Sins of the Fathers- Chapter five

By Pavana Lachrimae

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Squaresoft not mine, no squish please.

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: Sorry it took me so long to update- I've been really stuck on this story for a while. I might go back and rewrite it when I've finished, because I'm not happy with it anymore, but I've promised myself I will finish this and so finish this I will! Anyway, thank you for all the wonderful reviews and encouragement, and no, you haven't seen the last of Darra's father. Bonus cookies if you can guess who he is!

A/N II: I went back and corrected a few things. No major changes- just Seymour's mother's name (better to just name her Anima after all, like her aeon) and part of Darra's description in the prologue, which might give you another clue .. My apologies, but those things were really bugging me.

-x-

When Seymour was born, and we left Kilika to go and live with his parents, I was four years old- too young to remember anything but a few faint shapes above me, or disjointed memories and faces whose fragile connections to one another have disintegrated in the course of the years. At some point, I might have been jealous of my mother for spending too much time with the new baby, but I have no recollection of it. If I was, it was too early for me to remember now.

At first, I was not aware of any tension in the household, or why Seymour was so different from anyone else around me. Nor could I comprehend why sometimes both of us were shunned by the other children, on the rare and separate occasions that he and I were able to mix with them. I was vaguely aware that he was not allowed to play with me, but by the time he had reached an age where he was able to walk around on his own I was too old to care. At times I was lonely, having nobody else of my own age around, but for the most part my mother tried to keep me busy, and the other servants were usually only to happy to talk.

They used to say things about Seymour and his mother that I found hard to understand. Then, slowly, as I grew up, I began to realise why Anima didn't let him go outside, and why his skin and hair and face were different from everybody else's. Not only was he sick, he was also different, and the adults around me- intentionally or not- treated him as such. Even his mother, who loved him more than life itself, made the mistake of being too careful with his upbringing; she smothered him with too much affection and, until far too late an age for comfort, guarded him fiercely from the critical eyes of his peers.

He was a sheltered, almost spoilt child; I say almost because there were times in his life when he seemed to be on the verge of becoming normal. Sometimes Seymour could even be as amiable and unassuming as any other small boy. Overall, however, his childhood was one blighted by sickness, temper tantrums and, later, deep spells of depression- all fuelled by the innate unhappiness within him that seemed to run, consistent, through his veins the whole course of his life. And he carried this unhappiness with him even in the most stable of times- even during his brightest days, it was there at his ankles, dragging him down.

I remember him telling me once; "Life is sorrow. And pain is inevitable, in any life, no matter what you do to try and change it. Nothing precious ever lasts." This was in the final few weeks before his daughter was born- soon after the onset of Braska's peacetime-, and the change in him was evident from his face alone. He had gained some weight, but his cheeks were gaunt- when it came to food, he either complained he was feeling sick, or ate only what his cravings told him to, and solidly resisted my attempts to get him to eat healthily. His skin was pale and waxy, and his hair-, which would normally have been fixed in the traditional style preferred by some Guado royalty-, hung down over his shoulders, limp, in matted blue coils rather than separate strands.

I didn't know how to console him, or what to answer to that, so I stayed silent, standing beside his bed and idly mixing some potion or other. I was supposed to be encouraging him to exercise, but after the events of the week before, coupled with the young man's apparent exhaustion, I did not think that it would achieve anything.

Sitting up in his bed with his arms around his knees, he continued. "Haven't you ever thought that living might not be worth it? We spend years and years clinging to every shred of happiness that passes by, only to have it whisked away again at the first opportunity. We struggle all our lives, and for what? The only people in this Yevon-forsaken city who are even content are the ones floating around on the farplane." If he had looked up at me on that point he would have seen my hands stop, momentarily, mid-stir, but he did not. "Haven't you ever thought that we all might be better off dead?"

"Seymour," I said. "What is happening to you is no doubt frightening. I know you may feel alone and terrified during all this, but it is important to remember that it will be over soon. You'll probably start to feel better when your body recovers from the trauma. Who knows how your hormones are affecting you right now? It might be that you're only thinking this because the changes taking place -"

"I'm not talking about that," he replied sharply. "I'm talking about everything. People dying. People leaving and never coming back." Thoughts of that nameless pilgrim on the road flooded back to me- I banished them quickly. (Until the night Darra was born, I thought then I would never know who the baby's father was, and had told myself that it was pointless to think about the matter any more.) "Nothing's permanent, Heba. Sin is sleeping now, and we have peace, but what does that matter in the long run? It lives, and it will live to kill again. Give it two or three years, and people will be dying just like before. Nothing is forever.

"Or did you think it was, woman? I bet when you were small you thought your mother would never die- but she did, just like mine did. And I bet you thought that servant woman would stay here, didn't you? Admit it. It wasn't worth the sorrow of having her leave-"

"Seymour." His words stung a little, but I had to remind myself that he was only saying it because he needed someone to lash out at. I felt sorry for him, to an extent; even if she has never experienced it herself, a woman knows the pain of childbirth and the sickness of pregnancy. I could imagine what he was going through, and I tried to be sympathetic.

"I wish there were some way I could console you. I can't pretend I know what it's like, but I've seen wom-"

Seymour gave me a look.

"- I've seen people go through this before," I said diplomatically. "Just remember, it will be over soon." That was a lie- we both knew that there was a high probability Seymour wouldn't survive the birth unscathed, but I did not feel reminding him of that then would be the best course of action.

"And… you never know. Perhaps the Final Summoning was enough, this time." Finishing the mixture, I poured it into a glazed clay cup for him, knowing in advance that he would refuse to drink it. "We don't know for sure that Sin will come back."

"Oh, it will." There was an edge of certainty in his voice that almost made me shiver; something in there that was not simply pessimism, but an actual knowing. For not the first time in those several months I found myself wishing that I did not have to spend so much time with him. The things he said unnerved me, and, near the end of his term especially, he had become somewhat stir-crazy due to not being allowed out.

If only his mother had been there…guests were forbidden, for obvious reasons, but even if he had been allowed to see people, he would probably have had nobody else but me. And yet he could not even help but try to push me away. I cannot pretend that he and I formed any sort of bond while I was looking after him, but one thing is certain- I knew him better than any of his remaining relatives. Better than Jyscal.

Though Seymour's father was continually doing his best to ensure that the whole matter remained a secret, not once in all that time did he visit his son. Given his reaction when he found out about it, I was not at all surprised...