Copy-and-Paste Disclaimer: I do not own Tales of Symphonia.
He'd always found it shocking how much Kratos had changed once he got a family and was caught even more off-guard once Kratos had lost it.
Yuan remembered them dragging in Kratos's limp form and then having to take a full second to process that there had been honest-to-goodness real tear-tracks on Kratos's face.
That was the closest thing to tears he had seen in centuries; sure, he's seen eyes water plenty of times when something—usually spicy and occasionally on Yuan's own orders—had been put into the Renegades' food right before serving or when something was served that had not been put into food for far too long—which had not been anyone's fault but the one who had printed the expiration date wrong on the package.
Yuan would not witness true tears until a good while later.
— — — — — — —
The other Renegades—the subordinates, the underlings, the insignificant peons—avoided him like Pestilence incarnate.
They whispered, he heard, and they learned their lesson. Silence and tension filled the room when he was present, the dark aura about him penetrating the air and slicing any thought of complaint into ribbons.
He no longer used water spells. The last man caught practicing Tidal Wave or Spread—no one could quite remember which—was never seen again.
Whenever the newer recruits not yet in the know asked who the highest ones in the chain of command were or who led them all, they were silenced by their elders with a nervous look and a pale face before the question had fully left their lips.
— — — — — — —
Yuan spent a good while after the incident in his office, where he planned his next move and dwelled on the past despite knowing better than to do so.
It has been said that it is better to have loved then lost than to have never loved at all.
But that said nothing of friends.
Yuan had not known how to describe how he saw him until he witnessed the many different relationships Lloyd had with others, as well as the different stages of those relationships and had come to the conclusion that it was something not even Kratos's son—with his multitude of varying relationships from hatred to love, from brotherhood to acquaintanceship—could possess or understand.
Not that Lloyd understood his own relations, much less those of others.
How dare that bastard child accuse him of not caring?
However, Yuan knew he was only projecting his own self-anger on the boy.
Besides, Lloyd was no bastard, Yuan had been the witness at the Anna Irving and his then-friend's wedding.
Anna Irving…
Kratos's tears had left him soulless in their wake.
Yuan's had left him heartless.
He had waited too long; he had hesitated and allowed his Kratos bait to escape.
He had been so careless, he had never thought of the possibility that such an incident could ever occur. If he had acted sooner—a mistake he does not intend to repeat, he was releasing Origin's seal tonight—he would not be without his second-in-command.
Though he was more like Kratos and the man's emotion-clouded mind than he'd like to admit; for, in his mind, Yuan only had himself to blame for the loss of the one who had remained most loyal to him.
It is obvious to many—but no one dare risk his life to correct him—that is Yuan is wrong to shoulder the burden of guilt when it was Botta's choice to die.
— — — — — — —
When Aska descended from the sky, the light shined down and the sun lit the way to freedom.
That same day, there was a rain that had not fallen in four thousand years.
Originally the story of Kratos losing his family was going to be included, however I couldn't think up much for it and it's been told so many times already.