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Fandom: Final Fantasy XV
Characters: Prompto Argentum. Lunafreya Nox Fleuret. Ravus Nox Fleuret. Pryna. Umbra. A couple OCs.
Chapter Rating: PG, for the moment.
Warnings: Brief mentions of invasion
Word count so far: 12,313
Notes: Chapter title from Sing Me to Sleep by Alan Walker and Iselin Solheim
Shilling: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? If not...well, sorry. But if you are, I have a Ko-fi. I'm broke and appreciate every cup.
Previously: Prologue. Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three.
CHAPTER FOUR: Wait a second let me catch my breath
“Assistant to the king,” Prompto repeated, stuck somewhere between dubious and wildly incredulous.
“Yes,” Luna confirmed, nodding once, her hands linked together behind her back. In the kitchen, Ravus had tea with Prompto’s parents as he explained much the same thing to them. “He has more duties now than he’s ever had before, and he had no time to prepare for them. On top of that, many of the personal staff he would have inherited from our mother did not survive the attack.” Her expression dimmed slightly, before she cleared her throat and carried on. “He needs someone who can make it so he doesn’t need to worry about the minutiae. You’ll have your own room at the palace as well as the attention of my old tutors.”
"But what if I’m bad at it?” Prompto asked, tone approaching something plaintive. “I’ve never done anything like this before!”
Finally, Luna smiled gently. “Then your job will be to keep me company. I’m sure we can think of an official title. The Oracle’s Confidante, perhaps?”
“I don’t understand why, though?” Prompto replied, slightly distraught at the special treatment.
Luna’s hands settled on his shoulders. “Because making sure you’re safe is important.”
Prompto’s mouth opened, but no words came out, and he closed his mouth once again with a click. He blinked at her dumbly, and she covered her mouth with one hand to ineffectually hide a laugh.
“Will you try, at least?” she asked quietly.
Slowly, Prompto nodded. “Okay,” he agreed faintly.
His parents, once it was explained that Prompto would be safe from the public in the palace, were quick to agree as well.
*
He was just trying it on a provisional basis. Prompto was adamant about that. So all he brought with him at first was a single duffel bag, so he could still guiltlessly decide it wasn’t for him and back out of it, if it came down to that.
He was given a room—a suite, actually, with a bathroom and a small sitting room with a kitchenette attached to the bedroom—and a uniform. It was very… white. White shirt. White vest. White trousers. The boots were black and almost seemed to be screaming at him because of it.
On his first day on the job, it seemed like everything was thrown into fast forward. There were names and schedules and routines to be memorized and everything was color coordinated and there were so many colors corresponding to so many people. Prompto handed the wrong folder to someone three times, and by lunch he was sure he was already a failure.
But Luna joined them for lunch, and Prompto managed to wrangle a laugh out of her and something like a smile out of Ravus as he described Pryna’s heroics of just a few days before. And it seemed a little less urgent after that. After all, if something was really that important, they wouldn’t have handed it to an untried rookie like him.
By the time dinner rolled around, he had at least handed everything to the right people and he’d only gotten lost twice more, and his work for the day seemed to be done. For the most part, at any rate.
*
The next few days move along at largely the same pace. To Prompto’s surprise, he memorized who was where and who did what and what went where and to whom without much of an issue.
Gradually, more of Prompto’s stuff moved into his new suite.
*
“Mama, I promise, everything is fine. Everyone is nice. No one’s said anything about… you know. It’s all—what? No! Well, I mean… he’s sort of giant and intimidating, but he’s pretty nice so far? I think, at least? …And yeah, dogs. …I’ll call in a couple days. Tell Papa I said hi.”
*
When Prompto handed over a stack of paperwork that was slightly smaller than it typically was, Ravus thumbed through it curiously. Clearing his throat, Prompto offered, “Luna told me to give her everything that wasn’t marked ‘urgent.’”
There was something like a smile on Ravus’s face, tiny though it was. “Of course she did.”
*
‘Urgent’ had a very different meaning in the palace, Prompto was beginning to think. Half of the “urgent” notices didn’t actually require attention for weeks or months. Some weren’t even that important.
(If he wasn’t actually supposed to read all of it quite so in-depth, well, no one had informed him of that and everyone seemed content to let him keep on keeping on.)
He handed over a stack. “Urgent.” A second stack. “Urgently within the next six months.” A third stack, previously tucked under his arm. “And ‘I wanna jump the queue by calling my pet trash important.’”
Ravus cleared his throat to mask something that was almost reminiscent of a laugh, and Prompto grinned as innocently as he could manage.
*
The Solstice was a subdued affair. Neither Luna nor Ravus felt especially festive without their mother at the helm of the festivities. They put in a token appearance at the festival, and of course the staff decorated the palace, but if the king or the Oracle had any plans, Prompto heard nothing about them. He didn’t ask.
*
It was two in the morning when Prompto was startled awake by Pryna barking in his ear, her muzzle resting on his pillow. He flailed his way awake and nearly fell out of bed, and he blinked at her as she trotted expectantly to his wardrobe.
He pulled his uniform on in a bleary-eyed daze and followed Pryna to Ravus’s office at a jog. Luna was lurking fretfully around Ravus’s shoulder when he got there, and both of them looked to have dressed in a hurry.
Ravus handed over a single folder without looking up from whatever had so thoroughly captured his attention on his desk.
“To the guard captain,” the king stated tersely. “He’ll know what to do with it from there.”
Prompto nodded out of habit and his fingers closed around the folder. When he backed out of the office, Pryna followed and Umbra met them in the hall, and both dogs escorted him to the captain’s quarters. Once the folder was in the proper hands, Umbra caught Prompto’s wrist before he could turn towards his suite again.
Brow furrowing in confusion, he followed them to the council chamber, though he ground to a halt outside the door.
‘Are you kidding me?’ he mouthed down at them, gesturing emphatically at the door with both hands. Being the king’s assistant didn’t magically mean he was welcome in council meetings.
Umbra tugged at his arm and Pryna prodded her nose against the door.
With a groan, Prompto dragged a hand down his face before slowly reaching for the knob. He opened the door only just enough to slip into the room. It seemed full to bursting and even Luna and Ravus hardly spared him a glance, though everyone seemed content to let him ferry reports and messages around the room and from guards and couriers that periodically showed up at the door.
A Nifillian patrol had been spotted in the mountains. True enough, they hadn’t done anything yet, but given the recent attack, their presence alone was enough to set everyone on edge.
But the fact that they hadn’t done anything made matters… complicated, Prompto was guessing. After three hours, all that had been accomplished was a lot of arguing over what to do, until a knock at the door interrupted them. There was a distracted nod from Luna as Prompto looked at her, and he slunk over to the door, opening it just enough to see a courier looking back at him. The courier shoved a slip of paper into Prompto’s hands and bolted, leaving Prompto to scurry to Ravus’s side with the message.
The king read it silently, and a moment later he reported, “The danger has passed for the moment,” and the room itself seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
There were still decisions to be made. Prompto knew that. For the time being, no one even knew what the… visit had been about. But Prompto left for his suite gratefully once he was excused.
*
“Mom—Ma—Mama. I’m fine—yeah, I know what the paper says, but—‘increased military presence’ doesn’t mean we’re all gonna die, it just means the king is being paranoid.” Prompto sighed slowly. “Uh huh. Yeah, mostly. Love you, too.” He hung up and dragged a hand down his face.
“Paranoid,” Ravus parroted, his tone perfectly deadpan and his gaze still roving over the papers in front of him.
Prompto shrugged helplessly. “I had to tell her something, unless you want her storming the palace.”
“Ah, well. Carry on, then.”
*
Prompto started regularly attending meetings with the council after that. Hearing the talk out loud made it easier to parse the paperwork. Easier to pick out the important words, to tell the garnish from the main course.
The first time he handed Ravus a cheatsheet with the rest of the paperwork, organized by page, topic, and sender, he actually got something like a smile.
*
“Ravus is in a good mood,” Luna remarked, her words deceptively mild. “I never thought I would see the day.”
“Well, you know me,” Prompto sighed loftily. “I’m a miracle worker.”
Luna’s eyebrows rose. “So you could take over for me for a few days, then?”
Prompto cleared his throat sharply. “I, ah. I wouldn’t go that far.”
Luna clicked her tongue. “A shame when peddlers of pretend miracles can operate so openly,” she sighed.
Prompto shrugged blithely. “A con man’s gotta make a living somehow.”
Luna swatted at him lightly with the backs of her fingers.
*
His mother sniffled and wiped her eyes the entire time she helped Prompto pack up the little that still remained in his bedroom at the house. His dad tried to play it casual, but he kept double- and triple-checking everything, ignoring the fact that at that point there was nothing critical left to pack.
By the end of the evening, the work was done and Prompto was pretty sure he was going to start crying, too.
*
He mentioned it to Luna, casually, without much of a thought. And though her smile was genuine enough, there was something distant in her gaze.
“…Sorry,” he offered afterwards, staring at his shoes.
She squeezed his shoulder and tipped his chin up. “It would be rather unreasonable if I forbid you from talking about your parents, wouldn’t it?”
“I would be pretty tempted,” he admitted, voice low and more of a mumble. But he shook his head minutely and offered a smile.
“We should go get dinner.”
*
Luna had her own aids and guards. Of course she did; she was the Oracle and she was their princess. The idea of leaving her to fend for herself, regardless of how capable they knew her to be, was practically anathema. Even so, her aids were not immune to the ordinary illnesses of men, and when one of them came down with the flu, Ravus instead sent Prompto with her for the day.
He had never actually seen the effects of the Starscourge up close. He had never seen her heal anyone. People tried to capture it on film, now and then, but she was always insistent that the cameras stay off until after she was finished.
He wasn’t expecting the way she paled, or the way she needed to lean on him to keep her balance when she was done. For a moment, it seemed she might blow away with the next breeze, and Prompto clung to her hand like a vise.
“Is it always like that?” he asked quietly that evening, sitting on a couch in her sitting room.
“Most often,” she replied lowly. She still sounded so tired.
Prompto made a low noise of distress. Luna watched him in quiet curiosity as he got to his feet and bustled into her bedroom proper. Her expression softened with amusement as he emerged again with her spare blanket and an armload of pillows, but she said nothing still, watching as he turned the couch into a lopsided fort.
He caught her hand afterwards and gave it an expectant tug. Dutifully, she settled inside the fort, though her eyebrows rose in confusion when Prompto left the room.
…Just long enough to prepare two mugs of tea and return. He joined her in the fort and pressed a mug into her hands.
“This,” he gestured around with his free hand, “is a No Oracle Zone,” he explained. “There is no Oracleing inside the fort.”
“Is that so?” Luna wondered wryly. “Is that an order, my lord?”
Prompto’s face heated and he nearly took it back, but he paused, and steeled himself, and nodded once, decisively. “Yes,” he decided. “Yes it is.”
“Well,” Luna sighed, “I would hate to go against a direct order.” She smiled ruefully. “I suppose you’ve won this round.”
Prompto nodded once in satisfaction.
*
Prompto was mostly talking to himself as he shuffled papers into categories, grumbling, “So many of these are common sense or pointless or just touching base. You could just teach me how to forge your signature and you’d save so much time.”
It was around then that he realized that he was, in fact, still audible, and he looked up slowly. “Your Majesty, uh…” He trailed off at the thoughtful look on Ravus’s face.
“Find a pen,” Ravus decided after a moment.
*
Luna was twenty and Prompto had no idea what to get her. If she wanted anything, she hadn’t mentioned it, and Prompto was pretty sure he couldn’t manage anything she needed.
He wound up begging one of the cooks to help him put a picnic together in exchange for taking pictures of her newborn niece on his next day off, and he and Luna had lunch in the flower field. Pryna had no less than three flower crowns by the end and she couldn’t have been more pleased with herself.
They ambushed Ravus for dessert. It was the only way to make sure he didn’t conveniently have something he needed to do as soon as they insinuated they wanted him to be marginally social.
*
A few days later, Prompto left a folder of pictures from the entire year in the fort. It had migrated from the couch in the sitting room to a rug in the bedroom, right in front of the largest window, looking out into the mountains.
The next time he was in the room, half of the the pictures had found their way to places of honor on the tables and walls.
*
Prompto was sixteen, and when he opened the long, narrow box that Luna handed him over breakfast, he almost squealed. The gloves were bright red, leather, fingerless, and went clear up to his elbows.
“Pretend one of them is from Ravus,” Luna instructed him drolly.
The king steadfastly ignored them.
*
Prompto unboxed the boots from his parents that evening. Bright red. Leather. Clear up to his knees. He was sensing a theme, so he didn’t bother asking if he could customize his uniform.
He got his mom to help him modify a red flannel into a vest. Worn under his uniform vest, it fit perfectly, only the tails and the collar of it visible. He looked pretty cool, he figured. And he felt more like himself.
*
Prompto was fairly sure the Solstice was never going to be a particularly cheerful time of year within the palace. He understood.
He went home on the eve of the Solstice to have dinner with his parents and to listen to his mother gush about his pictures of the more harmless parts of the palace.
He didn’t return to the palace until late on the Solstice, and when he went to Luna’s suite to let her know he was back, he found her sitting in the fort.
“There is no Oracleing inside the fort,” she recited, absentmindedly stroking a hand over Pryna’s head. “Isn’t that right?”
“Right,” Prompto agreed quietly. “It was a direct order.”
Luna hummed in agreement.
“How was your Solstice?” she asked after a moment. “Are you parents well?”
“They’re great,” Prompto assured her. “I mean, they miss having me around, but it was nice.”
Luna smiled faintly. “I’m glad.”
*
Ravus’s office door was closed. Though light crept out of the gap beneath the door, there was no answer when Prompto knocked.
Eventually, he returned to his suite.
*
Things were going… well. Prompto was good at his job, to his own continual amazement. Even if being able to forge the king’s signature, memorize three different schedules at a minimum of two weeks out, and sprint from one end of the palace to the other and back again in about five minutes were not quite the things he ever expected to be amongst his skill set.
He had no complaints, all things considered.
He just wished he had known in advance all of the things his duty would require of him.
