How did it get like this? Kratos vaguely wondered, as he stared into the snarling face of his son. If sepia could kindle, conflagrate, and then blaze into an inferno of unquenchable rage, such were his son's eyes as they hung mere centimeters in front of him. The monolith at Kratos' back was unyielding as he was shoved further against it – no, he wasn't being shoved against it. He was being smashed into it. Kratos' hands were firm around his son's wrists. But his son's hands remained wrapped around Kratos' neck. The Seraph gazed unwaveringly upon the long planes of Lloyd's face, the angular cut of his jaw, the hard eyes that held years' worth of anger. Never mind the anger – they were still Anna's eyes, full of her passion if not her joy.

Lloyd bore into Kratos, wringing him, quenching his breath, yet Kratos continued to study him in a dazed kind of surprise. He was a man now. His son was a man now. It wasn't a fact that he begrudged. But Lloyd seemed changed every time that Kratos returned. During his visits, Kratos noticed that the changes had come small at first – things like Lloyd's bearing as he stepped down the halls in his ever curtailing freedom, his boot size as he outgrew his wardrobe, his tone of voice as it morphed from affection to agitation. Then the changes came larger – the alteration of Lloyd's belief system as witnessed by both Kratos and Yuan during the rawer conversations, his power which had changed from bizarre to uncharted, his height as he gained his father's tallness. He was transforming into an Aurion more and more every day, and Kratos did not rue that reality. He only rued the circumstances by which it was happening and how others were kept well-informed of his own son while he was not. Now he could only catch up by openly watching Lloyd, as he was doing now. Though today's scrutiny wasn't the best example of the way that Kratos learned his son – Lloyd's hands at his throat evidenced that – just looking at him was usually a way for Kratos to imprint detail into his mind.

To those watching, the two men seemed startlingly alike in appearance. Hair fell in willful sweeps of dark russet to the neck, the son's more a lay of deeper brown. Matching faces captured identical strong jaws and eyes that conveyed a duality of defensiveness and provoked emotion. They stood at the same height – or nearly so. When did he ever get this tall? Kratos absentmindedly wondered during his halfhearted struggle of staying his son's hands from choking him. But he wondered the same thing every time that he came back. Lloyd bent against him, and Kratos saw all of the Aurion in him now. It was nearly like looking in a mirror. Briefly, breathlessly – and albeit painfully – Kratos wondered when the broad shoulders had developed.

But there were still plenty enough differences between the two that could be noted at second glance – not enough differences to take the father out of the son, perhaps, but enough to view the son as distinct unto himself. The faces may have resembled each other, but the father's was of a calmer countenance. Kratos possessed a sort of composed tranquility in which he enveloped himself, today and every day and on a regular basis. Nothing escaped and nothing touched. He lived like an island. Even now, his expression was unruffled except for the faint suggestion of belated shock that could be read in his eyes. Lloyd, on the contrary, immersed himself in his ferocity and broken temper. There was a wildness about him. It could be read in his flashing dark irises, like deep chestnut-colored wells of abhorrence as they focused upon his father. His eyes were fierce, violent even. But more than anything, they were… feral. Feral, as though he were negotiating an inner chaos that was overflowing from him, a frenzy that he couldn't quite contain. He had faded cuts upon his face, only to be guessed about by those less intimately involved with him, and only serving to build upon the image of mania. His stance, his hair, and his face each contributed to a flyaway look. The very pattern of mana in which
he was now cloaked presented him as something both untamed and untamable as he pressed his fingers into his father's neck.

All of this havoc in the break of an instant.

Kratos had been freshly arrived at the Centrum. His report was compiled, his examinations undergone, and he waited to be summoned by Mithos himself. He had been standing in the vault along with several other Cruxis militants when Lloyd had burst through the chamber doors, trailed by yet more Cruxis subjects.

"Where is he?!" Lloyd had furiously snapped, not expecting to be answered even as silence descended.

The young man had propelled himself forward in just a few long strides and, before Kratos could do much more than catch his first curious glimpse of his son, Lloyd's gloved fist had been unleashed into the left side of his face, connecting with his cheekbone in a harsh meeting. And, before Kratos could so much as fall back, Lloyd was upon him, slamming him bodily into the column by his neck and strangling him.

And that's where they were now.

Had he the breath to spare, Kratos would still have lacked any words to share with Lloyd in this disconcerting scenario. With his auburn hair splayed across his face, tension drawn in his back, and his cheek throbbing from Lloyd's blow, Kratos couldn't find it in himself to resist his son for very long, much less hurt him. Besides, this wasn't all that remarkable to him. Unfortunate, yes. Disappointing, sure. But it wasn't something that he could claim as entirely uncalled for – not by him and not by Yuan, and who only knew what Mithos was thinking? Anyway, this was nothing compared to the way that Lloyd had suffered. This wasn't even the first brunt of it.

"I don't want to see your face here!"

The strangest thing happened then. The room began to… shake. Not a shaking as though from one of Mithos' machinations, but a shaking as though the floor itself wanted to slide, like the foundations of the chamber were wrenched crooked and the walls wanted to tilt to align themselves with ambient forces and gravity's law.

Kratos did choke then, but not because of his son's physical ministrations. He choked because of the sudden smothering of mana that seemed to surge forth from his son, so thick and heady that it was almost palpable. It was tantalizing and crippling and stained Kratos with such horror that he clenched his jaw and eyes as he was blanketed beneath it along with the rest of the room. The rumbling continued. There was the sound of glass shattering.

And then:

"Lloyd, stop this."

Kratos opened his eyes when he heard the familiar, steady, and unmelodic voice breaking through the din. It was Yuan. Though Lloyd had not released him from his suffocation, Kratos felt his son give a single shudder from the very core of his being. He also felt the sudden repeal as channels of mana were pulled back, pulled back, pulled back toward Lloyd. The spread of mana ungracefully stuttered around Kratos as it was surely and haltingly manipulated into some sort of higher compromise that Kratos could not read. And, as Kratos stared up at the high arching ceiling, Lloyd's hands dropped from his throat, none too feebly. The room ceased to shake – but not all at once the way that it had begun. The shaking faded away in waves, in long, binding increments that left behind echoes of vibration. Kratos moved his head marginally to rest his eyes upon his cerulean-haired interceptor.

Lloyd exhaled.

Yuan swallowed.

And Kratos cleared his throat.

How did it get like this, indeed.