Prompto wakes early on Saturday morning by habit, even though he hasn’t gone running in over a week now. He stares up at his darkened, pre-dawn ceiling, feeling--not rested, exactly. Just very—still. It’s the first time since he died that he’s woken up without any lingering nightmares, which ought to feel like progress.
It doesn’t, though. His brain was too busy to conjure nightmares because instead it was connecting a bunch of background puzzle pieces so it could triumphantly dump this thought in his lap: my parents haven’t tried to reach me.
It’s the mental equivalent of stepping on broken glass, only worse, because he knew this area was littered with it before he waded in barefoot.
Prompto never had the guts to ask why they adopted him in the first place. They never bothered to explain why they took him in and then just—didn’t stick around.Â
They showed up two days after he finished high school, explained that they would be selling their house, and handed over all of his legal paperwork. They made sure that his phone was transferred to an account in his name, told him he could keep whatever furniture he wanted, and provided a graduation gift of an apartment deposit in a checking account that wasn’t connected to them.
It took a couple days to get everything settled and for Prompto to move himself into his studio. That was the longest stretch of time he’d seen them since he was nine.Â
If they’re in Insomnia, there’s no way they missed what happened to Noctis. What happened to him. His name, their family name, has been all over the news. Even if they didn’t see it, surely someone they knew saw it and asked them if their son was the one the whole city was in an uproar about.
He still has the same cell phone number. The same email address. He hung on to them, in case—
This shouldn’t be a surprise. This shouldn’t make him want to curl up and cry. Prompto reaches for his phone to check one last time, and then he deletes their contact information.