Chapter Text
Clive sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
"This is a horrible plan," he says. "Among your worst, I'd say."
"Perfect plans are for boring people who don't think on their feet," Cid says. "Live a little, Clive."
"When you think on your feet, you tend to trip," Clive says, "and bring the both of us down."
"That's because I'm doing the thinking for two," Cid says. "Gets confusing, thinking for four feet."
"Torgal manages." He drops to a knee to pet his dear companion and ruffle his fur. "Isn't that right, boy? Are you going to be good?" Torgal happily barks and leans into his touch as he scratches between his ears. "I'll be back." Torgal woofs plaintively and circles around him, flicking him with his tail.
With Cid's proposal, it's neither safe nor sensible to take Torgal with them, his presence raising more questions than they could answer. Bearers on the run are not typically accompanied by large, battle-ready hounds; more often, they are hunted by them.
"I take it you're on board with the plan, then," Cid drawls, a fond expression on his face as he watches them. Clive thinks about how Torgal followed Cid and Charon for more than a decade, only a scant few years short of how long he himself had grown up with the canine.
"I can't think of a better one," Clive admits.
"We'll need Charon's help before we set out to Martha's Rest. Meet us in my solar," Cid says, setting off in Charon's direction. "Fetch Jill, too. Wouldn't want your girl worrying."
Navigating their torn childhoods, the gulf of time between them, their traumas at the hands of the imperials and the Ironmen - there is so much there. Clive loves her like a sister, he knows, but he struggles to grapple with the enormity of anything more.
Clive pulls Jill aside as she's in the middle of helping to prepare bandages in the infirmary and brings her up to speed. She promises to join them later in Cid's solar.
The rest of them convene in Cid's solar, one of the few private spaces in the hideaway still capable of accommodating a larger group - short of the infirmary, but Clive suspects the less Tarja knows about Cid's plan, the better.
Cid's in front of his mirror - and of course he has a mirror, how else does he always look so put together, his hair so styled? - inspecting his 'disguise' and trying to convince Charon of a plan she has neither the interest, patience, nor faith in, if the unimpressed expression on her face is anything to go by.
"Quit your yammerin'," Charon says. "It's not me you need to convince."
Convincing is not the word Clive would choose to describe Cid's undercover attire. He's traded his dapper gentleman rogue look for a humbler set of clothes: a simple long-sleeved white tunic and linen trousers the same shade of gray as his regular coat. He could pass for the bartender at a local inn, dashing all the same for how pastoral his reach is - a man who had never risen and fallen from the position of Lord Commander of Waloed. Clive wonders at these alternate possibilities, these versions of themselves in worlds where they are not Dominants, where they are free to laugh carelessly. No missed expectation that he wasn't the Dominant of the Phoenix, no pressure on Joshua, no chains on Jill.
He comes to attention as Cid snaps his fingers in front of his face, having finally forsaken his post in front of the mirror.
"Look alive, lad. Charon got you yours too," he says, passing off a stack of clothes to him.
"It'll cost ya. Bought these off a seamstress up in Northreach. The lass nearly robbed me blind." Charon eyes him with that familiar gleam for gil in her one good eye.
"Put it on Cid's tab, he's good for it," Clive says. "Aren't you, Cid?"
"I am always good for it. I'll dress you up however you want," Cid says.
Clive feels his cheeks begin to heat and drops eye contact, busying himself with unfolding the bundle of clothes. They're just as plain as Cid's, the fabric clean but unornamented, with patches where the shirt and breeches are more threadbare or the color faded.
"Gonna give us a show, then, lad?" Cid drawls. "Nothing we haven't seen before, isn't that right, Jill?"
Cid offers a wink over Clive's shoulder and he turns to find Jill walking through the open entrance to Cid's solar, Torgal tailing her.
"Did I miss anything?" Jill asks, tilting her head at Clive. She glances appraisingly at Cid. "You look good, Cid."
"You've not missed the show yet," Cid says, eyes sparkling with barely contained mirth and mischief. "And thank you, my dear."
"All right," Clive says, shuffling between the amused looks on Jill and Cid's faces, and excuses himself behind the partition in Cid's solar. He begins the laborious process of stripping out of the armor he inherited from his father, passed on by Lady Hanna. Had Elwin Rosfield gone through the same motions, struggled just the same with the clasp of the cape and the straps and strings that hold everything tightly together? It was the opposite with his imperial armor: easier to don, but harder to wear for all the blood that had been spilled on it. History and identity all wrapped and wound up in lace and legacy.
"You need a hand back there, Clive?" Cid shouts. “I know that corset won't come off easy.”
“It’s not a corset!” he shouts back.
He's out of Cid's sight and the man still manages to get a rise out of him. Thankfully, it's quicker work to put on his new clothes than it is to disrobe from his old ones, and he soon reemerges. Returning to an audience that looks a little stunned.
Cid breaks the silence, whistling in either admiration or mockery - Clive can't tell. He shifts uncomfortably and almost misses the squeak and sound of leather in movement as he gravitates to the mirror.
"Charon, did you buy these clothes off the Dame's tailor?" Cid asks. "This is more shameless than what he normally struts around in.”
"It looks good on you," Jill says, with a pensive gaze. "You look softer."
Clive registers the surprise on his own face reflected back at him. Without the cape over his shoulders and the tight shirt and jacket, he feels naked in the simple attire of white tunic, black breeches, and boots that stop a hand under his knees. Strangely, where the breeches are on the side of too tight, the shirt is loose and flowing, the neckline plunging even deeper, almost indecently so, and the sleeves stop short of his elbow, baring his arms.
"You look like a strapping young farmer," Cid says, joining him on his right shoulder, "or at least a whore pretending to be one.”
Jill appears at his other side and tilts her head consideringly.
"Yes," she says, and leaves it at that.
"I feel… exposed." He's rarely felt so naked in a full set of clothes. Even as an Imperial Bearer with the Sanbrequois, he was well-armored head-to-toe, mail over his chest, pauldrons on his shoulders, a jerkin beneath and all manner of gloves, greaves, belts, and straps. In the flimsy shirt and too-tight breeches, he may as well be walking around in undergarments.
"Parts of you certainly are," Cid agrees.
Clive moves a hand over his chest, fiddling with the dip in the collar of the shirt and the loose laces there.
"I'm not alone in that," Clive says, finding it difficult not to eye Cid's own indecent exposure, the strong planes of his chest. Cid could lean the wrong way and expose a nipple from Clive's angle.
"One of the Dame's boys is almost certainly missing his monthly shipment of clothes," Cid says, glaring at Charon.
Clive’s attention catches at that - Cid sounds… familiar with their attire.
"You give me short notice, you get the short end of the stick," Charon says, bored. "I'm not taking the clothes off the back of a Bearer or robbing a bloody grave."
Charon has a point, Clive begrudgingly admits. The Bearers that make it to the hideaway come with the clothes on their back, such as they are, and little else. They struggle as it is to keep everyone adequately clothed, with shoes on their feet and enough layers to bear the drafty passages of their base.
Cid startles him when he moves in front of Clive and reaches for the same laces over his chest. Clive exhales sharply, the breath punched out of him as his fingers brush his chest. Gloved as they are, there's no static touch, but Clive flinches all the same, nerves on fire.
"You forget these." He's making slow work of tying the laces of the shirt's deep collar. His fingers continue to skim and skip over the skin of Clive's chest.
Clive desperately hopes he can't hear the stuttering drum of his heartbeat fluttering like a songbird caught in a spring storm.
"Thanks," he manages, when Cid finishes with a last pat over his chest and leans back to admire his work.
"You look the part of a more modest whore now," Cid says.
But the torture, Clive despairs, is far from over.
"Charon, get the lad his scabbard, would you?"
Balefully, with a look that could wilt a whole garden of gysahl greens, she says, "Youse two get it yourself. I'm not your fetcher."
"Technically, you are," Cid points out.
While they bicker, Clive watches Jill duck behind the partition and return with his belt and scabbard.
“Here,” she says, as she hands them off to him. In her arms, she holds onto the rest of his discarded clothes. “These will need a good washing while you're away. Torgal’s fur is all over them.”
Jill shakes them for effect and in the dim light of Cid's solar, strands of Torgal's fur drift to the floor. One thick tuft in particular lands solidly on the floor, an almost cottony ball of greyish fluff.
Torgal barks happily at the sound of his name and scampers over to Jill for a scritch under the chin.
“Good boy,” Clive says, going to his knees to pet Torgal. Clive went thirteen years without his canine companion, and he's begun to learn to be more open with his affection in a world like theirs, where moments must be stolen before they are taken from them by fate.
Cid regards him with fondness as Clive returns to his side again, having had his fill of fur and farewells.
"Still need to get these on you," Cid says. "We wouldn't want your sword out of its sheath."
Instead of leaving him to secure his own gear, Cid takes them out of his hands. And then -- he kneels, placing the sword in its scabbard on the ground but keeping the belt.
Cid's gloved hand comes to his waist, holding him by the hip, thumb over the jut of bone. Clive's breath hitches at the sudden touch - he wants to hiss but kills the exhalation behind clenched teeth. When he tries to shift out of his hold, protesting, "I can take care of it," Cid only grips harder, almost pulling him in as he grounds him in place, the thumb there stroking like he's calming a spooked chocobo.
"I'm practicing. I mean to look like I know how to take them off and put them on again, if we're to be a pair of lovebirds," Cid says. With his free hand, he raises and bumps a fist lightly against Clive's chest, the evidence of his earlier handwork visible in the drawn strings of his shirt. "And I don’t like to leave a job unfinished."
Clive looks helplessly at Jill's reflection in the mirror, where he can see for himself his state of distress. He looks disheveled in these ridiculous loose garments, the makings of a blush blotchy on his cheeks and the crests of his ears. In the mirror he sees only the back of Cid's head, his styled hair, the long straight line of his back. Jill offers him a sympathetic but knowing look. If there's anyone who recognizes the signs of him being flustered, it's her.
Slowly, bracing him by his firm grip, Cid's free hand winds the belt through the loops of the trousers. His head remains down, wholly focused on the task at hand. He doesn't meet his eyes, and Clive considers himself fortunate by the Founder for it. His stomach is tight, like a volcanic eruption on the precipice, nerves ablaze where one hand rests and the other burns a path around his waist.
He should be used to this, he thinks. Cid and the rest of the hideaway are handsy, as open with their touches as with their teasing. They speak with touches to the shoulder, taps on the chest, claps on the back and hands over arms.
Growing up, his mother was a distant, disappointed shadow, and although Elwin loved his first son where his wife did not, he was often called away to fight Rosaria's battles, his praise reserved to the realm of infrequent letters and homecomings. And Joshua - thinking back on Joshua's warm hugs is like swallowing hot coals. When he was Wyvern, there was no space for solace amongst his fellow Bearers, no point in reaching a hand out to a fellow expendable.
But here, affection is freely given and freely received. Kenneth sneaking him a snack before a mission; Tarja's endless mothering; Charon sending Goetz after him with a potion she 'forgot' to include that 'came with the gloves' he bought; and, of course, Cid, in every manner, in all his ways of speaking and touching and being, his presence itself the feeling of belonging.
For someone so starved of it, Clive savors every crumb and morsel. And Cid’s? Cid’s are like a dangerous dessert, the fulfillment of a ravenous craving.
"Belt's a little wide for you, but it should do the trick," Cid says, cinching the belt at last and tucking the scabbard through it vertically. "There you are."
Cid proffers a hand and Clive obliges, giving him a hand up. Cid straightens beside himself, dusting off his knees and muttering about not being as spry as he used to be.
“What say you all, do we look like a Bearer couple on the run?"
Clive still feels flushed, even if his blush has faded. For something to hold onto, he lays a hand over the hilt of his sword, feeling the reassuring weight of it against his thigh. His hip still throbs with warmth in the aftermath of the touch, and images unbidden overtake him. Placing his own hand over Cid's pinning his hip; digging his other into the back of Cid's head as he knelt in front of him, running his fingers through hair and scalp and pulling him up –
"You look like an off-duty soldier and he looks like your well-armed whore," Charon points out.
Jill giggles into her hand and pats his shoulder comfortingly. "You look convincing," she says.
“Right then,” Charon says. “I’ll be on my way. Don’t get yourselves killed out there. You both have open tabs."
“Come on, Torgal,” Jill beckons and joins Charon on her walk to the door.
Before she follows her out completely, Jill stops with her hand on the frame and turns back.
Clive looks beseechingly at her. He needed a voice of reason, and with Cid at the helm and Clive's mind in a confused frenzy, she was the last remaining bastion of recourse and retreat.
With one of her slight smiles, she says, "You two behave, now," harkening back to Cid's own words to them.
The twin daggers jammed through the crystal on Cid’s desk catch the light. They are infected by Cid’s renegade madness, Clive thinks. The only question is whether they arrived that way or merely adopted it.
With their more conspicuous armor and gear traded for what Charon passed as suitable attire for Bearers on the run, Clive and Cid pack lightly, only enough potions and rations for a quick daysack each for the journey to Martha's Rest in Rosaria.
They run into Gav in front of the exit tunnel out of the hideaway. He's rocking back and forth on his heels, restless as ever.
"If you need owt before you go, let me know," Gav says. "I can do a scout and about."
"What's there to see?" Cid claps Gav on the back. "We don’t have a scent, even for a nose like yours. If we could track the bugger, we would've sent you. I reckon Otto's got something for you in the meantime."
"I'd sooner chase me own shadow," Gav says. "Don't get into too much trouble now. You'll make it too easy for me to find ya later."
"Mind the place while we're gone, will you? Make sure Otto doesn’t stay up too late and eats his meals on time," Cid says. "And stay alert."
"Aren't I always?" Gav asks, and the two share a brief hug.
Clive has to remember he isn’t special, that he isn’t Cid’s type. Cid’s affection extends to everyone in the hideaway.
The journey from the hideaway to Martha's Rest feels longer than it did when Jill and himself first visited. The day is hot - not like Ifrit's dry inferno, but humid, like the air is sweating. Worse, no breezes strong enough to offer any relief cut through it, and the sky stays stubbornly clear, leaving the relentless sun to bear down on them. Even their lighter attire makes only a marginal difference.
"Bloody sun," Cid grumbles, pausing in his prattle about the plan.
Clive grunts in affirmation, a response he now provides by reflex. He's parched, too heat-exhausted to offer anything more than acknowledgment and the occasional nod as they march on.
Blearily, he notes that Cid looks unfairly good in the heat, flushed down his neck through his collarbones to the trough of his shirt collar over his chest. He's loosened the shirt strings, baring even more skin than usual in these new clothes. Clive traces the path of a bead of sweat traveling down the expanse of his chest. The man looks positively obscene, and it stirs that fast-familiar confusion in him; he doesn't know if he wants to do away with the illusion of the clothes entirely and rip his shirt apart or force the laces closed again so he doesn’t lose his wits.
"Why do you reckon it's all couples?" Cid asks as they board the lift that will take them from the outskirts up to Martha's Rest. The shade is safe; the shade doesn't reveal the sweat that collects at the base of Cid's throat, or the unencumbered view of his bare neck, no longer sheltered behind his high coat collar.
"Taking one Bearer into refuge is a blessing. Taking in two is a miracle," Clive says. He activates the lift system and sighs, relaxing in the momentary shade of the tower and the rush of air as it carries them up. "Perhaps they consider themselves a romantic."
If their initial hypothesis is true, only a noble - someone of means - would have the resources to buy Bearers in an area keenly lacking them under imperial policy. Clive grew up in a noble family and amongst many others; there is no shortage of well-meaning romantics in that cohort.
"Or a right bastard," Cid muses.
Clive admits there is no shortage of them, either.
"We'll find out," Clive says. "We'll be richer an ally or the world poorer a slaver."
"Come upstairs," Martha says when they enter her inn. Unlike their previous visits, the establishment is empty today, on account of the closure sign hanging over the door.
"You got my message, then?" Martha asks as soon as they are upstairs.
"Aye," Cid says. "It fits the reports Otto's received of Bearers bought and moved by a non-imperial."
There are few folks remaining in Rosaria with the means to do so, short of the Imperials themselves and their loyalists in the province.
"At first, I was bloody thankful," Martha says. "We’re not having an easy time of it of late. The vicereine's slamming her boot on our necks. Rumor has it, she's putting together a force to do worse. I help where I can, but you've seen the abbey. All I can do is help those that are barely beyond helping."
Clive knows Martha does her best at the margins, purchasing contracts for Bearers on their last legs so they can die in what peace she and the abbot can offer them at the abbey. If there's someone else out there who can join the cause, one with resources, they have an obligation to try and bring them into Cid's network.
"How long have you been communicating with them?" Clive asks.
"It en't been more than a couple months," she says. "They heard about me and reached out by stolas. I sent a couple of girls their way that I didn't have the means to help. Fingers crossed they're well, but the alternative - I need to know if this is someone we can trust."
Martha’s conscience is clearly weighing on her. He's not seen her so nervous, not since the incident at the abbey.
"We'll get your answers, Martha," Cid says. "Did you get my stolas?"
"Aye, I did as you bade me. Arranged a handoff tonight, outside the abbey, for a couple of Bearers on the run, I said."
"Good woman," Cid says. "We'll be off, then. You with me, Clive?"
"Of course," he says, even as the doubt sets in.
They venture forth quickly from Martha’s Rest, eager to make the meeting time.
Cid, it seems, is equally eager to get in-character. He’s handsy enough with Clive on a regular day. Now it’s two-fold.
As he’s gossiping about Blackthorne’s bitter old ex to pass the time, he reaches over and brushes the nape of Clive’s neck, the action a balm and a burn at the same time.
As they climb a steep hill, he startles Clive as he rests a hand over the base of his spine, supporting him over the rocks.
Presented with this gluttony of touch, Clive gives in and leans guiltily into each one.
Night falls by the time they reach the abbey, and it’s quiet as they approach the tall hooded figure standing in front of it. In the dim light of the moon, the figure is hard to make out, shrouded in that thick dark cowl. They don’t appear visibly armed, and a quick scan of their surroundings doesn’t reveal any other hidden assailants.
"I was told there would be two Bearers," the figure says, muffled but masculine.
"Aye," Cid says. "And two of us there are."
He raises his hands in a gesture of goodwill as he walks directly toward the figure. Cid had left his weapons behind to fit their fabricated backstory.
The sight of him so unarmed and cavalier raises the protective instinct in Clive, his upbringing as a Shield, his remorse as fate nonetheless found its way past him and struck those he loved. His hand goes to the hilt of his own sword but he leaves it undrawn. He won’t lose Cid, too, he promises himself as he rushes to keep up with him.
Close up, he makes out a white mask within the figure's cowl, covering all but the eyes, mouth, and a dark beard streaked with silver.
"What I see is an imperial Bearer - a deserter, I assume - and a man without a brand."
Cid, of course, had accounted for the discrepancy on their journey to Martha's.
"I was a late bloomer, kept it hidden for years," Cid explains, and clasps Clive's hand in his. Clive savors the touch, even through the barrier of Cid's glove. There are touches that are warm not by feeling but by proximity. "Couldn’t hide it anymore, if we wanted to be together. I wasn’t going to sit by and watch them work him to an early death." Cid shrugs, pulling on his hand. "Forgive a besotted old man his folly."
The man's eyes flicker behind the mask as he takes Clive in like he's meat at a butcher's stand. Maybe there is something to the idea that he's slaver rather than savior, and their farce will end before it takes Clive down with it.
"Can't say I blame you," he concludes. "He's a pretty lad. Rare to find a Bearer so well-built and well-fed."
“As you guessed, I was in the imperial army," Clive says, attempting to pass in plain sight with the truth. "They released me into service as a bodyguard for a merchant’s caravan after an injury.”
"I would be one of the bodies in question," Cid chimes in, on cue. "That's how I ran into his handsome mug."
The man chuckles, laughing from his gut. The laughter echoes oddly behind the mask but it sounds genuine.
“An old cock, falling in love with the fox sent to guard his coop?” he asks. “You appeal to the romantic in me.”
Cid shrugs. “I’ve grown foolish in my old age.”
Clive feels the tension in him start to ease despite himself as the conversation appears to move in the right direction. An outlaw can't survive without allies, and sometimes the riskiest action is to take a leap of faith.
"I must say, the Founder looks kindly upon you.” The masked main considers him again. "The imperial army typically prefers to fully expend their injured Bearers rather than retire them.”
"The commander was fond of him," Cid interjects. "We’d rather not dwell on the past, if Martha is right and you've a future to offer us."
"Well, it gladdens me that the pair of you were able to find each other." His tone is wistful as he rubs the ruby set in the band on his finger. "It's harder, alone, and harder still when you are separated."
"Spoken true," Cid agrees. "You keep people together, then?"
"I do. I have my reasons, reasons I hope to share with you. I corresponded with Martha because I am inclined to believe she and I share similar aims. When I caught wind of her, I knew no one of malintent would buy Bearers on their last legs if not out of humanitarian concern." He hesitates a moment. "I am going to extend to you my trust; I hope you will do me the same favor."
He shakes off his hood and unhooks the mask, revealing the face of an older man - about the age his father would have been had he still been alive, Clive thinks with a stab of pain. His gray eyes are gentle, set beneath bushy brows, and laugh lines branch into his temples. It's the kind of affable, open face made for doting on and cooing at newborns.
"My name is Edward of the noble house of Lamont," he says. "If you would offer me the honor of your trust, I would take you back to my estate where we can discuss things more safely. And perhaps keep your man well-fed.”
Clive's eyes widen with recognition. The Lamonts are a Rosarian noble house. Although never close to the duke’s line and the more martial houses it favored, they are old and mercantile, and thereby likely to have enough wealth to survive an imperial occupation and the unrelenting spread of the Blight from the north.
Clive takes his liberties and reaches out to take Cid’s hand in his, sharing a genuine look of relief with him. In the aftermath of that fateful night, it had felt like all the pillars and foundation of his life had been permanently sundered and smothered in ash. To find Jill, Lady Hanna, Martha, and even families like the Lamonts amid Rosaria’s ruins feels like uncovering embers still burning under ash.
"Well, come on then," Cid says. "Let's get eloping."