Author's Note: Sheena x Kratos.
Yes, you read that right. Sheena x Kratos SHEENA X KRATOS !!! Ha ha ha... keels over from lack of oxygen
Kratos: Wait, does this mean I get laid?
Sheena: Perv. (slaps)
But anyway, I'm surprised this hasn't been done before, considering the similarities.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own ToS, probably a good thing, as the game would have ended up like this.
---------------------------------
Kratos awoke with the warmth of the sun and the feeling of cool silk against his body. He wondered at this as he didn't usually sleep naked. Kratos blearily opened his eyes slightly and then opened them wider at what he saw.
There was Sheena, sitting bent over at the edge of the bed, the bones of her back all clearly defined as she desperately tried to put her bra on silently.
"Wha...?" thought Kratos. The memories of the previous night came to Kratos, the way a train comes to a man tied to the tracks.
His body convulsed and it was all he could do to keep the bile down. What had he done...?
Sheena stopped and turned around at the sound. Kratos flipped to the other side of the bed, his back to her. It was then that he remembered he was completely naked and hastily grabbed a wad of sheets which he wrapped around his body. Kratos was hunched over, as though trying to hide, as his whole body shook.
Sheena grabbed him by the shoulders, and roughly spun Kratos so he faced her.
"What?" she spat. "Am I too ugly to look at when you're not drunk?" Her eyes were red and puffy. Kratos hunched even more, letting his red-brown hair fall over his eyes.
His voice shook slightly as he whispered "Sheena...I-I'm sorry." Kratos body flopped down like a broken doll.
"Great. Just Great. My life is so fucked up that I just had to spread the joy," he thought to himself. "Beer and Sex, mans' greatest pain killers."
Kratos looked up at the sound of something hitting the bed. Sheena lay there, shaking, the sun glinting off her black hair and the skin of her bare back and legs. A single guttural sob escaped her throat. Kratos almost lifted a hand to comfort her, but he couldn't bear the thought of touching Sheena right now.
Suddenly she looked up at Kratos, with wide red eyes. Her cheeks were covered with tears.
"Don't blame yourself. It wasn't your fault."
The comment was a shock to Kratos, so he sat up straighter and brushed his hair out of his eyes to get a better look at the girl...the woman. Their eyes locked.
And Sheena spoke again. "I wanted it just as bad as you did." Her voice was cracking.
Now Kratos was confused. She had wanted him? Or at least wanted it? And then a thought dawned on Kratos. But he could not find words for it. So instead he said a name.
"Zelos." It sounded flat, not at all like the person it had identified.
Sheena let out another sob and then pulled her knees up around her and began to rock.
"I did it."
Kratos looked at her questioningly.
"I did it. I killed him. I did it. I loved him."
Kratos bit his lip as he heard his own story told in another's voice.
"That's why I was so mean to him. I loved him. I wanted him to love me too. I wanted to be enough. Just me. That was why I liked Lloyd, he never wavered from Collette."
Kratos winced, as he remembered Sheena was only three years older than his son.
"But I wasn't evidentially. So he had to flirt with fricken' five-year-olds on the street. Idiot. She spat. "Why'd he do it?" The venom in her voice melted as she looked at Kratos with eyes filled with childlike questioning.
Kratos just sat there. He didn't have the answers then and he didn't have them now. He never would. That was why he did things like this.
Sheena watched him sit there humbly, the thought "For once the great Kratos Aurion has no high and mighty comment" floating sardonically in the back of her mind.
But Kratos did speak.
"Zelos did love you."
Zelos was one of the few people he'd never been able to truly fathom. But Kratos knew very well what love looked like.
Sheena jolted slightly. "Really?" she asked. "He really loved me?" The second was more or a dreamy comment than a question but Kratos still answered, glad to be able to make her happy.
"Yes."
And for a moment and expression of pure bliss rested on Sheena's face. Kratos smiled inwardly, happy to have done his part in this. "When she's happy she really is beautiful..." drifted into Kratos's mind.
But apparently is was just the eye of the storm. Sheena was sobbing more violently than before.
"What's wrong?" Kratos bent over, the concern evident in his voice.
"He loved me. He really loved me. Me. And..." Sheena choked on her tears. "And I killed him."
Sheena bent forward, her knees tucked to her chin, her forehead flat on the bed. Her tears poured freely. "I'm a miserable excuse for a human being," muttered Sheena.
Kratos laughed bitterly. "I see our stories have some striking similarities."
Sheena stopped crying for a moment. "That's right," she mused. "Kratos... Anna..." She looked at him again. His hair covered his face but Sheena could still see the silently flowing tears.
Her compassion overwhelmed her. She knew very well why she had chosen to use the carnal pleasures - Who was she kidding? It was sex, S-E-X, she made herself spell it out, no need for euphemisms- but she hadn't given a thought to Kratos's reasons. She had told her tale without realizing the parallels to his.
"Maybe the stories can join together now."
Kratos looked up at her.
"Maybe they can pick up each other's pieces."
Sheena had tears in her eyes but she was smiling. Kratos didn't answer her. He wasn't sure if his mind was empty or if it simply had too many thoughts to comprehend.
Sheena twitched. So she was just a one-night-stand for him? She had thought, that maybe, just maybe, there had been a connection there... But there wasn't.
Sheena turned away, curled up in a fetal position, tears coming freely again.
This time Kratos knew what to do. Both what had to be done and what he desperately wanted. Kratos reached over and picked Sheena up, pulling her into his lap. He buried his face in her hair, to hide from the probably anger, and realized it smelled nice.
Sheena rolled, and looked up at him. In spite of herself, she laughed at the absurdity of the fact that she was laying a buck-naked Kratos's lap in her underwear; and at how, despite the serious expression of his face, Kratos looked incredibly cute with his hair flopped in his face. Kratos was now looking at her like she was insane, which just made her laugh more.
"Good God," he thought. "Has she completely lost it?"
Sheena smiled up at him and blew his hair away. Before it could settle back down she pulled them together and kissed him. And he kissed her.
"Aren't we doing this in the reverse order?" Kratos asked with a bemused smile.
"Does it matter?" replied Sheena.
And it didn't. It didn't matter at all. So that was how they stayed for quite some time, letting the light drift in though the window, bathing them in the rising sun.
---------------------------------
Author's Note: Little unusual, eh? Please review.
