Slings and Arrows

by Nymphean

This fic follows Celena and Allen Schezar, Gaddes, Millerna and Dryden (among others) as they try to live normal lives in quite abnormal situations one year after the ZOAF is put into effect. Still very much a work in progress.

1. Prologue

Slings and Arrows

A/n: This should be a good one… I hope! Lots of slash in later chapters, so if you're opposed to that, then don't read this cuz you won't like it very much. Well, that's about all, I think! Enjoy! Oh yeah… I don't own Esca; not the original storyline or the characters. I wish I did. But I don't. Also, I'm afraid I didn't write 'Hamlet'… that credit goes to the wonderful William Shakespeare (if any of you REALLY needed to hear that, then SHAME ON YOU!) All righta… I think that's it. Later all! –Nymphean

Introduction

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…"

Allen reflects…

My name is Allen Crusade Schezar. I am a Knight Caeli.

I'm not a very good brother.

There. I've done it. I've admitted to one of my faults. That was frightening. Let's hope I never have to do that again.

Most people don't get to see the real me. They are the fortunate ones. Regretfully, my sister, Celena Scherezade Schezar, is not one of those lucky individuals. Which is precisely what makes me a bad brother. Believe it or not, I have my weaknesses. One of them is taking care of children. I can handle a sword better than most men on Gaea, and women adore me. But you can't fool children. They know things. They can see the true nature of a person, which, I'm afraid, is the very thing creating this immense rift between Celena and I.

From the moment we brought my sister home, exactly one year and one day ago today, I could sense that something was wrong. At first, I simply assumed she had her guard up against all of us, but as the days melted into weeks, and then months, I saw that it was something more than that. She seemed to revert back to early childhood, to the time when she disappeared. She would cry, shrieking wordlessly if she didn't get her own way, and quite often I found myself screaming back, trying desperately to find out what it was she wanted. But she refused to talk to me, and after six or seven months, I just gave up.

I still loved her; of course I still loved her. I still do, for that matter. But a year, one full year, with barely even ten words in response to my endless toil, was enough to put me off significantly. Every now and then she would call my name, and I would get all excited, thinking maybe, just maybe… only to find out that she had done something childish like break something valuable or get sick on my most valuable rug or some other rubbish. Of course, it wasn't these things that got me upset. Children cannot help themselves sometimes. No, it was the fact that Celena was not actually a child. She spoke and acted like one, but she was not one. She was a fully-grown young woman, almost sixteen years old. She was old enough to want to wear pretty gowns and go to dances and parties and have suitors, and yet her behavior forced me to dress her in plain housedresses and keep her inside the walls of Schezar manor, where she could neither cause nor get into trouble.

It was hard, at first, trying to explain to people why my sister was not attending social events with me. I used to hate it when people would ask, and I always told them the same, contrived story: Unfortunately, my sister has been quite ill and is unable to attend.

However, after a while, rumors began to circulate around Asturia, rumors which I eventually overheard, the most common being that Celena Schezar was simple-minded, slow, just an idiot with a good name. People stopped asking all together about her. She was an unmentionable taboo. I almost wished they WOULD ask.

And now, here we are, a year and a day since I found my little lost sister again, and we're still exactly where we started. I can't help but think that somehow, someway, all this a some bizarre sort of punishment for not trying to find her sooner, for letting her get lost in the first place. Or maybe it's her punishment, a punishment for what she did during those years. But every time I start to think that, I remember that she wasn't herself. It wasn't her fault. The Zaibach sorcerers were powerful, too powerful for one little girl. And so it has to be me. It's a reflection of my ability to nurture, my ability to help other human beings. Or, rather, my lack thereof. I feel as though I could bring her back if I only gave her the love she was robbed of during those years. And I've tried; God knows I've tried as hard as a person can try. But nothing has worked. And so, you see, I've found my greatest weakness of all.

I cannot love.