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The Saga of Kings, The Sins of My Father
Written by,
Vile M.F. Slanders
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"MELISSA!" My indoor voice was cast aside as my outdoor voice took the reins.
"WHAT?!" My beautiful blossom shouted right back at me, well before she'd even entered the hallway.
I was perfectly silent as I awaited the explanation for this to assume her position at my frothing side.
"...What the hell is this?" I growled in a baritone, as the scaly flowerpot returned to mauling my pillow with a gusto. Melissa didn't answer me.
"...I thought we had an agreement, wife…" I hissed.
"We did." Melissa spat right back.
"...I agreed to leave my work at work, if you would agree to leave your work at work." I growled.
"Well, it looks like we both violated the agreement." Melissa miffed at me.
"...Why is this piece of shit Bulbasaur tearing up my bedsheets?" I whispered in my danger voice.
"Why is the daughter of Theron Halcyon sitting on my couch?" Melissa countered, no less pissed.
"I have my reasons." I bore down on my wife with a shaking fury.
-And the look in her eyes had me backpedaling into the doorframe not two seconds later.
"...As do I, Zane." Melissa hissed to my humbled figure. I couldn't win against this woman.
I never could.
So I redirected my ire on the culprit responsible for my pillow's molestation.
"Spud, get the fuck off my bed!" I shouted my head off at that shit-fucked Bulbasaur, and that green little puke didn't even bat an eye.
"...Vauban, stop chewing up the linens." Melissa ordered in a cool voice.
My head just about popped off my shoulders when every muscle in my neck clenched up iron-tight.
Melissa dared to meet my bewildered and outraged glare, but her eyes weren't quite so scary anymore.
Those beautiful blue eyes of hers had softened up ever so slightly.
The Bulbasaur instantly complied with Melissa's directive, and with a couple of gimpy steps and one ginger leap to the floorboards later, that Bulbasaur was standing right at Melissa's toes, looking up at my wife with the happiest little dinosaur face you ever did see.
"...Why is it called Vauban?" I hissed out from between my chattering teeth. Melissa reached down and lifted the wounded Bulbasaur into the cradle of her arms, and held that terrible little monster protectively against her breast.
"...Maybe because the most famous hero in the modern age once had a Venasaur named Vauban?" Melissa replied in a cautious voice.
"Who named it?!" My voice was barely audible over the rumble of my larynx.
"...Some impressionable trainer, who picked a shitty role model." Melissa growled right back to me at my most ragged state.
...How fucking dare-
"...It's not Vauban's fault that she's named after your Vauban, Zane." Melissa whispered in an undertone, covering the Bulbasaur's eyes with a wary hand.
And those carefully elocuted words of hers brought it all back.
I couldn't even see Melissa's face through the tears in my functioning eye.
...Every wound I'd ever suffered had scarred. Every wound had found the time and means to mend. Every single one of my old war-wounds, except for one…
That one…
Oh, that one...
...I would never get over the memory of watching my daughter die in the most inhumane-
I fell back against the wall, choking on my own closing throat.
Melissa didn't say a word. Melissa didn't lift a finger to comfort me.
-She knew better than that.
I was all alone again, looking into her terrified eyes, promising her it was gonna be okay-
...Mere moments before he cut her head off.
Melissa let me have my time in hell to grieve. When I had come out of it enough to realize that I wasn't eighteen and helpless anymore, my wife had put aside that clueless green bump of shit, and had started to straighten out the collar of my coat with her emancipated digits.
"...Come on, Zane. It's over, soldier. It all ended a long time ago..."
-No, it didn't.
I was still there, screaming my head off in horror and disbelief, as my daughter's headless corpse thrashed out a grisly mockery of the rigors of life…
"Zane. I need you to come back to me. I need you to come out of it."
My face was buried into Melissa shoulder, and I was weeping against her like a wounded child. My arms took a firm hold of my beloved wife, and my panting breaths told of my struggle to comprehend her presence in this horrid place.
When I finally returned to the present day, I more or less returned as the present me.
A little more shaken than normal. A little more wet around the eyes. But I was still me.
And if you know anything about the normal me…
...You'd know that I'm normally pissed as all fuck.
"Get this piece of shit Bulbasaur out of my fucking house, now." I growled to Melissa, less than a minute after my recovery.
Melissa responded by collecting my tattered, toxic-saliva coated pillow, and firmly planted it against my chest.
"Better idea: How about you get out of my fucking bedroom, you piece of shit Greenback."
-There was a reason for why Melissa and I had gotten hitched, but for the life of me, I couldn't quite remember that reason right now.
"-Excuse me?" My voice was rife with disdain, while Melissa busied herself with stripping down the ruined bedsheets.
"Anastasia is sleeping on the couch, so you're not sleeping in the living room, and Vauban and I are sleeping in the bedroom, so there's no room for you in here." Melissa stated it all a-matter-of-factly, with only a minor hint of impatience betrayed in her tone.
"-Are you telling me to get a hotel room, after I've been to Kalos and back again?" I hissed to my unconcerned wife, and all she did was shrug at me.
"You can bed down with Cortez in the backyard. I'm sure that Hooch McGruff can tolerate your bullshit attitude better than anyone else in this household can. Now get the fuck out."
Melissa had laid down the law, and dumber than shit I may be…
...Even I knew better than to argue with this woman.
"You cold-hearted cunt. Why in the name of all that's sane did I put a ring on your finger?" I breathed out in utter bewilderment.
"Because you're a sucker for punishment. The backdoor is eight paces towards the kitchen, followed by a hard left. Now get the hell out of here." Melissa hissed.
-Now I remembered why I had married her.
"I love you. You know that, right?" A ridiculously goofy smile split my face into besotted halves.
"Duly noted. Now choke on shit and die." Melissa grumbled.
And with that touching farewell, I chuckled myself out into the hallway.
"...Home, sweet home." I smiled at no one and nothing in particular.
"God, I love that woman." I swore, as I headed my laughing ass off towards the kitchen for want of a cold beer.
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"When was the last time you and I danced together?" I asked Melissa as I led her out to ballroom's center floor.
"Hoenn's Ninth Legion Military Ball, six years ago." Melissa answered softly.
"Oh, I remember that now." A fond smile rose my cheeks as I met Melissa's splayed arms with mine.
"Do you really?" Melissa asked in shock.
"I may have been drunk half the time, but I'd never forget about you trying to waltz while suffering from food poisoning" I teased, sweeping my graceful Melissa out on our sole conjoined limbs, before pulling her back against my frame with a gentle tug and step.
"...I remember you stumbling all over my toes." Melissa grumbled, but her smile was no less nostalgic than mine.
"You walked it off the next day. After you'd ridden my ass into the ground for it." I was trying not to laugh, and Melissa was struggle just as hard as I was to keep the giggles repressed.
"...I swore that I'd never dance with you again." Melissa murmured in a sadden tone.
"And I swore that I'd never sober up again, but look at us now." I teased, as I took Melissa by her waist, and arched with her descending spine, until both our torsos were parallel with the floor.
"You finally stopped drinking so much." Melissa softened up, and I lifted her loose body into a lofty poise.
"Only because you never stopped chewing me out." The smiles we wore may have belonged to the youthful faces of our halcyon days, but here and now, both Melissa and I could look back on our union of unending conflict with joy.
"Where did we go wrong, Zane?" Melissa tittered as the ballad changed its tune.
"When I asked will you, and you said yes." I chuckled. My face was beginning to hurt, I was smiling so hard.
"Well, everyone has to be young and dumb once in their lives." Melissa smile regressed slightly, and I felt my own face relax.
I knew that I wanted to grow old and die with this woman. And I knew that she wanted nothing less than the same.
For all the trauma we'd put each other through in the years that had followed the Second Brink Collapse…
...We still loved one another as much as we had when had first sworn ourselves to the other.
"You are the single most unromantic fool that a woman could ever ask for." Melissa whispered.
"And you're the tightest noose that a self-destructive masochist could ever dream of." I replied in that same husky whisper.
Some would call us dysfunctional. And neither one of us would disagree.
But that's exactly what we wanted.
And that's exactly what we gave each other.
"...This song is too fast for me." Melissa grumbled. I shook with a suppressed chuckle, and guided my beloved wife off the ballroom floor and over towards our private table.
I could take a hint.
Melissa had trained me that well at least.
"You bowl over any foreign delegates, pooch?" I grunted to Cortez. My woolly mountain of a hound lifted himself upon all four of his mammoth paws when he heard the indolent sound of my voice.
"What about you, kid? How many staring contests have you won?" I turned my teasing attentions onto Anastasia, who despite her courtly elegance, was doing everything she could to avoid attention.
"There's no need for such petty competitions, Monsieur Bastard." Anastasia murmured in a nervous voice.
"What are you talking about? You could beat anyone in a staring contest with them googly eyes of yours. Hell, that petty competition was one of Ther-"
Melissa drove her pointed heel into my foot, cutting me off before I could so much as say his name.
And I didn't even wince.
"You know that I don't give a fuck about what all these Kalosian snobs think of him, Melissa." I grumbled to my wife, and her right hand crushed the scarred remains of my left. It took me a moment to realize why Melissa was pushing so hard to shut me up about a topic that she knew I'd never back down from. But then Melissa's pointed stare and inclined head directed at Anastasia's chair shut me up tight.
The kid was fiddling with her hair again, and her eyes were staring dead at the floor.
"Well, um… Anyone try the horderves yet?" I tried to direct the subject into less awkward waters. Cortez snorted, and rolled his massive head above me.
My number two had never lost his wingman reputation.
"They taste like salted turds, huh?" I asked Cortez, playing along with his jibe.
Cortez just sighed through his nose at me.
I didn't have to look at the kid to know that we were losing ground. Crude humor wasn't gonna pull Anastasia out of this one. She was already uncomfortable with being surrounded by the same people who had tried to kill her little more than a month ago.
-But Theron had been made to suffer that same sentiment of ostracization, and I'd be damned if I'd let his daughter submit to the status of a pariah as well.
"Right. Well then…" I gritted my teeth as I struggled to figure this one out.
I wasn't going to apologize to Anastasia. Me lying to her would only make things worse. She had no reason to feel ashamed of her heritage, and I respected Theron too much to besmirch his name for the solace of his daughter.
But I was still the Fucking Bastard at heart…
...And the Fucking Bastard always found a way to resolve any conflict.
"Did they teach you how to dance in House Halcyon?" I asked Anastasia, and the shrinking girl jerked up to meet my smile with a startled look. Melissa glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. It wasn't a happy look. I could feel that look burning a hole in my blind side.
Melissa knew that subtlety wasn't my strong suit, and she always feared for my blunt approaches.
"Come on. Enough sitting around. It's time to make a scene." I grunted, extending a cordial arm to Anastasia, as I met her cursed eyes with my sole one.
I didn't fear the rotting world in her eyes. I'd been there before, and I had come back alive.
The Ghosts didn't scare me anymore.
They just pissed me off, like every other godforsaken mon.
"It's rather rude to leave the Grand Marshal of the Ranger Corps hanging, kid. It really is just plain rude." I wasn't smiling when I said it, though I was laughing inside. Anastasia was getting all timid and flustered by my offer.
She was absolutely terrified of accepting it.
But I had left her with no other choice.
"Thatta girl." I grunted, when Anastasia's soft fingers entered my calloused palm. I pulled that kid to her feet before she could even stammer out a word, and then I dragged her reluctant figure straight over to the orchestra, and placed a request with the maestro for a slow and steady song.
"Right, just in case you know less about waltzing then me, we're gonna go through the steps slowly." I grunted taking the shaking lass out into the ballroom center, within full view of the Kalosian delegation.
"Let's start with a practice round. Put your toes on mine." I splayed my feet apart to a length that came up short of exceeding the width of Anastasia's hips. I could feel her cold hands quaking in mine, and the poor thing could barely shrug off her slippers for all the quivering of her knees.
"Take it easy. It's just a waltz. Easiest thing to dance to. Just sway your hips and take a slow step from side to side every other sway. Now hold my hands-" Now that Anastasia's hose-coated toes rested on the hardened leather of my dress shoes, I lifted her arms apart, and rested my palms against her's.
"Put your fingertips against mine on your right hand, and just relax the left. Laziest dance in the world." I grumbled, and a nervous laugh sounded from Anastasia's lips, right before a sharp intake of breath curbed her humor with dread.
"Just sway, nice and slowly. Let my feet do the stepping. Try to loosen up your elbows. No one is gonna draw and quarter you." I tossed a wink over towards the delegate from House Wikstrom, and the droll-faced prude went white as a sheet when my evil grin hinted at a nefarious intent.
This was fucking scandalous.
The daughter of Theron Halcyon, receiving waltzing instruction from the Hero of All Nations?
The Kalosian nobility was shitting themselves in helpless fury as Grand Marshal Zane Bastard made his verdict known to the whole world.
Fuck with this kid again, you motherfuckers.
-I fucking dare you.
"Not too shabby." I whistled as Anastasia began to lift her feet in time with mine.
"I'm actually a wretched dancer, so you should probably forget everything I taught you when we're done here." My cocky smile, carefree attitude, and infamous charm was winning Anastasia over. The sweet little thing was still shaking like a leaf, but my joke had given her ample reason to laugh.
"You're really not that bad, though I'm in no position to criticize." Anastasia murmured through a downcast smile.
"...You don't need to look at your feet, girl. They know how to move on their own." I murmured back to Anastasia, my voice still warm with mirth.
Slowly, hesitantly, Anastasia lifted her eyes from the floor…
...And for the first time since I'd met her, Anastasia met my eyes without shame or fear.
Who gave a damn if the walls were fucking bleeding? Who was bothered by the curls of murmuring smoke and the growing darkness?
Who cared that I was waltzing with a child's rotting skeleton?
I was the only one who could see this shit, and I knew damn well that the bony fingers in my hands belonged to a living, breathing, flesh-coated human being.
"This is fun, ain't it?" I smiled down to the grinning skull below my sternum, and Anastasia's voice reached me through the whispering dark.
"...It is surprisingly enjoyable." Anastasia's distant voice still sounded nervous, but a hint of joy only gave me more reason to smile.
"You got nothing to be ashamed of, Anastasia. You never did anything wrong." I spoke in a low tone for her ears alone, and the peeling skull beneath me averted its grey eyed stare. The shadows began to withdraw, but I released one hand of Anastasia's, and lifted her chin with a thumb, returning her gaze to mine.
"Nothing, kid. Not one damn thing." I grinned with my age old wicked charm, and when that thumb fell away from Anastasia's chin, her eyes didn't look away from mine.
"...Thank you, Zane." Anastasia whispered in the smallest of voices. I took shuddering breath, and peered past Anastasia's shoulder and into the weeping dark.
"You know, he would have loved to have taught you to dance too..." I swallowed hard, and Anastasia's hands twitched against mine.
"Zane, please…" Anastasia's voice sounded in a squeak.
"He loved you, Anastasia. And he wouldn't want you to live in the shadows like he did." I could the old anger coming back. That old anger that I'd never been able explain. That old anger that he used to make me feel.
That old anger I felt whenever I thought about what he had gone through…
Anastasia's hands left mine. One brief curtesy later, and her feet were once again shod.
And she was running away from me, with what little dignity she had left.
I stood alone, simmering in the center of the ballroom. No tune could shake me free from this anger.
Theron had given up everything…
...Absolutely everything for her.
And she couldn't even stand to hear his name spoken aloud.
I found my way back to our private table. Somehow a platter of champagne found its way there with me.
"Cortez, sniff her out. Keep an eye on her. And if anyone tries to do something to her, you intervene. The use of deadly force is authorized." I growled to my number two, as I sat down next to my distraught wife, and tossed back the first round of champagne like it was water.
"What happened?" Melissa asked, as Cortez took off on a silent and discreet prowl.
"What do you think happened?" I growled, loosening my necktie, and popping my collar open. Melissa just sighed where she sat, and relocated the platter of champagne to position on the table that was well beyond my reach.
"You'll never learn, will you, Zane?" Melissa groaned as she stared off across the ballroom, not really seeing anything there.
"How is it my fault?" I grumbled, tossing an empty champagne crystal over my shoulder, and glaring at the platter of fresh drinks on the other side of my wife.
"...Just because you think that people should think like you, doesn't mean that they're wrong for not caving into your infinite wisdom, Zane." Melissa started rubbing her eyes with exasperation.
-That attitude of mine stems from avoiding politics and being accustomed to a role of command. Do what I say, when I say it; don't even think of if, and, or, but.
I know better than you, and that's all you need to know.
"...Are you gonna let me get roaring drunk, or have you elected to put up with my foul ass for the rest of the night?" I grumbled to my wife, already well aware of her answer.
"You already drank more than you said you would. You're not touching another drop." Melissa waved down an attendant, and returned my commandeered platter of champagne to him.
-God, I love my wife.
"You're never going to make me into a decent human being, Melissa." I muttered, grudgingly conceding defeat.
"I'm not trying to make you into a decent human being. I just want to see you suffer." Melissa retorted, bringing a slight smile to my face.
She knew how to get through to me. Better than anyone else ever could.
…
After a sumptuous banquet had been served in miniscule proportions on way too big of crockery, it was time to meet and greet with my fellow VIPs.
I never really enjoyed having my ass kissed, so I left pleasantries in Melissa's capable hands, and ran off to instruct some Kalosian noble's six year old son in the proper method of vandalizing a two-hundred year old oak dining table.
After I'd carved my name in the fine grain next to his, I sheathed Doug's old BAMF, and headed off towards the courtyard, without even shooting a smug second look towards the awestruck six year old who had served as as my accomplice in petty crime.
It was time to find Anastasia, and explain a thing or two to my adopted ward.
I had faith in Cortez's ability to keep Anastasia safe. Nobody fucked with the Bastard's pooch and walked away unscathed. Cortez may have been the single most tolerant servicemon on this ravaged planet of earth, but I sure as hell wasn't.
If you fucked with one of the Bastards, you fucked with'em all.
-And no soul on earth could even hope to hold their ground against that kind of force.
But given Cortez's tender nature, I wasn't all that surprised to find my scarred up number two sitting on the courtyard steps, with the tiny Anastasia curled up between his forelegs.
"...You're too soft, Cortez." I grumbled to my Arcanine in an undertone, as I came to stand beside him.
Anastasia was sound asleep, buried in Cortez's thick mane.
...And the salty trails of her dried tears had smudged her makeup in their descent.
"Rise and shine, kid." I gave Anastasia my standard wakeup call with a deep rumble, and Cortez slowly fell away from the girl who had priorly been sleeping against him.
Anastasia didn't want to face me.
But I was the only person in the world who would face her, and that poor girl knew it.
"...We need to talk about something." I grunted, staring off across the courtyard gardens. Anastasia was still sitting on the steps, silently looking up at me in fear.
"Walk with me." I rumbled, setting off on my right foot.
Leaving poor little Anastasia with no other choice than to scamper off of the cold granite steps in pursuit of the only person who would meet her cursed eyes.
I didn't say a thing as Cortez nudged her into step beside me. Apart from my steadily measured footfalls, I didn't make a sound as I left the courtyard, shoved my way past a concerned attendant, and took my leave of the manor's property.
...Before I headed towards Goldenrod's north precinct, with a little violet clad shadow fearfully keeping pace with me.
Cortez knew where I was headed. There was a reason I avoided the cities. I couldn't stop in one of these urban fortresses without taking a moment to say hello and goodbye to all the Rangers that had served beside me in the Reclamation Campaigns.
Every occupied city in world had one.
A Ranger cemetery. A recent memorial to all those who had died in the Reclamation.
I led Cortez and Anastasia through the city wall's stone partitions and into a little alcove of silence and faint memories.
"At ease, Rangers." I murmured that order every time I took my first step into one these memorials.
These men had earned their rest. And their memories didn't need to salute me when I encroached upon their graves.
"Carmine, Stoffer, Jacobs, Merrian, Koski, Shoemaker, Bauser, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan…" I murmured every one of their names as I walked past their stones.
I didn't have to look at the markers to know who was buried where.
I had put everyone of them into the earth, and I would never forget where anyone of my soldiers now lay.
"Jacobs… Goodday to you, Private Jacobs." I came to a sudden stop beside one unremarkable stone. Anastasia had been shrinking ever since we had first entered this hallowed ground, and after checking the names on the stones I'd passed by without glancing at, she was had become something morbidly silent.
"...You knew who they all were?" Anastasia asked in a nervous whisper, after a respectful silence had been observed.
"Everyone of them." I muttered, peeling off a piece of moss clinging to Private Jacobs's stone.
These were my men. These were my soldiers. These were my Rangers, and every one of them had made the ultimate sacrifice for the people we all longed to preserve.
"...I'm sorry." Anastasia squeaked, and I could hear the emotion in her voice.
"...There's nothing glorious in death, kid. There's nothing romantic about it. You live everyday as if your life will never end, and then one day, you see a friend die…" I took a deep breath through my nares as their faces and voices all came back to haunt me.
"...Some of them wept in fear of death. Some of them smiled, right before their passage robbed them of that expression. Some of them faced it with a grim determination. Most never even saw it coming…" My voice was barely audible, but Anastasia felt every word.
"Jacobs faced it with a smile. He knew that he'd succeeded. He knew damn well he'd done exactly what he had set out to do when he first put that beret on his head…" I drew deep intake of breath, never breaking ocular focus with his stone.
"...Fourteen years old, and the kid still understood what needed to be done…" I let my pent up breath vacate my lungs in a shaky sigh.
"...What happened?" Anastasia fearfully whispered from my side. I just chuckled sadly, and waited for my emotions to settle before I chose to reply.
"Jacobs made a choice. He could have abandoned the mission, and escaped with his life, and no one would have thought ill of him for it…" I knelt down before his stone, and gently dusted away the the grime accumulating around his name.
"...Or he could fight on and die, and save a dozen soldiers doing so." I swallowed when I traced the date of his birth with a fingertip. He had been born all of eight years after me. He and I had grown up in the same sheltered world, oblivious to the hell that had awaited us on the not so distant horizon.
"...Jacobs made the hard choice. He chose to fight on and die, so that others could live. And it was my greatest honor to fight there beside him when he died." I could feel the long dried tears on my face when I spoke those words. I'd had long ago finished grieving for the loss of my soldiers. But their memory was still alive in me, and I would never forget who each of my Rangers were to me.
"...I'm sorry…" Anastasia was silently weeping with little restraint. My eyes lifted to an engraving just above Jacobs's name.
It was an engraving of two crossed arms, with the fists tightly closed, and a ring of solid gold encircled them.
The Crossed Arms.
A medal bestowed only upon those who willingly sacrificed themselves for the safety of their brothers.
That same decoration was clasped to the right pocket of my coat, and though it was surrounded by a dozen other meritorious accolades…
...The Crossed Arms had adorned my coat before any other medal, and I had yet to earn the credence implied by its honor.
"This medal is only presented to the most noble of soldiers." I murmured, brushing the dirt away from the Crossed Arms on Jacobs's stone with a thumb.
"This medal is only given to martyrs who gave their lives up for the greater good." I continued, and Anastasia took a step closer, in order to to hear my quieting voice.
"Jacobs died a hero, and this medal is the incontestable proof of it." I finished with my caretaking, and fell back with a sigh.
Anastasia didn't know what to say. She could only cry and shake next to me, as my long sight grew ever more distant.
"I brought you here, because I need you to understand, Anastasia…" I found a strength in myself, and used it to project my voice.
"...I need you to understand what self-sacrifice is. And why it is the most noble of actions that a human being could ever aspire to." I stood up with a sigh, and lifted Cortez's pokeball from my hip.
"Cortez, you are dismissed." I bade farewell to my number two, as the pokeball's dematerializing beam made contact with my faithful hound. Then I drew my ultimate weapon from the same belt that Cortez now rested on, and breathed ot the name of my second oldest squadmate with a firm reverence.
"Darwin, report." I ordered, angling the Heavy Ball's lens with the night sky above.
Ten seconds of bio-recognition processes, anatomical re-configuration, and re-materialization later: the Midgar took form in the skies above Goldenrod, eclipsing the stars beyond his serpentine figure with his unimaginable size.
"Come on. I'm not done walking yet." I grunted to Anastasia, as I took ahold of Darwin's saddle belay, and clambered my way up onto my gargantuan Gyarados's rostrum.
Anastasia was still standing in the cemetery, looking up at me with startled eyes, as Darwin shook the earth beneath her with an impatient rumble.
"Easy, fatso. Get that temper under control." I growled to my psychotic leviathan, before I leaned over his armored side to meet Anastasia's shocked gaze.
"We're not waiting forever, kid. Your bedtime is still twenty-one-and-a-half-hundred hours KST. Now climb aboard." I growled, and a frightened Anastasia took hold of Darwin's belay, before scrambling up his armored bulk to saddle in between my arms.
"Alright Darwin. You know where I want to go. Get your fat ass in the sky and get me there in record time, or I'll grill your worthless fucking ass without the butter and lemon." I spat to my perpetually pissed off Gyarados, and jerked firmly on his reins.
And Darwin obeyed me with a city shaking roar, as the biggest goddamn pokemon known to man took off into the night sky, and set a course north-east for Mahogany town's airspace.
...
"Mahogany flight control, this is Blackhat Darwin requesting permission to land in your airspace. We are currently eight clicks south of your district, and preparing for our descent. Over." I radioed in to Mahogany airbase, and awaited the Johtonese's reply.
I wasn't made to wait long.
"Honored Blackhat Darwin, this is Mahogany flight control. You have permission to land in our airbase at your discretion. Welcome back, Honored Blackhat Darwin. Over." The radio operator remembered me. That, or someone had alerted the new guy on the job to my sporadic visits.
"Roger that, and thank you flight control. Over and out." I replied, clipping my aviation radio back into Darwin's saddle.
"Take her slow, Darwin. There's no rush to get there." I sighed, and my mighty legend slayer grumbled his agreement.
"...Hey kid. Time to wake up." I gently shook the tiny girl between my arms into wakefulness, and Anastasia leaned back against my chest as Darwin began his descent.
"Where are we?" Anastasia's murmured voice was almost lost in the howling frigid air.
"...Not too far south of Mahogany town. We're preparing to land in the Frontier. Tighten up now, because Darwin never bothered to learn how to touch down gently. The stupid fucking fish…" I growled the last at my ornery comrade, and Darwin growled right back at me.
"Hey! Remember who you're talking to! Save the tough talk for a fight, you ugly fucking freak of nature!" I swatted Darwin's rostrum with a scarred hand, and the grudge happy Gyarados beneath me rumbled with a vehement hiss.
"Don't make me kick your ass, chubby." I warned my most dangerous of allies with a rumble of my own, and ended the pissing contest with a silent chuckle.
Darwin would kill me someday. That much was a given, but I didn't particularly care.
I still had his friendship, and that was all that really mattered to me.
"We're getting close now. When we hit the treeline, don't start panicking. Darwin is harder than any timber, and as rough as the ride is gonna be, it ain't gonna kill you." I did my best to prepare Anastasia for the landing ahead. I ever tossed in a cheesy smile to make light of the bruises and welts we were about to accumulate.
"Where are we going?" Anastasia asked in small and worried voice.
"Where?" I teased Anastasia with that same stupid smile still glued to my face, as the first set of treetops began to slam against Darwin's white belly.
"-Why, we're just stopping off to say hello to Darwin's big sister."
…
It was a small clearing that we entered. Carved stones made a low, mortarless wall around the permitter, and the flowers that filled that wall's enclosure were not indigenous to northern Johto's botanical roster.
"Hello Vauban." I whispered, stepping over that low wall with Anastasia in tow.
I was already fighting back the tears. I always had to when I came to this place.
I made my way towards the enclosure's center, where the flowers thinned, and three humble stones broke the level soil, positioned side by side.
I had brought Anastasia to another cemetery.
I had brought her to the dearest memorial that I knew.
"...Been a few months, hasn't it baby girl?" I murmured when I came to stand before the stone furthest left.
This was where she had been laid to rest. This is where my daughter had been buried.
...Right next to the most tragic soul that I had ever known.
"Hey Theron. Long time no see, brother." I turned to his stone now, with the tears streaming down my face.
Anastasia froze solid in my shadow.
"Valerie. Good to see you again, gorgeous." I turned to the stone farthest right, and bowed my head with a soft smile to Anastasia's mother.
"...I know that I've been away for a while guys. But I promised that I'd come back. I promised that I'd come to see y'all again." I was trying not choke when I spoke those words.
It didn't matter that they had all died twenty years ago.
It didn't matter that I had all that time to mourn their loss.
Whenever I stepped over that low stonewall…
...I was eighteen years old again, facing the end of the world…
...And I was saying goodbye to them all, like it was the very first time that wretched sentiment took its leave of my mouth.
"I miss you guys. I miss all of you…" My lips pursed together, as I braced myself against a sob.
Anastasia was as quiet as a ghost, barely able to comprehend this hallowed ground's existence.
There wasn't a cemetery in the world that would inter Theron's stone.
So I had to make one for him, far away from where anyone else knew.
"...I brought someone special with me, Theron… Valerie. Someone… Someone I thought you'd like to meet." I couldn't hold the emotion back now. I couldn't even even see out my eye. A shaking arm reached out for the stunned little girl at my side, and it guided her numb footsteps into position before me, as I introduced Anastasia to her parents.
"Theron… This is your daughter, Anastasia…" I put both hands on that gasping girl's shoulders, and my hands squeezed them firmly, as I tried to ease her past the shock.
"...I know… I know that you never wanted me to find out about her, Theron. I know… that you wanted to keep her safe… But…" I closed my one eye, and steadied myself against a shudder.
"...But things didn't go as you planned. Just like they never really did."
Anastasia was hiccuping against my sternum, crying for a reason that she couldn't fully understand. I turned my blurry sight to the rightmost stone, and carried on with introductions.
"You made a beautiful daughter, Valerie. She's the spitting image of you. Except for the eyes…" My eye flicked over towards the center stone, and my lips drew taut before I dared to tell Theron the heartless truth.
"...She has her father's eyes." I whispered to Theron, knowing full well how devastated he'd be to discover that his daughter had inherited his curse.
"You two made a good kid. A real sweetheart. A real tough cookie… Guess that means she takes after the both of you…"
Anastasia fell to her knees, and started sobbing into her hands.
I knelt down beside her, and wrapped my arms protectively around Anastasia's frail form.
"They loved you, Anastasia. They both wanted the very best for you. And no matter what your father did, he is still your father… And he still deserves to be loved by his daughter." I breathed those words into that hyperventilating child's ears, and a quaking Anastasia lifted her pupiless eyes to behold the center stone.
"Da… da-daddy-?"
...And that broken and desperate voice of hers brought back every wretched moment that Theron had ever put me through.
From our first encounter in Viridian City's shuttle terminal…
...All the way to his final moments in the Brink, where he had died sobbing within my arms, absolutely terrified of what awaited him in death.
I didn't say anything more. My tears slowed before they ceased, and the rivulets on my face began to dry away.
But Anastasia wept on and on, her pale hands resting on Theron's stone…
...And her tiny thumb and forefinger were looped around the Crossed Arms engraved above his name.