✮ i'll take your breath away.

For one that has come from the depths, spent their days and night and even more days still so far beneath the water's surface that near-everything has lost its novelty, the surface itself such a level of wonder and down right splendor that it's difficult to ignore, even if his father has insisted time and time and time again that the world above brings nothing but trouble, that it's best to stay hidden, stay safe. There is nothing in 'the above' that could possibly hold his attention beyond a fleeting fantasy, or some such nonsense that Regis is driven to instill in his only son, his heir to the throne, and it might just go without saying that insisting that there was nothing of interest to him would surely see the little prince of the sea looking upward, and wondering if that were at all true.

Spoilers: it very much isn't. There is a whole other world above him that holds so many wondrous things that he doesn't think he'll ever be able to understand them all, but oh does he try, collecting things that he might think have ties to the humans and their strange ways, their strange everything if only by dint of ignorance. Oh, but make no mistake, he is doing his best to close some of the gap that exists between himself and that world, because as the saying goes, the grass is always greener, or some such —

( We always want what we can't have, don't we? And oh, if that isn't about to become more than a simple phrase. )

He takes to the surface as often as he can, as stealthily as he can and that is in no small part due to the addition of a certain blond companion that covers for him when someone might think to call for him — giving him the sort of leeway and opportunity needed to make his way upward, slipping through the water as this otherworldly, ethereal thing that may or may not even be real, and it's one such instance that has him surfacing near a stretch of bright-white sand that still shines even in the light of dusk, shielded as he finds himself by a convenient outcropping of rock, and he settles with the intent to simply watch the distant city in the twilight, the unnatural light that shines on the surface of the water something foreign and wondrous, and then —

There is a figure walking close to the shore, barefoot with the cuffs of his pants rolled up to somewhere around mid-calf, and he's lean to the point that Noctis might find himself wondering if he's had enough to eat, but he's so beautiful that he can't bring himself to look away, even as the natural light fades to that which is given by the moon, even if it hasn't risen entirely.

This little prince has seen the beauty that the ocean holds, and has found himself intrigued by the unknown held out of reach by the human world — but this is something else entirely, something on a whole new spectrum, something that has the pit of his stomach bottoming out and the base of his spine tingling, and he. Comes back. And back, and back again, day in and day out watching this stranger like he might have some sort of answer that he hadn't been aware of looking for, something just out of reach along with that pale skin, those brilliant green eyes that he's only been able to catch the color of too briefly, and even still, he isn't sure that they don't more closely resemble the tide in the morning, seafoam, rich.

To his credit, all he does is watch — but he'll be damned if he doesn't already feel his heart wanting more, with every beat and every breath, and that he manages to keep his distance ( at least at first ) should be a testament to how hard he tries.

For all that he is the embodiment — the epitome, the poster-child, the flagship — of one that would rather leave effort as something meant for other people, the gusto he sometimes enters battle with would surprise anyone, especially anyone that has known him as long as the group that follows him now, and perhaps even more especially the one that has been with him from the tender age of three. Because if there is any measure of knowing what the crowned prince of Lucis is capable ( or incapable ) of, it is one ( 1 ) Ignis Scientia.

Sometimes, he goes looking for a fight. Not for any real need to work out anger, or frustration, or anything that might equate the need for it, but sometimes there is a reserve of restless energy just thrumming beneath the surface of his skin, something that accumulates and sits and festers when they go too long between picking up hunts, or there's a stretch of fetch quests that net them some good gil, but not the challenge that results in his body being so damned worn out that he can't do a damned thing but faceplant into a motel bed — or his bedroll if they're roughing it. There's a reason that he makes it a point to check out the hunts at every Crow's Nest they stop at, but it seems like the pickings have been slim for the last however-long, and he swears by the Six that he's about to go out of his damned mind.

Maybe that's why he can't sleep, even though it's been hours since the sun had gone down, since Ignis had prepared one of his favorite campsite meals — which stands to reason, really, that the older has noticed the prince as a restless and irritable thing — and even more hours still since they'd decided to call it a night, because the King's Knight server was down for maintenance and when you're out in the middle of fucking nowhere, there's little else to do but either look at the stars or try to get some sleep. And for all Noct has studied the stars from a very young age, they don't hold much interest for him when he can't sit still, and so he. Wanders.

The roads are treacherous at night, an echo of his chamberlain's voice breathes into his awareness, and that should, by all accounts, be enough to keep him within the soft blue glow of the haven's protection — but it doesn't. He's restless and anxious and all those adverbs one might think in Prompto's general direction on any given day, and maybe a walk in the darkness will clear his mind or make him so gods-damned bored that he can finally sleep, but either way, it would be too simple to turn back and call the whole thing off. So he isn't going to. He's —

Not expecting a Red Fucking Giant to come crawling its way out of the ground, but it Fucking Does, and whether it's close enough to the haven for the sound of it to echo or there is just some inherent alarm instilled in someone's brain when they sense their prince is in danger, Noct has been warp-striking this thing for a good ten straight minutes when the other three make their presence known, and he's pretty sure he hears Gladio growling out what the actual fuck, Noct before he. Uh.

( Look, hindsight is always going to be twenty-twenty, and he is going to come back to this in the morning and think something along the lines of what the fuck himself, but it goes without saying that this had started out as an innocent stroll, and daemons are always going to be the ones that fuck everything up. That's his story and he's sticking to it. )

So, the damned thing picks him up — you know, like they do, squeezing and squeezing just long enough to have him squirming and gritting his teeth against the pressure — and while under normal circumstances, being thrown from that unsolicited handshake would find him point-warping out of harm's way, but it's either a lack of sleep or something else that sees him slammed into the ground hard enough to have him seeing stars, and not just the ones that are hanging out in the sky above him, because those are pretty damned innocent and he's almost positive the ones that burst behind his eyes are the sinister sort that laugh at the fact that he's just been face-slammed into the dirt.

To his credit, there have only been a handful of times in which he's blacked out and come to with Ignis looming over him like some great mother chocobo, concern etched into the whole of his expression as a potion or whatever-else is pressed into his hand and promptly administered; he can feel the thrum of healing through the whole of himself, extremities and appendages and all the things in between, and while it's enough to get him back on his feet, there are still a few bits of him that don't feel like they're actually attached. Like he's meandering through a bit of cold molasses in pieces, or like his legs don't belong to him, or the tips of his fingers won't stop tingling no matter how much he shakes out the feeling of being maybe-almost-not-alive.

He leans, bodily, against Ignis on the way back to the haven — even if it's not very far, and even if he doesn't really need to ( in his head, because everything is fine, even if he'd just gotten himself face-slammed into the dirt ), but there's a bit of a lurch in his steps that have him stumbling, just a little. He's fine, damn it. He's alive. That's all that matters.