Spring Street
DISCLAIMER: Tales of Symphonia © Bamco. Story is mine.
(appealing to emotions I simply do not have – oh you precious boy)
When Lloyd shouts angrily at him, the shock of betrayal all over his face, it does not move Kratos in the slightest; there are things more important than the child's petulance, and those things involve keeping the companions of the Chosen from being slaughtered outright on Mithos' whim, keeping the Renegades' hands off the Chosen's vessel, and examining the situation objectively, as the old swordsman he still is, at heart.
Do you like animals, Kratos?
He can easily tune the boy out, the way he easily tuned out all those nasty little voices for the past several hundred, thousand years. After Anna's death, especially, such things ceased to matter to him at all.
I always wanted a brother to practice swordsmanship with…
Besides, reminders of the way Mithos used to be—the way Anna used to be—the way he himself was once, long ago… are irritating. They only make him feel hollow. So Kratos doesn't particularly feel regret or grief as he leaves the Tower of Salvation for Derris-Kharlan, abandoning the Chosen's party to the Renegades' questionable mercy.
Maybe it's because I have such a good teacher!
…It doesn't move him in particular, but when Kratos returns to his quarters, he finds a chair to sit in and wonders briefly, dispiritedly, what the point of all this really is anymore.