Freedom through Technology

“Of course it did,” she grumbles. “Everything always does. It was causing a bit of trouble, so we had to go in there and deal with it, and— honestly!” She pauses to frown, expression deadly serious. “You can go get Nero, if you want, because if he even thinks about trying to recreate that, I’ll strangle him. I’ll strangle both of you.” The warning is fond, but very sincere, really. “I do want to tell you, though, if just to see the looks on your faces.” She really, really wants to see it when she tells them the enormity of what they’d designed successfully. “I’ll wait here, it’s alright; it’s nice to be home for a bit, anyway.” And even so, even if she doesn’t tell Nero and Cid about the Tycoon…she still has to tell them who and what it took to the First— that’s something they need to hear. They were…there, after all. Part of NOAH just like her. Just like him. They deserve to know his fate.

“Yes!” She complains, tipping forward to bury her head in his chest with a sigh. “At least partially. And yes, it was for a very good reason, but still.” She’s so, so tired. But she has to explain, so she takes a breath. “Leaving out all the, ah…unpleasant details, you know we were all Called elsewhere, right? We were called to another world, because we needed to save that one in order to save this one from another Calamity, one of the worst yet.” She pauses, not wanting to go into too much detail of that part, but— well, this is the part he’s both going to love and hate. “Future you and future Nero, from the time after the Calamity, sent someone into the past of the First shard to call us there to stop it from ever happening,” she deadpans. “And I don’t think I need to tell you what you two absolute madmen,” she emphasizes this with another swat with the plating, “did to facilitate that. Or should I say built?”

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.

But he is sorry, and he wishes…mm. Well,there’s a lot of things he wishes, but he’s always been good at working with what he had, so small steps are still steps.

“...I am, too,” Cid finds himself saying, thinking back to days long ago, when the world caught fire and everything he cared for burned away. “We were both young, and caught up our own problems.” What Nero’s were, he doesn’t know, but he knows they were there - he’s analyzed the moment too many times over the years, wondering what he said that drove another person away from him, and the most he could ever work out was that there were things he didn’t see. Things that Nero either didn’t want him to see, or that he was simply too oblivious to notice. Possibly even both.

... He really was an ignorant, spoiled little fool back then.

“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. 

He shifts a little again, reaching for Cid’s hand and catching himself a bit, but he at least doesn’t leave. “I…” He begins, and then trails off, crossing his legs and somehow managing to fold properly into the chair. “So…” So…now that he’s not trying, he finds he has no idea what to say. Damn it.

“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.

“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.

He’s quiet again for a moment, face hidden from Cid, before he lets out a long sigh and sits up. “I know,” he says quietly. “Biggs and Wedge got their arses back in bed, and the Warriors are all mostly unharmed. You’re our only real casualty, which isn’t reassuring but it’s still not a bad thing.” He manages a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, then, and shifts slightly. “I…if you’d like some space, I can leave,” he offers reluctantly, but there’s a sort of understanding in his eyes. Maybe…maybe pushing so hard is only causing the walls to get stronger. Maybe he needs to back off. Even if he doesn’t want to, he…doesn’t want Cid to close off worse and end up letting this happen again.

“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.

“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.

A sigh escapes him, then, and he lets out a soft moan. “Any scolding I could do has probably already been said, and I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I said it, too, but I…” Another sigh. “Don’t do this again. Please.”

“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.

@libertatearchitecto | from x

The Keeper male bowed. “Kenj’a Cohrce, master of the merchant caravan known as The Swan’s Sundries, and father of Khaida Ahmahno. I wanted to thank you, for all you’ve done for my daughter. I know she’s…headstrong, and rather reckless with herself, but she’s got a good heart and it overjoys me to know she’s got people who know that looking out for her when I cannot.”

The story is easier for her to get out. It’s still a bit painful, but not in the way talking about Tsukuyomi is. Of the Lighthouse and Goug. Of the bangaa and Ba'Gamnan’s fate. And the resulting conversations afterwards. And of Ramza’s decidedly odd behavior. “Something is going on there, and I’m not sure I like it one bit. Even your friend seems to realize that once this is over, because we sadly cannot put it back in the box, those stones need to go to those who will ensure they’re locked far, far away.”

@libertatearchitecto

“It…it did not go well, no. I may want a hug in a bit, in all truth. But yes! I do have something to tell you.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “You left Kugane rather quickly, and I certainly understand why. Well…things did not go…entirely well after you left, either. Needless to say, the whole affair seems to have knocked some sense into your old friend.”

There’s silence for moment. “What?!” He demands, eyes wide and expression stunned and furious. “He’s messing with auracite?! Is he mad?!” He throws his hands in the air. “He’s read the story! He knows what auracite does! Wiegraf, Delacroix, Elmdore, Dycedarg, Folmarv, his daughter’s bloody namesake– they were all possessed by the monsters in those bloody things, and even if that’s not how they truly work, it’s sure as hells threat enough in and of itself!” He hisses. “Even I’m not so stupid as to think playing with those is a good idea, and I’m not half as obsessed with the tale as he is!”

He groans. “He’s fast on the same road as I was with Allag, even if it’s dressed differently. You’re right, Cid, if this keeps up…” He’d ended up in the Void; god only knew the horrors that could happen to Jenomis. “And unlike me, he has children to drag with him.”

Cid lacks the other man’s knowledge of the Ivalice tales, having never been drawn to them the same way as either of his friends, but he knows danger when he sees it. Nero’s anger only makes it more obvious what a fool Jenomis is being. While normally this might serve only as a confirmation of the suspicions and feelings Cid already harbors, when Nero goes on to mention his own follies, it stops his train of thought there.

He knows what Nero means - the void, and six months in the dark. He winces and reaches out to put a hand on Nero’s shoulder, the need to reassure the taller man outweighing his own irritation at Jenomis for the moment. “Speak to Alan,” he says, expression serious. “To any warriors you think might need to know - we can’t prevent him from rushing headlong into this, but we can be prepared to catch him. And the children, if necessary.” 

“I…” He’s, for once, speechless. “Someone’s worse than I am about that?! What in the world–” How is that– how is Jenomis cen Lexentale worse than him about matters of technology?! “I’ll go at you later about the flattery,” he says with the briefest of smiles. “But– he really did call them Ramza and Alma?! God, I always thought that he’d never have children, because he was so deeply obsessed with his story and so in love with Ivalice! I was surprised that he did, but to hear he really is barely even recalling he has them in the first place? Are they even children to him, or are they just part of his collection, I wonder?” He’s surprised at how much this is annoying him, but it is. Damn it, Jenomis…

“Do you mean Jenomis?” He asks, brightening slightly. “Ooh, did something exciting happen? Do tell! Or– no, no, I’ll ask Alan, she probably got to poke about more than you did.” Cid was no fighter, after all. But– wait. “Hold on, what’s he got his boy into?” He asks, quickly losing the enthusiasm in favor of mild annoyance. “Didn’t he name the boy Ramza? That’s disconcerting enough on its own, what else is going on now?”