those ain’t your bodyguards

aliatori:

(This amazing comic by the ever-talented @hanatsuki89 wouldn’t leave me alone, so please accept this humble offering of a ficlet inspired by it.)

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The gentle crackle of the campfire, a sound he associates with peace and comfort, does nothing to soothe Gladio’s nerves tonight.

Not that there’s much to soothe. He’s gone right past ‘stressed’ to a feeling he doesn’t think he knows a word for, and he’s got a pretty expansive vocabulary. Maybe Iggy would be able to nail it down.

Then Gladio remembers, in an icy burst of clarity, how much Iggy’s suffering too.  (How could he have forgotten, even for a moment? He’d been so quick to throw it in Noct’s face.) They’re all blind in different ways, stumbling towards a goal they barely know how to reach, broken and limping and raw.

Everything’s gone to shit.  Everything’s gone to shit and Gladio has no idea how to fix it.

Especially Noct.

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