For the first year after the sun goes down, Ignis' dreams don't change much. He wasn't born blind, and the way his memory works keeps details crisp and vivid, an aspect of his life he's not sure he likes; every morning means realizing all over again why he's so disoriented, why it feels like he can't get his eyes to open. Over time, the impression of people and places he's only seen a handful of times glaze over, get blurrier. He can hear Talcott's voice starting to change, but the ten year old boy Ignis will always picture runs at the edges.
Even as his dreams become more like his daily (nightly, he supposes) life, the slow slide into wakefulness still sets off a plume of question marks before his brain catches up to his body. A year after that, which is altogether 742 days without sunlight (Ignis has been keeping track; it's useful to practice the numbers in Braille)--he doesn't know if he'll ever really stop having to claw his way to clarity through that paralyzing instant, but having another body in the bed helps. Familiarity like an anchor, waking to warmth and that faint aftermath of rain always clinging to Noct's hair and skin: the only clear sky he's ever going to know again. Ignis has decided it must be an offshoot of Lucian magic and-it's good. A length of red thread wound around his finger to remind him where and who he is, that he's where he's meant to be.
When he blinks out of dreams this time, a time that might be morning, afternoon...it barely matters, time is measured by how they all just go until they can't anymore--deep rhythmic breathing and sleep-heated deadweight tucked back to chest with him says he's awake before Noct. This is in no way unusual, but also means he could have slept anywhere from eight hours to twenty minutes; the light hasn't changed enough to signify a shift in what he can still sense. Whatever time it is he doesn't think he's getting back to sleep, so for some while he just indulges the paranoid impulse that strikes like lighting more often than he would admit to anyone, just reveling in all the little things that mean Noct is alive, heartbeat and breath and tiny shifts that clang like thunderclaps in the ears he's learning slowly to rely on more each day.
If he could ever really let himself relax he'd probably be content to do that for hours, but Ignis is still too much himself to idle for too long; eventually he kisses the nape of Noct's neck and disentangles, gently, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand before remembering he doesn't really need them in their house, and deciding to go without. It's not as if Noct is suddenly going to come over all questions about the scar.
He feels his way to the hall, trailing fingers finding the lightswitch just in case Noct does wake up, walks the route to the kitchen familiar enough now that he doesn't need much in the way of assistance from walls or step counting. His initial intentions are mostly to get a glass of water, take a piss and try for sleep a second time, but--the heel of his hand against the kitchen counter brings back, without warning, what had connected all his dreams in a string of beads: the smell of...of something, it won't quite crystallize, but he knows it was familiar, that it felt like a time he trusted his own hands around sharp things and open flame.
Whatever it is they surely don't have the ingredients to make it, Noct's culinary skills having by necessity graduated to Competent but Still Rudimentary, and the thing is, Ignis has only ever really missed cooking a handful of times. The point wasn't the act itself, it was the look, the vicarious pleasure of Feeling Fed; without that this echo of emptiness welled up every time he thought about it. But if he learns for himself, just to take that back and to make it his again, then maybe he can live without seeing those smiles.
So. As sound a sleeper as Noct is, even he shall be awakened by all the slamming around that's going on in the kitchen. Ignis has not, to this point, dedicated much time into knowing where anything is, sans what is most basic, and it can probably go without saying he and Noct have vastly different organizational styles.
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Even as his dreams become more like his daily (nightly, he supposes) life, the slow slide into wakefulness still sets off a plume of question marks before his brain catches up to his body. A year after that, which is altogether 742 days without sunlight (Ignis has been keeping track; it's useful to practice the numbers in Braille)--he doesn't know if he'll ever really stop having to claw his way to clarity through that paralyzing instant, but having another body in the bed helps. Familiarity like an anchor, waking to warmth and that faint aftermath of rain always clinging to Noct's hair and skin: the only clear sky he's ever going to know again. Ignis has decided it must be an offshoot of Lucian magic and-it's good. A length of red thread wound around his finger to remind him where and who he is, that he's where he's meant to be.
When he blinks out of dreams this time, a time that might be morning, afternoon...it barely matters, time is measured by how they all just go until they can't anymore--deep rhythmic breathing and sleep-heated deadweight tucked back to chest with him says he's awake before Noct. This is in no way unusual, but also means he could have slept anywhere from eight hours to twenty minutes; the light hasn't changed enough to signify a shift in what he can still sense. Whatever time it is he doesn't think he's getting back to sleep, so for some while he just indulges the paranoid impulse that strikes like lighting more often than he would admit to anyone, just reveling in all the little things that mean Noct is alive, heartbeat and breath and tiny shifts that clang like thunderclaps in the ears he's learning slowly to rely on more each day.
If he could ever really let himself relax he'd probably be content to do that for hours, but Ignis is still too much himself to idle for too long; eventually he kisses the nape of Noct's neck and disentangles, gently, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand before remembering he doesn't really need them in their house, and deciding to go without. It's not as if Noct is suddenly going to come over all questions about the scar.
He feels his way to the hall, trailing fingers finding the lightswitch just in case Noct does wake up, walks the route to the kitchen familiar enough now that he doesn't need much in the way of assistance from walls or step counting. His initial intentions are mostly to get a glass of water, take a piss and try for sleep a second time, but--the heel of his hand against the kitchen counter brings back, without warning, what had connected all his dreams in a string of beads: the smell of...of something, it won't quite crystallize, but he knows it was familiar, that it felt like a time he trusted his own hands around sharp things and open flame.
Whatever it is they surely don't have the ingredients to make it, Noct's culinary skills having by necessity graduated to Competent but Still Rudimentary, and the thing is, Ignis has only ever really missed cooking a handful of times. The point wasn't the act itself, it was the look, the vicarious pleasure of Feeling Fed; without that this echo of emptiness welled up every time he thought about it. But if he learns for himself, just to take that back and to make it his again, then maybe he can live without seeing those smiles.
So. As sound a sleeper as Noct is, even he shall be awakened by all the slamming around that's going on in the kitchen. Ignis has not, to this point, dedicated much time into knowing where anything is, sans what is most basic, and it can probably go without saying he and Noct have vastly different organizational styles.
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