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Next time on deadly prison gang, Iggy volunteers to fight

Weeks ago, Ignis wouldn’t have dared to try and lead them from the yard. Without his sight, all the unknown variables piled up much too high, and it was very likely he’d run into trouble; a guard bearing down, an unhinged gang member, even a stone wall. However, even in the thick of the crowd now, Iggy clutched onto the confidence of his known footing and the strength of his senses. His left hand remained clutched on Gladio’s sleeve as he weaved and shoved through the crowd of inmates beginning their dangerous swarm, and his foot made contact with steps in mere moments.

All too quickly, the noise began to fade away as they crossed the threshold into the prison. The thick, cold walls drowned out the chaos outside, even as inmates began to fall to swinging batons. The shriek of a whistle burned his ears. However, Ignis didn’t waver, and continued to walk quickly forward, unable to let go of Gladio’s sleeve.

He wanted to stop and assess the wound Gladiolus had suffered, but if they stopped now, they risked any of the angry mob of inmates that had managed to slip past the guards catching up to them. No, it wasn’t safe to stop and check anything until they reached the confines of their cell. At the very least, then, they’d have a door to hold them off for a moment or two.

However, even through the horrific muck and stank of the prison, Ignis picked up the scent of blood. The steady drops he was hearing splatter against the concrete floor was certainly not water leaking from the roof. It wasn’t rhythmic enough. No, blood was seeping freely from Gladio’s side. Ignis grimaced, mentally counting their steps down the long corridor. Was there anything in their cell he could sew a wound with? Unlikely …

Finally, they crossed into their cell, with what near non-existent safety it provided for the time being. Ears and eyes were everywhere, but at least in the bunk, Ignis knew each and every inch of the area and could use it to his advantage. No one would dare approach them unless they wanted to find their head dented through a metal sink.

Gladio immediately began to chastise himself, and Ignis shook his head. There was no predicting that the man would have some kind of a shiv, nor that he would have launched himself at Gladio so recklessly. Iggy moved around their small, shared space as Gladio mumbled to himself, picking up a torn piece of cloth he’d been using as a makeshift rag and running it under the cold water of the tap. Gladio’s outburst and swing against the metal bunk rattled Ignis for a moment, and the adrenaline of the situation caught up with him as he rung out the rag in the sink and rounded on his injured friend.

“Enough,” he pointed to Gladio sternly, before moving forward and grabbing Gladio’s free hand, shoving the rag into it, “What’s done is done. Let’s treat your wound best we can for now, and we’ll deal with the fallout when it comes.”

Easier said than done, of course, as Ignis simultaneously felt like cursing just as loudly as Gladio had and vomiting all the same. Gladio was still healing from his previous fight, and now this. Ignis swallowed his worry for the moment, making quick work of removing Gladio’s jacket and forcing the bottom of his shirt up, so that he could assess the wound to the best of his ability.

The mixture of thick, cooled blood and warm, slick blood met his fingers. Ignis moved Gladio’s hand away from the wound and tentatively felt for the edges of his skin where the knife pierced, before grabbing the wet rag and pressing it hard against the wound, “Sit. Lay on your side, we have to stem the bleeding.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.

Anxiety bubbled in his gut. How dirty was that knife? Was there anything on it? Either way, the wound needed to be cleaned as soon as it stopped bleeding as much as it was. But, how much time would they have? Gladio had said that he would be forced into the ring again soon. Even with stitches, there was no way he’d be in fighting shape anytime soon.

His fingers around the rag began to tremble. Ignis blamed the cold.

"Other than anger, I need to know what you feel. Are you light-headed? Colder than you should be? Can you feel the wound?" Iggy asked, more gently than his earlier tone, attempting to assess how much the blood loss may have already gotten to Gladiolus.

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Iggy be pretending he's okay, but he aint

Gladio was unsteady. It was a bad sign in an already very serious situation. It sounded like his legs had almost given out underneath of him, if that’s not entirely what they did. Ignis followed Gladio’s movements, keeping the rag tightly pressed against the weeping wound. Gladio’s description of how he felt lined up well with how one felt experiencing a sudden, significant blood loss. Ignis exhaled hard through his nose. There wasn’t much in the cell he could use to patch the injury, but there was enough that he could make it work. A needle and some thread he’d stowed away to fix their clothing would do well enough, but with no way to sanitize any of it …

Well, they’d have to take that chance.

“Steady breaths,” Ignis quietly insisted as he checked the wound again, “Tell me if the room begins to spin or darken.”

He used a free hand to measure Gladio’s pulse in his wrist. It was high, and his blood pressure was likely through the roof. Slipping into an unconscious state seemed inevitable. Iggy cursed in his head, keeping the ever calm facade he was so well known for. It was no time to slip into a panic when he needed all of his wits about him. The wound was not in a life threatening area, thankfully, crossing no major arteries or veins, but it would be problematic for every movement Gladio made until it healed entirely. The cold would make that even more difficult.

The blood slowed from a stream to gentle ooze. Ignis grabbed the ragged blanket from the top bunk and tucked it against Gladio’s abdomen, to soak up the water he was about to make a mess with. He went to the sink and washed out the rag, letting it soak in what freezing water it could. He apologized quietly to Gladio before squeezing the rag over the wound, washing out whatever he could from the split, bloodied skin. He had to repeat the motion a few times to feel satisfied with cleaning the wound best he could, but on the upside, the freezing water had likely numbed it.

Ignis tossed the now soaked blanket to the floor – he could survive a night or two without it – before moving to collect the sewing supplies he’d tucked away.

“I’ll be as gentle as I can,” Iggy continued to explain everything he was doing, at the very least to keep Gladio talking, “I’m hoping it's numb, at the very least. But I have to sew it up.”

Iggy mentally winced as the needle pierced Gladio’s skin. Fixing gaps in clothing was one thing, but it was entirely another to sew a person back together. The motions were the same, something he’d learned in survival training, but skin was less forgiving than fabric. Still, Ignis worked quickly with his practiced motions, fingers feeling the outsides of the wound and pinching it together as he went. He tied off the thread as soon as he could, and placed it aside.

It still oozed, but the texture felt different from blood. Perhaps it was just serum now. Ignis pulled Gladio’s blanket over him, and threw his coat on top of the man for good measure. It was the best he could do for the time being, and it would last until his teeth chattered so hard he couldn’t withstand the cold any longer. Iggy collected his wettened blanket from the floor and hung it around the rail of the top bunk to dry.

The door to their cell was closed and locked, but it didn’t stop passerbys coming in from the yard from banging on the bars and shouting at them. Ignis ignored it, washing blood from his hands in the freezing water. Anxiety gripped his ankles and began to creep further and further upward, squeezing around his throat. What were they supposed to do, with Gladio having such a serious injury? He certainly couldn’t fight again, not anytime soon. He shouldn’t even get up and stretch the wound for days.

Iggy would have to face it all alone. Exposed.

But, the reality of having to deal with all the ugliness the gulag had to offer paled in comparison to his worry for Gladio’s health. What if the wound got infected? What if the knife had something dangerous on it? What if the wound was more serious than Ignis could realize? What if someone tried to attack Gladio now, while he was down?

Ignis swallowed those thoughts, and sat himself at the edge of Gladio’s bunk.

“You have to stay with me, Gladio,” was his selfish demand. He didn’t have a prayer of escaping the prison without Gladio. And Gladiolus still had a duty to perform, should they ever escape the hell hole they found themselves in.

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Have a novel where Iggy suffocates someone for an antidote

Everyday challenged the threshold of Ignis’s worry. Whether it was infection or something worse, Gladio continued to decline with each day. True consciousness had slipped away from him within the first 24 hours of the stabbing, and only the occasional murmur passed his friend’s lips. Other than that, it was nothing but grunts of pain and vomit. With each passing day, Ignis mentally tallied how much hotter the man’s forehead became, how much pus spilled from the wound that refused to properly heal, despite consistent attention. His own mental breaking point was coming.

Gladiolus wouldn’t survive without proper medication. He would turn septic, if he hadn’t already. He was starving and dehydrated, only barely taking in the occasional sips of water that wouldn’t immediately come back up. One by one, each body system would shut down until there was nothing left.

But … what could he do? The other prisoners laughed as they passed the cell. They taunted Gladio, who couldn’t hear them. The guards didn’t care. In this hellscape, Gladio would be nothing but another nameless body.

Gladio had to make it through. He simply had to. Ignis knew it was a childish thing, to simply try and will wellness into existence, but … what else could he do? Without treatment, there was nothing to be done. And yet, Ignis ran his fingers over the carved numerals he’d found on the wall one day. He’d tallied up the days Gladio had been locked in the cell – years. Years. He continued to add a number for each day that his friend breathed. As if the act of keeping the days recorded would extend the stay.

The darkest of thoughts sunk their claws into his mind, again and again. It was getting tiring, fighting them off.

A week had passed, before a familiar voice came by – reminding Gladio that he had a fight coming up. A voice Ignis had been waiting on.

“Let me fight,” he begged through the bars, hands clutched around the frigid steel, “Let me fight in Gladiolus’s place.”

Fighting was the only way to get anything in Gorgon. Rations, blankets, fresh water.

Medication.

The guard on the other side of the bars shrugged his shoulders, “Don’t care who fights, as long as someone does.”

The man scribbled something down on a clipboard, “Alright blind man, what do you want if you win? We ain’t got a fresh pair of eyes for ya.”

“An antidote,” Ignis let the quip pass him by without a fight. The man only grunted in response before his footsteps began echoing away.

It was insanity, what he was asking to do. There was no telling who they would pit him against in that ring of death, just to teach him a lesson for daring to fight at all. There would be a large turnout, excited to watch a disabled man get pummeled into the ground. Would it be Rurik’s men? He’d certainly pissed them off enough.

It was the only way. Without an antidote of some kind, Gladio wouldn’t survive. So, he would have to get it – or die trying.



As he walked through the hall, the sound before him built into a steady and raucous roar.

Ignis knew the moment the lights hit him, as the inmates behind the fences spat and called and screeched. The scent of the room was overwhelming; the stench of unwashed bodies, a frigid hint of iron, the vile scent of nearby vomit. Iggy had long since lost the feeling in his bare digits, professionally wrapped by his own hand. There would be no cornerman for him today, his bucket of supplies dangling from the fingers of his left hand. He’d have to avoid injury best he could. But the ring … there was no telling who would step inside.

He was only slated for a single fight; a blessing. It seemed they weren’t expecting much from him. The few tussles he’d been involved in, Gladio had always been present. It was likely assumed that he was nothing without Gladio there to protect him. A guard nudged him in the back with a freezing baton, ushering Ignis up the metal stairs and between the ropes, into the ring as an announcer declared his name and that this was his first official fight.

The jeering intensified. Ignis drowned it out, focusing instead on the feeling of the mat under his feet. He could sense the announcer in the middle of the ring shifting from his right foot to his left. Someone, heavy footed, was stepping onto the mat opposite of him. He was either purposefully stomping about, or he was larger than Gladio. Whoever he was, whatever his body count in the ring was, Ignis didn’t care. No other noise mattered other than the start of the fight. The only thing that mattered was living, and winning.

The announcer stepped out – the bell rang over the sounds of chaos.

Fighting hand-to-hand was not Ignis’s preferred method, but that hardly meant he was untrained. Hours each day, when Noctis was busy with schooling or other duties, had been assigned to physical training. He was not just the king’s retainer, but a defender. He was no shield like Gladio; more of a discreet, assassin’s arrow. Losing his eyesight had forced Iggy to relearn so many things, and self-defense had been one of the harder ones to grasp. One depended on seeing the way their opponent moved, what limb they may swing, what they may do next.

Now, it was the give of their mat under their feet. It was the bellowing grunt from the man’s throat. It was the flutter of ragged clothing as it moved through the air, and the pop of cartilage in his opponent’s knee.

The man (Levi, as he’d later remember him being called), did manage to make first contact. Ignis hadn’t managed to dodge far enough back, as an elbow came crashing into his nose. Pain flared across his face as a gasp was ripped from his throat. The crowd’s roar grew louder – first blood on the blind man. They were ready to see him torn to shreds.

Blood gushed from Iggy’s nose and soaked into the too-large, stained tank he wore. There was no time to address the issue, though, as the man attempted to take him down to the mat. Ignis managed to move out of the way of a second strike, forcing the pain from his face from his mind, focus, focus! The weight on the mat shifted again, his opponent crying out before his next strike. Ignis slipped through on a crouch, and his foot made contact with a large, hairy jaw with a sickening crack.

Most of their movements were a blur as Iggy moved on instinct. He wasn’t sure when he was struck across the face again, only vaguely aware that the scarred skin above his left eye had been torn open. His right hand ached after making contact with a skull. He managed to slip away from another devastatingly powerful strike, and the crowd booed him in anger.

Somehow, their bodies hit the mat. Levi tried to get a proper grip on Ignis’s throat, but perhaps the blood had made him too slick. Was it some sort of animal instinct that forced Iggy to slip through the man’s hold and manage to wriggle his way to his head? Vaguely, the scent of acrid sweat, grime, and blood mixed as his face was pressed into the mat. One arm wrapped around the man’s meaty neck in a death grip, while his legs secured one arm and his free hand fought with the other. Dull nails scratched at his face, but the adrenaline made it feel more like ice against his skin.

The man’s struggle became less and less. Was it an eternity, or only moments, before the man stopped moving entirely? Ignis lay there, afraid to loosen his hold, the roar of the crowd more deafening than it had ever been before. The fight … was a blur. How many times did he hit the man? How many times was he hit?

… Had he won?

“Let go of the corpse,” some guard barked at him.

Ignis felt numb – from the cold, he reasoned. He let go of his opponent and brought himself to his feet as the announcer declared him the winner. At the moment, it didn’t feel like a victory. He reached out and grabbed the fabric of a guard’s uniform, “When do I get it? What I won?”

He was shoved off toward the ropes, “When we feel like it, cripple. Get out of the ring!”







Ignis mopped up his face to the best of his ability with the scrap of a rag that hadn’t been used to clean up Gladio’s sick. His fingers were numb, and it was difficult to tell exactly if he’d managed to wipe blood away rather than smear it, but it would have to do for now. It would be much harder to get off once it had dried. For the most part, adrenaline covered his aches and pains, but the world still threatened to spin as he shoved rolled toilet paper into his nostrils to stem the flow of blood.

“I hope you didn’t worry while I was gone,” Ignis spoke to his unconscious friend as he sat at the foot of Gladio’s bunk, “You’ll chastise me for it, I’m sure, but I fought and won today. I know I’ve asked you to wait for quite some time already, but I’m afraid I have to ask you to keep holding on a little bit longer. Until they deliver my prize.”

His ears were ringing louder than they ever had before. Perhaps it was a mixture of the volume in the ring and the strike to his head? Things felt fuzzy, and the longer Ignis sat still, the more he wanted to lay back (Gladio’s legs be damned) and rest. The aches and pains began letting themselves be known quite rudely. Ignis rested his head against the metal post as he brought his arms around himself, shivering as his cooled sweat turned icy against his skin.

“Hey, blind man.”

The voice of a guard brought Ignis out of his daze. The man didn’t continue, so Iggy forced himself to his feet and fought against the sensation of pins and needles as he forced one foot in front of the other to the bars.

The guard continued, “Warden wanted me to drop this by now. Doesn’t want you losing your motivation.”

A bottle was pressed into Iggy’s freezing hands. He felt along the seams and the top, identifying the bottle as some kind of curative, “And how do I know this isn’t some sort of trick?”

The guard grabbed his collar through the iron and pulled him hard against the bars, “Don’t you dare doubt the warden's hospitality, little shit. You wanted this, you earned it. Go make big ugly all better, then get ready to step back in the ring to get your ass handed to you in a couple weeks.”

The man shoved Ignis as he let him go, and his heavy footsteps echoed off the walls as he stomped away.

Iggy clutched the bottle in his hands. He either trusted what he’d been given, or he let Gladio die, slowly and painfully from infection. His choices were limited. Ignis made his way back to Gladio’s bunk, bunching up his own blanket to prop his friend up. He unscrewed the top of the curative, his fingers shaking, before tapping Gladio’s cheek that was still burning to the touch.

“Gladio. I need you to wake up. Just a little, just for a moment.”

He barely tipped some of the curative past Gladio’s dry, cracked lips.

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He might cry if he had the energy for that.

For the first time in days, intelligible words left Gladio’s lips.

Ignis wasn’t sure what words left him in jubilation and relief, or if they even made sense. He tipped the bottle again, having Gladiolus drink more of the curative. It was working. It worked! The leftover adrenaline from his match had run its course, and with the relief came soreness, aching, and pain. It was all background noise, though, compared to the way Gladio’s breaths finally evened out. The second turned into minutes, and Ignis wanted to demand Gladio speak again. He kept still, however, leaning against the metal bar of the bunk as to not collapse in the floor.

Finally, Gladio seemed to recognize he was there. Iggy felt the weight on the stiff mattress shift, and his hand barely tapped Gladio’s chest before the man fell backward on his own. He had to be incredibly weak, Ignis reasoned, after so many days without movement or nourishment. Still, Gladio had the strength to ask about the situation.

“You’ve been unconscious for nearly ten days,” Ignis informed him, his own voice hoarse in his ears, speech affected by the cloth in his nasal passages, “We were in the yard, and you were stabbed after scuffle with the pushers. The blade must have been laced with a poison or drug.”

There was no sense in telling Gladio everything he saw during that time. Listening to his friend writhe in pain, burn with fever, heart unsteady. How Gladio started rejecting even water two days ago. Gladio had surely suffered enough of his own hell, trapped in his poisoned body.

“I took your place for a match,” Ignis stated matter-of-factly, despite his obvious injuries and exhaustion, “And I suppose the curative I won must not be too terribly expired, as it seems to have worked well enough.”

He had to stay strong. He had to stay strong, despite wanting to collapse, despite wanting to explain how terribly worried he had been. He couldn’t let Gladio know, just how relieved he was, down to the very depths of his soul. He would never tell him how very terrified he was at the thought of losing him, here in this deepest and darkest hell.

Death was an honor, if one’s life was lost in the line of duty as a retainer. Otherwise it was …

It was unthinkable. They had to live. They had to make it out of there, alive. For Noctis. For themselves.