds. "Nyx, we can't leave the hunt unfinished."
There's a hiss of breath from out of Nyx's mouth, all his own irritation and reservations, but he must know. He must know, he must know why Ignis is so desperate why he'd rather die than go back in shame.
"Fine," he says, finally, and it takes them two days and three more attempts but they don't leave until every last daemon has drawn its final breath.
There are moments. The more they fight together the more time spent time alone, moments that make Ignis nervous for reasons he can't explain. One hunt turns into two turns into five turns into ten. He thinks he should be bothered, that Nyx only sticks around because he's afraid Ignis will get himself killed and doesn't want that blood on his hands. But Ignis doesn't send him away either. Rather, he doesn't even try to. Attempt would prove futile. And maybe it's not all bad and he decides that sending Nyx away would be selfish. Nyx doesn't drink when they're together on hunts, and Ignis's pride can take a hit to say that babysitting a blind man is better than drinking oneself into a stupor alone.
He's been practicing the words in his head so they come out natural.
Just like he's been practicing the same basic recipe over and over and over until he gets it right. But even right still isn't quite right, because passable might as well be terrible when he used to be good at this. He used to take pride in this, and everything he could make, he used to love watching people's faces when they...
"If you'd like, I can cook something."
Nyx stops moving. Camping fare has been canned soup, canned beans, canned anything heated over a fire. He's eaten worse. He's also eaten much, much better with fewer ingredients to work with.
Nyx says, "Alright," sounding hesitant, and probably for good reason. But Ignis has come prepared, or so he thinks. Prepared with materials, even if his mind is racing and it feels like he hasn't been this nervous since he first tried to address the Council in the middle of a meeting at age 16, thinking he had some important input about the war. It takes him a moment to get his bearings and then he takes off his gloves and starts to work. Simple meat skewers. Thin cuts that will cook fast, less of a chance of serving something raw in case his meticulous mental timer and trained nose lead him astray. Basic food but something warm and homemade to fight against the persistent chill that always seems to be a part of him now.
"Ignis..." so focused, he hadn't heard Nyx creeping closer and for once hadn't felt self conscious of eyes he couldn't see watching him. He stops, wondering why Nyx should sound like that, sound like he's sad and then-
He feels hands on one of his own. They're warm, and he can distinctly feel the difference between the two, the texture of skin burned and scarred beyond repair and he feels a finger gently trace the burn mark on the back of his hand.
The thing is, sometimes he will knock in to things like the edges of the oven or hot pots and pans when he has a lapse in memory and spacial awareness, when he's concentrating so hard on remembering how much garlic or how many mushrooms, the thing is, when he calls his fighting daggers to his hands out from the ether, they always land with the grips in his palms, and his cooking knives do not do the same, the thing is, as practiced as he is with dicing and chopping, sometimes a finger or two or three get cut.
His heart is pounding. He pulls his hands away, turns away to grab his gloves again and put them back on before he keeps working. He is careful to keep a rough approximation of where Nyx is for the rest of the night, so he can avoid giving him a good look at his face.