When Tir was six years old, he was kidnapped.
He can't remember much of it-- he thinks mostly because he's blocked it from his mind. All he can remember is the white-hot rush of fear, rough hands on his arms that left dark bruises, the smell of rancid breath as the thugs sneered in his face-- poor little rich boy-- and the feel of the dirty straw bag thrown over his head and scratching at his face.
He remembers screaming until they stuffed a filthy rag in his mouth to shut him up, fighting them with his skinny arms and blunt teeth and ragged fingernails till he'd been forced to stop, bound and aching and tired and hurting. Sometimes he remembers their raised voices, arguing and yelling and bargaining, something about the war and the crown prince and his father and himself.
To his young ears, all it meant was confusion and more fear.
After… he just remembers an endless amount of time passing in the dark, wondering if he would never see his daddy again, if the men were going to hurt him again and when it would happen, and then Gremio came. Gremio in a rage and a fury that Tir would never have imagined of his friend in his wildest dreams-- nightmares-- and strange noises and thumps and moans, till the bag was ripped off and he could see the men lying in a heap with red sticky stuff all over and he thought he could see the same red on Gremio's discarded axe-- and on his face.
He'd cringed away from Gremio in fear, and his caretaker's eyes had grown even wider and sadder than before as he reached his hand to Tir's cheek and spoke soothing words in his gentle voice. Then Tir had thrown himself into Gremio's arms and he couldn't tell if the tears were all his or if some of them were Gremio's, too.
Eventually he came to understand that he'd been kidnapped by thugs of Geil Rugner, used as a bargaining tool to get at his father. Tir would soon understand that most of what happened in his life had something to do with his father.
The next year, when Tir was seven, Teo brought Ted home.
Tir had been thrilled. Finally, he would have a friend close to his own age. Gremio was wonderful, of course, but… It would just be different with Ted. There were so many things they'd have to talk about, and they could have real adventures. With Gremio, Tir had to worry about getting too dirty and taking a bath and not getting into trouble and minding his manners, but he wouldn't have to bother about any of that with Ted.
Tir never wondered about any of the things maybe he should have. He didn't think it was strange how his father had found Ted, wandering around a battlefield, or that Ted was able to live in a house by himself, or that he sometimes seemed to know things that a kid wouldn't know. He never wondered why Ted always wore gloves, even in the summer, or why he'd lay out in the grass under the stars at night with tears dripping down his cheeks.
He didn't ask Ted any of the things he wished he had because he hadn't yet thought to ask them, until it was too late.
At ten, Tir thought himself tremendously old.
That's because Teo started to teach Tir formal weaponry and battle techniques. He picked out a stave and learned how to take care of it properly and the best way to strike. He sparred with his father out in the fields behind the stables while Ted watched, until Teo asked if Ted wouldn't like to join them. Ted had declined, saying he liked archery better, and even after Tir saw him hit an apple on the highest bough of a tree at the far end of the grove, Tir never thought to ask where Ted had learned to shoot so well.
In the evenings after dinner Teo now elaborated on his old war stories to explain troop formations and battle maneuvers, the ideal places to fight and how best to counter depending on the enemies' weakness. Gremio frowned and tutted in the background, saying the Young Master was too young to know such things, but Tir had listened wide-eyed and enraptured and Teo had chuckled, telling Gremio he worried too much.
When Teo left on missions for the Emperor, Tir liked to imagine what his father was doing, to picture the skirmishes, so when his father returned he could compare his imagined scenario to what actually had happened. It never occurred to him that sometimes Teo's missions didn't involve fighting at all.
After Tir had gained some mastery with his staff, Teo even allowed Ted and him to go outside the boundaries of Gregminster and take on the rogue monsters that pestered travelers. Gremio hated that Teo let them do this, and accompanied them whenever he could. This annoyed Tir to some extent, because he hated how Gremio still treated him like a child when he wanted to be a man like his father, but he also kind of liked it when Gremio came because Gremio was much better with an axe than Tir would have expected.
He wondered why it was that Gremio hated fighting so much, while his father loved it so.
When Tir was thirteen, he started to wonder whether Sonya Shulen would become his new mother.
Teo still acted as though he and Sonya were nothing more than good friends, but Tir wasn't stupid. He was old enough to get the idea of why his father spent so many nights with the pretty lady general, even if he'd rather not think about it, exactly.
Tir wasn't sure, though, what he thought about the idea of his father getting married. He couldn't remember his real mother, not even the slightest bit, but that didn't mean that he didn't love her anyway. He liked Sonya-- he liked her a lot, in fact. She was kind and brave and strong and funny; she told stories like Teo and she always had a small gift for Tir when she returned from long sojourns at Shasarazade.
But he didn't know if he wanted her as his mother. That felt like he was betraying his real mother. Tir wanted his father to be happy, but he also didn't want his father to forget Tir's mother. If Teo forgot her, then who would there be to remember her truly, so she would not become merely imagined memories and nice dreams?
He mentioned these thoughts to Gremio, once, and Gremio had advised him to discuss it with Teo.
Tir never did.
At the age of fifteen, Tir followed in his father's footsteps and began his own work in the service of Emperor Barbarossa.
He was made an officer of the Imperial Guard, under command of Kanaan, and thus under Kraze Miles. After the initial glee of the thought of serving his country, after laughing with Ted and gossiping-- that's such a girlie word-- about the beautiful Lady Windy, Tir stopped to think.
Why was it that he was starting out so far ahead of those other boys his age? Why was he immediately named an officer?
The answer did not remain hidden for long. Because he was Tir McDohl, son of the Great General Teo McDohl. It had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with his father. He wasn't to be an officer because he deserved the title, but because of his name. Nothing he ever received was actually due to anything special or worthy about himself, but only because of his lineage.
Tir made a decision that night, lying in bed. He would make a name for himself, so that he would no longer be General McDohl's boy, but Tir McDohl. He would make sure that everyone knew he was strong, and courageous, and loyal. A good fighter, an intelligent person. He would quiet all the jealous and bitter whisperings that he wasn't good for anything, that he was rewarded for nothing. He would show them he did deserve to be an officer.
He would show everyone he belonged.
Tir was still fifteen when he became a fugitive of the Scarlet Moon Empire.
Teo was away on a mission to put down the ninja resistance when a series of events led Tir to start to see the holes in the government, the disparity between the rich and the poor, between what those in charge did for themselves and did for the people. He learned that Ted wasn't the person Tir had thought him to be, and he watched while his best friend faded slowly and gave him a small mark on the back of his right hand, power and immortality and danger, and things Tir could not even begin to fathom.
He met a woman, brave and passionate and idealistic and eloquent, who showed him what the world was and what it should be. What they could make it be. She taught him not to ignore the truth, to do what was right and not what was easy, and treated him with a respect he could hardly understand-- that even scared him a little.
Under her guidance, he turned from everything he thought he'd known, everything that he'd believed in and found to be a lie. He turned from his father and started on his own path, to do the things he'd only before dreamed of. He started to make his convictions a reality.
Tir watched this woman-- young and frail and strong-- die before his eyes.
He took on the mantel of her resistance and vowed to make her dreams-- his dreams, now-- not a fantasy any longer.
He tried not to wonder how exactly he expected to do so, because when he thought about it, all he became was afraid.
At not quite sixteen, Tir killed his father.
Before Teo died, he told his son how proud he was. How he had always lived and fought for his own beliefs and nothing made him happier than knowing his son did the same. He blessed his son even as he lay bleeding from the wounds Tir had inflicted on him.
His father's last words gave Tir no comfort. If anything, they hurt him worse. How could his father still love him after everything he'd done? Tir had learned all that was important from Teo, only to use that very knowledge and those very skills against him. Tir had grown up emulating his father, wanting to be just like him, a mighty General.
And then he killed him.
Tir was not first the leader of the Liberation Army. He was first a boy, merely a boy who had fears and questions and confusion. A boy who more than anything wished he'd never set foot on this path, wished he could turn back time and be normal again, wished he could leave his father to fame and be content just to be General McDohl's boy.
He wanted to sit by the fire in their home in Gregminster and listen to his father's tales again. He was sick of his own stories, his own adventure that was nowhere near what he'd thought it would be when he started. Closer to a nightmare than a dream.
But he was Tir McDohl, and no McDohl ever backed down from a challenge. A McDohl didn't give up because things got hard.
Teo had said he was proud. Tir could not let him down now.
When Tir was seventeen, he defeated the Scarlet Moon Empire and crushed the last vestiges of all that his father had held dear.
He watched the life fade from the eyes of the Emperor's last loyal general.
He watched as the man his father had served above all others died for love, love for a woman who didn't love him back, for a woman who'd used and manipulated him and led to the downfall of his empire.
He watched a man take an arrow meant for Tir. A man who'd loathed him for being alive when his lover was not, for taking that woman's place, for representing his own failure and everything he couldn't be. A man who'd then slowly and grudgingly given Tir his respect and had become a most loyal and trustworthy companion and even friend.
He watched a second man also stay behind to help keep the last of the Imperial soldiers from giving chase, the man who'd dragged Tir into this whole mess in the first place, a man who was wiser than he looked and who'd kept a smile on his face and a joke upon his lips through the worst of times.
He saw a man finally achieve peace in death, a man without whom Tir could never have won this war, a man who could finally be rid of killing and dying, a man who'd done his sister's memory proud.
He listened as men far older and wiser than he offered him the rule of their new fledgling country, the country they'd won in the name of freedom, with blood, sweat, tears, and grime, with countless dead whose names would be forgotten all too soon.
He saw dreams fulfilled, his own and those of the woman he'd inherited his position from and those of every person who'd ever hoped for a better life.
He saw people brought together from all wakes of life become friends and also prepare to leave, perhaps never to see each other again, but with a bond forged that distance and time could never break.
He turned his back on all of it when he walked out of the castle in the early waking hours, side by side with his closest friend and the man he'd thought he'd lost.
He was ready to just be Tir again.
By the time he was twenty years old, Tir had thought he was done with war.
Turned out he wasn't. It only took another boy, a boy who could've been the very image of himself a scant five years ago, to bring him into it again. Another war, with death and killing and tragedy, with friends fighting friends, with a thin line between what was right and what was wrong, what should be and what should not.
All he had wanted was peace. To see the things he'd only heard about, to watch the people whose lives were untouched by violence and politics, to laugh with the one person he loved above all others. Those were his only wishes-- and his only dreams.
He had nothing more to prove.
But this time… this war… he wouldn't have to prove anything. He wasn't being asked to lead or to take charge, but to help, if he could, however he could. And… if there had been another, five years ago, another young man who could've helped Tir with his burden, how unbelievable would that have been? How could he deny this boy, Riou, something that he himself would've given almost anything for? The chance to hear from someone who'd lived much of the same things he himself had been going through?
How could he ignore the pale sad desperate gleam in Riou's eyes?
He couldn't, because no matter how tired he was or how many days months years of peace he craved, he was still the same person who'd said yes all those years ago when he was asked to lead an army. He could not say no to the smallest plea for help.
He was Tir, and McDohl, and son, and Young Master, and Commander Tir. The name did not matter, and Tir finally realized it had never really mattered. What mattered was what was behind the name, and Tir had learned to hold true to that person, no matter what happened.
Author's Note: The ages are all guesstimates, and Ted is purposely vague because I've never really understood how old he's supposed to be when he knew Tir (particularly after Suikoden IV).