The Hotel at Galdin Quay; Leide (Eos). Tuesday Morning [05/24 FT].

[chef_chocobro]

Noctis sat on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as the sun rose in Galdin Quay. Slightly less sleepy than usual; it seemed as though they'd let him sleep in a little for a change. That was kind of nice, actually, especially with all of Gladio's early morning sand jogs. The next thing to greet him was Prompto's equally sleepy but much more cheerful voice.

"Heya," he said, simply enough, "morning!"

But something didn't sit right with Noctis. Maybe it was just his nerves getting to him, his anxiousness, the fact that nothing on this trip seemed to be going the way it should. You'd think a simple trip to Altissia would be just that...simple, but so far, it had been anything but. Knowing their luck, that Dino guy had been lying about being able to obtain a ferry for them, and they were just about to find themselves snared in another delay. Meaning the next few days would be a whirlwind building up to the wedding, but, hey. Once they finally got there, he and Lunafreya would actually be married. It was honestly kind of a lot, so it wasn't much of a surprise that he hadn't slept well, even with the extra time he'd been given that morning. Sighing slightly, he pushed himself up to his feet, and turned toward where Prompto and Gladio were ready and waiting to complete their voyage, finally.

But then Noctis frowned, noticing a significant absence in the well-lit room. "Where's Specs?"

"Should be back any minute now," said Gladio, and Noctis, impatient, nervous, anxious, drifted toward the large windows looking out over the sea, toward Altissia, the black smear of Angelgard's sweeping peaks dominating the view.



Then, the door opened, and Ignis stepped through, and that heavy feeling suddenly became more pronounced. His face was pale and drawn into a tight, serious frown. He looked...disturbed. Troubled. And whenever Ignis was troubled and actually showing it, it was never, ever a good thing.

He held in his hand a newspaper, and his thoughtful, worried eyes immediately went to Noctis as he entered. That was the moment when all the other things behind those glasses became evident: distress, concern, sympathy Pain. He'd been up earlier than all of them, and he'd been sitting with the difficulty of what he had to do in front of him for hours now.

Noctis immediately saw that look on Ignis' face and his stomach dropped into his feet. Maybe he'd imagined it. Maybe they'd just run out of Ebony. Maybe...maybe...

"What's that look for?" Noctis asked, almost as if desperate for the answer to be that mundane, that insignificant.

Almost as if he knew better.

But even the words Ignis had rehearsed for this moment failed him. He turned away, toward Gladio, who held out of hand for the newspaper. Ignis gave it to him willingly, knowing it would be easier once someone else could share this burden with him, and who better to carry a weight than Gladiolus Amicitia?

"It's in all the papers," Ignis then said quietly, as his hand dropped to his side. He wanted to turn back to Noctis, but found that he couldn't.

"What is?" Noctis insisted, none of this doing anything to ease his concern, his worry, his rising panic.

Gladio paced away as he read, and Prompto, his own dread and curiosity getting the better of him, leaned in to peer over Gladio's arm. "Insomnia," he read the big, bold headline easily, but then stopped, falered, stumbling over the next word in shock and disbelief, certain he must have read it wrong, "...Falls?"

"What?"

The word hit Noctis like a punch to the gut. No. No! That….couldn't be right. Prompto must have read it wrong! That wasn't true, that was impossible--

Suddenly, Noctis' surprised turned into anger as he turned on Prompto. "Is this your idea of a joke?"

"I need you to calm down," Ignis rushed in, hand lifted, as if prepared to put himself between Noctis and the entire world if he had to, "so I can explain."

"I'm as calm," Noctis growled, his ire now targeted on Ignis, and each step closer made him angrier than the last, "as I'm gonna get!"

"There was an attack," Ignis offered, reluctance and apology and so many other things he couldn't express with words going instead into the measured tone of his voice. He almost lowered his eyes, looking away from Noctis now right in front of him, but he knew it was unfair to be anything but honest with him, especially in this moment. "The Imperial army has taken the Crown City."

"'As treat room tempers flared,'" Gladio read from the front page, and Noctis, immediately, barely able to let that bomb settled in his stomach, shifted over to him to read along with the words, needing to see them with his own eyes, "'blasts lit the night sky. When the smoke about the Citadel had cleared, the king...was found...""

Noctis didn't need to read any further to know what was about to leave Gladio's mouth.

"....dead.'"

"...no," Noctis breathed out, refusing to believe it. It was wrong. He'd read it wrong. He had to have read it wrong! "Wait. Hold on..."

"We had no way of knowing," Ignis said, softly, turning away again, as he felt that weight again, that pressure, because he felt he should have known. They did have a way. Everything had been suspicious from the start, there was no reason not to think it had all been traps and lies and now he'd failed in his duty to prevent any of this from happening. They did have a way of knowing. He should have known...

"What?" Noctis insisted with a hiss. "Knowing what?"

"That the signing was last night," Ignis said, turning back to Noctis, though his head was still down. "That Insomnia--"

"But the wedding!" Noctis insisted, as if trying to make it all make sense. "Altissia!"

"I know!" Ignis said, now with a bit of fierceness in his voice, despite his efforts to keep himself and his own tangle of emotions under control. Despite feeling the desire to just scream, feeling the need to just let out his anger and frustration and disappointment with himself just as Noct was doing. And his own feelings of betrayal and hurt, that he thought he'd been involved, they made him feel involved, but he'd been just as mislead and left in the dark as anyone. And now...everything was...

"That was the plan," he said, softer now that he saw Noctis' face reflecting even more of what he was feeling, plus all that pain, all that confusion. "Yet the reports of the invasion are all the same. How could every headline in the kingdom be wrong?"

But, oh, how he wished they all were.

"No," Noctis' brow furrowed, his eyes gleaming with tears, and he couldn't look at Ignis. He couldn't look at anyone. "Lies...."

His hand reached out for a chair in support.

"....if only," muttered Prompto, his head hanging, his hands rubbing together anxiously as he realized there was definitely no witty quip or clever joke to relieve the tension in this situation. His own mind was racing, too, and he felt a little guilty at the selfishness of some of his thoughts. If the Crown City had been overtaken by the Empire, then what did that mean for...him? And Liz? All their plans...

...and what if...what if this...was this start of...of it all? All those horrible futures they kept getting glimpses of thanks to Fandom? Was this the beginning of the end? Was this where all that darkness finally crept in?

Noctis stiffly moved past the chair, sitting heavily instead into another one, and Gladio lowered the paper, finally, with a disgruntled sigh that seemed almost too light for what he was feeling. But his mind was going into action already. They needed to reassess things, they needed to figure things out. They really couldn't afford to just sit and mope in the tragedy, not if the king was dead, not if the Nifs had taken over the city, not if literally everything they thought to be true had just gone up in smoke. And then there was the matter of the Crystal...

"What else do we know?" he asked, focused, turning now toward Ignis.

And it was rare for Ignis to not have any words, but, in this instance, all he could do was shake his head futilely, almost stunned by this dreadful feeling of inadequacy. There were no more words. That was all he had.

"Then we can't be sure until we see it with our own eyes," Gladio decided firmly.

"And that means," Prompto realized, slowly lifting his head, realizing that there might be a chance, that there might be even more at stake all of a sudden than what they first realized, "we go back to Insomnia."

"Might not be safe for us there," Ignis pointed out.

"Might not be safe for us here," Prompto countered, with a sudden flash of both hope and dread, all balled into one, but then he faltered, slightly, in his newfound insistence as a silence settled uncomfortably between the four of them in small light-filled room on the edge of the sea.

"...Turn back?" Gladio finally ventured.



All eyes fell toward their prince.

No. Not their prince.

Toward their king.

Their king who was not ready for this. Not ready for any of this. Noctis dropped his head, staring into his hands in his lap.

He may not be ready.

But he didn't have a choice.

"Yeah," he breathed out, lifting his eyes again. "Let's go."


[[ NFB, NFI, TBC, OOC a-ok. Dialogue heavily taken from Final Fantasy XV, Chapter One: Departure ]]