Author's Notes:

Here we go... thought it'd be a bit longer before I did my first GS fic with "shipping", but this writing contest came up, and I'd always hoped to write something about Kyle and Dora at some point anyway. The canonical couples in Golden Sun simply do not get any attention in the fandom...

Anyway. Both praise and constructive criticism are, as always, much appreciated. I wrote this in something of a hurry, and in a different style than my usual, so while I believe that in absolute terms it's an interesting story that I have worked to a well-written polish, it's probably not as good as most of my stories. But we'll see. Or at least, you'll see.

The milieu and characters of this fanfic are property of Nintendo and Camelot. This story is set in a time spanning 14 to 16 years before Golden Sun.

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In Mysterious Ways

plot and script - Martin III

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Dora was happy, happier than she'd ever been, to know her child would soon be born.

Kyle wasn't. He was worried.

"I don't want you to get so excited about this," he said, his eyes looking even more stern than usual. "Just in case... it goes badly again."

"It won't," she told him. "This one's different, Kyle. He's strong, always kicking... I could barely even feel the others."

"That's just a trick of your mind, Dora. Each one always feels like such a miracle that he must be different, stronger than our other children. You forget what they were really like."

"Don't say that!" she cried. "Don't you dare say that I forget them! I carried them inside me for nine months! I'm the only one who ever knew them..."

"Don't you think that hurt me, too?" He gripped her tightly by the arms. "To never have the chance to hold my own children?"

"Then don't say hurtful things about them," she said, angry, yet not pushing him away. "I've had enough of the hurt, Kyle. We're going to have our first healthy child soon. Please, let go of the terrible things that happened before. We're going to be a family, a real family."

But Kyle wouldn't stop worrying. He was always too dead set on burying his pain.

Dora hadn't buried hers; she had accepted it. Having two children born dead was hard, very hard, and after the first time she'd felt so crushed that she didn't want to even think about having children anymore. Fortunately, having children isn't something one needs to think about for it to happen. And Kyle was on the frisky side. Dora had yet to learn how to say "no" to him, and his rugged features and passionate embrace didn't make it any easier. So a second pregnancy, and now a third, had followed.

It pained Dora that her husband couldn't see the joy in that, that he couldn't believe that after all they had suffered, true and complete happiness was finally being bestowed on them.

Not that Kyle only made things harder on her. She wasn't so ungrateful as to overlook his industrious spirit, how he'd kept plenty of food on their table through all her pregnancies. He might have closed himself off emotionally to their new baby, but in his actions he was as optimistic as ever. She knew that when he worked on repairs to their house, or when he stayed out late to earn some extra money, he was only preparing for the coming baby.

And so she accepted his pessimism, not only because she had enough hope and strength to carry the both of them, but because that pessimism had not made Kyle give up.

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The delivery of the baby went as smoothly as could have been hoped for. After a relatively brief labor, Dora pushed out a wailing, screaming, writhing, beautiful baby. She took her child into her arms, sobbing with joy, while Kyle simply laid a supportive hand on her shoulder, as though afraid that if he touched their little miracle, it all would turn to dust.

They'd discussed names over and over since they were wed. It came down to Isaac if it was a boy, Charlotte if it was a girl. It was a girl.

The same cradle Kyle had built during Dora's first pregnancy was ready and waiting for little Charlotte. Not that she got much use out of it. Charlotte was a feisty one, crawling to anywhere she could reach until she learned how to walk(which seemed to take no time at all). Mercifully, she didn't cry much, but keeping her from getting into trouble was a constant concern. Kyle tried building a crib for her, but within a week Charlotte had learned how to climb out of it.

"I told you she was stronger than the others," Dora said to Kyle with a grin and a wrinkling of her nose.

He just grunted a faint assent, his attention focused on putting one of his fingers in his little girl's grasp.

Most of their thoughts were occupied with either Charlotte or simply getting by, so it came as a surprise when Dora became pregnant for a fourth time. This one was not as energetic as Charlotte, but lively enough, and Dora was actually a bit pleased to have a pregnancy that wasn't marked by ceaseless kicking towards the end.

After an overall pleasant series of months, Dora gave birth again, this time to a boy. Handsome, quiet-eyed little Isaac.

Having two children increased the attention she needed to spend on them, at least at first. Charlotte was friendly, to an excessive extent; Dora had to always keep watch to make sure she didn't hurt Isaac. Getting the two of them to eat with anything remotely resembling tidiness was nearly impossible.

A great relief at this point was the fact that their neighbors now had a pair of children of their own, named Felix and Jenna. Charlotte had already become acquainted with Felix, and so they saw no reason not to put the four of them together. The two families often took turns babysitting the four children. It was noisy, but for the most part they all seemed to have fun.

The joys and trials of having two children went on for a month. Then came the evening that turned the course of their fortunes in a very unpleasant direction.

"We might need a bigger house," Kyle commented, looking at their two children.

Dora shook her head, with a weary but quite genuine smile. "I think we have room for a third one."

He took a look about the room, as if to verify that.

That was when a frantic knocking came at the door.

Kyle jumped to his feet, pausing for a moment, like an animal preparing to defend mate and offspring. That made Dora feel even more uneasy at the knocking than she otherwise would have been. Then he moved to open the door, revealing the Great Healer leaning against the doorframe, out of breath.

"Uh..." Kyle said, while their visitor recovered his breath. "Hello. Can I do something for you, Great Healer?"

"You must..." he gasped. "Excuse me. This was urgent, and... May I come and sit down?"

"'Course."

Without further ado, the Great Healer came in and flopped down on one of the crates that they always had strewn about the room. Dora brought him a glass of water.

"Thank you. It's..." He took a drink. "There's no easy way to say this. I just had a dream that concerns your family. A warning." He closed his eyes. "You must... You must send your daughter Charlotte away, have her adopted. And you must never see her again."

"What!" Dora took a step back. With anyone else, she would have laughed this all off. But the Great Healer's visions, rare though they were, were always true, and always important to heed. Anyone who had grown up in Vale knew this.

"What kind of dream is that?" Kyle demanded.

"A message from a very trustworthy source," the Great Healer replied somberly. "He warned me that a great danger to the entire world will come, starting in Vale, shortly after your children come of age. Sometime between now and the coming of that great danger, the people behind these dark happenings will come to Vale looking for a Venus adept. That Venus adept will join their side. Kyle, Dora... If Charlotte is in Vale when they come, they will choose her."

There was a moment of silence. Then Kyle stuck his index finger in his ear and wiggled it around a bit. "I must have missed the part that made sending away our first-born child seem like a good idea."

"Don't you understand, Kyle? They're going to corrupt her."

"And you are going to take her away," he snapped. "Leaving them to corrupt someone else. Doesn't seem like an improvement to me."

"Kyle!" Dora gasped.

"Look, I'm sorry to be rude, but I think you've wasted your time coming here."

"No," the Great Healer said. "I can't have. Listen to me: this is what the messenger wants. He spoke to me because it is the will of the gods for your child to be spared the fate of becoming a servant to evil. That fate is meant for another."

"Well, too bad for whoever that might be, because we're not giving up our daughter." He stood up. "Oh, and if what you're asking is the will of the gods, why does it need our cooperation to make it happen? Doesn't it seem like the will of the gods should be what happens when people with visions don't try to second-guess fate and change things around?"

"Kyle!" She gripped his arm. "For pity's sake, think of what you're saying! You can't question the Great Healer. He has always been our guide against the things we can't understand."

"When has he ever proved it? When have we ever seen anything good that we can be sure came because we followed what he told us? What proof have we seen that his supposed knowledge is really true?" He pulled Dora's grip off and went upstairs. "You're not taking Charlotte away, and that's final."

Moments later, there was the sound of a door closing upstairs.

"I'm sorry," Dora said. "He can be so stubborn sometimes."

"No, I understand." The Great Healer rubbed at his brow. "This is very difficult. It was difficult for me to even convince myself to come here and tell you what had to be done."

"But even if we don't listen to you, we still lose Charlotte, don't we?"

"Yes. But you might have her for a bit longer."

"I guess so..."

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A few days later, Kyle awoke to find that he had only one child.

He had an urge to see both his children before leaving for work, and discovered Charlotte absent from her crib. He searched every nook and cranny of the house before turning to Dora and screaming, "What did you do!?"

She was already crying. "We had to face it sooner or later, Kyle. One way or another, Charlotte was already lost to us. We're... we're actually lucky. Many people lose their children, and they don't even have a chance to say goodbye, or to choose how they lose them."

"'Choose'?" he echoed. "You didn't give me any choice at all!"

He was right. But Dora knew that neither of them had a real choice. They had to have faith in what the gods wanted them to do.

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That night, the Wise One dipped his consciousness into the mind of the Great Healer, and was pleased to see that his advice had been followed.

It had been a regrettable, but necessary bit of meddling, he mused to himself. Though he could not see the future - no one could - he could already see that the threads pointed towards Isaac carrying the receptacle for half the power of the Golden Sun. If necessary, he could act to ensure that things took that course. For the moment, however, he would have to assume Isaac would respond to the arrival of those first affected by the waning of alchemy(the Proxians, most likely) by trying to reignite the lighthouses. It was natural for a young man with a decent upbringing to want to act to help people in need, without giving a thought to the consequences.

The trouble came with Charlotte. He already realized her patterns, sensed that she would become strong, and protective of her little brother Isaac. If Isaac went in search of the lighthouses, she would not fail to come along. If he received a share of the Golden Sun, then so would she. Their close proximity, combined with their shared blood, would make that inevitable.

And that could not be allowed. If Isaac took the course the Wise One expected him to, his chosen one would win at best only half of the Golden Sun's power. He could not let that half be reduced to a third by another child. If that happened, Charlotte and Isaac would stand together against his chosen one, their two thirds of a sun against his one third.

But Charlotte receiving a share of the Golden Sun was now nothing more than a hypothetical scenario. From now on, there were only two ways his plan could fail: if Isaac failed to fill his part of the plan, and if his chosen one failed to live up to the hopes he had set for him.

Still, the Wise One wondered. Why had whatever god there might be allowed Charlotte to be born to Kyle and Dora, knowing that he would cause her to be given away to other parents? Why not simply have another child born to the couple who were adopting Charlotte? That child would not be Charlotte, of course, but what difference did that make?

Anyone called the Wise One should understand that, he concluded. Yet understanding eluded him.

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Kyle stayed angry at Dora for a good long while. For months she knew little but angry glares and cold silences. They softened with time, of course, and when one evening Kyle came up behind her and took her in his arms, pressing his rough chin against her cheek, she knew things were back to normal.

Yet even then, he would remember the day Charlotte had been sent away every year. Four years since that day, they were sitting eating dinner, and he announced in a matter-of-fact tone:

"That's four years now that we would have had her with us."

Every year he said it. "Two years now..." "Five years now..." "Ten years now..."

When Isaac was old enough, he would look at his father with curiosity and ask, "Who's 'she'?"

Kyle did not answer, but Dora knew, of course.

Just as she knew what Kyle was getting at when he said it. The Great Healer hadn't known exactly when Vale's evil visitors would come in search of their Venus adept, so Dora had had to assume it would be soon. But it wasn't. If she had known that defying the Great Healer's wisdom would mean that they would have their dear girl for over a decade longer, that they might see little Charlotte turn into a young woman, would she still have sent her away?

But that was a silly question. If she'd known it would be over ten years before Charlotte would be taken away, she'd have raised her for those ten years and then given her up to her adoptive parents.

Besides, Dora refused to allow the bleakness of Kyle's annual comment to hurt her. Regardless of anything else, she had done the right thing. Besides, despite her great loss, she still had Kyle and Isaac. That was more than she had ever truly thought she'd have. As far as she was concerned, fate had been good to her.

She did not complain at fate keeping her from having a bigger family, either. Even after her silent reconciliation with Kyle, they pursued the task of procreation with reluctance. Having lost three of the four children they'd already had made them both overcautious. But when Kyle held her in his arms as they lay in bed, knowing their son was in the upstairs bedroom, Dora never felt lonely.

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It was not until 14 years later after Charlotte was taken away that Kyle completely forgave Dora for that.

It wasn't that he saw Felix as the Venus adept who the Great Healer had told them would be taken from Vale. Nor was it that the thought that he might never see Dora again made any grudge against her seem foolish. His forgiveness came because he at last understood Dora's action.

Because, much as he missed his wife and son, he was thankful beyond words that they were not there in Prox with him.

END