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http://bit.ly/2M0QABOAuthor’s Notes: Oh, man. I spent a long time thinking about how to handle this request without boring folks, haha. So, as it turns out, I have a very long, very in-depth multi-chapter fic with exactly this premise, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to give you what you want for this drabble without doubling down too hard on something I’ve already written. If you haven’t already, please check out Running Behind. (Memories of the Past and C1:NDR3LA are also MT!Prompto reveal fics, with slightly different focuses.)
For this drabble, though, I’m going to branch out a little for variety’s sake. Have some MT!Prompto confessing to someone who is not the bros, instead. I hope this works for you. Thank you for the request! <3
===
Confession
===
When Unit 05953234 discovers the creature in the wooded area west of the mountains, it has been twenty-seven days since his drop ship crashed, and thirteen days since mechanical malfunction forced him to abandon his armor.
He no longer has access to the medical scan provided by the device set into his armor’s right palm, but knows anyway: the creature is dying.
There is a lot of blood, and the yellow coat that covers its whole body is matted with rusty dried brown and fresh, sticky crimson. Its eyes are half-open, and its breath is weak and uneven.
There is nothing he can do.
But when the creature calls out softly, Unit 05953234 comes in close. When it lowers its head and leans toward him, he strokes it with trembling fingers. The yellow surface of the creature is soft and yielding, and it tips its head sideways, to press into his palm.
It is the first time anything has ever wanted Unit 05953234’s touch.
He gives the creature water from his canteen. He talks to the creature, bits of phrases he has heard people say to other people, in passing. No one has ever said these things to Unit 05953234, but he knows that the words are good words. They are the kind of words Unit 05953234 used to wish that someone would say to him.
He says them to the creature now, quietly, in a voice that is rough with disuse, until that soft yellow chest stops breathing.
Then he stays a while longer. His throat is tight, and his eyes burn. Wet streaks run down his face.
When Unit 05953234 finally stands to leave, he almost doesn’t see it.
His vision is blurry, still; he comes so very close to missing it entirely.
But as he turns away, it catches his eye: some sort of rock, smooth, and round, and white. It is half buried under the creature, only a small portion of the surface peeking out from underneath.
Unit 05953234 wonders why it’s there. He wonders why the creature settled down on top of it. He wonders why his fingers itch to take it, even though he knows that he shouldn’t burden himself with more weight.
This is why he did so poorly in training, he thinks; he has always had these impulses toward impractical things. This rock has no purpose. It will only slow him down.
It might be nice, though, to have a reminder of the way it felt, to have something press so gently into his palm.
Unit 05953234 takes the rock carefully from beneath the plush yellow of the creature’s chest. He hefts the smooth weight of it against his chest, and he holds it close.
===
The rock breaks three days later, while Unit 05953234 is curled up beneath a shallow ledge, away from the burning light of the sun.
He hears the change before he sees it: a soft crunch that has him blinking his way out of uneasy sleep.
For a moment, Unit 05953234 knows regret. He must have shifted and broken it with the weight of his body. He has ruined this thing, which was meant to be a reminder of something soft.
But as he traces his fingertips across the crack in the rock, the damage grows, splintering out across the smooth white surface.
Then the rock moves.
Unit 05953234 yelps and drops it; it lands in his lap, and he scrambles to give it space. He cannot go far. If he ventures out from beneath the shelter of the ledge, his skin will turn red and blistered. He will be in pain for days.
Trapped, he stays to watch.
He watches as a whole side of the rock gives way. He watches as the motion within takes form, and something struggles to push free. He watches as a wobbling thing covered in something wet and yellow ventures out in the world and begins to make distressed little peeping sounds.
Unit 05953234 stares.
It does not look like the creature that died, not precisely. But the shape is the same, with those tiny, wobbly legs. The color is the same, though this one is wet and bedraggled. The neck is the same, and the bright eyes, and the way it presses up toward him, so very hopeful.
Unit 05953234 picks the little creature up.
It is warm against his palms. It squirms, and tries to nuzzle in nearer. It calls, and calls, and calls, until Unit 05953234 bends his head to speak to it, bits of phrases he has heard people say to other people.
He says them to the creature now, quietly, in a voice that is rough with disuse, until that tiny yellow ball goes still and content.
===
The creature grows.
The wet yellow that covered it when it burst from the rock becomes downy and soft. Unit 05953234 likes to rub his fingers gently between the creature’s eyes, and the creature likes it, too. When he stops for too long, it tucks itself beneath his palm and calls for him to continue.
Its insistent little cry sounds a lot like, “Kweh.”
The creature drinks water from his canteen. It shares what berries and greens he can find, out in the woods.
There is little enough to go around, but Unit 05953234 feeds the creature first. When it finishes, he keeps what remains for himself.
The creature is, he’s sure, the best thing that ever happened to him.
The situation itself has not changed, of course. He’ll still be shot on sight as a deserter by Imperial forces. The Lucians will put him down as an enemy combatant if they happen upon him. His days are spent hiding from the sun’s burning rays, and his nights are spent foraging for food and water, the creature tucked carefully into a sling at his hip. He has a half-dozen small injuries, scrapes and bruises from the local wildlife.
But somehow, Unit 05953234 finds that the hunger and pain hardly matter.
The creature curls up in the hollow of his neck when it sleeps, and Unit 05953234 does not know how something so small can feel like it’s crushing his chest, every time it touches him.
===
The creature continues to grow.
It can keep up with him now, tiny feet scrambling to match his pace, and it walks beside him on his nightly searches for food. The daemons seem to ignore Unit 05953234, but they do not ignore the creature. He is always ready to scoop it up and flee, if one ventures too close.
In the day, the creature wanders out beyond the shelter of the rock outcropping where he rests. It plucks at grass and flowers, and it eats insects: stalks them, and snaps them up, and gulps them down. Unit 05953234 is glad. Lately, the creature has been consuming more and more of what he scavenges, and Unit 05953234 worries that he isn’t giving it enough.
He worries that the creature will leave him, if he doesn’t take good care of it.
===
Unit 05953234 is not used to talking.
During training it was not permitted. In the lab, the researchers did not allow it unless he was asked a direct question. In the field, speech was strictly probibited.
But the creature likes to hear his voice.
When he speaks softly, tone gentle, it curls up beside him.
When he tells it stories about the desert to the east, or the snowy mountains of Niflheim, it says, “Kweh, kweh,” and flaps its tiny not-arms, like it’s talking back.
When he tells it that he’s not a person, and that they made him in a building of glass and steel, Unit 05953234’s eyes leak, and his shoulders shake.
He says that the creature should find a person. A person could take better care of it.
The creature looks up at him with shiny black eyes. Then it presses in beneath his palm until he rubs the spot between its eyes.
===
The people come seventy-two days later.
“A hundred gil says we missed it,” says the deep voice that alerts him to their presence.
Someone snorts in reply. “You telling me I can’t read a map?”
Unit 05953234 is curled up beneath his outcropping to protect him from the glare of the sun, although lately, the light does not burn so badly. Lately, on the few occasions he has been caught out after the dawn, the warmth is almost pleasant.
He is tired, though, and sick; there is a gash in his side, from an imp’s claws, and a set of teeth marks on his calf, from a hobgoblin’s jaws. It used to be that the daemons ignored him. Now they chase him down, during the dark hours, turning each night into a frantic race for safety.
There is no time anymore, to search for food.
Unit 05953234 has become wobbly and unsteady on his feet, these past few weeks; he has grown markedly slower. If he runs from these people in the woods, he thinks, they will surely catch him.
Better to hide until they pass.
“I’m telling you we should’ve been there already,” the first voice is saying.
A new voice cuts in, mild and accented: “Perhaps we’d best check our route again, just to be certain.”
There’s more after that. They keep talking, but Unit 05953234 misses all the rest.
He’s too caught up in the fact that the creature curled up beside him, a soft warm weight against his ribcage, jolts to its feet at the sound of conversation. Before he realizes what it means to do, the creature darts out from beneath the ledge of rock and sprints across the clearing, crying “Kweh!” at the top of its lungs.
Unit 05953234 stares after it, stricken.
He shouldn’t be surprised.
Of course it would leave. This is the better option, after all.
Lately, there has been so very little to eat. Lately, the creature has been calling out to him plaintively, mouth wide and begging, the way it does when it’s hungry. Unit 05953234 has nothing to give it.
It makes sense, that the creature wants a person who will care for it. It makes sense, that it would go.
The creature is already out of view, small yellow form swallowed up by the undergrowth. If he had known it would leave, Unit 05953234 would have rubbed the spot between its eyes one last time.
He takes a careful breath in. His chest is tight, and his eyes sting.
After a beat, one of the voices says, “Hey, check it out. A chocobo.”
“The hell?” comes the reply. “All the way out here?”
“It would seem Wiz has a wayward ward,” says the third voice.
Unit 05953234 can hear the creature – the chocobo – calling out. He tries to impress the sound of it into his mind, so that he can remember it weeks from now, or months, or years. He pulls his arms in against his knees, drawing them up to his chest.
“C'mere, little guy,” says one of the voices, and Unit 05953234 knows a moment of gratitude. That voice sounds gentle. He hopes its owner will take good care of the chocobo.
But one of the other voices is saying, “Whoa, slippery little thing.” There is silence, and then the rustle of bushes, much closer at hand.
Abruptly, Unit 05953234 can hear the soft patter of the chocobo’s feet. It calls out, “Kweh, kweh!” and it darts back into the space beneath the rock ledge.
It burrows into Unit 05953234’s arms, and he stares down at it, helpless, for an endless instant.
It came back to him.
It came back to him.
He holds it, trembling, right up until a face appears below the lip of the rock outcropping to peer in at him.
It is a boyish face, with curious, dark eyes. It comes with disheveled black hair, and an expression that starts as surprise and smooths quickly into something Unit 05953234 does not understand.
“Holy shit,” says the boy.
Unit 05953234 forgets how to breathe.
He is almost certain the boy is Lucian; the hair and eyes give him away, and the skull motif that dots his shirt.
Niflheim and Lucis are at war. Unit 05953234 knows this. The boy will see that he is an MT; he will return with a weapon.
Then Unit 05953234 will die.
He does not want to fight, and he does not think he can run. He is very tired.
But nuzzled in against his neck, the chocobo says, “Kweh.” It occurs to Unit 05953234, distantly, that there are things he’ll need to tell them. If they take care of the chocobo, they should know that it likes the small purple berries that grow in the woods. They should know that it likes to be rubbed between the eyes.
Unit 05953234 says, “Wait,” in a voice that’s rough and shaking. He says, “Wait, I have to tell you something.”
The boy doesn’t listen. He turns away from the rock ledge, and he calls: “Someone’s here! He’s hurt.”
As Unit 05953234 stares, uncomprehending, the boy goes to his knees on the dark brown soil. The boy’s hands hover, uncertain. Then one reaches out to touch Unit 05953234’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” says the boy. “We can help.”
He is the third thing to ever want Unit 05953234’s touch.
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