Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"So you're still legally married? To Nero tol bloody Scaeva?"

The sun was low over the Ala Mihgan palace, making the towers glow. Spreading out below them shimmered the pale mottled expanse of the salt flats, the light dispersing and fracturing as it hit the scattered pools of water still captured in their crevices. Once the pride of Ala Mihgo, then the Empire, and now once again Ala Mihgo, they also made a perfect place to attempt to break magitek landspeed records.

Cid laughed, latching the security harness tightly around Wedge as the Lalafell settled into the cab of the Falcon III. It was a single-seater, sleek and powerful like its father and grandfather were before it, but with far more safety features. Falcon I had nearly taken Wedge's life, and Falcon II had led Jesse to nearly take Cid's when she got the damage reimbursement report. "Mind you, there's no longer any government to hold us accountable to it so it's probably moot, but aye. Nero bloody Scaeva. Tightness okay?"

Wedge tugged at the straps and then gave a quick thumbs up. "Comfy as my own bed, chief. I didn't even know Garlemald still did arranged marriages," he said as he tied on his helmet. "Seems rather backwards of the most civilized civilization to ever civilize."

"Oh, it was mostly something the old nobility families did, and even then I think it was on the wane by my generation. I know Father couldn't legally force me to do it, so I must have found Nero tolerable enough back then to go along with the idea. We did double check the cereuleum pump this time?"

Biggs nodded, bending to inspect the fuel lines at the back of the vehicle. "Triple checked, boss. And we didn't have a clue about Nero, we'd have told you if we did but you didn't tell us a word of it.."

"Not that we were exactly friendly, back in Garlemald," Wedge noted. He sat back in his seat, wiggling his shoulders excitedly as his fingers slid around the steering wheel.

"Gaius says we kept it pretty close to our chests. If nothing else I didn't want the entire damn army knowing I was diemphylikos, and people knowing I had a husband would have opened some awkward questions."

Biggs laughed. "Aye, I suppose that would have given the game away." Even the two of them hadn't known until long after Cid had made the crossing to Eorzea.

"Right, exactly. Even citizen men can't marry other men in Garlemald. God knows what Father expected us to do about having children, maybe he assumed I'd come around eventually."
Cid pulled his goggles down from his forehead, exposing the flat pearl on his brow, and settled them over his eyes. "Speaking of children, let's see what our newest baby can do."

Garlemald didn't have Eorzea's more diversity-minded approach to Eternal Bonding, which had to accommodate everything from Seeker of the Sun clan structure to Lominsan matelotage arrays. Cid's motherland restricted the gender of the pairings which could wed, and for noncitizens the restrictions were even more frustrating. Even the name on Cid's marriage certificate had been the one Cid was given on his nameday. Midas may have let Cid play at being a boy in day to day life, but when it came to government paperwork he had been marked a formal F until the day he shot himself over Baelsar's wall and into the land of the savages.

"All right, Wedge," Biggs said, taking a step back. The Falcon III's engines began to hum as Wedge leaned forward, grinning with rising glee. "Now testing the engines at 125% of normal power, we have launch in three, two, one–"

A loud crack and a gust of wind heralded the vanishing of Falcon III across the salt flats. Grains of flying salt stung at Cid's skin, and the faint scent of burned ceruleum hung in the air. In the far distance, he could see the tiny car shooting past a set of sensor poles Biggs had hung up as time checkpoints, feeding back into the chronograph remotely.

"First checkpoint, 0.3 seconds, second checkpoint 2.5 seconds," Biggs recited, reading off the scanner in his hands. "So are you gonna talk to Nero about it?"

"Jessie says he's due to turn in the month's reimbursement requests by tomorrow, and he's almost never late on those. I figure I'll ambush him when he's back at Rhalgr's Reach. At the very least I want to know why he never said anything about it. " Cid pulled his goggles back up again, squinting into the distance. "What's the third checkpoint's time?"

Biggs tapped the scanner. "It isn't reading his signature at all."

"Hm? Why not?"

"Either it's broken, or I'm not sure he's passed it."

Their linkpearls chimed, Wedge's voice briefly incomprehensible below the sound of bubbling and rushing waves. He went through a coughing fit, then managed, "Biggs, I think the angle of the drive axle is still off."

"Why so?"

"The Falcon went into the loch again. Can you bring the winch around? And maybe some towels?"

—--

The man who would later take the pseudonym 'Wedge' had been recruited into the Garlean Empire when he was barely past his youth. If they'd known about his weak eyes before they'd made him sign the papers saying how proud he was to do his due service to their patron nation and beloved Emperor, maybe he'd have happily whiled away his days out in the provinces. Run a shop or something. It didn't do to dwell on 'what might have been' but that didn't stop anyone from ever trying.

Ironically it was his weak eyes that led him to meet the man who would later be Biggs, sitting awkwardly side by side at the medical assessor's office while they waited to be diagnosed too blind for combat. When they'd been interrogated as to their skills, both said 'engineering', an answer that set the course for the rest of their lives and eventually wound them up assigned as shophands to the prestigious Cid mal Garlond, a man so full of prestige that it took them a full month to realize he was almost as young as they were.

Cid was certainly not the worst superior officer they'd ever had. He didn't throw around slurs about Wedge's height or Biggs' girth, he called them by their actual names, and overall his attitude towards their status as aan seemed to be that of a delicate naivete, as if he was almost confused as to why they didn't have the same rights and status as everyone else. It would be endearing if everyone else didn't keep rushing to make sure the two of them never forgot it - or if there weren't occasions that Cid genuinely forgot he had something that the two of them lacked.

Of course the problem with the luck of being assigned a good officer was that it was just that: luck. And luck changed.

They were in the province's outskirts when the Bozja Incident happened. An entire city wiped off the map in moments, Garlean and native alike. The chaos filtered back before the news - refugees rushing to get out, a frantic chaos of whispered rumors and overheard gossip that the official Vox Imperatoris radio broadcasts could do little to conceal. At first it was called rebel lies, and then overexaggeration, then blamed on rebel influences sabotaging Garlean machines. Anyone with sense would know it didn't matter what the official story was anyway - the joke around the aan community was 'If you don't like what the Vox says, wait five minutes'.

Cid didn't come back to the facility for two weeks, and then almost immediately locked himself in the main workshop and gave everyone else the day off, regardless of project status. When the team came back in the morning he gave them the day off again, shouting their dismissal through the thick steel of the workshop door.

Biggs and Wedge were the only ones who didn't leave. They had nowhere else to go.

"I mean. His father died, you have to give him some time for that," said Biggs, as he laid another card on the table. They were playing with a Garlean set, but he'd written over the different card faces in ink to modify it into a makeshift Triple Triad deck.

"He never even mentioned his father before," Wedge replied. "Not sure he even liked the guy."

"Doesn't mean losing him like this wouldn't leave him off kilter. Especially in something as dramatic as–"

The clanking of metal boots outside made Biggs instantly sweep his hand across the table, snatching up the cards as he launched himself into a stiff at-attention pose. Wedge shot erect beside him, fist clamped to his chest. They stood side by side, chests puffed, as an imposing figure in dark armor and crimson cloth strode into the room.

"Good morning, Legatus van Baelsar, sir!"

As Legatii went, Gaius van Baelsar was notoriously not one of the worst. To Wedge that was like saying first degree burns were not the worst kind of burn - sure, there was a spectrum and where you were on the spectrum mattered, but at the end of the day you were still on fire. The presence of that glinting armor and glaring mask made Wedge's stomach turn over no matter how many times the general visited. He supposed that was half the reason Gaius wore it.

When Gaius stopped in front of the pair and actually turned to look at them, Wedge's stomach started imitating a steam turbine.

"Where is your superior?" Gaius asked, his thick voice further distorted by the speaker in his mask.

"Praefectus mal Garlond is in the main workshop, sir." Wedge said, staring straight out, arm tensed in the imperial salute across his chest.

"And where is the rest of the staff?"

"He dismissed them for the day, sir."

"And yet you are still here." The helmet inclined slightly - Wedge couldn't tell if Gaius was looking at him or at the stray playing card almost but not entirely hidden underneath Biggs's foot. "But idle."

"Yes, sir." You never gave an officer excuses. If they didn't ask for your reasoning, they didn't want to know it.

The sound of a soft sigh echoed through Gaius's helmet. It was impossible to tell what he was exasperated about or why with the damn mask on, and Wedge dearly hoped it wasn't him. "The workshop door is locked, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did he last leave?"

"The day before yesterday, sir. To my knowledge, sir."

"When did he last eat?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Do you have the override or will I need to shoot the door down?"

Wedge hesitated, but the pounding of his heart forced words out of his mouth like fuel from a cerulean pump. "We can–we can override it, sir." Of course they could. First rule of being in a cage, learn how to open the doors even if there's not yet a reason to flee. Wedge had a habit of figuring out how to remove every barrier he saw regardless of whether it personally constrained him.

"Then do so."

Wedge's heart was in his throat as he entered the backdoor code for the workshop door system, Gaius's gaze burning into the back of his neck from above. In his mind he could see their boss's body lying limp on the workshop floor, dead of his own hand or of hunger, and Gaius's searing gaze turning on him with all the fury of a Garlean true believer, and–

And the door opened abruptly to show an unwashed, underslept, and very much alive Cid mal Garlond glaring back up Gaius from under a raised welder's mask. Behind him the workshop was in total disarray - papers lying in tatters on the floor, scraps of ration packets strewn about, the faint smell of a soldering iron hanging in the air.

"You could have knocked," he said after a long moment staring at all three of them. There was something off about his eyes, to Wedge. A dullness that replaced the previous ever-burning spark which seemed to power Cid's limitless creativity.

"You would not have answered, " Gaius responded, equally stiff.

"It would have been polite, anyway."

Gaius took a step forward and Cid, half the legatus's size, was forced to move back. Gaius reached out to rest his fingers against the door handle and slide it closed behind him as he entered, sealing Biggs and Wedge out.

Even with their ears pressed against the door, it wasn't easy to hear much, and after a while Biggs and Wedge gave up eavesdropping. Both of them found one of their make-work pieces, so that when Gaius came out again they'd look busy - it was just taking a defunct reaper cannon apart and putting it back together again, but to the average eye it looked like Very Important Engineering.

After what felt like an eternity Gaius departed, not sparing a look for the two aan frantically shuffling their tools about. The door stayed open afterward, but Cid did not emerge. When Biggs and Wedge peeked inside they saw the young engineer slumped in his chair and staring at the wall, a spare bolt slowly being twisted in his fingers. Even more than before, it was as if the soul had been taken right out of him.

"Everything all right, sir?" Biggs asked.

"They're promoting me," Cid said dimly, his eyes moving to track Biggs's form but the rest of him refusing to move. "To his position. Father's. I'll be Cid nan Garlond." He sounded as if he was announcing his own impending execution.

"Oh. I…good to know, sir."

"I don't want it."

"I'm sorry, sir." Biggs didn't suggest Cid decline the promotion. Both of them knew that when duty called, you answered. But at least he wouldn't give him the humiliation of a congratulations.

"I don't want…any of it." Cid's voice was barely audible, like the mumblings of a sleepwalker.

Biggs held no love for most Garleans, and he knew better than to get too close to them. Especially the ones in the military, which was most of them. But even in grief he'd never seen a man look hollowed out like a rotted log the way Cid nan Garlond did, slouching with the bolt hanging slack from his fingers. Some impulses couldn't be burned out of you, no matter how much imperial training you got - it was instinct that made Biggs sit on a box next to Cid and extend one massive arm around his shoulders, letting the other young man press his face into Biggs's chest and finally, finally, exhale.

Wedge sat nervously nearby, fidgeting over the sequence of several long breaths and the sounds of weak sobbing that rose to a fever pitch and ebbed again like the tide. His small hand eventually reached out and rubbed Cid's shoulder, feeling his shuddering slowly begin to ease. Later, much later, he'd find out that was the only time Cid was able to weep over his father's death.

Cid finally withdrew, wiping his eyes, muttering half-choked words of thanks. That it was an honor working with them, that he was sorry to see them go, that they'd do whoever they worked with next proud even if that bastard wouldn't deserve it. Then he'd told them to go back and get some rest and given them all the money he had in his pockets to get themselves something nice for dinner.

That was the last time they'd see Cid within the bounds of Garlean territory. They'd assumed it would be the last time they'd see him at all.

The next day when they showed up to work they were told they were being reassigned, since their superior would no longer need them. Their new superior would be Aulus mal Asina, and they would be transferring back to the Capital. Two weeks later Wedge was overloading a magitek reaper to provide cover to their escape, and one week after that they'd crossed over the border to Hingashi and traded the last of Cid's money for passage to Eorzea.

And two months later, they'd receive news that Cid had done the same damn thing.