#jessie: YOU WANT THIS TO BE THE SCAEVAN IRONWORKS CID? DO YOU?

[cidnangarlond]

I need to write more Cid and Fortuna stuff. sorely lacking in that department

[nymfaia-archive]

“Cid.”

After all the time spent at his side, Alta did not need for him to speak or turn to face her to know she had his attention. It was in the shuffle of his boots, in the stall of his fingers against the touch screen ahead of him, head turning just enough to lend her an ear.

The Warrior of Light licked her lips, gazing upward. For a moment, she allowed herself to be distracted, if just to quell the uncertainty brewing in her stomach: schematics filled the screen in bright blue and white. Even the Echo was unable to translate engineering shorthand. The only thing that stuck out to her was the file’s name above it all, in a no-nonsense Eorzean font: BONANZA v1.3.

“I - …”

Alta stepped forward. Her eyes did not leave the projected blueprints. “You - … asked me if there was anything you … could do. For me. After Omega. -- and I … have a request.”

“A favor? From the Warrior of Light?”

The schematics abruptly disappeared with a swipe of his bare hand against the screen. Her words had taken him by surprise, the topic seemingly serious enough for the man to devote his full attention to her. Cid leaned back against the computers, crossing his arms as she decidedly avoided his gaze.

“Anything,” he promised. “You’ve done far too much for the Ironworks, and it’s high time you found something you wanted. What can I do for you, Alta?”

Silence lulled between them, confidence coming to her like waves to shore. She looked down from the blank screen to meet his gaze, drawing in a deep breath.

“I - … want a gunblade made.”

“Nero is usually the one engineering weapons,” he hummed, “he made your staff, after all. But you came to me… because you don’t want him to know, I take it?”

“Please.”

Cid couldn’t help the bark of laughter that bubbled forth, shaking his head. There was still a sense of unease on the au ra’s face, eyebrows knitted firmly and her face paint gently cracking from the movement. A weapon without Nero’s involvement… he had accommodated stanger requests from others. Accessing the man’s design files could be done, especially since Nero had chosen to lighten his coffers and flee. It would be trying to keep his nose out of why Garlond was constructing a gunblade that would prove difficult.

Well, Cid thought, if he wanted to know, he would have to make it back to the workshop.

“Easily done, my friend.” He turned back to his computer, fingers tapping away as he began the tedious task of delving through Nero’s haphazardly organized filing. “... However, I hope you are aware that nothing we construct here would rival Heirsbane. Baelsar’s weapon is one of a kind, and I doubt he would replace it for anything we could make.”

The silence was so abrupt between them that he could even hear Jessie shouting down the hall, and Biggs grumbling in return. He wondered, belatedly, if she had simply left already, faced with the truths he had gathered. But then she spoke from behind him.

“...It isn’t for him,” Alta replied. “It’s for me.”

And his office door closed behind her.

“That certainly changes things,” he mused aloud. The size of the weapon, for one; the fact that she was far more involved with the ex-legatus than he had ever theorized, for two. For but a moment, Cid stared up at the Scaevan schematics for a gunblade, one of the dozen different weapons he had conjured up, and tried to imagine the little Warrior of Light using one man’s designs as she fought alongside another.

If Nero wasn’t aghast by the concept of Cid building his designs in his absence, he would damn near destroy the thing himself if had even an inkling why it was being built.

No. He would make something new for her. Something from the parts left behind by Omega, perhaps…

.

Alta never knew she would miss the confines of her Rising Stones room. Her youth was spent on the Steppe, where nothing but the ground was hers to call home. The Hotgo shifted their tents as frequently as the moon turned in the sky, it seemed; where she rested her head at night meant little as long as she was among those she found comfort in.

Maybe she didn’t miss the space, she thought, but what it meant… but she was lying. She knew she was the moment she swung the door open and the scent of fresh laundry and parchment wafted out. The soft dolls of her companions sat in the window as she remembered; her desk had been dusted and cleaned, but multiple letters and little packages sat, delivered but untouched, on the surface.

She had mindlessly stood her stave up in the corner, turning to kick her sandals off, when a larger package caught her attention. It laid atop her bed, the weight of it digging into the blankets, not cased in paper packaging but a blackened metal case.

It was with a hint of trepidation that she approached. She recognized the Ironworks logo, raised and glossy on the lid, and fumbled with the latches. When it opened, Alta abruptly remembered why it was there in the first place.

In all her time on the First, her request had gone entirely forgotten, an unimportant relic of what felt like years ago. At one time, she had been hopeful to simply get to learn and grow, and now - …

A bittersweet twist came to her lips as she ran her fingers over the cold metal body of her new gunblade. Now she would have to learn and grow, if she were to be useful sooner rather than later. But for now, it could be later: Alta closed the lid, climbing onto her bed behind it and simply enjoying the familiarity of Tataru’s handmade quilt against her skin.

Or she had intended to. A slip of yellow paper caught her gaze, recently bent, as if it had fallen off the lid of her gunblade when she opened it. She pulled it toward her, a pit forming in her stomach at the sight of a certain engineer’s strict, square handwriting.

DON’T MENTION IT, CHAMPION.

Alta crumpled Nero’s note in her hand, giving it a halfhearted throw across the room, and buried her face into her pillow.

Some things she did not miss from her time away.