Archive of Our Own ^beta

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."

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.

Chapter Text

"Nero's in the back."

"I didn't say I was here for Nero."

"You're delivering your paperwork a day early and you're not running away before I give you more." Jesse took out the jeweler's monocle she was using to inspect a slate of tomestones so she could give Cid a proper pair of squinting suspicious eyes. "Nero's in the back. Shacked up in your office."

Cid passed by her so quickly he missed her muttered, "And try not to be so loud this time'.

Nero was, in fact, in the back, borrowing Cid's desk in one of his usual aggressive territorial displays. The office lamps were dimmed, both for the sake of Nero photosensitive eyes and to make a definitive 'Nero was here' mark for Cid to come back to. He had a stack of receipts on one side and was scribbling out sums on a piece of jagged-edged scrap paper - Cid guessed he was probably trying to figure out how much he could bill the Ironworks for this time.

He looked pretty good. For Nero, that was. The flamboyant reds he favored decorated his vest and the upper edges of his boots, covered over by a russet brown longcoat so he didn't stick out too much in the Ala Mihgan wastelands. Sun and wind had colored his cheekbones a pale pink, and bleached his already pale hair even paler, though he still kept it gelled and combed back. A proud peacock to a fault.

"Productive trip?" Cid offered, leaning against the doorframe.

Nero smirked, deliberately not looking up as Cid entered. "Indubitably. I believe I've found a new format of tomestone, but I'll need to verify it's not just a repackaging of the astronomy variant."

Cid offered a thoughtful nod. "Wow. Impressive."

Nero paused in his scribbles, giving Cid a sidelong glance. "That's all you have, really?"

"I–look, can we talk a second?"

If Nero rolled his eyes any harder he'd go blind, Cid fancied. "Fine, Garlond. Fine."

Cid stepped in and closed the office door behind him. The urge to fidget was overwhelming, and his fingers trailed over the desk as he entered, picking up a stray pair of interlocked gears left over from an old project. "I went over to Terncliff last week."

"And how is my dear former superior officer?"

Cid's impulse was to insist that he had plenty of nonGaius reasons to go to Werlyt but as usual Nero saw right through him. "He's fine. He's…just doing his work, you know. I think it's helpful. To have something to do." The gears rotated in the fingers of his right hand, tick-tick-tick as they snapped into place over and over.

Nero tapped the end of his pen irritably against the receipts and made a 'get to the point' gesture.

"He showed me a–look, you know when the Calamity happened, I lost my memory, right?"

"Right. Spent about five years playing priest while we all thought you were dead."

"I wasn't a–never mind, the point is not everything came back at once. Some things don't come back until I'm reminded of them. Even things I feel like I really should have been asked about by now."

Cid saw Nero's eyes narrow, then go wide again, realization hitting a half-moment before Cid simply said the matter out loud.

"Nero, why the hell didn't you tell me we were married?"

"You forgot?" The pen nearly bent in Nero's hand, his words coming out in a near shriek of frustration. "You mean to tell me all this time you just forgot?" He half rose to his feet, pen held as if he meant to put it right through Cid's throat.

Cid's own hands were balling up by reflex, drawing up to his full height like a threatened bird to try and deny Nero even an inch's worth of superiority more than he already had. The twinned pair of gears were digging into his palm. "It wasn't as if you were quick to remind me of it!" he shot back.

Nero flung the pen away so he could flail more effectively. "I thought you were pretending it never happened! I thought I was being polite!"

They were each a step closer now, as if drawn by magick, if the world had reordered itself simply to bring them closer.

"It wasn't as if I had any way of knowing! You could have damn well asked!"

"How was I supposed to ask, when you resent even being in the same room as me?"

"I don't know, maybe around the time you decided to become my employee?"

Closer still, each with a firm splayed palm on the desk…and then the inevitable happened.

As it seemed to always happen, when tensions and tempers ran high, when heat built beneath skin, sending them to lay hands on each other. Shoving and slapping turned to tearing at clothing, stolen goggles avenged by stolen sunglasses, shifting from kisses to bite marks to knees clenched between thighs for some friction to grind on. They grappled until one was pinned to the desk on top of the forgotten and strewn-about receipts, pants dragged to knees, pressing up and inside as their mouths sought each other out for something to be muffled by, rolling to hit the floor with papers flying around them.

Always violent, never a word of negotiation or caution, and somehow always perfectly in synch.

In the aftermath Cid lay with his face tucked up against Nero's shoulder on the office carpet. Fingertips resting on Nero's opened shirt felt the pace of Nero's heartbeat, gently slowing from a fever pitch as Cid's own heart kept pace with it.

"Is that why we…keep doing this?" Cid panted.

Nero half-lifted his head. "Mmm?"

"Because it's how we were before? Or did we…not?"

Nero shrugged. "Mmm-mm. Not by most definitions. We fooled about a bit, as young people do, but you were not a fan of how things sat, at the time." Nero made a vague gesture at Cid's torso and lower regions. "We discussed the matter, but never actually got around to it. Our first proper time was around the back of the Crystal Tower, when we were waiting for the Warrior of Light's team to finish their business. You were so insistent about showing me what Eorzean aether reweaving had done for you, it would have been rude not to indulge."

"As if you weren't nearly ripping my trousers off to take a peek," Cid grumbled. "Don't pretend you weren't enjoying yourself too."

"I didn't say I wasn't." The arm around Cid tightened, almost possessive.

Now that encounter, Cid remembered clearly enough. The first time that a heated insult from Nero had ended in a heated kiss (the first time Cid remembered, anyway), it had felt like lightning in Cid's veins. As if he was compelled by some outside force, washed away on a sea of need and a strange sensation of reclaiming that which was lost, that which was his by right. The fever burning in him hadn't cleared until they were tangled up in each others' arms in sticky post-climax clarity, unable to speak for having poured out everything into each other.

It wasn't as if Cid hadn't had sex before, but the impact of his need had never hit him like a speeding Behemoth until Nero first put his hands on him. Honestly, he should have known something was up just from that.

"Gaius said we…got along well enough, by the end. That we agreed to it all without our parents having to force us into it."

Nero shrugged. "We weren't exactly starcrossed soulmates, we just had an arrangement. Did you see where my glasses went?"

"No." No, and if Nero wanted his sunglasses back that was a sure sign he was feeling cagey. Cid pressed down the hand that was trying to fumble about for Nero's possessions and drew it back to his shoulder. "So what happened to get us that intimate? The most I remember is we'd do things like get into a fistfight over the tensile strength of something."

Nero smiled, bittersweet. "Mythrite. Tensile strength of mythrite. I was right, too."

Cid scoffed. "You absolutely weren't, but that's irrelevant. At what point did we decide we wanted to be chained together?"

Another shrug, and Nero gave up the search for his glasses, laying back down on the floor. "It just…sort of happened," he mumbled, a softness to his bared eyes. "We argued constantly but we were the only people who could meet each other on the same level, the same interests. Even the arguments were invigorating in a way I couldn't get out of anyone else. I'm not going to pretend I know what was going on in your head, maybe you just wanted me for my stunning good looks and knew I wasn't going to get you knocked up. I just figured I'd rather be chained to someone I could at least hold a decent conversation with than some dullard interested in court politics or weaving, and you agreed to the same."

"I mean, that sounds like something I'd do."

Nero chuckled bitterly. "And then of course, as always, you had to go and ruin a good thing by running away to Eorzea. The ass end of the ass end of the middle of nowhere."

Cid let out a stifled growling noise of frustration, his nose crinkling. Damnit, not this rant again. "Why do you always make that about you?" With Nero's exposed flesh so close to his face, the urge was rising in Cid to just bite him.

Nero rolled away, grunting as he hit a desk that he thought was a lot further away. "I was your damn husband, and you couldn't even leave a note about where you were going?" he snarled.

"As if you'd have come along if I asked?"

"I–you know what, probably not, but it would be better than thinking you were dead in some magitek accident thousands of malms away. Which I did!" Nero hissed, throwing up an arm. "The only reason we didn't have a funeral is we never found your body, and then it took over a year for news to work its way back to the capital that you weren't just alive, you were working for our enemies. Building airships for a country that still ran on chocobos and balloons."

Nero's fingers were digging furrows into the carpet now. He took a breath, steadying himself to deliver his next smug barb. "But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised this was something you forgot."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cid felt dread starting to creep up his spine.

Nero shifted, raising himself up on one elbow, lips twisted in a sneer. "Because, dear spouse of mine, you have this annoying habit of forgetting specifically the things that make you uncomfortable. "

Cid's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

Nero held up a hand, ticking off items on his fingers. "You forgot your father's tempering, because it was easier to write him off as a martyr to the sins of the Garlean Empire rather than someone who personally pulled the trigger on Bozja Citadel using a device you helped build."

Cid bristled and pulled away. An angry heat was building under his skin, like an engine powering up. "Don't bring him into this," he said, shoulders tense. "He couldn't help it. It wasn't his choice."

"He's relevant, I'll do what I want." Nero dismissed Cid's protests with a wave of his hand, folding down another finger. "Then, after the Calamity you forgot your entire identity, the better to not deal with the consequences of having to rebuild the realm from a catastrophe you felt implicit in creating."

"I stopped the Calamity from being even worse than it was!" Cid shouted back. "Just because van Darnus used my father's research–"

Nero tapped his third finger. "And you forgot our marriage, because it's just one more thing tying you back to the Garlean Empire. And it's Garlemald you specifically want to blot out. Honestly I'm surprised you haven't cut out your third eye completely instead of just keeping it constantly hidden. Finally become that perfect and blameless Eorzean you crave to be."

"That's not true, Nero."

"You cover your forehead, you take the honorific out of your name completely, and you expect me to think you weren't just pretending we never got our hands chained together while you wore the world's ugliest wedding dress?" Nero sat up, pulling his pants back up from his ankles with a sour expression. "Never mind that you treat interacting with the one bit of family still talking to you like you're a child forcing down medicine."

"You do know Gaius shot me, right? Aside from all the other things he did?"

"Fathers do things sometimes. It happens. Get over it."

"I–you know what, I'm not even going to touch that." Cid tried to grab Nero's shoulder, hobbling after him with his trousers around his thighs as Nero foraged for his undershirt. "Besides, you're one to talk about weird hangups - Gaius said you never even nullified the contract! Still wanted my family's money?"

Nero snorted as he tried to collect the fallen and crumpled receipts from the floor, grabbing stray clothing as he did so. "Annul the marriage, when I was assigned to the Legatus who practically raised you? I'd be signing my career's death warrant. Lord van Baelsar would never forgive me. Hell, it's probably half the reason he hired me, it was the closest he could get to still having you."

"Fine, so what about now?"

Nero glared back over his shoulder as he buttoned up his vest. "Well, now it hasn't mattered for sixteen years, and the Garlean government is in shambles, so who's going to hold us to it? It's not as if we weren't both fucking about outside of marriage regardless."

Cid buckled his pants and tugged his jacket down over it, fuming. "You're the one who's so damn insistent about not having any ties to me," he grumbled. "Why not make a clean break of it?"

Nero, collecting his final receipt from the floor, went dead silent. In the quiet Cid could hear the faint hum of the market outside, the soft whirring of metalworking machines, the call of an agitated chocobo, and the distinct sound of Sensible Cid telling the rest of Cid that he had most assuredly put his foot in it.

"Why not, indeed," Nero repeated, slowly rising to his feet. Without looking at Cid he went to his bag, stuffing the receipts inside and fishing out another item, a thin metal box with a flat hinge. Cid felt his breath hitch as Nero cracked it open, fished through a few papers of passage, and tossed a yellowed piece of parchment onto the desk. The document was printed on thick, strong paper, folded several times along lines that were starting to tear from the effort of staying bent, with delicate calligraphy chains and knotwork along the edges..

"There you are, Garlond," Nero spat, grabbing his sunglasses off the floor and sliding them back up to cover his eyes. "With half the Garlean capitol on fire that's likely the only existing document giving us any claim on each other. Tear it up, burn it, boil it in a stew and choke to death on it, I hardly care anymore."

"Wait, why do you still have–"

Before Cid could finish Nero had grabbed his bag and vanished out the door, slamming it so hard the nearby furniture trembled and sending Cid running to catch one of his airship models before it hit the ground.

"Impulsive piece of arse," Cid grumbled, carefully setting the model back up in its place before chasing Nero out the door. By the time he made it outside, Nero was gone.

"You got lucky this time, Chief," Jessie said, trailing Cid outside to help him stare at the vanishing treads of Nero's magitek mount. "He only turned in half his receipts, and I don't have to bill your account for–what's wrong?"

Cid clutched the battered paper between his fingertips. As thick as it was, it felt incredibly delicate in his fingers, as if the contract were made of spun glass. "It's…it's nothing."

It ought to be nothing.

Chapter Text

In a display of spectacularly bad timing, next month's turn of the seasons brought about the new day of remembrance Eorzeans dubbed 'The Rising': The commemoration of the day, now almost seven years ago, that the second moon had fallen from the sky and unleashed the Seventh Umbral Calamity. The very land itself had been warped and remade by the moon's impact and the elder primal it released, not to mention the death toll both during the Calamity and in the months following.

The different clans and subgroups of Eorzeans handled the anniversary differently. Some spent the day in prayer and remembrance of the departed, which had been Cid's method during the five year span he'd been an amnesiac gravekeeper at the ass-end of South Thanalan. Gridania planted trees in memory of the fallen. Some got roaringly drunk and held a nationwide wake, that'd be the Lhimsa Lominsa method. Ul'dah found ways to profit off it, of course, with commemorative trinkets and gilded prayer slips.

And then there was Cid's method, which was to pretend it wasn't happening until someone else made it your problem. This year's plan was to spend the entire Rising in the guts of the Rhalgr's Reach main water pump and water treatment plant, which had been an exquisitely revolutionary design meant to serve the entire settlement and had the bad fortune to be assembled by a pack of complete imbeciles.

But no act of charity or hermitage was ever enough to escape a round of That Fucking Question. Cid was beginning to regret not spending the festival in Kugane instead.

"Okay, so where were you when Menphina's hound came home, Pale Bones?"

Pale Bones, a stately Roegedayn with soft pink hair, took another swig from his flask. "I'd gone home to my family, we were up near Fallgourd Float. Wasn't much point in running either way. Thought to just lock the door and pretend, but my youngest cried until we took her out to look, and eventually we all just wound up on the roof, watching that red circle dip lower and lower until the flash came. What about you, Swygsynt?"

Swygsynt, who wore Resistance colors and was clearly far too scrawny to have actually served in the war, shrugged. "I was working over in Aleport in La Noscea, so we were just trying to get everything battened down. Boss figured something that big hitting would throw up a tsunami and he weren't wrong - the waves nearly took out the entire port. What about you, Master Garlond?"

"I don't like playing this game," Cid mumbled from beneath the pump. He was on his back on a flat, wheeled cart that let him slide around the underside of the pump freely. Droplets of cold water were dripping onto his face, soothing sweat-soaked and dusty skin but also fogging up his goggles. He had a glowing crystal clenched between his teeth for light as he rolled about, hunting loose bolts.

Both Roe came to crouch by the gap between pump and ground, peering in at him like curious dogs. "Master Garlond was right on the front lines, weren't he?" said Pale Bones. "Dead center, a front row seat."

"Oof."

"S'why everyone thought he was dead for five years."

"Ooo-ooof."

Cid rolled his eyes, sliding out to grope for his screwdriver.

Swygsynt leaned in, eager enough to make Cid sick. "So that means you saw everything, yeah? You saw the Warriors of Light? The first set, I mean."

Cid shrugged and stuffed himself back under the pump again. "Probably," he grumbled.

"Probably?"

"Well, he don't remember, do he? Nobody there does. Something about the aether release and all." Pale Bones made a series of gestures in the air. "They say even when they try to remember their names and faces, all they can think of is this bright white light, like starin' into the sun."

"You think the Warriors themselves even know they're the Warrriors?" Swygsynt asked. "Like imagine you save the entire world and then you forget you was the one what did it, and you're running some takeaway stand in Ul'dah not even knowing you're a hero."

"Might be, might be. Had a friend whose sister was on the battlefield down at Carteneau. Forgot completely where she lived for a full month, her poor mam thought she died, and then–you're going to laugh at this–"

Cid's head slowly peered out from the edge of the pump, watching Pale Bones dramatically gesturing out the shape of the story.

"Until she had this soup. Some goddamn soup at some backwoods restaurant, and suddenly she remembers oh, I live at Nine Ivies, I got a mam who makes me this soup, I have a swiving house!" Pale Bones slapped his knee, rocking with laughter. "Can y'believe that. From a soup!"

"That happen to a lot of people?" Cid asked, rolling out further with the light crystal between his fingers. "Losing random memories?"

Pale Bones shrugged. "Well, it ain't the first account of it I've heard of. Again, I ain't no mage or scholar so I can't tell you how the hells aether works, but standing that close to something that big and explosive can't be too good for your soul and mind, yeah? But you'd know, why am I telling you?"

"Why, indeed." Cid slowly slid himself back under the engine and tightened the final bolts for the pump. "Hey, Swygsynt, when's the next mail run out to Baelsar's Wall? I need to call in a few favors."

—---------------

"You found Nero?"

"..."

"Finally! So where the hells did he finally turn up?"

"…"

"What do you mean, he went to the moon?"

"…"

"The moon in the fucking sky?"

—---------------

Summary of Assessment of Prisoner "Cid nan Garlond" by I'netcheh Nexii, 4/9/1562

At four bells this date, Wood Wailer scouts reported seeing a single person magitek craft shooting over Baelsar's Wall with the speed of a cannonball, following a significant explosion. The craft came down near the Hawthorne Hut and the single occupant, a pureblood Garlean male of approximately sixteen years of age, was apprehended by Wood Wailer scouts Miophonne Javepiere and Joyse Thorne. Prisoner complied with scouts, repeatedly making the statement, "My name is Cid nan Garlond. I wish to defect to Eorzea. I know a great deal about magitek that can help you," in Eorzean tongue. The craft also contained several boxes of documents that the prisoner claims are related to Imperial airship technology, including information held confidential by the Garlean Empire.

Prisoner identifies himself as the son of Midas nan Garlond, originally of Garlemald. Despite his young age, he claims to also be the Empire's chief magitek engineer. Travel passes on his person support this claim, though they are potentially forgeries.

After arrest, Garlond was transported to New Gridania and interrogated by myself in conjunction with G'nel Tia of the Brass Blades, who also translated from the Garlean tongue. A full transcription of the interrogation is included with these documents.

My initial assessment does not judge this to be a Garlean ruse. However, I would like to note the strange nature of Garlond's mental state.

Our scouts reported that upon arrest, Garlond seemed unusually calm, with one comparing his dulled reactions to that of those Tempered by a Primal, and he retained that state when we interrogated him. This dazed status was originally attributed to injuries from the impact, but it continued even after Garlond was treated by a conjurer. Tests for milkroot intoxication and other substances also came back negative.

When asked how he had made his alleged escape, Garlond was able to describe the detailed steps of reworking and overclocking an airship pod to carry him beyond the reach of Garlean artillery and into the safety of the Black Shroud . When pressed for personal details, however, Garlond appeared to struggle.

I asked his age. He had to pause, reflect upon his birth date, and calculate the number based on that. He was sure of his father's name, and that his father had died serving the Empire, but asking his mother's name gave him pause and it took several long moments before he could recall her name and vocation. When questioned about siblings his answer was "I don't believe I have any," but did not seem sure of this.

If he was a spy, he would have been better prepared to support his false identity with confidence, and were he simply a bad liar he would be panicking over his lack of preparation. Garland has neither reaction. Instead, he simply seems numb to what is happening around him.

Unlike other captured Garleans he does not react to the invocation of the Twelve or the alleged 'humiliation' of being interrogated by a Mi'qote (we are often seen as akin to beastmen in their eyes), and he has been amiable to every request made of him.

Below is a relevant segment from the interrogation that I wish to bring to my superior's attention. Out of two full bells of questioning, this was the only point at which he expressed strong emotion.

Interrogator: Chief Magitek Engineer of all Garlemald would have been a very prestigious position for you, especially at such a young age. Why did you wish to defect to Eorzea of all places?

Prisoner: I don't want to build things that will just be used to kill and oppress others. I have too much blood on my hands already.

Interrogator: Were you forced to kill in Garlemald?

Prisoner: No, it was in Bozja - no, not forced. I did it willingly. (Note: Prisoner seems regretful about this.)

Interrogator: Because you were threatened, or truly willingly?

Prisoner: No, nothing like that. I was never mistreated. I just wanted to show off, so I built their weaponry. I helped my father turn a city to ash. I shouldn't have. If I stayed I would have kept doing it. I would become a monster and stopped caring who suffered because of my work. That's why I left. They're…all monsters over there, now.

Interrogator: If we were to ask you to build a magitek reaper and teach our Wood Wailers to use it against the Ixal, would you do so?

Prisoner: No! I will not build war machina again! I told you, I'm not doing it! (Note: Prisoner is now visibly agitated and shouting.)

Interrogator: It would make you very valuable to our government.

Prisoner: I don't care. I won't do it!

Interrogator: What if you would be executed for refusing?"

Prisoner: Then I guess I get executed. I would get executed in Garlemald too. But I won't do it.

Interrogator: You're not afraid to die?

Prisoner: No.

Interrogator: Then why are you trembling?

Prisoner: I'm not…am I? (Note: Prisoner is staring at his hand, which is visibly having tremors. He seems confused by it, and his voice returns to its previous dulled state when he speaks again.) Oh. I don't know why that's happening. Sorry about that.

Following this point in the interview, the prisoner did not raise his voice again, even when the possibility of imprisonment or execution was referenced.

Based on my assessment, I do not believe he is a current danger to the nation-state, but rather a useful resource. His knowledge of the Garlean military and its magitek may be invaluable once it is confirmed by a reliable source. However, I would advise a careful eye be kept upon him. Whatever those "civilized" barbarians in Garlemald have done to him to make his mind such a morass, the effects may be unpredictable.

—-

The romantic thing would have been to dash off all at once the moment Nero was located, but that was for young lovers and people who'd never owned an entire company. Even negotiating the time away from the Ironworks took over a month of preparation and Jessie-nagging, and that was after finding out Nero had deliberately put himself so far away from Cid that he'd left the damned star.

As impatient as Cid was, the downtime was useful. It meant time to work on new projects, time to think, time to plan, time to gather information and resources. Time to find himself an excuse to finally head over the Magna Glaces, catching a ride with one of the transport lines ferrying supplies to the Islabard refugees and Eorzean Alliance encampments. Besides heading Eorzea's most impressive engineering company, Cid was also one of its best pilots, and even after a decade and a half the sharp cold winds of Garlemald's mountains felt familiar under his hands. The body remembered what the mind rejected, or buried.

When he wasn't driving, Cid tucked himself away with the collection of reports he'd copied from the Wood Wailers. His files held census data, medical files, and then the uncomfortably clinical report of his own arrest, interrogation, and eventual probationary release. It was strange reading words he was sure he'd said but had no real recollection of saying…everything between his father's death and his arrival and Eorzea was a strange blur, the churning surface of his memory only rarely broken by a recovered snapshot of moments like salvage dredged from the sea. It was as if he'd made the entire journey from the capital to the Black Shroud like a drone left on autopilot.

As they descended the final set of hills out of the Magna Glaces, Cid took up a post on the airship's bow, looking over the charred and slumped remains of what was once Ilsabard's most advanced city. Cid could barely recognize it in the haze of burnt-off ceruleum and ash. He tried to pick out individual buildings and map them to his tattered fragments of isolated memories.

The streetcorner he'd thrown a tantrum at, because Father wouldn't buy him the wind-up toy he wanted. The office his father had worked at when he'd been at the Academy, up in the big tower at the city's heart, where Midas's secretary always had hard candies in her desk drawer to slip Cid when he visited. The opera house where Cid had first seen Emperor Solus in the flesh, and had the fleeting joyful thought that the heroic Father of Garlemald was just as short as he was.

Among the ashes, Cid couldn't find a damn one that looked familiar. Nothing but twisted metal and an acrid scent on the wind. The shining capital of his faded memory, so beautiful in steel and lamplight, no longer existed.

Deep breaths, then. Eyes closed, letting the chill on his face keep him present in the moment. He wasn't here for Garlemald - they'd forsaken each other, and to claim otherwise would be to lie. Cid was here for other reasons.

Stupider reasons.

Moon reasons.

—---------------

An immediate sweat broke out across Cid's body as he stepped off the teleporter pad, the temperature abruptly shifting from bitter bone-deep cold to pleasingly temperate. As he descended the platform he opened the first few buttons of his coat, startling when a high-pitched chirp broke into his reverie.

"Salvē! Si vales bene est, ego valeo!"

The noise made by Cid's brain trying to process a traditional Garlean greeting said in the shrill, delighted voice of a Lalafell sized rabbit in a turban was akin to the noise made by an orchestrion abruptly reversing itself. "I–what?"

The Loporrit frowned. "Did I say it wrong? I've been practicing the pronunciation."

Cid shook his head. "No, no, you're fine, I just…I didn't expect to hear that here."

"Well it won't be the last time you hear it! My name is Greetingway and I'm the residential intake coordinator for the Lunar Archives. Welcome to your new home, my Garlean friend!" The Loporrit spread her arms gleefully, gesturing to the high walls around it. Cid noted the presence of a tattered Garlean flag hanging next to a WELCOME TO THE MOON!!! banner painted with tiny excited Loporrits.

"I'm sorry, I'm actually only here to find someone," Cid said.

Greetingway's tiny arms sagged, and her ears bent into sad little curves. "Are you sure?" it asked, her voice full of such adorable woe that Cid felt a little guilty nodding.

"I'm sure you've done a marvelous job," he assured the tiny creature. "And I'd certainly love to have you show me around, once I've met the person I'm looking for."

"Of course! And if you should change your mind after seeing our breathtaking accommodations, that would certainly be no trouble at all." Greetingway was already rubbing her palms together giddily, as if some master plan were afoot. She toddled over to a panel on the wall and pressed a few of the glowing spots on it, sending images and strange characters flowing across the glass surface. Cid bent over to watch, fascinated despite himself.

"Now, who were you looking for again?" Greetingway asked. "I'll have Sortingway look them up in our database of new arrivals."

"A pureblood Garlean man named Nero tol Scaeva."

The Loporrit paused mid-button-press. "Oh," she said, in a flat and carefully emotionless voice. "Ah. I see. You're very sure that's the one you want?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Can your Sortingway look him up?"

Greetingway swiped a paw over the display and the glass panel went dark. "Oh, we won't need Sortingway for that. Follow me, we'll need to take the Lunar Metro over to Residential Burrow 5."

Apparently Nero, out of every Garlean currently using the base as a refugee camp and infirmary, was the one person the Loporrits aggressively kept tabs on. Greetingway tried to put a positive spin on it, as Cid had noted their race tended to do even with the most catastrophic of situations, but he gathered the general attitude towards Nero was the attitude one held towards a dog that wouldn't stop getting into the pantry no matter how many barriers one put up. The Loporrits were impressed at his ingenuity but rather wished he'd pick up a less intrusive hobby.

"Ah, so you both were working with my colleagues on retrofitting the Ragnarok to travel to Ultima Thule! How exciting. And if I may ask an unrelated question, what are your thoughts on making large destructive machines even more large and destructive? Pro, anti…?"

"Um. Neutral."

"Hm." The more Cid spoke the less Greetingway seemed invested in convincing Cid to make a permanent home on the moon.

"Has Nero really been giving you that much trouble, then?"

"It's not…trouble, exactly." Greetingway wrung his hands as they exited the Lunar Metro, an impressively silent high speed train that went through the moon's core and made Cid itch with the need to dig around in its engine. As they headed down the hallway Cid expected their voices and footsteps to echo back down from the high ceilings but somehow the sound never did, which made the vast architecture feel even more unsettling.

"It's more that he never seems content with what we give him and he doesn't like to stay still. Always poking into things, asking how things work and then trying to build his own, better version. Why, just the other day we found him crawling around in the air ducts trying to analyze the air pressure functionality." Greetingway shook her paws in frustration. "I wish we could just give him what he wants, so he'd stop trying to take everything apart."

Cid laughed. "I'm sorry to tell you, from what I know of Nero that is what he wants. Man's probably never been happier in his life." Well. Until he found out Cid was here. They'd see how things went after that.

Other Loporrits passed them in the hallways, all of them giving Cid a chipper and excited wave as if he were a newly arrived celebrity. Not that Cid didn't get that attention back in Eorzea, but he got the sense every new arrival received the same level of excited devotion. It must have made for one hell of an adjustment after crawling out of Garlemald's smoking, war-torn,
blasphemy-infested ruins.

The hallway opened up into what looked like a massive hanger, though given the relative size of everything here it might have just been someone's living room. Several large quadruped machina hunched along the walls like chocobos in a stable, and at the far end a cluster of Garleans and two Loporrits were working on augmenting one of them.

Standing atop a rolling scaffolding, glinting like a brilliant ruby in the sterile lamplight, was Nero. His back was to Cid as he guided a large hunk of metal raised by pulleys into place on the machina's shoulder, then clung to it with one hand as he tightened the bolts above. The fabric of his scarlet shirt and trousers had a strange metallic sheen to them, as if he were wearing the Iron Nero like a suit of clothes, and his arms were bare below the elbow. The other Garleans wore similar clothing in a motley array of colors and styles, the aesthetics completely disjointed - with the Loporrits in charge of supplies, they must not have gotten to be picky.

"It was supposed to be a rover for navigating the more rugged portions of the lunar surface," Greetingway grumbled. "And then he started welding missile launchers onto it. And painting it red. Why is this man obsessed with red?"

Cid walked slowly down the hanger, eyes fixed on the work. Nero had his head buried in the cockpit on the machina's back, calling out commands to the Garlean below as the machina slowly lifted one foot, then the other.

"All right, I think we're still below our ideal efficiency ratio, but at least the manipulators are reaching full range of what in the hells are you doing up here, Garlond?"

Cid lifted a sheepish hand and waved up. Nero looked ready to pitch the wrench right at Cid's head.

"Are you really that obsessed with me? I can't do anything before you do it, so you had to follow me out of the bloody star?" Nero heaved himself out of the cockpit and landed hard in front of Cid, slamming his wrench down against the scaffolding.

Cid folded his arms, scoffing. "Oh, that's rich coming from the man whose first job out of the army was joining my company."

"I was invited to join your company, you absolute pillock, because they knew the president certainly wasn't qualified to be making any of the decisions!"

The Loporrits stood together quietly and politely watched the two men drag each other away, Cid's hand in Nero's shirt.

"Are they going to be all right? Goodness, and he said he was here to meet a friend."

"If we don't hear from them in an hour I'll send Healingway around. Until then, I don't want any part of it."

Nero dragged Cid into one of the few rooms that actually had a window, probably intended as some sort of command center or observation room. It had a massive bed that likely was meant to hold a single Ancient lying prone, but was ample enough for at least two normal men, a fact that proved useful when Nero immediately threw Cid onto it and began tearing off his undershirt.

"Nero, wait, I want to talk–"

Nero glared up at Cid from the level of his navel. "It's been months. I want at least one good round before you ruin this."

"I won't–I—" Nero's hand plunged down Cid's waistband and made a quite convincing argument in favor of Nero's position, cutting off Cid's protests. Cid's breath hitched as his pants were dragged away, Nero's mouth finding the right spots as if he were some machina trained specifically on Cid's groin. "Fine! Fine, one–oh hells, don't stop–you can have one round, fine–"

They made it to two.

Chapter Text

"So you see the ocean on the left, and then that bit sticking out into it in the middle? The sort of jagged edge there, and then the dip up?"

"I don't–ah, I think I see it, right there?"

"Right. Anyway, that's Eorzea. Your entire bloody reason for doing things, right there." Nero held up his hand, tilting it to cover a portion of the blue and green marble drifting out in the void beyond their window, above the barren and dusty ivory of the moon's surface. "Right under my thumb."

"Glad to see getting some perspective hasn't affected your ego." Cid tilted his head gently into Nero's shoulder. His body was exhausted, sore from the waist down and feet aching besides, but his brain was still buzzing about like a horde of anxious bees.

"On the contrary. It's nice to finally have the petty politics of the star scaled down to the size they belong at." Nero dropped his hand, letting it rest on Cid's forearm. He sighed, melancholy and a bit overdramatic. "All right, let's have it. So why did you follow me up here?"

Cid nuzzled the toned muscle, his beard's bristles sending Nero's skin into goosebumps. "Because," he muttered softly. "I was right, and I can prove it with citations."

Nero snapped upward."I knew it!" he grumbled, trying to grab his clothing, only to have Cid tackle him back down into the sheets. Nero might have vertical supremacy but when prone, Cid's superior muscle mass took precedence.

"Look, would you just let me talk?" Cid straddled Nero, hands on his forearms to pin him. "I pulled records from the Eorzean healers' guild on people they'd treated after the–stop squirming!–after the Calamity."

"You did what?" Nero shot back, absolutely refusing to stop squirming.

Cid gritted his teeth, toes pressing into the mattress as he leaned in against Nero's protests. "Almost everyone at the Battle of Carteaneau had some traces of lost time, with the exception of those who possessed the Echo. Across Eorzea there's over 75 cases of people having moderate or significant temporary loss of parts of their memories–gah!"

Nero rolled forward and flipped them, leaning his weight on Cid's arms.. "It's called trauma, Garlond, if you hadn't fled the army you'd be used to seeing it," he snarled back.

"Not just that, you sack of eggplants, if you would let me damn well finish!" Cid rallied his core strength to flip them again, this time getting his legs wrapped around Nero's thighs. Only a thin layer of rage and the concept of a refractory period were keeping them both from tossing aside the conversation and going for round three.

"The memory loss can be directly tied back to the massive warping of local aether during the release of Bahamut," he persisted. "And of the 23 who had significant or total memory loss, there was one unifying factor. They'd all been exposed to some form of aether manipulation previously, most notably by an encounter with another Primal."

Nero's head darted at him, and Cid had to lean his head out of range of the blonde man's snapping teeth. "Don't tell me you came all the way up here to give me a medical lecture. And I will be seeing those citations, don't think you can get away with hiding details in the footnotes."

Cid's fingers dug into Nero's wrists. "Tempering directly warps the victim's personality by shifting their aether in specific ways," he insisted. "When the warping is completely haphazard, or partial, it alters their temperment by shifting memories of past experiences."

Nero gave another futile buck against the man clinging to him. "What the hell is your point, Garlond? You were forgetting things before you even got to Eorzea, and you'd never met a Primal before that."

"Hadn't I?" Cid grinned fiercely. "What corrupted my father, Nero? What burned Bozja Citadel off the map? Not who pushed the button, what actually did the work?"

"It was–" The tension went out of Nero's arms, realization washing over him. When it came to drugs and euphorias, nothing for Cid compared to the delicious ecstasy of actually seeing Nero forced to admit Cid had a point.

"Bahamut. The most powerful Primal this era's ever seen," Cid continued, triumphant, his heart pounding. "I spoke with my friends in the Bozjan Resistance and they also had a few cases of temporary memory loss reported from people who'd been close enough to see the Citadel go up. In the chaos afterwards nobody had the time to notice the pattern, just like with the Seventh Calamity, but the effects were damn well the same. And out of everyone affected, I'm the only one who survived to be present at both events."

Nero huffed, pale eyes glaring up at him, the moon's white expanse reflected in their depths. "So what's your damn point?"

"My point is that it's Not. My. Fault. It was never what I wanted to forget, I never had a gods-damned choice in the matter, and I can prove it!" Cid was nearly shaking Nero at this point. He forced himself to pull back, sitting back on Nero's thighs with his arms down.

"I'm not going through trying to censor the bad parts so I can be some perfect Eorzean. I've just got two sequential cases of aetherwarp trauma from a gods-damned Elder Primal and I'm lucky my brain hasn't turned to spaghetti al nero at this point!" he shouted. "So you can damn well stop blaming me for things that were never in my control!"

Cid fell silent, his pulse racing, waiting on a response. Nero lay quietly in the large bed, staring out past Cid onto the lunar surface. His bare chest, pockmarked with the souvenirs of war and the ravages of the Void, gently rose and fell below Cid's gaze.

Cid had expected all manner of barbs, and spent weeks mentally preparing how he'd deflect them. He was not expecting a long, sullen silence that tore at his chest, shredding the fleeting sense of victory.

"Like I said," Nero finally muttered, head falling to the side. "What's your damn point?"

"...What do you mean?"

Nero looked back up at him, resigned. "Fine. You were right, it's not your fault, you're free of sin. What do you want me to do about it?" The fire was out of him, but the venom wasn't.

"I want–you idiot, I want–" Cid's tongue wouldn't form the words his mind had practiced.

"We can't go back to what we had 16 years ago,' Nero continued. "Hell, we can't even go back to the same place we were 16 years ago. Garlemald's been burnt to the ground and I don't think either of us cared as much as we should have that it did. You've got your Ironworks, your friends, your life in Eorzea. You're the famous Cid Garlond, genius, savior of the realm."

Nero trailed off, leaving a silent question hanging in the air: So what do you need me for?

Cid's tensed shoulders slowly lowered, his gaze turning soft. "I don't want to go back to what we had. Even if I remembered it in full, I doubt we could. But I don't want to leave everything about what I was on the sidelines…and when I move forward, I want the future I make for myself to have you in it."

If G'raha Tia's testimony was correct, they'd already done it once before.

Cid shuffled off Nero and sat next to him as the taller man curled up, the blankets pooled around their hips. Nero sulkily beckoned, opening his arms to let Cid curl up against him.

"Always have to make it dramatic, you git," Nero said grumpily, as if he wasn't twice as dramatic himself.Cid cuddled in, head under his chin, his shorter legs intertwining with Nero's appallingly long ones.

"I remembered, the week before the ceremony, before we signed the marriage contract," Cid muttered against the pillow. "When we'd agreed to go through with it, just so nobody else could pin us down. I remember we camped out in that spare room in the back of the library together and we hashed out the details of what we wanted this to be."

A smile, unbidden and fully by reflex, twitched on Nero's lips. "Mm. You really remember that? We spent weeks working out the details."

"Bits and pieces, from seeing the contract again. I remember we discussed pregnancy, and who we could sleep with. How long we'd have to wait if we wanted a divorce. I remember we thought we were very clever, dodging the system like that. Both of us were fighting to have control of our destiny, even back then."

Nero's gaze wandered past Cid's ear and out again to the moon landscape. At the tiny glass marble rolling through the void above it, with all its social conventions and economic systems, so small and insignificant from so far out here.

"I'm not asking you to drop everything you're doing out here," Cid said, now nearly at a whisper. "Hell, I have work as well. I'm just asking to know that when you leave, you'll come back home again."

Nero closed his eyes. For several minutes there was only a tense silence, the sound of breathing and the distant soft whir of the air filters. The warmth and scent of the body that spurred such a complicated barrage of emotions every time he came near it, anger and grief looping back around to obsession and adoration. Nero's arm slid around Cid's waist, tugging him in close.

"All right." And then he continued, even as Cid let out a breath that made his whole body go limp. "All right, but under one condition."

"Name it."

—-----

The old Albatross Hotel in Terncliff had seen over a century of Werlyt regime changes and three changes of owners in its time. Its top floor hall looked out over the ocean, the balcony carefully restructured so that attendees wouldn't find their view of the iconic white cliffs marred by a castrum or burning war machina. Yellow and blue tile decorated the walls, with mosaics of waves curling across the floor of the rooftop banquet hall to the large floor to ceiling windows at the cliff's edge.

The original plan had been to just do this in the Castrum hanger, no frills and no catering, only their closest mates in attendance. Then someone (Biggs) was foolish enough to tell Rowena why there'd be no new deliveries next week, and Rowena had absolutely insisted on subsidizing the event, for the low low price of getting to gawk from the sidelines. Now there would be catered sandwiches and wine afterwards, but also Rowena would be there. Everything in life was a trade-off.

Cid wore the traditional pale suit and floral accents often seen in the Eorzean Ceremony of Eternal Bonding, mostly because he'd already gotten the suit to go to one of his employee's weddings and didn't see the point in buying a second suit for a single event. The locket with his father's face rested in its usual place against his breastbone.

Nero surprised literally zero people by dressing in a flamboyant scarlet coat with tails and silk shirt, augmented with a single ruby gem dangling from a filigree earcuff that matched the array of rings across his fingers. Not Garlean style or Eorzean, just pure Nero.

As they waited at the front of the event hall Cid caught Nero's eye and gave him a weak smile, one that Nero met with a confident smirk. Bastard was just as nervous as he was, Cid was sure, but damned if he would show it. Cid took a deep breath of cool air, tinged with that hint of salt and algae that pervaded Terncliff even indoors.

An Allaghan node floated above the ceiling and a second hovered at the podium, recording the event for the few Ironworks employees who couldn't attend in person. Outside of their skeleton crews and those on the other side of the world, almost every Ironworks member, from Chief Project Manager Jessie Jaye on down to Zontli the Ixali intern had found a way to be in attendance. Allie, wearing a spring dress edged in lace, offered Cid a rare smile before following her friend to their seats.

Cid felt a thick hand descend upon his shoulder, hesitant at first and then squeezing as he turned a smile towards its owner.

Gaius, for the first time that year wearing something that didn't look like he'd foraged it out of a dustbin, was in the sapphire blue uniform that Werlyt had decided it awarded to generals now. It was his first time actually putting it on, and the fabric was so starched that he claimed he'd had trouble getting dressed without a shoehorn.

"Should I start?" Gaius whispered.

Nero shot a look back at the crowd. "Yes, might as well, we'll be waiting all day for them to stop chattering if you don't."

"Aye, he's got a point," Cid noted.

Another squeeze, and a soft smile that looked as if it had gotten lost on its way to a gentler face, and then Gaius stepped away to stand before the podium, facing the packed room. The muttering in the crowd settled, though didn't fully dim until Jessie half-rose and gave one of her trademark Firm Looks at the rabble, cowing them into silence.

"Our gratitude to those who have come here today to bear witness." Gaius spoke like the legatus Cid remembered, power without pretense, but with his strong voice no longer distorted by the helmet of his armor. Cid had always wondered what his face looked like when he gave those big speeches.

"This day has been a long time coming. As with most things with this pair, it came in a most unusual fashion and only in its own time. One of these men I have known since the day of his birth, the other I have borne witness to his entire career, and for both I have learned that telling them what they cannot do only gives them more reason to do it."

A few polite chuckles went up at that, but Cid noted a decided wince from Jessie. It made him grin.

Gaius continued, "I have known few men whose ardent need to chart the courses of their own destinies burned as brightly as that of Nero tol Scaeva and Cid Garlond. In my time as a Legatus, I have done much to destroy the freedom of others. I consider it a blessing that the final act I take with that title is to give these two men their freedom again."

Gaius held his hand over the battered document face-down on the podium. His strong voice boomed across the event hall, over the sound of excited whispering and the tiny confused 'whark?' of Alpha as Wedge fixed the little flower crown he was wearing.

"In my office as Legatus Gaius van Baelsar of the XIVth Legion, and in the name of the Emperor, I do dissolve the bonds between the two names on this contract, and between the two men before me, that their holds upon each other may be as void as the dust of the Burn."

Gaius beamed, like the sun coming up across a weathered cliff face. Cid and Nero's hands bore no chains, but even so Cid could almost feel the weight of them falling away, the tension dissolving from his shoulders. "Congratulations, gentlemen," Gaius announced. "You are officially divorced."

A roar went up from the crowd, with clapping and the pop of confetti crackers sending bursts of colored paper into the air. Rowena dabbed at her eye with a monogrammed handkerchief, muttering to Jessie that she wished her divorce had been half this beautiful.

Cid leaned toward Nero, raising up on his toes to mutter out of the corner of his mouth, "It's now officially too late to kill me for the inheritance money, just so you know."

Nero chuckled. "Damn, I knew I forgot to do something this morning." Their hands found each other for a brief, quick clutch, and then parted again.

Gaius took two steps back from the podium, taking the wedding contract with him as he went.
He was replaced by a Viera in a clerk's uniform, short for her kind, and slight. A paper folder was clutched in her fingers. Gaius's bombastic presence made a hard act to follow and she wasn't trying hard to match him.

"Um. Hello. My name is Zalru Hyskaris and I'm from the Mor Dhona Department of Commerce, and I actually really don't do usually do this kind of thing very often." One ear was nervously twitching downward, and she had to repeat herself when the back rows called out that they couldn't hear her.

"What I mean is," she said at a near-yell. "I don't get invited to events, and I don't usually have speeches to give, but Master Garlond and Master Scaeva were polite enough to invite me here to do this in person. I think it's beautiful that you both don't let anyone define what you want to be with each other, and I hope you continue doing that." Zalru wavered, looking around wide-eyed until Cid gave her a discrete little nod to prompt her to lay out the new paperwork on the podium.

"Sign here and here, please?"

Alpha proudly trotted up to them, two elegant fountain pens held in his beak, which Cid and Nero took up with all due solemnity. They signed their names to the document and then exchanged the pens with each other - blue and silver going to Nero, red and gold to Cid.

Zalru blew on the document to dry the ink, shook it a few times, and then held it up for the sight of the crowd. "Could I have a verbal confirmation that you have witnessed the–" she started, before the cheering of the audience blotted her out.

Cid laughed. "Does that count?"

"Ha, I think so." The Viera woman coughed again, drawing on every onze of her lung capacity. "Then in my capacity as a government official," she said at maximum volume, "And within sight of these witnesses, I recognize Cid Garlond and Nero tol Scaeva as full equals in ownership and administration of The Ironworks, formerly known as Garlond Ironworks. You may now kiss the business partner!"

The next burst of popped crackers was so loud that Cid wondered if someone had flouted the ban on bringing explosives to the ceremony. Perhaps that was just the sound of his pounding heartbeat, loud as cannonfire, as he grabbed at Nero's collar and yanked himself up just high enough to capture Nero's lips with his own.

"Don't you dare forget this," Nero hissed as their mouths parted, his fingers intertwining with the chain of Cid's locket at the back of his neck. "I won't do this a third time."

"I won't," Cid promised, useless words whispered into the sea-salt air. "Trying my damndest, I won't. But if I do, I have you and a whole roomful of people to remind me."