Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note:

Some of the events here are mentioned in Photographs of Freedom.

This is all waaaaay before Tales of Symphonia.

-/-/-/-

It's possible! For a plain yellow pumpkin

To become a golden carriage

It's possible! For a plain country bumpkin

And a prince to join in marriage

And four white mice are easily turned to horses

Such folderol and fiddle-dee-dee of course is

Quite possible! It's possible!

For the world is full of zanies and fools

Who don't believe in sensible rules

And won't believe what sensible people say

And because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes

Keep building up impossible hopes

Impossible things are happening every day

-Impossible (Rodger and Hammerstein's Cinderella)

-/-/-/-

"Can you teach me to write my name?"

Kratos looks over at Yuan. They'd taken to spending their afternoons outside. Sometimes, they wandered through the nearby town or they simply hung around in the forest that bordered the plantation. Right now, they were both on their backs, watching clouds as they passed by.

"Yeah, of course." Kratos thinks that it's a little strange that Yuan had never so much as seen his name on a piece of paper. Kratos sometimes got a little tired of his name and writing it on the right corner at the top of his schoolwork. "Grab a stick."

Yuan is on his feet before Kratos is completely aware of what's happening. Sometimes Yuan does that, moves too fast for Kratos to really see. Yuan hands the long stick that he found nearby to Kratos. "Teach me."

"Okay, so you know your alphabet, right?" Yuan nods fervently. It had taken a few weeks, but he'd managed to memorize all twenty-six letters. "Okay, so your name has four letters. The Y, the U, the A and the N."

Kratos sketches the letters into the dirt nice and big for Yuan to see before giving him the stick. "You try."

Yuan's hand is shaky as he writes, and the letters are written with a childlike, blockish kind of care, but right underneath Kratos' letters is a passable imitation of them. Yuan looks over at him. "Did I get it right?" He asks anxiously.

Kratos grins at him. "Yup. You can write your name."

Yuan whoops and is suddenly hugging Kratos tightly before releasing him. "Thank you." From the way Yuan was smiling at him, Kratos might have given him the world. "Thank you so much!" He can write his name. He, Yuan, a slave from Asgard, could write his name. Yuan had never felt pride like this before, not even when he'd beaten Zaren for the first time in cards.

"I just showed you how. You did it all on your own."

"How do you spell your name?" Yuan asked him, head tilted. Kratos blinks at him before demonstrating. "Can you do it a little more slowly?"

Kratos obliges before Yuan tries. The S was backwards, but otherwise, he'd gotten it right. Kratos guides him in writing the S and it takes Yuan a few more times to get it right. Yuan asks him after several more words, ones that Kratos can't figure out how they're linked together. After Yuan asks him several times if he's absolutely sure that that was how they were spelled, Yuan grabs a small knife from his pocket.

Kratos gapes at him. "You have a knife?"

"Yeah. Just in case."

"Just in case of what? I try to kill you?"

"Not like that. My brother told me to always carry the knife in case…something happened."

"Something like…what happened to your village?" Kratos isn't an idiot. He might not know the details of what had happened, but he knows that Yuan didn't volunteer for this.

Yuan's eyes are unreadable. "Yeah, like that kind of something."

"So what's the knife for now?"

Yuan grinned impishly, suddenly himself again. "You'll see." He dashed for the tree line and scans the trees carefully before choosing a fairly young one with a sturdy trunk and long branches. He carefully began etching words into the trunk.

When he finally took a step back and hummed appreciatively at his work, Kratos sidled closer, taking a look. When he did, his chest felt a little tight. There, written in Yuan's shaky carve-work, were the words YUAN AND KRATOS and right beneath it was KINGS OF THE WORLD.

Kratos looks over at him. "Kings of the world?"

"Oh yeah."

"What makes you think we'll ever be kings of anything?"

Yuan folds his knife and slips it back in his pocket. "Well, you taught me to read and write didn't you? If you can do that, anything's possible."

Kratos looked back at the carving. "Yeah. You're right. Anything."

Yuan stuffs his hands in his pockets as they begin walking back to Kratos' house. "…And that includes flying."

Kratos laughed. "That's the crazy part."

"What, you seriously think we can't? Watch, one day we'll be tasting clouds and I'll tell you 'I told you so'. I wonder what clouds taste like? Sugar?"

"Cotton candy more like it."

Yuan blinked at him. "Why would you want candy made out of cotton? That doesn't sound very sweet at all."
Kratos burst out laughing and slung his arm around Yuan's shoulder, still grinning. "You still have so much to learn."