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Chapter Text

“Clive, a word,” his father calls after him. It wasn’t often that his father would single him out in the War Room. But the meeting had just ended and Lord Commander Murdoch and the other head Shields and advisors were leaving the room. Clive had to assume it was much more likely to be a matter of the personal than of work.

“Your Grace,” Clive gives a brief bow to the command. The others leave, only a few sparing Clive a glance.

“Please sit, son,” Elwin says, gesturing back to the chair near him. Clive takes the seat, only slightly hesitant.

“What do you think of what was decided?”

“Ah,” Clive says, “As the Lord Commander says, I think it’s prudent to take measures to protect ourselves. Until Sanbreque’s missing prince is found they will continue to unreasonably blame Rosaria for their loss. It’s unpleasant business to prepare for war, but even more unpleasant to not be prepared for it once needed.”

His father nods but doesn’t seem satisfied with the answer.

“You have your concerns?” Clive prods.

“Third-party interference is unavoidable in global politics, but the circumstances of the nations are concerning,” his father obfuscates.  

“Are you speaking of Prince Dion or Waloed?” Clive asks.

His father gives him a wry and exhausted smile, “Both, of course. But there’s nothing to do now but be prepared and vigilant.”

His father’s words were vague but Clive could intuit the meaning anyway. “You think Waloed has had a hand in the disappearance of the prince? You think there’s magic involved with it all?”

Rumour was that at one point all countries in Valisthea had use of magic but due to the over-mining of the crystals, the phenomena had dwindled until only the ever-isolationist Waloed had access to magic.

“What I think doesn’t matter,” his father argues. “I asked you to stay behind for a different matter.”

Clive stiffens and nods.

“Kanver will remain neutral in any fighting that picks up between Rosaria and Sanbreque. Your brother and Jill should remain there and finish their studies. I would have you travel there with some men that you trust to leave them with more guards and ensure their continued safety. They will need to know it’s not safe for them to leave.”

“As you command, your Grace.” Clive hesitates a moment before continuing, “You don’t want me to stay with Joahua and Jill to ensure their safety?” It was always his duty to protect Joshua and the idea of leaving it in another’s hands chafed worse than he’d expect. But his father was already shaking his head.

“No, son, you are Rosaria’s First Shield and your sword and shield will be necessary for any fighting to come. Our citizens are counting on you.”

 Clive raises himself from the chair he is in and kneels on the ground in the way all Shields first take their oaths.

“I understand, your Grace. I will see Rosaria safe.”

Clive startles when he feels a hand on his head. His father ruffles his hair as if he was a child again.

“I know you will, Clive. Thank you,” Elwin stands up looking much older than he is and leaves the room. Clive is left kneeling there, hair askew and alone.

The trip to Kanver was thankfully uneventful. Clive had decided on a few Shields and they made quick time across the content, being sure to avoid the borders of Sanbreque to the best of their ability. The hardest part of it all was simply finding the apartment on campus that Joshua and Jill were sharing but after a few extra hours of wandering around than necessary and some kindly students, Clive managed to meet up with them.

“Where’s Torgal, Clive?” Was Jill’s first question once they were both seated at the low table in the centre of the living room. Jill had unceremoniously pushed books off the top of the table when she brought him over to sit down. Tall stacks of books fill all corners of the room and most horizontal surfaces. The Shields that Clive brought with them stand awkwardly as sentries at the entryways of the cramped space. Joshua is puttering in their small kitchen making tea.

“I left Torgal at the Inn, he was getting pretty distracted on the streets,” Clive says dryly. It would be no greater nightmare than trying to wrangle the dog through the open food market Clive had to pass through to get to the University. He continues on explaining the reason for his visit. That Prince Dion was still missing and tensions were rising between Rosaria and Sanbreque. 

“It’s not Rosaria’s fault Sanbreque misplaced their prince,” Jill points out blandly.

“And yet they think so anyways,” says Clive dryly. 

“Do we know where Dion might be?” Calls Joshua from the other room. He was always closer to the man than Clive ever had been.

“Father seems to think it was Waloed, but I don’t know if there is any proof of that,” Clive tells him. Jill bites her lip in uncertainty.

“What?” Asks Clive.

“There have been rumours lately of an airship that looked Waloedi in nature flying nearby,” Jill informs.

Clive looks at her incredulously, “Airships are dead pieces of stone, what do you mean it flies?”

“Exactly that, brother,” Joshua interjects. He sets down three mismatched mugs on the table with a pot of tea. As he begins pouring them all a cup he continues, “It is said to be seen moving in the air, not unlike a bird. But know that it is just a whispered rumour. I have not put any stock into it. Certainly, there would be more concern than that of the musing of students if such things were true.”

Clive nods his thanks and picks up the cup that was offered to him. The mug was chipped horrendously around the edges. “Does mother not send you an allowance?” He asks. “Can you not afford better cups?”

“Well, yes she certainly does send me an allowance. You will find most of it gets put towards more important things than kitchen wares.” Joshua answers tartly.

At Clive’s incredulous look, Jill clarifies by gesturing broadly around the cramped book-laden room. “Do you not see this, Clive? Your brother has a problem.” She says severely.

“You are spending all the money Mother is sending you on books?” Clive says beyond amused and the little hoarder his brother is proving himself to be. “Is there not a library at this university?”

Joshua makes a dismissive sound, “I think our concern should truly be the oncoming war with Sanbreque.” The blush on Joshua's cheeks betrayed him.

Clive shakes his head and takes a long sip of the tea. It was a lovely Dhalmekian flavour, dessert roses if Clive had to guess. It would have been better with a bit of honey.

“What you two need to concern yourselves with is staying in Kanver and finishing your studies. You will be safe from any fighting here,” he tells them both firmly.

“And what about you?” Demands Joshua, never content until he’s in at least as much trouble as Clive.

“And I will fulfil my duty as First Shield, and second in line to command the forces after Lord Murdoch.” At both Joshua’s and Jill’s worried expressions, he continues with what he hopes is a comforting smile. “You know, I started my official military career when I was 15 with the unexpected invasion by the Iron Blood at Phoenix Gate.” he reminds them both. “I am an adult man now and much better trained. I think I can manage it.”

“It’s true,” Sir Wade interjects behind them all. “The Lord Marquess is the best Shield Rosaria has. Sanbreque will run screaming when they see him with a blade.”

Clive feels the tips of his ears flush at the praise.

Jill notices and hides a snicker behind a sip of tea.

“Regardless,” Clive interjects, “I will be fine, and so will you. Just stay in Kanver and keep us from having to worry about you too okay?”

Jill sets down the teacup and reaches across the table to grip Clive’s hand. She shares a brief but resolute glance with Joshua before she gives Clive a firm nod.

“She will stay here, safe in Kanver. In exchange, you must promise that you will always make it home safe too.” She says seriously.

Clive shifts his hand in her grip so he is holding her hand back. “I promise,” he vows. “I will always make it back home, safe.”

Clive left Joshua’s and Jill’s apartment after nightfall, content that they would both be safe under the watchful eyes of the Shields. He avoided the busier streets and took a bit more of a darker path back enjoying the warm breeze of the night.

As Clive carried on his way he noticed some men slumped against a wall. He gives them a cautious look when he passes. The hair on the back of his neck raises and he jerks back as one of them suddenly jumps out at him. He lunges back and goes for his knife that he keeps on his thigh but the other man was on him already. He hadn’t even seen that one move. Their eyes distracted him temporarily from their scuffle; they had luminous glowing blue eyes and Clive could see brand marks on their cheeks. They were Cursed.

“Fuck,” snarls Clive as he pushes the other man off of him. Perhaps the rumours of Waloed weren't so foolish after all. They are the only ones able to set a curse on someone. But even then curses were supposed to range from the inconvenient to the deadly based on the strength and intent of the Wizard. He’s never heard of one causing people to become crazed and these men were exactly that. They clawed at Clive viscously, snapped their teeth at him, going for bites, and weren’t slowed by any number of blows Clive dealt them in his attempt to get them away from him.

He finally manages to fumble his knife out of the sheath and throws one down the alley to give himself enough time to shove his knife into the shoulder of one of the Cursed. The man isn’t affected by it in the slightest.

“This seems a bit one-sided. I hope you don’t mind me evening the odds a bit,” a gruff voice calls with a cheeky lilt down the alley.

Clive looks over to see a broad man in a purple jacket standing a few paces down.

“Duck,” the man advises Clive, looking him dead in the eye. Clive’s instincts listen before he can even process the command. His knees hit the dirty ground. Lightning cracks and Clive thinks he might have gone deaf from it by how much his ears are ringing and his body feels like lead. He looks briefly at the Cursed that was attacking him. It was a charred corpse on the ground slowly dissolving to blue dust, the same unnatural colour its eyes had been. The same was happening to the other one down the alley. His ears were still ringing.

Clive tenses up as he feels his arm getting jerked and he looks up to see the magic-user trying to pull him up.

“What did you do to those people?!” Clive demands forcing his body into movement and hauling the man bodily up against the wall and pinning him to it face first into the brick.

“Wanna ease up on the yelling, lad?” The ringing was fading just enough for him to hear the man bitching. Clive puts more pressure on him

“What did you do to them?” Clive growls, slightly quieter this time now that he can actually hear his own voice.

“They were attacking you. I stopped them. You can thank me anytime you like.” The man bites out, only slightly muffled from the rough treatment.

“Thank you?” Clive snarls. “Those people are dead because of you. I saw them. You are a magic user and they were cursed. I can do the math.”

“Good for you, I’m very impressed. You can do math, but not understand that there is more than one magic user in the world?” The man growls and shoves hard against the wall forcing Clive to loosen his grip just a bit. Some scrambling comes from the other end of the alley.

“You’re telling me you just happened to be in the vicinity by chance.”

“By chance? Not exactly. I could feel that there was some unfettered magic nearby and I needed to come see for myself. That there, with the glowing blue eyes and feral behaviour is called going akashic; it’s what happens when people are fed too much cursed magic by mad wizards. They lose their minds and turn into feral beasts. The only kind way of handling them is putting them out of their misery. You said you saw their eyes, which means you saw how blue they were. You saw what happened to them after they died. Those men weren’t human any more, lad.”

The stranger gives a final shove and forces Clive’s hands off of him. He looks down the alley where the noise is growing louder. A handful of shambling Cursed were spilling down the narrow path, their eyes all as bright as the two from before, glowing ominously in the night. Clive takes a few steps back and sees that even more Cursed coming from the other end behind them.

“Ahh,” says the man, brushing off his purple coat casually. “I think we ought to be going, don’t you?”

“Go where?” Demands Clive. “We are blocked on both sides. Where would you have us go?”

“Well there’s always up,” says the man with a cheeky grin.

“Up?” Repeats Clive incredulously. The ringing in his ears from the lightning earlier was still there and Clive was certain he had to have misheard.

“Yeah, that’s what I said, lad. Consider getting your hearing checked.” The man lurches towards Clive as the group of akashic get close to grabbing distance from them. The stranger wraps his arm around Clive’s waist and pulls Clive with him towards the other wall. The man kicks off the wall and, impossibly, they continue up until they reach the open night air. They were stopped on a cloud of seemingly the man’s own creation staring down at the city below them.

“Fire and Flames!” Exclaims Clive. He frantically loops his arms around the man’s neck not prepared to fall from this height. The man laughs loudly and Clive realises he is very close to the stranger’s face. He could see all the stumble dotting his chin, his striking green eyes, and his charming grin.  

“Aww don’t be afraid, sweetheart. I won’t let you fall.” He says. The arm that wasn’t around Clive’s waist reaches into his coat. Clive tenses only to stare in shock as the man pulls out a pack of cigars. He takes one out and lights it with the tip of his finger. Clive gets a strong whiff of tobacco when the man brings it to his lips for a drag.

“Now, what do you say? Shall I walk you home?” The stranger husks in his ear. His tone was at odds with his words that played at being a gentleman.

“I say that’s the bare minimum of expectation,” Clive answers, 60 feet above street level.

The man laughs again, takes a long drag of his cigar and offers Clive a wink. “Anything more will have to wait until our second date.”

Clive flushes. He blames it on the colder wind of the higher skies.

The man gently grabs Clive's arms from around his neck, takes a step back and loops their arms together so they are joined at the elbow. It was all very reminiscent of a gentleman escorting a lady home.

 “Well, use those nice legs of yours and start walking,” the man quips, cigar hanging out of his quirked lips.  

So Clive did. He first takes a tentative step out but when it is much like walking on land he grows more certain of his movements and begins taking much more solid steps although he continues to focus heavily on his actual footsteps.

“What about those people down there?” Clive points out. Glancing down at the dimly lit streets below them, Clive could see the main streets still busy with the nightlife. “Aren’t they at risk of being attacked by the akashic?”

The man lets out a small puff of his cigar and shakes his head. “No, they only react to other magic users. I reckon my magic had a wider area of effect than I thought and they grabbed you by mistake.”

“My brother and friend are studying in this city. I don’t want those things wandering around where they could get them.”

The man shrugs, “I’ll go back and clean up that mess later.”

Clive scowls at the blase answer. “If you didn’t curse them, who did?”

The man shakes his head again, “best that you don’t get any more involved.”

Clive's scowl deepens. Regardless of what the man thinks, Clive was walking in the middle of the night sky after being attacked by some Cursed. “Is this how all your first dates go or am I just lucky?” Clive asks sarcastically to the man.  

The man chuckles roughly and it distracts Clive momentarily from his dogged attention to walking.

“Actually,” the man says. “I’d say you are rather unlucky. I try not to get other people wrapped up in my shit, but I’m afraid it might be too late for you.”  

“What does that mean?” Demands Clive tightening his arm on the other man.

“The less you know the better, trust me,” the man says.

“Can I at least get your name?” Clive asks.

“A ruin my air of mystery? I don’t think so.” The grin that Clive gets is crooked.

Clive sees the Inn that he was staying at nearing and points out down below. “That’s my stop.”

“Alright,” the man agrees easily and begins moving them down until Clive steps onto the roof of the Inn.

“Is that it then?” Clive asks.

“What? Were you expecting a kiss goodnight?” The man jokes. “I told you, I’m a gentleman on the first date.”

“Goodbye then,” Clive says because he has manners. “Respectfully, I hope I never see you again.”

The man just smiles ruefully and nods with a small chuckle. “Fair enough, really. Do me a favour and stay inside for the next little bit. Wouldn’t want a pretty thing like you attracting any more unwanted attention.”

Clive nods at the request. He was just planning on going to sleep.

“Well, ta-ra then,” the man says and steps off into the night.

Clive doesn’t so much as sit down on the gently sloped roof as much as his legs give out. What a weird fucking night. He doesn’t know how long he stays there collecting himself, letting the adrenaline wear off and just watching out into the streets below for any glowing blue eyes. Eventually, Clive pulls himself up, shambles over to the side of the building and drops himself down onto a nearby balcony. The curtains were thankfully closed so he didn’t have to deal with the hassle of explaining why he was dropping down from the roof. From there he drops himself off the balcony to the ground and makes his way into the Inn.

His room was on the second floor and it was a trudge to make it up the stairs. But eventually, Clive makes it to his door. He jimmies his key into the door and lets himself in. Leans back against the door, closes his eyes for just a minute and rubs his face tiredly. It was decided: a bed was what he needed most.

Clive is a few steps into his room when something catches in the corner of his eye and his every muscle locks up in stress and tension.

A man was sitting in his room, in the little armchair in the corner of the room. He had his legs crossed and Clive’s broadsword laid across his lap, playing with the blade mindlessly. He had long silver bangs going across half his face, and the rest pulled back into a tight braid. He wore a white blouse with a purple collar, not dressed as if he was here for a fight but a threat nonetheless.  

“I think you have the wrong room,” Clive tells him.

This new stranger gives him a mocking smile, “Tell me, does daddy know what type of company you keep?” His accent was thick and unmistakably Waloedi. 

Clive sneers back at the man. He moves further into his room so his back is to the wall and he is squared up for a fight a few feet from the man. From this new position he could see Torgal laying on the ground unnaturally still. It was only the shallow movement of the hounds chest that kept him from rushing to his dog. 

“What did you do to Torgal?” Roars Clive at the man. 

 “Easy, easy,” the man waves his hand dismissively. “No need to shout. Your puppy is just asleep. I am serious, you know, you should be careful; that man you were with is dangerous.”  

Clive could feel himself baring his teeth like a dog, furious beyond belief. “I don’t know him and I won’t see him again. If you're here because of him, I can’t help you.”

The man shakes his head with a look of mock confusion. “Not at all, it was just some free advice since I was passing by. Thought you should know. I am here for a different matter.” The man continues to run his fingers up Clive’s sword, smirking like a cat that found his mouse. Slowly he raises the blade, uncrosses his legs, and stands.

Clive reaches behind him for his knife, only to bite back a curse. He left it in the alley when he was attacked earlier.

“I’m here to deliver you a present,” the man croons. “Someone paid a lot of money to make sure you get it.”

“Keep it,” snarls Clive.

The man moves inhumanely fast. He pulls Clive’s sword back, which was now glowing bright with the same blue as the akashic and throws it like a javelin at Clive’s head. Clive just barely has enough time to throw himself down against the ground. Blue sparks rain down overhead from where his blade struck the wall.

Clive watches as the man smirks at him, and raises his fingers to his lips meaning for Clive to be quiet. Then to his surprise, the stranger steps around him and walks out the door.

Clive lets out a ragged breath, his whole body aching in a way it never has before. He drags his hand up to his face and rubs his eyes. His cheek hurts. It doesn’t feel right. Something is wrong.

He pulls his hands away and stares at them mutely. They were wrinkled and leathery. As if he were an old man, not the 28-year-old he was. Clive hauls his body up, adrenaline spiking through him yet again. His body aches and argues the treatment in a way it only ever did after the most rigorous training with Lord Commander Murdoch.

Clive is standing in front of a mirror. He doesn’t recognize the man staring back at him. It’s an old withered and wrinkled man, several inches shorter than Clive ever remembers being, with hair white as ash and frail as can be. Clive watches as the old man raises his hand to touch the brand on the corner of his face. Clive wanted so desperately to believe it was someone else, but it was him. It had to be him because Clive could feel his wrinkly fingers prodding at his own face. He was Cursed.   

Chapter Text

Clive winds up sitting on the floor cradling Torgal’s head in his lap as a quiet shock sinks in. He would have liked to say he was thinking of a plan, of a solution, but that would have been a lie. His mind was unpleasantly blank, unable to grasp a thought beyond the panicked whisper in the back of his head saying that he was useless without the strength of his body, that he was nothing anymore. Eventually, exhaustion must have caught up with him as he jerks awake to a cold wet nose pressed to his cheek and a warm tongue licking over it.

“You're awake, boy,” Clive murmurs. He pushes Torgal’s big fuzzy face away from him and runs his finger through his fur. Torgal whines plaintively and continues to try to push his face in closer to Clive, to which he finally gives in and pulls Torgal in closer. He hugs Torgal, cradling him to his chest with his own head pushed into his furry shoulder. Clive takes deep and shaking breaths like this trying to once again ground himself to this situation, in this unfamiliar body. He ached from being on the ground for so long but Clive had nothing but experience in ignoring hurts.

Eventually, he pulls himself away from Torgal and uses the bed to push himself up. His knee threatens to give out and his back seizes which leaves him curled over the bed with one hand pushed into it to keep him steady and the other bracing his knee. Torgal is whining at his side in concern. When his back lets up he is able to ease himself down so he is sitting on the edge of the bed.

It was slow moving, picking himself up and getting ready to leave but Torgal made himself useful as a portable ballast when Clive needed to catch himself when his bad knee threatened to collapse.

He remembers when he was younger and still Lord Murdoch’s squire. Lord Murdoch had assigned him on a mission with a few of the men. It was supposed to be just a short jaunt to inspect a monster camp, Clive would only later find out it was goblins. There had been a large jump across a steep ravine and Clive, young as he was, had been desperate to prove himself to these men and overconfident in his abilities. He took the jump, fell short of the landing by half a foot and rolled down the ravine. He got scratched to hell by the weeds and bristles and wrecked his knee in the process. It had been more than a bit humiliating to have been all but carried back to Rosalith by one of the Shields that had been accompanying him; the tongue-lashing he had gotten from Lord Murdoch wasn’t pleasant either but it was his father’s obvious disappointment that stung the worst. It took months for his knee to heal and even then, the physickers had cautioned that it would most likely always be slightly weak and would grow worse as he ages. It would seem they were right.

When he went to pull his sword out of the wall, he found it caught firmly in a wooden beam. With his body rebelling against him, he didn’t have the strength to pull it out and he had to leave the blade his father had gifted him stuck there. The thought had passed that he could ask the innkeeper to retrieve it for him, but with the brand on his cheek, he is just as liable to be attacked for the ill omen of his appearance. The Cursed were never welcome wherever they went.

The fact of the matter was that Clive couldn’t stay here and he couldn’t return home, not like this. His mother was just as likely to call for his execution for the sight of the brand on his face sullying her bloodline than anything else. She had always very noticeably favoured Joshua for reasons Clive was never truly sure of. So his only options were to run away and leave his father wondering what had happened to him or to break the curse and return home. Only one of those options was passable which left his path forward clear.  He would have to go to Waloed and find someone able to break the curse. So Clive set out on shaky legs with Torgal following at his heel.

The problem with getting to Waloed is that they are an infamously closed border country. There were no legal ins or outs, although there is a rumour of people slipping through on the very few trading vessels that dock on Storm. As far as Clive knew, Kanver and a small port just north of Kanver were the only posts that would dock Waloedi ships. Due to the big nature of the city, the ships coming and going from Kanver were more heavily guarded and watched for trespassers than the ones that leave from the north; if Clive wanted to make it to Waloed he would be needing to travel for it.

Clive has sat through many meetings with Lord Murdoch and other advisors about the existential threat other countries could be for Rosaria; for obvious reasons, Waloed came up often. The reason why the northern port was less guarded was due largely to the geography of the area. Blighted land split Kanver from the port which made the path there a treacherous pass with harsh weather, hardy beasts and no proper road that has been maintained. The port was made around a small closed-off metalworking town that Waloed used to import weapons and iron.

So Clive bought supplies, lighter clothing with less heavy armour so he was no longer drowning in his old leathers, a lightweight knife and a ride on the back of a cart for as far north as they could take him. He kept his hood up for the duration of his time in town but the suspicion and disgust followed regardless once people caught sight of his face under the hood.

“Where are you going?” The farmer asked roughly, eyes squinted at Clive in suspicion. He had pulled the cart to a stop not far from where blighted and wild lands start.

“North,” Clive answers him curtly. He withholds a recoil as he is once again taken aback by his now raspy voice. “I have family who work the port,” he lies.

The man snorts derisively. “I’m sure. Don’t expect anyone to find your corpse in the hills, old man. You will die out there.” With those cheery words of support, the man cracks the reins on the chocobos and takes off further down the road to wherever he is heading next.

The warning about dying in the blighted lands was perhaps more warranted than Clive had given the man credit for. Had Clive been young, the trip wouldn’t have been any strain, but Clive was no longer that. The path was largely uphill and Clive found himself having to stop and rest his aching lungs and legs increasingly often, not to mention the higher he climbed the harder the wind blew. His lighter clothes were woefully inadequate to the chill.

Clive’s leg snags on a rock on the path and his leg gives out yet again causing him to fall, sprawling hard onto the ground. Rocks cut into his hands causing them to start bleeding and the weight of his pack on his back keeps him pinned for a moment, temporarily winded and aching. Torgal barks at him, gives Clive a lick on the face and promptly runs off leaving Clive sprawled there alone.

“Torgal!” He called out after the hound, but it was no use as his voice was hoarse from strain and the wolf was moving away fast and with purpose.

“Fucking Metia,” he curses. It was a bit of an indignity to be left behind by his own dog, not that he can truly blame Torgal for wanting to leave. Slowly he pushes himself up so he is rolled over and seated on his own. Rather than getting up, he stays there seated and stares down at Kanver. It was pretty in a way that nothing should be right now. The sun was setting behind the city, rays of light danced on the ocean and painted the sky orange and pink.

Clive was going to need to get up and find some sort of alcove to take shelter in for the night. He hadn’t made it nearly as far as he hoped he would and rations would become a concern as well. The blight killed the weakest of the crops, mainly those that were edible to humans and led to uncontrolled, heavy forest taking its place. Only the most hardy beasts and animals remained, those that were carnivores mainly and small animals that were able to adapt and survive. Assuming Torgal returned from wherever he made off, he may be able to hunt small game to cook at a fire.

Slowly Clive pushes off the ground, making sure to take most of his weight on his good leg. His hands were raw and bleeding lightly, more than expected but not so much that he felt a bandage was necessary. He wipes his hand on his cloak and ignores the accompanying sting. He did his best to ignore the throbbing in his knee but it was getting harder to walk through it, as the pain was beginning to become more front and centre. His leg was beginning to tremble which slowed his pace more than before as he continued up the mountain. He made it only a few paces further when the brush ahead of him rustled and Torgal came launching out with something large in his mouth. He stopped moving as his dog came back and dropped a large stick at Clive’s feet.

“I am not playing fetch with you right now, boy,” he says dryly. Torgal barks back as annoyed as a dog could sound. Clive looks down at the stick and finds out that it’s closer to a long and thin branch than a stick; it is over 5 feet long easily. Torgal picks it back up and begins to press it towards Clive with force. Clive grabs it mostly out of self-defence before Torgal can take out his leg with it. He pretends the shaking in his wrinkled hands was from the chilling cold and not his now older age and nerve damage from all the knicks and cuts on his hands. Clive has never been a very good liar.    

It was a good size so Clive ended up holding it like a walking stick to attempt to take some of the strain off his leg. Torgal barks at him and spins in a pleased circle.

Clive feels himself smiling at him despite the situation. “You smart boy, you went and found me a walking stick. No finer hound than you, Torgal.” With care, he bends down and scratches Torgal around the ears to which his hand receives pleased licks and a few happy barks.

With the stick, travelling goes faster, but not by much. Eventually, Clive gives the command to Torgal to go find them some shelter as black had begun to well and truly pitch down on them and the moon and stars began to appear.

Torgal comes bounding back over and Clive follows his onerous path up to the crest of the small mountain. He stands there gasping for breath to his embarrassment and stares in bewilderment at the massive stone airship that lies nestled into the grooves of the hillside. It was lit up and shining in a way Clive had never seen before, with soft purple light coming out from indents in the stonework. Torgal barks, proud of his accomplishment.

“This is not a shelter,” he tells Torgal firmly. “This is a hazard.” Jill’s rumours of a flying airship suddenly seem much more true than before.

Torgal gives him a judgemental look. The annoying thing is the look is probably warranted. His knee was in an unignorable state of white-hot agony, and the cold was biting more and more into him as night began to fall, his shivering causing him to shake almost as much as the pain. Whether Clive wanted to go in or not, that airship was most likely the only way he was surviving the night in any condition.

He takes a few trembling paces forward with shaking legs and Torgal takes off again leading him around to a side with a small door knocked into it. Clive may be older now but his survival instincts persist and he palms the hilt of his hunting knife under his cloak. If there is a fight, Torgal will most likely be able to do more damage than Clive but it is a security nonetheless.

He pushes open the door and rests his back against it after he slips in. The room was a comfortable warmth, especially in contrast to being in the cold for so long. He lets out a long pleased groan and the instant relief in temperature.

When he looks forward he is daunted with a set of stairs going up and Clive almost gives up and surrenders himself a night on the steps, but he can hear a crackling fire which is more tempting than the cold stone. Clive leans his walking stick against the wall by the door and with slow and measured steps he hauls himself up one step at a time. It was slow going as he was using one hand to lean heavily on the railing and his other gripped his knife with white knuckles. He finds himself at the top of the staircase breathing heavily between the trek up and the pain. His stomach is making attempts to turn inside out. Clive recognizes he is rapidly nearing the limits he could push this decrepit, useless body to.

He’s in a cramped and cluttered room. Trinkets lined shelves in the room, and books were stacked in all the others. There was a bed in one corner and a desk covered in papers in another. In the centre of the room was a crackling fire and mismatching cushioned chairs, one green and one orange. The whole place smelled faintly of tobacco and spice.

A door opens across the room and a sturdy man enters.

“Cid,” the man calls out, “‘Bout time you showed up.” He stops short as he stares at Clive with blank surprise.  

“Well,” the man gruffs. “Who the ruddy hell are you?”

“Clive,” he says. “I’m sorry for intruding. I am just looking for a place to stay the night.” The tone he was going for was measured but his voice cracked in the middle of the sentence causing him to grimace.

The man continues to stare him down, his face showing nothing.

“How the hell did you get in here?” The man demands.

Clive nods down to Torgal who had laid himself down at Clive’s feet and seemed content as he could be with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. That alone made Clive loosen his grip on his knife just a bit, if Torgal thought the man was a threat he wouldn’t have sat down at all, much less be so relaxed.

“I’m travelling to the port, passing through the Blights. Torgal here led me to your… home to rest,” he hesitated to describe the airship causing an awkward pause.

The man shakes his head slowly. “But how the hell did you get in here?” He demands.

“Through the door?” Clive says, uncertain at what answer the man was looking for.

The man looks at him wearily and moves forward to Clive who tenses up. But the man stops and stares at a turn dial on a wall that is pointing to the colour green.

“Bloody kid,” the man mutters. “Playing with the goddamn door again.”

“I’m sorry,” Clive says again, recognizing that he needed to say something more. Hers was starting to die down leaving exhaustion in its wake, “I just really need someplace to stay the night. I’ll be out of your hair in the morning.” The man continues to give Clive a cynical look. “I’m just trying to find a way to get back to my family again,” Clives tells him. The silence drags on before the man nods slowly.   

“Well, if you're not here to cause any trouble, you can start by putting that knife away,” the man says at last and Clive hesitates only a minute before sheathing his knife and raises his hand that wasn’t white-knuckling the bannister to keep himself up to show he was unarmed.

The man nods again, and gestures to a cushioned armchair in front of the fire. Clive hobbles over to the chair with Torgal supporting his side and sits down heavily on the chair. Torgal lays down at his feet. The man takes a seat in the remaining orange chair.

“Well, Clive,” the man says, still watching him critically. “The name is Otto and this here is the Hideaway.”

Clive looks over at him, between finally being able to rest and the warmth of the fire washing over him, he finds it a struggle to keep his eyes open and attentive in the presence of an unknown and possible magic-using stranger.

“Hideaway?” Clive asks.

“A safe place for Cursed like you,” Otto explains, “There are others around, all with their own baggage and scars. Most find some form of home here and choose to stay even after Cid has fixed them up. Not everyone, mind, some curses are too tough even for him to break, and others move on once Cid’s done what he can for them.”

“He can break curses?” Clive asks. Like that, Clive is fully awake and hope is pounding in his chest.

Otto is watching him with the still cautious eyes, “Aye, some. Not all. Next time he wanders home we will get him to give you a look over.”

“Please,” pleads Clive.

Otto nods his head more surely, “I can lead you to a room for you to stay the night.”

With only some hesitation, Clive pushed himself up from the chair using mostly his arms. He makes it a half step before his knee collapses and he falls back into the chair hissing in pain and grasping his throbbing knee as it laces his body with hot agony. Torgal jumps up and puts his head in Clive’s lap with a whine, wanting to help his master but limited by being a dog. There was no way he was going to make it anywhere like this.

“Your leg is it?” Otto asks. “I can go wake our resident physicker, and have her take a look. She’s a damn good one.”

Clive shakes his head. It was well late into the night by now and there was no reason to wake anyone on his behalf. “There’s no need for that,” he says firmly. “I would be more than comfortable to just stay here the night if you would allow it.” Clive didn't particularly want to sleep sitting up for a second night in a row but moving simply wasn’t an option at this point and he was so exhausted at this point it probably wouldn’t even matter.

Otto grunts displeased, but nods anyway, and stands up to leave the room. Before he leaves Otto walks over and does something by the door. Clive watches as the colour wheel on the wall changes from green to red. Otto walks back up the stairs and leaves the room.

Clive takes it as permission enough to stay where he is. He must have quickly fallen into a doze because he was jerking awake a few minutes later at the sound of footsteps drawing near. He tenses and looks over to see Otto holding a blanket and a few pillows. He must have seen Clive tense because he approached more slowly. He throws the blanket and one of the pillows at Clive which he catches with some surprise. Even more surprising was Otto was setting the pillows down in a tall stack in front of Clive with a pointed look.

“Our physicker will see you in the morning, but I know damn well she would kill me if we didn’t elevate your leg tonight,” Clive stares at him blankly.

“Well?” Otto demands.

“I--” Clive cuts himself off. “That’s not necessary, but thank you.”

Otto scowls at him and doesn’t move, “That’s the wrong answer. Try again.”  

Clive remembers back in his teens when he was first laid up with the injury. The physickers were shoving pillows and stools under his leg at every turn trying to keep it elevated.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. He bends down, works off his boot and props his leg on the stack of pillows. The man gives him a dirty look. Clive doesn’t understand why.

“I didn’t want to dirty your pillows?” Clive says in a way of explanation at Otto’s judgemental look. It sounds more like a question than it should have but Clive couldn’t quite temper his tone enough to fix it as tired as he was.

“Someone your age should at least know how to lace their boots. It’s no wonder your legs aggravated with how loose they were,” the man grouses from where he was watching Clive.

Clive tries not to bristle at the age comment but it’s true he had left his shoes loose when he left the room this morning, frustrated by his aching back and trembling hands.  

“It’s the cur--” Clive begins to tell the man that it’s not his fault and he’s not that old. That the curse made him older. But the words cut off in his throat and he is there grasping at his neck in startled panic as his throat closes and he struggles to get air in. The man jerks in alarm and goes to grab Clive, right as he is able to take a heaving gasp of air. He sits there fighting through the lingering feeling of choking and leans back in the green plush chair.

Otto stares at him in mild alarm. “Right... A curse can do that if there’s a clause not to talk about it embedded in the spell. Best to not try and say the like again,” the man cautions. “You alright?” He asks.

Clive nods shakily, exhaustion is well and truly setting in. “Thank you,” he mutters, unable to raise his voice from a whisper.

Otto nods, adds another log to the fire, and takes his leave.

Clive wakes up slowly, and then all at once. There had been gentle voices in the corner of the room gently pulling him from his sleep, and then his survival instincts kicked in and he was jolting up to see who was in the room with him. Otto and a woman with long red hair and a scar on her cheek where a brand would be were staring at him critically.

“Morning,” he says raspily. He tries to sit himself up from where he slumped over in his sleep in the chair. He pulls his leg off the pillows Otto got for him last night with it twinging in pain as he did. He goes to stand to greet them. The woman raises her hand that wasn’t holding a large bag in a motion for him to stop, and she points sternly at the chair to show that he was to remain seated.

“I’m Tarja,” the woman introduces herself. “I’m the physicker here.” She approaches Clive’s chair. “Otto says your leg is causing you pain, may I take a look?” Tarja’s tone suggested that she wasn’t asking permission.  

“Clive,” he introduces himself in return. “And It’s not too bad. The rest would have helped it. You don’t need to trouble yourself with it.”

The look on her face was the same one Otto gave him last night of flat disapproval and stubbornness.

He slowly nods at her. “It’s my knee,” he says, giving as much permission as he can for her to proceed.

She walks so she is standing closer and looks down at Torgal who was lying where she obviously intended to be. Torgal looks up at her, lets out a soft boof and rolls over for tummy rubs.

Clive snorts at that, and stifles a soft cough into his arm as it irritates his lungs which were still sore from yesterday’s trek and then choking. “Some guard dog you are,” he tells Torgal amused but reassured at his hound’s comfort with these people.

Tarja also snorts, crouches down and puts her bag to the side to give Torgal a few pats on the stomach. “What’s his name?” She asks.

“That’s Torgal,” he informs her. She nods, gives Torgal one last pat, and then more firmly commands, “Move, Torgal.”

Torgal gives a plaintive huff before he rolls back over and moves so he is sitting on Clive's other side. His head was level with the armrest of the chair so Clive reached over and gave him some scratches behind his ears.

Tarja kneels, taking Torgal’s place and with light and nimble hands she feels around his knee through the outside of his pants. When he hisses as her hands prod a more tender spot she gives him a look that shows just how cute she found his prior denials. She brushes her long hair over her shoulder and tilts her head back to yell at Otto who was still standing and watching in the corner.

“If you want to be helpful, go and get him something to eat,” she orders.

“Fine, fine…” the man grumbles. He gives Clive a firm once over, “Don’t you go causing problems for Tarja,” Otto orders him.

Tarja snorts derisively. “I think I can take the old man in a fight, Otto, if that’s your concern. Now go and get something for him to eat. Bring something for the dog too.”

Clive grits his teeth as his pride chafes at the words, no matter how true they are. Torgal leans over and gives his hand a small lick. Once Otto has left the room, Tarja turns her attention back to Clive.

“You have two options,” she informs him smartly, “You either take off the pants so I can get a proper look at what’s going on or I can cut them up to the knee which I promise will look exactly as stupid as you think.”

Clive grimaces properly now, but spending enough years in the barracks has him more or less desensitised from any embarrassment about the state of his dress, much less in front of a physicker. “I’ll take them off,” he tells her.

Again his pride takes a hit when she helps him stand, but thankfully she makes no attempt at helping him take off the pants. Once he was seated back in the chair she pulled his foot gently back onto the stack of pillows and started examining his knee. Even to his own eyes, he could see how unnaturally swollen and inflamed it was.

Tarja hums thoughtfully, takes his leg and gently tries to bend his knee. He grits his teeth at the pain but doesn’t make a sound. Gently she straightens it out and puts it back.

“I see some scarring on your knee, I take it you had surgery on it at some point?”

“Yeah, I took a fall when I was younger. My knee was out of commission for months,” he explains.

She nods. “Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do to fix this,” Tarja says, gesturing to his knee, confirming to him what he already knew. “But, I can make some remedies to help with the inflammation and the pain. I’m also going to wrap it to provide a bit more support,” she tells him, reaching into her bag, pulling out long bandages and beginning the process of wrapping it around his knee. “As your physicker, I’m ordering rest and elevation whenever you can. I will get someone to bring you some ice later to hold on to it.”

She gives him a look and Clive finds himself staring at her scar despite knowing it to be rude.

“Are you waiting for Cid?” She asks him.

“Otto says he can break curses,” Clive agrees, nodding.

She nods and rubs her cheek where the scar was, “He can, and even when not, can normally at least advise on how we might be able to break it ourselves, as was my case. A curse broken leaves a mark, you’ll be able to see who has managed it and who hasn’t once you get more situated into the Hideaway.”

“You chose to stay after you had broken it?” He asks her.

She nods, back to intently wrapping his leg. “I did. This place is my home, and these people are my family, besides they need a physicker on site.”

“When will I meet Cid?” He asks.

Tarja smiles dryly and shakes her head. “Impossible to say. He has a tendency to leave for days, sometimes weeks at a time. He always comes home eventually but he may not be back for a while.” She finishes up the wrapping and stands. “Well, how does that feel?” She asks.

Clive gently moves his leg, it feels more secure than it did before, with an even tension around it. A better compression job than most could do.

“Good, thank you.”

She nods, “Anything else wrong with you then?”

Clive shakes his head and goes to wave her off before she reaches out and snaps his wrist in her hand.

“Uh,” he says intelligently.

She scowls in return. “You didn’t say your hand was hurt,” she accuses.

“It’s not,” he defends before catching sight of the palms of his hands which were covered in dry blood and gravel from when he took a tumble yesterday. “It was just a few scratches,” he explains instead.

Tarja looks increasingly unimpressed as she lets go of his hand and walks over to a table in the room that has a bowl on it. She brings over the bowl and Clive can see that it is full of water. With a damp cloth hanging over the side, she takes his hands again and starts washing them to get the gravel and blood off.

“I can--” he begins to say only to stop at her firm scowl.

Once they are clean Tarja gives him a flat look and studies his hands. She applied a light salve to the deeper cuts, but seeing as they weren’t bleeding anymore seemed to decide anything more wasn’t necessary.

Otto came back as he was lacing his boots up after putting his pants back on. He carried a tray of food that he put down on the table in the middle of the room.

“Well?” He asks gruffly.

“He best keep off it as much as he can. Someone ought to find him a proper cane,” She informs Otto. Clive, under the watchful eye of Tarja, carefully makes his way over to the table and sits down with the other two as Otto unpacks the tray which has three covered bowls. Clive tosses the bone that was left over to Torgal who catches it in his mouth and sets to work biting down on it. The bowls end up being a simple but flavourful oatmeal with some raisins and nuts in it to make it more hearty.

“Is there anything I can do to be useful while I’m here?” He asks, looking at them both after they have all had something to eat. Tarja tilts her head to Otto in deference to his opinion.

“Let’s give you a tour of the place first and find you a corner to call your own. We can decide what there is for you to do after,” Otto decides.  

Clive nods and after the meal is all said and done Otto gathers all the bowls together and starts the slow process of walking Clive around the Hideaway. He stops first at the kitchens and dining room to return the bowls. The space was warm and welcoming with a few tables set around and a few people eating in groups. Already Clive could see that this was an actual community and not a collection of a few that Clive initially assumed.   

Otto introduces Clive to the chef, a man named Kenneth with a brand he wears proudly on his cheek. “The only two rules in the Fat Chocobo are that you must eat your food while it’s warm and that no one is allowed to leave here still hungry,” Kenneth tells him with a warm smile.

Clive nods and offers a small smile of his own. “Thank you for breakfast, it was good.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Kenneth says. “Make sure you stop by anytime you like, we always have something available, even if it’s just snacks.”

Clive nods and thanks him again before Otto moves them along. Torgal ends up dictating where they go next as he ends up sniffing around a trader’s stall.

“This your hound?” the woman asks gruffly as she gives him a few pats behind the ear.

“Yes. His name is Torgal.”

“Lady Charon, this is our newest addition, Clive.” Otto introduces them. “Clive, this here is the illustrious and economical Lady Charon.”

“Lady Charon,” Otto continues. “Do you have any canes available?” Charon gives Clive a critical look.

“I don’t know,” she says with a cock of her hip, “Does the old man have any gil?” She snarks.

“I do,” Clive bites out more than annoyed to be called old by a woman with as much grey hair as he has. Clive certainly was not jealous at how the older woman across from him didn’t seem to wear her age at all from her energy and movements.

“Well good for you,” says Charon. She turns around and putters around some cupboards. It was only Otto staying put that kept Clive from leaving. She turns back around and shows them a white cane.

“I’m not blind,” Clive says immediately.

The woman snorts. “Good for you,” she repeats dryly. “This is the only cane I have that would suit your height. Take it or leave it. Or better yet, bring your own damn cane next time.”

Clive considers continuing on without it but the walking stick had helped yesterday and his knee did ache. He pays the old crow her asking price.

They take off from her stall slightly faster now that Clive has the cane to support his leg, although it took some figuring out how to get the stride right. Torgal hangs back at the stall to get some more pets and attention, which Clive also isn’t jealous of, but eventually, Torgal comes bounding back with another bone hanging out his mouth. Clive rolls his eyes at the dog.

Otto introduces them to the forge master, a surly man named Blackthorne. Shows him where to find Tarja’s infirmary, at which point Tarja comes out with a small bag that clinks with sound glass bottles rattling against each other, and gives Clive the firm instructions to take on every morning. Otto brings him to the seamstress Hortense who offers to make him a new set of clothes that fit better than what he was wearing, then the botanist Martelle who was working on how to create a little garden on the airship, and finally brings him the small classroom that the kids stayed in with their tutor.

It was a relief when Clive was shown to a small side room with a simple archway opening into it. The room had a simple cot and table with not much else. Otto leaves him there with permission for Clive to explore at his leisure.

Clive sits down on the edge of the cot rubbing his aching knee. He tugs off his cloak and removes his knife, setting it on the small side table before laying down on the cot for a minute.

He must have fallen asleep because he woke up to Torgal’s wet nose pressing into his face and a wet lick to his cheek. Around his big furry head, Clive sees a short mess of blonde hair hiding around the corner of the archway from him.

“Hello,” he calls out, sitting up in the cot and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He watches as a small girl pokes her head out and gives him a cautious look.

“‘Ello,” she says in return. “Otto said we had someone new joining the Hideaway and that I shouldn’t bother him.”

“But obviously you decided you needed to see this new person for yourself?” Clive says, amused.

“That’s right!” The little girl declares with a wide mischievous grin. It was clear that she knew what she was doing was naughty and was excited to do it anyway. She steps into his room fully, evidently deciding Clive is safe enough.

“I’m not staying long,” he tells the girl, feeling the need to temper her expectations sooner rather than later.

“Ello, I’m not stayin’ long,” she says. “I’m Mid!”

Clive withholds a smile at her cheek. “My name is Clive.”

“Grandpa Clive!” Mid shouts gleefully.

“Just Clive!” He says hurriedly back.

“But you're old, which makes you a grandpa,” she says as if she had it all figured out.

“And you're young. Does that mean I should call you little girl Mid?”

Mid shakes her head furiously, her little braid flying wildly around her shoulders. “I’m not little!” She denies.

“So how about we meet in the middle; I call you Mid, and you call me Clive,” he reasons to the 10-year-old.

She nods reluctantly, “Alright, Clive.” Her eyes stray to Toragal and she takes a few steps towards him before looking back up to Clive to see if it was alright.

“That’s Torgal,” Clive introduces for the up-teenth time since coming to the Hideaway. “He likes scratches behind his ear.”

Mid takes it for the permission that it is and does just that. Torgal gives her a few sloppy kisses for her effort which pulled excited giggles from her.

“I have never had a pet before,” she tells him. “Where did you get him?”

“My dad rescued him in the Northern Territories when he was just a puppy and brought him back as a gift for me,” Clive tells her. The pang of longing for his home was easy to ignore.

“Da says I shouldn’t ask people what their curse is,” she informs him smartly. It was an obvious attempt at getting information from Clive that had him smiling despite himself.

“I can’t talk about it,” he tells her, remembering last night when his throat closed up.

“Oh,” she says disappointed. “You can’t tell my dad I asked because I didn’t ask. I just implied the question,” She drawls the last statement with the confidence of a child used to talking her way in and out of problems. Clive bites his lip in amusement at her wit.

“I don’t even know who your dad is,” he says dryly, to her obvious delight. “But even if I did, I think I can keep that between us,” he tells her conspiratorially, unable to stop himself from joining in her attempt at subterfuge.  

Mid beams at him, glad to have a partner in crime. “I can show you around the Hideaway,” she offers.

“Otto has already shown me about.”

“But he hasn’t shown you the cool places,” she says with emphasis on the fact that Otto has evidently only shown him the very lame parts of the Hideaway.

“Alright,” he says, which is how Clive found himself getting dragged around the Hideaway with Torgal by a child.

Mid shows him all her favourite spots including a hole in the back of Kenneth’s pantry where she sneaks in to get treats. She comes out of the hole with two apples, one of which she gives to Clive.

“They come from the trees in the Hideaway and taste bad,” she tells him. “My dad is weird because he actually likes them.”

True to Mid’s words the apples were tart and bitter but the petty theft must make it taste better as Mid eats it with vindictive and victorious glee despite the poor taste.

The next place Mid brings him is a small back hallway that has a small crack in the floor. She kneels down in front of it and gestures for Clive to do the same. Slowly Clive lowers himself down to the ground, weary of his knee. Despite all the walking from earlier, it wasn’t quite so painful now after following Mid around. The compression must be helping more than he expected. He lowers himself down so he can look into the crack in the floor.

He gasps as he sees shining, moving waves of water several feet below them. They had to be moving fast over the water’s surface. “We are moving!” he tells Mid shocked. Mid only nods as if this were an everyday occurrence.

“I think Dad said we were going down the coast to warmer weather. It’s cooler to see from the sun deck. But I am not allowed to go out there without an adult,” she tells him.

“I’m an adult,” he informs her.

She looks at him blankly before the statement clicks and she grabs his hand and hauls him up. He only stumbles a bit with his bad leg but steadies quick enough. Mid drags them out through back halls, only slowing enough to actually allow him time to use his cane as she brings him to a small nondescript side door.

He opens the door and the wind immediately starts pulling at him, his pale hair flying into his face and clothes pulling to the side. He drops his cane inside the door so it won’t get blown away in the wind and takes some steps out onto the sundeck. They were moving even faster than he expected over the water. The midday sun shone brightly overhead. Mid follows him out and runs up and over to the railing to look out across the water. Clive lurches forward when he sees this and instinctively runs over quickly to grab her shoulders and get a firm hand on her to keep her from falling or getting blown away by the wind that had already tugged her ribbon out of her. She turns back and grins at him wildly. Seaspray coats them both and Clive can smell the familiar scent of the office, soothing something inside of him.

“Fire and flames,” Clive breathes out, awestruck at how beautiful it was. He pushes his hair out of his face with his other hand as he adjusts his grip on Mid to be more secure.

“What?!” Mid yells out over the wind. Clive just shakes his head at her and continues to watch the moving of the ocean. Something tickled at him and he realised it was the sun. Clive has spent a lot of time sleeping today, more than he normally did, and while it’s hard to tell the time from inside the airship, it should be a lot later than midday. He would assume it was getting close to late afternoon, if not close to sunset. He scans the horizon and finds land not far off. It was obvious that it was all a long stretch of desert and the small town he could see seemed to be close to Boklad.

“We aren’t anywhere near Kanver anymore,” he says to Mid. Mid’s blank look says that she didn’t hear a word of it.

He takes one last glancing look at the ocean before he starts pulling her inside the Hideaway. She follows with a pout. Torgal barks at him looking more than a little wind ruffled and obviously not pleased to have been on the deck once they were safely back inside.

“We aren’t by Kanver,” he repeats from before.

“Oh, is that where you wandered in from? Kanver?” Mid asks curiously. Her hair was wild around her shoulders having been pulled out of its braid in the wind.

“The blighted lands by Kanver, yes,” Clive agrees. “But we aren’t--”

“What?” Mid cuts him off with the question. “Da never keeps the dial set to the Blights, and Otto doesn’t let anyone change it while he’s away. You shouldn’t have even been able to get in. Are you a wizard?” Mid asks curious.  

“Me?” Asks Clive.

“No, I meant Torgal,” says the brat. “Yes, you!”

“If I was a wizard I wouldn’t be Cu--” the words cut off in his throat and he finds himself curled over with his hand on his throat and the other holding him up against the wall as he finds himself choking for his breath. A small tentative hand lands on his back.

“Are you okay?” Mids asks urgently. “I can go get someone. Do you need me to get someone?”

Clive shakes his head as he gets a gasping breath in. Mid looks at him biting her lips and worried eyes.

“What do you mean dial?” Clive rasps out.  

“Come on, I’ll show you,” Mid says after a moment of silence and cautious eyes. She bends down and offers him his cane back from off the ground. They make their way slowly down the hall and Clive finds himself being led to the room he first entered into with the fire. She brings him down the small flight of stairs he struggled so much with last night and points out a small mechanism on the side of the door. His walking stick that he brought inside with him yesterday was leaning right beside it.  

“This is the Dial,” she tells him. It is a small colour wheel that matches the one on the wall Clive had watched Otto change last night. It was divided into four sections with a different colour on each side with an arrow currently pointed to the red section.

“We are moving right now in red so it’s best that we don’t open the door, but if we change it to green then we can see the blights,” Mid tells him as he twists the dial to green and opens the door. Clive steps through the door and sees the blighted lands that he had wandered in through. “Dad is the one who can program the door, so if you wanna know how it works you gotta ask him.”

“Snuck into your dad’s Solar to play with the door again, Mid?” Otto’s gruff voice calls out and he peers down at them from the top of the staircase.    

“I’m not playing with it, I’m just showing Clive how the door works,” she tells Otto petulantly.

“Right, and you weren’t playing with it before Clive came and wandered in either, were you?” Otto questions disbelieving.

“I wasn’t!” Mid argues back.

“I’m telling you now, Mid,” Otto tells her seriously. “Get away from that door and don't go playing with it again. It’s dangerous and you should know better. You can bet your blessings that I am telling your dad about this when he comes back. Now change it back to red now.” Mid does as she is told, pouting fiercely.

“I wasn’t playing with it,” she repeats moodily.

Otto scoffs, “To make matters worse, you play hooky from your afternoon classes and go bother Clive after I expressly told you not to,” Otto chastises her.

“The classes are boring!” Mid complains, “Miss Shirleigh was teaching us arithmetic. Da taught me arithmetic last year.”

“She was no bother,” Clive offers.

Mid gestures grandly to Clive, “See? I was no bother!”

Otto gives them both a chastising look then. “Well, it’s dinner time and we were wondering where you all had gone off to. So go on and get your butt moving before it gets cold.”

“Fine,” Mid grumbles. She takes the stairs two at a time with a dexterity that Clive misses. Her attempt to scuttle past Otto was foiled by the man grabbing her bicep as she tried to pass.

“What happened to your hair?” Otto asks her, tugging one of her wild flyaway strands.

“Torgal ate my hair band,” she tells Otto seriously.

Otto gives Clive a blank look as he pulls himself up the stairs. Mid gives Clive a pleading look to lie for her. Clive tries not to give him a guilty look. “Yeah,” he says awkwardly. “Torgal did... that. I can replace the hair tie.”

The look on both Mid’s and Otto’s faces was incredulous.

Otto gives Mid another look catching her expression before she can smooth it over. He sighs with all the force of a man tired of playing babysitter to a rambunctious child and drags a hand over his face. “Never mind,” Otto decides. “I don’t want to know.”

“Wow, Clive,” Mid stage-whispers to him. “You are a terrible liar.”

Otto snorts loudly from in front of them but doesn’t say anything further.  

Dinner was an interesting affair as Mid was still pouting from getting in trouble with Otto. Dinner was a simple helping of bread, some seasoned chocobo and greens which Mid pushed around her plate. Otto spent the meal telling Clive more about the workings of the Hideaway, while Clive spent the meal encouraging Mid to sit back down and finish her plate whenever she got up and was bored of sitting at the table. More than once she tried to feed Torgal the vegetables under the table, which Clive caught and stopped every time. Her petulance at eating the greens reminded Clive of Joshua so much his chest ached a bit. The difference was that Mid was much more carefree and happy than Joshua had been as a child and Clive couldn’t help but think how that might have changed had their mother been any different.

“Clive,” Otto says rather abruptly, “Cid may be gone for a few weeks yet. You said you were interested in things you could do in the meantime. How do you feel about helping out with keeping an eye on the kids? I know Shirleigh has trouble keeping the focus of both the younger and older ones. She would appreciate the help.”

“I don’t know,” Clive says slowly. “I can’t say I have much experience with children outside of watching over my little brother and adoptive sister.”  

Otto gestures towards Mid. “You seem to be doing more than fine with her. Normally, Cid is the only one able to get her to sit at the table for any length of time.”

“She’s a good kid,” Clive says in lieu of anything else to say.

“I’m not a kid!” Mid complains loudly but turns an excited expression onto Clive once she realises the topic of conversation. “But yes! Please Clive! You should do it! I’ll introduce you to everyone!” She says positively cheered by the prospect.

“If you think it would be a good idea?” Clive agrees tentatively.

At Otto’s resolute nod, it was decided.

Chapter Text

“Clive,” Mid whined, “I’m done. Can we go for a walk now?” 

Clive smiles and makes his way over to the table she was sitting at. “I don’t know. Let’s take a look to see how you’ve done,” He tells her.

He sits down at the table and grabs her stack of papers to flick through. The maths was done correctly for the few questions she had deigned to answer. As far as he could tell the girl was well beyond her years with the harder disciplines in a way that Clive had never been as a child. 

When Otto and Shirleigh had been first preparing him for what was to come, they had nothing about complaints regarding Mid in the classroom. However, upon Clive’s first day joining Shirleigh it had been easy to identify the problem. There were about 8 young children between the ages of 4 to 7, and Mid was the only older child of the bunch. Shirliegh was understandably flustered focusing on the younger ones while Mid was often left to just do work on her own as she was more self-sufficient. As Shirleigh was unable to spend more time with Mid, the work was often under-levelled to Mid’s intelligence. Between the minimal supervision and boring work it was no wonder that Mid would either act up in the classroom or wander off just as often.

Shirleigh had spoken with Clive at length about his education and how he intended to teach and it was ultimately decided that Clive would watch over Mid’s studies as his approach to learning was more advanced than what the younger kids would be able to follow. For her part, Mid seemed especially happy with this outcome. 

“These questions aren’t done,” he points out to her. 

Mid gives him a familiar pout. “But it’s not fun,” she justifies, “I wanna go do something fun. Can we go to Da’s Solar?”  

Clive has to withhold a roll of the eyes. Mid was well and truly on her way to becoming a little grease monkey with her need to tinker. There has been more than once that he found her in her father’s Solar tinkering with some metal at his desk. But he remembers being forced at a desk while his tutor drilled words at him when he was a child. Honestly, he couldn’t say what most of his lessons were about anymore due to the monotony of it. 

“Tell you what,” he tells her. “How about we go to your dad’s Solar and we do some of your maths there. How about that?” 

Mid peers at him with suspicious eyes but she was already hopping up from the bench to get moving. “It will still be boring there,” she cautions him. 

“Do you want to bet?” he asks her with a smirk. 

Mid lights up at the challenge. “Yes!” She shouts. “If I’m right I don’t have to do these worksheets ever again.” 

Clive snorts again. “If you are right then you don’t have to do the maths work tomorrow. How about that?”

“Two days,” she bargains and Clive concedes to her demands.  

Shirleigh looks up when she sees Clive getting up and grabbing his cane. He smiles and waves her off with the work papers he had picked up after Mid who had long since bounded out of the room. Shirleigh goes back to helping the other students with their work and he makes his way after Mid. 

Torgal keeps pace with him as he follows behind Mid who is all but skipping a few paces in front of him. It was a long walk to the Solar but Clive found that he didn’t mind it as much when he was with the girl, her enthusiasm and energy seemed to be infectious. Mid, to her credit, would stop often to wait for Clive to catch up with her.

They make it to the Solar and immediately Mid is dragging the green cushioned chair over from the fireplace to the desk. She gestures grandly to it at Clive as she proceeds to clamber into her dad’s wooden desk chair. Clive smiles grudgingly charmed by her thoughtfulness. 

“Alright,” he tells her as he sinks into the chair. He tries not to be bothered by the chair being lower to the table than the desk chair making it awkward to work on. “Grab your metal pieces,” he orders her and Mid dutifully goes and collects all her tinkering bits. 

“What are you working on right now?” He asks her. 

“I’m making a motor!” She tells him excitedly, “I wanna make it so that a wheelchair can move on its own.”

“A motorised wheelchair?” Clive asks, surprised. “Why?”  

“Well, you're not getting any younger, Clive,” Mid tells him with a cheeky grin. 

Clive frowns at her, trying not to let the words of a rambunctious eleven-year-old sting.

She catches his expression and her face morphs into something much more remorseful. 

“Sorry, Clive,” she tells him sincerely. “I guess that was mean. Mr. Weller is an old man and he needs to be pushed around in a wheelchair. I thought it would be good to make something so it’s easier for him, and other people who have trouble walking, to get around.” 

Clive lets out a breath through his nose and reaches over to ruffle Mid’s hair. “Thank you for the apology,” he tells her knowing well enough to encourage good behaviour in kids, his pride about it be damned. “And that’s a kind reason for wanting to make a motorised wheelchair. I’m sure that will be very helpful to a lot of people.” 

He smirks as she starts swatting at his hand in her hair. He turns it into a light noogie, the same that he would do to Joshua when he was younger. Mid yelps at the treatment and when he pulls his hand back, Mid stares at him with a wide-eyed wild grin.

“So how are you planning on making this motor?” He prompts her. 

Mid dives into the parts grabbing at different pieces fiddling to connect them and explaining what each of the different pieces are and what they do. Clive lets her go on for a while before he reigns her in and points to a metal. 

“This is supposed to turn right? How much force do you think we have to put on it to make it turn?” he asks her. 

As her blank look Clive elaborates. “We apply force onto things to make things move,” he explains and makes an example of turning the piece of metal with his fingers. “You want it to spin at a certain speed, right? Well, if it’s going to spin then we need to apply a certain amount of force to it to make it spin. How do you think we should go about figuring that out?” 

Mid has a look in her eyes that shows that she understands Clive’s point and has a new puzzle to solve. “Do we need to make an equation like in the problem sheets?” Mid asks with a tone that shows she already knows the answer is yes.

Clive smiled at her and with that, they were off picking apart the different parts of the machinery in front of them and discussing the different equations and formulas they would need to solve it. It stayed mostly hypothetical as Clive couldn’t readily remember most of the formulas his tutors taught him all those years back beyond simple geometry and angles which Mid took too with swimming confidence. 

They had been at it for hours as Clive was unwilling to pull Mid away from the work she was so invested in. He hadn’t seen her take to anything else with as much enthusiasm as this. 

“Alright, Mid,” Clive tells her, pulling her attention away from the piece of paper and numbers she had been puzzling over. “It’s close to dinner time, so start putting your things away and we will finish up for today.”

“Can we do this again tomorrow, Clive?” She begs him. 

He grins at her, “I take it I won the bet then?” 

Mid pouts at him but nods anyway. 

“Alright, tomorrow then,” he tells her and Mid beams back at him.     

That night after dinner Clive finds himself going through the small library Shirleigh kept in their small classroom. He was able to find what he was looking for, a book of advanced technical maths. He grabs it off the shelf and immediately starts going through it to see what he might be able to show Mid and spends the next several hours with a dim glow of candlelight reviewing the different theories and marking off what Mid would find most interesting. 

It was another week of this, sitting in Cid’s Solar looking at metal tinkering bits with Mid and going through the textbook he found with her. As expected, despite it being closer to a university text, Mid kept up with the theory easily, grasping it better than Clive himself did most of the time. More than once Mid re-explained the concepts to Clive after he had apparently done an inadequate job himself.

It was another such day with him in the green chair, and Mid working on formulas and bits at the desk when there was a sound of something shifting and Mid was looking up and over towards the door as the Dial changed on its own from red to blue. Clive watches as he can see the head of a man stepping through the door at the bottom of the stairs.

“Da!” Shouts Mid leaping up and throwing herself out of the chair and down the stairs to wrap her arms around the man.

“Hello, pumpkin,” The man says with a gravelly laugh and a warmly returned hug. “Wasn’t expecting you to be in my study to greet me.” 

Clive stands up and takes a few steps towards the stairs to see him more clearly. 

“You--” Starts Clive, mouth agape as he stares. The man was unmistakable with his broad shoulders, purple coat, coarse stubble, striking green eyes and gravelly voice.   

The man looks up and over at Clive. The man’s arms tightened on Mid almost imperceptibly before relaxing just as fast as he let her go and made his way up the stairs.

“Well, hello to you too,” says the stranger. Mid wasn’t letting go of the man’s hand. “And who might you be?” The man asks. 

“You,” Clive hesitates a second, thoroughly off guard and uncertain of what to say to the man who had whisked him up and out of an alley to walk him home across the stars. Clive realises then that the man wouldn’t recognize him, nor should he. It’s not like he looks like he once did. Clive feels an uncomfortable pulsing of shame and embarrassment in his gut.    

“Eloquent man, you,” says Cid. 

“Da, this is Clive,” Mid introduces, “He wandered in from the blights a couple of weeks ago and has been teaching me maths that don’t suck butt.”

“Watch your language, young lady,” her dad tells her with a grin.

“I heard you say worse!” Mid argues impishly.   

“Couldn’t be me,” the man says, laughing. “Everyone knows I’m a paragon of virtue and gentlemanly behaviour.” 

“That’s not what Lady Charon says,” Mid points out. 

The man was grinning but still looking at Clive again with assessing eyes.

“You must be Cid,” says Clive finally. He has to withhold a grimace at how lame it sounded to his own ears. 

“That’s right,” Cid says with a wry grin. “So tell me, what’s this about you wandering in and out of the blights?” 

“I was passing through the blights to get to the port north of Kanver. I needed a place to stay the night so Otto welcomed me in. He said that you might be able to help me with my--” Clive cuts himself off before the words can be stolen from him by force. “...my problem.” Clive gestures blandly towards his cursed brand. 

“Aye,” says Cid after a short pause. “That I might.” The man takes a few steps towards Clive and Torgal stands up from beside him and barks playfully at Cid, his tail wagging happily. The hound paces forward and starts sniffing furiously at Cid’s pant legs. 

“That’s Torgal,” says Mid helpfully.  

“Hello to you too, Torgal,” Cid says with a laugh. He lets go of Mid’s hand to lean down to give Torgal a few pats around the ears before straightening up and stepping around Clive’s hound, Cid comes to a halt just a few paces in front of Clive. 

“May I?” Asks Cid. 

“Uhh, sure,” says Clive, not entirely sure what he was giving the man permission to do.  

The man gives him a wry smile, and steps forward so he is fully inside Clive’s space. Clive goes to step away from him but Cid uses one hand to grab Clive by the shoulder and keep him in place. Cid then uses his teeth to pull the glove off his other hand. With his bare hand, Cid gently reaches up and brushes his fingers over Clive’s brand. Clive tries to jerk away from him when he feels a shock of lightning go through him at the touch, but the man’s grip is tight and sure. 

The moment holds and Cid lets out a low almost growl from between his clenched teeth that still had his glove hanging from between them. Clive feels a shudder run down his spine at the sound. From this close Clive could see just how piercing the man’s sharp green eyes were, much like they had been all those weeks ago. 

“Can you fix it, dad?” Mid asks behind them. 

Cid lets go of Clive and makes his way over to his desk, pulling on his glove again while he does so. He sits down in the chair and gives a long look at the metal pieces and chicken scratch maths equations that fill the desk. Clive feels vaguely unsteady but is unwilling to sit down in his chair next to the man. He grabs his cane that was resting across against the desk and holds onto it with shaky hands.  

Cid turns to address Mid, “Pumpkin, it’s getting late. Why don’t you hop off to the Fat Chocobo while Clive and I talk specifics? Let Otto know I’m back and will be around for a while.” 

“But--” Mid begins to argue. 

“No buts,” her father cuts her off. “I’ll come to find you after Clive and I finish up here. You can tell me about everything I missed then.”

Mid pouts for a moment more before realising that she won’t be winning this fight. 

“You’ll come to have dinner with us, right Clive?” She asks, turning hopeful eyes onto him. 

Clive can’t help the frown, still unsteady by everything that has happened in such a small portion of time. 

“Wouldn’t you rather spend time with your dad alone? It’s been a few weeks since you’ve seen him.”

“I like spending time with you too,” says Mid and Clive feels his heart tug. 

“Only if it’s alright with your dad.” 

“Isn’t any bother to me,” says Cid. “So there you have it young lady, off you hop now. Ta-ta.”

Mid shuffles dramatically out of the room to the amusement of both of them. The man has shuffled away Mid’s papers and metal pieces to the corner of his desk and has lit a cigar. He catches Clive’s eye.

“Would you care for one?” he offers, gesturing to the tin on the table and Clive shakes his head, never one for tobacco even when the other Shields would goad him into taking a few drags in their off time. “You can take a seat anywhere you like,” Cid tells him, gesturing around.

Clive shakes his head and shifts his position so it is more sure-footed. “Can you break it?” Asks Clive, desperate for the answer.  

“You have a hell of a curse on you, lad,” the man tells him. 

Clive wasn’t sure whether he should bristle at being called lad or not. On one hand, it felt demeaning on the other, it was nice not to be called grandpa like all the children except for Mid have taken to calling him. 

“You can’t fix it then,” he says. 

“Didn’t say that,” Cid denies. “But it’s no simple thing either. It’s got layers to it that will take time to unravel and figure out.” 

“So what does that mean?” Asks Clive. 

“It means, if you’re looking for my advice, that is, you stay here at the Hideaway and give me some time to work on understanding and breaking down that curse of yours. I can’t tell you for sure what the outcome will be for doing so, but I can promise I’ll do my best to help.”

Clive bites his lip, ignoring the disappointment in his chest but nods his head acquiescing to the plan. 

The man offers him a crooked tired smile and takes another deep drag of the cigar. “I know it’s not ideal. Sorry about that, lad.”

“What will you need to do to study it?” Asks Clive, ignoring the apology. 

“We are going to need to get familiar with being close in each other’s space and comfortable with some light touching too. I gotta get a feel for that curse of yours. I will need some proper time to do so.”

“Light touching?” Clive asks, uncertain of the man’s tone.

Cid raises his eyebrows at him. “Daddy will still be able to walk you down the aisle in white on your wedding day, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” the man has the gall to tease.   

Clive gapes and to his horror feels himself blush horrendously at the gauche comment. 

“That’s not-” Clive cuts himself off before he can embarrass himself further. “Fine,” he says between gritted teeth. “You can do what you need. Can we start as soon as possible?” 

Cid snorts seemingly amused at Clive’s fluster. The man nods slowly, “Alright. Come to the Solar tomorrow evening and we will start then.” 

Clive nods and the silence lingers a moment longer before Cid stands up from his desk, stubs out the last bit of his cigar, and claps his hands together. 

“Right then,” the other man says, “I reckon Mid will be waiting for us at dinner.”  

The dinner last night with Cid and Mid had been odd, but thankfully the men didn’t have to interact with each other much as Mid controlled the conversation. She went through everything she had found interesting over the last few weeks while Cid had been away. Most of the conversation seemed to centre around Clive to his chagrin, but Cid didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, just happy to hear his daughter talk. 

Clive didn’t see either at dinner tonight which he wasn’t sure whether he should be grateful about or not about. Clive could only hope he would find Cid in his Solar as the man had promised to start working on breaking his curse tonight. He stands there now in front of the door trying to ignore his uncertainty about it. Torgal nudges his head into Clive’s thigh and gives him a small bark of encouragement. Clive knocks on the door. 

“Come in,” the muffled holler comes from the other side of the door.

He pushes open the door and Torgal follows in behind him. Mid was on the floor in front of the fireplace between the chairs working on her motor with a furrowed brow. Cid was looking up at Clive from his desk, tall stacks of books on either side of him at the desk.

“Welcome,” the man greets Clive roughly before turning his attention to his daughter. “Off you go, pumpkin,” he tells Mid. “I told you: you can only stay until Clive gets here. Now you gotta go and do your schoolwork for the evening.” 

“I don’t have any work to do,” Mid argues. 

Clive snorts and gives her a pointed look. “So you’ve already read that part of the play I asked you to, have you?”    

Mid pouts at him. 

“None of that,” Clive tells her firmly. “You asked to finish up early today so you could play with Torgal. I agreed on the condition that you do the reading I told you to. If you don’t do the reading tonight, I won’t have reason to trust you to do so next time you ask to finish up early.”  

Mid looks appropriately chastised and grumbles out a small agreement. Clive watches her stand, leaving the motor parts strewn around and going to make her way out of the room. 

“Are you forgetting something?” Cid asks her dryly. 

She stops and looks at him vaguely confused, before skipping over to her dad, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and kissing him on the cheek. 

“I love you?” she asks. 

 Cid laughs, presses a kiss to her forehead and then ruffles her hair.

“I meant for you to clean up your mess, but yes, I love you too.”  

“Oh,” she says. “Fine.” Cid and Clive watch as she generally just shoves her pieces of metal onto a table in the corner of the room. She drags her feet over towards the door and stops with a hand on the handle.   

“Goodnight Da. Goodnight Clive,” she bids them both. 

Both Cid and Clive say their goodnights in return and she closes the door behind her. 

“Sorry about that,” says Cid. 

Clive shakes his head, “Don’t worry about it.” 

“Why don’t you sit down and get comfortable? This will likely take some time,” Cid cautions him.  

Clive hesitates for only a moment before nodding and taking a seat in the green chair he normally takes whilst in the Solar. 

“Care for a glass of wine?” Offers Cid making his way over to a cabinet and pulling out two goblets. Clive watches as Cid pours them both a cup, not waiting for Clive’s response. “I’ll not have it said that I’m a bad host.” 

“Thanks,” says Clive, accepting the glass from Cid after the man had taken a seat in the orange chair next to him. Clive takes a sip, it wasn’t the best wine but it certainly wasn’t a poor cup either. “How do we start?”

“Well,” says Cid. “I will need to feel the curse of yours again, probably more than once if I’m being honest. Just a teach of the cheek should do. Then I start pouring over my books and making notes.” 

“Okay,” says Clive. 

Cid takes a large drink from his goblet before giving Clive a dry smile and slipping off his glove. Cid reaches over and gently presses his fingertips to Clive’s brand. Again a spark of electricity shoots through Clive when Cid does so but beyond that he can’t feel much of anything aside from the man’s hand on his face. The man withdraws his hand with a thoughtful frown and makes his way back over to his desk where he begins writing notes down in a journal. Clive sits and watches as he works. Once Cid had written enough, he would come back over to Clive and the process would repeat. Occasionally, Cid would go through his stacks of books until he would find a large tome and crack it open, flipping through the pages of the book quickly. 

For Clive’s part, he would sit in silence, adding the occasional log to the fireplace and poking life into it when necessary. Eventually, Cid decided he was done for the night and advised Clive to make his way back to his room to get some rest.   

“Did you read the act of the play I told you to?” Clive asks Mid. 

“I tried, Clive,” Mid says earnestly, “but I couldn’t focus on the words. I don’t like plays; they are too boring to read,” Mid says, upset.

“What’s boring about them?” Clive asks.

“They are just words on paper of people talking.” 

Clive snorts, “All books are just words on paper.”

“And some are more interesting than others,” Mid agrees seriously. Clive huffs out a small laugh, shakes his head and considers Mid’s complaints.

“Plays weren’t meant to be read,” he agrees truthfully.

“So I don’t need to read them?” She asks eagerly. 

“No, you have to read them,” he says. “Just not how you have been.” 

Mid frowns at him displeased, “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Clive says, pulling the script towards himself and cracking it open to the right act. “That I will be the dashing and daring young Lord Soloman and you will be the demure and darling Lady Sophia of the King’s Court.” 

“I want to be Soloman! I’m dashing and daring!” Mid immediately objects. 

Clive can’t help his laugh and shake of his head but if Mid was going to play along he might as well meet her where she was at. 

“Alright, Lord Soloman. You begin,” he says with a laugh and gestures to the play that he had set down between them. 

Mid did speak out the words, haltingly and awkwardly at first clearly uninterested in engaging in the play. When Clive took over his role of Lady Sophia he pitched his voice into a falsetto and did his best to mimic a womanly voice, “Lord Soloman, if you wanted my attention you had only need but ask, speaking out against my family in court was unnecessary.” 

As he expected, Mid burst into giggles immediately. “Clive!” She shrieks delightedly. 

“Lord Soloman, I haven’t a clue what you mean. I am simply a young lady of the court,” he teases her. 

Mid giggles and looks down at the book. This time when she resumes her lines she drops her voice down into a baritone, her chest pushing out proudly as she does so. Her face was twisted into a scowl. Clive can only assume the scowl is probably Mid’s best attempt at mimicking Clive’s normal expression based on her mischievous eyes. 

As they go through the play Clive watches as Shirleigh moves the younger kids over to watch them. When new characters get added Shirleigh takes over voicing them adding her own silly voices to add to it all. Eventually, Mid had a dramatic monologue where she stood out of her chair and dramatically read out her part from on top of the table to the other children’s delight. The children were a rapt audience that called out when something surprising happened, laughed when something funny did, and cried out in dismay at the sad parts. Inadvertently, he made it through the whole play with Mid, although he only intended to do a few acts with her. 

“That was so much fun, Clive,” Mid tells him after. 

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he tells her warmly. “My uncle always took me to the theatre when I was a child. It was always a really special place for me.” 

“Do you have a favourite play, Clive?” Mid asks. 

“I do. The Saint and the Secretary was always my favourite,” Clive tells her. 

“Can we read that one next?” 

Clive looks down at Mid who was peering up beside him from the table and he can’t help but give her a warm smile. It was moments like this where his age didn’t feel so crushing. 

“I would like that,” he says and Mid beams up at him. 

The next evening that Clive found himself in Cid’s Solar, it went much the same with an oppressive silence smothering them. It was an awkward feeling, to say the least, so when Cid sat next to him and cupped his cheek, Clive finally broke the silence. 

“Why do you do this?” 

Cid removes his hand, surprised at the interruption. “Magic is a physical thing, I need to touch it to understand it.” 

Clive looked at him blankly for a second not understanding the relation to what he asked before it clicked and he was shaking his head. 

“No, I mean why do you try to break people’s curses?”

Cid gives him a long look. Sitting this close to him Clive could smell the heady tobacco and spiced cologne that the man wears. 

“Not much to it. It’s just the right thing to do,” Cid says at last. 

“I don’t know much about Waloed,” Clive confesses having realised his understanding of magic was uncomfortably little quite a while ago. “But most of the people here came from Waloed, right? Most were Cursed at some point, and those who weren’t knew people who were. I get the feeling that there aren’t many wizards out there like you,” Clive says.  

Cid was silent a moment before he shook his head, “Aye, almost all men who have access to a Crystal to use magic got it from the King’s court. Barabas Tharmr doesn’t care much for kindness, just strength and power, creating the world in his supposed God’s vision.”  

“I haven’t seen you use a crystal,” Clive points out.  

“Shoved it up my ass,” Cid says with a sharp grin. The man reaches forward and cups Clive’s cheek and the conversation stops there for the moment. 

Once Cid had let go of him and moved back to his desk, Clive opened up the conversation again.

“You didn’t really answer before. Why do you do it? Why create the Hideaway?”

Cid looks up and over to Clive from where he is opening a large tome. 

“As I said,” Cid repeats. “It was the right thing to do. These people are good people and have been given a shit hand by their King, the man who was supposed to protect them. The least I could do was try and help them live a life free of the corruption of magic.”

“Most countries are fighting for a chance at wielding magic like Waloed: Rosaria, Sanbreque, Dhalmekia, all of them,” Clive points out, “Yet you call it corruption. You think the world would be better without it?” 

“I understand your defence of it,” Cid says with a sarcastic bite. “Magic has certainly made your life easier, hasn’t it?”

Clive scowls at him and the reminder of why he’s here, “Point taken. Do you have a plan to get rid of it then?” 

“What?” Asks Cid, incredulous. “Do I have a--? No.” Cid shakes his head like he doesn’t even understand why Clive would ask such a thing. 

“Getting rid of magic is simple in theory,” Cid says finally. “You probably know the history of the Mothercrystals as well as I do. At one point all of Valisthea had access to magic but the crystals were soon destroyed due to human greed and magic was limited to Waloed, the location of the last remaining Mothercrystal. Destroy the Mothercrystal, and eliminate magic. But that’s not feasible anymore, Tharmr has built his castle around the Crystal. It is as protected as you can get, not to mention the beasts he has surrounding it for good measure.”

“I see,” says Clive, for a lack of something better.

“Look,” says Cid, “The world we live in is piss poor with countries warring over the ability to use and manipulate magic against others. So long as there is magic, people will be hurt and abused by it. My goal is simple, heal the hurts the best I can and create a place where everyone might live and die as equals away from it all.” 

“There are worse goals to strive for,” Clive says at last.

“Clive,” Shirleigh approaches him after the kids have all been dismissed for the late afternoon. 

“Yes?” He asks.

She sits down on the bench next to Clive where he is still going through Mid’s thoughts about Lord Soloman and his quest for revenge. 

“I’ve noticed you have had a lot of success with Mid recently in getting her to focus on her work. I have never seen her this excited and engaged with the work before,” Shirleigh says. 

“She is a smart girl and eager to learn, provided you can help her see the value in the material.”

“You do that through more hands-on learning, correct?” 

“That’s right,” Clive agrees. 

“I see,” says Shirleigh, pushing her hair back and out of her eyes. “I was wondering if you had any ideas on something we might be able to do with the younger children to get them involved similarly?”

Clive considers it, “What do you have them working on right now?” 

“Simple fractions.”

“We could ask Kenneth about having them work with him in the kitchen. Teach them both about cooking and how we can measure different ingredients using fractions to make food. Mid would probably enjoy it too.”

Shirleigh gives him a wide smile, “I think that sounds like a good idea” 

Kenneth ended up being thrilled to have all their little hands joining him in the kitchen. He ended up teaching them how to make a simple cookie recipe while Shirleigh and Clive helped them understand the practical maths applications of it. The children were beyond excited about the lesson and spent the remainder of the afternoon eating the fruits (or rather cookies) of their labour and asking when they could do something like that again. 

Clive’s only regret was when Shirleigh asked him to speak to Lady Charon about teaching the kids about stall tending and counting currency.

Things gradually got more comfortable between Cid and Clive as they spent more time together in the evenings. Conversation flowed more easily as Clive understood the man more. Cid was an honest man, with a generally straightforward approach to problems. Clive’s curse seemed more complicated than most and it vexed Cid to figure it out, but the longer he spent with Clive the more determined he seemed to be.

“Mid would never forgive me if I didn’t get you sorted out, lad. Greagor only knows that you are well on your way to usurping me as her favourite person,” Cid told him with an easy grin and a teasing twinkle in his eye one day. 

Clive feels himself flush, “I must not be assigning her enough work then.”

“Just enough, I reckon.” 

“I-,” Clive cuts himself unsure if he’s allowed to ask what he was intending. 

Cid raised his brows at him from where he was standing at the bookshelf. 

“Stop me, if this is out of line,” Clive starts, “But I haven’t met Mid’s mother.”

Cid was already shaking his head, “And you’re not going to. I found Mid abandoned in a forest in Waloed about a decade ago. She was just a small crying babe, tucked in between some wild pumpkins. Took her home with me and the rest was history. Best decision I ever made.”

Clive feels the frown settle with the story. He knew that children get abandoned, but to think of Mid as a baby out there alone didn’t sit well with him. 

“She’s lucky you came by,” Clive says. 

“No,” disagrees Cid. “I’m the lucky one. I don’t dare to think what man I’d be today without her.” 

Evidently, Cid decides he is done with this more serious conversation because he flashes Clive a teasing grin and asks, “What about you, lad?”

“No,” says Clive, confused. “I haven’t found a gourd child, yet.” 

Cid snorted loudly at that, “Good to know, but I meant more if you had a lady waiting for you at home?”

Clive’s frown turns into a scowl as he shakes his head. Clive never had an interest in pursuing women and so long as he was dedicated to his service to Rosaria, his father wasn’t considering marrying him off. It didn’t stop Clive’s mother from complaining about his use to the family running short. His best qualities, his mother would never tire of telling him, were his bloodline and pretty face. Only one of which remained for Clive now. 

“No,” he says curtly. 

“No?” Asks Cid. “A fine gentleman like you should have women swooning.” 

“As far as I’m aware, women prefer someone young and handsome. Not to mention I prefer-” Clive cuts him off from saying anything more indicting.  

Cid hums and closes the book he was picking through to wander over to where Clive was sitting.  

“Might be right about that,” Cid agrees. “But trust me, if you dress the part it takes years off your appearance.” 

Clive scowls at him and Cid grins back cockily, “Take that cane for example. Give it here to me.” 

Clive does not hand him the cane, hating already that he has to use one and not wanting to draw any more attention to it. Cid was apparently not prepared to let the conversation drop as he stepped forward and grabbed it from its place leaning against Clive’s chair himself. 

“See this?” Cid says flourishing the white stick. “This is an old man's cane. It reeks of the scent of the decrepit and miserable elderly.” 

“Thanks,” says Clive with a bitter snarl. He lurches up and out of his chair to try and grab the cane back but Cid dances back and out of the way.   

“I think we can do better than this, don’t you?” Asks Cid rhetorically.  

“Fuck you,” says Clive. “Give me the cane.” 

Clive’s harsh words only seem to make Cid grin broader, pleased for some unknown reason. 

“Alright, old chap. Take your cane,” Cid says and throws the cane at Clive. Clive instinctively goes to catch it but as it leaves Cid’s hands it starts sparking an ominous purple. Clive yelps and his hands jerk back away from it as he remembers how the silver-hair wizard had done something similar with his sword. It hits his chest and falls to the ground.

He looks down as the sparks dissipate. His cane had been large and clunky, obvious to the eye what it was and impossible to ignore. Now the cane lying on the floor was sleek and painted a cool black with a curving leather handle that looked like it would fit well into Clive’s hand. Slowly Clive bends down to pick it up and marvels at how light it was compared to the other one. It looked like something the young nobles in court would use to play at being refined. Clive twists the cane in his hand and sees a light red carving, the rising Phoenix, the symbol of Rosaria.

“See,” says Cid, “You are looking younger already,”

Clive ignores the jab, still looking at the cane with surprise. 

“How did you know I was Rosarian?” Clive asks. 

“Your accent isn’t light, lad. Not exactly a stretch to figure out where you come from,” Cid says with a shrug as he sits back down at his desk and looks to get back to work. 

“...Thank you,” Clive says grudgingly. The cane was miles nicer than the one he had been using and he was sure it would rub at his ego-less as well. 

“Don’t thank me,” says Cid, not looking up from his books. “You can thank the cane when you start getting some pretty lad’s tail.”

Clive feels his face flush red as he stutters out a denial and Cid laughs at him.

“Clive!”

Clive bolts awake just in time to catch and soften the blow of an eleven-year-old’s knee digging into his stomach as she clambers on top of him in his cot. Torgal was barking at Mid and coming over to give her big wet dog kisses on her face. This doesn't really help Clive as Mid scrambles to squirm away from his dog, but eventually, she falls into the crack between the edge of his cot and the wall and she looks up at him giggling as breathless as Clive was himself after he was winded by the force of a small child projectile.    

“Hello Mid,” he says.

“Clive!” Mid repeats beaming at him excitedly. “Da says he’s gonna take me into town today. He said you can come with us if you wanna.” 

“Going into town?” He asks. “To do what?” 

“Exploration,” Mid says seriously. “Plus Da says he has errands to run and could use some extra hands for. So get up already!” 

“Well, get off me then,” says Clive back. Mid wiggles her body out of the crevice and clambers over him again. She shouts that he has to get ready quickly and goes running off with Torgal at her heels to most likely harangue her father while Clive gets dressed.

Clive smiles and gets up to get ready to go out. Hortense had, after a week of him being there, dropped off a few new shirts and pairs of pants that she said suited him. Clive had personally thought they were too old man-esque but it was hard to argue with his appearance being what it was. The new cane, even a few weeks old now, was still a much-welcomed improvement. He even finds himself leaving the blasted thing in his room increasingly often as the strength in his knee and hands returns to him. Clive grabs it today assuming he will need to do more walking while out at the market.  

Cid, Otto and Mid were already seated in the Fat Chocobo having breakfast when Clive got there. 

He grabs a serving of porridge from Kenneth and sits down at his usual spot beside Mid. Clive generally ended up eating breakfast with Mid and Cid mainly due to Mid’s insistence that he join them every morning. Otto was known to join occasionally but it was by no means a common occurrence. 

“Hortense needs more bolts of cloth; here’s her list. Kenneth has also asked that you pick up spices for him to refill his pantry,” Otto is telling Cid gruffly, shoving a list of paper into the man’s hands, most likely with a grocery list of things that need to be picked up.   

“Aye, I heard you the first ten times. I reckon I can buy some supplies,” Cid bitches back good-naturedly with an easy grin.

“Hurry up and eat Clive! I want to go,” Mid says excitedly. She hadn’t stopped fidgeting since Clive sat down at the table. He watches as she stands up from the bench about to wander away. He grabs her bicep before she can leave and gently pulls her down so she is seated at the table again. 

“I think you need to finish your breakfast first,” he tells her dryly looking at the half-eaten bowl of porridge she was attempting to leave. Raisins and nuts seem to make up the majority of the bowl, leaving Clive to guess she had done her best to eat around them. 

“Finish your breakfast, pumpkin. We aren’t leaving until you do,” Cid agrees. 

“But I don’t like raisins,” Mid says petulantly.

“You like grapes,” points out Otto. 

“Grapes are round and plump. Raisins are small and wrinkly. They may share a common ancestor but they are an evolutionary separate species. Raisins would never survive natural selection,” Mid tells Otto seriously.

“I think in your metaphor raisins are the byproduct of natural selection. They adapted to stay fresh longer and to be less appealing to be eaten by young, blonde, apex predators,” Clive corrects her. 

“Counterpoint,” cuts in Cid. “Raisins actually taste better than grapes. The young, blonde, apex predator simply doesn’t have a refined enough palette to appreciate them.” Cid pulls Mid’s bowl towards himself, scoops out the neglected raisins to put into his own bowl, and gives her his peach slices in return. He slides her bowl back across the table. 

“That wasn’t a counterpoint,” argues Mid, catching her bowl between her hands. “You had the same hypothesis as Clive. Which, by the way, both of you are wrong.” 

“Two against one, then. The numbers win,” says Cid with a grin.   

“What in Greagor’s bloody name are you teaching her, Clive?” Otto complains to him.

Cid snorts loudly, “I’m afraid you can’t blame Clive on this one. She was precocious before he got here.” 

Somehow they all manage to finish their bowls and Mid grabs them all off the table to dash over to the dish station Kenneth had set up. Mid was then hurrying them out of the Fat Chocobo and towards the Solar with her and Torgal running ahead and Clive and Cid following at a much more sedate pace.  

“Where are we going, Dad?” Mid asks when they make it into the Solar. She was already at the bottom of the staircase by the door rocking on her heels. 

“Just to Ran’dellah. I have some supplies to pick up for Tarja, Hortense and Kenneth. I thought Clive might have a few ideas on books to pick up for you kids as well.” 

“I’m not a kid,” Mid says predictably. 

“You're right there’s a few books and plays that I wanted to find for them,” Clive agrees. 

Cid claps his hands and goes down the stairs to stand by Mid, gives her a playful and light elbow to her ribs to get her to give him space and turns the Dial with a faintly glowing hand. It lands on the red colour. When he opened the door Clive could see the arid and bustling streets of Ran’dellah. 

Mid was ducking under her father’s arm and bustling out with Torgal on her heels. Cid waited for Clive to make his way down the stairs and held the door open for him as they both stepped out onto the streets. 

“Ever been here before?” Cid asks him as they both watch as Mid makes her way up a merchant table and immediately starts ogling at the wears.

“Once or twice when I was younger, mostly while travelling with my uncle. Couldn’t exactly tell you what it’s like now.” 

“Fair enough,” Cid agrees with a grin. “Shall we catch up with my miscreant?”

Clive can’t repress his smile and the two of them take off down the street and follow Mid and Torgal. Once they caught up Cid would frequently stop to show Clive some trinket or knick-knack on a shopkeeper's table. For items he’d recognize he would explain their origins, like a Waloedi soldier's knife they came across. At one point he nearly came to blows with a merchant who was selling a “genuine magic crystal” which Cid called worthless polished quartz. Mid took exception to Cid calling it worthless and made him buy it for her so she could give it a good home. 

Clive directed them next to a young jeweller's table.

“Would you be able to make this into a necklace?” He asks the merchant, gesturing to mid to show the man the quartz. 

“I want a bracelet,” says Mid with a look that said she was just trying to be contrary. 

“A bracelet then,” says Clive with some exasperation. 

The jeweller shakes his head, eyes narrowed, staring down Clive. “I don’t want any trouble,” the jeweller says with a thinly repressed sneer, staring at Clive’s cursed brand. “You should be on your way.”

“Funny that,” cuts in Cid. He picked up one of the man’s necklaces and was staring at it intently. “We aren’t looking for trouble, just for a hunk of quartz to be made into a bracelet. If that’s too big of an ask for you, I’ll just take my coin purse somewhere else. Maybe when I do, I’ll let the next guild member I come across know that you are selling broken pieces of Drake’s Fang crystal. Aren’t the laws clear regarding the mining of which?” 

The man lets out a hiss and reaches across the table to yank the necklace out of Cid’s hand. Cid keeps his grip tight on the chain, leans into the younger man’s space and whispers in a low rough voice, “As I said, we are just looking for some quartz to be fashioned into a bracelet.” 

The man leans back and stares eyes wide at Cid before nodding reluctantly, “Actually, there’s no need for you to go somewhere else. I would be more than happy to help you,” the jeweller agreed and reached out to Mid to take the quartz from her. “I’ll take it and you can come back in a few hours to collect the finished product.”

“You do that,” says Cid. “We will be back in a few hours.”

As Clive was leaving a small glint of light caught his eye and he stopped and stared at the table. There was a small ring nestled in between some cushions, it was obviously Rosarian. It had a rose-tinted metal that was mined in the mountain regions and a small ruby placed in the centre of it, presumably mined off of Drake’s Breath Island if Cid’s words were to be believed. He stops himself from reaching out to touch it. 

“A ring, Clive?” Mid asks, catching the action. 

Clive shakes his head immediately, “Your father is going to have to do a lot more to impress me if he wants me to accept a ring from him.” 

Mid giggles and Cid gives him a flatly unimpressed expression which makes Clive grin. 

“What gives you the impression I would buy you a ring?” Cid asks gruffly. 

“Just seems like a gentlemanly thing to do,” says Clive. He begins walking down towards a little bookstore he caught a glimpse at earlier.

Cid sees where Clive is walking and waves both Mid and Clive ahead. “I’ll meet up with you there,” Cid says, pulling off and towards a small apothecary. “This is where Tarja needs her things from and the weavers aren’t far by either.”  

Clive nods and he and Mid make their way with Torgal down to the bookstore. The store is cramped, nearly claustrophobic with how tight the selves were pushed together so he bids Torgal to wait outside and he and Mid wander in. 

Clive’s not certain how much time he spends flipping through books in there but it must be a while as Clive is jared from his position sitting on the floor by a gentle nudge to his thigh. He looks over to find Cid pressing the side of his foot into Clive looking amused. Clive adds the play he was looking at to one of his stacks of books. Most of what he picked out was for teaching the kids, a few were stories from when Clive was a boy that he thought the younger ones would enjoy, plus a few higher-level texts for Mid.  

“Right, and I am to take it that I am paying for all of these, am I?” Asks Cid dryly. 

Clive snorts and looks up at him with a best attempt at a charming smile, “Don’t tell me you are a cheap date?”

“I’m not a cheap date,” Cid scoffs. “I just know I’m about to play pack chocobo to all of these bloody books while you pretend to use that cane of yours.” 

“I’m not pretending,” denies Clive immediately frowning at him. Cid raises his eyebrows back at him with a slight smile tugging at his lips. 

“That right?” Asks Cid. 

Clive frowns at him. Cid grins wider and offers his hand, Clive takes it and pulls himself up. Clive is surprised to find his knee barely hurt despite having been walking on it for hours this morning. He scowls at Cid for good measure when the man looks a bit too smug for some reason. 

“You don’t pay Tarja enough,” Clive accuses. 

“Too right I don’t,” Cid says, clapping Clive on the back and then bending down to help pick up the stack of books. They find Mid in the corner of the store with her own pile of books that Cid puts up another good show about having to buy before putting all of everything in front of the teller and dutifully emptying his coin purse. As Cid suspected he was beginning to look quite a bit like a luggage chocobo with the amount of bags he was holding on to. Clive ended up taking a few of the lighter bags to counter any complaints. It was a bit awkward with the cane but it wasn’t really any bother. 

They make their way over to a few more stops, including a small vendor selling kebabs for lunch which Mid seemed to enjoy greatly based on the amount of sauce on her face. 

Cid at another point wanders off to visit a cigar vendor and leaves Mid and Clive wandering the large plaza that the vendor was based out of. 

“Clive, what’s that?” Mid asks, pointing to the wooden board in the centre of the plaza. 

“Looks like a community board,” Clive answers. He starts guiding her down towards it, “People will post ads for their stores, community events, or sometimes pamphlets about important things that are happening nationally.”

“What community events are there?” 

“I don’t know. Let’s find out,” He says, nudging her forward. It turned out there wasn’t much interesting happening, just a few things for shops, and an outdated flyer for a Dhalmekian religious holiday. He spots the edge of a pamphlet from one of the international news companies. Clive pushes away a few more pieces of paper away to get at it only to feel his body lock up at a headline on it: “DUKE OF ROSARIA DEAD; DUCHESS TO MARRY EMPEROR OF SANBREQUE.” 

Clive yanks down the pamphlet with trembling fingers. The pamphlet explains that his father had been found dead in bed one morning. Assassins were speculated to have broken into White Keep. His mother a few weeks later had been announced almost immediately after to be engaged to marry the Emperor of Sanbreque to resolve the conflict between the countries. The pamphlet notes that both firstborn princes have been suspected to have been killed by the other country as both Clive and Dion have been missing for some months. 

“Clive?” He hears Mid ask and small hands grip his shoulders. 

“Are you okay? Clive?” Mid sounds so worried and Clive knows he needs to reassure her but his jaw is frozen shut. He had sunk to his knees at some point gripping the pamphlet in his shaking hands. Torgal was pressing his wet nose into Clive’s cheek. 

“Just wait here,” he hears Mid tell him through a fog, “I’m gonna go get Da.” 

Duke Elwin Rosfield was dead. Rosaria was going to be turned into a province of Sanbreque. His traitorous mother had gone and gotten engaged to fucking Sylvester Lesage. His father was dead. His country was going to be annexed.  

A steady hand lands on his back and another grabs a hold of the paper Clive was holding. 

“Let go of it, lad,” a low steady voice soothes in his ear. 

Clive shakes his head desperately. His vision was blurring around the edges. 

“You can do it. You just need to relax your hands. Take a deep breath, Clive,” the voice commands in his ear.

Clive can follow an order. It's the one thing he was only ever good for. 

“Aye, that’s good. Do it again.”

Clive does it again. Slowly he lets his hands go slack. His eyes don’t leave the pamphlet as Cid’s rough and calloused hand takes the paper gently away from him. He feels Torgal’s wet nose pressing even more insistently into his cheek and can hear the soft whine coming from his hound. The hand on his back was slowly rubbing up and down, firm strokes along his spine. The world slowly comes back into focus. 

“There you go,” says Cid. The man was crouched next to Clive still moving his hand firmly up and down Clive’s back. 

“Do you need a moment?” Cid asks him. Clive was once again struck by the man’s electric green eyes. They were softened at the corners with concern. 

“No,” rasps out Clive. 

“Okay,” agrees Cid after a beat of uncertain silence. The man squeezes Clive’s shoulder and reaches over to offer Clive his cane from where he had dropped it earlier. Clive rubs the tears out of his eyes and off his face. and goes to scratch Toragal behind the ears. His wrinkled hands were shaking horrendously but Torgal didn’t seem to mind and the fur was grounding. Cid says nothing, just waits there patiently.

Clive takes the cane and slowly pushes himself up. Cid kept a hand on his bicep when Clive wobbled on the motion up. His knee shakes with the effort and Clive would have gone down again without Cid there to keep him up and his cane supporting him. All of his energy to do anything was gone and his body ached fiercely.

“Clive?” Mid asks from where she is standing with wet, worried eyes and all of their bags. 

“I’m okay,” he tells her weakly. “I think I just need to lay down for a little bit.”

“Da,” says Mid, staring between Clive and her father. 

“Right,” says Cid. “Let’s go home.”

The walk back to the door was long and slow as Clive was forced to lean heavily on his cane and his knee burned with pain. 

By the time they made it back to the door and Cid was opening up the Solar, Clive was about ready to collapse. Mid grabbed his hand and did her best to help him up the stairs. 

“The chair, Mid,” Cid’s voice commands behind them and Mid moves to direct Clive to his green chair as Cid fiddles with the Dial on the door.

Clive collapses into the chair taking heaving breaths from the exertion of walking there. 

He catches Cid looking at him from across the room with a shadowed expression. 

“Just rest there for a moment, lad,” Cid commands him. 

Clive’s eyes drifted closed not long after as the exhaustion caught up with him.

Clive woke up with pillows stuffed under his knee, a blanket tucked around his shoulders and the sound of a soft-spoken argument. 

“Let me take a look at him, Cid. I let him rest all night at your behest, now it’s morning and his knee needs to be looked at. He hasn’t looked this bad in weeks, Cid. Not since you have started working with him.” 

“Exactly which is why we should let him rest for as long as he needs. He had a rough day yesterday, but he will recover from this just as he has been.”

“I’ve let him rest,” says Tarja. “But our sleeping beauty is awake now which means I now get to take a look at his leg to make sure there’s no further damage while you get to fuck off for a bit.”   

Clive shifts so he can see where the two of them are standing. Tarja was poised as ever with her large medical bag at her side while Cid stood a few paces away from her looking sleep-tousled. His hair was askew everywhere and the man was dressed down in a simple linen shirt and dark pants. 

“Tarja,” Clive greets the safer option.  

“I hear your knee is back to aching. Well, let me see,” the woman commands. She must catch Cid not having moved from the corner of her eye. “Why are you still standing there?” She demands of him. 

Cid scowls at her, one of his rare unfriendly expressions. “This is my room,” he growls. 

“And you lent it to Clive to sleep in for the night, which makes it his by right. Go away.”

The man grumbles and pulls on his purple jacket and goes to leave the room. 

“Take care of him Tarja,” Cid commands before leaving the room.

“I don’t need you telling me to take care of my patient,” Tarja snaps back at the closed door.

“Well, what are you waiting for,” she addresses Clive, “Drop trou.”

Clive grimaces at her, but has long since learned not to fight the physicker. 

There were a few moments of silence while Tarja poked and prodded around his knee in silence. 

“I won’t ask what happened yesterday,” Tarja says, softly from where she was kneeling beside him. “I know whatever it was, hurt you deeply.” 

Clive takes in a deep shaky breath. He didn’t want to think of his father or Rosaria. That his mother betrayed both his memory and their country. That even if he breaks his curse there won’t be a home to return to. 

“The children love you, Clive. Shirleigh would weep if you left. Otto likes and respects you, hell even Charon would say the same and we both know how she is,” Tarja takes a deep breath. “I have never seen Cid as present as he is with you around. The man was never around for more than a few days at a time, mainly just stopping by to check in on Mid and to see if there was anyone who needed his aid. Now, I can barely remember the last time he has left the Hideaway for any length of time and Mid’s never been happier.”

Clive’s throat feels tight. He can’t say anything. 

Tarja stops what she’s doing to meet Clive’s eyes, “What I’m saying is, no matter what you look like, no matter what you can or can’t do, or whether you're cursed or not, there will always be a home and a family waiting for you here.”

Clive looks down. 

Tarja riffles through her bag and Clive looks up as something soft is pressed into his hand. A hankerchief. Tarja doesn’t look at him as he presses it into the corner of his eyes. She doesn’t ask, but if she did, he would have told her it was from the pain in his knee. Clive has never been a very good liar.  

Things continued on after that as they had been. Clive went back to teaching during the day and limped to the Solar in the evening to spend time with Cid. The man was still studying his books looking to figure out how to break the curse but he felt at Clive’s brand less often. Clive tries not to miss the man’s electric touch.

It was another comfortable evening with Clive curled up in his chair with Torgal at his feet while Cid was at his desk flipping through papers. Clive was doing his best to go through one of the plays he picked up to teach the kids. It was a comedy filled with silly dialogue but had some raunchy subtext that had Clive grimacing, uncertain of whether it would be appropriate for the younger ones. Mid would probably find it hilarious.    

“What are your goals after this is all said and done?” Cid’s gravelly voice calls out from his desk disturbing the easy peace they had.  

“What’s that?” Asks Clive, not looking up from the play in his hand. The characters were preparing for a dinner party with the villains of the story. 

“Lad,” Cid says seriously. The tone registers with Clive and he pats around for something to use as a bookmark on the small side table Cid set up for Clive. Clive tilts his head over and sees Cid leaning back in his chair staring at him seriously. 

“What are your goals?” Cid repeats. 

Clive considers the question and the serious look he is receiving.

“If you had asked me three weeks ago I would have told you to return to Rosaria and do my duty,” Clive says slowly.

“But I am asking you this now.” 

Clive frowns down in consternation, “I know. But my duty to Rosaria is all I know. That's all I have. All I am. But I think that too has been stolen from me. My father is dead and Rosaria is about to be subsumed into Sanbreque” 

Cid’s face does not give any thoughts away, “What’s this duty then?” 

“I was a Shield of Rosaria. It was my duty to defend her. I failed.”

Clive startles as Cid scoffs loudly from across the room. 

“What? Is that it? You’re sad you can’t play soldier anymore?” Cid presses, his lips falling to the side as he stares at Clive. Disapproval was clear in his tone.

“Excuse me?” Clive says incredulously at the dismissal.  

“I don’t know,” Cid grouses, leaning over his desk to light up another cigar. The man takes a deep drag before continuing, “There’s always something better than being another man’s bloody blade.” 

Clive scowls back at him, “That’s what I am. I can’t change it nor would I ask to. I was born with the duty to protect Rosaria. My brother was born with the duty--,” to lead it. “I know where my value lies, and my responsibility is there beside it.” 

“No,” says Cid. “That’s what you were before you were cursed. Your own damn family had you believing you were nothing but a human weapon and flesh shield to be used by others. Now you are sitting here moping because you can’t swing a sword or martyr yourself on a blade.”

Clive glared at Cid hotly, “Don’t insult my father. He was a good man. It’s not his fault I was destined to be a Shield, the firstborn is always the First Shield in Rosaria. It was my job to protect my father and brother, to protect Rosaria. Except my dad is dead and I don’t even know why. Never mind where Joshua and Jill are, or what they're doing. Rosaria is being fucked to Ifrit’s flaming Hell by my mother and I am stuck here, looking like this, with no recourse for what to do.  

Cid has nothing to say to that so Clive continues. “I was a Shield,” he repeats, hoping he will understand. “Shields protect, and I can’t do that right now.” 

Cid shakes his head. “It’s a father’s job to protect his son, not the other way around.” Cid takes another drag. “No one is asking you to protect them here, Clive. No one here thinks less of you for not being able to: not me, not Mid, not anyone.”

Clive says nothing. 

“You're alive, lad,” Cid tells him. “Don’t you know you’re alive? Don’t you want to live your life by your own design, not what was set out for you by others?”

“I know I’m alive,” Clive argues back. “Why did you ask me this, Cid?” 

Cid takes another drag of the cigar he was smoking. Clive didn’t move even when the silence lingered. Cid finishes his cigar, ashes it into the little tin on his desk and stands up to make his way over to where Clive is sitting. The man collapses into the orange chair at his side.

“I reckon a silvered hair, forked-tongue, little cunt cornered you somewhere. I bet he put a curse on you and fucked off promptly after.” Clive stares at Cid who is still looking doggedly into the fire and thinks about the man who met him in his room at the Inn. “See, your curse is complex, and it is tied up in so many knots that I can’t make heads or tails of how to begin to untie it. There’s only one person I know vindictive, petty, and skilful enough to accomplish it. I know because I trained him.” Cid says heavily.  

Clive says nothing. 

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, Clive. I have done bad things and now I need to live every day trying my best to fix the hurts I have caused. I’m sorry. I can’t fix your curse. Not anytime soon.”

Clive breathes in and out of his nose. “You trained that man?” 

“If it’s who I think it is, yes.” 

“What was your position in Waloed?” 

“Why do you ask?” Cid asks with a frown. 

“You got to press me on my past,” says Clive. “Seems only fair I get to ask a question back.”

Cid breathes out heavily through his nose.

“Before I deserted my position I was Barnabas Tharmr’s Lord commander and Chief Wizard.”

“Yeah, I can see why you don’t advertise that openly,” says Clive wryly. It made sense in a twisted way. The amount of ability and knowledge that Cid had was beyond advanced. “Okay,” Clive says finally. 

“Okay?” Cid repeats, confused. 

“You said I need to live my life by my own design, but I can’t do that like this. Not with my father’s murder unanswered and not with this curse still on me. It means I have to go back to my original plan. I need to go to Waloed and get my answers there.” Clive doesn’t say how the silver-haired cunt, as Cid called him, said he was hired to be there. Someone paid Waloed a lot of money to keep Clive from returning to Rosaria and his father ends up dead only some weeks later. Clive wasn’t generally a betting man, but he was willing to put Gil down that Prince Dion must have had a similar fate. 

“You can’t!” Cid says not without a large bit of alarm. “What do you expect to happen, Clive? You waltz into Stonehyrr and then what? Do they break your curse? Do they answer all your questions? Don’t be a damnable fool. Sleipnir and Barnabas are too powerful for you to take on. It would be suicide to go there.” 

“Compared to what?” Clive asks. “I’ll die if I stay here. Cid, you’ve made this place a home for a lot of people but this is still just somewhere to hide and eventually die as the world passes by. That’s not living. You have to know that. The world outside of this Hideaway is messy, cruel, kind and beautiful all at once and it’s worth experiencing. Not everything is good, some things are hard, but it’s not going to get better staying here. I am not going to get better staying here and my father’s murder will not be solved by me doing nothing. To live my life freely, I need to be able to live and be free from all these burdens.” 

Cid was staring at him and shaking his head softly as if he didn’t believe what Clive was saying. 

“I am not going to run away from a fight because the odds are bad. Life is worth fighting for.”

“Even for a life that would have seen you as someone else's blade,” Cid asks. 

“Even then,” agrees Clive. “I need you to drop me off at Waloed tomorrow.”      

“Mid cares about you,” Cid says. It sounded like a plea. 

“I love her too,” Clive says honestly, hearing what wasn’t said. “And maybe while I’m there I can make the world a bit more of a safer place for her too,” Clive says. 

Cid stands up, turns his back on Clive and walks over to his desk to light another cigar. 

“I think we are done for tonight,” Cid says roughly, not turning to look at Clive.

“Tomorrow morning,” Clive tells him. 

“Go.” 

Clive walks out of there with Torgal at his heels and resolve to see this through.