#idk i definitely resonate w/ l.ivia. or i did as a preteen/early teen. which is why i peg her as Unwell

[heirbane]

feel free to ignore if you’ve already talked about this before, but i was running prae recently and it got me curious about gaius’s feelings on livia / nero / rhitahtyn? or the xivth in general. :>

i have been roosting on this for. weeks? months? because i have Thoughts and not a lot of them are popular probably lol. long long post below. so!

Livia and Lucia lived with Gaius after they were orphaned. The wiki gives like one sentence to say they were separated, but there's no linked proof. For the purposes of my canon, Lucia and Livia are identical twins, and fell into Gaius' custody around the age of nine or ten. (Mayhaps they had intended to separate them, but doing so to people so obviously two halves of one soul, as twins are oft believed to be, was cruel.)

Livia and Lucia were Gaius' first children. He was 39 and had spent twenty five years in the military already, a feat both telling of his ability and his early enlistment. Those who made it to twenty summers in the military had their futures financially secured for them. Gaius would never want for anything, and he now felt that he could offer himself up as a mentor figure to those younger... because as a child who had raised himself and had grown up in the military, he believed that all children needed was a safe home, plentiful meals, and education. His coin could provide all of those things.

Gaius scarcely remembered being ten years old. Not from lack of trying but from purposeful forgetfulness, a merciful omission made by his subconscious to truly forget the half-dozen winters spent trying to relieve his mother of her grief and fending for himself. He thinks he remembers being lonely, and cold, and scared. That, he thinks, he can avoid with the twins, even while he's on a tour of duty. He is so resplendently well-off and respected that the girls could attend private lessons and be dressed in the warmest coats.

(Providing the essentials - even to a level bordering on excessive, or stifling - is not a love children need. His first daughters were no better off than he at ten: they may have been clothed, in classes, and being raised by one of the military's finest, but they were still cripplingly alone. It is a knife he had handed all of his children, something he doesn't feel the blade of for over a dozen years.)

Livia was desperately, horridly lonely. Even before the death of her parents, she did not receive the amount of attention and love that she felt she needed. Her parents attention had always been split between her and her sister, and - as is often the case in multiple child households - Lucia was often seen as the more proper daughter. Upon their demise, Livia was left with a flurry of emotions she had yet to truly acknowledge and decode as one would growing up. Without a proper parent to idealize and a healthy, consistent environment to grow up in, Livia gorged herself on any and all attention, no matter how uncouth or unhinged. All attention was good attention.

She idolized Gaius to a suffocating degree. After her parents died, it seemed as if he swooped in and brought them into gilded luxury: she had everything she could have ever desired... but somehow - ... she still felt empty. But she felt loved and seen whenever he was home. She didn't know what she wanted, nor did she have the maturity to know there was a what: she simply wanted whatever scraps of affection he would offer... and never quite grew out of that. Trauma and emotional neglect is a bear trap one does not get free from on their own. Unfortunately, Livia was very much alone.

Lucia fled Garlemald at sixteen. Both girls were enrolled in the military at fifteen - one more willing than the other. Livia made leaps and bounds in a short few years, clawing her way to fight at Gaius' side, where she believed she belonged. Lucia focused on espionage, and used her adopted father's name to her advantage... and fled. Livia never saw Lucia after that, and died not knowing if her sister had ever found what she had sought in the savage lands.

Rhitahtyn, by comparison, was decidedly more a younger brother than son. A half dozen years his junior, Rhitahtyn entered the military not long after Gaius turned twenty-four. Not long after, Rhitahtyn was assigned to Gaius' very first platoon of soldiers ... as those from conquered lands were oft used as a new General's testing group.

Rhitahtyn and other Roe folk often used their native tongue to chitchat when in the barracks or otherwise not under the direct eye of Garlemald... or when they believed their superior to be ignorant of the language. Gaius had been in the military over a decade by the time they crossed paths and had chosen to learn the basics of the tongues spoken by those under his command. Needless to say, Rhitahtyn had choice words for his leader. (Needless to say, Gaius had his own in return. The floors of the platoon's bedquarters would never be nearly as clean as the Roe had made them that night as punishment.)

Despite the bad foot they got off on, Gaius saw promise in the younger man. He remained level-headed no matter the confrontation, already had years of work behind him as a mercenary, and had a sharp wit to boot. As time went on, their footing became less uneven, and Gaius began to see him as a peer instead of a recruit. Time and time again, he chose Rhi to be at his side, much like Nero and Livia.

Rhi knew the rest of Gaius' children. He met all of the Au Ri from Terncliff: he knew the Garlean orphans the man sponsored care for. They all came to see the Roe in a similar light to Gaius, despite the wide age gap between himself and them: to his children, Rhi was but another sibling. (It was Alphonse, still losing baby teeth and learning how Garlean names worked, who stumbled over Rhitahtyn's name enough that 'Rhi' came to be. Only the children dubbed him so. It was not a name Gaius would ever admit to using.)

As it is in canon, Gaius would not have sent Rhi to Cape Westwind to die. He would not have left the grounds to Livia and others. He did not believe the Warrior of Light so strong as to put down two soldiers he had trained himself: he had more faith in their abilities - and in Garlemald - than he had fear of the Warrior.

(As not many survived Westwind or after, it took Gaius many, many years to learn how Rhitahtyn perished - a fact only the Warrior of Light carried with them. He knew he had perished: he knew he had fought until the end. But to know that his brother-in-arms had fully intended to go down in flames with the Warrior of Light - ... to say he has regrets is but a sliver of the truth.)

In a perfect world, Gaius may have set up Nero with one of his daughters. In a perfect world, Midas would not have perished, and they would have happily co-parented Cid. Both Cid and Nero were born when Gaius was in his early twenties, and he sees both men in a similar light, much to Nero's disgust. A little competition never hurt anyone, and each boy's promise seemed to ignite fire in the other.

Much akin to Livia and Lucia, Nero is ... definitely the black sheep. While close to the age of his adult children, the man froths at the mouth when such is spoken, forever rushing to be great in his own right. Nero's sights for the future - his future, specifically - is both endearing and infuriating to Gaius, who sees his soldiers as part of a larger whole.

Unfortunately, no matter how infuriating or offbeat he is, Nero is a genius... but would have still come up short, had Cid stayed in Garlemald. Gaius knows this. Nero knows this, and he will fight until he is near dead to get out of the shadow Cid left behind by simply existing.

(Nero does not know why the shadow remains. He does not know why Gaius is soft-hearted for Cid, or why his voice is so fond for Midas. His relationship with the scientist is a secret only two other people were privy to: Midas' wife, and Cid. By the time Gaius meets Nero, Midas' widow has long since disappeared from under Garlemald's eye... and Cid is presumed dead.)

Had Lucia not fled and had Livia been sound of mind, he does think they would have made a fine lineage, all things considered. However, Livia only had eyes for Gaius... and Nero only had eyes for Cid.