The Day I Died.


Chapter 14. Daddy dearest. Part II.

Lady Honoré looked at the three former guardians with a weary smile playing in her lips.

"I promised to you I would explain why my husband, Serian, has now more power than all the maesters´ put together and why he hates the likes of Yuna and the half-blood maester…I should fulfill that promise now. By doing this, I will betray my husband…I promised him that I would always stay by his side, but…it must be done. I can´t let him simply kill everyone he hates. That won´t bring our son back." Laetitia whispered, and took another black sphere out of the pouch and observed it in her hand.

A tear ran down her cheek, and the sphere glowed with dark light and they were drawn to it´s realms once again. A memory. Lulu watched the scenery laid to her eyes, and the memory´s pain and overwhelming disappointment clenched her heart and tried to rip it apart.

They were all silent as they observed the scene before them.

It was Guadosalam. The scent of the air told something bad, something deadly serious had just happened. All of Guadosalam had gathered to the centre of the living city, and low whispering was all what was heard.

Even Jyscal Guado and his wife and son were attending to the gathering.

Jyscal and his wife, Adelé, seemed to have a heated argument, and the boy standing between them looked totally helpless as he stared up to his parents with his bright lilac eyes, which were legacy from his human mother.

But the boy soon realized that a pair of similar lilac eyes were fixed upon his small frame, and he turned his eyes to look at his observer. Seymour had never liked how people looked at him, he never fancied that penetrating and calculating stare, but something about the other boy, how he stared at him made Seymour wonder.
In Seymour´s eyes, the boy who was watching him, looked like just another Guado boy to him, although the boy possessed this odd melancholy and certain fear in his eyes, that Seymour wondered why should a normal Guado-boy be so very afraid. Guadosalam was nothing to be afraid, Seymour had lived there over six years already and he knew by his child´s instinct that there was nothing to be afraid.

The boy who Seymour thought to be bit odd, with his slightly less spiky white hair and slightly shorter arms, was now staring at certain Guado-woman who was standing alone, far from the boy. The woman had pale complexion, snow-white hair and bluish eyes. Seymour smiled as he remembered the woman´s name; she was Arwaeryl, the servant for his father…a member of the lower cast, Seymour recalled with a small smirk. But his childish smile vanished immediately, as he saw that the woman was crying her heart out.
She tried to muffle her sobs to her sleeve, but made quite poor job at it. Seymour´s observation was however irritably interrupted, as Jyscal decided to speak.

"I don´t understand why you have chosen to return to this place…did I not told you never to return again?" Jyscal stormed, and the dark haired man who was standing behind the odd boy opened his mouth.

"I came to make you understand that you can´t abandon everything you don´t like and sweep them under the mat like they were garbage, Jyscal….not like you are going to do with your own son…" He drawled, and Jyscal flinched.

"You are going to send him to Baaj, aren´t you?" The raven-haired man continued.

"Adelé, did you tell him about this?" Jyscal hissed, and Adelé snapped back with equally frosty tone. "Of course I did. Commodus is my brother, after all."

"I do not wish to be in contact with your kin, Jyscal, ever again, but I want you to acknowledge my son as part of the Guado family. He must live here, where he belongs." Adelé´s brother hissed with poison in his voice, and Jyscal smiled.
"how ironic. Here you are, preaching to me how I "should not abandon my offspring" as you are doing your everything to dumb your bastard son to my care, Commodus."

"I care nothing for him." Commodus replied, and Jyscal´s smile grew wider. "Indeed."

"I have had enough of your meddling in the affairs of the Guado. I demand your leave from my city." Jyscal said with stony voice, and Commodus smirked.

"Then tell me what will happen to my son if I should leave?" Commodus questioned bitterly.

"I care nothing of him either, Commodus. He does not have proper lineage nor is his blood pure enough to be considered wholly as a Guado. True, my son is also half-breed, but Seymour is solely the result of my legal marriage and he is also my heir. Your son is not result of legal marriage, nor is he of noble blood. Now I demand you´ll leave us be." Jyscal stated grimly, and his wife was in the verge of tears.

"…Fine then. So long, sister. You know I love you." Commodus spat and turned to look at the frightened six year old boy in front of him.

"Take my hand; we´ll go now." He whispered to the boy, and the boy looked at his father with his wonderful lilac eyes, heritage from his father. "But….what about Mother? Isn´t she coming along too?" The boy asked, struggling to not to spill any tears. He knew how his father hated him when he cried: he always said how tears were a sign of weakness and how he hated weak people.
"No. we´ll have to go away without her." Commodus simply stated, without any kind of emotion in his voice."But….when we will be back?" The boy asked. It was even harder to bite back the tears, but he wanted to make his father proud; he would not ashame him.

"We won´t be back." Came the emotionless reply. Six-year old Serian glanced his weeping mother one last time, and his father pulled him, partially dragged him away from Guadosalam for good.

The sphere´s surroundings chanced. The memory was different.

A white-haired, pale-faced boy was staring at himself from the mirror.

He was the same boy from the previous memory, although he was few years older, he was still oddly heavy-minded and melancholic for an eight-year old.

Serian continued to stare at his reflection, and he could swore that his reflection was laughing at him. He grimly touched his veins in his forehead with his long, delicate fingers and suddenly remembered how he hated them. He dropped his hand back, remembering how he should be praying to Yevon right now. Father didn´t like if Serian didn´t pray at least five times in a day; Father always said how Yevon would cleanse his sins which came to him when he was born.

And speaking of which…his father was standing in the doorway, peering down to his son. Suddenly Serian felt like all the air in his lungs had been drawn out; he tried to please his father so much, so much it hurt, but Commodus was very demanding father.

"Have you been praying today, Serian?" Commodus coolly asked, and a small cold spark ran trough Serian´s small frame. He had forgotten completely, as he was playing in the basement with Father´s sword. He shouldn´t have touched Father´s things, he knew, but the silver dagger was so fascinating, so very sharp.

"You are not going to answer my question?" The cold voice brought the boy back to the grim reality, and he glanced at his father with his pale indigo eyes wide open.
"Yes, I have prayed, Father." Serian was not a good liar, and his father knew this. "Have you?" Commodus merely lifted his brow to him. "Yes. A-And I prayed to Yevon that he would punish the mudbloods, Sir." The boy whispered. He didn´t really know why he should hate them; Father always said how they were garbage and how they should suffer, but he never explained why. Serian was scared to ask him; he knew how it would anger the man. But curious little child as he was, Serian opened his mouth to ask.

"Why are the…mudbloods so terrible, Father?" He asked with wonder in his voice, but the older man´s eyes were so terrible that the voice died in his throat.

"You filthy little beast…After all what I have taught you…after giving you a home and clothes to hide your abnormality, you dare to ask that from me?" Commodus hissed, and slapped the boy across the face. Serian could feel his right side of his face sting like it was on fire, but he didn´t care; he had angered Father. He would pay the price for his foolishness soon.

"Well, allow me to educate you a little, Serian." The elder man hissed, and grabbed his son´s pure-white hair. Serian did nothing even that his scalp hurt so much that tears threatened to spill from his eyes. The boy´s arms rested limply on his sides, and he simply stood there and waited for his father to educate him.

"You are nothing than a cursed little freak….oh, how your mother wanted to hold you, nurse you and love you…but I knew better…yes, I knew better. You are a freak, an abomination and nobody will ever love you!" Commodus continued, and dragged his son to face the tall wall-mirror.
"Look at yourself….what do you see?" He asked from his son with a tone Serian had never heard before. The voice was sharp and high-pitched, far from his usual coldness.

"I-I see myself, Father." The little boy whispered, and his voice was small from the strangling fear in his throat.

"What are you?" Commodus questioned harshly.

From this, Serian glanced his Father with terrified eyes trough the mirror.

"I´m me. I´m Serian. Your son." He whispered.

His father´s lips lifted into a grim, cold smile. His hand had never left his son´s hair, and now his grip got even harder.
He yanked his hand and his son´s head slightly away from the mirror´s reflection.

"You are not my pure-blooded son. What are you?"

Commodus Honoré loved his son very much. So much, it almost hurt.

Almost.

"Your son!" Serian shrieked with terror, his long fingers desperately trying to remove his Father´s strong grip on his hair and scared eyes spilling silvery tears down his burning cheek.

Commodus hit his son´s face hard against the mirror´s cool surface.


Smash.

"You are nothing but a filthy mudblood. If it weren´t for your mother, I would have gladly taken your life myself! We were happy, Arwaeryl and I. You ruined it for me!"

Smash.

The broken mirror was now covered with blood and tears of his son.

"Now…what are you?"

"A…mudblood."

"What does the likes of you deserve?"

Smash.

"T-To suffer, Father." The little boy managed to sob trough his half-consciousness and his head felt strangely light and he vaguely noticed how something warm trickled down his jaw and throat. But none of that really mattered.

The only thing what mattered was that it had stopped. He didn´t even need to turn his head to see, that his father was smiling.

"You´re nothing more than a failure, and that´s what you´re ever going to be, Serian. But even still, I am your father and I love you." Commodus whispered to his son, and although he knew how his words had wounded Serian deeply, he smiled. Those words, whispered to any son, would have made them spill tears. However, Serian didn´t want to be so weak, not anymore.

Commodus left his semi-conscious son to lie in the cold stone floor, and Serian watched his reflection from the broken mirror.

"Mirror mirror on the wall, tell me whose the most beautiful of them all?" Serian whispered in his mind, and the twisted reflection sneered at him with a broken child´s smile. "Certainly not you, mudblood." The cruel voice rang in the stony walls, lasting an eternity for the little boy, rending his throat sore.

Oh, yes. Now Serian knew how his reflection laughed at him.

And he also knew now, that Father didn´t really hate the mudbloods. Serian knew that he loved them. After all, didn´t the most purest love mean the suffering of the body and heart? After all, didn´t all fathers wanted to kill their son? Isn´t this love?

Serian loved his Father very much, so much, it hurt him sometimes.

When it had hurt him once too much, he crept in during the night in the room where Father kept the silver dagger. In that night, Serian had taken it from under Father´s all seeing eyes, and decided that he would guard Father from anyone who wanted to hurt him.

In the darkness of the night, he crept to Father´s bedroom with the dagger clenched to his small hand tightly. Serian had listened his Father´s steady, deep breathing and imagined that a filthy mudblood tried to harm Father. And that mudblood was sleeping now in Father´s bed! How dared he?

Oh, yes. He would protect his Father from those filthy mudbloods.

Serian, despite his young age, knew what happened if a filthy mudblood had his throat cut open. And the mudblood´s throat was right under the breathing.

He would rise the dagger like this,

Serian lifted the big silver dagger above his head, above his Father´s chest.

…and he would stab him like this.

Serian prepared to press the dagger down to the mudblood´s chest, but the filthy creature had turned to his side in his sleep, and the boy missed.

Serian had forgotten again.

"Oh. It wasn´t a mudblood after all. It was Father. And we don´t want to kill Father, do we?" He heard the little voice inside his mind speak to him; it always spoke to him when Father had loved him more painfully than usually.

Sometimes, when Serian was bored, as he never couldn´t go outside to play, he often talked with the voice inside his mind.

He had named his voice as Animus.

A/N: Ohh…Such a disturbed little boy. I feel sorry for him.

Explanation time: "Animus" is the opposite of "Anima". Anima is the feminine side inside of man´s personality, whereas Animus is the masculine side of woman´s psyche. These contexts are rather complex, and I do not feel worthy enough to try and explain these two to you with my scant knowledge of psychology. I am aware that professors Jung and Freud have research these contexts, and you can read their studies about Anima and Animus to know more. Anima and Animus means also spirits with feminine and masculine sides. But why Serian named his "friend" as Animus? Animus is the masculin side inside woman´s mind, yes. But why not "Anima"? You´ll find that out later.

I hope you are not too shocked about this, it´s just that this thought crept to my mind in one night, and I personally prefer to write angst and tragedy, for some weird reason.

At first, the chapters 13 and 14 were planned to post as a one enormous chapter but naturally, that would have been too much. I KNOW that no one would possess the immense strength to read fifteen pages straight! So, I divided the chapter thirteen into two "mini-stories".

And, once again, this chapter didn´t tell anything about Seymour. I´m sorry! There´s time for that later. (despite the fact that it may take hundreds of chapters to get to that point!) : )
This chappie didn´t serve in anyway as a major plot mover, but I kind of fancy Serian, and I feel that I should explain his motives properly, and that takes time and chapters.

And as a tribute for Mr. Thomas Harris, the author of the ever famous novel "Red Dragon", my personal favourite, I have borrowed few concepts of that great book in to this chapter. Salutations, Mr. Harris!

Anyway, you know the drill: you read and review. Say what you like and don´t like. YOU HAVE THE POWER (although minimal) to shape this story. Kind of. Maybe.

Ah, no. Not really. But getting constructive reviews sure is nice.

You know it already. steal my fic or any parts of it, and the heavens will smite you. Every time you even think of"borrowing" my fic or any parts of it, Serian kills a kitten.

Thank you.