A/N:
Sorry for not having posted anything since... SO LONG! Not that anyone really cares, anyways...
So here I am, with yet another fanfiction that may as well never be finished... as with all my other non-oneshot stories. And yeah... I was really supposed to be doing the other fics I had in mind on my poll... but this popped into mind and I wrote it at school. So meh... sorry about that! D:
Don't. Own.
And since about half the fun of writing is because of all you great readers, please tell me what you would like to see in the next chapters! Something's telling me that this will turn out to be yet another (yes, siiiigh) angsty James-centric. The pairing will be James x Vixy, of course... and starts way back, maybe at around the time when Fox is born, or even earlier, but I'd like to know what you guys want as the main focus! Or just review anyhow, and tell me that anything goes if that's the case. I'd really appreciate it! Thanks in advance...
So without further ado... the prologue of Reminiscence.
James is a very common surname. If you look at the records over the years, you'll find that its popularity never strays far from the first few ranks. In all of Lylat's history, there must've been hundreds of men named James who have had, at one point or another, their own paw prints stamped upon our world.
In my entire life, I have only come to know one person with such a name- or two, if you see it another way. No, that's not quite it. Truth is, I know next to nothing about either one, if you look at it now. Public images contort the truth- or at least, covers it up and exaggerates, moulding the views of society to its own accord. Of course, the result is not always negative, but it becomes the only thing that we are able to see. In short: we perceive and understand merely what others have told us: what the public demonstrates as the truth: an image most often shallow and utterly superficial. In time, all that we are capable of remembering are these keen, petty representations of what never quite was- which ultimately, amounts to nothing at all.
The James I thought I knew is - was - the one known to all as James McCloud. Was, because now, there is nothing left of him save hollowed memories and exaggerated understatements. As I have come to understand, at last, time clouds our memories and locks them away- then throws out the key. Whether James McCloud still remembers, I do not know- nor shall I ever. But these facts are irrelevant, as James McCloud Junior has died- and he, after all, knows this story better than I.
They are both dead, and that is the truth underlying it all. The only one left is I: Fox McCloud – ah, the irony. Now, I fear that he too is slipping away from me, from the world.
But once upon a time, when James McCloud was more than a coveted name - a time when he was - these forlorn details may have held importance. That was Then; this is Now- and beyond the gates of my knowledge lies the transition between the two. A story, one that is not mine to tell- though in the midst of it all, James McCloud Junior, if only for a brief time, was.
How James McCloud was, and then ceased to be.
But mostly, how Then became Now. How Now became Nothing At All.
James' story. The story of James McCloud.
The story of my father.