Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
Author's Note: Finally beat the scythe and umbrella chicks in Arc Rise Fantasia. God, I hated them. And I met the thief/pirate, Serge. I like him. So far, he and Niko are tied for the title of Favorite Character. :)
Saw the Sorcerer's Apprentice and loved it. They did a fantastic job.
This is all before Tales of Symphonia.
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"A lady always makes a man want to be better than he is."-Truth (The Harlequin)
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"What are you doing here?"
Yuan stilled and looked over his shoulder at Yggdrasill, but it hadn't sounded like Yggdrasill. The voice hadn't been velvety and cold, but much closer to Mithos' tone of surprise.
"What's it look like I'm doing?" Yuan asked, continuing to search in Kratos' desk drawers.
"Alright, I asked the wrong question. Why are you here?" Yuan wanted very badly to ask Yggdrasill that question, but he had a feeling that he didn't quite want to know the answer. "You're supposed to be finding Kratos."
"This is part of the process. I nearly had him in Luin, but then Kvar's soldiers decided to raid the town—rather conveniently, by the way, seeing as how Kratos could make his whole story fall apart—and he got away. I figured I should check into his things, see if there were any clues to places he might go."
"'If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to.'"
"I'm not burning every city in Sylvarant to the ground, Yggdrasill. Too much paperwork and I have plenty to do already."
"That's because you've gotten lazy."
"Well, I do have all the time in the world to do it." Yuan sat back in Kratos' chair, making the mental note to steal it for his office at the base. It wasn't as though Kratos was going to use it any time soon anyway. "Nothing at his desk."
"I don't see why you thought there would be. Kratos is a careful man."
"That he is. And almost horrifyingly neat." But that was to be expected of a man raised with a general for a father and who'd spent much of his adult life (before the angel transformation, obviously) in the military.
"Did you expect something different?"
"No. It's just that the extent of the neatness never fails to surprise me."
Yggdrasill—Yuan knows that it's not Mithos, not quite, though today is one of the saner days—hums in acknowledgement. There is no sound to accompany his leaving and Yuan is sure that, if he hadn't been looking at the boymanangel, he would never have seen him exit the room.
Yuan counts slowly to thirty before standing and walking to Kratos' bookshelves to where he knew Kratos kept the maps. He'd known that he'd be seen coming into Derris-Kharlan and that Yggdrasill would have been notified. It had just been a matter of buying time until then.
Yuan unrolled the map to check it was the one of their world, the one they'd traveled so extensively before it had been twisted and broken, before slipping it into his sleeve.
-/-/-/-
"The dye is really starting to come out." Anna commented one morning as Kratos was sitting up. She didn't want to call it waking up because angels couldn't sleep, but he was coming to full consciousness, so she supposed it worked. The auburn was becoming much more like streaks rather than just showing at the roots.
"We'll need to get going for Triet soon." He said, ruffling Noishe's fur as he stood. "This area is too dangerous."
Anna arched her eyebrows and Kratos knew that she'd known Yuan too long already. "I thought that with that fantastic hearing of yours that you would've heard Yuan telling off those Desians last week during the inspection. I don't think they're willing to risk his wrath."
Kratos smiled briefly. Very rarely did true rage come over Yuan. Most of his vengeances were through subtle pranks that he watched from a difference. "I heard. But that won't stop Kvar. He's invested eight years on the Angelus Project. He won't let it go so easily."
Anna glanced down at her left hand. "So…this angel process…how long does it take anyway?"
"That depends. Usually, it takes a few years. But we don't know what Kvar did to you."
"What's life without being able to…y'know, enjoy the little things? The things we take for granted, but then they're gone and then…"
Kratos doesn't need her to finish. He's experienced it all and wishes that he'd savored the tang of oranges and the familiar taste of beef and rice before the transformation because now, all he could taste was the mere shadow of food and what was a shadow compared to the real thing?
Noishe raised his head, ears upright and body alert. Immediately, Kratos' eyes searched out the door and Anna went still. A knock came through the door before it opened, a large hand poking inside and waving.
"I'd prefer not to be skewered when I walk in, Kratos." The next minute, the door is open and Botta is standing in their living room.
"What's wrong?"
"We've managed to get a pair of horses for you two to get to Triet, along with some travel papers, but we need to be going if we want to get out of the area before dark."
"What's happened to make the decision so suddenly?" Anna asks.
"Apparently Yggdrasill doesn't entirely believe Yuan's story. He's sending Rodyle in to inspect Luin."
"That also means that he believes Yuan at least in part, otherwise he would have sent Kvar. He's being unusually cautious."
"Is there any reason that you can think of for that?" Botta asks, crossing his arms.
"It's most likely because the parents of Sylvarant's next Chosen are due to be married soon. They're the closest match to Martel's mana signature yet. It's making him a little nervous."
Anna knows that Kratos regrets his part in Cruxis, but she doesn't think she'll ever become accustomed to speaking so casually about controlling people's lives. It's not natural.
But as much as she doesn't like it, it's who Kratos has been for four thousand years and her mother had taught her that it was useless to attempt to change a man and they'd only hate you for it. (At least, she thinks it's her mother. Could she really have forgotten the way that her own mother smiled, or the way she moved and gestured when she talked?)
"Yggdrasill being nervous doesn't strike me as a good thing." She says.
"It isn't. But there is a good side to that. It means Yggdrasill will be more likely to make mistakes."
Anna tilted her head curiously at him. "Huh. Never saw you as optimistic, Kratos. You always struck me as the guy that always saw the cloud, not the silver lining."
He glances at her briefly and Anna thinks that Kratos was a natural optimist, but something, perhaps Time, maybe experience, had scratched and whittled that optimism down to nearly a splinter, until the optimism couldn't show its head unless the moment was opportunistic.
"We can discuss the little details at the base." Botta says. "Let's go."
-/-/-/-
Yuan is behind his desk when they arrive. He drags a hand through his hair, leaving streaks of black and dark blue ink. Kratos had seen him in this kind of mood much more often in the past few months than he had in the past millennium., so he simply sets down their bags and sits in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Anna mimics him and Noishe pads around the desk to rest his head in Yuan's lap.
That's what makes Yuan look down and then up at Kratos and Anna. "You two are already here?"
"It's nearly full dark. When was the last time you checked the time?" Kratos asks. He knows Yuan's tendency to bury himself in his work.
"Full dark? The last time I got up from this desk was to get a coffee and that wasn't too long after lunch."
"You're telling me that you haven't eaten for nearly seven hours?" Kratos knows that they've both gone without eating for much much longer, but it was the principle of the thing.
Yuan frowned a little. "You sound like Botta."
"Technically, he sounds like me." Because Kratos had been born long before and he and Yuan had been friends for millennia before Botta had even been a thought in his grandfather's mind.
"He's got a point there, sir." Botta said as he came in the room. "And Doria asked me to pass along the message that, under no circumstances, will you be getting any of today's leftovers seeing as how you chose to lock yourself away in your office and starve yourself. All of the leftovers are being offered to the guests…including Noishe."
The protozoan lifts his head at the mention of his name and is immediately at Botta's feet, tail swishing back and forth with a low whine slipping from between his teeth. Botta sighs and opens the door so that Noishe can go through, following the creature shortly after.
"Well at least someone has the heart to punish you for having your sudden workaholic streaks. Which this one was inspired by…what, exactly?" Kratos stands and moves until he's standing just behind Yuan to see what was on his desk.
"It's for the interdimensional transfer system. Botta helped me figure it out. It's the old theory about the poles, but mixed with some technology and some magic, it can work."
Kratos studied the diagrams and map in front of him. "You're planning to make another base in Tethe'alla for the purpose of the transfer?"
"Yes."
Kratos traced a carefully straight line leading from the desert to the other side of the world. "You're positive that this is where the opposite pole is?"
"We did a holographic model of our world to double-check."
"You do realize that the opposite pole is on the Flanoir continent? Surrounded by water and snow and ice? You'd have to take a boat every time that you wished to go there. The winds there are too rough to fly."
"I'm well aware, Kratos." Yuan said darkly. "And let me remind you that the entire idea of building the base in the Triet desert was all yours. It was your brilliant plan."
"Did you have a better plan?" Kratos said.
"Had I known that to get the interdimensional transfer technology working, I would have to build a base in the frozen hell that is Flanoir, I would've thought up a better one."
Personally, Kratos didn't think that Flanoir was such a bad city or continent. But then, he had a better tolerance for the cold and for boats. And he'd always liked the snow. But he knew that while the conditions had been harsh here, they would be doubly so in Flanoir.
"What's Flanoir?" Anna asked, curious.
"It's a city in Tethe'alla. It's always snowing there." Yuan told her.
"You make it sound miserable."
"It's because he hates the place." Kratos said.
"I hate the cold, not the place." Yuan corrected. "Flanoir is actually quite a beautiful city. And they have fantastic hot chocolate."
"And you're going to build this base in the middle of what, to my understanding, is a frozen wasteland?"
"I don't want to, but it has to be done. Though now that I think on it, some of Exire's people might want to join. And there must be half-elves in Ozette that aren't content with their situation."
"You're going to have to sneak the materials to build another base by Yggdrasill again. He won't be able to miss all those 'misplaced' materials with his tetchiness."
Yuan blinked over at him. "Is it truly about that time again? Is the new Chosen going to be born so soon?"
"It's always been longer than you think."
They seem so very old at this moment that it makes Anna feel like little more than a child. Perhaps that's all she was in their eyes.
A knock on the door. "Sir?"
Yuan looked at one of his technician's children. That had been many of the half-elves' concerns when Yuan had gone recruiting. What would happen to their families? Yuan had allowed them all to stay at the base. It wasn't as though there was lack of room.
This boy—Hassan, was his name?—was just old enough to want to know what, exactly, was going on and young enough to not be told much. It was a terrible age to be. He had an unruly mop of black curls and dark brown eyes. A lot of the base's children liked to run messages for their parents. After all, there wasn't much else they could really do to help.
"Did something explode again?" Yuan asked. There had been many of that kind of mishap as everyone was learning to use magitechnology.
Hassan shook his head. "No sir. Doria says that there's a big…animal…or something in her kitchen and she can't seem to get it out. Botta told me to come get you."
"Should've known that Noishe would start some kind of trouble." Yuan said, standing and rolling his shoulders. He looked pointedly at Kratos. "You're coming too."
"And why is that?"
"Because you are Noishe's owner, person or whatever it is with you two."
"Noishe listens just as well to you as he does me."
"Then do it because Doria won't feed me, but she will you two."
"You're far too comfortable with mooching." Kratos says, but he stands anyway. "Are you hungry, Anna?"
She smiled. "Do you really need to ask?"
"Sometimes I think your stomach is a bottomless pit." Yuan told her. His instincts were to help Anna to her feet, like males had always done when he'd been growing up, but he knew that if Anna didn't need the help, she wouldn't take it. Sometimes he wants to call her feminist, but really he wonders if the customs that he and Kratos had grown up learning weren't a bit sexist.
"You say that as if it's a bad thing."
"Just an observation."
There is a ridiculous amount of stairs and ramps throughout the base and Yuan wonders if he should invest in elevators, but then decides against it. Walking wouldn't kill any of them.
"You guys built this place from the ground up? It's like its own town." Anna asked in wonder, staring around at the blinking machines, the bright screens; at the incredibly stacks of files with mugs of coffee rested on them, at the people repairing machines that she'd never even heard of.
There were children in the mix as well, ranging from newborns to toddlers to preteens. Some of the men had a baby on one arm while the other hand was typing away. The older kids were helping to care for the younger ones and were standing by the adults, watching and learning.
"And it took weeks of working sleepless nights, let me tell you."
The further they went down, the easier it was to hear Noishe's whines. The first thing Anna saw when the door to the kitchen was pushed open was a plump woman with her hands propped on her hips and staring Noishe down.
"Doria, you can't skin him and stick him in one of your stews." Yuan tells her.
She looks up. Her eyes pass over Yuan and study both Kratos and Anna, but Anna a little more closely. "I take it he's yours then, Kratos?"
"Yes. I apologize for the inconvenience." Kratos called Noishe away from the counter. "We've been on the road for a while."
Doria appraised Noishe. "His teeth are sharp enough. Why didn't he just go find a wolf to chew on? He's certainly large enough to take one down."
"That blame rests with your leader."
Doria looked back to Yuan. "What on earth did you do?"
The half-elven seraphim looked back to his best friend. "You realize she'll never let this go?"
"Good." Kratos replied. "Neither have I."
Anna's stomach chose that moment to grumble lowly and instantly, every head turned towards her. Had they been human, Anna is sure they wouldn't have heard it.
Doria pushes a plate of curry into her hands. "You've been starving her." Doria accuses.
"She ate twice on the way here." Kratos refutes. "She loves to eat."
Anna glared balefully at him as she began to dig into the curry. The two times she'd eaten on the way here could hardly count as meals. She'd munched on an apple for a good portion of their journey and had made herself a small sandwich from slightly hard bread and salted ham.
"And you're looking thin yourself. Eat."
Kratos doesn't try and argue with her. He'd learned long ago that some things weren't worth fighting. Doria had convinced herself that the men of the base couldn't be trusted to look after themselves, so Doria had taken it upon herself to do it.
"You know that we've added a 'dining room'. Well, it has tables and chairs, at the very least. You should eat there."
"Do we not merit a chair in the kitchen anymore?" Yuan said, sounding a little sad. "What did we do?"
Doria shook her head. "There's no point in trying to get you all to learn proper things, is there?"
Kratos swallowed a mouthful of curry. It had to be just the right amount of spicy because he could only taste a shadow of the spice. Whenever Yuan tried to make curry, he overcompensated for their lack of taste and ended up with both of their mouths on fire. As much as Kratos might be annoyed at the time, he could never say no when Yuan suggested the idea again because it was one of the few things that they could taste at all anymore.
"It's useless to try and push a cart sideways." Kratos told Doria. It was something that Martel used to mutter when one of them was being especially stubborn.
"Besides," Yuan added. He wanted something other than the slight echo of Martel's words to fill the air. "The kitchen is where the food is."
"Four thousand years and counting and you both still think like that. I suppose there are things that boys never outgrow. And you," She rounded on Yuan. "Don't think of stealing their food. You missed dinner."
"Do I still get your fantastic nutcakes tomorrow morning?" He asked. Doria's nutcakes were sweet, even to him.
As Doria turned and began to wipe down the counters, Kratos took one more spoonful of curry before handing the plate to Yuan. It was an unspoken, automatic thing leftover from their days of travelling; just the two of them when money was tight and often, they could afford only one meal.
"Sir, did you figure out where the other ranch is going to have to be?" Botta asked.
"I did and it isn't good news for anyone."
"If it's in the middle of the ocean, I believe we can figure a way around it. Doesn't one of the Cardinals have a ranch out in the ocean?"
"Yes. On a tiny spit of land. But this is considerably worse. It's in the middle of the Flanoir continent, which is little more than a frozen wasteland."
Botta stared at his leader for a moment. "Sir, you're insane."
"I didn't choose the opposite pole."
"No sir, you didn't, but you do realize that this will be the second base that you'll have built under extreme conditions?"
"I'm fully aware of this and I'm sure more than a few curses will be hurled in my direction for that. I'll make sure to head to Flanoir and get supplies and warm clothes for everyone. I also need to recruit more people over there. Oh, and Kratos, I'm going to need your help too. Snow is just as shifty as sand."
"What could you ever have done without me, I wonder?"
"I wouldn't have built the base smack in the middle of the desert and then we wouldn't be in this situation." Yuan says it in jest because he knows Kratos had made a good point about this being one of the safest places for the base and because he knows that, without Kratos, he would have been a slave until the end of his days. In truth, Yuan isn't sure that either of them would be who they were now without the other. Kratos had been shy when Yuan had met him all those years ago, not the quietly confident swordsman he was now.
"So, shall I tell the troops about the new base location, or do you want to do it?" Botta asked.
"I think you should do it. If I tell them, I think at least one of them will punch me out." Yuan replied. It's odd because he'd never felt quite comfortable when he was in the military. But here, it was just close enough to the military that it pushed them all towards their goal, but enough like their own hideaway town that the pressure was never suffocating.
"You're right. A black eye just wouldn't work with your complexion." Anna teased. Yuan shot her a dirty look and Anna just smiled.
-/-/-/-
"So what are you going to do?"
Kratos looked up at Yuan. He'd been undressing for bed when the half-elf had slipped in the door. "About what?"
"You kissed her. Now what?"
"It was a cover. It didn't mean anything." Kratos considered wearing a shirt to bed, as he always did, but it was far too hot here for that, even with the air conditioning.
"You can lie to yourself all you want, Kratos, but you've never been able to lie to me. You wouldn't have done it if it had meant nothing. You're not that kind of person."
"Even if you were right, I'm not going to do anything about it."
"You're a stubborn moron." Yuan told him flatly.
"So you've told me before. On multiple occasions."
"You're determined to take the worst path on this, aren't you?"
"Now I really don't know what you're talking about."
"This is something that could be good for you and you're ignoring it altogether. Why?"
"I thought you didn't approve of the idea of being involved with Anna."
Yuan leaned back against the wall. "Forgive an old man's memory, but I don't remember ever saying that. I don't like that she fogs things up when we're running a coup against the largest organization seen in four thousand years, but she's still good for you. You haven't seen yourself around her, have you?"
"Forgive me if I haven't had an out-of-body experience recently."
"You're happier around her, even if it's just a little bit. You're…" Yuan searched for a word. "You're more like the person I knew when we were teenagers. You should give this thing between you two a try."
Kratos sighed. "Hypothetically…if I was interested in her—and this is all hypothetic and if's, by the way—she wouldn't want me."
Yuan looked his friend up and down. "I don't see why not. You're handsome enough and I don't remember her punching you or pushing you away when you kissed her."
"We both know that if Anna is anything, she's practical. She allowed me to kiss her because it was necessary. That's all."
"Excuse."
"I'll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself on this matter."
"You don't need to thank me because I'm not going to do that. You need to hear the truth, not whatever you delude yourself into thinking is the truth."
"Then we can discuss this another time."
Yuan studies his friend's face. He knows evasions when he sees them—hell, he's used enough of them—but lets it go. Pushing himself to stand upright, he bid Kratos a good night before leaving.