“Hardly,” he counters, shaking his head. “Your reckless adventurer friends are on the whole far more successful than I’ve ever been.” It’s a pathetic fact, probably, but true nonetheless - with a few exceptions, the people the Ironworks associates with seem to get the job done and save the people they mean to save while they’re at it. Not that he’s resentful of that fact - not much, anyway. Someone needs to do what’s right, and do it well, else the world fall to ruin. And so long as he’s failing at managing to do anything suitably good for the world (at least without getting himself damaged in the process), he’s at least not succeeding at causing further harm.That’s good enough, all things considered.
There’s something sad in Nero’s gaze, in the way he almost reaches out, and Cid closes his eyes so that he can pretend he didn’t see it. It isn’t as though he doesn’t miss the friendship they once had, too, but - they aren’t connecting like they did back then. Maybe they can’t, even if Cid does try to let him in. He knows, after all, that the person he’s become is… not the man Nero misses, nor is he the sort of person anyone would want to befriend without nostalgia blinding them. But Nero is trying, and he’d be a fool to turn that away.
“…So,” he agrees, as lost for words as the other man. But one of them has to find them, and it may as well be him, while he’s still lucid enough to do so. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, don’t we?” It… it isn’t what he wanted to say, not really - but it will do, and it’s a start. He doesn’t think this is going to fix itself overnight, and tearing down the walls he’s put in place hurts in a way he can’t define, but at this point he has quite literally nothing left to lose.
He’s genuinely startled, he thinks, when Cid speaks. “...we do,” he says finally, only a little relieved to hear it. It was hard to admit for the both of them, he thinks, and...he’s glad Cid said it. Not that he disagrees, really, but it’s...it’s difficult to say out loud. But it’s true, they...they had a lot of work to do. No more attempts to tape over the breaks and try to run the machine with a slapdash repair job and hope it’s good as new -- they have to sit down and do it right, even if it takes a long time.
What kind of engineers would they be if they didn’t?
“...I’m sorry,” he says finally, after a long, long silence. “I...I never said that, did I? I’m sorry.” For leaving, for the fight, for whatever else. It was stupid and they were young and ridiculous, and he wishes he could take it back. But he can’t, and now...now this is what they’ve got to deal with. But they can and they will, because they’re both stubborn bastards.
But he is sorry, and he wishes...mm. Well,there’s a lot of things he wishes, but he’s always been good at working with what he had, so small steps are still steps.
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