Night 69: Main Hallway 2-West

[envy_the_sinners]

[From here]

Scar shone his flashlight down the second floor hallway. It seemed to be deserted as always, but God only knew what might come out at them.

"I don't think there's anything down this first hall. I woke in one of the rooms there last night."

Comments

[redcladidealist]

It may have been the second time Kratos had told anyone this story, but it was the first time that Lloyd had heard the whole story of his mother's dead. He'd only had bits and pieces up until now. She fell off a cliff. No, it was Desians. Then finally Kvar had told him the most, told him that his father had killed his mother after her Exsphere had been removed, transforming her into a monster. He hated to take Kvar's word for anything, but he was starved for details about his parents and that was the most he'd ever had.

Starved until now. Now the details of Anna's death pounded into his ears. Confirmed by someone other than Kvar, he could see her distorted, tortured body, her skin stretched and bulging with the glut of mana gone out of control. Why had he wanted to hear this? This wasn't what he wanted to know! "Stop it," he choked the words out - or tried to. The words stuck in his throat, and he didn't know if Kratos heard because he kept telling the story. The story of how his father had to kill his mother, had to take his sword and- "Stop it!" His whole body was shaking now - with horror, with stress, he didn't know. Every breath he dragged in shuddered in his chest.

But there it was. The missing piece, the reason why his father had vanished between the moment he'd had to kill Anna and when Dirk had found Lloyd and his mother at the bottom of the cliff. He'd looked. He hadn't left. He'd looked. He'd just been too late. Something stung in Lloyd's eyes, making him fiercely blink it away.

"But you still gave into him! How could you do that when you knew what he was doing was wrong?! How could you be okay with going back to the man who's in charge of the people who killed mom?!" In his mind, even knowing the truth, he still blamed Kvar. Kvar had been the one to doom his mother when he'd taken her Exsphere away. Lloyd clenched his hands, vibrating with anger and emotions he could barely hold in check, emotions he was afraid even to identify, that made his eyes sting even more. "Even if you didn't have a choice, you still could have fought! Maybe you still could have gotten away. Just because someone's strong doesn't mean they can't make a mistake! Isn't that what you taught me?!"

[forsworn]

It was curious how this conversation was mirroring all of the ones from the past, as if even the words they were to say were somehow fated to be. "I could have, but I didn't care anymore by that point. I convinced myself that since Mithos had promised to reunite the two worlds once he'd revived Martel, I could live with my decision, because what I wanted would be accomplished anyway. That's what I thought, that I could only keep moving down the flawed path I had paved for myself, until you taught me otherwise."

He had still managed to muck up quite a lot, but somehow, he had still been alive at the end of it all, and that was definitely not what Kratos had expected. He had been almost disappointed at first, but more and more, he was happy things had not gone as he'd originally intended.

[redcladidealist]

Fated to be, or perhaps this was just the way Lloyd was, they way he'd always respond when faced with revelations like this. Either way, his hands were curling and clenching into fists, heedless of the pain this caused as his cut and cauterized skin pulled and stretched, the thin scabs splitting under the strain. In a way, he was almost glad for it. It gave him something physical to focus on, to ground him in the here and now.

It also gave him something to blame for the dampness in his eyes.

It took one shuddering breath, then another, before he could form words again. "I... taught you?" That didn't make sense. "You were the one teaching me. At least... before..." Before the Tower of Salvation.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, it still felt weird to hear someone refer to Yggdrasill as Mithos. Mithos the Hero... All this time...