Dr. Cid - "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"
Title: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Characters/Pairings: Dr. Cid, mentions of Ffamran and Venat
Rating: K+
Summary: Cid occasionally struggles with his place in life.
Challenge: Use the dictionary.com word of the day:
mendicant \MEN-dih-kunt\, noun:
1. A beggar; especially, one who makes a business of begging.
2. A member of an order of friars forbidden to acquire landed property and required to be supported by alms.
3. Practicing beggary; begging; living on alms; as, mendicant friars.
Author’s note: My Cid muse was feeling dissatisfied. If you think about it, his life really can’t be all that great, you know? Done for the_sandsea on LJ with themes of 7. The future, 16. Sacrifice, 31. Duty, 36. Don't look back, 93. No good deed goes unpunished. I also must thank their theme list for the title.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the concepts from FFXII.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Sometimes Cid felt that he might be the loneliest man in the world. That was not to say he was unsatisfied with his life or his position. It was just that in the moments when he took his mind off of his work, and those were rare indeed, he invariably found himself painfully aware of the fact that he lived in a very empty house, his wife dead, his last remaining relation run off to become a sky pirate. He frequently thought that even were his son to have left to join the common mendicants in Old Archades it would have been a better option. One in Cid’s position did not need the association of a relative of his being a criminal, nor was he especially fond of considering the possibility of his son being left to die in a dungeon somewhere. He was attached to the boy, much as the boy himself seemed to think otherwise. Ffamran simply had not understood the work his father was doing. And so he had run. Silly boy.
Now Cid was left with naught but the comforts of his work, occasional meetings with the royal family, and the subtle, mystical companionship of the being named Venat. One might be surprised to realize just how much comfort the man managed to find in the latter. He would not go as far as to say that Venat was a friend. Far from it, actually. The being understood little of human thoughts and emotions, merely prodded the scientist on in his quest for a new world. That quality was precisely what Cid found so comforting. When he was actively working and Venat was helping him along, he was free from these accursed thoughts of family and memories and other things lost to him. He would not think about the past, only the future and the shifting of the tides through the means of his own research. He would only think of his own self-proclaimed mission to put history back in the hands of man, and not consider that perhaps it was the same hand of fate he so desperately wanted to defeat that had brought him to this task and that had taken all other parts of his life away from him.
Sometimes he wondered if his son may have actually had the better idea.
But no. Cid always came to the same conclusion. There was no other path for him. Why should he want one? He was changing the shape of history. What did it matter whether he had a family, or for that matter anything aside from his work? Never was there a great man who could have been said to have lived an easy life. He was not alone. He had the company of all men who had done something for humanity, whether or not humanity deigned to appreciate him. He had Venat. He had his work. He had a purpose. And whenever he felt like giving up, he would simply push past the despair and dissatisfaction and remind himself of that simple fact, and convince himself that he would survive as long as he needed to in order to bring that purpose to fruition. Otherwise, it was pointless to survive.
Characters/Pairings: Dr. Cid, mentions of Ffamran and Venat
Rating: K+
Summary: Cid occasionally struggles with his place in life.
Challenge: Use the dictionary.com word of the day:
mendicant \MEN-dih-kunt\, noun:
1. A beggar; especially, one who makes a business of begging.
2. A member of an order of friars forbidden to acquire landed property and required to be supported by alms.
3. Practicing beggary; begging; living on alms; as, mendicant friars.
Author’s note: My Cid muse was feeling dissatisfied. If you think about it, his life really can’t be all that great, you know? Done for the_sandsea on LJ with themes of 7. The future, 16. Sacrifice, 31. Duty, 36. Don't look back, 93. No good deed goes unpunished. I also must thank their theme list for the title.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the concepts from FFXII.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Sometimes Cid felt that he might be the loneliest man in the world. That was not to say he was unsatisfied with his life or his position. It was just that in the moments when he took his mind off of his work, and those were rare indeed, he invariably found himself painfully aware of the fact that he lived in a very empty house, his wife dead, his last remaining relation run off to become a sky pirate. He frequently thought that even were his son to have left to join the common mendicants in Old Archades it would have been a better option. One in Cid’s position did not need the association of a relative of his being a criminal, nor was he especially fond of considering the possibility of his son being left to die in a dungeon somewhere. He was attached to the boy, much as the boy himself seemed to think otherwise. Ffamran simply had not understood the work his father was doing. And so he had run. Silly boy.
Now Cid was left with naught but the comforts of his work, occasional meetings with the royal family, and the subtle, mystical companionship of the being named Venat. One might be surprised to realize just how much comfort the man managed to find in the latter. He would not go as far as to say that Venat was a friend. Far from it, actually. The being understood little of human thoughts and emotions, merely prodded the scientist on in his quest for a new world. That quality was precisely what Cid found so comforting. When he was actively working and Venat was helping him along, he was free from these accursed thoughts of family and memories and other things lost to him. He would not think about the past, only the future and the shifting of the tides through the means of his own research. He would only think of his own self-proclaimed mission to put history back in the hands of man, and not consider that perhaps it was the same hand of fate he so desperately wanted to defeat that had brought him to this task and that had taken all other parts of his life away from him.
Sometimes he wondered if his son may have actually had the better idea.
But no. Cid always came to the same conclusion. There was no other path for him. Why should he want one? He was changing the shape of history. What did it matter whether he had a family, or for that matter anything aside from his work? Never was there a great man who could have been said to have lived an easy life. He was not alone. He had the company of all men who had done something for humanity, whether or not humanity deigned to appreciate him. He had Venat. He had his work. He had a purpose. And whenever he felt like giving up, he would simply push past the despair and dissatisfaction and remind himself of that simple fact, and convince himself that he would survive as long as he needed to in order to bring that purpose to fruition. Otherwise, it was pointless to survive.