Disclaimer:Tales of Symphonia does not belong to me.
Rating:K (two swear words…)
Spoilers: Slight Tower of Salvation.
AN: I'm not too fond of this one right now… a Colette focused one will be coming up next, haha.
Tears
--
Lloyd Irving has stopped crying a long time ago, he recalls as he stares up at the ceiling above his cot one evening.
He doesn't like to admit that he was a crybaby as a child – he has a reputation to keep up, after all, even after being exiled (I'll return there one day soon, he reminds himself as the guilt seeps in after all this time still) from his village of Iselia.
After all, it was hard sometimes, being the oldest of their trio of a group.
"Why are you crying?"
Lloyd glances up from his position, rubbing a hand over his eyes quickly as the blond girl before him frowns, before turning it into a brilliant smile.
Lloyd thinks he might be blinded by it, but she starts speaking again.
"Please don't cry!" She says, still smiling, but now she's squatting down beside him and offering him a handkerchief from one of her pockets. He stares at it for a moment before gingerly wrapping his little fingers around it and bringing it up to his face, giving a hesitant smile to the girl.
She smiles wider, and introduces herself.
"I'm Colette!"
Lloyd has seen her around already; the teachers tend to dote on her more than any other child, and he can't deny the tiny tendrils of jealousy that sprout in his heart.
"L-Loyd. I'm Lloyd."
His voice is still shaky from the tears and he sniffs as he realizes this, fearing that he'll burst out in tears again. He doesn't want this girl – Colette – to see it, just as he didn't want the other children to see it either.
Which makes him wonder; what was this 'Colette' doing behind the schoolhouse?
"Oh, please don't cry!" Colette repeats herself again, wringing her hands in a motion that he thinks looks too old for her, and leans closer to him.
"Why?" He manages to ask as he tries to calm himself down – he misses his 'father', Dirk, and doesn't understand why he had to be sent away here – and then realizes what a stupid question it was. "Um…"
"I don't like seeing people cry!" Colette smiles back, encouragement and kindness radiating from her voice. "Everybody should be happy!"
Lloyd cocks his head and doesn't exactly understand what she means – but it sounds nice, because he would much rather be happy than sad, and smiles again back at her.
And then they can hear their classroom teacher running around the corner of the wooden building, puffing in and out of breath, a look of relief spreading across her face as she spots the young Chosen.
"Oops," Colette giggles, and Lloyd finds himself laughing with her.
Colette was his first friend at Iselia, he remembers and turns over on his side to stare out the window and across the city of Altamira. Nobody bothered with the small boy who wasn't a resident of the tiny village; he was an outsider.
The one became a two.
"Good morning," Teacher Raine greets her class with her usual smile, but the students can see a certain apprehensive twinkle in her eyes today. Colette and Lloyd exchange looks from beside each other and turn their heads to listen to the silver-haired woman.
She clears her throat and glances around the classroom.
"We're having a new student joining us today," she says and motions for a figure in the hallway to enter. Excited whispers break out through the children, but quiet down as a foot steps into the room.
The small boy – at least four (five?) years younger than Lloyd – marches nervously to the front of the room by the blackboard, turning his blue eyes to gaze out onto the kids. Lloyd can see that he is as young as some of the kids in the school house, but he doesn't understand what someone as small as seven years old is doing in this classroom.
A whisper in the back of the room catches his attention – 'What's this kid doing here?' someone mutters to their companion – and Lloyd agrees with them.
"This is Genis," Teacher Raine is still talking, Lloyd realizes, so he resumes listening. "My younger brother. I expect you to treat him kindly."
A silence blankets the room.
"Teacher Raine's brother?" Colette whispers to him and he shrugs back at her. "Wow. He's a bit young… maybe he's just short?"
Lloyd snorts. "Maybe he skipped a grade?"
"More like a few grades," an older boy sitting behind him sneers – after all, this was a ten to sixteen ages class, much to Lloyd's displeasure – before bonking Lloyd on the head. "He's a shrimp. Wonder how long it'll take for him to break."
Lloyd grips the wooden edges of his table and Colette sends a weak glare at the boy. Lloyd can still remember the same boy bullying him earlier in the year and still hasn't forgiven him.
"Genis, please take a seat." Teacher Raine instruct and Genis follows it obediently, settling himself down on the opposite end of the room from Lloyd and Colette. A few kids watch him, but then Teacher utters the words 'surprise test' and all the attention is diverted to her.
A week later, Lloyd clutches a paper in his hands behind the school house and wills himself not to cry.
"Are…are you okay?"
He whirls around at the meek voice, startled, and finds Genis Sage peering at him hesitantly from underneath a large tree.
"I'm fine," Lloyd snaps back, becoming uncomfortable. Genis isn't well-liked in their class; in the first day of his being there, he had proven himself to be smarter than the other forty or so odd kids.
Nobody took to that too well, and Lloyd knows it is best to avoid him if he doesn't want to get beat up by The Bully (he never bothered learning his name for him to call the other boy by).
And then, to Lloyd's complete and utter horror, he feels the tears slowly gathering themselves at the edges of his eyes.
"Oh, that's the test Raine gave us last week!" Genis exclaims, noticing the paper clutched tightly in the older boy's hands. Then his attention switches to Lloyd's face and his eyes widen for a second.
"Oh…" He says, shuffling uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Um, I take it you didn't do too well?"
He's too nice for his own good, Lloyd thinks as he finds himself holding the paper so the top part of it is visible to the younger boy.
Lloyd curses the small child's ability to look so… pathetically 'cute'.
The red 'F' flashes on the paper and Genis averts his eyes, scratching his head with one hand. After a moment's pause, Lloyd stuffs the paper into his pocket and turns on his heel to leave, the tears gathering themselves faster and faster.
"W-wait!" Genis calls back and Lloyd half turns, not knowing whether he should be surprised or annoyed. He settles for somewhere in between.
"Um…" He can see that the other boy is very nervous, so he waits patiently. Finally, Genis looks up from his shoes and blurts out, "Would you like me to help you understand this more?"
Silence. Lloyd wasn't expecting the offer.
"Um, um, I mean…" Genis stumbles over his words, his face flushed and flustered in embarrassment. "If you don't want to—"
"Sure, why not."
Lloyd knows that if he comes back with more grades of this type, Dirk would be shouting at him long into the night until he ended up sleeping in the pen with Noishe.
Another week later, when Genis' desk has been pushed closer to Lloyd's and Colette's, Teacher Raine hands Lloyd back a minor test and nods slightly before moving on.
Lloyd stares in wonder at the page as he holds it up in the air – at the 'C' at the top – and feels as if he's finally accomplished something great.
He can't help but sniffle a little.
(The next day, at sword practice for their P.E class, The Bully finds himself on the receiving end of Lloyd's weak Demon Fang, much to the latter's satisfaction. He doesn't bother them after.)
Genis was an outsider too, Lloyd knows as he spares a glance at the small half-elf snoozing on the bed opposite of his. Lloyd was his first friend, the first new person he put his trust into, and Lloyd will never break that bond with him.
The two had become a complete three.
There were many times when Lloyd had cried. The first time he got lost in the forest surrounding his home, the many times he fell off of Noishe and scraped his knees, and the times when he burned his hands on Dirk's numerous tools.
Then Lloyd grew up and realized that as the oldest of the three, he was a role model (of sorts) to them.
He couldn't cry anymore, because they relied on him.
He turns over in his bed again, a hole gnawing at his heart because he doesn't understand something, still, even as the tears – after years of being shut out – pour down from his eyes and he cries into the pillow, Genis' snores hiding the sound.
Kratos has betrayed us, he thinks, over and over again. Kratos has betrayed us.
He has known the fact for a long time now, but the tears hadn't come any earlier.
Lloyd doesn't understand which part he doesn't comprehend – the one where the man he almost considered his brother tricked them for Colette's life, or the way his heart beats in agony whenever he sees the man.
(Long after, when Yuan threatens Kratos for his son's life, Lloyd finally understands the ba-boom his heart makes. He beats the living crap out of the nearby monsters before collapsing under a tree, bawling his eyes out and cursing the man to the deepest parts of hell.)
(And as the snow falls in Flanoir, Lloyd watches Kratos depart with the locket – his mother's, his father's, his family's – clutched tightly in his hands, he smiles and lets the tears slip out.)
But this time, they're happy ones that he isn't afraid to show.
…