Sins of the Fathers- Prologue
By Pavana Lachrimae
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If Squaresoft was mine, would I be writing fanfic? .
Teaser: Six years after the final defeat of Sin, a young part-guado girl named Darra seeks out the only remaining link to her parentage in a last attempt to find out who she is. But when the truth finally surfaces, will she really want to know? Seymour x ?. Lots of twists. Not a sue, and if you read it, you'll see why ;) …
A/N: An experiment, of sorts… and a little journey into the past of our favourite FFX villain. It's a style I'm not used to writing in, so I need criticism. Badly. And no, even if you do manage to guess correctly what this whole thing's about, I won't tell you. Hah.
PROLOGUE
The marks on her face were the first thing I noticed, poor girl. She could never be called beautiful, even at a stretch. Even without the lines, perhaps, which looked like thin scars at first, before you realised how dark and smooth they were, how much like veins…I knew who she was the moment I opened my door.
''Are you Heba? The midwife? ''
The very way she spoke suggested shyness, yet not once did her steady gaze leave mine. She had that same look in her eyes I'd seen all those years ago, both unstable and so very striking. Later on, I'd find it hard to believe that she hadn't guessed her parentage before; that she had never once been told how similar she was to Seymour, or how much her voice and manner resembled his.
Then again, she did not look like him. Apart from the lines across her cheeks, there was little in her appearance that reminded me of the former Maester. Her skin was darker. Her hair was black, and had a thick, matted quality to it- it hung limply over her skinny shoulders, looking perpetually damp. Her face was too angular, her blue eyes too deep-set and too piercing, to ever be called pretty. She lacked, in looks, the bizarre elegance that Seymour had possessed when he was still alive, in his later years at least.
But perhaps this too would come, with age. Sixteen years had passed since I brought her into the world, yet it felt longer. Spira had changed so much, in the past six years especially, and sometimes it seemed worlds apart from the one my mother and I had been born into. The places we had frequented were now rebuilt beyond recognition; the proud guado aristocrats we had once served, dying out.
I miss the time I spent in Guadosalam. For a long while, it was the only world I knew. And now I hear news of their race, declining by the year, left crumbling in the wake of an insane leader, and it pains me. Change is not always a positive thing. Sin is dead, but so are most of the guado youth, and with them, their future. When I first saw the girl, I wondered if she knew she was the last in an ancient line. Perhaps it doesn't even matter any more.
Standing either side of the threshold of my doorway, we regarded each other for a moment. It was she who finally broke the silence. The smooth, almost hollow tones of her voice were painfully familiar to me.
''…I'm Darra. ''
''I know who you are. '' I stepped back, holding the door open for her. ''I've been expecting you for a long time, Darra. Come in. ''