Remember How
Nov. 15th, 2017 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: Tales of Symphonia
Characters: Kratos, Anna (posthumously), minor Colette
Word count: ~450
Warnings: None
Notes: Really early-game stuff: set after Colette, Raine, and Kratos leave Iselia, but before Lloyd and Genis get to Triet. The game tries so hard to get you to buy Kratos as this super enigmatic badass, but it's just as easy to read him as the most awkward man alive.
This was not the first Chosen One he’d had to shepherd to the tower. Mithos sometimes sent him, and sometimes Yuan - although as the sacrifices began to resemble Martel more and more closely, Yuan had put up more and more resistance. Kratos was the closest thing to a disinterested party, if anyone could be disinterested after whole millennia.
But she was the first in a long time. The first since before Anna’s death, certainly. He didn’t remember how to deal with them. Since Anna, he had deliberately forgotten even the little he retained about how to interact with humans. It was of no use. No single human life was of any value or significance. So it did not matter to him that Colette Brunel would soon be dead. It did not bother him. What bothered him was the thought that he had, somehow, to maintain her goodwill and that of her half-elf guardian until that time.
“We can all take turns cooking!” she said, at the outset. Despite the mana lineage containing only minuscule amounts of elven blood, diluted by hundreds of generations, her appearance was similar to Mithos. It was jarring to see someone who looked like him display an earnest naivety that could never have been his. Had she not been educated about the Chosen’s role? Did she not know that her body would either be given to Martel or thrown into a box to forever orbit the Tower of Salvation?
“Take turns cooking,” he muttered resignedly, frowning at the skillet over the fire. It was already clear that it wouldn’t be safe to give a turn to the young Professor, and so, to allay suspicions for the time being, he would have to remember how it was done. Before Anna, he had gone two thousand years without eating, much less preparing food himself. She had taught him a few recipes. She had called his skills “pitiful” and he had remembered not to take this literally. He had remembered not to be offended, because she was laughing as she said it.
He had lost many abilities, in his long alienation from humanity. If these recollections were the price of recovering them, he did not want them back.
But this was the absurd situation he found himself in. He would have to make do. He was to keep a close watch over Colette until she became Martel or died; Mithos did not offer any other choices.
Perhaps soup. Anna had once told him, “Even you couldn’t mess up a soup. I believe in you.” He tried not to remember that part.
Characters: Kratos, Anna (posthumously), minor Colette
Word count: ~450
Warnings: None
Notes: Really early-game stuff: set after Colette, Raine, and Kratos leave Iselia, but before Lloyd and Genis get to Triet. The game tries so hard to get you to buy Kratos as this super enigmatic badass, but it's just as easy to read him as the most awkward man alive.
This was not the first Chosen One he’d had to shepherd to the tower. Mithos sometimes sent him, and sometimes Yuan - although as the sacrifices began to resemble Martel more and more closely, Yuan had put up more and more resistance. Kratos was the closest thing to a disinterested party, if anyone could be disinterested after whole millennia.
But she was the first in a long time. The first since before Anna’s death, certainly. He didn’t remember how to deal with them. Since Anna, he had deliberately forgotten even the little he retained about how to interact with humans. It was of no use. No single human life was of any value or significance. So it did not matter to him that Colette Brunel would soon be dead. It did not bother him. What bothered him was the thought that he had, somehow, to maintain her goodwill and that of her half-elf guardian until that time.
“We can all take turns cooking!” she said, at the outset. Despite the mana lineage containing only minuscule amounts of elven blood, diluted by hundreds of generations, her appearance was similar to Mithos. It was jarring to see someone who looked like him display an earnest naivety that could never have been his. Had she not been educated about the Chosen’s role? Did she not know that her body would either be given to Martel or thrown into a box to forever orbit the Tower of Salvation?
“Take turns cooking,” he muttered resignedly, frowning at the skillet over the fire. It was already clear that it wouldn’t be safe to give a turn to the young Professor, and so, to allay suspicions for the time being, he would have to remember how it was done. Before Anna, he had gone two thousand years without eating, much less preparing food himself. She had taught him a few recipes. She had called his skills “pitiful” and he had remembered not to take this literally. He had remembered not to be offended, because she was laughing as she said it.
He had lost many abilities, in his long alienation from humanity. If these recollections were the price of recovering them, he did not want them back.
But this was the absurd situation he found himself in. He would have to make do. He was to keep a close watch over Colette until she became Martel or died; Mithos did not offer any other choices.
Perhaps soup. Anna had once told him, “Even you couldn’t mess up a soup. I believe in you.” He tried not to remember that part.
