Disclaimer:
I don't own anything!
Author's Note: This was a particularly difficult thing to write, mostly because I've never even attempted to get inside Dirk's head before. This story takes place very near the end of the game, if you choose to keep Zelos over Kratos (Which I rarely do). I just find it so off that Kratos just stays chilling out at Dirk's house while the world is being saved, and that of all people, those two need to have a proper conversation. So this was a fun study I wrote while I was at work.
"Strangers take a long time to become acquainted, particularly when they are from the same family."
― M.E. Kerr
Dirk didn't know what to make of the man in his dining room. Lloyd's birth father. "But don't worry," Lloyd had added. "You're always gonna be my dad."
Dirk knew of Kratos as a mercenary who'd offered his services to help protect the Chosen. He knew of Kratos as the angel who'd betrayed Lloyd and his friends, and who had helped them when Colette was sick.
He knew nothing of him as a father, except for the fact that he hadn't been there.
(Dirk wants to hate him, in all honesty, wants to be angry at him for never looking for his son. The man is part of the most powerful organization in the world and he hadn't been able to find a single child? But then he remembers Anna. How he'd found her. Bloody, desperate, and terrified. Begging a total stranger to watch over her son. Whatever had happened that day—and Lloyd had mentioned that his father had been forced to kill his mother—it had been terrible. Dirk can't judge Kratos when he doesn't have all the facts)
"D'ya want some tea?" Dirk asked finally. Whatever else Kratos was, he was still a guest.
Kratos wasn't a very expressive man, in Dirks admittedly limited experience, but he imagined that there was a bit of surprise in those red-brown eyes. Had he been expecting judgment from the man who raised his son? Or perhaps to simply be ignored?
"…Yes, thank you."
Dirk sat across from him as the tea leaves steeped. His tea set was nothing fancy, a set that Lloyd had saved up for several years ago with a floral design. It had been a Celsius Day present.
After the tea was poured, Kratos sniffed at it curiously. "What kind of tea is this?"
"A blend o' me own. I made it for Lloyd when he came home hurtin'. Heard ya mention that you were injured."
"Thank you." Kratos bowed his head as he said it. It took long moments before Kratos asked,"…Did he get injured often?"
"Lloyd? Often enough. He's good at findin' trouble, as I'm sure ye've noticed." Dirk saw the way Kratos opened his mouth briefly, as though to ask another question, but he thought better of it. "…He came home with a black eye an' a busted lip the day he met Genis."
"Did he?"
Dirk might not know much about Kratos and angels, but he recognized this; just a father asking after his son. "Yes, he did. Refused to apologize to the other kid too."
"Why?"
"Because the other kid deserved it. Said he shouldn't have been bullyin' anybody." Dirk watched Kratos hide a smile in his teacup. "What is it?"
"He reminds me very much of Anna," Kratos said quietly. "She would have—actually, she did say much the same about the Desians."
"I imagine that she was a fine woman."
"She was." Kratos fell silent, eyes on his tea. Like this, so serious and grim, Dirk could find little resemblance to Lloyd. But that moment of fondness where the grimness had lifted away—he'd seen a bit of Lloyd in the corners of his smile, in the softened lines of his face.
"Was she stubborn?" Dirk asked when the silence stretched too long. "Your wife. Because Lloyd is as hardheaded as they come."
The grief didn't leave his face, but some of the seriousness did. "…Oh yes. Anna was fierce, and stubborn, and kind." His face wasn't very expressive, but his voice was. Dirk could hear the love there, the sorrow and the fondness. Kratos was many things—not all of them good—but he was a man who loved his family. That, Dirk was sure of.
(Kratos is somewhere in the thousands of years old, according to Lloyd and the others. But he looks like a fairly young man to Dirk. It's his eyes that give him away, that mark him as being much older than his appearance. Four thousand years is a very long time. Dirk has been a father for fourteen years; Kratos had been one for far less than that. Fourteen years is hardly any time at all to one of the long-lived races—such as dwarves or elves. But even dwarves and elves don't live to be four thousand. To Kratos, he might have lost his wife and son yesterday for all the time that's passed)
"I'm sorry for your loss."
Kratos glanced up with that same kind of almost-surprise in his eyes. Perhaps it was kindness that he wasn't used to. He bowed his head again in silent thanks.
Dirk stood a little while later. The world could be ending out there; his son—their son—fighting an insane boy-god, but Dirk refused to act as though the world had already ended. He had orders to fill.
He finished off a set of horseshoes that he'd started several days ago, and a pair of earrings all in silence. Kratos finished off the tea and washed the set methodically. Afterwards, he took a seat by the window and while he made a good impression of it, Dirk was willing to bet money that he wasn't actually seeing the outside.
It was Dirk carefully hammered a set of kitchen knives that he said, "…He remembered you." He didn't see so much as feel the attention being shifted to him. "When he was thirteen, he asked me for a sword. When I asked him why, he said it was because he remembered his father having one."
"Quite the thing for a boy to remember about his father."
"Swords aren't inherently good or evil. Their wielder decides." It was something that Dirk was fairly certain Kratos knew, intellectually speaking, but it was something that his soul had forgotten.
Kratos leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, but he stiffened halfway through the movement and leaned back. He was injured then, somewhere. "…Why were you out here? That day?"
"Getting firewood for my forge. I had several large orders coming up."
"You are the first dwarf I have ever met that lives aboveground."
"I did it fer Lloyd. Humans don't do well underground, generally speakin'. Wasn't entirely sure how humans did it, living up here," Dirk laughed, remembering those first few months. He had helped out with his nieces and nephews, but that had been centuries ago, and he hadn't been entirely sure how to go about raising Lloyd. "But I rather like it now."
Kratos' eyes travelled around the house, with the moss growing on the pillars and the plants creeping in from the ceiling cracks. Herbs sat in flowerboxes everywhere, interspersed with tools and sketches. The gentle light from the windows softened the worn wooden furniture. "It's a beautiful home." A beautiful home for his son to have grown up in; relatively safe from Desians and Cruxis, stable, a community nearby to support him. Everything Kratos could have ever wished for Lloyd.
(They had dreamed of a home like this, once. He and Martel. He remembers sitting beside her on a long night, waiting for news from the front. It is less than a week after Yuan had proposed, and Martel mentions—almost off-hand, but he knows her too well to believe it—that she wants a home of their own, one day. Hers and Yuan's—"Not," she'd added hastily. "That I don't want you and Mithos around, but…" He remembers laughing and they'd taken turns, adding things to their dream life and dream homes. Iron stoves and thick blankets. He'd wanted bookshelves lining the walls, and she'd wanted a garden.
He remembers doing the same with Anna, once. And she'd curled in on herself a little, unsure of what went into making a home. She'd been little more than a child when the Desians had taken her. Kratos had assured her that, one day, they would have a place to call their own and he would try not to make too much fun of her trying to figure out a home. She'd pushed him playfully, but she'd laughed before kissing his shoulder, saying that she quite liked the sound of that)
"He's become a good man, our son." Dirk said quietly. He had never had to share Lloyd with anyone except the woman buried in their yard. It was odd, particularly now, sharing him with this man—a stranger, for all intents and purposes. This man was a murderer, had helped commit genocide on several levels—humans had suffered in the ranches, yes, but dwarves had been all but wiped out over the millennia—but he was a man who loved his wife and son. For that man, Dirk was willing to share their son.
"Your son," Kratos corrected quietly, not meeting Dirk's eyes. For such a strong warrior, he was not a confrontational man. "I don't have a claim as a father."
"It's yer choice, but I disagree. And I think Lloyd does too."
Dirk saw Kratos look up, this time a visible shock running through his face, and yes, there was Lloyd. In the wideness of his eyes, the line of his jaw, the shape of his brow.
Dirk wasn't sure if he imagined it or not, but he liked to think that he heard Kratos thank him.