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But...

[Prompto watches Ignis, his own attention fixed, his frown lightening not at all.]

Wouldn't we be helping him?

[Even if both of them are already past the point where they could save Lunafreya. Even if they can't go back with Noct...]

Wouldn't it help if we could all just... talk about it? Together? Like when we were busting bases, or. Any of that?

[He looks down, like the words to express what he means properly will be there at his feet. They're not. He's never had the vocabulary for this, and he came to the concept late. So late. But never too late.]

Wouldn't it help to talk?

...In a matter like this, Prompto, it's your intuition I'd trust, not mine.

[The repetition, the insistence get him to glance up, and it's apparent from the expression on his face that for once, he's not the one with the answers.]

Will it help? Do you think he'd allow us to be a part of it? Or would he insist on doing it alone, to try to protect us in some capacity?

[If Ignis doesn't have answers, the question he asks still sounds like it has one. Like it's rhetorical. They've all known him for years; the last time Prompto heard his voice before coming here, he'd run ahead just to protect them.]

...I think he'd try.

[If he doesn't acknowledge that, then he's being willfully blind, and he can't do that in front of Ignis, not anymore.]

But we swore an oath. And I think... I think... I think, really, it's what he wants, too. He doesn't want to do it all alone. And I think... I think he needs us.

[I'm going to make the world a better place.

You with me?]

And if he takes our help, that's what'll make him a real king. If he accepts what he needs, not... not just what he needs to do. Or else he's just running away. Like I did, after we were separated.

[He breathes in, then out.] That's what I think.

...He feels responsible. For Insomnia, for what awaits him in Altissia. For you. For me.

[He's quiet a minute, and then his voice goes lower; what's coming isn't something that he finds easy to say, but sometimes being a good advisor means saying the things that aren't easy, and that no one else wants to.]

The Marshal, however righteous his intentions, did a number on him in that respect, I think.

[It's not the sort of thing one unhears, after all. It doesn't just go away. Perhaps it never will.]

...I hate the thought of him having to go somewhere I can't follow, you know.

I know.

[It feels a lot like his own need, desperate and young. 'All I ask is that you remain ever at his side.'

Prompto lifts his hand, wavers, and then puts it on Ignis's arm.]

Don't let him. I won't, either. [He remembers something and says:] We're not his bodyguards. We're his brothers.

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