It all came back slowly. So achingly, terrifyingly slowly.

First was always the sensations of the body. A dull ache in his limbs, lessened from what it previously had been, but fatigued nonetheless. The vertebrae of his back complaining in earnest from a time spent too-still, the creak of his joints as he flexed his waking hands. The scratch of fabric over his chest as he took a deep breath in, and the warmth of soft material under his skin. Each digit reanimating, one synapse at a time. It was a familiar wake, one that came with too many forced losses of consciousness.

Next came the sounds. Where his brain anticipated the groan of steel and the howls of angry, exhausted, terrible men, it found instead silence. A silence that had long since been forgotten and neglected. The ticking of a clock was the loudest, announcing its presence one insistent beat at a time. Behind that were muffled sounds of life – behind a wall or a door, perhaps. Footsteps and voices, milling about. The sound of fabric bunching together crisply as he moved an arm, and the creak of the bedspring beneath his back. Too loudly, the breath coming in and leaving his body every few clicks of the clock.

The smells, so different it was jarring. Gone was the musk of unwashed bodies and grime, the mold, the strong scent of blood. The very temperature of the air no longer shocked his nose or chapped his dry lips. Instead, everything seemed to try as hard as possible to have zero scent. Sterile and clean. Evidence of a once-burning candle or incense perhaps, that had burned out some hours ago. Even his own skin seemed to take on that very subtle nothingness, no longer plagued by sweat, dirt, and desperation.

Then, the sudden dawning of realization, where the mind wakes–

– and the near panic sets in.

Where am I!?

Ignis jolted in a sudden flurry of movements, limbs askew as he fought the fatigue in every muscle to sit up. His body protested enough to keep him from making it quite to where he needed to be, forcing him down to his back with a quiet creak of the bed. No, not just the weakness, but the fact that he’d been tucked in tightly as well. Choking down his urge to call out into the unknown, the royal advisor forced himself to take deep, even breaths, counting in time with the too loud clock.

He needed to ground himself. Iggy mouthed the seconds as he took a breath in, mouthing them again as he released it. He flicked the fingers of his right hand in time with his counting – up to five, down to 1 – as the digits of his left hand scratched against the fabric he was held against. Focusing on the sound of every gear that turned the hand of the clock another second. Taking only a spare moment to barely bite down on his tongue, just enough to make sure the insignificant pain was there.

What was the last thing he could recall? Iggy worried his bottom lip between his teeth a moment, ignoring the complaints of the chapped and dry skin. Adrenaline. Anxiety. Now-or-never. Screams and explosions and pain and – too much, too much. They had escaped, hadn’t they? He could still hear Gladio shouting next to him as he led the charge through the chaos of the prison as it broke down into shambles. They had made it to freedom, finally, hard wrought and desperate and threading the needle to even have a snowball’s chance in Hell.

And then voices called out to him.

Familiar voices, ones he had missed through years of searching. Of hoping. Of dreaming.

They had been real, hadn’t they? Now, as much as Ignis wanted them to be, needed them to be, he suddenly couldn’t be sure. Those memories felt so hard to reach, so unreal, lost in a sea of sensations and sounds that was near impossible to wade through. Mired in a fog so dense, tangled in brush so thick, it would take eons to unravel. Trying to parse out the details would take a helping hand, and one didn’t seem to be nearby. Unease sunk into his bones without Gladio’s familiar presence nearby, but they’d been separated plenty of times while stuck in the confines of the Gulag and reunited time and time again.

Iggy slowly and carefully raised a hand to his face, fingers tracing over the familiar, scarred skin of his left eye. Recalling what he did know, and knew to be true. He swallowed dryly, his tongue feeling too sticky in his mouth. He moved just enough, fought against the ache, to have himself propped up in the bed. The most comfortable bed he’d been in for a long time. Perhaps he was in a hospital or clinic. A healer’s bay.

He replayed the voices of his friend’s calling his name through the chaos and confusion. Whether he imagined them or not, whether they were figments of a desperate mind or it really was their hands that had secured him tightly as he lost consciousness, it warmed Iggy’s heart more than anything had in quite some time.

Noctis … Prompto….

His breath hitched in his chest for only a moment.

Though he wanted nothing more than to wrestle his way to freedom and find them – anyone, everyone – padding around on bare feet in unknown territory, Ignis knew well his body wouldn’t tolerate it. In the prison he had been starved, dehydrated, drugged, beaten and abused for what felt like an eternity. He had already pushed his body beyond the limit just to escape that gods forsaken pit of torture. It would take time, rest, and recovery for his strength to finally return to him.

His heart angrily protested. But his mind won out, as it did most of the time.

Ignis sighed and turned his head toward the direction the muffled noises of life had come from and strained his ears – desperate to hear familiar tones as he fought against a wave of fatigue that threatened to return him to the world of sleep.

Waiting for anyone to come and tell him that this wasn’t a dream, that the voices of his friends hadn’t been imagined, and that he was, finally, free.

Blink once.

Blink twice.

Oh.

How achingly, terrifyingly slowly the waking came.