He came. There had never been any doubt for some reason, despite all the events that had happened in his life that told Cera that he should. So many had abandoned him. They had held his tender, golden heart in their tarnished fists and whispered words of promise and loyalty against its gleaming surface. When it stopped reflecting back to them the warped, beautiful image they were so narcissistically enamored with and showed instead their tainted, greedy selves...they dropped it, uncaring of their own perpetuated lies and what it meant for Cera to see it stranded upon the sands. But Gaucho...perhaps he was too primordial to have such grievous flaws, or he was uninterested in being raised on a pedestal to the idol that a younger Cera had made everyone who loved him into.

Gaucho had only left him once. Once. But he had come back. For the first time in Cera's life, somebody who had abandoned him had actually returned. Apologized. And from then on, it had become a pattern. When Cera called, Gaucho came. Always.

Were Gaucho to ever have an altar in his name, Cera would sooner sacrifice himself atop it than have to give up the one man in his life who had always returned. Always supported him. Always been there.

Turning, Cera let himself drown a peaceful sort of death in Gaucho's azure gems, his own name sounding more whole than the boy who owned it had ever been coming from his Sultan's lips. "Gaucho," he murmured in return, toneless in all but an underlying thread of loss and confusion. "Midas...Father...did you know?" Had he and Ranjiri conspired to keep the news from him? Or was it accidental, in the end? Cera as always kept from the one he needed and wanted most by duty?

"He's dead." It felt...heavy, on his tongue. Leaden. The same as how it echoed between his teeth. As often as it had been in his head, it still sounded false somehow when cloaked in his voice. It was still so surreal, such an impossible feat. Midas had been gifted immortality, how could it be? Wasn't the only one who desired such things the Goddess of the Moon? And had she not been cast down from the ranks of the others to walk the land of Helovia, as mortal as those she so apparently despised? "It feels..." helplessly he turned his eyes to Gaucho, chest aching with how numb it all felt. "I can't feel..." it was both a whole answer and a fragment, because what he felt couldn't be described, simply because he could not experience it. Cera had shut down on a fundamental level, and he was left floundering in his own existence.

"Tell me what to do. Gaucho, please." If he never asked something from the man again, he could live with that. "I need to do something. Work. My quest. I don't care if I have to challenge someone, I need to do something. I can't feel anything, and I need to...I need a purpose," he hiccuped, and a singular tear creased in the corner of his eye to trail pitifully down his cheek. He'd been too shy to ask Gaucho for help on his quest before, despite being such a good candidate. But if it made Cera stronger...he would do anything to be able to be useful. Strong enough to blot out his own emotions.

@[Gaucho]

Had Gaucho spoken his mind, he would have been further surprised. With all the devastation and ruin that suddenly pervaded the golden's life, all the change that swept through and past him, there was one rock of certainty in the middle of the current. It was why Cera had run for Gaucho, why he would always seek him out in times of trouble. Because Gaucho was more of a father to Cera than Midas had ever been. Perhaps not in physical proximity, or even traditional, complex love. But Gaucho had taught Cera lessons that Midas had never cared to. He'd seen the individual, the independence hesitantly festering in his soul and had encouraged it. Midas had never been able to see past the child cling to his side, forever in his shadow. The man had paved a path of gold for Cera to follow, living on the foundation of his grace and popularity, always given an unfair advantage. Always forever living on in the shadow that grew ever longer in his purportedly righteous death.

Gaucho had shown him another path.

But to call the man father? Cera would, but was unsure of how Gaucho would ever react to that kind of title. Would he misunderstand, in the wake of Midas' death? Find Cera to be too old for that kind of reliance? Be uncomfortable, with the multitude of blooded children he had of his own? So the prince's tongue was forever held, words measured and careful, his own quiet desired trapped in his chest and tattooed on his tongue. Yet another secret to the complexities he'd never seen to exist inside himself.

But pain had a funny way of erasing all those tells, the awareness of change. The subtleties of truth. And it was hidden away for another time, if it were ever to come about. There was too much noise in Cera's head, buzzing, trembling with the staccato beat of his heart. Gaucho's rumbling vocals an undercurrent of truth to the cacophony in his ears. It had not subsided since he'd first found out, and Cera wondered if this was how madness was born.

Cera snorted bitterly, the sting just as sharp even when Ranjiri had shared that particular news on her own. Cold cut stones slid up towards Gaucho's own, heartless for a beat as ice flooded his mouth and cut itself into syllables. "He chose that land. He doesn't deserve to be buried here anyways." It was sharp, but no blood ever burst along his tastebuds in metallic waves. Sincerity dulled the edge of his own blade between his teeth. That he couldn't see his father even in death just made him grin, wry and bitter, glinting like glass caught in the folds of his lips. Bloodstained. But he said nothing else.

It served as perfect grounds for the apology that swept past him, dismissed and forgiven in turn with a flick of his ear. "She thought it would spare me the pain," was explained quietly. As if he deserved that. Thin shoulders shrugged. "I wouldn't have wanted you to...see me like that." A mumbled confession, for though he would have happily leaned upon Gaucho's shoulder, he would not have wanted to make the man uncomfortable. Nor make him feel as though all of Cera's hard work had been put back a great league, when the Prince was standing there in that moment hoping to excel beyond all other measures.

And what better way than his quest? "I met with the Sun God when he visited our lands, and he granted me a quest for magic. Collect four fire magic types in the amulets he gave me - " here he motioned to where they were woven into his mane by Ilaria, for lack of chains. " - and to return to be granted it. I need your help, Gaucho. I need to be strong." Torn face lifted upward as if Gaucho was his savior and he a righteous man to be pulled from the open, yawning mouth of the seas of the damned. The Wildfire was more fitting an idol, an angel, than any other Cera had encountered.

@[Gaucho]