Chapter Text
It's not the perfect opportunity, but you know what they say: perfect is the enemy of good. The disaster at Phoenix Gate has thrown Rosaria into chaos, and the Imperial legions - so conveniently close to the border, what a lucky coincidence - are occupied with, well. Occupying. The eyes of Oriflamme are turned west, the Emperor's mind is on other things, and Cid thinks it's time he tried out that back entrance through the crystal mines of Drake's Head.
Luck must be with him as well as with the Empire's troop deployments: it's a walk in the park. The guards are distracted, the miners too exhausted to notice him. Cid strolls his way through the place until he finds a handy passage that takes him pretty much directly to his intended destination.
The Sanctuary within Drake's Head is certainly impressive, if you like that kind of thing. And if you don't know that the enormous crystal mountain overhead is sucking the land dry like a fat, glowing tick. Cid will take the shabbiness of his newly established base in the Deadlands any day, thanks.
He's feeling pretty good about things when he hits the bridge that leads to the Inner Sanctum. Maybe, for once, this whole plan of his will just work, he thinks foolishly, as he reaches to push open the great gates…
… which are already standing ajar.
Cid freezes, every sense on high alert. He peers through the bars, searching for the threat. He can't see anyone. He can't hear anything either—
No, wait. There is something. A faint thread of sound from up ahead. Something Cid would never expect to hear in this place. His stomach drops when he finally recognises it.
This can't mean anything good.
A wiser man might turn around and leave. A worse man would draw his sword. But damn his soft heart, Cid edges quietly through the gap in the gates, and goes to find out who is crying.
Dion has always thought that heartbreak is a strangely violent word.
He's known sadness, certainly. He barely remembers his mother, but he misses her all the same. He has lost much in his twelve years of life, even though he has been showered with luxury since his father claimed him as heir. It's little things, mostly. Toys that quietly vanish when someone deems him too old for them; favourite clothes that disappear as soon as they take a stubborn stain; people who care for him and teach him his lessons and then are gone one day without a goodbye.
Friends who aren't 'suitable' now he's Crown Prince, like Terence, whom he barely sees at all anymore.
Dion is used to impermanence, to the ache and regret that comes with discovering that something you valued has slipped through your fingers unnoticed. Sadness has always seemed to him a subtle thing, like a mist that dampens your clothes and hair so gradually that you scarce realise you are even cold until you find yourself shivering.
But heartbreak, it turns out, is exactly what it sounds like.
It's a feeling like his chest is full of broken glass. It's a pain so all-consuming that he must grit his teeth every second to keep from screaming. It's the conviction that he cannot live through this, that every pump of blood through his veins must surely be his last, because how could anyone survive this agony?
Dion can't remember the last time he cried. It's a habit that was quickly trained out of him when he became Crown Prince. It is his duty to be the people's strength; they must never see him falter.
Which is how he's ended up here, crumpled on these cold marble steps, sobbing in the eerie blue light of the Mothercrystal. There is nothing comforting about this place, nothing to ease his misery, but no-one will look for him here.
No-one will know of his weakness.
At least, that's the idea. The faint scrape of a footstep swiftly dispels it; Dion bolts into a sitting position, looking towards the sound before he remembers that his face is certainly a blotchy mess.
He turns his head away again almost at once, but he has time to glimpse the person who has disturbed him. A man, his father's age perhaps, but not in a guard's uniform nor dressed like any Imperial courtier. He has two swords at his hip, and he moves like the soldiers Dion will someday command. He has halted halfway across the circular platform, hand dropping casually to rest near the hilts of his weapons.
"What are you doing here?" Dion demands. His voice comes out choked and shaky; he flinches from it.
"Was thinking I might ask you the same question," the man replies. "Hell of a place to find a lost kid, this is."
"I am not lost," Dion replies. He tries subtly to wipe his eyes, takes a shuddering breath to hold back further tears. "Don't you know who I am?"
"Not a clue. Just heard you sobbing your heart out in here." The man's tone is brisk, almost mocking, but then he hesitates, and the next words come out softer. "What's caused you so much grief, lad?"
Dion feels his lower lip wobble. He clenches his fists against his knees to try and steady it, ducks his head so that his hair hides his face.
There's an ink stain on his white tunic, he realises. Spilled in a moment of carelessness as he hurried to finish his letter…
The letter he will never send now.
His heart breaks, and breaks, and breaks. He doubles over with it, not even sobbing so much as trying desperately to draw breath against the howls that want to escape him.
"Hey—" the man says, moving closer. "Come on, now—"
"He's dead," Dion chokes. He covers his face with his hands, hooks his fingers into his hair like he can claw the truth of it out of himself. "He's dead."
"Who's dead?"
Joshua, Dion thinks, but what he says is, "My friend."
"Shit." The man looms over him for a second, but then drops down to sit on the step at Dion's side. "I'm sorry."
It's the first time anyone has sounded sorry all day. The first time anyone has acted like this world-shattering event is worth his grief. Dion's father didn't even come to tell him personally; he was just summoned to a meeting of the Council of Elders, where the news was shared in a sombre tone, and everyone shook their heads regretfully and immediately began discussing how best to apportion Rosaria's territory among themselves.
And Dion said nothing, and shed not a single tear, and kept his back straight and his head up like he's supposed to, until nightfall gave him the opportunity to get away to the only place he could think of where no-one else would come.
Where no-one else is supposed to come.
"Who are you?" Dion asks. He can't summon the proper authority to make it a demand; to his own ears he just sounds wretchedly bewildered. "How did you get in here?"
"I walked," the man replies. "Not as hard as you'd think, to be honest. As for who I am…"
He hesitates. Dion hears him make a strange sound under his breath, a sort of resigned grunt, like he knows he's being stupid but has already accepted he can't do anything else.
"You can call me Cid."
The name stirs some faint recognition in Dion's mind, but not enough to give him answers. He presses his palms against his eyes, trying to stem the tears that refuse to dry up.
There's a nudge against one arm. Dion looks up to find a large and mostly clean handkerchief thrust in front of his face.
His own is already soaked through and useless, so he takes it, hanging his head in shame as he blots ineffectively at his eyes.
"Thank you," Dion mumbles. Then, belatedly, "You shouldn't be here. I should probably call for the guards."
Cid doesn't take it badly. In fact, Dion hears a snort of repressed laughter.
"You probably should, at that. Though then you'd have to explain why you're in here."
Cid has a point, sort of. The guards wouldn't question Dion's presence, but he can't let them see what a mess he is.
"You haven't explained why you are," Dion points out, sniffling.
"What, a man can't stop by to admire the architecture?"
Dion stares at him, really taking him in for the first time. He's definitely not Sanbrequois; he speaks like no-one Dion has ever met. His face is lined with a life of pain and hard toil, his jaw set like a man determined to be stern, but he can't seem to suppress the amused quirk of his mouth, can't hide the quiet compassion in his eyes.
Dion doesn't often like people immediately, but he likes Cid. There's something familiar about him; not so much like they've met before, but as if they could understand each other well, given the opportunity.
"You really don't know who I am?" Dion blurts out, struck by the novelty of it.
A crease forms between Cid's eyebrows as he studies Dion's face in return.
"I'm starting to think that I should," Cid says slowly. He glances at Dion's clothes, at his hands clutching the already-soggy handkerchief; Dion realises he must be looking for a ring or some other insignia. "You certainly don't seem overawed by our surroundings."
Dion huffs a shaky laugh, turning his gaze out over the great platform, taking in the sparkling crystal walls all around.
"They bring me here every year for the ceremonies. I suppose I've grown used to it." He shivers, and admits, "I don't like it much."
"And yet this is where you came for comfort?"
"This is where I came to be alone," Dion corrects him, scrunching the handkerchief between his hands. "A Dominant isn't supposed to cry."
Cid sucks in a quick, hard breath.
"Ah." He chuckles mirthlessly. "I was right. I should have known you, your Highness."
Dion flinches strangely from the title he's heard almost every day of his life.
"That other part's bullshit, mind," Cid goes on. "We may be Dominants, but we're still human. 'Course we cry."
Dion stares at him.
"We?"
Cid smirks. Holds Dion's wide-eyed gaze as he lifts his right hand and snaps his fingers showily. Lightning crackles around his fingertips, dances in his eyes for an instant before he lets it fade. Dion's mouth drops open.
Cid. Cidolfus. Cidolfus Telamon, Dominant of Ramuh. Cidolfus Telamon, Lord Commander of the army of Waloed, enemy of Sanbreque— wait no but he deserted, they say he's his own master now, some sort of bandit, some sort of outlaw—
Cid snorts a laugh, drops his hand, shakes his head.
"Wipe that panic off your face, lad. I'm not fool enough to pick a fight with Bahamut."
Dion isn't sure he believes him. Not that he thinks Cid is actually going to start a fight; Dion just has a feeling that he wouldn't hesitate to do so if necessary.
"What are you doing here?" he demands.
Cid leans back on his hands, looking up at the crystal above their heads. Dion can't help but follow his gaze automatically to where a pulse of glimmering light flows like a river into the Mothercrystal's heart.
"You can almost taste the aether, can't you?" Cid muses. "Makes my teeth itch, like a storm that won't break."
"Yes," Dion replies softly, knowing exactly what he means.
"Ever wonder where it all comes from?"
Dion frowns.
"From the Mothercrystal."
"Hmm. Does it?" Cid shifts his weight so he can point up at that ribbon of light. "Why's it going into the crystal, then?"
Dion feels like he's been speared through with the lance he's not yet tall enough to wield. He stares at the flow of aether, tracing it again and again with his eyes, trying to make sense of something he's never thought to question.
"'Cause it's a funny thing," Cid goes on, still in that tone like he's talking to himself, but with a remorseless edge that sends a chill down Dion's spine. "Seems like the rest of the world is hurting for aether these days. All that land sucked dry of it, turned to Blight and left to rot like a fruit husk when all the flesh has been sucked out. Except nothing even rots, in the Blight. No nourishment for new life, no future, nothing left."
Dion has always been a quick study. Cid doesn't need to spell it out any further.
"That… that can't be true."
"Why not? Because it's inconvenient?"
"I—"
"Thought I'd perform a little experiment, you see," Cid goes on conversationally. "See what happens if someone destroys this thing."
"Destroy it?" Dion gasps. "Destroy the Mothercrystal?"
"Aye, that's the idea. Might keep the Blight at bay, even if we can’t reverse it."
"But the crystal supply— the Empire depends on—"
"All the crystals in the world won't save Sanbreque from the dying of the land beneath her feet," Cid says grimly. He tsks with his tongue against his teeth, scowling at nothing. "Not that the Empire isn't trying to claim them, by the looks of things."
"Claim what?"
"All the crystals in the world. And all the lands left untouched by Blight." Cid shakes his head. "Rosaria is just the start."
The reminder of Dion's loss slices him apart like a wyvern's claws. It's too much. Too much on top of all Dion has already endured this past day. Too much to stave off with protests or denial. Dion curls forward over his own knees, buries his face in them, shakes with new, silent sobs.
"Shit," Cid mutters. "I'm sorry, lad. Took me years to come to terms with it and I just dump it in your lap like you weren't already in bits over your friend."
The claws of grief tighten like they will crush Dion's chest and strangle his lungs.
"I don't understand," he chokes. Cid must think he's talking about the Mothercrystals - starts to answer - but Dion blunders on before he can get more than a word out. "I don't understand how this could happen. I don't understand how they got past the guards, past the Shields! I don't— I don't understand— how can he be dead? How can— he's— he was the Phoenix!"
His voice has risen to a wail muffled in his tear-soaked trousers.
"He was my friend," Dion whispers, heart breaking for the thousandth time this day.
Cid sucks in breath like he's been gut-punched, hisses it out on a curse so foul Dion doesn't even recognise all the words.
A hand lands on his shoulder, warm and careful and resolute. Dion leans into it helplessly.
"Fuck," Cid spits, a gravelly note in his voice that blends anger with something raw and painful. "The Phoenix? You were close?"
Dion nods, unable to speak.
"Oh, you poor little sod." Cid's hand tightens like it's trying to hold him up. "Your father has a throne because of you, an Empire because of Bahamut, and this is how he rewards you?"
For a moment, Dion can't make sense of the words. Then, he jerks upright, staring at Cid through a sheen of tears.
"What?"
Cid grimaces, takes his hand off Dion's shoulder, looks away.
"Never mind, I shouldn't have—"
Dion is on his feet without knowing how he got there. The broken pieces of his heart are rattling against each other so hard that they must surely break his ribs open and fly away.
"What did you mean by that?"
There's an echo of Bahamut in his voice. He can feel the static pulsing over his skin, the stirring of wings that want to spring into reality. There are suddenly new shadows in the crystal chamber, scattering away from a white light that he knows must be coming from him.
Cid jumps up and takes a healthy three steps backward, but he doesn't reach for his sword.
"Your Highness—" Cid makes a face, changes his mind. "Dion. Easy there. If you prime in here you'll do my job for me—"
Dion clenches his fists. The light around him only grows brighter.
"What," he grinds out, "did my father do?"
Maybe a part of him already knows. Maybe it's a picture he can draw together from a hundred hints on this awful day: the Council's lack of surprise, their plans of conquest already drawn up, the total absence of more than a brief, formal murmur of regret…
Cid sighs.
"I've contacts in Rosalith," he admits. "Word is that the Rosfields were betrayed. The Duke and his sons were slaughtered in the night by assassins who passed freely through the Duchy."
He pauses, finishes with reluctance: "Assassins who wore the armour of Imperial Knights."
Maybe a part of Dion already knew. Maybe that's why he doesn't question for a moment whether Cid could be lying to him. Maybe that's why it breaks him like a glass vase thrown hard against a wall.
Dion throws back his head and screams.
He hears Cid shout, "Oh fuck—"
And then, for a time, there is only rage, and only Bahamut, and only what must be done.
One day, Cid will learn when to keep his bloody mouth shut, but today is not that day.
No, today is the day when he, quite possibly, dies under a chunk of falling crystal because he's the kind of fucking idiot who'd push an already traumatised child beyond his limits.
On the plus side, Bahamut has done Cid's job for him, and effectively at that: the Mothercrystal is crumbling around them.
It would have been nice to be a bit further away at the time, is the only thing.
Cid has legs and the will to use them. He can get out of here, with determination and a lot of luck. But he hesitates.
Bahamut is still thrashing in the wreck of the crystal's heart. The dragon's talons have done almost as much damage to the Inner Sanctum as the fractured stonework raining down from above. The Eikon throws back his head and howls, and in that otherworldly rage and pain, Cid can still hear the awful echo of a broken-hearted child's unfathomable grief.
Cid can't just leave him here.
Not that he's taking Bahamut anywhere the dragon doesn't want to go. Cid never met the previous Dominant; the power passed to Dion not long after Cid found himself chosen by Ramuh, so they have never clashed in battle. All he's had to go on are historical accounts.
Those accounts have never quite captured just how huge Bahamut is.
Crystal cracks and peels away above them. Cid gets a glimpse of the night sky. Bahamut sees it too. The Eikon roars again, that horrible hurting wail, spreads his wings, and springs up towards the stars.
Cid has a feeling he's not just popping out for a bit of fresh air.
Fuck.
Priming is so much harder than it used to be, and Cid doesn't know if it's truly become more difficult, or if his body simply resists with greater insistence now it has tasted the consequences. The stony grey patches that dot his arm sting like hell as he pulls aether into himself. Cid ignores it. It's not that much worse than dropping cigarette ash on his skin.
Ramuh does not exactly fly, not the way Bahamut does. Not the way Garuda does, either, with her endless feathered wings and fierce joy in soaring free. Cid turns his thoughts away from that place as he rises out of the crystal wreck. No, Ramuh rides the lightning like its a waterspout lifting him aloft; he may rise, and he may hover, and sometimes if Cid is feeling very adventurous he may drift around a bit, but there's no way he's catching up to anything with wings.
Fortunately, he doesn't have to, because unfortunately, he was dead right: Bahamut's outburst is far from over.
This, Cid thinks grimly as he floats higher and watches Bahamut send a bolt of white light through the nearest of Oriflamme's towers, is what happens when you raise a kid on shit like a Dominant isn't supposed to cry. Force him to bottle everything up like a good little prince, let the pressure build until something gives, watch as the resulting explosion tears him and everyone around him to shreds.
Though Cid will admit that, technically speaking, he's the one who heedlessly turned up the heat.
He has no love for the Empire, but no desire to see its citizens massacred - and gods know what it would do to Dion to hold himself responsible for such carnage. He's just a child, no matter how his father uses him as both blade and shield. Cid wonders, with a flash of disgust, if Sylvestre knows his own son so little that he was unaware of Dion's attachment to the Phoenix - or if he knew, and didn't care.
Bahamut has no focus for his destruction. He is simply lashing out, breaking anything that will shatter in a satisfying way. Cid isn't even sure he went for the Mothercrystal on purpose—
— he did, Ramuh murmurs, Eikonic insight laced with sorrow. He has a noble soul.
Well, we'd better stop him before he has a city's worth of guilt to weigh it down, hadn't we? Cid thinks back, raising his staff. Got any better ideas than making bait of ourselves, old man?
Ramuh, apparently, does not, so Cid braces himself, and sets about getting Bahamut's attention.
It goes about as well as he expects, which is to say that he dodges a couple of shots and is then punted bodily out over Oillepheist Bay by a furious draconic tail. He does at least get the satisfaction, as he's sailing through the air, of seeing the entirety of Drake's Head dissolve into vapour, leaving Oriflamme standing naked and alone against the backdrop of the northern sea.
One down, four to go.
And he has at least achieved his goal of luring Bahamut away from the city. The dragon pursues him out over the water and makes a convincing effort to take his head off with a flare of punishing light. Cid ducks, feels the hair on Ramuh's head singe, and curses as he tries to waft himself a bit faster towards the opposite shore.
It's all dark over there, of course; that land is long lost to the Blight. His only beacon is the weird glowing mass they call Shiva's Sorrow (or, occasionally, Shiva's Something-a-lot-more-vulgar), that lumpy outcropping that might be ice or might be crystal and is definitely too flooded with aether for anyone but a Dominant to risk approaching.
Too flooded with aether even for a Dominant, at least one in their right mind, but Bahamut's a long way from that and Cid doesn't have a lot of options here.
He ducks behind the Sorrow just in time to avoid another lethal blast. As he drops, he lets Ramuh's form go, lands on the ground on his own two feet. He's starting to understand why Barnabas always spoke of Bahamut with respect. If this is the power of a half-trained 12-year-old, Cid can well imagine that a Dominant of Light in his prime could give Odin a run for his money.
No wonder Barnabas was always so keen to fight the old Dominant one-on-one. Cid wishes he'd realised sooner what was really driving Waloed's taciturn king. Wishes he'd seen through the pretty words of freedom and unification to the bloodlust and craving for dominion that lay beneath.
No time for that now, he's got plenty of bloodlust breathing down his neck right here.
Bahamut's instinct - which is a sound one - seems to be to hang back and use his flare at range, but Cid has quickly wormed his way under the overhang of the Sorrow. As he hoped, it's not solid; it looks very much like a huge surge of water or mud has been frozen in an instant, and is thus full of gaps and air pockets.
As he also hoped, Bahamut is too enraged to think strategically. The dragon lands with an earth-shaking crash and begins to lash out at the Sorrow with furious talons.
Is it ice, or is it crystal? Cid can certainly feel the cold of it, like the inside of a glacier, but the glow is unmistakeably aetherial, and even more intense than the heart of Drake's Head. He can feel the power beating on his skin, choking his lungs.
He's never heard of a Dominant turning Akashic. He hopes like hell he's not about to either experience it or witness it firsthand.
Better wrap this up fast.
"Warden of Light, stand down!" Cid bellows, gladly borrowing Ramuh's ancient gravitas to make his voice boom off the crystal walls. "I am not your enemy!"
Bahamut tries to take a bite out of the Sorrow, snarls and rears back when it splinters painfully in his jaws.
"Bahamut! Enough!"
Bahamut somehow locates him well enough in his hiding place to give the impression of looking him dead in the eye as he begins to charge another flare.
"Fuck."
Time to play dirty. As if Cid hasn't hurt this poor kid enough for one day.
"Dion! Is this what your Phoenix would want?"
Bahamut falters.
"Dion," Cid says again, gentle as he can be whilst bringing Ramuh's steely judgement to bear. "Is this what you want?"
The dragon throws his head back and wails to the sky. The sound goes on and on, a long mourning howl, a plea for a response that will not come.
Except… maybe it's just the echo, bouncing back from the mountains behind the bay, but… just for a moment, Cid almost thinks he does hear a distant, answering cry.
He doesn't have time to ponder it. Bahamut is consumed in an explosion of his own blinding light; when it fades, his Dominant lies face-down in the Blighted ash, unmoving. Cid swears, wriggles his way out of the Sorrow, stumbles to Dion's side.
He's breathing, at least, though he's unresponsive and there are sparks of blue light dancing at the ends of his hair. Cid casts a nervous look at the Sorrow, swears some more, and hoists the boy over his shoulders. He's heavier than he looks; the Emperor already has him training for his future as a weapon of war. There's muscle on his childish frame; hardly any trace of baby fat left on his serious little face.
It occurs to Cid that he is, technically, kidnapping the Crown Prince of Sanbreque. He pauses for a moment to consider his other options.
There are none. None his conscience will permit, at least.
Dion Lesage, Cid reflects glumly, as he hauls both their asses away from that cursed place as fast as his old feet can take him. Dion Fucking Lesage just had to choose the heart of the Mothercrystal, tonight, to hide away and have a good cry.
Something aches in his chest. Maybe just the aftereffects of priming; he's not started coughing blood yet, but it can only be a matter of time.
Or maybe the pain is twisted up with the memory of Dion's anguished voice: he was my friend.
Inconvenient, that friendship must have been for a man with Sylvestre's ambitions. Or, at best, something to be used until it might be discarded. Much like a fruit husk when all the flesh has been sucked out.
Much like his own son when the curse finally takes him.
"I don't go in much for praying, as you know" Cid mutters to the red star hanging in the sky ahead. "But so help me, let me change this world before I die. You can do what you like with me after."
Metia does not respond, of course, but Cid finds himself uncharacteristically comforted by her presence, all through the long night's trek out of the Blight and back to some semblance of civilisation.