♞

♚ ╼ ⟨  @iirvings ⟩

this house had become like his home as the afterthought of recent events. sylvarant and tethe’alla where no longer two sides of the same coin, but had become as one whole again. his son, hailed a hero and the chosen, no longer had to live an existence only awaiting her death. it was happy ending or it should’ve been. kratos had watched as lloyd learned another lesson of life: that saving the world was more than having redworn idealism, cherished companions, or wielding a blade in battle: that sometimes, change ( of any kind ): was met with those who saw nothing incorrect about the days of yesteryear. it was hard watching, as both a father and something else so alien to his own flesh and blood, as he had to navigate a reformed world that was dealing with the intense aftermath of atrocities and malfeasance from the front door of cruxis: but naturally, the general public would never know of such truth.

a lack of knowledge bought out the very best and the very worst in people ( the negative is always what was focused on, no matter how good or positive the deed ): a populace whom, had lloyd not wanted to see a world where one was not sent as a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter for thousands, would not even have the soul to feel hate, know fear, or have bigotry towards the new reality set before them. so perhaps that was why kratos found himself in a setting of deja vu. standing before a familiar resting place of a long deceased love. another year and yet another reminder that sometimes a version of happiness wasn’t meant to last forever, but that, like dandelion seeds would be carried on the wind and find new lands to take root and grow in. even if the seedlings had been beaten and maltreated along the way: they’d still find there place in the cycle of life.

having spoke to dirk earlier in the week, kratos had taken all manner of precaution prior to today. to the masses it was just another monday, but to kratos it was so much more: it was lloyd’s birthday, his eighteenth birthday to be exact. the former key to original had spent the past fourteen years on this day drowning in misery and despondency but no longer did kratos need to exist in such a state. sure, one birthday could not make up for a what if relationship lost to time of years past but it was a start, a closer attempt, and kratos would make due with whatever fragments lloyd wanted to give him. running his fingers along anna’s gravesite he exhales and gives a silent thought to beg his wife, even after death, for courage and as usual, for forgiveness. sylph’s winds seemed to pick up speed and the sighs of spring where in full swing. all manners of flora and fauna had life and home amongst iselia forest ( one of the few places that did not suffer drastic changes from the rejoining of world’s ): kratos saw it as a tiny blessing amidst everything else lloyd had experience and would continue too do so in the foreseeable future: aselia still gave him a sense of reprise, a sense of home.

before long, dusk had begun to settle in and the vernal equinox bestowed a crystal clear night sky and kratos reaped the benefits as not soon after the familiar steps of one lloyd irving and noishe appeared outside the thick woodlands. ❛ lloyd. ❜ refraining from adding the long begotten and silenced ‘o’ at the end of his son’s name, the seraphim conveys so much emotion with just the single word.

❛ hey, kratos. ❜

why should he expect to be called anything different. lloyd, had a father and a far more adapt at the job than he. however, it is a shallow kind of sting that hits him right in the bones, right in the heart. ❛ lloyd. ❜ kratos simply speaks his name once more but his voice is more low, more tender ( the embodiment of regret and sorrow ): he watches earnestly as lloyd goes to sit next to his mother’s grave and tilts his head up towards the sky, muttering his daily secrets and intimate words only for his mother, yet kratos, with all his enhanced senses heard them anyway but does his best to ignore, out of respect for both of them. perhaps, the day of his birth was not the best to have tried to do this. perhaps, that day would never be and he’d go to derris-kharlan still with regret of things he did not do, things that he did not convey. perhaps—the internal soliloquy is broken by a bittersweet iselian dialect.

❛ did you know i was your son the whole time? ❜

noishe whines and begins to kneel on all fours, curling his legs inward in so-much-like-a-canine-way beside his young master and oh, what a night. while, the duo where long overdue for this conversation ( it having been put on indefinite hiatus until the saving of the world business had been taken care of ): but that had been months ago, when winter still gave its chill and jack frost sought to cover the land in snow instead of mother nature’s evergreens. kratos had came here for this, had had dirk make, like new, to a treasured trinket that had rusted due to misuse. a something that had been his sole reason to keep edging on the road of life before that faithful day outside martel’s temple, the orders from mithos notwithstanding.

kratos hesitates briefly, right hand firmly holding onto the hilt of his blade ( the act of which had always been a crutch for him, even now ): it gave him much gallantry, especially during bygone times of war. ❛ i realized it when i found anna’s grave at your house. ❜ what a ambivalent reunion it had been indeed. to have been given both death and rebirth all in mere seconds.

❛ how did mom die? you know, don’t you? ❜

where did one begin, where did they end with the heaviness of a conversation, the weight lay heavy onto kratos as summer’s humid air. ❛ like presea, anna was a research subject of the angulus project. they were trying to create a cruxis crystal inside her body. ❜ his eyes half-lidden as the remnants of a memory he’d long buried began rushing to the forefront, as adam’s ale finally free of billabong or manmade restriction.

❛ i still don’t get it, why couldn’t they just get more from cruxis? why a whole separate project for something like that, they already had the ranches. ❜

ancient hero of yore just looks and looks at his child— no the man before him. lloyd was all grown up, he had no use of kratos as a father ( that duty had been very appreciably passed to another ): unyet, on this spring borne night, lloyd still treated him with all the curiosity of asking question from when he was three, some habits truly never died. ❛ the method to creating cruxis crystals was lost during the era of the great kharlan war. what cruxis possessed where only leftovers from that conflict and by all standards running out. the angelus project served as a way to find new methods to create them. but, as with regular exspheres, they require a living host to develop. ❜

it was in this moment that the pandora’s box of what he’d unleashed had finally hit lloyd so to speak and he dropped to the ground, knees pulled close to his chest as he sat beside the ever evolving protozoan dubbed ‘dog’

❛ when i learned of mithos’ plan to create an age of lifeless beings. i turned against him and descended upon sylvarant, ❜ another pause, another brief hesitation, but hadn’t kratos hesitated enough? hadn’t he hid in the shadow of others as many enormities by cruxis’ malfeasance. even if it brought pain, even if he was met with more hatred he had to continue. if not only for his sake, then lloyd’s as well. ❛ where i met anna. ❜

again, so much like when he was a toddler and when they where a family lloyd looks up at his biological father, his eyes wide with all the wonderment like the women he’d been said to resemble ( physically, emotionally, and mentally ): by yuan, mithos, and kratos—but for whom he could never remember nor truly know. ❛ so mom was an experimental subject just like presea…is that why in ozette you seemed kinda different? ❜

only his own flesh and blood could’ve picked up on the silent change in his mannerism, the tug on his heart. ❛ yes. it reminded me so much of anna. but after meeting her, i realized my mistake in believing that accepting mithos’ vision would be the fastest route to reunite the worlds. it was then that i began to search for a way for a human to wield the eternal sword. ❜

❛ so even back then, even back then kratos you— ❜ like a poppy blooming within the first glimmers spring warmth, something seemed to awaken within the eternal swordsmen. kratos, who had always seemed half-whole, was finally opening up to him after all this time. ❛ you where doing to stop mithos. so you could unite the worlds. ❜

❛ indeed. aionis and cruxis crystal aside, inside me still flows the blood of a mere man. however, anna and i where pursued ruthlessly by cruxis, ❜ a bittersweet smile grows on his features, half in tears, half in laughter ( those where the best years of his life, how he wanted to spend the rest of his overextended life ): a long murdered rage crept inside kratos once more but he pushed it down, kvar was long dead by his bloodline’s blades anyhow. ❛ we traveled from place to place, evading cruxis and when you where born, with you as well. we where searching for the only dwarf said to still live in the world of sylverant, so he could craft anna a key crest. so neither of us had to live with the what if. ❜

ironic, wasn’t it. how everything had become just so. his child, raised by the very dwarf he’d been seeking for years, his wife given a beautifully maintained resting place, and the so called pinnacle of kvar’s life work had been used in bringing justice to the world. kratos could never thank dirk enough, would never be able to do so, in any amount of word. in any long or bygone tongue. 

❛ …but, we where finally caught by kvar. ❜

noishe whines again, moving to lay his head onto kratos’ left boot. his whines get louder and louder as his younger master pets him ever so tenderly. his inhuman noises trying to relay all the hate, fear, and protest at the four letter name, what ruined the arshis little found family too.

lloyd’s voice and movement is half hollow, as he uses the petting of his lifelong pet as a way to soothe himself. ❛ and then mom was turned into a monster. ❜

❛ yes. her exsphere removed and lacking a key crest, the mana in her body went out of control and she was turned into an exbelua; just as marble and dorr’s wife. ❜

recalling it was just as bad. having lived it and retelling one of, if not thee hardest moments of kratos aurion’s foregone life. the first time he’d ever seen such a monstrosity ( theories and hypothesis did not do the terror justice ): but even now, as the imagery was still fresh in his mind ( would always be ever clear ): kratos could no more view that visage as monster than blood could keep warmth upon snow: even in all the horror and blood-chilling screams, anna’s eyes had still looked as divine and steady as they’d always had, reaching in and pulling out the darkest parts of kratos. how love had saved him and how loved had become his undoing. time and time again everything he held dear was stripped and taken from him. how this topic of conversation pained him.

❛ when it ( not his anna, never his anna ): tried to devour you, ❜ his voice wavers, his grip on his blade never faltering, the skin being torn as droplets of blood hit the ground as the indomitable strength would’ve long since shattered the hilt to pieces had it not have been forged from the strongest of material for this hero of both present and yesteryear. ❛ noishe protected you, as he always had, and anna regained control of herself momentarily. ❜

❛ noishe saved me? ❜ newly fledged adulthood says in bewilderment. noishe, his loyal companion and friend who ran in fear at even the common house fly. had protected him fiercely from something as horrific as… that?

❛ that’s probably when noishe became sensitive to monsters. noishe and anna were both gravely wounded. your mother, ❜ dithering and a sea of cunctation. just keep pushing he prayed but falsified goddess or fabricated deity. ❛ your mother begged me to kill her. ❜

lloyd jumps to his feet at the mention of murder and his mother in the same sentence. the movement startles noishe who retreats from his position on the ground to move to stand beside kratos who begins petting his head with such an ease as he’d once done when they’d first met millennia ago. ❛ i’ve heard enough. ❜ he was the one to have started this conversation and he would be the one to end it. however, opening the floodgates to several lived lifetimes of regret and sorrow could not be shut so easily.

❛ anna went out of control again and turned on you. then i— ❜ if a hell even more than niflheim existed then kratos was already there ( maybe had always been ): and he had fabricated this eternal damnation by his own two hands. deserving far worse than the symbolistic shackles worn by regal. transgression and sacrilegious action far beyond the foretold promise of a sweet embrace from an executional style duel. how pathetic, for a man who had slain and took life from so many, seek that which was far out extended passed average means.

lloyd spoke even louder now. had he not lived on the outskirts of iselia, any neighbors he might’ve had would have left houses in curiosity and worry. ❛ that’s enough! ❜ he could fill in the blanks, figure out the missing pieces. his heart ached so much for something his soul could no longer recall and mayhaps, that was what hurt the worst. yearning for something that was immortalized for everyone but yourself, the living embodiment of its half, never being made whole.

❛ i,  ❜ if the recesses of any angered chosen or citizens of aselia could come up from their bygone graves and send kratos into the world’s depths at this moment, he wouldn’t fight back nor refuse. ❛ killed her. ❜

❛ i said that’s enough! ❜ and his anger is the type to move whole nations, whole mountains. a steady stream of tears are falling from lloyd’s face and his stance is one of defense, but not from sabers nor magicks but from words, from truth.

what else is one of the last remaining members of cruxis to do? how can you comfort the person you are causing the pain of? how could he rid his own pain? kratos was the genesis and revelations of his own demise, of his lackluster undeserved rebirth.

❛ after that, ❜ because he couldn’t stop. it was as natural as birds taking flight or fish swimming in the ocean, they just did as they could. ❛ kvar attacked, then you and noishe fell down the cliff along with the exsphere. i fought off kvar and his men, then descended the cliff. ❜

what isn’t being said is the seething rage kratos had during that conflict. the soulless slaughter towards every single person that had come after his family, that had been the cause of him being forced to choose between his beloved and their love filled creation, that made him do harm to the one women he had sworn to protect with his life. kratos had slain them all without mercy nor regret ( kvar within a last second before kratos had drove flamberge through his neck managed to teleport away, the only reason that bitch had survived ): but everyone else had become for daemon and monster kind, mere numbers in his extensive and unnamed body count.

❛ but all that was left was the half-eaten desian corpses by monsters and just one single shoe. ❜ it was in this moment that kratos reached into an inner pocket on his attire, undoing the ( one of many ): buckles to retrieve the object inside, the second most important item that had kept him doing all these years: the left shoe of his, then three-year-old son. it was all worn and half the sole had fallen off over the years but he looks at it with the same fondness and bittersweet reminiscence that he always had. a smile graces kratos’ features and with it, tears began to form at the corner of eyes. ❛ i thought there was no way you could… still be alive. ❜

kratos had searched aimlessly and had never stopped searching, even when he saw the world as nothing but a beauty and colorless existence. even when he became a mere hollow of a once great hero of kharlan, the companion and teacher to the hero mithos of four thousand years ago. he never gave up on trying to find a piece of his happiness and the living merging of love between a mortal and a sin filled angel. but, encountering his flesh and blood again, going on the journey of regeneration and having breathed new life into its meaning was as babylon and trumpets shouting: try again. try again. repeat and do it again.

aurion and irving where both filled with emotion, some happy, some sad. it was as christ being nailed to a cross but then rising again. ❛ is that when you returned to cruxis? ❜ lloyd was crossing the t’s and doting the i’s. 

❛ i am the origin seal itself. since killing me would break the seal, yggdrasill ( again, not mithos. the cruelty and hate of heart hadn’t been his mithos ): couldn’t just leave me be. ❜

❛ and you were okay with that? after everything he did to you, to mom? even though you opposed everything he was doing? ❜

❛ everything felt meaningless. ❜ by losing anna in such a way, kratos had truly understood where mithos’ heartache and guilt regarding martel stood. kratos had no choice, he’d already betrayed his words to his wife and child… could he have really done it again in losing one of the only two people he truly still had left in this new world that was nothing like the aselia he once knew or would ever know again? ❛ mithos said he would reunite the worlds as soon as martel was revived. ❜ but believing in that idealism had been is downfall once and had been it again and again.

now it is kratos who shifts his stance, moving now to place his non bloodied hand onto lloyd’s shoulder. ❛ i came to think that as long as the land would be as it was once more, that would be enough. that was, until i met you. ❜

dumbfounded, lloyd looks at his birth father in earnest, because he knew lloyd, sure he’d only been three when the hand of fate made them part but he’d always known lloyd and maybe he always would. after all, what was lloyd but one parts anna and one parts kratos? ❛ me? why me? ❜ sure, there was something entirely lloyd irving and raised by dirk the dwarf in there too but within there was no nature vs nurture argument to be had. instead, there was only eternal love and the upmost tenderness and it was bursting, bursting bursting.

❛ you reminded me of mithos, the hero of kharlan not as he had become as lord yggdrasil. because just like you, mithos was desperately trying to save the world, even when most of the world around him spat at his existence. he didn’t give up. no matter how much he was oppressed. he was hopeful, ❜ there goes that bittersweet tone of voice again. ❛ until the day martel was killed, by a human no less. ❜

the young man shifts and kratos lowers his arm. he looks to the sky seemingly searching for something, anything otherworldly to ground him from the heaviness of the title he now choose to bore and all the expectations that adorned its crown. ❛ a hero. that’s what people called him. ❜

❛ yes, they did. some still do. ❜ seeing the change in lloyd’s mannerism, kratos tries to recover, he needed this talk to go well and maybe it shouldn’t of been had on his birthday of all days, but had anything in his life exactly gone as planned? ❛ but, there is a clear difference between you and mithos. ❜

❛ our race? ❜ it is said so innocently, no malice or ill intent by hidden meaning. his best friend and professor where of half elf descent and mithos, the person he’d grown to know as a friend, was too. 

kratos shakes his head, cracking a small laugh in response. truly, as much as things changed something’s would, thankfully, say just the same. ❛ no, not that. you realize you are capable of making mistakes. or rather, if you make a mistake, you are capable of acknowledging it. that takes courage. mithos, as well as i and yuan, were unable to do that. ❜

❛ the courage to acknowledge one’s mistakes. ❜ a saying that sounds so profound coming from someone like him. he, in vermilion attire lovingly forged by a dwarf. 

to kratos, those words fully embody everything that lloyd had and that he, until recently, lacked. ❛ we were incapable of correcting our flawed path, we gave up on correcting our atrocities and fell more into them. but you, lloyd. you didn’t give up. ❜

❛ if you feel that way, then you realized it by now that mistakes can be corrected, even one’s like the one’s made by cruxis. but, i guess that’s why you’ve decided to leave for derris-kharlan. ❜ the last part left a bittersweet melody off the young hero's tongue.

❛ yes. giving those half-elves left behind by cruxis is the next step in correcting my flawed path. aiding you against mithos was the first but there are others. ❜

the warmth of spring has bygone in the few hours or so they’ve spent outside. the moon, now high in the skies gives a slight chill to the breeze as it blows, causing the flower petals atop anna’s grave to seemingly dance. the petals move past both he and lloyd, as if embracing the pair from beyond the reaches of life. it is comforting and gives the pair ( as well as noishe who has now ceased whining ): a bit of reprise from the former topic at hand.

❛ but before i go. there is something i still have to do. ❜ kratos places the shoe he’d carried all these years onto anna’s grave, offering silent words not meant to be shared besides with his love who now dwelled beyond the breath of life. before reaching around his neck to reveal two pristine lockets, one of the purest silvers and the other, the most precious of white golds. it is then that he reaches for the silver and unclips it so. ❛ happy birthday, lloydo, ❜ it sounds so foreign on his tongue, like the rebirth of a creature long thought extinct. at least he wasn’t going to miss a fifteenth birthday. 

happiness was the only feeling lloyd could place, if not a bit of bittersweetness as the other realization hit: that lloyd could of had this. while, eternally blessed and grateful that dirk had found and choose to adopt him, built them a house, and gave them both a home. it was also intensely heart-wrenching that lloyd could of had a life with two parents ( a clearly loving one filled of boundless affections ): but that his own mother, own father, and himself had been made as victims inside the countless list of others.

his hands tremble slightly, as he takes the object from kratos’ outstretched hands. ❛ a pendent? what is? ❜ he questions before opening it, kratos’ eyes never leaving the sight before him. inside is a photograph, worn from the passage of years but still visible in all the ways that counted. ❛ its you and mom? then that baby— ❜

❛ is you. it was us, as a family. we got the photos taken the year you turned one. you where both so happy, we were so happy.❜ how fitting that the first and last present kratos would ever give his only child was a memento.

maybe it was just his rotten luck that things had turned out this way and mayhaps it was for the betterment. it had been said that time healed all wounds but kratos had learned that some wounds where too deep and deadly to repair. in time, the mind simply wished to protect his sanity and had covered all the memory and dread with scar tissue but it didn’t make the ache throb any less, didn’t make the memory any less impactful. but like this, on the day that had served as the catalyst that changed his life for all the right reasons, in front of his love, in the gaze of his child. kratos was on the right pathway to redemption. within tragedy and melancholy and facades the real person within kratos could finally be free again. not much time was left until he would leave for derris-kharlan but with the time he did have was bound to no one nor as a summon spirit key. it was as adam’s ale and divine given retribution.

In terms of space, those vows must take up at least like... eighty percent. The other twenty was made up of whatever else had Lloyd's interest. And putting aside twenty percent was being awfully generous.

No doubt if there were any onlookers, unaware of their relationship, they would think Zelos was being awfully harsh; His somewhat serious and unchanging expression giving his words a little extra heft. But Lloyd knew better by now. Joking around was just another coping mechanism of his, just like his cruel demeanor. Granted both were often taken too far.

Movement caught his eye and seeing that Lloyd was planning on giving his hair another ruffle, he began to shy away only to notice that said touch was shortly abandoned. With a wary blink, Zelos paused upon noticing the look on his companion's face. For once, Lloyd looked far older than he was.

A feeling of dread suddenly welled in his chest and burst upon hearing Lloyd's overdue question. "Why..?"

It was difficult not to notice just where Lloyd placed his weight, but as usual, Zelos would pretend it had flown over his head. "...If I said it was on a whim, would you believe me?" He has been known for being capricious after all.

But he didn't believe it either and sighed as a result. "Maybe I'm still just running away. From her, from responsibility. I know I said I'd live with her but... I'm still terrified." Of history repeating. Of her pushing him away again. But maybe there was also something else to this equation and thus he continued.

"Or maybe... this is my way for trying to atone for all I did." For almost condemning all of them to a life with no feeling and no meaning. A life of nothing but merely existing. "You might have forgiven me, but..." I can't forgive myself.

" ... "

Now, how would he answer was the question he asked himself. How could he simply take something so multi-faceted and turn it into one single thing? Lloyd gazed upward, feeling the weight of titles not his own bearing down on him.

" ... You don't expect me to be more than I can be. Quite frankly, it's. Well. Everyone and their mother wants me to be some sort of Martel-sent hero- " he glared up at nothing, " and instead of leaving me the hell alone for five damn seconds, I'm either being dragged into Church propaganda, or I'm borderline ordered to attend social events for political factions I couldn't give a rat's ass about, or I'm just hounded for saving this person or that.

"You heard what the Church calls me nowadays, right? The Holy Sword. They've practically turned me into some sort of sword saint to save their own asses because of all the bad pr from the pope's ousting."

Lloyd sneered at invisible shadows in the ceiling. But just as quickly, he settled back into neutrality.

" I have no reason to overcompensate around you. I'm not your little brother, I'm not your student, I'm not your leader, I'm not some savior to you- I'm just. Lloyd. "

Besides, he had an inkling Lloyd was swimming in a sea of regret at the mere sight of him. This was his fault after all.

The unspoken invitation was left hanging in the open air. He had little desire to sit and catch up over what each other had been doing over the last who knows how many years. The question at least had him canting his head to the side slightly, as if confused why he would ask such a dumb question. Seems all those years hadn't made him any more wise. Typical.

"You're a very easy guy to find, provided one knows what to look for." Yes, he knew Lloyd was still kicking for a very long time. Rumors and history kept him updated on his whereabouts, his actions, all perfect for avoiding the man that listened to his heart over his head the one time it really, truly mattered.

"Though you know... Here I was thinking you'd be happy to see me." Happy. Anguished. Defeated. Not this frustrating calm that kept making his blood boil. Perhaps a little more prodding the bear would work, and he took a swing where he suspected it would hurt most.

"For someone so desperate not to lose the one he apparently loves, you really haven't done much of anything to back up that claim." He let out a sigh, voice eerily impassive compared to how he actually felt.

" I left you to die after doing my damndest to keep you alive. Beating myself up for it got old after a millennia or two. "

Though 'beating himself up' and 'having visceral nightmares from then on' were incredibly different statements to make. Zelos didn't need to know that though. He deserved better.

(He deserved to have been listened to and yet you just left him-)

A n y w a y

Elbows on his knees, he tilted his head onto an open palm. Gone were the days of some naive little boy in red not quite ready to take on the world; here sat a living remnant of an era long forgotten, an angel and lord in his own right. " I pride myself on being hard to locate considering this is my domain, so you must have spent centuries yourself keeping an eye on me. Which leads me to question two,

" Why? "