Chapter Text
For him, there was nothing left.
Nothing but the vast, vacant sort of dark that served only to cleave all thought from mind. The kind of dark that allowed words left unsaid to slip regretfully by, lost forever to the sea of time. A darkness that took once familiar voices and dissolved them to meaningless whispers, hushed murmurs that ultimately drowned in the echo of the weakened beating of his dying heart.
It was empty. It was silent. It was dark.
Until, it wasn't.
Cid’s eyes shot open with a gasp.
It felt like he had been holding his breath for eons. His lungs burned as he tried to sit up, not realizing at first that he’d woken up not on the ground or in a bed, but on a large piece of wood, his tired body half-hanging off into icy cold water. Waves picked up and tossed him around violently, almost throwing him entirely into the sea. In a panic he scrambled against the wood for purchase, barely managing to get both his legs back on.
What the fuck happened? His thoughts were frantic, flying, trying to figure out how in the unholy fuck he ended up there.
Belly down on the board, he gripped the sides of it hard enough to turn his knuckles white. He looked up and around to try to get his bearings, but he couldn't see a damn thing. Powerful winds were whipping water off the surface, making the mist and fog too dense to see through in every direction.
“Fuuuuuuck!” he half screamed, shaking his head. He tossed it to the sky again in hopes to see something, anything, to help him figure out where he was. Nothing but more fog and clouds heavy with rain were there to greet him.
Then, a shimmer of blue light suddenly caught his eye.
He squinted at it, as if that might have helped him see through the fog. It didn’t. The waves threw him around again and he silently thanked all the time he spent on Waloed’s ships, the years of experience were probably the only thing keeping him from being seasick.
When eventually he was able to look up again, the fog had parted just enough that he could follow the blue line of light back to what he hoped was land. Some kind of aetherial lighthouse? Cid’s heart skipped a beat when a rocky shoreline in the distance finally showed itself, a small bit of relief washing over him.
Every limb felt weighed down as he started to paddle his way towards the beach, body splayed across the board. This was one of the few times he really cursed his clothing of choice, as leather never quite agreed with water, every movement made much more difficult than it should have been.
That’s when he heard it.
An otherworldly screech that echoed above him, followed by a deafening roar of rushing water that came from behind. Cid spun his head around, fast enough to nearly give himself whiplash, and was met with a vortex of water that swirled and stretched towards the sky.
It wasn't the water, but what he saw come out of it that stopped him in his tracks.
A winged serpent tore from the cyclone, its body impossibly long, with iridescent scales and winged fins that adorned its back. The serpent screeched again. Cid's mouth hung open in awe and horror as he watched the creature move with an ungovernable anger, seemingly flinging waves and spheres of water and aether aggressively towards the shore. There was only one beast Cid knew of that could do a thing like that and—
No, no, no, no. That’s… there’s no way. No fucking way. Shiva’s frosty fucking tits, is that…
“Leviathan,” he whispered in disbelief.
In the back of his mind, Ramuh grumbled in agreement.
Well, shit.
Cid couldn't take his eyes off of Leviathan, completely entranced as he watched the eikon dance around with destructive grace in the sky. He snapped out of his trance when a pillar of fire suddenly shot up from the cliffs he'd spotted earlier. Cid recognized the flames immediately. Even at such a long distance, the fire eikon’s heat warmed his skin, grounding him a little in the chaos.
“Clive… what did we get ourselves into now?” he sighed to himself, extending a hand in their direction.
He watched for a moment as the two eikons exchanged attacks. Aether and fire and water, clashing and blending, orange and red reflecting off the blue. Opposing elements that somehow twisted themselves as one. The brawl looked evenly matched, both sides holding themselves on equal ground despite their considerable difference in size, until Leviathan abruptly lunged toward Ifrit. The serpent snapped the much smaller eikon in its enormous maw and dragged him into the still swirling cyclone of water.
“Clive!”
If Cid wasn’t panicked before, he certainly became so then. He instinctively tried to prime, hoping to get himself out of the water and head to help Ifrit, but he couldn't cross the threshold. His whole body thrummed and vibrated with levin and aether, but Ramuh would not come forth. “What the bloody hell,” he yelled, at himself or Ramuh he did not know, in frustration as he dropped his head down and let go of the aether he'd gathered.
Hundreds of lightning bolts rained down in every direction as he took a few moments to catch his breath. His limbs were shaky as he desperately clung to the scrap of wood that had become his lifeline. When Cid caught sight of Ifrit again, he was skating across the surface of the sea like a child on ice in winter, dodging near every attack and steadily pressing forward towards his target. An image of perfect power and control Cid had never before seen Clive have with his eikon.
Fuck, he’s beautiful like this.
Ifrit ducked and weaved through onslaught after onslaught of waves that were thrown at him, waiting for the perfect time to throw his own magick back. He growled a noise Cid thought sounded more akin to sad frustration than it did anger itself. The water around them roiled and churned and Cid couldn't tell if the chaos was from Leviathan, or if the fire dominant was making the damn sea itself boil.
It took everything Cid had to not paddle over towards Clive, he knew he would have been absolutely useless without Ramuh in that fight. Not to mention, he desperately needed to get to land before he ran out of strength to swim. Cid let another batch of lightning go and closed his eyes, letting himself feel where aether hit land instead of sea.
Several moments of thrashing through water on top of his board went by before Cid got knocked off into the sea by another large wave. He tumbled around underwater for a moment before managing to right himself and break above the surface. Disoriented, he searched frantically for his makeshift raft, but the sea seemed to have different plans for him, as it was nowhere to be found. He couldn't waste any more time, he needed to swim the rest of the way to shore.
At least the chaos behind him had seemed to calm, but it was hard to tell with a dizzy mind and eyes that burned full of saltwater.
Coughing up water as he finally felt sand beneath him, Cid was more exhausted than he could ever remember being. He let the entirety of his body weight fall to the ground and crawled through the sand until he made it just out of the waves reach. Panting and shivering, he rolled onto his back to catch his breath. The cold from the water and wind finally caught up with him, now that Cid was no longer fighting for his life in the waves.
The winds picked up speed and the clouds opened, the rain adding insult to injury and drenching him even further. The chill of it all had him cursing under his breath again. He stood up on shaky legs and risked a glance back at the sea. It was hard to make out through the fog and fire, but even at this distance he could still vaguely see Ifrit as he continued to clash with the lost water eikon.
Cid desperately tried to recall how they got there, thoughts reeling as he desperately combed through half blacked-out memories.
Think Cid, think. North Reach, Oriflamme, the pleasure houses, the mother crystal… fuck. Fuck. That's right. We went to Drake's Head to finally go through with ridding the Twins of the damned things—
Oriflamme.
A mass of thoughts and visions came crashing back to him all at once, hitting faster and harder than any of the waves he'd just barely fought his way out of. Cid fell back to his knees with a pained groan. He slogged and sifted and sorted through the mayhem in his mind, fists balled up in the sand, desperately searching for anything that made sense.
Wading through aether floods in the mines, the hoards of akashic beasts, the akashic men… Almost falling through the bridge, the dragon, gods the fucking dragon…
Cid’s hands flew from the sand and grabbed at either side of his head, the imagery only disorienting him further. It was becoming hard for Cid to tell what was reality and what was memory. The sand under his nails felt agonizingly real, though. Good. He knew at least he wasn't dreaming, that he hadn't entirely lost his mind.
The heart of the crystal, Jill, Torgal, Clive… I hit the crystal, the damn thing didn't break…
Cid desperately scanned the beach for cover, the weather was only getting worse. Not seeing much, he settled on the same rocky cliffs that guided his way to shore, thinking there might be a cavern there he could rest in. He picked himself up again and started stumbling towards refuge.
I primed Ramuh…
What he needed was right on the edge of his mind— taunting, evading, screaming at him. He took a few more steps, wet leather clinging to his skin and creaking as he moved.
I threw a Judgment bolt, the crystal finally shattered. The portal, that giant creature. More like a wraith, it was. Those soulless eyes…
His pace picked up when he finally spotted a nook he could tuck himself into. Definitely, probably, far enough up that high tide wouldn't reach him. He hoped, anyway.
Three huge beams of light, of aether…
Cid winced in pain and grabbed at his jacket with his right hand. His face went blank and his body entirely still. His stone-cursed hand flew up to meet the other, both pulling at several gaping holes in his clothes. His eyes followed their path and landed on red, angry scars beneath the wet and dark stained leather.
Clive screaming, the wraith's hands reaching towards him, I dropped my prime, then to the ground? More yelling, so much yelling. Jill maybe? Fuck, where is Jill right now?
Ifrit bellowed and Leviathan screeched, Cid nearly jumping out of his skin at the noise. He'd almost forgotten they were there. He barely had time to process the tsunami building in the distance when his nose finally caught up with the smell of old blood, rot, and salt coming from his body. His legs felt like lead as he trudged the last few steps to the cliff.
Fuck, I was bleeding out, wasn't I? In Jill's arms? Torgal was barking at… Clive? Was Clive knocked out? I think I asked him about a god damned nap…
Fuck though, a nap sounded incredible in that moment. No time for that yet, much to his dismay. He grit his teeth and hissed as he gripped the rocks, his cursed arm screaming at him in pain as he pulled himself up.
Another creature… No. It was Ultima. No, no, no, no, NO! All those stories that Barnabas told were fucking true, weren’t they? He was coming for Clive, I grabbed my sword…
Hooking his sopping wet boots into the cliff was much harder than he could have anticipated. He slipped a few times before he eventually found decent footing.
“I know who you are, and if you think I'm going to let you have him… think again!”
His grip faltered slightly as he clung on through another dizzy spell. The leather of his gloves were the only thing that kept his hands from being torn apart on the jagged rocks.
“Clive. For so long, I thought I had all the answers… but then I met you… and I learned, it wasn't a good death we should be fighting for, but a better life. It's all very well a man reclaiming his fate… but if he can't choose how he meets it… what's the point? So, I made a choice.”
Through the pain, and despite violently coughing up water, it took every last bit of strength Cid had to swing a leg onto the ledge and pull himself up.
I was coughing up blood then, too, wasn't I? I put my hand on Clive, gave him my eikon. No wonder the old man didn’t come when I called…
He pressed his hands onto the floor of the cavern, safe enough at last to lay down. The first real, solid ground he'd met since he woke.
The look in Clive's eyes when he begged me not to. Hell. The last thing I wanted to be for him was more pain. More loss.
Cid rolled onto his back, half reaching up towards the ceiling.
“The rest is in your hands. The crystal's blessing is a prison, Clive… and if it's an outlaw the world needs… to help it break free…”
The wind had stopped, the sudden silence a drastic change.
I couldn't see anything else, just Clive. Nothing else mattered. Couldn't hear Jill crying anymore, or Torgal whining…
The burning in his limbs and ache in his chest dulled, all feeling leaving him but the cold. A familiar darkness began to close in on him again.
Is this hell? Did I die?
Cid’s heart pounded. He was afraid it might pound right out of his chest.
“I can think of none better… than you.”
Fuck. Clive. Eyes slipped closed, my body failed, that last cigar falling from my mouth…
Cid let out a weak cry, his eyes wet with tears.
And then,
It was dark again.