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Part 2 of exchange fics
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Hurt Comfort Exchange 2024
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Published:
2024-06-18
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2,110
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1/1
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phantom pains

Summary:

"Shh," the ghost says, a gentle hand brushing the hair out of his face, "I'm not going anywhere, Noctis."

-

The ghost is gone by the time he wakes.

 

[or: noctis's magic has run dry, and he pushes himself too far to save his friends. he has to pay the price, but he doesn't have to do it alone.]

[or: or: from haunting memories that never leave to people who always do, noctis's whole life has been a series of ghosts. it's time someone finally sticks around.]

Notes:

Hope you guys like this, since it's my first FFXV fic I've written! I used to read fics in the fandom all the time, and this prompt reignited my interest in the fandom!

: ]

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

 

"Look out!" Noctis cries, another spell spilling down his throat like wine, his hands twitching as magic crackles through his veins. He warps just as the spell reaches its peak, splitting the lightning between space in a two-for-one combo. The lightning crawls through the wave of Scarabs and Mantises, effectively downing the closest row and only missing a very unamused Gladio by an inch. Noctis resigns himself to the lecture of a lifetime after this is over.

 

He waits for a moment, but the magic fizzles out and doesn't do anything to stop the Mantis next to Prompto from rearing up to charge, its bladed front legs raised up above its head ready to swing down and spear through him.

 

Prompto fumbles with his gun, only half-loaded before he was shoved to the ground by a particularly unwieldy Scarab, but he's backed into a corner with nowhere to go and no time to shoot. There's no world where he gets away in time, no matter how quickly he can load his gun, and the space their healing potions should take up in the Armiger has never felt so empty.

 

Noctis breathes out, fear a distant cry beneath his skin, and he feels his warp flicker like a flame beneath his breastbone. It's weak-- he's weak, his magic spilling out of him on every side--but he feels it flicker in his hand like a ghost and pulls. Space moves around him until he's practically falling onto Prompto, grabbing his wrist and tugging him back through space until they're both landing in a heap just a few feet from the car.

 

"Fuck," Prompto groans, rolling over and smacking his elbow into Noctis's side in the process. "Thanks for the save, dude."

 

Noctis grunts, but he doesn't move to get up off the ground, his hands twitching as electricity crawls through his blood and beneath his skin.

 

"We gotta get back," Prompto says, nudging Noctis who begrudgingly pries himself off the ground. Prompto helps him up and starts moving them both north, loading his gun in one swift movement, and the gravity of the situation finally sinks in. Ignis and Gladio are facing the horde, alone, and there's at least a twenty-minute run between them thanks to Noctis's little stunt.

 

"Fuck," Noct says vehemently, and Prompto only thins his lips in response, quickening their pace. It's not quite a run, not with how Noctis can barely keep his feet beneath him, and the time between them and the other two draws longer with every stumble.

 

Finally, Noctis grabs Prompto by the arm and yanks him to a stop. "We're never gonna make it there in time on foot," he says, and he knows that it's true the moment he says it. If his prediction is right--and they usually are--the horde is just going to keep coming, and Gladio and Ignis will be swarmed within two minutes, let alone twenty.

 

"You think you can warp us back?" Prompto asks, and Noctis can see the tense set in his shoulders.

 

"Of course I can," Noctis says, all false bravado, trying to start that flicker in his chest back up like revving a dead engine. That always works eventually in the movies, doesn't it? He probably doesn't watch enough movies with car scenes, actually, since he revs his magic again and again, but it only sputters and sizzles like wet coals.

 

Shifting gears, he lets his eyes slip closed and feels around inside that sort-of-real space his magic likes to take up, all colors and sounds and echoes, only waiting until he feels the barest beat of magic before he pulls with everything he has, practically wrenching the two of them back to the battlefield.

 

They land on their feet this time, for the most part. At least, Prompto lands on his feet, and Noctis keeps a vise-grip on Prompto's arm enough to keep the ground beneath him.

 

Prompto is quick to raise his gun at everything that moves remotely in their direction, even with Noctis clinging to his arm like a koala, but instead of gunshots, there is only silence. Noctis turns, dread thick in his throat, only to find Gladio holding his side, leaning against one of the decrepit stone pillars and staring dispassionately down the barrel of Prompto's gun.

 

Ignis meets Noctis's gaze cooly from his place on the floor, half-way through wrapping a gash on his leg, a dagger in his hand poised to be thrown. There's a tense moment where Noctis worries in the heat of the moment he might find himself with a blade sticking out of his side, but Gladio cracks the ice and steps back with a snort. "Good reflexes, blondie."

 

Prompto's quick to holster his gun after that, jostling Noctis's grip on him, and Noct lets out an admittedly pathetic yelp. Ignis turns to face him, eyes narrowed as his once-over turns into a full-out interrogation.

 

"Are you alright?" he asks carefully, eyeing Noctis's now-precarious grip on Prompto's arm.

 

"Oh, he's fine," Gladio scoffs, making his way toward them with heavy footfalls not unlike a galloping horse, "Aren't you, princess?"

 

"Course," Noctis says--because what else would he be? What else could he afford to be?--and he nods, flashing Gladio a thumbs-up, the world lagging a few seconds behind his head as it tilts. He breathes through his nose, his grip on Prompto's arm tightening probably well past painful as the ground spins beneath his feet.

 

"Noct?" Prompto asks, but his voice is far away, buried like the whispers of the Gods beneath the soil, like the echoing screams of the drowned beneath the waves.

 

In between blinks, like a flickering strobe light has gone and replaced the sun, his knees hit the ground with all of his weight, the full force of the fall sending electric shocks down his spine in a cruel mimicry of the past. Heavy hands grab onto his shoulders and he finds himself nodding at Gladio's boots, tipped forward and only just kept from eating dirt.

 

"--happened?" someone says, but it only barely sounds like sounds. It's all soup-ey, like the soup Ignis likes to make to trick him into eating his vegetables. Maybe it's Igins talking, actually.

 

"--his magic--" someone else says, but it's all noise at that point. Noctis hums, an old tune he barely remembers, and feels his grip slip away like a little kid too excited with their first balloon. He'd only ever had a balloon once, after the accident, a stupid little smiley face he'd fought to keep tied to the foot of his bed long after it deflated and sunk to the floor.

 

He feels himself deflate, all of the air wheezing out of him, and he lets himself drift off as he's pulled up off his knees and against a warm chest.

 

---

 

Noctis wakes up screaming.

 

He doesn't know why he's screaming, not at first. For a moment--for a beautiful, beautiful moment--he lives a life of blissful ignorance, like he's lagging a few frames behind himself.

 

Then, the knife twists behind his eyes.

 

Noctis writhes, practically throwing himself away from the pain, but it follows him like a ghost. A pair of heavy hands latch onto his shoulders, dragging him back to where he was and pressing him down. The pain dulls for barely a moment, his screams breaking off into strangled sobs as he's held down on every side, but as the pain returns in full force he rakes his nails roughly down the arms closest to him, arms he can't even see.

 

He'd like to say he threw them off of him. He'd like to say he utilized one of the many tactics Gladio had insisted he learn, but his brain is barely active as he thrashes and claws like a wounded animal.

 

He feels like one, a fox caught in a bear trap that yowls in the night, or a fish hooked through its face and suffocating above the water, only the hook missed his mouth by a few inches and nestled through his eyes instead, wrenching and yanking and bleeding him dry.

 

He screams, not the pretty kind of scream, but the ugly, desperate kind he has a haunting familiarity with. It only cuts off as he chokes, sputtering on liquid as it's tipped down his throat. He thrashes more, something distant that screams of danger and poison, but even as the bottle's emptied entirely--half on the bed and half on his face--another quickly comes to take its place.

 

With poison in his hair and blood between his teeth, Noctis screams and screams and screams.

 

---

 

Noctis wakes up crying.

 

He knows why he's crying the moment he comes to this time, knives behind his eyes and needles stabbing into every joint of his hands, piercing through every crook of his fingers. He doesn't jerk forward, this time; he knows better now. Instead, his shoulders turn inward, sobs raking him, and he curls forward tightly like a ball, like a baby. He pulls away from the headboard of what surely must be a bed, already half-sitting from the pile of pillows holding him at an angle.

 

He cries through his teeth, jaw clenched shut like he could bury his cries behind his tongue, but he's loud enough that the door throws itself open, footsteps climbing toward his bedside. A figure blinks into existence, a ghost standing before him, and they reach out, a gentle hand settling on his shoulder.

 

"Are you awake?" the ghost asks gently in an oddly familiar voice. Something tells him that they're friendly, for all that they're not any of the friends he can think of.

 

Noctis struggles but manages to pry his jaw open enough to answer. It feels like hot coals down his throat.

 

"No," Noctis rasps hoarsely. This isn't waking, this isn't life; it can't be, it can't be, it isn't. The ghost hums, as if considering him, and Noctis feels the floor drop out beneath him as they shift away from him.

 

"Please," Noctis cries, eyes wide and heart suddenly pounding, gripping the ghost by the arm with everything he has. A fresh wave of tears spills over and he begs, "Don't go, don't leave, please."

 

He feels like a little kid again, watching his dad leave him alone in the hospital bed for a council meeting, watching his mom for the last time as she--

 

"Shh," the ghost says, a gentle hand brushing the hair out of his face, "I'm not going anywhere, Noctis."

 

The ghost presses him back against the pillows, Noctis still holding onto their arm with a death grip. There's no hair for them to brush out of his face this time, but maybe it's the ghost of a memory that makes them brush their free hand along the side of his face gently as they sit beside him, the bed dipping under spectral weight.

 

"Rest," the ghost says, "I'll be here when you wake."

 

Noctis believes them, he does, but he still keeps a grip on their arm even as dreams overtake him.

 

---

 

The ghost is gone by the time he wakes, replaced by a very, very upset Ignis sitting in a chair beside his bed. Apparently, Noctis's "casual disregard for his personal safety" has finally hit a breaking point, and Ignis gives him a very sternly-worded lecture on the limits of magic.

 

Gladio spends no less than an hour grumbling about all of the fun and exhausting drills he's going to make Noctis run as soon as he's cleared to be on his feet again, muttering on and off about Noctis's duty.

 

Even Prompto has a lecture for him, teary-eyed and surprisingly vicious monologue about recklessness and abandonment that slices through Noctis like a blade.

 

Just as he's beginning to break down, finally convinced he's pushed his friends over the edge, the world seems to still as Ignis presses a warm bowl of soup into his hands. Noctis breathes in the steam, basking in the warmth.

 

He notices with alarming clarity how Gladio sits at the foot of his bed, facing the door with his back to Noctis, in the same way he did when they were much, much younger, when the most dangerous things were nightmares or monsters below the castle.

 

Prompto flops onto the bed beside him, careful not to jostle him too much, and entertains him with an alarming amount of gossip, since Noctis has been unceremoniously banned from so much as thinking about a screen.

 

The ghost is gone when he wakes, but his friends have made it very, very clear that they aren't going anywhere.

 

Notes:

Hope you enjoyed! : ]

If you liked it, please, please, please comment! Any comment, even just a "<3" or a keysmash is so sweet and motivating to see! Also, please let me know if there's any interest in more Final Fantasy fics!

<3 <3 <3

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