Disclaimer: Not mine. Fanfic is meant as a compliment to original source material, and I am making no money from this hobby.
A/N: What happened to the Hollow Bastion crew before canon picked up their story has always appealed to me, but Cid often gets short shrift in the fics I've read about that time – which strikes me as woeful, because Cid is awsomesauce.
Both Sides of the Story
© Scribbler, August 2008
We always need to hear both sides of the story.
-- From Both Sides of the Story by Phil Collins
Cid grunts and rolls out of bed. The chink of glass hitting glass rouses him further, and he curses when the empties hit the floor ahead of his feet.
"Damn it."
His head is thick and woolly. He goes for a drink of water and thinks he can actually feel it flowing to the parts of his brain where it's most needed. He downs three glasses before his stomach protests and he wanders into the sitting room, sinking into an armchair and holding his head. Mornings never get any easier.
He drinks to block out the faces and voices of those he left behind. He's great at blustering his way through life, telling fate and fortune to fuck off while he customises his own brand of luck. He took the training wheels off his destiny and fixed the carburettor on his future so that it flew under his guiding hand instead of someone else's. He's just not so great at convincing himself he knows what he's doing, and that he's not engaging in yet another big fuck-up that'll leave him with more demons he can only shut up by getting blotto. During the day, when he has jobs to occupy his hands and brain, it's not so bad, but at night…
He had neighbours and friends in Radiant Garden. Not many, since few people could handle his brusque personality for long without wanting to punch him, but enough that the guilt bites hard when he remembers them. Everybody lost something– or someone – when the place fell, but he was the only survivor who could've done more than strap himself in and hold on for the ride.
"Fuck," he mumbles into his palms. His eyes and lips feel dried out. His body can't take much more of this type of punishment – not the drinking so much as the never-ending mental torture he uses it to block out. "Fuck … ing hell."
He should've gone back. He should've tried to help more of them. He should've gone to the Gummi Ship earlier, before the Heartless were so rampant in the streets, going in and out of buildings and dragging the still-beating hearts out of people. He should've staked out the castle and shot that fucker, Ansem, before he had the chance to sacrifice his own people like that.
There are a lot of things Cid thinks he should've done different.
Maybe he falls asleep. The next thing he knows there's someone in front of him – three someones, in fact, and another two in the kitchen banging about. He opens his eyes and Yuffie takes it as an invitation to climb onto his lap.
"You smell bad." It might be childish honesty or it might just be how she is – a proper little straight talker. "Pee-yuu."
"Aerith and Cloud made some dinner," Leon says solemnly. "It's past twelve o'clock."
"And we laid the table," Tifa adds, like this might encourage him to get out of his chair. Neither follows up on Yuffie's comment, though Cid sees their eyes tick to the whisky stains on his pyjama top. He actually made it into his pyjamas last night, which is a miracle. "Yuffie made ice-cubes to go in the glasses since it's so hot."
Already their foreheads are beaded with sweat. There's no air-conditioning in this house. There's not much of anything in this house, since they arrived here with no money and only one of them old enough to work. Traverse Town is a hole in the ground where magic eclipses technology. Cid hates it.
He shuts his eyes again.
Yuffie prises them open with her fat little fingers. "We're having fish fingers and baked beans. You have to get up. Aerith says you can't eat off your belly like a slut."
"Say what?" Cid says sharply.
Tifa pulls her off and carries her on one hip like someone twice her age might do. She's too young to be so comfortable carrying a kid like that, but she doesn't complain. None of the kids ever complain – about anything. "Like a slob, Yuffie! A slob."
"Oh. So what's a slut?"
Cid watches them pretending not to watch him. They're trying to give him his space in a clumsy, childish way, but they're also trying to pull himself out of his funk and take care of himself the way he, as the only adult, is supposed to do. He wonders whether that's why he can't remember getting changed out of his work clothes last night. A brief streak of shame goes through him.
No matter what else he should've done in Radiant Garden, one thing he did right was rescuing these kids.
His head still feels like a can of rocks rolling down a hill, but he pulls himself up and out of the armchair with a grunt. The nap has done him good, but that's not the only remedy. Drinking isn't the only way he blocks out what he should've done different – it's just the most self-abusive and destructive.
"C'mon, pipsqueak," he grumbles, taking Yuffie from Tifa and copying the way she carries her. It feels weird – he's not natural father material – but he's learned how not to drop the brat on her head or her ass. "Lunchtime."
"But what's a slut? Ciiiiid! What's a slut?"
"Something you'll learn about when you're older. A lot older."
"Would you …" Tifa bites her lip. "Would like a drink with your lunch?"
Cid pauses, considering.
He feels awful, and guilty, and ashamed – but this time not about what he should've done in Radiant Garden, but about what he should be doing for these kids. They rely on him. He's supposed to be taking care of them, and there aren't any lessons parenting in the bottom of a bottle.
"Naw," he says after a long moment. It hurts to say it, because no matter how awful he feels he does want a drink, but the internal struggle was worth it for Tifa's breath of relief and the slight smoothing of lines on Leon's face. Those things strengthen his resolve, just as his little batch of survivors stopped him from giving up hope when they first arrived in Traverse Town. "I'll do without."
Fin.