Disclaimer: Tales of Symphonia and its characters are copyright Namco Ltd. This work is not for profit.
A/N: This piece can stand alone, and it is also a companion piece to another one I've written called "Reconciliation." Parts of them are quite similar – "Reconciliation" tells Raine's side of the story and expands on some of the details just mentioned in this one.
The night is cool and deep. Hundreds upon thousands of pinprick stars are splayed across the dark, dark sky. The only sound is the steady murmur of engines as a pair of Rheairds soar through the atmosphere. Somewhere far beneath them, a nighttime breeze pulls navy-black waves across the face of the sea.
The news came unexpectedly, out of nowhere, and at first they hadn't really known what to do. Go, or not? She is someone of the past, a past that she lives in and that only one of them remembers. But at the same time, they always knew what they needed to do. They set down what they'd been doing, gathered together the belongings they needed, and left to get the Rheairds they currently fly to go and see their mother on her deathbed.
It is sometime around midnight when they arrive, Exire a mere shadow in the darkness of the night. They land nearby, and the feelings pass wordlessly between their meeting eyes. He slips his hand into hers like he used to when he was little and gives it a gentle squeeze, and together they cross the short space to the structure that she calls home. Genis feels his sister's hand leave his as she reaches for the door handle, and he knows this is harder for her than it is for him. He looks toward her in the darkness, worried, and it's then that he hears the voice drifting out the window.
"My... my children... Jean- Genis..." The voice fades away for a moment, and Genis's breath catches in his throat. "...Raine... Raine, my daughter... Raine..." The voice goes quiet again, and then a new voice, louder, and warm, answers.
"Yes?"
"Please, tell... 'I love you...'"
"I will."
The first voice does not reply, as if it has faded into nothing, and Genis's breath suddenly finds his lungs again. The door opens, and Genis briefly wonders if Raine should have chosen that moment to open it or if her emotions are about to burst out again until he sees the elder standing in the doorway, light framing him from behind and hand still on the door handle, surprised for just an instant at seeing them standing there.
He looks from Raine, who says nothing, to Genis, who meets his gaze questioningly, and the elder shakes his head slowly, solemnly, and all of a sudden Genis realizes that his mother really is gone.
It's hard to say exactly how he feels right then. He's sad, yes, but it's the sadness of losing someone he never really knew. He never really knew her, and she never really knew him. She'd left them to Sylvarant before she ever really knew him, and even now in her delusions he isn't, no, wasn't, even born. She was expecting, always expecting, and he never came.
He can't help but wonder, though, if maybe, just maybe, when she'd spoken her fading, dying words, it wasn't tell her that Virginia was trying to say, but tell them. He knows she is his mother biologically, that she contributed half of his genetic makeup, but he wants to know she is his mother emotionally, that she loves him, and he wonders if somehow she did know him, if just in a mother's love, as he didn't know her.
Whatever the answer, he'll never know. Had he been there, he might have, would have, but there is no way of knowing now.
Exire does not have enough land for a graveyard, so they bury her according to their tradition: wrapping her body in cloth weighted with stones, lowering it into the sea and watching it sink beneath the waves until there is nothing but deep blue water to be seen below them. They carve her name into a pole amidst those of the others who have died in that place before her, and that is her gravestone.
The elder gives them what belongings she had, and Raine gives almost all of them back for use by others in the city. Genis says nothing. He no longer fears that her emotions will explode out of her again, because he knows that this is how she deals with the strange grief of their mother's death: she puts on her calm, brave face and walls the grief up inside.
The sun is shining from a clear sky when they leave Exire behind, and before sunset they decide to stay in Luin for the night, because going farther today is too difficult. They land and rent a room at the inn, and then they go their separate ways to be by themselves with their thoughts. Raine leaves the room with their mother's doll in her hand, and Genis lets her go. He's worried about her, but he believes in her too. She is the only mother he has ever really known. He knows she'll be all right, even if it takes time.
He stays in their room, and after a moment he goes over to where his sister's bag is lying. He know she won't mind, so he opens it and reaches inside, taking an out a worn book that's at least several years older than he is. He lies down on his stomach across the nearest bed and opens the book from its back cover.
He's looked at the diary before, and when he has he's always read the end of it, because that's the part that has to do with him. He reads it again, turning the pages slowly and dwelling as he has before on the final words, the ones he first heard in the elder's house in Exire. He was hardly able to believe it then. For so long he wondered why they'd been abandoned, and he'd always imagined it was because they were a burden, or their parents hated them. Who would want to raise two half-elves in a world that hated them? When he first heard it, the truth really was great news.
But the truth is also that while Mother tried to protect them, when they came to Sylvarant they found discrimination there too. They were abandoned, their father died, and their mother went insane with grief, her entire family lost. His sister is the only family he has ever really known. The truth still hurts.
For what may be the first time, he wishes he could have known his parents, he really does. He looks down at the book in front of him, and after a minute he turns it over and opens the front cover, running his fingers over the name written there. Virginia Sage. Maybe he still has a chance to know her, even though she is gone.
Before this, he's never really thought that the first part of the diary could have much to do with him, but now he thinks that this is one family's story, and that family's story is his story too. He's never even dreamed of it before, but as he reads through those first few pages, he finds himself thinking that maybe, he's lucky in a way. He's always told himself he didn't really need a mother, because he had his sister. He needed her, and she needed him. But now, when he finally realizes that he really does need a mother, he finds himself in a way having two of them.
He looks up when the door opens, and Raine closes it behind her. The doll is gone, and he meets her eyes, suddenly worried again.
"I gave it away. To someone who needs it more than we do."
Relief washes over him, and the worry gives way to a quiet, understanding smile. Genis sits up as she comes over to him and pulls him into an embrace, and he wraps his arms tightly around her, pressing his face into her shoulder, the diary still held in one hand. He smiles a little into her coat even as he feels himself start to cry, and for the first time, he thinks that maybe, in the warmth of his sister's embrace, he can feel their mother's too.