To the verification of faith.

“Oh, you know,” Dante hedged. “The same stuff that happens when your brother turns out to be a megalomaniacal test tube baby trading state secrets with a domestic threat. Like, all the usual stops. Did some monologuing, tried to recruit me—obviously, because we both know who’s better in the field—got mad when I said no thanks, got even more mad when I stabbed him in the heartbone, and then he kinda disowned me.”

Under his breath, he added, “Wasn’t really as surprising as it should have been, probably.”

There was a tense silence, the kind that always followed something a little too honest. Dante glanced sidelong, noting the clutch of Ignis’ hand at the door handle, the tense set of his jaw.

“Relax, Igs,” he drawled easily, resting his arm along the back of the seat. “Come on, I’m not gonna crash us—”

He was cut off by the sudden upheaval of the entire car, drowning out his brief ‘oh, shit’ with a howl of crushed metal and shattering glass. He briefly registered that there had been an impact before the toss, when he slammed his temple against the steering wheel. As his head bounced around the interior of the tumbling car and blood seeped onto his tongue, he couldn’t help but think this was vastly preferable to talking about the Vergil debacle.

It happened very quickly after that, a staccato chopping of snapshots. He was flung through the car window—and briefly thought back to Ignis’ fussing over his lack of a seat belt—and went skittering across the pavement and into the brush beside the road, where he rolled in the dust and dead grass until he finally skid onto his feet. The finally car teetered to a stop on its side, and Dante was up and next to it before it even settled into stillness.

“Okay, first off,” Dante said as he pulled himself up to the passenger side. “That totally wasn’t my fault. I think we hit something. The car’s uh, flipped over. On its side.” He knelt by the shattered window below him, patting at Ignis’ chest to show his presence. “You okay? You get fucked up?”

He was certain that the enamel of his teeth had splintered and cracked for how vehemently he’d ground his teeth, feet gouging hard into the floorboard to steady him, hands grasping at the overhead ceiling to keep him secure. He braced himself for an impact that came in triplicate, before the long, scraping slide of the vehicle that took what seemed like a lifetime to finally slow and stop.

The seatbelt dug mercilessly across his chest, prohibiting the desperate breaths he heaved. His hands shook, rendered useless with shock, but still he managed to find the buckle to undo it, and let himself fall to the crumble of glass and twisted steel below. Ignis frowned, feeling the frame of the passenger window, and finding it empty of any protective glass, he pulled himself out of the fame of the wreckage through it.  “I’m fine,” he insisted, an automatic answer that came even as he felt himself for cuts or bruises, and finding only surface wounds, nodded.  His hands then reached for Dante, feeling him in similar fashion to look him over. “Gods, Dante, you could have gotten us both killed. And while I can only presume that’s half the appeal of driving so recklessly, I have to ask that you reserve such a feat for when you are alone, as I do intend to continue the laborious art of living.” He frowned, remembering the wreckage. “Though I suppose now that’s a moot point.”

“We’re going to have to walk, aren’t we?” he asked, already searching for the crook of Dante’s arm, to loop his own through. “We oughtn’t tarry.” 

“It’s 210 miles per hour,” Dante informed him anyway, even as he noisily shifted  gears to drop the speed down, as so kindly requested. “I can already hear you asking: What’s that in king’s measurements?” He exaggerated Ignis’ accent a little unflatteringly. “Frankly, I dunno. I only use freedom measurements. Yeehaw, Igs.”

He took his eyes dangerously from the road—not like there was anyone to hit anyway—and leaned over, grasping Ignis by the back of the neck to study his face. “You good, man?” A little green around the edges, maybe. Dante sat back again. “Yeah, you’re good. But if you gotta toss your cookies, do it out the window. This interior already reeks of smoke and I don’t think adding in some vomit is going to balance the aromatic palette.”

The pace seemed achingly slow now, even though they were still pushing 80 or so. But Dante didn’t remark on that, even as his fingers drummed impatiently on the wheel. “Getting closer now,” he answered finally. “I see it up there. Looks a little worse for wear, but it’s still kicking. Doesn’t look the way it used to, but I dunno if that’s because the city is different, or if I am.” He shrugged a shoulder, even thought Ignis couldn’t see it. “Nothing looks much the same as it used to anymore. But yeah, man. We’re nearly there.”

Ignis allowed the tug of his hand at the nape of his neck, and could nearly feel the rake of Dante’s scintillating gaze as he scrutinized his face, checking him over. He almost missed the lack of his hand, warm against his skin, reassuring and firm. 

He did miss it.

There was an incongruous pull to the way Dante had always handled him. Carelessly, as was his way. Sometimes a little more roughly than Ignis expected. But with affection freely given and truly-meant, a luxury that no one had quite ever bothered to display for him. Ignis wondered if he was so starved for such things that he was far too amenable to Dante’s advances. But that was undermining the impeccant tenderness he was sure Dante intended for him, and he refused to think so.

Ignis settled back again, a little less tense, though none the less circumspect about the prospect of being a passenger in a vehicle bound for death. He could have sworn that he heard a melancholy in Dante’s voice, uncharacteristic and therefore marked, and the curiosity it piqued spurred a question he’d been holding close to his heart.

@infidem  &  @praesidioest     /       rare 3 way combo

The roads were quiet these days; the night stretched on and on, and few dared the risks of travel amidst the hordes of daemons. The highway outside of Lestallum sat quietly, with only the stars spinning above and a few instances of skittish wildlife grazing at the patches of grass peeking from the sides of the asphalt.

The silence was broken by the roar of an engine in the distance, spitting a choking dust cloud behind the car as it tore viciously along the straight cut of road. If the car protested the abuse of its gas pedal, the sound was drowned out by the deafening music blaring from within.

Dante had modified this commandeered vehicle, hacking the roof away and coloring it with a patchwork of graffiti from pilfered cans of spray paint, because what else did he have to do with his time lately? Dickwart, as he affectionately named the abomination, was the closest thing to arts and crafts he had. And arts and crafts were good for stress, they said.

He didn’t slow down on the curve, and the tires screeched in objection as the whole car threatened to flip, but it settled on the straightaway and Dante decided not to remark on it. He reached over to turn down the music.

“They’re not gonna let me in,” he informed Ignis matter-of-factly, calling out to be heard over the whip of the wind. “You, of course, they’ll let you in and throw you a parade or some shit, but I’m gonna be camping out in Dickwart and fending for myself out here. But like, no big deal, whatever, don’t make it a thing. I’m used to it. Just throw me a pack of cigs over the gate and I’ll be just fine.”

He floored the gas, bringing the engine fully into the red, and used his knee to steer as he took his hands off the wheel and lit a cigarette held between his teeth.

“Loving this empty road shit,” he added, putting a hand back on the wheel after much too long. “Wanna guess how fast we’re going? Test your blind man powers, maybe?”

Ignis had shoved himself hard into the corner where the door met the cushion of the seat, arms splayed against both to bolster himself from the unpredictable savagery with which Dante had maneuvered the car. Which was not to say he did not trust his competence with the vehicle. Part of Dante’s inevitable and ineludible charm was the carelessness he presented incomparable skill. It was a trait that Ignis was far too aware of. On a personal level. So he trusted his driving. Even if he didn’t particularly care for he style in which he committed it. 

The bile rose in his throat alongside a wave of nausea that slowly but surely overtook him. He’d read somewhere before that fated road trip of how to prevent car sickness. It seemed that within the ear was a vestibular system of three lymph-filled canals attached to the cochlea, regulated upon three dimensions to telegraph to the brain movement to the rain and resolve movement and sight. When the sight did not coincide with the movement perceived, it resulted in nausea. He wondered idly if his blindness would forever curse him to that remand. It was a small and desperate reprieve from the present harrowing of Dante’s driving. 

“No,” Ignis replied through gritted teeth, and the answer came far more clipped than he’d intended. An unfortunate byproduct of wondering thrice a heartbeat if this moment was his last or not. “I think it’s enough that we both know how imprudently you handle it.” 

He suspected that Dante had only asked for his input to ensure that he was aware of just how irresponsible he was. They made an incongruous pair, the two of them: one, inexorably lawful. The other, chaotically so. The shallow differences between them had seemed immeasurable. But in point of fact, the two had always gotten along with a surprising accord. Perhaps there was something to the adage that opposites attracted. And no one seemed more aware or exploitive of that fact than Dante. If only because he found it so amusing. 

“They won’t prohibit you from entering the city,” Ignis assured him, still hating every second of his life as Dante continued to steer into what seemed to be every terrarian disturbance possible. “I won’t allow it. You’ll be entering under the aegis of my protection. And Gladio will surely vouchsafe for you, should that not be enough.” 

“Got no intention of being kind,” Daud assured dryly, finishing off the last drag of his cigar before stubbing it out with his boot. “Won’t learn anything that way, will you?”

The younger boys had dubbed the room ‘the drop room,’ although the older Whalers called it the balance room. It was a collapsed three-story section of a former bank, flooded half up to the first story and dotted with posts of varying heights and thickness. It was one of the first masteries completed by a budding Whaler, and often the one that gave the most trouble. The initiate was expected to leap and bound and balance along the various posts at increasingly challenging distances, with the water below acting as a cushion for when he invariably took a tumble down. Ignis was, like all established Whalers, familiar with this room and these drills. Which was partially the reason Daud had chosen to ease Ignis back into his work with it.

“You’re going to start with bare bones,” Daud said, and the world darkened and crumpled around him as he blinked across the post. It came back into sharp focus around him when he settled in his viewing place on the topmost floor of the hollowed out room. “Gotta learn to crawl before you can walk. Or, you know. Pull off transversals again.”

He leaned against the railing, idly cracking the stiffly stubborn joint in his left shoulder. “Jump across the room using the posts,” he directed. “You remember how. Start. I’ll tell you when you’re done.”

There was nothing offensive about Daud suggesting a soft re-introduction to his training. But knowing that, it did nothing to prevent Ignis from the ignominy of his own embarrassment. The greenest of his Whalers could make the first post. For the most part. And there was no level of skill, no expertise or finesse or ingenuity that could aid him better in this endeavor than the talent of sight. He’d miss that post, by all accounts and expectations. But he would try. For Daud’s sake, he would. 

There was a stuttering roar that deepened like an earthly groan where time slowed, the crash of waves a protracted, dry scrape intermingling with it all. Ignis cast his marker before him, and understood nothing: no indication of its target, nor its success.  But he committed the transversal nonetheless, feeling the hook of that pull just behind his navel, propelling him forward—

—and into the frigid welcome of the water beneath him, engulfing him, overwhelming him, and knew his defeat with more discouragement than he might have anticipated, even with the previous doubt. 

He listened to the occlusion of the water, turned his face skyward to note the direction of the light and the correlating shadows, and managed to navigate himself to the ladder and hoist himself up to the pier. 

“Calling the setup here a charity is a little generous,” Daud said skeptically as he held a wax stick to the candle flame at his desk. The wax melted to a dark, bloody red, which he then smeared and sealed on the fold of a letter. “You’ve seen the coffers. My personal safe. Your own payments. Some might say I’ve taken advantage of the high orphan count to line my own pockets. I’m sure you’ve heard that. Maybe even some of the Whalers think that. Which is fine. I think a little dissent in the ranks is good. Keeps me honest.”

He stood from his chair, ambling around his desk to linger by the grime-covered window overlooking the flooded streets. “But I think you misunderstand me,” he continued. “I’m not dissuading you. I’m informing you that I haven’t released you of your obligations to the Whalers, or to me. Doesn’t look good for me if my best men think they can leave any time they want.”

He tipped his head, feeling the bones in his neck settle with a low crack. “Your drills resume tonight,” he informed Ignis. “Back to basics, just like we did with Roberts and his off hand. I expect you’ll need more work than he did, but you’ll be back on contracts once you recomplete the training. Considering the delicate nature of the injury, and the unprecedence, I’ll be working with you instead of Billie or Thomas. So before you go thinking it’s charity, you might want to consider the fact that I don’t like my investments wasted.”

The meandering stretch of his lips hardly felt like a smile, so foreign was that sensation to him now. He remembered that kindness disguised as vanity and vainglory. He’d heard those assurances since he was a child, and even in his crowded bunk, even when he’d had to learn to defend himself from other boys, even while he tended to scrapes and sutures and the infinite anguish of loss, he understood what Daud’s fosterage had meant for him: protection.

“It was a charity,” Ignis insisted stubbornly. “Taking me in when no one else would. I was a charity, that much was plain. I don’t mean pity. I don’t mean you’ve given me anything I haven’t tried to deserve. But you gave me a home and an occupation, and nothing I could do in your stead could ever be enough to repay the kindness you have shown me. And if you ask your investment to stay, I will, at your request. Because I owe you at least that much.” 

Ignis bowed, a brief, curt gesture that still slipped into his mannerisms. A relic of his days as a lordling’s son. But somehow, it didn’t seem inappropriate to offer Daud, given the immense respect he held for the man. Less noble was the way he stalked out the room, with far less confidence. But at least he didn’t stumble. 

Later that evening, Ignis stood in the practice room, his daggers installed in their usual place, and the press of that unwavering steel gave him resolve. Like a security blanket of sorts.  He bent his arm in such a way that the point of the dagger hidden within his forearm cuff pressed its dull tip to the bend of his elbow, inciting that rush of blood and adrenaline that superceded the embarrassment and anxiety he had, sure he was about to make a fool of himself in front of the man who had once trained him so well.

Daud had half expected it, but it was considerably sooner than he thought it would be. He’d predicted  some wallowing in self pity, some adjustment to his new state, maybe one attempt at a contract. But then, Ignis had always been remarkably practical. And efficient. So it was no great surprise that it was only days after his accident that he thought to tender his resignation.

It was a little unprecedented. None of the Whalers had ever been injured in such a way. Roberts had lost a hand to a steel trap, but it was his off hand and he made do with a clever metal hook one of the other boys had crafted. Beauchamp had lost an eye, but other than a little lost of depth perception, his work had barely suffered at all. No, none of the Whalers had ever lost their sight completely and made it back to the Financial District. It left Ignis in a perilous grey area; fully trained and capable, yet unable to fulfill contracts.

Daud sat back in his seat, replacing his pen in its inkwell and reaching instead for the cigar burning in the ashtray. The silence stretched in the room, leaving only the lapping of water outside and the hiss of the ember as he chewed at the end of the cigar.

“Don’t think anyone’s ever left the Whalers that wasn’t in a shroud, Ig,” he said finally, crossing his leg to rest it ankle over knee. “Unheard of. Don’t think I can start making exceptions just yet, either. You think it’s gonna be any easier out there than it is in here? You got some kind of retirement plan in place? What’s your plan, exactly? Where do you think you’re gonna go?”

Everything within him tightened. Tautened. His fingers, now bared of their heavy leather gauntlets, curled hard into fists, his neatly-filed nailed boring crescents into the soft of his palm. The hard slant of his mouth pulled harder before it slackened into something consciously innoxious. “Allow me the honor of bring the first, then,” he asserted smartly, his shoulders rolling back to fortify his proud stance. “I always did like leaving a good first impression, whenever I could.” 

Daud would find the enmity with which he spoke to be distinctly out of character, and he immediately regretted the candor with which he spoke to him. “I have no doubt that it will be more difficult, out there in the world,” Ignis continued, his tone softening with an urgent humility now. He hadn’t forgotten whose presence he was in, who and what Daud meant to him (still meant), and what respect should have been afforded him.“But my skills at this time are more suited for whatever’s out there than anything you might have use for. Not anymore, at least.”

Ignis’s fingers walked themselves along the threadbare sheet until they abutted against the uneven, knotted softness of what had served these last years as his pillow. Beneath the coarse batting, nestled away within his spartan pillowcase, were the precious few items he’d saved of his life before the whalers, before Daud: a miniature of his mother, the carved, gilded frame already etched with ungainly nicks and cuts and scrapes, his father’s pocket watch,  the mother-of-pearl cuff links his uncle had given him for his first dinner party. Meager things, and trinkets of definite value, left intact and untouched by the other boys’ hands, protected through the inferential honor among thieves.

It seemed monumentally sad that Ignis’s entire existence could be summed up in such meager few items. Worse that his personal effects hardly filled the handkerchief he’d thought to bundle them up in. But he did so, stuffing the secured parcel into his knapsack and hoisting it upon his shoulder as he directed himself clumsily down the hallway to where Daud’s office resided. 

He could smell the sweet, caliginous smoke of Daud’s cigars, indicative of his presence, and Ignis braced himself to face his mentor. Adjusting the leather strap of his bag, he stepped within the threshold and cleared his throat, heralding his own arrival with a cough. “I’m leaving,” he said plainly, and without ceremony. “There’s no use in delaying the inevitable. I’m tendering my resignation to you, along with the assurance that I am your man for the rest o my life, in spite of my inutle state. I’ll betray you never. Of that you can be assured. But I’ll not be a burden. So I’ll leave. On my own terms.” 

Dante always thought the fuss about nudity was exaggerated, and had no shame in being seen naked. But he still startled at the sound of steps, shoulders taut until Ignis’ voice came over the gentle hiss of the shower heads.

There were several unoccupied stalls, but Ignis, for some reason, slipped into the one Dante was using, probably on accident. Right? Probably. It felt a little wrong—pretty wrong—to check out a guy that couldn’t see him doing it, but his eyes swept briefly down the length of him. For nostalgia’s sake. Or something.

“You get stung by bees or something, man?” Dante asked, his voice humming against the walls, like an acoustic afterthought. “Because you’re looking real swole. The fuck is that? Is that a six pack? I’m at my lowest weight here, and you're—I don’t even know. Competing for Mr. Costa del Sol or some shit.” He scoffed a laugh as he turned back to the water. “Ridiculous.”

He found the bottle, and almost tossed it to him out of habit, but he caught himself just in time with the vivid imagery of belting Ignis across the blind face with it. So he leaned over, catching Ignis by the hand to press the bottle into it.

“Yeah,” he said after a pause. “I ran with Gladio a while. Few months back. Funnily enough, they still weren’t too keen on letting me in anywhere. We ended up sleeping in the truck half the time. My shoulders are kinking up just thinking about it. But, yeah. Lestallum, maybe. I’ll think about it. How often you end up there?”

The voice came closer than he’d expected, and Ignis gave a small gasp of surprise at its proximity. His first and basest instinct was to have scurried out of there like a humiliated rodent, but before his impulse to flight could solidify, Dante had caught his hand, pressing the castle to it. 

There was no reproach in the way he handled him. No roughness, no displeasure that he could sense, no stiffness, no awkwardness. He touched him with the same warmth, the same affability that Ignis could still remember. Still cherished. Like nothing was different, even though they weren’t the same. 

“As often as I can,” came his answer, careful, as though he might offend somehow. He had already violated his space, and Ignis had instinctively backed against the wall, the bottle of soap held to his chest like a catholicon. “Which is to say, without systematicity. I do like to ensure our apartment is well-stocked for Gladio and Prompto. God knows they don’t think of taking inventory or replenishing their supplies of rations and curatives. Most likely due to me having taken care of things of that nature for them. So I like to continue doing so.”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I told you. I like taking care of others. I like making sure they’re sound. You were as much friend to me then as they were. So you’re entitled to my attentions as much as I would enjoy to endeavor giving it.” He smiled fully, now. A little wistfully. 

He tensed at the application of the kiss, although more for the foreignness of it than anything else. (Well—a little at the unexpectedness too.) It was over too quickly, before he could react properly, and he felt the urge to continue it, to chase that mouth with his own and grab with hungry hands.

But he let the urge pass, taking that step back as an unspoken, if confusing, signal of distance.

“A shower would be fantastic,” he said instead, tilting his head to settle the bones of his neck with a noisy crack. “I probably smell like roadkill. Sorry about that. Having a hard time getting let into outposts lately. Word travels and shit. But, uh—yeah. Shower first.”

He kicked his boots off, which were caked with dust and mud and whatever other unmentionables, leaving him down to his hole-ridden socks and worse-for-wear clothes. “Probably need to give these a wash too,” he mumbled, mostly to himself, as he peeled the grey shirt over his head. “I think they smell worse than I do.”

He kept his pants on, for other people’s modesty and not his own, and passed a hand through his own hair as he cleared his throat. “So—which way for showers?”

Ignis was already halfway across the room when Dante gained his side, smiling softly to himself at the apology he offered. For all his boldness and bluster, he always seemed to display an unexpected consideration that Ignis could never quite come to expect. It was a level of attentiveness that might be understood of his brother (though Ignis knew himself how false that attribution was), but people rarely reconciled with his abrasive personality. 

“I could have them washed,” Ignis offered, leading him down the corridor to the showers, which were thankfully empty at this hour. “And mended, as well. And I’ll have you outfitted with a change of clothes if you like. That is, if you don’t find the extra baggage to be an encumbrance. And rations, of course.” 

He handed him the towel, waiting expectantly by the stall. “You can go on ahead, if you like. I’d like to deposit your clothes with the rest of the laundering, and see if I can’t request some food to be brought to our room. Careful you don’t let the water get too hot. It scalds.”

It took nearly a quarter of an hour for Ignis to complete his tasks, and he found himself hurrying back to the shower with an alacrity that superseded his embarrassment when, in his haste, he tripped over a step. He’d quickly righted himself, hastening up the stairs, until he was half breathless in the showers, already unfastening the buttons of his shirt, the front of his trousers, to slip into the stall beside Dante. “Is there still hot water?” he asked, waiting for the tap to warm. It was evident from the steam that kissed his skin that there was.