Notes: This is a very odd fic, I'll warn you now..and it has spoilers of course but that's a given. But it's not written from the perspective of any of the known cast members; though logic dictates, if you got to see certain events with Presea, that these could be considered cast members of a sort...for all we never hear from THEM. This is actually three short fics semi-dedicated to the seraphim of Cruxis.
We are speaking to you, though we are mute. We hold you close, though we are armless. We walk with you upon your legs and see through your eyes; yet most of all we live within your hearts.
And such sad worlds those hearts are...
Crowned in auburn, like a tree sorrowing the loss of summer into autumn...grieving as one would on seeing winter soon approach...for four thousand years, you have lived in that autumn. I can hear your sorrow, your regrets...I reach out to touch you, only to never be seen nor felt. I hold you close, I carry you on as days become years...and then years stretch into centuries...
Yet you never know I am there. I watched your great works...I felt the grief they gave rise to in you as they became twisted by another's sick desire. Your despair has been a heart wound to us both; yet my words of comfort go unheard by you...my promises for a better life, if only you hold on, lost. All I can do is hold on to you, unseen and unheard...and wait for you to understand there will always be hope.
You found it once not so long ago and we both rejoiced...But I should have listened to the warning of my brethren and held you back. I couldn't bear to, however...for the first time in four thousand years, you were not crying where only I could hear. I ignored the warning of the other, misborn and struggling with the woman you hoped to forge a new life with.
I should have listened; I should have tried again to make you hear me...perhaps then, your will would not have been broken. I watched as her life was twisted, even as that of my brethren screamed warning to me...I watched you break as you lost what you had only so recently begun to live for was lost.
I'm sorry...I failed you, even if you do not even realize I am here. I hold you close again, knowing I am mute to your ears...even as I whisper my promise to you.
Should you live even another four thousand years, Kratos...you will never be alone.
I share your gaze through emerald shards; I know how you look to those without..how you try so hard to look to them. As cold as the stone your eyes seem carved of; glinting and unfeeling...as harsh within as you seem without. That is what you tell them; that is what I know to be a lie within you. I have stolen from you your tears; if I could have given them back to you, I would have done so a hundred fold...if only it would set you free.
Though of the three who live yet, you seem the brightest and most exotic to the eye; a tropical bird of color among sparrows and finches- within you are so dark and lost. You rebel against what you know is wrong; against the twisting of a dream you and two others shared in our youth...Yet you do so convinced of your state. Alone, untouchable and aloof. You show the world a mask as lifeless as one created from the feathers of such a bird who would share your colors...acting hollow and cold.
You are hollow inside now...but you are far from cold. The tears you cannot cry remain trapped here; the mourning you refuse to show an endless lament echoing through caverns of precious memories you dare not visit again...knowing they would break you. You must kill her once and for all; we both know this. Yet I wish there were a way to spare her for you...some way to give your hope back to you.
I reach for you, but you cannot feel me. I call to you, yet you cannot hear me. Only in the darkest of nights, when you come as close to sleeping as you can...only then can I even begin to reach you...but you see me only as her in your mind and shake me away, refusing to be hurt again by dwelling on the one you wish to kill.
Loneliness is the bitter curse of my kind, and now it is upon you...yet even if another four thousand years passes, Yuan...you will never be alone.
All the colors of the world live in the wings I grant you; beautiful and wild to behold...and as frightening as you are, within and without. The world exists only at your whim, fueled with life only so long as there is a chance you may revive her; to think that one woman could be so important and cause so much pain...To think that the one who claimed to love her most would become so twisted by her end.
I was with you when you fought by her side and saved my mother, the world as she existed then, from the demise that foolish war was sure to bring upon her. Now I watch as you rip her apart and use her remains to try to revive your sibling...tormenting hundreds of thousands of my brethren and one of the two races that helped bring you into being...
I am watching a maddened child torment and slaughter one parent, ignore the other so long as they hide and lay waste to my mother in turn. I scream at you to stop, I plea with you and try to call you back from your despairing madness...You were so good, so pure once. I treasured you as much as you treasured the sister you lost...Yet like those who were your companions...I cannot reach you.
It is with no small relief I greet the end of your body; you fall fully into my arms even as you speak to your slayers...still unaware of me, still lost in your madness. If this continues, you will only use me to rise again in time...You will never let me take you within me as you once took me within you. I hear your vow...if the same choices rose again; you would make the same decisions.
My kind cannot cry...but we can grieve all the same. And I catch hold of you more firmly as we are both struck down again for the last time...never had I thought death to be something to be welcomed...but even as the sword draws me within it, I hold onto you and take you with me. We will both rest now; there will be no rebirth or return of any kind for either of us.
Yet even in death, poor Mithos...you will never be alone.
If you still hadn't guessed yet: these are all from the Crystals' points of view on their bearers. Colette and Lloyd's - Presea's and Zelos' too- were a bit too young for me to think they really would have developed any kind of real perspective on their holders/matured enough to think in such a way. This whole fic was inspired by the scene where Presea is taken to the caverns where they mine the spheres and informed that humans are not the only ones that are hurt by what Mithos and the Desians are doing with the exspheres.