Sins of the Fathers- Chapter five
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: The plot thickens! Apologies for my somewhat excessive use of parentheses in this chapter, as well as the slow-moving plot. It will pick up soon, I promise! Again, criticism is welcome, and thank you all for your reviews- it's lovely to hear what people think, and they mean so much to me! Please tell me if you think my writing style is too pretentious or boring- I'm trying to improve all the time, but I can't do it without your help.
Also, Chapter Six will be up very quickly, as I have almost finished it. Yay!
-x-
Tell me everything, she says.
Where do I start?
A warm night, in the waning summer. The room is humid and heavy with the scent of blood, and something that smells like stagnant water. Seymour is holding my hand so tightly I feel like his scaly fingers are crushing it. There is a moment of silence and then his screams rip the air around us, sucking us in, piercing my shallow flesh.
No. Earlier. Winter, maybe, or early spring, in his room, and I'm putting my hands on his stomach and telling him it might be a growth of some sort. I can't help but notice that his eyes have softened a little, the way I imagine he used to look at his mother, and suddenly I realise he probably hasn't been touched like this for a long time. (Did he know, then? In retrospect, it seems more and more likely, but hindsight is the wisdom of fools.)
Earlier still. Perhaps this is where it started- on a cool evening in autumn, waving goodbye to a nameless pilgrim in the dusk. Honoured Visitors To Our Home. Or maybe not so nameless, after all- maybe my suspicions are right, and I have met the father. Yet to tell Darra this or not? A part of me thinks this is one secret I will have to take to the grave. But I digress.
Younger Seymour, or first of all his voice, mingling sweetly in the corridor with another's as I pass by. Seymour is the one telling the other to keep quiet, someone's coming, and the giggling makes some effort to subside. Then a servant whose name I have long forgotten is striding into the room and shouting, and Jyscal is called and then the house goes deathly quiet for a few hours. (Seymour was fifteen. I never knew how old the other boy was, and as far as I know I never saw him again.)
You tell me, Darra. Where do I start? Where did it all begin?
I have long debated this myself. I think of him at least once every day- more than, even, I think about the love I once carelessly threw away (but that's a different story entirely). Many times I have asked myself whether, if only we had known -if only we had paid more attention to him- we could have somehow been able to prevent his descent into madness and the deaths he left in its wake. And yet every time, I seem to draw the same conclusion; that Seymour was condemned to his fate from the moment he was born. A half-breed, and a mistake. Predestined to fall.
''Darra. Do you believe in fate? ''
The question startled her, I think. She was expecting me to start with some terrific revelation; a simple starting phrase that would explain everything in a few words. Perhaps it did, looking back, but then again, perhaps it is overly romantic to think that.
''I don't know, '' she said finally. ''Thinking about it, it seems a little unlikely. Nobody's really religious any more, you know? They're all too busy killing each other. '' A pause, and she picked at the skin of her hand. ''Why? Do you? ''
''No, '' I replied. ''Not… usually. Usually I think things don't have a reason. They just happen, and they cause other things to happen. It's a chain reaction, branching in random directions. But when I remember your… well, your mother, Darra… I somehow feel as if nothing could have changed the way things went. That, no matter what could have happened, your birth was inevitable.
''Or perhaps it's just another chain reaction, but one that was so set in its direction, from the moment it was started, it could never go in any other direction to the one it travelled in. Do you understand me, Darra? And it started the very moment Seymour was born.
''Let me start from the beginning…"