“maybe normalcy is a thing we’re meant to protect, rather than enjoy.” (anise)
[ @pikohan | emotionally intense prompts | accepting ]
The statement is unexpected. Kratos had not even been looking at her. It had been one of those moments when he hadn't been looking at anybody, lost of thoughts of a similar nature.
Truthfully, he agrees. In fact, he recalls a similar conversation with Yuan, close to the beginning of all of this business, looking out at a world that was determined to tear itself apart. But he and Yuan were both former soldiers, born in wartime, born of it. They had not known peace. They hadn't sought it for themselves either.
And they'd been old, even when they weren't. Kratos, at the age of 28, had been old already, had worn the weight of thousands of lives lost through his actions. He had already chased his so-called dreams and seen where they would take him.
He'd already lived longer than many in his position, and even made peace with death.
There had been an agreement between them then, that they lived for the sake of preserving Aselia. That their lives, once property of their individual countries, were still not their own.
Sometimes, staring into the inky expanse of the void beyond Derris-Kharlan, Kratos has wondered whether that was why his family was taken from him. That brief moment of normality he had enjoyed, something forbidden to one who had failed in their original purpose. And in allowing himself to shirk that duty to enjoy it, he had damned them.
But Anise is so incredibly young. She is but a child herself. He feels she cannot have even lived long enough to decide what her dreams are, let alone seek to fulfill them.
That is the very reason that normalcy should be protected.
Turning his head to look at her, he does not nod. Truthfully, he agrees, but not for her.