Disclaimer:
I don't own anything!

Author's Note: Largely a character study. I've written this scene multiple times, but I realized that I never managed to explore how Kratos goes from rebelling against Cruxis to being at Mithos' side. I didn't quite get there all the way, but it's a start.

Also. I watched Series of Unfortunate Events. THAT is how you adapt books into TV shows, holy crap. I'm so proud of them. It's fantastically done and Lemony Snickett is a treasure. So, obviously, I need to reread the whole series because it's been, what, fifteen years since I read them and while I remember what happens in general, the details escape me and I need to experience a masterful storytelling again.

Tell me a story of war-
That how after love,
we are naked, shivering,
a mass of recklessness.
that we would dare to eat all the stars-
all of the light in heaven.
-Salme Deera (War on Love)

Yuan is too late. It's a succinct summary of his life: born too late to be drafted as a soldier, too late to save Martel, drowned in his grief too long to save Mithos. In four thousand years, at least, he's always been able to say that he's never been too late for Kratos; they have always been in sync that way.

Figures that Fate or the Universe—and Yuan is inclined very much towards the latter—would have a problem with that.

Botta is the one who tells him about the Desian troops being deployed in the Iselia Mountains. Kvar's soldiers, well outside their territory. They'd been after the Angelus Project for years now, and Yuan has to grudgingly hand it to Kvar—the man is tenacious.

However, even Botta's incredible efficiency catches the information too late.

Yuan flies out only to find a killing field. The grass is washed bloody, and red mist hangs in the air—bloodmist, they had called it in the war. Mana still supercharging the air and not letting all the particles settle. Yuan doesn't choke on the thick smell of blood and meat—he's seen worse—but it's a close thing. But past the copper taste in his mouth, he can pick out the bitter tea-type taste of Kratos' magic, as familiar as his own. But there's no sign of him. Or of Anna.

Yuan steps around the corpses, searching for some sign of what had happened. Some of these people weren't killed by a sword, or even magic. Their wounds aren't neat enough. Like claws had ripped them open. Even Noishe couldn't do that. Not in his current form.

But a monster could have. The monsters made from removing Exspheres. Had someone actually managed to get that close to Anna?

The child. Lloyd. Where is Lloyd?

Yuan searches the area, even following the soft dirt and loose rock of some kind of rockslide. Nothing. A trail of blood long since dry. Whoever had fallen down here had likely been carried away by wolves, or other monsters.

Yuan flew back up the mountain, considering the situation. Kratos—for all of the skill and power in him—has never been a violent man. These killings weren't his usual style, clean and quick. These had rage and grief behind them; Yuan doesn't have clear memories of the last time it had happened—he'd been too deep in his own fresh grief—but he remembers the rumors drifting in his numb mind. How Martel's murderers hadn't even looked anything remotely resembling human after Yuan, Kratos, and Mithos had finished with them.

The thought of Kratos not surviving this battle is laughable. But Anna and Lloyd—they must be dead. They can't not be. Kratos would not have reacted like this otherwise.

He can't let Kratos be alone now.

There are few places that Yuan can think of where Kratos would go; Yuan finds him in Derris-Kharlan amidst shattered mirrors breathing hard and shaking. The angels have vanished, some instinct still left telling them to disappear.

"Kratos." Yuan stands at the edge of the shattered glass, something in him aching. He and Kratos are not what they had once been—they can never be that again—but they are still all the other has. That's how they'd started and, it seems, that that's how they'll end.

The man that looks up is not the man that Yuan has known since he'd been ten years old. For a moment, Kratos doesn't even recognize him.

After a few too many heartbeats, Kratos says, "Yuan?"

"Yeah." Yuan dares to, slowly, step forward. "…what did you see?" he asks, gesturing at the broken glass.

It's not a safe question, given the circumstances, but it's better than the alternatives. Yuan refuses to drive the knife of whatever had happened in the mountains any deeper.

Kratos' fists clench, beads of blood welling up in the cuts on his arms and from between his fingers. "Nothing that I haven't seen before."

(There should be change. Kratos felt like his insides had been ripped apart and churned to dust. Anna's love and death—murder, couldn't forget that it was him, he'd done it, he'd murdered her—should have left some physical sign. Lloyd's death should make this grief etch itself on his face. But there was nothing. Not a single gray hair, or scar, or wrinkle. Kratos looked the same as he had six years ago before he'd ever met Anna. And that thought was unbearable)

Yuan kneels, uncaring of the gentle-sharp press of glass on his knees as he takes Kratos' hands in his. There are deep slices across his palms and fingers, shallower on his arms. "C'mon," Yuan says, moving to stand. "Let's get you fixed up."

Kratos shakes his head. "No. Can't be fixed."

Yuan knows how it feels to break. To shatter so far that there is no hope anywhere of healing. Kratos is broken, of that, Yuan has no doubt, but he can't let him stay that way without even trying to help. They've been through too much for that. "I know," Yuan says quietly. "I'm not great at fixing things—kind of the opposite—but I can at least heal your hands. Please, Kratos."

Kratos follows him obediently after that, like a dog kicked too many times. Yuan takes him to his room in Derris-Kharlan, hardly every used, and sits him down on the bed. He pulls tweezers and disinfectant out of his medical supplies and hooks a chair to sit on.

Pulling the glass shards out of the wounds is a painstaking, slow process. Kratos doesn't flinch once. "…I killed them."

"Which 'them'?" Yuan asks carefully.

The next words sound like they are ripped from Kratos' throat. "My wife and son, Yuan. They're dead. I killed them."

"Their deaths are not your fault." Kratos had been the one to beat that lesson through Yuan's skill four thousand years ago. Quite literally.

(Yuan sprawled on the ground from a solid punch. Kratos getting to his feet because Yuan had never been the type to take anything lying down, even from his best friend.

"She didn't die for this," Kratos spat out, red on his teeth.

"You don't get to tell me what she would want! She was my wife!"

"You're not the only one who loved her, Yuan." The snap of Kratos' normally gentle voice made something in Yuan's brain sit up and take notice. "She didn't die for us to follow her." Kratos sounded like he was on the verge of tears again.

"She didn't want to die at all," Yuan snarled. His tears were all used up, and Yuan was very good at converting that to anger. "And it's my fault. I should've gone with her, should've insisted she not go out there alone."

"You think that would've worked? In any universe?" The pain was raw on Kratos' face and it made Yuan feel like shit. No, he wasn't the only person to love her; Kratos and Mithos were both drowning in this grief with him and he'd been too selfish to want to see it. "Martel would've knocked you on your ass if you'd 'insisted' on going with her."

Yuan's laughter was a wet, hysterical sound, but Kratos was right and he knew it. The woman he—they—loved had never been very good at taking orders. Or suggestions)

"Anna's is."

Kratos' sudden stillness—the inhuman, angelic kind that comes only from not having to breathe—makes Yuan tense. "What?"

"Anna's death is my fault," Kratos repeats and his voice is hoarse and he sounds every second of his age. "She asked me to kill her. Kvar turned—and she asked me to."

Spirits above. Yuan gently pulls Kratos closer by the back of his neck, pressing a kiss to his hair. He can't look at him right now, can't imagine how destroyed Kratos is. Of the three of them, Kratos had been the one to retain the most sanity after Martel's death, had been the one who'd managed to get them off the ground. But Anna—Anna Irving will forever be the one person in all of the last four thousand years of history who had the power to destroy Kratos Aurion.

Yuan both loves and hates her for this.

There are no words of sympathy that can help, but Yuan knows that that's now what Kratos needs. Not right now. "Did you kill him?" Yuan asks quietly.

"Kvar? No. He ran. But I will."

Yuan has never once feared Kratos in all their long lives. But the dark tone that Kratos makes that promise with? Oh yes, it makes Yuan afraid of him.

Yuan releases Kratos so he can go back to healing. He's never been very good at it, but small things—he can do small things, even if they take longer than they should. He's nearly finished with the healing when Kratos says, "Don't make it go away."

"Kratos," Yuan begins slowly. "Hurting yourself won't do you any good."

"I know. But—" There is some instinctual terror in Kratos' eyes, deep and vast.

Yuan looks down at Kratos' hands, his arms. Even his mediocre healing skills have left the skin smooth, like the wounds never happened.

Ah.

Someone as wonderful and incredible as Anna Irving, Yuan thinks, should leave a mark on the world. If not the world, at least her husband. Kratos doesn't even have a ring to remember her by.

"I'll leave this one be, then." Yuan stands to find a bandage, wrapping it around Kratos' hand. It's not terribly deep anymore, but it's enough to leave a scar.

As Yuan cleans up, he hears Kratos say, "…We're monsters, Yuan."

Yuan nearly splinters the cabinet beneath his fingers. Anna had insisted that Kratos hadn't been a monster. That monsters were defined by their actions, not what they were.

("And us?" Yuan asked her. "We've done terrible things, you know."

Anna had been unfazed by Yuan's logic. Even in the early days when she'd been afraid of him, she'd still proudly inclined her head and refused to let the fear show. "But you're trying to change. Trying to make things right. Monsters don't do that.")

"None of this," Kratos' gesture is vague, but Yuan can guess the meaning. Derris-Kharlan. The angels. The Seed. The worlds split apart. All of it. "Should never have happened."

"No. But it did. Nothing we can do about that except try to change it for the better."

"It's impossible. People don't change, Yuan. Not enough. Not really." Kratos has been a monster for four thousand years. Anna had tried to convince him otherwise, but look where that had gotten her. Murdered by her own husband. No, Kratos has no more illusions about what he is. "Mithos was right. There's nothing to hate if everyone's the same."

(Or rather, he couldn't hate himself if everyone was the same)

In the future, Yuan will be able to pinpoint this moment as the one chance he'd had to perhaps sway Kratos' opinion. Kratos had still been too broken, too suggestible to have a concrete mind on it.

But, as always, Yuan thinks of that option too late. Or, perhaps, thinks of the option and discards it because he is not the same as Mithos, subtly slipping into people's minds and twisting them around with an expert balance of emotion and reason.

So Yuan lets Kratos be, lets him lick his wounds, and the next time Yuan sees him, Kratos will be the monster of a seraph that Yuan has fought for centuries to avoid becoming.

It's a very good warning, and if Yuan becomes more driven in his efforts against Cruxis, if Botta, once, asks him if something is wrong, well. Yuan had been good at turning tears to anger. There haven't been tears for four thousand years, and the anger is an old one that he converts into sheer force of will. It's the only thing, he's found, that makes events happen.