He is Ifrit.

Clive shifts in his seat, a shiver running down his spine as his mind rotates this new revelation in his mind, still unable to fully process it. He is staring down into his mug, his food still untouched. Cid insisted he eat something before heading out, said he'd not carry his sorry ass back to the hideaway if he passed out on him again.

Despite that, Clive doesn't touch the stew sat infront of him. Instead, his attention shifts to his hand, he turns it over, conjuring up a small flame within it. He grits his teeth and swallows thickly. This is the Phoenix' blessing, he knows, this flame doesn't feel as volatile, as dark as Ifrit's, it's warm and soothing, bright as his brother was before—

"The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow."

Clive startles from his thoughts, his gaze snaps up to find the origin of that voice, it's tone so eerily familiar it tugs at an ache long burried in the back of his mind.

He had all but forgotten about the reoccurring nightmare he had suffered as a boy. Had forgotten about waking up crying, wailing and shaking, afraid to let anyone touch him, not afraid that they would hurt him, but that he'd hurt them, burn them, that he'd turn into the monster with yellow eyes and claws and fangs his subconscious showed him over and over.

He had been so young back then. That dream had haunted him far earlier than one would think, long before the events at Phoenix Gate ever came to pass.

The healers of the duchy had speculated stress to be the cause of them. After all, the young boy was told from as early as his birth that he would awaken as the Phoenix, the guardian of Rosaria. Stories were told to him of a being of fire that would grant him power, a might so great he would be able to level cities, to strike anyone down that would dare oppose him or his people, that he'd become Phoenix, hope incarnate.

But the flame Clive described was never the Phoenix', it was never warmth and life-bringing magic. It was scorching heat and the taste of ash and blood in his mouth. Maybe he knew. Deep down, even back then. He wasn't Phoenix. He would never be the Phoenix.

They had written the dreams up as a young mind burdened by too much pressure. He'll outgrow them. He'll overcome them. He's strong. Let him rage and wail for a bit, he'll tire himself out and go back to sleep. They all believed it, too. His mother previously devastated, now reassured by the thought her prodigy heir would get through this on his own.

His father however didn't leave Clive to fend for himself. He had weathered young Clive's assault, his small hands leaving angry red marks on his father's skin as he tried to hold him at a distance, wide blue eyes overflowing with tears.

"I'll hurt you, Papa. I'm a monster."

This memory hurts too, as all containing his late father do. But it is an ache different from the hollow feeling in his chest, an almost welcome change from it even. His father had held him close back then, had let him cry as he quietly reassured him.

"The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows, Clive. There is darkness in all of us, but that doesn't make us monsters."

It had soothed him at the time and it soothes him now, too, even when told them by ...a stranger. But the way he holds himself, the way his shoulders square— Clive blinks, realizing he's been rather blatantly staring at the man infront of him. A hood drawn deep into his face, the shadow it casts only allowing a glimpse of the lower part of his face and his neck where a gruesome scar resides.

@levinstrike smiles into his wine, looking amused. “Don’t hurt yourself thinking too hard about it, lad.”

“…But it shouldn’t be that hard,” he says, brows furrowing, expression one of almost solemn frustration.

“I used to be good at this. Memorizing things and such… Believe it or not I was a good student when I was younger. I used to read a lot when I was a boy, I—”

He trails off, then sighs and decides that it doesn’t matter and that Cid certainly doesn’t want to hear about how Clive couldn’t remember the last time he sat down to read anything that wasn’t a missive or a report. How he sometimes wonders whatever brightness he supposedly possessed as a boy was completely lost to him now that he spent decades being nothing but a tool, a weapon.