Scarlet
By HighWind
DISCLAIMER: Amarant Coral and any other FFIX characters/locales/references are copyrighted to Square.
Prologue: A Legend is Born
My name is Amarant Coral, and I am one of the depressingly large number of people who can say he's been through hell and lived to tell about it. I guess it would be romantic if I could say I have no memory of my parents, was forced to live on the streets, and survived because of hard work and perseverence. The truth is that I remember my parents all too well, left home quite by choice, and survived by lying, cheating, and engaging in a great deal of illegal activity.
I guess I'll talk about my parents first. It's surprisingly hard for me to do, actually. Freya asked me about them once. All I told her was that my first memory was of a guy I had to fight. In truth, that isn't my first memory at all, but it's the one that sticks out most in my mind. I have only fleeting memories of my mother, all pleasant, and thus unimportant to this story. She passed on when I was tiny, and in a way I'm glad she can't see what I've become. Anyway, it was just me and my dad for as long as I can remember. I blame a great deal of the way I've lived my life on that fact. Because unlike my mother, who was kind, caring, and affectionate, my father was abusive, angry, and all-in-all made my life a living hell. Around the time I turned ten, he apparently decided it was necessary to constantly get very drunk and then beat the crap out of me. I've got the scars to prove it. Maybe I reminded him too much of Mother-I had inherited her firey red hair-and he couldn't bear to see me. Maybe I was just too much of a smartass for my own good, which really hasn't changed. Either way, I eagerly awaited the day I'd be bigger and stronger than he was, so I could finally teach him a lesson.
Being alone during the day and growing up in a hellhole like Treno, I ran into all the wonders of the slums at an early age. One of those wonders was how to defend myself. And so, on my fourteenth birthday (for which, naturally, I received no gifts) I was ready to show ol' pops a thing or two. Yes, this day would go down in history as the day I finally showed my father that I was a man. When I told the story to Freya over a decade later, I would conveniently leave out the part about him getting back up, beating the hell out of me, and kicking me out of his house. I like to pretend that I simply ran away. At the time, I had convinced myself that I could have gone back if I wanted to. The truth is, I honestly didn't care. Besides, near-certain death on the mean streets of Treno couldn't be much worse then absolutely certain misery living with my father, right? ...Right?
I was right about one thing. This day WOULD go down in history, at least in my mind. Because this was the day that the Legend of the Flaming Amarant began...
By HighWind
DISCLAIMER: Amarant Coral and any other FFIX characters/locales/references are copyrighted to Square.
Prologue: A Legend is Born
My name is Amarant Coral, and I am one of the depressingly large number of people who can say he's been through hell and lived to tell about it. I guess it would be romantic if I could say I have no memory of my parents, was forced to live on the streets, and survived because of hard work and perseverence. The truth is that I remember my parents all too well, left home quite by choice, and survived by lying, cheating, and engaging in a great deal of illegal activity.
I guess I'll talk about my parents first. It's surprisingly hard for me to do, actually. Freya asked me about them once. All I told her was that my first memory was of a guy I had to fight. In truth, that isn't my first memory at all, but it's the one that sticks out most in my mind. I have only fleeting memories of my mother, all pleasant, and thus unimportant to this story. She passed on when I was tiny, and in a way I'm glad she can't see what I've become. Anyway, it was just me and my dad for as long as I can remember. I blame a great deal of the way I've lived my life on that fact. Because unlike my mother, who was kind, caring, and affectionate, my father was abusive, angry, and all-in-all made my life a living hell. Around the time I turned ten, he apparently decided it was necessary to constantly get very drunk and then beat the crap out of me. I've got the scars to prove it. Maybe I reminded him too much of Mother-I had inherited her firey red hair-and he couldn't bear to see me. Maybe I was just too much of a smartass for my own good, which really hasn't changed. Either way, I eagerly awaited the day I'd be bigger and stronger than he was, so I could finally teach him a lesson.
Being alone during the day and growing up in a hellhole like Treno, I ran into all the wonders of the slums at an early age. One of those wonders was how to defend myself. And so, on my fourteenth birthday (for which, naturally, I received no gifts) I was ready to show ol' pops a thing or two. Yes, this day would go down in history as the day I finally showed my father that I was a man. When I told the story to Freya over a decade later, I would conveniently leave out the part about him getting back up, beating the hell out of me, and kicking me out of his house. I like to pretend that I simply ran away. At the time, I had convinced myself that I could have gone back if I wanted to. The truth is, I honestly didn't care. Besides, near-certain death on the mean streets of Treno couldn't be much worse then absolutely certain misery living with my father, right? ...Right?
I was right about one thing. This day WOULD go down in history, at least in my mind. Because this was the day that the Legend of the Flaming Amarant began...