lullaby
It is highly recommended that you listen to the song 'Lullaby' from Key the Metal Idol while reading this vignette (you can ask me for the mp3, actually… ^.^). By the way, this is going along the assumption that something really DID happen between Flik and Odessa, so there.
Timeline-wise, this can happen just about anywhere within the Suikoden II game, so I just put it after Viktor's since these two always seem to come together anyway. Call it a package deal. :p
She used to sing me a lullaby before we slept.
Sometimes, I'd see her standing there by the window, bathed in the moon's blurred lily light, smiling at me as though nothing had ever happened.
As though she was really alive still, with me.
I can still hear her voice. Even after all these years of fighting alone, without her... her voice remains clear in my mind, to my ears alone, unfading, perfect.
I remember the last night we spent together before those soldiers ended her life. We had spent the night in each other's arms, content with the few moments of peace we had left to spare before we had to fight yet another pathetic battle for another pathetic cause.
Her scent still fills my nostrils. Her smile still clouds my eyes. Her voice... it still sings her lullaby--our lullaby--to me.
But that was in the past.
Now, I sleep alone in my own room, haunted by ghosts of the past, waiting for this infernal existence to end...
Hoping that when I leave this place, the first one who'll greet me will be her.
I try to keep myself busy so that I don't remember. This peace unnerves me. It makes me recall the memories I vowed to keep chained away where they cannot hurt me.
I try everything... fighting, killing, training, drinking.... anything and everything to make the pain go away.
But it's still there. It hasn't disappeared.
Sure, it faded... during the first few months after her death, I thought that the pain would kill me.
When she died, it felt like my heart had been ripped out and tossed into her grave with her. I had tried so hard to act strong--hell, did I! But those first few months alone--without her--had been living hell.
But it's been years since she died. With this new hero on the rise and the Highland army to fight, I haven't even found time to visit her grave. I smile to my companions as I always do... I smile and I frown, I laugh and I sigh, I walk and I run, I command and I conquer... I go through the motions of living as a commander to a mercenary army and retainer to this army's leader.
But every time I step back into my room, I feel her there.
She will never fade away. I can never lock her away.
I can never let go.
Thus, her lullaby lives on.
With that song, I cry myself to sleep.
***
*knock knock knock*
*knock knock knock*
With a muttered curse, Viktor pounded on Flik's door. "Dammit, Flik! It isn't like you to sleep in like this...!"
*pound pound pound*
Still, Viktor received no response. With a growl, the dark-haired warrior raised his fist to pound on the door again when he caught a muffled sound from the other side of the door.
"Eh?" dropping his fist and blinking in curiosity, Viktor attempted to listen more intently.
The sound came again.
Viktor's eyes widened.
Is he... crying...?
"...." Quietly, Viktor walked away.
So he hasn't gotten over Odessa after all.