[Tales of Symphonia] Friends After All
Jul. 11th, 2010 02:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreFriends After All
Author: Amber Michelle //![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
myaru
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Characters: Genis, Mithos
Prompt Set:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
7rainbowprompts - violet set, 9 - time to spare
Gauntlet theme: 08 - in the middle of being partly myself
Rating: K
Words: 1833
Warnings: AU. Not quiiiiite as gen as it could be, depending on how you read, but still not trying for anything else.
Notes: edit? beta? what?
I spent most of this trying to figure Genis out. No word yet on whether I succeeded or not.
..........................................................................
"Vinheim."
Genis turned around. He'd heard footsteps approaching, noted that the door opened, and felt the presence at his back in a way he could only describe as physical - like the warmth of sunshine on his back, or fire. His heart thudded and jumped behind his ribs even though he knew who it was.
Perhaps out of kindness, Mithos did not display his wings. Without their prism shape lighting his hair from the back he looked like a normal half-elf. "This palace is at the center of the facility on Derris Kharlan, just as it would be in a human city." Pink light shimmered through the window and ringed the crown of his blond head. "Does that help?"
The angel who'd attended Genis since he woke hovered behind her master with something folded over her arms - long blue robes, it looked like, trimmed with white and silver like his old clothes. Books, too - red-bound, black-bound, and they looked heavy. "I didn't think they'd actually ask you," Genis said, hooking his fingers on the windowsill. His legs quivered when he thought of moving closer. If this were his Mithos-- if they were at Altessa's house looking out at the rain instead of the storm of Derris Kharlan's atmosphere, there would be no problem. He found himself saying I'm sorry and looking away.
Leave those on the bed, Mithos commanded, and the flap of angel girl's wings ruffled Genis's bangs. He heard her lay the robe out and stack the books on the bedside table, and at some signal he didn't see, she floated over to the door and left. Mithos and his strange heat drew closer; maybe it was an effect of the crystal. His gaze belonged to Yggdrasill; so did the voice, and the narrow face, and the height that didn't seem so tall anymore. "They tell me you broke the window. But-- you didn't try to escape."
Genis's fingers ached from gripping the sill too hard. "I wasn't trying to leave."
Yggdrasill gripped his chin with thumb and forefingers and made Genis turn his face forward. His face belonged to the enemy, and just because it lacked the light of his angelic nature did not mean wasn't still beautiful, familiar - it was all so clear now, the resemblance so obvious. The shape of his green eyes, the way his bangs swept over his forehead, the shape of his nose and mouth. He was looking at Mithos and a stranger at the same time. He wanted to touch the soft blond hair. He wanted to bury his face in Mithos's shoulder and cry.
Could he cry? Colette couldn't. Those stories about angels shedding tears over the world's misfortunes were all a lie.
He could imagine Mithos-the-child doing so. Maybe. A long time ago.
"Come," Mithos said, drawing Genis away from the window with a finger crooked beneath his chin. "I'll help you dress."
*
The further corridors of Vinheim looked very much like the room Genis woke up in: dark stone, pink clouds beyond the glass - and there was so much glass, so many tall windows that stretched as high as the roof of his house in Iselia, and marble statues of winged women with the same face, crowns of leaves and flowers draped on their heads. Was she supposed to be Martel, this statue that repeated at every corner and staircase? Mithos cast a quick glance back at him, but didn't answer.
So maybe it was a dumb question. Genis had his moments - not as often as Lloyd, but it happened-- occasionally. Very occasionally.
Genis kept his head down and his eyes on the crimson carpet they followed as it branched into another, smaller corridor. Finally, some color. Angel girl had said his room was kept plain so he wouldn't be agitated when he woke up, but blue was getting old, and he wished his robes were a different color. Mithos wore white. Kratos never seemed to make up his mind. Genis would put up with anything - black, gray, white, even red or yellow, though he might draw the line at pink. That was Zelos, and Genis would choke himself with a spoon before dressing like the idiot chosen.
He probably didn't have to eat anymore, did he? He hadn't slept since--
A long time. Two days.
No, it might have been three. Being dressed made him feel more awake, but when he made himself think about it - how he felt an hour ago, or a day ago - the difference was miniscule. He ate one meal just after waking up and remembered it tasted like nothing, not because the effect of the Cruxis crystal had kicked in, but because the angels who made it had no sense of taste.
A hand stopped Genis in his tracks, and he jerked his head up to look at Mithos. "You're going to run into something like this."
Genis stared. Then he blinked. "Oh, uh--"
Mithos lifted both eyebrows, and then his forehead furrowed and he sighed with a dramatic roll of his eyes, the kind of gesture that would've looked fine on a child. "Idiot." He opened the door - since when were there doors? Where were they? Genis wrenched his neck around to look back, saw the glow of the great hall a long walk down the passage - and let Mithos grab his wrist, allowed himself to be pulled. "You'll have to get someone else to lead you here next time, then. I can't always leave the control room."
The door drifted closed without any prompting. Bookshelves lined every wall, and the rows of multi-colored bindings stretched all the way to the ceiling. Genis craned his neck back. "Wow." There weren't any windows, but the lamps on the wall burned blue and bright. "Now this is a library."
"It's one of many," Mithos said. "To my knowledge I have a copy of everything officially published in both worlds, and a few things that weren't. So."
Genis let his eyes drift down to the shine of the other's hair and the glimmer of his crystal, then up to his eyes. His stomach cramped. "So?"
"You said there must be another way to realize my dream. Find it." Mithos swept his hair behind one pointed ear. "If you can."
"Are you crazy? That could take years--"
"You have forever." He tapped the crystal through Genis's robes and smiled. "If you're good."
Genis made himself stand still, his arms prickling and the skin between his shoulder-blades itching. Heat flashed across his skin like a summer wind. If he was good. If he was good? "Lloyd isn't going to give you forever." His voice went hoarse when he said his friend's name. "He's - he's probably already on his way here to confront you."
It-- it wasn't like he didn't fight back when Mithos grabbed him that night. Lloyd knew that.
"Me? Just me?" Mithos flicked the jewel harder; his nail thunked against the crest, and then he pulled his hand back and let it hover near his hair as if he meant to flip it back. "Lloyd will look at you and see an angel of Cruxis, not his cowardly friend Genis. If you're patient you might learn to revert to your natural form, but that will take time and effort, and I don't suppose your friends will inquire before they attack what they perceive as a threat-- they didn't when they met me."
Yeah, well, he looked threatening. His smile challenged Genis to say it out loud.
Genis covered the crystal with his hand, pressed his fingertips into the flesh around the crest, but it made no difference to the tight, pulling, aching of his skin. When was it going to stop hurting, anyway? They said he would get used to it - but they said a lot of things, none of which were true: the mana swirling around Derris Kharlan wasn't enough to make him forget the caress of real wind, and he didn't feel better now that he was freed from the needs of his mortal body. He didn't ask for this. All he wanted was to understand why. Why, Mithos? What made any of this - Cruxis crystals, splitting the world - sound like a good idea? You always call me a genius, Genis told Lloyd a few days ago (only a few days - why did it seem like forever?) as they were leaving the Tower of Salvation, but I just can't figure him out. And then, no, nothing is wrong. I just... just want to get back and see if Mithos is okay. Why wouldn't he be? Hah, well.
"You said you wanted a world without discrimination," Mithos said. His fingers sifted, stroked into Genis's hair, leaving his scalp to tingle. "I'm trying to give it to you."
"You're killing people," Genis whispered. "They're suffering."
"So? How much have you suffered?"
Raine used to stroke his hair like this. Before Iselia became there home there was a little township called Ligre in the forests just north of Triet, and they'd thrown rocks - sharp ones - when they chased Genis and his sister out. He remembered the bite of a stone shaped like an arrowhead when it grazed his arm. Blood trickled from beneath Raine's hair when they dropped out of sight between the roots of a giant tree, snaking over her temple, across her cheek, her face stiff like cracking stone.
Mithos appeared to guess what he was thinking; his smile faded, turned into a slight frown. The stories they'd traded were too real to be lies. "This world will murder your sister," he said, pulling a long strand of silver hair over Genis's shoulder to look at it, then twist it around his finger. "Just like it did mine. Are you going to let that happen?"
"No." Genis looked down. Pressure built behind his eyes, heat that had nowhere to go. His vision refused to water.
"That's right." Mithos pulled his hair, pulled him forward so their breath mingled and Genis couldn't look away. "Read. Learn. Help me build a world that will not hate our sisters or drive our friends from their homes."
Would that world include Lloyd and Colette, Sheena, Presea--? What about Marble and Alicia, who died for it? What about Regal and Zelos and Seles?
"I won't fight them," Genis said, and wished his voice was stronger.
The line between Mithos's eyebrows smoothed away. "I wouldn't let you anyway."
.
Author: Amber Michelle //
myaruFandom: Tales of Symphonia
Characters: Genis, Mithos
Prompt Set:
7rainbowprompts - violet set, 9 - time to spareGauntlet theme: 08 - in the middle of being partly myself
Rating: K
Words: 1833
Warnings: AU. Not quiiiiite as gen as it could be, depending on how you read, but still not trying for anything else.
Notes: edit? beta? what?
I spent most of this trying to figure Genis out. No word yet on whether I succeeded or not.
..........................................................................
"Vinheim."
Genis turned around. He'd heard footsteps approaching, noted that the door opened, and felt the presence at his back in a way he could only describe as physical - like the warmth of sunshine on his back, or fire. His heart thudded and jumped behind his ribs even though he knew who it was.
Perhaps out of kindness, Mithos did not display his wings. Without their prism shape lighting his hair from the back he looked like a normal half-elf. "This palace is at the center of the facility on Derris Kharlan, just as it would be in a human city." Pink light shimmered through the window and ringed the crown of his blond head. "Does that help?"
The angel who'd attended Genis since he woke hovered behind her master with something folded over her arms - long blue robes, it looked like, trimmed with white and silver like his old clothes. Books, too - red-bound, black-bound, and they looked heavy. "I didn't think they'd actually ask you," Genis said, hooking his fingers on the windowsill. His legs quivered when he thought of moving closer. If this were his Mithos-- if they were at Altessa's house looking out at the rain instead of the storm of Derris Kharlan's atmosphere, there would be no problem. He found himself saying I'm sorry and looking away.
Leave those on the bed, Mithos commanded, and the flap of angel girl's wings ruffled Genis's bangs. He heard her lay the robe out and stack the books on the bedside table, and at some signal he didn't see, she floated over to the door and left. Mithos and his strange heat drew closer; maybe it was an effect of the crystal. His gaze belonged to Yggdrasill; so did the voice, and the narrow face, and the height that didn't seem so tall anymore. "They tell me you broke the window. But-- you didn't try to escape."
Genis's fingers ached from gripping the sill too hard. "I wasn't trying to leave."
Yggdrasill gripped his chin with thumb and forefingers and made Genis turn his face forward. His face belonged to the enemy, and just because it lacked the light of his angelic nature did not mean wasn't still beautiful, familiar - it was all so clear now, the resemblance so obvious. The shape of his green eyes, the way his bangs swept over his forehead, the shape of his nose and mouth. He was looking at Mithos and a stranger at the same time. He wanted to touch the soft blond hair. He wanted to bury his face in Mithos's shoulder and cry.
Could he cry? Colette couldn't. Those stories about angels shedding tears over the world's misfortunes were all a lie.
He could imagine Mithos-the-child doing so. Maybe. A long time ago.
"Come," Mithos said, drawing Genis away from the window with a finger crooked beneath his chin. "I'll help you dress."
*
The further corridors of Vinheim looked very much like the room Genis woke up in: dark stone, pink clouds beyond the glass - and there was so much glass, so many tall windows that stretched as high as the roof of his house in Iselia, and marble statues of winged women with the same face, crowns of leaves and flowers draped on their heads. Was she supposed to be Martel, this statue that repeated at every corner and staircase? Mithos cast a quick glance back at him, but didn't answer.
So maybe it was a dumb question. Genis had his moments - not as often as Lloyd, but it happened-- occasionally. Very occasionally.
Genis kept his head down and his eyes on the crimson carpet they followed as it branched into another, smaller corridor. Finally, some color. Angel girl had said his room was kept plain so he wouldn't be agitated when he woke up, but blue was getting old, and he wished his robes were a different color. Mithos wore white. Kratos never seemed to make up his mind. Genis would put up with anything - black, gray, white, even red or yellow, though he might draw the line at pink. That was Zelos, and Genis would choke himself with a spoon before dressing like the idiot chosen.
He probably didn't have to eat anymore, did he? He hadn't slept since--
A long time. Two days.
No, it might have been three. Being dressed made him feel more awake, but when he made himself think about it - how he felt an hour ago, or a day ago - the difference was miniscule. He ate one meal just after waking up and remembered it tasted like nothing, not because the effect of the Cruxis crystal had kicked in, but because the angels who made it had no sense of taste.
A hand stopped Genis in his tracks, and he jerked his head up to look at Mithos. "You're going to run into something like this."
Genis stared. Then he blinked. "Oh, uh--"
Mithos lifted both eyebrows, and then his forehead furrowed and he sighed with a dramatic roll of his eyes, the kind of gesture that would've looked fine on a child. "Idiot." He opened the door - since when were there doors? Where were they? Genis wrenched his neck around to look back, saw the glow of the great hall a long walk down the passage - and let Mithos grab his wrist, allowed himself to be pulled. "You'll have to get someone else to lead you here next time, then. I can't always leave the control room."
The door drifted closed without any prompting. Bookshelves lined every wall, and the rows of multi-colored bindings stretched all the way to the ceiling. Genis craned his neck back. "Wow." There weren't any windows, but the lamps on the wall burned blue and bright. "Now this is a library."
"It's one of many," Mithos said. "To my knowledge I have a copy of everything officially published in both worlds, and a few things that weren't. So."
Genis let his eyes drift down to the shine of the other's hair and the glimmer of his crystal, then up to his eyes. His stomach cramped. "So?"
"You said there must be another way to realize my dream. Find it." Mithos swept his hair behind one pointed ear. "If you can."
"Are you crazy? That could take years--"
"You have forever." He tapped the crystal through Genis's robes and smiled. "If you're good."
Genis made himself stand still, his arms prickling and the skin between his shoulder-blades itching. Heat flashed across his skin like a summer wind. If he was good. If he was good? "Lloyd isn't going to give you forever." His voice went hoarse when he said his friend's name. "He's - he's probably already on his way here to confront you."
It-- it wasn't like he didn't fight back when Mithos grabbed him that night. Lloyd knew that.
"Me? Just me?" Mithos flicked the jewel harder; his nail thunked against the crest, and then he pulled his hand back and let it hover near his hair as if he meant to flip it back. "Lloyd will look at you and see an angel of Cruxis, not his cowardly friend Genis. If you're patient you might learn to revert to your natural form, but that will take time and effort, and I don't suppose your friends will inquire before they attack what they perceive as a threat-- they didn't when they met me."
Yeah, well, he looked threatening. His smile challenged Genis to say it out loud.
Genis covered the crystal with his hand, pressed his fingertips into the flesh around the crest, but it made no difference to the tight, pulling, aching of his skin. When was it going to stop hurting, anyway? They said he would get used to it - but they said a lot of things, none of which were true: the mana swirling around Derris Kharlan wasn't enough to make him forget the caress of real wind, and he didn't feel better now that he was freed from the needs of his mortal body. He didn't ask for this. All he wanted was to understand why. Why, Mithos? What made any of this - Cruxis crystals, splitting the world - sound like a good idea? You always call me a genius, Genis told Lloyd a few days ago (only a few days - why did it seem like forever?) as they were leaving the Tower of Salvation, but I just can't figure him out. And then, no, nothing is wrong. I just... just want to get back and see if Mithos is okay. Why wouldn't he be? Hah, well.
"You said you wanted a world without discrimination," Mithos said. His fingers sifted, stroked into Genis's hair, leaving his scalp to tingle. "I'm trying to give it to you."
"You're killing people," Genis whispered. "They're suffering."
"So? How much have you suffered?"
Raine used to stroke his hair like this. Before Iselia became there home there was a little township called Ligre in the forests just north of Triet, and they'd thrown rocks - sharp ones - when they chased Genis and his sister out. He remembered the bite of a stone shaped like an arrowhead when it grazed his arm. Blood trickled from beneath Raine's hair when they dropped out of sight between the roots of a giant tree, snaking over her temple, across her cheek, her face stiff like cracking stone.
Mithos appeared to guess what he was thinking; his smile faded, turned into a slight frown. The stories they'd traded were too real to be lies. "This world will murder your sister," he said, pulling a long strand of silver hair over Genis's shoulder to look at it, then twist it around his finger. "Just like it did mine. Are you going to let that happen?"
"No." Genis looked down. Pressure built behind his eyes, heat that had nowhere to go. His vision refused to water.
"That's right." Mithos pulled his hair, pulled him forward so their breath mingled and Genis couldn't look away. "Read. Learn. Help me build a world that will not hate our sisters or drive our friends from their homes."
Would that world include Lloyd and Colette, Sheena, Presea--? What about Marble and Alicia, who died for it? What about Regal and Zelos and Seles?
"I won't fight them," Genis said, and wished his voice was stronger.
The line between Mithos's eyebrows smoothed away. "I wouldn't let you anyway."
.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 04:02 pm (UTC)I'm happy I found this even though I wasn't looking for it. My favorite parts are near the beginning, such as where Genis finds echoes of Mithos in Yggdrasill, probably because while the story develops well, it also develops in a way so close to the game's flow that I feel like I've read it all before. That could be a good thing, though. It shows how uniform it is with the style of the game and how well it fits in.
Gen or not, before I hit the actual explanation, my mind was blinking, "Sex slave? ... Sex slave?"no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 04:57 am (UTC)Yes, sex slave. I mean... no. I mean.Symphonia fandom left me with the same disappointment. I like most of the characters, but what I wanted to see most - more Mithos and Genis - is so rare, and often not very well-written to begin with. The potential for a Genis-joins-Mithos AU is so obvious that I can't believe I only found one fic that took advantage of it.
On that note, that feeling of repetition bothered me as well, maybe for different reasons. It's why I haven't added anything to this AU. I'm afraid of treading over ground those few Mithos-Genis writers have already walked, or somehow not making it believable enough, or different enough.