Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note: Lion King on stage is a fantastic show. If you get a chance to see it, please please go.

Had our Grad Nite at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure last Saturday night. We were there from about-well, we were supposed to get there at six PM, we ended up getting there at 7:30-and we were there until 2AM, which is pretty damn impressive for me since I usually knock out at, the latest, 10:30. We had a lot of fun and I got me a Ravenclaw shirt from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Next day on Pottermore, I got Sorted into Hufflepuff. Oh the irony.

So, had the weird idea for this oneshot somewhere in between playing Tales of Vesperia and replaying the last, oh, quarter of Symphonia. Still not sure how I got this, so it's essentially an experiment with Summon Spirit relations.

This is connected very loosely to Heartstings, so reading that might help clear up some of the latter portion of this fic, but it isn't necessary.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.
-John F. Kennedy

He had been different when being the Guardian of the Great Tree had been his priority, not Lord of Monsters. His eyes had been green once, Origin remembered, though never a single shade. They would shift like the sun sieving through the leaves of his Great Tree, would be as pale as new shoots of plants or as dark as evergreen needles.

Those eyes weren't the ones in front of him now. These eyes were redredbloodred, with rust tinting the edges.

"Why are you staring?" Ratatosk asked. He'd always been different from the other Spirits. There were times, Before, in those short eras of peace that flashed in between wars, that they would sit in some place in the world and simply observe and talk.

"Simply lost in my thoughts, my friend." For that is what Ratatosk was, even now when he was so different from the one he'd known.

Ratatosk snorted, but didn't say anything. His form shifted between bodies unconsciously. He was a tree, a boulder, a leopardliontiger, a human man, an elephant, an old half-elf, a young elf, a birdeaglehawk. His eyes, as always, were the one thing to never change.

He could still remember when Ratatosk's single form that he preferred since he came into being. Nut brown skin, autumn-leaf hair and those green-green eyes. But since he broke (Shattered, fell, ruined, thousands of piecesmemories scattering across the floor), he hadn't been able to keep a single form for very long. His personality hadn't changed, much. He had always been arrogant and headstrong with a temper to be feared. He'd always preferred smirking to smiling and he'd always been rough as bark around the edges. But ever since the Great Tree had withered and died, Ratatosk had become abrasive and venomous, temper always sharpened in someone's direction, the Lord of Monsters being all that was left to him.

"Thoughts about what?" Ratatosk asked finally.

"Martel."

Ratatosk's jaw tightened. (He remembers the real Martel, remembers how she hadn't been afraid of him. Remembers the arguments they'd get into, remembers how she'd kept her promise. She'd changed the world alright.) "What about her?"

"What do you think of her?"

Origin didn't mean Martel Yggdrasill, the woman who'd had more of an effect on the world than she could ever have imagined, all from a breakingbroken little brother. Ratatosk knew that.

"I haven't met her." Ratatosk said neutrally.

"That has never stopped you from forming an opinion before."

"…I think she'll have a good run until those mortals forget what the price was for their freedom again. Then it'll circle right back around." Bitterness tainted his voice and Origin could not blame him. To lose half of one's self, to hatred and discrimination no less, was something that changed you forever. To see someone else with that half…

"Mortals were the ones who brought the worlds back together." Origin reminded him.

"They were also the ones who split them apart and lied to us for power." Ratatosk's temper had the air rumbling. Even now, with the Tree gone, he was still mana incarnate. "Or are you so quick to forget?"

Origin's own temper flashed, his power rising to meet Ratatosk's. "I forget nothing. But I am willing to forgive and try for something better."

The old Ratatosk had been willing to try. When Mithos, Martel, Kratos and Yuan had come to the Great Tree, Ratatosk had been there to meet them and had agreed to help them in their war efforts, even without a pact. Ratatosk was the one Spirit who had never made a true pact. Sometimes, Origin wondered if that got lonely.

"That naïve idealism is what allowed the world to be torn apart the first time, remember?" When Ratatosk's temper was sparked, none were safe from it. Not even the King of Summon Spirits.

"You will not be able to shame me by reminding me of past mistakes."

(Origin won't admit it, but in truth, he likes that Ratatosk challenges him, argues with him. He's the only one who ever really does. Celsius does, at times, but never with this kind of bite, and she always let his position win her over in the end. Ratatosk only uses it as fuel for his fire)

"You're the one who brought up the subject. I was fine with sitting here in silence."

"I thought you would welcome a change in pace. I'm sure the Ginnungagap could do with some noise."

That stung and a growl rumbled out from Ratatosk's chest, a sound that reverberated and echoed slightly with his everchanging forms. Origin wasn't fazed; Ratatosk could rage all he liked, he wouldn't hit him. Not to say that he couldn't, but despite Ratatosk's rebellious and snarly nature, he had some measure of respect.

Ratatosk rose from his spot and began to stalk away; he did that, when he needed some way to release the anger.

Origin didn't move, but rather, spoke over his shoulder. "…You knew that you would not be able to keep the Tree alive forever."

"It isn't the dying, Origin." Ratatosk's voice was steady and quiet and a little too soft for the subject; it meant cold anger, the worst kind. That anger had been known to destroy cities and entire armies. "It's the manner of the dying. The Tree had years left in it yet. Decades, perhaps. But because mortals are incapable of learning, they hate and war and killed it long before its time."

There was little point in trying to change his mind, Origin knew. Not from trying, but because he remembered long millennia spent licking wounds from a broken half-elf who just wanted his sister back.

"…Meet her, at the very least. She is your kin."

Ratatosk didn't reply. He was already gone.

He went months afterward, when the restlessness settled in once again, at twilight.

The new Tree was small, smaller even than his Tree had been, so long ago. A new, fragile Tree for a new, fragile world. The air in its direct vicinity smelled fresh and earthy; elsewhere, the dust was still in the air from the rubble that used to be the Tower of Salvation, making it thicker and chalky.

"Hello."

When he turned to the voice—quiet, soft, feminine—he supposed he should have been more surprised at what he saw. Martel Yggdrasill's features, smoothed over a bit, with details that didn't match up with his memory of her—which was perfectly likely. Four thousand years and things like that tended to get lost.

Green eyes (Eyes like sunlight shifting through leaves, like new shoots rising out of the ground) studied him. "…It knows you."

Something instinctive, something from that missing, phantom half of himself, recognized what she meant without asking. "It should."

She tilted her head at him. "…Who are you?"

"I was the guardian of the Giant Kharlan Tree."

"I did not ask who you were. I asked who you are now." There were hints of steel in this woman, a strength that one wouldn't expect. But Ratatosk supposed that that made sense; Martel had been a woman ahead of her time when it came to her independence.

"Ratatosk, Lord of Monsters." His form shifted without him willing it as he said it. He'd stopped noticing it, most of the time, always utterly comfortable in whichever form. He's a hawk and he adjusted his wings, spreading them before folding them back at his sides.

There was something of envy in the green eyes. (She's been existing for three months now—Kratos taught her how to measure time in one of his brief appearances here—and she is beginning to tire of everyone looking at her and seeing a memory of a woman who'd been dead for four thousand years. People who had never even met or seen Martel look at her that way. She wants to have that ability, to change her appearance on a whim)

"Your creatures stay away from here."

His eyes—redredbloodred like the memories hazed by War—watched her almost lazily; there was old anger and bitterness there, but it was distant, like he didn't want to touch it. "You think that's my doing?"

"Do you not command them?"

"Not for something as insignificant as that."

His eyes didn't flicker with a lie like she'd observed in others, but she could sense that, once, there had been a heart-wish from him, one that exposed this lie for what it was. "Why are you here?"

He flashed into a new form and she was beginning to think that it wasn't something entirely voluntary. He was a person, features shifting, bones constantly rearranging, but the smirk that curled his lips didn't change, much like the redredbloodred eyes. "I was bored."

"You could help with removing the rubble to clear the air for the Tree to alleviate your boredom."

He shook his head and took a step back, feet already fading away. "Not my problem anymore. That Tree's yours, you deal with it."

He disappeared in a small swell of mana, but there was more left behind than simply that. The heart-wish hovered there, floating near the seedling and she wished she could do something about it for it was a heart-wish thousands of years in age, but she couldn't because she was a guardian of something else now.