ad astra per aspera

Alisaie accepted the offered hand and gave it a firm shake. A deal had been struck.

“Oh, well if that is the case, it would be an absolute shame if the Excelsior’s steering became connected to the windshield wipers, would it not?”

Never let it be said that the female twin could not be devious.

“....Oh, I like you,” he says, once they’ve shaken on their mischievous plot. “That is clever and altogether something that would drive him batty.” He’ll think it’s something far more complex than it actually is and spend two bells tearing around trying to fix it when it’s just the most simple of wire switching! And it won’t actually harm the airship, so....

He does remember the Elezen twins, yes, and even though he only met them once the difference between them was...definitely noticable. So even if this one’s dressed like the boy, the glimmer in her eye was enough that he grins back at his little friend.

“Well,” he says. “This is not my favorite holiday, I confess, mostly due to the sudden surplus of bloody voidsent floating about, but.” He holds up a finger, and his grin is wide enough his answer is already obvious. “Everything else about it suits me just fine. So, I do believe I’ll accept your offer, should you make sure no beasties get overly close to me.” She is a mage, after all, is she not? Definitely enough to keep this mischief spree blessedly safe. So he sticks out his hand. “And as long as Cid is on our long list of victims,” he adds, still grinning and not likely to stop any time soon, especially given her compliment (even if it was grudging). “He’s notoriously stingy for All Saint’s, from what Wedge tells me.” 

AND NERO IS 100% CONFIRMED TO HAVE HELPED WITH THE DESIGNS THAT BECAME TYCOON

Just...the last words AU Nero said to G’raha before the portal closed behind him and he died and became Drake, who I doubt G’raha ever realized was Nero.

"I'll not suffer watching a green boy master the tower. Do what you will with it. But remember me, son of Allag!"

AND THEN ALL OF THIS.

Just... that last scene, when you can say “I’m glad you’re awake, G’raha Tia,” just...Drake going “I’m glad to see you did what you would, son of Allag.” Just acknowledging that he remembers G’raha’s role and who he was, but also telling him who he is, really. Not just another Warrior, but Nero.

ALSO JUST. IN MAINLINE.

SO YEAH HI I PREORDERED SHB

MIGHT BE COMING BACK HERE

IDK

We’ll see if Nero pokes his nose into any of the 5.x shenanigans, though he’d fucking better, NERO IN THE NIER RAID SHIT OR I RIOT

“Hardly,” he counters, shaking his head. “Your reckless adventurer friends are on the whole far more successful than I’ve ever been.” It’s a pathetic fact, probably, but true nonetheless - with a few exceptions, the people the Ironworks associates with seem to get the job done and save the people they mean to save while they’re at it. Not that he’s resentful of that fact - not much, anyway. Someone needs to do what’s right, and do it well, else the world fall to ruin. And so long as he’s failing at managing to do anything suitably good for the world (at least without getting himself damaged in the process), he’s at least not succeeding at causing further harm.That’s good enough, all things considered.

There’s something sad in Nero’s gaze, in the way he almost reaches out, and Cid closes his eyes so that he can pretend he didn’t see it. It isn’t as though he doesn’t miss the friendship they once had, too, but - they aren’t connecting like they did back then. Maybe they can’t, even if Cid does try to let him in. He knows, after all, that the person he’s become is… not the man Nero misses, nor is he the sort of person anyone would want to befriend without nostalgia blinding them. But Nero is trying, and he’d be a fool to turn that away.

“…So,” he agrees, as lost for words as the other man. But one of them has to find them, and it may as well be him, while he’s still lucid enough to do so. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, don’t we?” It… it isn’t what he wanted to say, not really - but it will do, and it’s a start. He doesn’t think this is going to fix itself overnight, and tearing down the walls he’s put in place hurts in a way he can’t define, but at this point he has quite literally nothing left to lose.

He’s genuinely startled, he thinks, when Cid speaks. “...we do,” he says finally, only a little relieved to hear it. It was hard to admit for the both of them, he thinks, and...he’s glad Cid said it. Not that he disagrees, really, but it’s...it’s difficult to say out loud. But it’s true, they...they had a lot of work to do. No more attempts to tape over the breaks and try to run the machine with a slapdash repair job and hope it’s good as new -- they have to sit down and do it right, even if it takes a long time. 

What kind of engineers would they be if they didn’t?

“...I’m sorry,” he says finally, after a long, long silence. “I...I never said that, did I? I’m sorry.” For leaving, for the fight, for whatever else. It was stupid and they were young and ridiculous, and he wishes he could take it back. But he can’t, and now...now this is what they’ve got to deal with. But they can and they will, because they’re both stubborn bastards.

“I hardly fall into the same category as the adventurers,” the injured man grumbles, an edge of something good-natured and fond under the complaining, the ghost of a much more personable man brought forth, just for a moment. But the man he was once, or rather who he might have been, is long-since gone, drowned in an ocean of blood. There’s a darkness in his eyes now; a shadow that didn’t exist in the sheltered schoolboy Nero remembers and misses. He knows it, and it seems like Nero’s finally seen that, given his offer.

But at the same time, he’s not… he’s not wrong, either. Cid has never had much regard for himself - not since Bozja, at any rate, and only growing worse over time as his loyalty to the one person who stayed led him down an ever-darkening path, and he knows he’s pushed away everyone who might have tried to breach the walls he’s built around himself… to the degree that he didn’t bother telling anyone when he’d been dealt a blow that could easily kill him, instead choosing to treat it himself so that they could continue their work. (And it isn’t as though it wasn’t important to let them work, any distraction could be dangerous - especially the way Nero has taken to fussing.) 

So… perhaps he can try to reach out in turn. Just a little.

“…And leave me with naught to do but count irregularities on the ceiling? I hadn’t thought you were cruel, Nero.”

“No, but you’re getting there,” Nero says with an amused roll of his eyes, fond despite himself. He’s tired, he really is, and he needs a nap after this shit and dealing with Jenomis and everything else, but at the same time he’s run for longer on less sleep, and there’s things he still needs to take care of. Not least of which Cid.

He’ll leave if Cid wants him to, he thinks. Stepping back, he thinks...maybe he needs to. If it’s not helping...if he needs to learn that they’re not the same people, and that pushing only made it worse, then stepping back might give them both a chance to relearn how to work with each other again, learn who they both are these days. He hates that thought, he won’t lie, but he’d rather have Cid back at some point then keep pushing too hard and lose him entirely.

He pauses, though, and lights up again when Cid speaks, though he’s trying not to-- “Well, if you want me to stay,” he says with a grin, shifting slightly so that he’s sitting comfortably again. “I won’t say no. Far be it from me to enable your boredom. You’re almost worse than I am being trapped in bed.” He always had been, just like he’d been sick more often than anyone else. 

“Would it reassure you to know that I don’t intend to repeat the experience?” Cid asks, grey eyes ringed by dark circles that stand out against a face made waxen from blood loss. He’s healing, or beginning to, but it’s going to take time to recover from this one. (It’s just as well, really; the longer he takes to recover, the longer it may be until whatever other incident makes Nero look at him like that.) He is serious, though - he’d rather not experience this sort of wound again, let alone one dealt by an omnicidal machine.

But… he knows that’s not really what Nero is getting at, and they both know it.

 “I…” He starts to say, but his tongue gets tied partway through, and so he stops, instead choosing to watch his old friend with an expression torn between wariness and guilt. He knows he’s been slow to trust, slow to rely on anyone after all the times it’s been proven that those who matter the most aren’t going to stay. (And yes, Nero has been trying to counter that, has been ever since the tower, but he’s been trying so hard that it doesn’t seem entirely genuine, even now.) “…Must you fuss so much?” He asks instead, one hand coming up to rest over his injury as he smiles faintly. “One might almost forget you have other people to worry over.”

“Only somewhat,” Nero admits with a wry smile, looking up from where he’s draped. “My hair’s going to end up like yours at this rate, with you lot constantly getting hurt and jumping headfirst into the jaws of dangers.” Not just Cid, but all the Warriors, too! Gods, it’s like lack of self-preservation is an epidemic. Not that he isn’t guilty of it, too, given-- given a lot of things, but the point stands. People he cares about keep getting wounded.

He knows he’s...he knows he’s been pushing hard to make things like they were before he’d left, probably too hard, but it’s Cid. He’d hoped and waited for the man to follow him for years, and hung onto that for as long as he could until Carteneau, when priorities...changed. But now that he was here, he just wanted it to be the same again. But if this proves anything, it’s that the boys they were no longer exist.

“At this point, I’m half convinced you might,” Nero mutters, draping himself not at all dramatically over Cid’s bed. “You keep doing this and you need to stop.” How many times was this, now, he’d thought he’d lost him? The Praetorium, then the bloody Tower, now this? And this was the worst one, because he’d nearly died because he was stubborn enough to avoid them and stubborn enough to say nothing until he collapsed.

Nero was born to Silvanus, a Garlean Hunter, and Muirenn, a fae. Unfortunately, not long after he was born, another Hunter, Albinus Scaeva, discovered this. He killed Muirenn and badly wounded Silvanus, leaving him for dead and taking their son, Nero, for his own. A changeling child could be a useful hunter, after all, if trained right.

Nero grew up a mess -- abused and tormented by his strict and uncompromising father and his sadistic elder brothers, and not aided at all by his cold mother, he was a sickly boy, weak and constantly ill, and aside from that he knew somehow he was...different. He wasn’t like his family, he was broken somehow, and he didn’t know what to do. His only comfort was his best friend, Cid Garlond, and the simple, understandable workings of machines. He was a mechanic and engineer, the only thing he was good at since he couldn’t fight, and did his best despite how little he was cared for.

(He has no idea that his constant proximity to iron is what makes him sick, nor does he realize his ‘parents’ were lacing his food with rowan, ash, verbena, and St. John’s wort, herbs poisonous to fae, to keep his magic suppressed.)