Chapter Text
The blood on Ignis’ hands was half-dry already, but the movement of his arms as he ran pulled the wound and more blood soaked into his sleeves, hot and sticky. The buildings shook from the attacks.
Noct was dressed in pyjamas, a loose hoodie shoved over his head. His feet were bare. With the white t-shirt stained liberally in Ignis’ blood covering his face, looped around the back of his head, he was unrecognisable.
He’d tried to fight, up until he saw his father cut down in front of him. He’d probably still be fighting, except he was limp and gasping with both stasis and tears. Ignis felt entirely numb. He didn’t know where Gladio, who’d meant to be there to guard Noct, was. He didn’t know why Niflheim was attacking. There were airships, Magitek engines — the Citadel was being razed to the ground. Civilian casualties had to be in the hundreds if not thousands. There had been talk of a peace treaty. Now King Regis was dead, the Wall broken, and the Crystal — broken? Taken? Its power had been removed from both him and Noct at least, and the loss of the armiger felt like a cold void inside his throat, so empty it hurt.
They crawled out through the tunnels and secret ways he and Noct had found as children, when they’d been too young to warp. On the other side of the gardens, out of the Citadel, he could see there were Magitek soldiers, terrifying for their inhumanity, troops of them following human Niflheim soldiers who — from what Ignis can see — were doing something in-between crowd control and mass murder.
People were screaming and crying, and there were dead bodies and blood on the ground. The soldiers were searching the crowds, creating checkpoints at each street corner. They had to be searching for Noct or others escaping the Citadel.
There was no way past them. Ignis tied the bloodied t-shirt a little tighter, hefted Noct onto his back, and ran.
He pushed through the crowd, until he was too close not to be spotted. It didn’t take much acting for his voice to come out panicky and shrill and entirely unlike his own.
‘Help her,’ he said, then louder, shouting above the din: ‘Someone help her!’
They were shoved by the crowds desperate not to get too close to the Magitek soldiers, and they ended up even closer to the human Niffs. Ignis turned to them to try and make eye contact. ‘You have to help her,’ he shouted at them, ragged, the words like sand in his mouth. ‘Please!’
‘Move on!’ one of the soldiers barked at him; with their helmets, he couldn’t tell which. He was shoved hard enough he fell to his knees, overbalanced by the weight of Noct on his back. Then he scrambled back up, and none of the soldiers paid him — or Noct — any attention when he moved through and then past the checkpoint.
He’d assumed they were looking for Noct and wouldn’t pay attention to a woman, much less an injured woman needing help. The fact that he’d been right took his breath away with both relief and fury. He heard shooting from the checkpoint behind him when he was halfway down the street, and he ducked down and ran to the nearest side-street to take shelter there. Noct didn’t respond much as he hitched him tighter and higher, starting to run even when he knew they hadn’t been shooting at them. Better to get away as soon as possible. He thought of whoever they’d just executed and felt sick.
Noct was still in stasis, if his limpness was anything to go by. That was a boon, because Ignis knew that as soon as Noct recovered he’d want to stop and fight and grieve. It was also deeply worrying. Noct should have recovered by now — he should have recovered over an hour ago. Had they done something to him while Ignis hadn’t been paying attention? Was it to do with being unable to access the Crystal? What if he never got better? What if he got worse?
Ignis didn’t know. He didn’t know how to help Noct out of stasis, if it were at all possible. The only thing he’d been taught was to keep Noct safe and comfortable.
He was failing on comfortable; he wasn’t sure if he was failing on safe.
The journey across Insomnia was a long one, roads gridlocked, and when dawn broke Ignis’ bare feet were rubbed raw, his back ached like he’s been beaten, and Noct was still in stasis. There were Magitek patrolling the streets; Ignis knew how to avoid them and did so, kept on edge by the need to listen out for their clanking.
Broadcasts had started playing from the hovering Magitek airships, telling people to stay inside their houses. The broadcasts ran on repeat until the words stuck in Ignis head like insects in honey. It didn’t say that Niflheim were enforcing the curfew with execution by Magitek; the streets were almost entirely empty save for the bodies on the road, all of them dead. Even though he shouldn’t, Ignis checked each person in the hope there was someone he could save. There wasn’t. Several times someone called out from an open door to tell him to come in, to be safe. There wasn’t time to justify why he couldn’t, so he ran and left them behind. He hoped no one tried to follow him and put themselves in danger, but he didn’t look back to check.
He needed to concentrate on Noct. On keeping him alive, on getting him to safety. Everyone else — civilians, his uncle and parents, Gladio, Prompto, the council and the Crownsguard he trained with and trusted and respected — came second. He was so tired his eyes stung, leaking tears that trickled down his face, hot then cold in the chill air. His back felt close to breaking. His arms had gone numb. Avoiding the stamping Magitek was becoming less and less easy. He doesn’t know what he was going to do when they got to the Wall, because the soldiers around the Citadel may have been lax, but there was no chance they wouldn’t check everyone leaving the city if they truly want to catch Noct. The bridge would be occupied. They had the airships to shoot down any boat that tried to cross to the mainland. But if Noct couldn’t leave, neither could he stay. Hiding in Insomnia would be waiting as a fish in a barrel. Escaping into Cavaugh would simply be escaping into a slightly larger barrel.
He didn’t know what to do. Without the armiger they had no weapons. No curatives. They didn’t even have their phones. He should have waited for Gladio to meet them. He’d panicked and ran. He should have found reliable allies, other Crownsguard, Kingsglaive, anyone.
It was impossible. Ignis was carrying the King of Lucis on his back and he was stupid, weak, and defenceless; he was barefoot and stumbling, and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to protect Noct.
King Regis was dead and Niflheim had taken Insomnia. The Old Wall did not activate and Ignis didn’t know why. Noct was still in stasis and Ignis didn’t know how to help him.
Within sight of the start of the Inner Insomnian Bridge, Ignis stopped by the feet of a dead man whose face was broken in two, the insides of his head pooling out onto the road. Turning, Ignis looked around the empty streets for soldiers. There were none. Had they moved on or where they still close by?
He fell down in front of the dead man, meaning to kneel gracefully but ending up more collapsing. Noct fell from his back before Ignis could stop him, slipping from his cramping hands and slumping, rolling, down onto the pavement. He groaned and curled but did not get up, and Ignis turned to check on him.
His pulse was slow but not too slow. He shoved at Ignis limply when Ignis touched him, face scrunching up beneath the bloody t-shirt in the same discomfort he always showed when in stasis. It had to be that his removal from the crystal’s power was preventing him from recovering. The possibility that he’d never recover so long as he was cut off from the crystal was real and utterly terrifying.
If he knew Ignis was dressing him in the clothes of a newly dead man, he gave no sign. The trousers and shirt replaced his pyjamas, and the hoodie went back on top. Ignis made the motion to take Noct’s bag of laundry from the armiger and sat stupidly with his hand outstretched when it did not appear. Then he held the dirty pyjamas in his fist, turning his head as if to look for a place to put them. It seemed fundamentally wrong to put them by or on the dead man.
He was wasting time. Ignis stood and threw them to the side of the street, then took the man’s socks and shoes, cold and slightly crusty. He put the socks on himself and the white and red trainers on Noct, lacing them up tight because they were a size or two too big. When he heaved Noct back up, feeling him cling weakly to his shoulders and hips, the pain crawled up his feet and ankles, white hot agony, and the socks did nothing at all to help as he started walking again.
The half of the bridge inside the Wall was full of people, perhaps eight or nine hundred. The gate was open and there were what looked like several dozen soldiers blocking them from walking out.
Ignis made his way to them, because his spectacles were smeared and he couldn’t see quite what was happening, and also because what else was there to do? A crowd was the best place to hide in, and the crowd would likely never be larger than it was now. There did not seem to be active violence, though the crowd was clearly tense. Ignis felt like he was walking into a fight without realising it. He wouldn’t be able to use the same trick twice. On his back, Noct stirred.
There were only about forty Niflheim soldiers managing the bridge, armed with guns, and perhaps 200 Magitek soldiers lining the road. In the middle of the road was a huge machine, hulking like the metallic skeleton of a gargantuan, malevolent ape. It was Magitek armour with a soldier piloting it from the inside, Ignis understood in a factual, distant sort of way, but the primitive terror it shrouded his head in was insistent.
To fight without weapons or curatives would be to die in seconds, and Noct to be discovered and most likely killed. To incite the crowd to fight would be instigating the deaths of hundreds of civilians, and pointlessly so if they didn’t win, which they probably wouldn’t. There were no other ways out.
Maybe they should go back. Try and find a safe place to hole up in while waiting for news, or backup, or a plan that wouldn’t get the both of them killed.
‘Hey,’ Noct said, cracked and whispered in Ignis’ ear. Ignis turned his head and opened his mouth to tell him to stop talking, to cover his face back up again, when Noct said: ‘Go closer.’
‘We shouldn’t,’ Ignis said. They were just close enough to see what was happening; to be this close at all was a stupid risk. To be closer would be unforgivable, especially when Noct was revealing his face.
Noct pressed his fist against Ignis’ shoulder blade. The sharp sting of magic bolted through Ignis and hit the road in the rough centre of the Magitek infantry. A ball of bright blue exploded into being, crystal shards and blackness so deep it hurt to look at. The Magitek, including the armour, disappeared into it.
The crowd moved, like a single unit trying to tear itself apart. Ignis was shoved as a woman screamed and pushed to run back into Insomnia, and he only barely managed to keep his feet. Half the crowd went with the woman; some rushed forwards instead. Some remained where they were. The sound of bullets punctured the air for a few seconds, then stopped. The sound of people turned into the singular roar of a crowd, a noise like a skyscraper collapsing.
Ignis clutched Noct to himself as tight as he could and ran.