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Crowe's body was on fire, the pain so sharp she thought she might scream. Her borrowed magic crackled with it, alighting every nerve.
And then it was over and a familiar voice was telling her she was fine, to just breathe and keep calm. When her eyes opened, she was staring into the concerned face of Prince Noctis, and around them stretched the wasteland that had become of Lucis.
"What?"
"I just used a Phoenix Down. I had to cut it close, I'm sorry."
"You...what?" Now that he said it, she could remember the van, remember her death, but couldn't figure out why he'd be around to save her.
They must be freaking out, back at HQ, if the Prince was missing.
Noctis pressed a potion into her hands, the magic familiar from the infirmary she knew he helped stock, and she used it without thinking. Whatever was going on, however much King Regis was pissing people off, Crowe knew better than to blame the kid who was so obviously a pawn in everything in his life that sometimes Crowe's heart ached for him.
He helped her up and into the back of a nondescript car, staying with her. Up front was the blonde kid she'd seen with him sometimes, nervously tapping out a rhythm on the wheel.
"Good to go?"
"Prompto, hit it."
The car started to move and Crowe reached up to report in, only to find her ear piece missing. "Oh, sorry," Noctis said, looking bashful. "I was worried you might do that automatically. Had to make sure we kept this secret."
She was starting to recover, enough to sit up straight without his support, enough to start noticing just how weird this was. "Why? What are you doing out here?" Not running away, surely, he was already scheduled to leave Insomnia the next day.
He exchanged a glance with Prompto (she could remember the security dossier on him, now, that he was technically Crownsguard and one of the Prince's retainers). "So, I doubt you'll believe me, but I guess it's better just to get it out of the way."
"Yeah, everything else makes so much sense once you know that." Prompto was glaring at Noctis in such a pointed way that Crowe figured whatever it was, he hadn't told him immediately.
"I'm a time traveler. I just arrived a few days ago. I've been trying to figure out what I can change about what's coming."
Crowe studied him, looking for signs of deceit or some sort of episode. She couldn't find anything, just a gaze that did look way too old for the twenty year old prince she knew.
"Okay."
"I can--what? You believe me?"
Laughing at his expression, and Prompto swerving them almost off the road in surprise (did that kid even have a license?), she decided she'd made the right choice. "Yeah, sure, why not? I've got a fraction of your dad's magic and I can do some weird shit, time travel isn't that out there."
"Yes! Thank you!" Noctis shot Prompto a judgmental look of his own. "So, as you may have guessed, there's a high level traitor involved in Glaive activities and the treaty is a distraction for the assassination attempt on my dad and the invasion of Insomnia."
"Fuck me," she muttered, sinking deeper into her seat. If Noctis was a time traveler, it implied all that stuff actually happened and it got bad enough he had to pull out some powerful magic to counter it (and knowing what she did about the cost of magic, she was scared to know what he'd had to give to do it). "Why save me, though? You've got way more important stuff to do. The Princess--"
"Luna is...complicated. I could potentially reach her, but it would be too noticeable. Libertus told me about events leading up to everything, years from now, and he always emphasized your death. I thought...I mean, not only did I not want him, or Nyx, to lose you, or you to die obviously, but it felt like you'd be...really good to have around."
Her heart ached a little, thinking of how her friends must have reacted when they found out she died, how Libertus had probably still been mourning her (and Nyx? Noctis didn't mention him talking about it, which made her wonder).
"Okay, so...no one hears from me, the people who don't know think I'm still on my mission, the traitor thinks I'm dead. You've got one more person on your side of this in the know." He nodded at her assessment. "Who's the traitor? From the way you're skirting around the issue, not someone I'd be likely to accept." Libertus and Nyx were the only ones he'd named and were the only ones she would hesitate for, she thought.
And then he said, "Titus Drautos," and she realized she was wrong. He was the Captain, he'd trained, mentored, almost all of them. He was one of King Regis' friends. "He's the reason General Glauca uses that ridiculous vocoder. So no one recognizes him if they run into him."
"Are you saying Drautos is Glauca?" He nodded. "What the fuck. That's--fuck."
He was one of the few who knew anything about her mission, he must have ordered her death. How many other missions had he fucked over? How many other people who had looked up to him, been loyal to him, must have died over the years?
"So that's why we can't have you reporting into anyone or using any official channels. I'll be seeing Nyx tonight, I'll talk him into coming in and we'll tell him there. I remember a few of the other loyal Glaives, so he'll hopefully be able to round them up quietly."
It was, she thought, a sloppy plan, but not a single person in all of Eos would be expecting Prince Charmless to be doing anything like it.
***
When word of Luna's kidnapping went out, Nyx performed as they thought he probably had, taking control and ordering the Glaive out against the hidden fleet. By that time, most of the loyal Glaives had pretended disgust at the treaty (not that they had to pretend, especially knowing what was coming) and stayed behind, lying in wait with Crowe and the prince's retinue.
Noctis, meanwhile, went out with the Nyx’s group, hidden in a uniform they'd acquired for him. With all of them concentrated on the ship that held Luna, he could focus on the others. He tore his way through, royal arms swirling around him as he cut down the MTs and daemons they had protecting the engines.
The second had fallen, Noctis warping to the third, when some of the traitors finally confronted him. He had drawn them away from Nyx and Luna, just as he had hoped.
"Who are you?"
Noctis pulled back his hood, smirking. "I guess I shouldn't expect a traitor to his own comrades to recognize his prince."
His identity was enough of a shock to make Luche hesitate, giving Noctis the opening he needed to shove his Engine Blade right through him, a fierce satisfaction burning in his gut as he thought of what Libertus had told him of this particular Glaive.
From there, destroying the ships and taking out the traitors went hand in hand, one even fell to her death into a turbine, causing a failure that sent the ship off course into the one next to it. The Nifs on board tried to stop him, but clearly had no idea what they were actually dealing with. Everyone who would be strong enough to take on a Caelum was down in Insomnia waiting to kill his dad.
The only way to know that things were going better in Insomnia was by glancing out at the Wall whenever he got a break, seeing it still projected out of the Citadel. He prayed to Ramuh and Carbuncle, the only gods he trusted, as he plowed through MTs, that his father was safe, that his people were surviving.
Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised by the accidental summoning that destroyed the last two ships, Ramuh giving him a surface to warp off of when he jumped out of one. he offered, dissipating as Noctis prayed his fervent thanks for the help.
Nyx and Luna were both staring at him as he joined them, Nyx because he hadn't known about Noctis' covenants and Luna because she knew he shouldn't have covenants, yet. He explained as best he could on the way, Nyx interjecting with what he knew when Noctis had to field a call.
***
Crowe wasn't the only Glaive hidden in the room as the "treaty signing" started. She knew that King Regis could feel them, feel his power within them, but even though he wasn't clued in on what was happening (even his own son hadn't been able to get a private meeting with him), he played it off with a coolness that Crowe respected.
When shit hit the fan, it was almost hilariously obvious. Aldercapt had been looking more and more nervous as he wasn't getting reports about explosions outside, or the Wall going down, or the fleet incoming, but apparently couldn't let the actual signatures take place. Right now they were still at war, until he and the king signed he wouldn't look that bad.
The king's royal arms when he finally brought them out were a sight that always awed Crowe and she didn't know how the Nifs managed to calmly face them down, except that they probably didn't understand half as much about them as she did, couldn't feel the seeping cold of the land of death around them.
The Crownsguard had their weapons out, all attention was drawn to them, and the Nifs weren't prepared when the Glaive warped in, cutting them down. Crowe herself blasted away Aldercapt's gun, burning his hands so terribly that she doubted he'd recover from it, but not really caring. Noctis had told her everything that Niflheim caused and she had zero remorse for anything they did to them here and now.
She glanced around, seeing the Tenebrae Commander on the ground with a mostly superficial stab, others sprawled out in various states of unconsciousness. His sword at Aldercapt's throat, the king was already shouting orders into the comms, his Shield guarding his back and the Glaives in the room standing in a circle around him.
Crowe left, then, slipping away to meet up with Libertus where his team would be taking on Drautos. They all wanted a piece of that traitor, but it would probably only be their magic and their element of surprise that let them keep the upperhand. She'd seen him slaughtering his way through Glaives on the battlefield and knew how powerful his armor was.
It wasn't just Glaives fighting Glauca and the troops with him. There were Crownsguard with the prince's Shield and Adviser, the blonde from her rescue on a roof nearby, a wicked sniper rifle that he clearly knew how to handle beside him. There were civilians, too, hunters that had been gathered quietly from the outside with the promise of fighting the Niflheim General who had destroyed so many of their homes.
By the time Nyx returned with the prince and princess in tow, the city was more of less secure, the Nifs dead or imprisoned, searched carefully for magitek just as much as weapons.
Noctis ran straight into the king's arms when he saw him, pulling at Crowe's heartstrings with how human they looked. Maybe she could even feel some of it, through her borrowed magic, the swell of worry-fear-love coming off of them like a symphony. Or maybe she was just being overly dramatic and it was the empathy that had her crying at sad commercials at play.
"Can't believe we pulled that off," Libertus muttered, limping up beside her with an arm swung over Nyx's shoulder for support.
"From what the prince said, we've got you to thank for that," Nyx teased.
"Ugh, don't remind me, he already made noise about me taking over Captain duties here, too. We save the day and he wants to punish me. Typical Lucian."