Sins of the Fathers- Chapter ten
By Pavana Lachrimae
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Squaresoft is not mine; no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: I hope you like the newest chapter- as always, keep criticising, keep helping me improve :). Again, my updates have been less frequent than usual, and I apologise. Coursework and music exams have kept me plenty busy, yes they have. This story is really dragging on, but I promise I shall try to get it finished soon. There's not far to go, so don't worry.
Thanks for reading!
NOTICE: Chapters eleven and twelve (or 12 and 13) have been taken down for revisions.
I'm really sorry. I showed an embarrassing lack of respect towards you as readers; I guess I was just in too much of a rush to finish. I promise the plot and characterisation will be better in the new chapters. Also, I will try not to be so graphic/bizarre/horrible to poor Seymour this time. ;
-x-
"So he never told you who my… father was."
I could hear the break in Darra's voice as she said the word, turning it over in her mouth with a hint of disgust. She was still trying to come to terms with it, I realised, and I found myself wishing that I were more equipped to deal with this- to comfort her. She was Seymour's daughter, after all. I would have been no more help to her than I had been to him, all those years ago.
"No. I'm sorry," I said.
After all, it was not a lie. He never told me. But that does not mean I didn't know.
-x-
It was about that time, around the start of Lord Braska's calm, that Seymour began to act strangely. I would come in to find him lying, completely flat and completely still, on his bed, or even on the floor. He was not sleeping. Nor was he practising the breathing exercises I had tried again and again to teach him (he refused point-blank to learn at first, but later on, he would relent).
Perhaps he was simply conserving his strength. But I could not help but wonder whether he was imagining what it was like to be dead.
"The final summoning. I think I have started to realise why my mother wanted me to perform it," he told me once, almost completely out of the blue.
"Oh?" I asked, looking up at him. That fold in the flesh, like the trench of a caesarian scar, was starting to change- it looked sore, and slightly odd against the human characteristics of his body. Sore, but his development was still behind. It would be a difficult labour. It worried me a little. I was not fully listening.
"She wanted the best for me," he said. "As a child, I was foolish. I did not realise that the best for me would be to… not grow up at all. Perhaps it would have been better if she had sacrificed me while I was still in the womb."
"…Is this about the child, Seymour?"
He ignored me. "All guado children understand death. We live beside the farplane, after all. But what we are not taught- what we should be teaching our children- is that the life before it is merely an option. What better fate would there be than to die at birth, completely innocent, blissfully unaware of Sin…"
"I think I might have to reduce your dosage."
"Don't- patronise me." The young man sat up abruptly, shuffling back. "I know perfectly well what I am saying. If anything, it is you who are deluded. Death is preferable to pain." He tugged his robe on and pulled it tight around himself, suddenly annoyed. "Now I'm tired. Leave me alone."
Before I left, I went through his drawers and took out anything that was remotely sharp or breakable, bundling them all up in the only two sheets I found that were thin and pliable enough to pose any threat. Later on, I had Tromell remove the light fitting from his ceiling. I expected Seymour to be angry with me, but to my surprise, he was not.
"What's the point?" he said, instead, and laughed.
(Later on- much later, as he lay screaming before me, he would beg for me to kill him. Again, I would refuse him. But for a moment I would wonder whether it would not be kinder to hold his hand while Dr Orfeo slit his throat, and simply slip the child from his lifeless body. I did not tell Darra this either.)
-x-
Two months after her engagement to Seymour, Riana went missing.
Tromell woke me up at around midnight, to the sound of muted footsteps and desperate whispering in the corridor. It did not take me long to realise why the other servants had not been woken. Unwilling to raise the alarm, we barred the doors until everybody had woken up and we could move around the house more inconspicuously; we sent guards out in the dead of night in the hope they would find her. Secretly, I prayed that they would not.
By midday, word had been sent out that an illness- presumably different to the one Seymour and I were supposed to have been struck down with- had made Riana delirious, causing her to wander out during the night. If anybody found her, they were to bring her back to us immediately, and using force if necessary. After all, said Jyscal, we are all afraid for her safety.
They did not have to worry. Four days later she had been found dead at the base of Mount Gagazet.
As soon as the child was born, I vowed, I would leave.
-x-