the law of probability
a bit from the ending of the next fic, where Cid learns about that little problem of reality unraveling itself like a bad sweater. Vayne counters this with pre-emptive drinking.
Cid groans. “Oh gods, is it to be that smile already. Take pity on an old man.”
“You don’t like my smile?”
“Vayne.”
“I’ve been told it’s rather fetching, in its way.”
It is his mother’s smile, in those few moments when Vayne is truly happy. The first Queen had been a quiet, reserved sort of woman, and there was a good deal of her to be found in her youngest son. Cid had mentioned as much, once, and the look Vayne had given him - certainly, it was the highest compliment he has ever managed to make. His expression now is not at all the same, though Cid doubts most would mark any difference. It is the half-smile he gets far more use from in the day-to-day - a dry, weary expression, as if life were a tepid drama, mostly amusing due to poor writing and terrible actors, and the worse things become the more diverting it all is. Vayne greets mortal peril and certain doom like an old friend - this is the smile Cid saw in Nabudis.
“You only look like that when you’re being shot at, or facing a hundred people who want to kill you, or when the Princess of Dalmasca tries to cut out your heart with a pie server, and wasn’t that /interesting/ and it’s just a terrible /shame/ how all the china was broken.”
“It was a rather pretty pattern.” Vayne says mildly, and the smile is gentler, and for just a moment, and there is true apology there. “I did not mean to worry you.”
Cid scoffs. “Who was worried? What death would ever dare to cross a Solidor?”
“True enough.”
With no fanfare, Vayne pours himself a hefty shot, and drains it in a single, smooth motion. It is not a casual gesture, not at all drinking for politeness’ sake, and Cid feels a burst of nervousness, like the ulcer he’s surprised he doesn’t have yet, as Vayne empties a good deal of the bottle out into another glass, pushing it across the table toward him.
“I have learned what the Sun-Cryst is for.”
Cid waits. Vayne swirls the bits of ice magicite in his glass with a flick of his wrist, looking at nothing. It is more than a simple, dramatic pause, and Cid feels the knot pull tight in his gut, double over and tighten again.
“Well?”
Vayne tells him.
Cid swallows. Twice. Asks again, and the words are the same, Vayne’s voice as unflinchingly calm and steady as if he were speaking of the weather. A long, quiet moment passes before he remembers that he’s got arms and hands and a full glass of alcohol and can do himself the benefit of trying to put some kind of buffer between himself and that truth. It’s at least two shots, possibly three in such a large glass. Vayne thinks of these things, though it might as well be water for all the good it’s doing. Cid can’t even taste it.
“Now I need you to tell me I’m a proper lunatic, Doctor, so I can get on with the business of enjoying this lovely day.”
He has to laugh, even if he can’t quite remember how to be amused. “You need a much better opinion than mine for that.”
“Do you believe-”
“Oh, it’s entirely possible, if one considers the variables at play.” Which is the last thing he wants to do, but already he’s mapping the possibilities, half-amused he didn’t see this coming. “An engine designed to remake the world? Why not? So much Mist in so refined a chamber, over such a long period of time? Theoretically, there’s no reason the Sun-Cryst wouldn’t have the power to… alter whatever was intended, and as for the Occuria - well, you are familiar enough with what happens when they conscript an alternate, a vessel to carry out their will.”
He knows he is not one step closer, to finding a way to undo the damage of the Midlight Shard. Cid is flailing in the dark and knows it, with nothing but the knowledge that Venat might have had the answer, that if he were smarter, younger, /better/ than he is...
“If you wished for me to rain down vengeance on you, you should not have made yourself so irreplaceable.” Vayne says. “Keep drinking.”
“A thousand men in Archades can turn a wrench. A thousand moogles, for that matter.” And he is yet again forgiven - he can see it in Vayne’s gaze - and yet again Cid refuses to accept it. He cannot bear to accept it. A second pour of the bottle into their glasses and they’ve killed it in no time at all, though he surely feels more sober than when they’d begun.
“I would ask, of course, just how it was you discovered we are all of us destined for catastrophe?”
He is rewarded with that rarest of moments, seeing Vayne Solidor flinch, his eyes cutting away and down in an attempt to cover for what he does not wish to reveal.
“Raithwall. King Raithwall himself, or the shade of such. Warning me of the fate that he could not avoid.” Which is barking mad, of course, but Cid has spent nearly half a decade conversing with gods, so who is he to object? It’s the quiet that’s bothering him far more, how Vayne is not offering up more than he must, only a few reasons for him to be so taciturn.
“And you saw him how? What happened?”
Vayne sighs, and reaches out, plucking a piece of ice magicite out of the glass. Better than frozen water, the stone keeping its chill without diluting the alcohol. It glows, the faintest blue, resting between Vayne’s thumb and forefinger before he clenches his fist around it. The slightest grimace, there and gone as if he’d only imagined it - but Cid hasn’t, knows he hasn’t, as Vayne opens his hand and lets it hit the table. No longer cold, no longer with that haze of power - a simple piece of stone, completely drained.
Cid knows he is staring, open-mouthed, just as he knows the basics of magickal energy, how dangerous it is when spells lash back upon the caster and /Vayne can’t cast,/ hasn’t been able to manage a spare syllable since Nabudis, so where did that kind of power come from? The damned fool boy was in the middle of a firefight, where does Cid /think/ that power came from, when he knows the only lies Vayne keeps between them anymore are all lies of omission. The proud silence of a man for whom vulnerability is unthinkable.
“A clever enough party trick.” Vayne says mildly, and pretends he is not refusing to meet Cid’s eyes. “I do think it wise that I avoid any further attempts on my life at present. At least those involving magic.”
“… and of course no one saw this happen. Which meant you, what? Went after the princess alone?”
“I will admit, it seemed a better idea at the time.”
He would bother chastising, but Cid is already quite familiar with the number of ways Vayne can politely deflect such questions and they’ve got larger issues to face - and gods but there are no words, no dimensions by which to describe this. Truly it is not every man who learns as Cid has, to the detail, how the world would be better off had he never been born.
“The girl is going to kill us all, then. Either by mistake or design.”
Cid groans. “Oh gods, is it to be that smile already. Take pity on an old man.”
“You don’t like my smile?”
“Vayne.”
“I’ve been told it’s rather fetching, in its way.”
It is his mother’s smile, in those few moments when Vayne is truly happy. The first Queen had been a quiet, reserved sort of woman, and there was a good deal of her to be found in her youngest son. Cid had mentioned as much, once, and the look Vayne had given him - certainly, it was the highest compliment he has ever managed to make. His expression now is not at all the same, though Cid doubts most would mark any difference. It is the half-smile he gets far more use from in the day-to-day - a dry, weary expression, as if life were a tepid drama, mostly amusing due to poor writing and terrible actors, and the worse things become the more diverting it all is. Vayne greets mortal peril and certain doom like an old friend - this is the smile Cid saw in Nabudis.
“You only look like that when you’re being shot at, or facing a hundred people who want to kill you, or when the Princess of Dalmasca tries to cut out your heart with a pie server, and wasn’t that /interesting/ and it’s just a terrible /shame/ how all the china was broken.”
“It was a rather pretty pattern.” Vayne says mildly, and the smile is gentler, and for just a moment, and there is true apology there. “I did not mean to worry you.”
Cid scoffs. “Who was worried? What death would ever dare to cross a Solidor?”
“True enough.”
With no fanfare, Vayne pours himself a hefty shot, and drains it in a single, smooth motion. It is not a casual gesture, not at all drinking for politeness’ sake, and Cid feels a burst of nervousness, like the ulcer he’s surprised he doesn’t have yet, as Vayne empties a good deal of the bottle out into another glass, pushing it across the table toward him.
“I have learned what the Sun-Cryst is for.”
Cid waits. Vayne swirls the bits of ice magicite in his glass with a flick of his wrist, looking at nothing. It is more than a simple, dramatic pause, and Cid feels the knot pull tight in his gut, double over and tighten again.
“Well?”
Vayne tells him.
Cid swallows. Twice. Asks again, and the words are the same, Vayne’s voice as unflinchingly calm and steady as if he were speaking of the weather. A long, quiet moment passes before he remembers that he’s got arms and hands and a full glass of alcohol and can do himself the benefit of trying to put some kind of buffer between himself and that truth. It’s at least two shots, possibly three in such a large glass. Vayne thinks of these things, though it might as well be water for all the good it’s doing. Cid can’t even taste it.
“Now I need you to tell me I’m a proper lunatic, Doctor, so I can get on with the business of enjoying this lovely day.”
He has to laugh, even if he can’t quite remember how to be amused. “You need a much better opinion than mine for that.”
“Do you believe-”
“Oh, it’s entirely possible, if one considers the variables at play.” Which is the last thing he wants to do, but already he’s mapping the possibilities, half-amused he didn’t see this coming. “An engine designed to remake the world? Why not? So much Mist in so refined a chamber, over such a long period of time? Theoretically, there’s no reason the Sun-Cryst wouldn’t have the power to… alter whatever was intended, and as for the Occuria - well, you are familiar enough with what happens when they conscript an alternate, a vessel to carry out their will.”
He knows he is not one step closer, to finding a way to undo the damage of the Midlight Shard. Cid is flailing in the dark and knows it, with nothing but the knowledge that Venat might have had the answer, that if he were smarter, younger, /better/ than he is...
“If you wished for me to rain down vengeance on you, you should not have made yourself so irreplaceable.” Vayne says. “Keep drinking.”
“A thousand men in Archades can turn a wrench. A thousand moogles, for that matter.” And he is yet again forgiven - he can see it in Vayne’s gaze - and yet again Cid refuses to accept it. He cannot bear to accept it. A second pour of the bottle into their glasses and they’ve killed it in no time at all, though he surely feels more sober than when they’d begun.
“I would ask, of course, just how it was you discovered we are all of us destined for catastrophe?”
He is rewarded with that rarest of moments, seeing Vayne Solidor flinch, his eyes cutting away and down in an attempt to cover for what he does not wish to reveal.
“Raithwall. King Raithwall himself, or the shade of such. Warning me of the fate that he could not avoid.” Which is barking mad, of course, but Cid has spent nearly half a decade conversing with gods, so who is he to object? It’s the quiet that’s bothering him far more, how Vayne is not offering up more than he must, only a few reasons for him to be so taciturn.
“And you saw him how? What happened?”
Vayne sighs, and reaches out, plucking a piece of ice magicite out of the glass. Better than frozen water, the stone keeping its chill without diluting the alcohol. It glows, the faintest blue, resting between Vayne’s thumb and forefinger before he clenches his fist around it. The slightest grimace, there and gone as if he’d only imagined it - but Cid hasn’t, knows he hasn’t, as Vayne opens his hand and lets it hit the table. No longer cold, no longer with that haze of power - a simple piece of stone, completely drained.
Cid knows he is staring, open-mouthed, just as he knows the basics of magickal energy, how dangerous it is when spells lash back upon the caster and /Vayne can’t cast,/ hasn’t been able to manage a spare syllable since Nabudis, so where did that kind of power come from? The damned fool boy was in the middle of a firefight, where does Cid /think/ that power came from, when he knows the only lies Vayne keeps between them anymore are all lies of omission. The proud silence of a man for whom vulnerability is unthinkable.
“A clever enough party trick.” Vayne says mildly, and pretends he is not refusing to meet Cid’s eyes. “I do think it wise that I avoid any further attempts on my life at present. At least those involving magic.”
“… and of course no one saw this happen. Which meant you, what? Went after the princess alone?”
“I will admit, it seemed a better idea at the time.”
He would bother chastising, but Cid is already quite familiar with the number of ways Vayne can politely deflect such questions and they’ve got larger issues to face - and gods but there are no words, no dimensions by which to describe this. Truly it is not every man who learns as Cid has, to the detail, how the world would be better off had he never been born.
“The girl is going to kill us all, then. Either by mistake or design.”