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shinonFandom: Tales of Symphonia
Characters: Zelos,Zelos's Mommy Issues
Word count: ~1200
Warnings: Some crude humor. Dissociation/unreality/hallucinations (ambiguous - but let's just say this dude is having A Time). Mucking about with verb tenses.
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genprompt_bingo prompt - "Snow and Ice." What a slutty overcoat looks like is left as an exercise for the reader. Making Zelos suffer is fantastically diverting, and I don't know why I haven't done more of it in all these years.
April in Meltokio. The general rule of thumb - Zelos learned this from a Noble Quarter hunny who looked kinda like his mom, and who escaped her shitty marriage with all-consuming hobbies of gardening and adultery - is you don't plant anything before Queen Lutetia Day. Any earlier and a freak frost might kill off everything.
"Why, Chosen One?" she said. "If you want your own herb garden, I have seeds -"
No, no, and hell no. But he committed that cutoff date to memory and he's lived by it ever since. That's the real date winter ends. No point taking chances - stay in Altamira til then, drinking cocktails on the beach, a babe on either arm.
"Some plants are more tolerant of ice than others," Gardening Hunny said, and he said, "Well, I'm not," and quickly steered the evening in a more fun direction. Spare us all another friggin' dissertation on rosemary.
He wouldn't have forgotten any of this. He wouldn't have mistaken the date. It's too important. It's the city that's wrong.
April in Meltokio, and snowing.
Dumbass, he tells himself, quickening his steps back toward home, Of course the weather's different now.
The worlds have been reunited - so the climate is responding to, in effect, brand-new mountains, new lakes, and hell if he knows what else. New prevailing winds or whatever. A snowflake catches in his eyelashes and he almost spooks like a racing dragon - the effort it takes just to not flinch sends spasms through the muscles of his back. He huddles back into his new overcoat - very haute couture, moderately slutty, definitely not designed to withstand contact with real weather. But hey, if anyone sees him out here speedwalking like a dork, they can just assume it's because he's cold.
...But seriously, nobody better see him.
You're not gonna freak out, he tells himself. He skirts down a private laneway that doesn't get much use in the summer, and hopes the same is true in other seasons. It's been like a billion years. You got snowed on in Flanoir and nothing bad happened.
"You look like you're gonna hurl," Sheena said, eyeing him narrowly.
He raised his eyebrows at her and gave her that smile she always hated. "Are you volunteering to hold my hair?"
So, okay. Other than Sheena, pretty sure no one caught on, anyway.
He's handling this fine. He's walking home in a surprise cold snap, and he's not happy about it, but who would be? Yeah, okay, boo-hoo, your mom's dead. Don't you know there's kids in this city who'd just love for their mothers to die?
And then reflexively he thinks, Sorry, Mom, I didn't mean it. He ruined her life and got her killed, and no one but him and Sebastian remembers her clearly. It's supposed to hurt.
The snow isn't even accumulating. It melts when it hits pavement, and only sticks in a thin layer to the stubby early grass of people's lawns and gardens. The sky is almost white, all midday sun glare bouncing off clouds. There's nowhere an assassin could even be. It was so long ago, and nothing is the same. This might as well be a different city, and him a different person.
And he's nearly home. He's debating whether to get something weird out of the wine cellar or - since it's so cold out - have Sebastian make coffee and dump a bunch of wacky novelty liqueurs into it. Noble hunnies love their funky-flavored booze, so he always keeps some in stock - but he hasn't had anybody over in a while, so maybe it's time to work on that backlog. Something frivolous, something distracting.
If he thinks he can do "frivolous" and "distracting" on a day like today, in the house where Mylene Wilder's portrait stares down over him. For the first time, he's not sure. But it's not like he can ever take that painting down.
Three more blocks. When they were all traveling together, what was that song the girls liked to sing? Colette infected them all with some sappy earworm - so for something to do, Zelos tries to remember all the increasingly raunchy alternate verses he made to piss them off. Raine threw a shoe at him once. Those were the good times. Remember the good times? The snow is coming down faster, flakes starting to clump together in midair, splatting wetly against him. No it isn't. He's not thinking about that. There was a verse speculating about the sex lives of Summon Spirits - obviously Aska has two dicks, why do you think Luna likes him so much? Genis tried to cover Presea's ears; Presea said flatly "I'm twenty-seven." The sky is getting darker - but it can't do that, it's only 1:15. Mom used to sing, too, remember? But he must've done something when he was young to make her stop wanting to sing to him.
It can't be coming down that hard, and even if it is it shouldn't stick. It was warm yesterday. He looks to his left and sees a back lawn all blanketed in white, and tells himself, no, it isn't happening that way. He's just remembering / imagining. He catches a whiff of his own cologne and realizes that, under this flimsy-ass coat, he's actually sweating. He stops. Shuts his eyes. Takes a breath. And when he opens his eyes and starts walking again, it's fine. It's a gray day. The weird wet snow will melt by tomorrow and refreeze into dirty city slush, and day after tomorrow it'll run down the storm drains into the sea. Nothing to get upset about.
But one more block and then -
no amount of blinking makes it disappear -
in a little dip in the ground where the snow has stuck thickest there is
a red circle
spreading.
He whips around, knife in hand. It's not the same. It won't happen again, it's not the same, this time he's grown up and fully armed and he can protect her or die in her place (ideal scenario: both?) - but where is the killer, where is her body, he knows enough healing magic to stabilize her, probably, and then he can stand over her and fight until help comes -
Movement overhead. He looks up, and it's just red snow and red light, red red red, and he sweeps his free hand back ready to cast a fireball and -
An unfamiliar voice up above, sounding confused: "Good afternoon, sir?"
Zelos blinks. Still red snow. Shakes his head. Squints upward one more time, and -
Sonofabitch. That's right. He puts his knife away and lets the mana in his other hand dissipate.
There's been an initiative to phase out Exsphere-driven personal carriages, but of course people complained about the loss of convenience, so now the crown is trying to buy the nobles' support with a fancy new hydroelectric light rail, and - it's the red warning lights of the construction site over his neighborhood -
A shudder runs through him. He collects himself. To the random construction worker he just almost set on fire he says, "Whoa, sorry - partied too hard last night. No harm done?"
"Uh..."
"You guys okay for coffee up there? If you wanna maybe forget you ever saw me, I'll have my butler send you up a gift basket."
There's a long pause while construction guy puts two and two together. "Uh, don't worry about it, Chosen One."
Zelos sighs and goes home. It continues to snow. When he gets inside, he blindly slaps his hand against the panel of switches to close every curtain in the house, and sinks to the floor. But around the edges of windows and under the door, faint snow light still finds him.
Characters: Zelos,
Word count: ~1200
Warnings: Some crude humor. Dissociation/unreality/hallucinations (ambiguous - but let's just say this dude is having A Time). Mucking about with verb tenses.
Notes:
genprompt_bingo prompt - "Snow and Ice." What a slutty overcoat looks like is left as an exercise for the reader. Making Zelos suffer is fantastically diverting, and I don't know why I haven't done more of it in all these years.April in Meltokio. The general rule of thumb - Zelos learned this from a Noble Quarter hunny who looked kinda like his mom, and who escaped her shitty marriage with all-consuming hobbies of gardening and adultery - is you don't plant anything before Queen Lutetia Day. Any earlier and a freak frost might kill off everything.
"Why, Chosen One?" she said. "If you want your own herb garden, I have seeds -"
No, no, and hell no. But he committed that cutoff date to memory and he's lived by it ever since. That's the real date winter ends. No point taking chances - stay in Altamira til then, drinking cocktails on the beach, a babe on either arm.
"Some plants are more tolerant of ice than others," Gardening Hunny said, and he said, "Well, I'm not," and quickly steered the evening in a more fun direction. Spare us all another friggin' dissertation on rosemary.
He wouldn't have forgotten any of this. He wouldn't have mistaken the date. It's too important. It's the city that's wrong.
April in Meltokio, and snowing.
Dumbass, he tells himself, quickening his steps back toward home, Of course the weather's different now.
The worlds have been reunited - so the climate is responding to, in effect, brand-new mountains, new lakes, and hell if he knows what else. New prevailing winds or whatever. A snowflake catches in his eyelashes and he almost spooks like a racing dragon - the effort it takes just to not flinch sends spasms through the muscles of his back. He huddles back into his new overcoat - very haute couture, moderately slutty, definitely not designed to withstand contact with real weather. But hey, if anyone sees him out here speedwalking like a dork, they can just assume it's because he's cold.
...But seriously, nobody better see him.
You're not gonna freak out, he tells himself. He skirts down a private laneway that doesn't get much use in the summer, and hopes the same is true in other seasons. It's been like a billion years. You got snowed on in Flanoir and nothing bad happened.
"You look like you're gonna hurl," Sheena said, eyeing him narrowly.
He raised his eyebrows at her and gave her that smile she always hated. "Are you volunteering to hold my hair?"
So, okay. Other than Sheena, pretty sure no one caught on, anyway.
He's handling this fine. He's walking home in a surprise cold snap, and he's not happy about it, but who would be? Yeah, okay, boo-hoo, your mom's dead. Don't you know there's kids in this city who'd just love for their mothers to die?
And then reflexively he thinks, Sorry, Mom, I didn't mean it. He ruined her life and got her killed, and no one but him and Sebastian remembers her clearly. It's supposed to hurt.
The snow isn't even accumulating. It melts when it hits pavement, and only sticks in a thin layer to the stubby early grass of people's lawns and gardens. The sky is almost white, all midday sun glare bouncing off clouds. There's nowhere an assassin could even be. It was so long ago, and nothing is the same. This might as well be a different city, and him a different person.
And he's nearly home. He's debating whether to get something weird out of the wine cellar or - since it's so cold out - have Sebastian make coffee and dump a bunch of wacky novelty liqueurs into it. Noble hunnies love their funky-flavored booze, so he always keeps some in stock - but he hasn't had anybody over in a while, so maybe it's time to work on that backlog. Something frivolous, something distracting.
If he thinks he can do "frivolous" and "distracting" on a day like today, in the house where Mylene Wilder's portrait stares down over him. For the first time, he's not sure. But it's not like he can ever take that painting down.
Three more blocks. When they were all traveling together, what was that song the girls liked to sing? Colette infected them all with some sappy earworm - so for something to do, Zelos tries to remember all the increasingly raunchy alternate verses he made to piss them off. Raine threw a shoe at him once. Those were the good times. Remember the good times? The snow is coming down faster, flakes starting to clump together in midair, splatting wetly against him. No it isn't. He's not thinking about that. There was a verse speculating about the sex lives of Summon Spirits - obviously Aska has two dicks, why do you think Luna likes him so much? Genis tried to cover Presea's ears; Presea said flatly "I'm twenty-seven." The sky is getting darker - but it can't do that, it's only 1:15. Mom used to sing, too, remember? But he must've done something when he was young to make her stop wanting to sing to him.
It can't be coming down that hard, and even if it is it shouldn't stick. It was warm yesterday. He looks to his left and sees a back lawn all blanketed in white, and tells himself, no, it isn't happening that way. He's just remembering / imagining. He catches a whiff of his own cologne and realizes that, under this flimsy-ass coat, he's actually sweating. He stops. Shuts his eyes. Takes a breath. And when he opens his eyes and starts walking again, it's fine. It's a gray day. The weird wet snow will melt by tomorrow and refreeze into dirty city slush, and day after tomorrow it'll run down the storm drains into the sea. Nothing to get upset about.
But one more block and then -
no amount of blinking makes it disappear -
in a little dip in the ground where the snow has stuck thickest there is
a red circle
spreading.
He whips around, knife in hand. It's not the same. It won't happen again, it's not the same, this time he's grown up and fully armed and he can protect her or die in her place (ideal scenario: both?) - but where is the killer, where is her body, he knows enough healing magic to stabilize her, probably, and then he can stand over her and fight until help comes -
Movement overhead. He looks up, and it's just red snow and red light, red red red, and he sweeps his free hand back ready to cast a fireball and -
An unfamiliar voice up above, sounding confused: "Good afternoon, sir?"
Zelos blinks. Still red snow. Shakes his head. Squints upward one more time, and -
Sonofabitch. That's right. He puts his knife away and lets the mana in his other hand dissipate.
There's been an initiative to phase out Exsphere-driven personal carriages, but of course people complained about the loss of convenience, so now the crown is trying to buy the nobles' support with a fancy new hydroelectric light rail, and - it's the red warning lights of the construction site over his neighborhood -
A shudder runs through him. He collects himself. To the random construction worker he just almost set on fire he says, "Whoa, sorry - partied too hard last night. No harm done?"
"Uh..."
"You guys okay for coffee up there? If you wanna maybe forget you ever saw me, I'll have my butler send you up a gift basket."
There's a long pause while construction guy puts two and two together. "Uh, don't worry about it, Chosen One."
Zelos sighs and goes home. It continues to snow. When he gets inside, he blindly slaps his hand against the panel of switches to close every curtain in the house, and sinks to the floor. But around the edges of windows and under the door, faint snow light still finds him.
