#mina fiore

[redwayfarers]

febhyurary 2026 - family

like mother, like son. apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

[redwayfarers]

◇ sagrada familia ◇

[redwayfarers]

i was fighting for my life there but please look at nika and his gay moms

[redwayfarers]

Mina Perseis 🥰

[redwayfarers]

defense

Fandom: FFXIV Ship: Nika/Artoirel Characters: Nika Perseis (WoL), Artoirel de Fortemps (mentioned), Mina Fiore Rating: Gen Word count: 1516 Spoilers: minor StB spoilers. part 1 - read on ao3 divider by @saradika

The door closes behind her. Admittedly, she never imagined her first introduction to this mysterious Artoirel to be like this; from Nika’s stories, he’s a proud, determined man, reserved but genuine, devoted to a cause. And those things may be true - from the way he stood there, taking Nika’s verbal abuse like a stone figure, betrayed largely by a shaking hand and blinking eyes that try to stave off tears, Mina glimpsed at all those things that her son spoke of that made him look away with a silly little smile on his face. 

But this is different, gravely so. She knows something of pride, but she also knows something of pain, and by the Twelve, if Artoirel’s eyes didn’t shine with hurt! The Nika that spoke of his finer qualities is not the same Nika who yells now, draped in a shirt too large for him, holding onto a bedpost for dear life and crying. So Mina sends Artoirel away, wraps her arms around her son and muffles his anger-filled screams in the collar of her shirt. 

The same way she did when he was a baby, when he was upset. Rogan was there too, playing with Nika’s hair, trying to get him to calm down. But that was years ago; Rogan is now dead, Nika is no longer a baby, yet Mina holds him all the same. 

What else should she do? It’s her child. No mother likes seeing her child in pain. Maybe if Rogan lived, maybe she’d have another, but as fate would have it, she only has Nika now. Really, what else should she do?

It’s later that day, when Nika’s calmed down, that she hears him ask in a quiet, sore, wrecked voice, “Do you think he hates me now?” 

Mina shuffles on her feet. She stops brushing his hair for a moment. “Artoirel?” 

Nika huffs. “No. His brother in Camp Dragonhead. The dead one.”

Mina squints. Nika’s shoulders droop. “Yeah, Artoirel. I told him… I told him a lot of shit earlier.” 

“Quite angrily, too.” 

Nika sighs. “Do you think he hates me?” A pause. “I’d hate myself. I’d try to kill me, if I was him. Kick me out of my house and my life.” A pause. “Certainly not love me anymore.”

“I think you hurt him,” Mina says. “And I think you have to apologize to him. But I don’t think he wants you out of his home.” 

“But does he love me still?” Nika pushes, and turns sharply to look at her. But the movement is probably too sharp, and his face scrunches in pain. 

“You can love someone even if they hurt you,” Mina quietly says. Nika purses his lips and slowly turns away. “Likewise, you can love someone and hurt them at the same time.” She knows all too well the extent of her words. Had life been different, had she maybe been wiser, maybe she wouldn’t have left Ul’dah after Rogan’s death, and wouldn’t have uprooted Nika’s life. Maybe he wouldn’t have run away otherwise - in that same half-baked wisdom that Mina herself had in her times of grief. But the facts remain. Love is not enough. You can have all the love in the world and still it won’t save you the pain if you’re not careful. 

“I would kick me out, if I was him,” Nika repeats. He then laughs, but there’s no joy in it. It’s as wrecked as he himself is. “We’re the wrong people to talk about this sort of thing, right, mom?” 

Mina blinks. She looks at their reflections in the dresser’s mirror - their similar faces, their dark hair, with hers bearing the signs of age, and his the signs of violence. In the dim light of the dying evening, his eyes shine like Rogan’s once did, whenever he’d feel overwhelmed; a spectacle, a show, bloodshot, puffy. But that’s the only thing Nika has of his father - everything else is of Mina, down to the actions, to their bones, and the proud, uldan marrow. Rogan was of Ul’dah himself, and looked the part, but Mina’s face disappeared in the crowd more easily. He didn’t carry the pride of the city’s inhabitants in quite the same way Nika and Mina do. 

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Have I ever talked to you about me and your father, before you were born?” 

Nika’s response is quick. “No.” He sounds tired, too tired to make it an accusation it should be. 

“I remember we had a big fight one day, right before he was meant to go on a mission,” she swallows a lump in her throat, “and I told him a lot of bad things. I had to sit with them for two weeks, praying he’d return soon so I could say sorry, and when he did, it was all solved. We were hale once more.”

“That sounds like a fucking nightmare,” Nika shivers. 

“And Lucretia too - she asked if she could meet you, I told her it was not the time, without consulting either of you, and I hurt her feelings too. But we made up, and she did get to meet you.” 

“Was that right before the dinner you broke the news that you were bisexual to me over flatbread?” 

Mina buries her face in her hands. Not her finest moment. “I had no idea you knew the word at all. Gods, I didn’t know how to label it myself for a long time.”

“Heard some kids on the street use it,” Nika says softly. “I figured out what it is for the most part on my own. I just..” He trails off. 

“Didn’t think I was going to ever be in love with a man?” Mina finishes and Nika nods. 

“Listen, when Minfilia died, I thought–” he looks away and rubs his eyes. “The world can go fuck itself for all I care, but I– he–” He shakes his hands around his head and hisses. “He’s my second chance at— at love, and if I ruin it because I’m a jackass–” 

“You didn’t!” her voice comes stronger than intended and he looks in the mirror, alert. “If you care about him, and you do, you will apologize, and all will be fine again!” 

“How do you know that!” 

“Because it’s happened before! To me, to your father, to Lucretia! And it will happen again to all of us, including you and Artoirel! And while there may be things you can’t overcome, a lot of things you can. So just suck it up, go to him once you’ve slept a bit, and say you’re sorry!” 

Nika curls in on himself. “Suppose sleep will help,” he murmurs. “My head feels twice its fucking size.” 

She ties the braid off and rubs his shoulders. “It will. Go sleep. And remember that this is nothing you two can’t overcome.”

Nika makes a noise she can’t decipher and doesn’t fight it when she helps him up and guides him to the bed that’s far too large for one person. Mina wonders if hers is as big as this for a brief moment, but such thoughts disappear when she feels Nika’s head rest against her shoulder. 

“Try not to fall down,” she says quietly, halfway joking, and he blinks. 

“How fucking embarrassing,” he replies. “One day I’m shooting at fucking insane Garlean princes, and the other I can’t walk in a straight line to the bed.” 

“You almost died,” Mina says. Dread settles in her bones and she looks at him, imagines her son dead and gone, and she holds him a little tighter, to feel the warmth of his skin. “Don’t– Your body needs time to recover from that. You need time to recover from that.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Long enough to get him on the bed, to get him under the woolen covers. Long enough to sit beside him and run a hand down his arm and have him lean into the touch like it’s a gulp of water in the midst of a drought. 

“I’m scared, Mom,” he croaks, and buries his head in the pillows. “Gods save me, I’m so scared.” 

“It’ll all be fine,” she whispers as she slicks back his hair. It needs washing tomorrow. She then runs a finger over his jaw, where the coarse hairs of a growing beard disappear in the shadows of a bedside candle. It’s as if not a day ago she was helping a child fall asleep, and in the long, painful absences between them, he grew up. He has a beard now, yet it hardly matters. 

He’s her son, and that is all that she knows. 

“It’ll be fine,” she repeats until his breathing becomes even, and only then does she press a kiss to his forehead, one he’d rarely ordinarily allow. 

They may have lost one chance at a relationship, but now they both know that love isn’t enough by itself. And that’s good. Whatever comes out of this, it’ll be better than anything they could’ve had before. 

And that is very, very good. 

[redwayfarers]

making a little nika family ref, for myself and anyone who's interested, now that they're all introduced more or less:

mina fiore (formerly perseis from her first marriage, maiden name bassi) - she/her - cis woman, bisexual - midlander hyur. comes from a working class uldan family; seamstress by trade. has one sister and one brother. left ul'dah after her husband's death to live in limsa lominsa with nika, where she now lives and owns a clothing repair shop. nika's biological mother.

rogan perseis - he/him - cis man, heterosexual - midlander hyur. also comes from a working class uldan family; joined the immortal flames and served there as sergeant. by all accounts, he was a kind, responsible man with a great love for his family, even moreso after the birth of his only child. oldest of six siblings. he died from a wound obtained during a patrol in thanalan when nika was 7.

lucretia fiore - she/her - cis woman, lesbian - highlander hyur. comes from a family that moved from ala mhigo to limsa lominsa generations ago. now works as a dockworker in the city she was born in and helps her wife manage the repair shop. met mina a year or two after she moved to limsa with nika. nika's stepmom.

[redwayfarers]

all these baby wols/wol kids gposes i see on my dash makes me think of nika and his mother, mina. obvs i can't do the baby nika gpose (yet) and have to contend with my own head for a moment but like. the way he would've been much different if mina had decided to stay in ul'dah when rogan (her husband, nika's dad) died. how nika would have had a connection to his father through stories of his living relatives; the perseis family isn't a small one, and rogan was a sergeant in the immortal flames, so there would've been lots of stories.

(side note, but the fact that nika is an immortal flames sergeant himself is very inchresting. like, people who knew rogan going like, oh we have another sergeant perseis in our ranks, how sweet and also you have your dad's eyes haha and nika's heart clenches really hard for a few moments. anyway.)

but instead, mina moved to limsa and took her son with her, maybe to start again, maybe to try and heal in a new place, maybe to raise her son in a place where rogan's death won't follow them like a shadow, but it does. like, she met her wife lucretia in limsa and is in a very happy marriage, but she had to witness nika pull away more and more when he was a teen to the point he ran away from home.

and maybe in his long absences, or the absences of his letters since nika hadn't been home for literal years before he started to rekindle the relationship with his mothers between heavensward and stormblood, mina realized nika had her coping mechanisms and wanted to advise him against that, but she couldn't.

but they made bread together after years of not really talking to each other in the kitchen. they drank coffee and had evening walks down the docks of limsa lominsa. he tried teaching her how to play the lute, but without any real success but hey, at least he's trying, right? at least they're trying?

idk man, i'm having lots of feelings abt nika and his familial relations