[Xenogears] Reflection
May. 19th, 2009 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreReflection
By: Amber Michelle
Prompt: xeric
Character(s): Krelian
Words: 618
For:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nyuna
......................................................
Sometimes Krelian thought of how close he'd come to killing Sophia that night, five centuries ago, when the monastery's terra cotta floors ran with blood, and his mouth would run dry. She'd wanted to die; she always took her own life so lightly, assigning it less worth than that of an ignorant farmer's wife or the least of soldiers. She always said her words weren't what led Nisan on the right path - instead it was an innate sense of morality within each person, the essential good that existed somewhere beneath the conditioning of society. Nor was God an object to be found, Sophia said, but an aspect of self to be realized.
Krelian wished he'd killed her at times. He might have moved on, and lived miserably perhaps, but nevertheless been in control of his actions and their consequences. She destroyed her own dreams - and his, and Lacan's, and those of countless others.
Sometimes, he dared to label her actions as thoughtless and deserving of censure.
When the time came to meet her reincarnation face to face, he felt parched and hot, dizzy and exhausted while he opened the correct program at his workstation and recalibrated the cell scanner. She looked somewhat different - she always did, Miang said. Elhaym was taller than Abel. Kim's counterpart was frail and pallid, suffering from radiation poisoning. He rejected her, you know, when he realized she wouldn't give him any children - as if fate would allow them a legacy. How typical, Krelian thought when she related what she knew of the story. It seemed Lacan was a fool by design.
Elly was not Sophia. He knew it the moment she opened her eyes in his laboratory. Her hair was darker, a light brown with red tones, rather than the burnished bronze of Sophia's hair. Her eyes were paler. She was taller, her hands were hardened with calluses. Her slender frame was corded with muscle, instead of the softness of her former incarnation. If he had cared for her body in that fashion, he supposed Elly would have been more attractive than the woman he knew, who was weak and prone to illness. Sophia wheezed and strained to breathe after only a few dozen yards of running - a weakness in her lungs for which he and Melchoir labored weeks to find a cure.
This one - she ran. Even in the dark she ran-- against walls she couldn't see, bounding away from them with the strength of her arms a hair before her pursuer reached her. She knew the pattern on which the palace corridors were based and felt her way through them in the dark as a good spy should - if fate had not betrayed her, she would have been one of their best special operatives.
But Fate did betray her. And when she opened her eyes, when her lashes flickered in recognition, Elly strained against her bonds with wide eyes, and the readouts showed the quickening of her heart rate.
Perhaps he couldn't have harmed Sophia even now, though her participation in the resurrection was necessary. But Fate did not require him to make that decision; it was Elly chained to his table, fear tensing her jaw and straining her voice when she called him commander. She was merely a reflection.
A vivid, living, breathing reflection.
Still, her gaze left Krelian's mouth dry and his words jumbled in his throat. So he turned his back on her, strode to the console, and reminded himself she wasn't Sophia - and never would be.
.
By: Amber Michelle
Prompt: xeric
Character(s): Krelian
Words: 618
For:
nyuna......................................................
Sometimes Krelian thought of how close he'd come to killing Sophia that night, five centuries ago, when the monastery's terra cotta floors ran with blood, and his mouth would run dry. She'd wanted to die; she always took her own life so lightly, assigning it less worth than that of an ignorant farmer's wife or the least of soldiers. She always said her words weren't what led Nisan on the right path - instead it was an innate sense of morality within each person, the essential good that existed somewhere beneath the conditioning of society. Nor was God an object to be found, Sophia said, but an aspect of self to be realized.
Krelian wished he'd killed her at times. He might have moved on, and lived miserably perhaps, but nevertheless been in control of his actions and their consequences. She destroyed her own dreams - and his, and Lacan's, and those of countless others.
Sometimes, he dared to label her actions as thoughtless and deserving of censure.
When the time came to meet her reincarnation face to face, he felt parched and hot, dizzy and exhausted while he opened the correct program at his workstation and recalibrated the cell scanner. She looked somewhat different - she always did, Miang said. Elhaym was taller than Abel. Kim's counterpart was frail and pallid, suffering from radiation poisoning. He rejected her, you know, when he realized she wouldn't give him any children - as if fate would allow them a legacy. How typical, Krelian thought when she related what she knew of the story. It seemed Lacan was a fool by design.
Elly was not Sophia. He knew it the moment she opened her eyes in his laboratory. Her hair was darker, a light brown with red tones, rather than the burnished bronze of Sophia's hair. Her eyes were paler. She was taller, her hands were hardened with calluses. Her slender frame was corded with muscle, instead of the softness of her former incarnation. If he had cared for her body in that fashion, he supposed Elly would have been more attractive than the woman he knew, who was weak and prone to illness. Sophia wheezed and strained to breathe after only a few dozen yards of running - a weakness in her lungs for which he and Melchoir labored weeks to find a cure.
This one - she ran. Even in the dark she ran-- against walls she couldn't see, bounding away from them with the strength of her arms a hair before her pursuer reached her. She knew the pattern on which the palace corridors were based and felt her way through them in the dark as a good spy should - if fate had not betrayed her, she would have been one of their best special operatives.
But Fate did betray her. And when she opened her eyes, when her lashes flickered in recognition, Elly strained against her bonds with wide eyes, and the readouts showed the quickening of her heart rate.
Perhaps he couldn't have harmed Sophia even now, though her participation in the resurrection was necessary. But Fate did not require him to make that decision; it was Elly chained to his table, fear tensing her jaw and straining her voice when she called him commander. She was merely a reflection.
A vivid, living, breathing reflection.
Still, her gaze left Krelian's mouth dry and his words jumbled in his throat. So he turned his back on her, strode to the console, and reminded himself she wasn't Sophia - and never would be.
.