Chapter Text
During several conversations with Biggs and Wedge, Cid had reinforced that he was not doing any of this for Gaius's sake. Not because Gaius had earned it, or Cid owed it, or anything stupid like that.
It was just, this was the era of reconciliation and all that. One big happy Eithyrs family. End of the bloody world had come and gone, so now it was time for everyone to start making amends and coming together in harmony, etc. Cid needed to set a good example, and it was hardly fair to ask his fellow Eorzeans to do something he wasn't willing to do himself.
If Cid framed it as something like eating his vegetables or doing morning calisthenics it made the process more bearable.
Cid's memories didn't want to reconcile the imposing masked finger that haunted Eorzea's dreams, horns broad and decorated like some strange voidsent monster, with a man that Cid's mind clearly told him he had once cared about. Whose love and approval had once mattered so damn much to him. Really, the worst part about reconciling with one of Garlemald's most notorious generals, a man who had not only spearheaded countless invasions and occupations but had personally shot Cid at least once, was having to confront how much of Cid still wanted to be with him.
That and that hangdog expression Gaius always had on his face when they met at the airship dock in Terncliff, the way he could never quite meet Cid's eyes in the moments when Cid first disembarked. It made Cid feel like he had something to be guilty about.
Gaius was staying in the old castrum, which in the wake of the Final Days had been refitted into a command center and sentry tower. Scorning the old rector's quarters, he'd moved a bed into the main office and jury-rigged a radio hookup there. Outside of the basics the place was sparsely furnished; the castrum had been severely looted after liberation, and Gaius seemed disinclined to add anything back in. Likely felt he didn't deserve it, or something stupid like that.
The walk up to the castrum was awkward, as Gaius asked perfunctory questions about how this or that person or situation was, and Cid answered just as curtly. It never stopped being strange to see the Black Wolf out of his armor, dressed in a dull red longcoat over a knit sweater and wool slacks, as if he were just another retired civilian meeting an old friend.
"We've been cleaning out the Imperial offices in Werlyt recently," Gaius said, once they'd gotten themselves some privacy. "To try and sort out records - get families back together, give people a way to find where the loved ones were. I found a number of my old possessions there. They're at least a decade old, left over from when I was the Viceroy here. It was the safest place to store things close to the front, at the time."
"Huh." Cid nodded along, waiting for Gaius to explain why this was relevant to him. His faux-bored gaze wandered up the menacing architecture of the rafters, iron-black on iron-black. Even the way Garlemald designed a ceiling made their buildings feel oppressive.
Gaius hesitated before speaking next. One hand - the one he'd kept wrapped in bandages during his time as 'Shadowhunter', and now wore a dark glove over to hide the marbled burn marks - clenched and then opened. "Some of them were yours. I thought you…I wanted to at least offer the option to take them back."
In Cid's hazy childhood memories of Gaius, Gaius hadn't stumbled through his words like this. He always spoke boldly and with confidence in every statement. These days even the small moments seemed plagued with self-doubt, as if any poorly thought out syllable might trigger Cid's wrath or ruin the delicate ceasefire between them that they'd spent months building up. Cid found it hard to resist mocking Gaius for it, but he managed.
"Sure, though I'm not sure what use I'd have for them." He offered an apathetic shrug, taking a seat across from Gaius's desk.
Gaius nodded, then bent to open one of the drawers and pulled out a thick folder, its paper wax-coated to keep out water. Age had left delicate cracks like varicose veins through the wax and the papers inside were even older, some of them brittle to the touch. Gaius brought out each one with utmost delicacy, like a priest setting out religious relics.
School reports. Letters. Certificates, paired with tiny medals in velvet bags for science and academic awards. Even looking at them gave Cid a feeling of revulsion. He took each item politely, but even Gaius could tell Cid had no enthusiasm for them. The former legatus took in a deep breath before setting out the final item.
"I don't…exactly know where you two stand these days, but.."
In his hand was a carefully preserved lithographic print, pressed between two panes of thin glass. Not a painting, but an actual camerabox image, the kind even Garleans only got if they had the money and status to commission it and were rare to see at all outside of the Empire.
The print showed a young couple standing together under a latticework of silk flowers. Each one had a hand resting on the pedestal between them, showing the thick metal cuffs and elegant chain that bound their wrists together. Standing off and to the right of the bride were figures that, squinting, Cid could identify as Gaius in full armor and his own father Midas nan Garlond in his military dress. Both had their helmets tucked under their arms, but the print was too faded to make out their exact expressions. The ones to the left of the groom, Cid didn't know at all.
As for the married couple themselves…Cid studied the face of the groom, and then began to laugh. "Wait. Wait. Is that Nero? Oh hells, that is Nero. Why do you have Nero's wedding photo? Why are you in Nero's wedding photo? I didn't even know he was–"
Cid looked up to see that the miasma of sadness in Gaius's expression had congealed into pure horror. Gaius wet his lips, straining and failing to speak, before managing, "Cid. Please. Look at the print again," in a harsh whisper.
"Why, what's wrong?"
"Cid, please."
Cid leaned over, blowing a stray piece of hair out of his face, and made a show of studying the image. Something teased at the back of his head, something familiar he didn't want to think about. He searched the rows of friends and relations behind each of the figures, stern faced elders and fidgeting youngsters. He glanced across the face of Nero's younger self, with the awkward smile on his face, his suit buttoned up to the neck.
And then, at very last, Cid's wandering eyes were forced to rest on the face of the bride - the wide billow of her dress, the train falling behind her gem-encrusted headpiece that framed and emphasized her third eye. Her eyes. Her fat cheeks, bookending an expression of forced neutrality. The pale snow-white of her hair, even paler than the pearls against her brow.
Cid felt the bottom drop out from under him.
----------–
The sky was a mottled, striped plane of dark blue over light blue, stretching out above the fields leading into the outskirts of Garlemald's central territory. Compared to the lively towers of the capital that shot black steel girders up to conquer even the sky itself and teamed with the wealth of a dozen provinces, it looked deathly empty. Their train car was warm and comfortable, the kind only the elite of Garlean military persons and their families got to ride in with any frequency, but Cid was still contemplating opening the window and leaping out.
"It's hardly something I feel you should be getting upset about," Midas nan Garlond said from his plush seat next to him. "This is normal for someone your age. Probably the most normal thing you've done in a while."
"Which is why you didn't tell me what we were going to the provinces for until I was already on the train."
"I did say we would be meeting someone important."
Cid turned back from the window, his teeth gritted and half-bared. The kind of bluster he knew would do nothing in the face of his father's calm, stern facade. "You didn't say that someone was my future husband. Does he at least know about–" Cid made a frustrated gesture at himself. The small body, a full head shorter than most boys at his school, made worse by wider hips and a chest that he kept strapped down and covered as much as possible.
"I am sure it will be something you will need to discuss," Midas said, again carefully neutral. "His parents will likely keep their description vague as well, they may not mention it to him."
"Great. So I get to be the one who breaks it to him that he'll be marrying a diemphylikos."
The traditional Garlean term was gallii, though mostly used for born-men who'd sworn off manhood rather than the inverse, and Cid preferred the gender neutral Sharleyan term for his situation. If nothing else, it made his father just a bit more uncomfortable to have to use a foreign word and part of Cid savored that.
"It's traditional to have prospective couples be as blank slates," Midas was saying. "You trust that your elders have made the correct choice in placing you together, and meet as if strangers. This lets the young couple come to see the wisdom of their elders on their own terms."
"You sound like you're reading a paper to a symposium," Cid grumbled, folding his arms and sulking back into his seat.
"You know, you're lucky you weren't born somewhere like Coerthas, you'd be married off and on your first child by now."
Cid rolled his eyes. This wasn't the first time they'd gone through the 'be grateful for how you're treated because at least you're in a civilized country' routine. "Certainly not. They'd definitely have me burned at the stake as a witch," he sniped back.
Midas frowned and returned his attention to his notebook. The train trundled on through their uncomfortable silence, as they stared in turns out the window and over at the opposing wall.
Cid's finger trailed over the embossed cover of the schoolbook in his lap. It featured a a pictorial depiction of the Natural Order of Beings - a Garlean man and woman in traditional garb at the top left, their third eyes highlighted in gold. Below them a Hyur man and Roegadyn man, below those a Miq'ote and Au Ra adorned in primitive garb, lower still a cluster of beastmen clutching their spears, and at the bottom right an antelope grazed by a tree with an eagle perched in its branches. An embossed chain threaded between each cluster, indicating both their interconnectivity and their objective hierarchy.
"I will say," Midas finally murmured, tucking his pen into the spine of his notebook and closing it. "If you agree to the marriage, I could make it easier for you to change your–"
"Don't," Cid snapped.
"Why?"
"Don't hold something I want hostage for this. It's cruel to whoever this other boy is, anyway, if I'm just using him to get something from you. You either give it to me because I deserve it, or you get out of my way and let me get it myself."
Cid was perplexed to see Midas smile at that. "You always were such a driven child. It's one of your most admirable traits."
Cid spent the rest of the train ride pretending to study, to avoid having to deal with more of his father's genius ideas.
The Garlonds were meeting the other family at a beer hall, midway between their two homes and next door to the regional train station. Cid ticked through what he knew, or could deduce, about his prospective fiance as he followed his father up the narrow stairs to the second floor private room - the boy studied in the capital but was from the provinces. They were about the same age. The boy was of some note and promise, enough to sate Midas's demands but not enough to have better prospects than what Cid brought to the table.
At the top of the stairs a tall, bright-haired man greeted Midas, beaming ingratiatingly, which was a terrible sign already. If Cid's prospective father-in-law needed to butter Midas up, it meant he thought he had an otherwise poor business offering.
The man turned his beaming towards Cid. "Ah, and this must be young –but come, come, you two should meet properly."
Cid set his foot on the final stair, stepped above the level of the bannister, and froze. The tension between him and the blonde young man across the room was later described by Midas as like the tension between two feral coeurls abruptly catching each others' eyes in an alleyway, frozen with hackles raised.
And then the claws came out.
"No! Absolutely not, not him–"
"Anyone but that–"
"Father, I cannot believe you would have such terrible taste–"
"Taste? Coming from you that's a–"
"As if you're not the one who–"
Gnaeus eir Scaeva leaned in toward an aghast Midas as he watched the two youths scream at each other, circling the long table that was the only thing keeping them from scratching each others' eyes out, and muttered, "I've seen worse starts to an engagement, you know."
----------—-
"I didn't realize your memory loss was this…dire," Gaius said later, pouring out two mugs of tea from the battered magitek kettle at the back of his office. The smell of Ala Mihgan spices wafted upward as he brought the mugs back over to his desk.
"It's not a big deal." Cid said, still toying with the glass edges of the print's casing.
"It's not a big deal," echoed Gaius, sounding less sure of that fact than anything else in his entire life.
"I mean, it's better than full amnesia. Recent memories I can hang on to just fine, I'm not going senile or anything. My engineering knowledge stayed completely intact. It's just anything prior to the Calamity where I start losing things, and it gets more unclear the further back I go from there."
Cid's memory had never been the most reliable. There were some Sharleyan bioscientists who claimed that different types of memory were stored in different ways, like carefully sorted jars of herbs, and Cid would believe it. Cid's memory for engineering was impeccable, he could tell you the exact aetherial resonance required for manacutter sails without needing to look it up, but personal memories were harder to come by.
The further Cid's memory went back, the further it resembled the hazy skyline of Lhimsa Lominsa on a foggy morning. One could see the grey towers peeking out over the top of the mist, with a lamp here and there leaving a bright smear on the clouds, but the vast majority of it was a roiling amorphous fog. It was possible to make out specific shapes, if one squinted and knew exactly what one was looking for or the wind shifted the right way, but to behold it all at once was impossible.
Cid remembered his father's face, somewhat, though it helped that the portrait of him in Cid's locket was on him at all times. He could call up a few snippets of childhood events, excised from context. The taste of butterscotch candy, the scent of violets. He remembered Nero's voice, and Gaius's, could remember specific moments in time but he had no idea how old he was or what they had been talking about.
"Ah, so just the first thirty years of your life is the troublesome part, then," Gaius said dryly.
"It's not completely gone! I remember you, I remember my father, I remember being in school. It's just patchier than it is for most people." Cid took a swig of the tea, and tasted something a bit stronger than cardamom laced into it. The sort of thing they drank back in Garlemald to ward off the cold, though in Werlyt they didn't need to make it powerful enough to leech the paint off a magitek reaper. You couldn't say Gaius skimped on the hospitality, no matter how spartan his living conditions were.
"And I have been getting things back," he added. "It just has to be triggered by something else, usually a sensory memory- a scent, or a snippet of music."
"Cid, you forgot what your own face looked like."
Cid ran his thumb over his cheek, where the skilled work of aetherial manipulators and five years of not shaving had finally concealed the soft curves of his cheeks. "It wasn't as if I was fond of it."
Gaius's gloved fingers tapped against his mug. "You forgot your own marriage," he ventured again.
"I probably wasn't too fond of that either!" Cid snapped, a bit louder than he'd have liked. Gaius deflated and sat back in his seat, leaving Cid with a gnawing feeling of guilt that just made him more ticked off.
"You certainly didn't like the idea at first," Gaius said quietly. "Midas had no idea you were school rivals. On paper you did make a good match - both brilliant minds with similar interests, both with strong career prospects. Your family was prestigious and wealthy, theirs was old nobility with empty coffers looking to rise back up to former glory. Not every father tries so hard to find a match for intellect as well as station in life."
Cid scoffed. "Also I imagine marriage prospects are low for a bride who's planning to grow a beard, so Father took what he could get. So how'd he force me into it?"
"He…didn't. We left you both to it, after the academic break ended, and by the time the end of the engagement period ended you both seemed reconciled to it. Optimistic, even." A soft smile pulled the corners of Gaius's worn face up. "I remember you used to call me on the radio when I was in the field. You'd always be talking about some stupid thing he did, or some stupid thing you did in front of him, and it seemed as if you were complaining but…he did always seem to be on your mind. And month after month I could hear the fondness growing in your voice. You always had the choice to turn down the arrangement, as did Nero, but by the end I think you truly were in love. Or at least accepted it as a mutual partnership."
Gaius's eyes flicked upward, then back down to the lithographic print. The fingertips of his gloved hand rested against the glass, and the soft, wary smile vanished. "This was the year before…before everything happened. Looking back, I think it was probably the last time I saw your father truly as himself." His voice turned hoarse, like his ribs were closing in on his lungs. "Before that monster eikon hollowed him out from the inside, and before Bozja burned. Before you left me." Gaius shook his head slightly, forcing himself back under control. As if even showing grief was too great of a luxury here.
"What was the wedding like?" Cid asked, trying to shift the conversation back from discussion of Certain Specific Events. It was like poking a wind-aspected crystal in an aetherodynamic motor, once they got on the topic of Cid's defection everything got drawn into a nasty vortex and one might not leave with one's fingers intact. Better to stay off it.
Gaius saw Cid's ploy for what it was, and looked grateful for it. "Modest, for the son of a nan. Your father always hated big parties, and Nero's parents toadied along with whatever he asked. That damn dress was the only thing your mother-in-law put her foot down about - probably some repressed regret about never having a daughter to doll up, I missed the context."
"I look terrible in it," Cid laughed, daring another look at the print. Bits and pieces were starting to come into focus now - he remembered a tall woman, cornsilk hair in meticulously curled braids. Agrippina, that was her name. He remembered her having very loud opinions, all of them rather obnoxious. He remembered the dress had once been hers.
"It did look a bit unnatural, even to me. No wonder you didn't recognize yourself."
Cid clicked his tongue, tilting the print up. Delicately, he tried to cast his mind back to what Nero had done that day, fumbling for scraps in the back drawers of his mind. A passing pair of sentences came up in his search, the memory of Nero's voice scratchy with the rigors of entering manhood. By the Emperor, Cid, you look terrible in that dress. You're lucky to be a man, if you were a woman you'd be an ugly one.
It was the kind of backhanded compliment that Cid savored like rare gems, these days. Some things apparently didn't change.
"Why didn't Nero ever mention this?"
"I don't know why. You'd have to ask him," said Gaius.
"He didn't get married again after I left, did he? No other Scaevan ex-wives I should be aware of?"
Gaius chuckled, pulling the mug of tea close to his chest. "Cid, as far as I know, he never actually had the marriage annulled."