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Because of the Cruxis Crystal, Kratos can’t sleep. It had bothered Anna at first – she thought it was unfair, a sign that everything about being an angel was wrong, and Kratos agreed with her. Even if he removes it, he can’t sleep – his body is so changed by the prolonged exposure that he’s not sure he could ever go back to being wholly human again. When Anna first discovered it, she’d been angry for him, and tried to stay up and keep him company. He’d had to make her sleep, and assure her time and again that it was alright, that he didn’t mind. Eventually she’d come to believe him, and now she’s even thankful.
Lloyd isn’t a fussy baby, but even he wakes up at all hours of the night. Kratos can always get to him before Anna wakes, and it’s a relief to her – they’re on the run after all, and her being sleep deprived would hardly be a good idea. All Kratos has to do is hold Lloyd and tuck him against his chest, so Lloyd can hear Kratos’ heartbeat, and that usually sends him back to sleep again, if it’s not food he wants. Kratos- well, he doesn’t have the words for how happy it makes him. How happy Lloyd makes him. He’d never thought he’d have a child, even when he’d met Anna. Even when he’d married her.
On the nights when Lloyd simply won’t sleep, Kratos leaves Noishe on guard duty and climbs to the highest place around, and he holds Lloyd close and looks up to the stars and tells him about the constellations. They’ve changed over time, and the stories about them have changed too, so Kratos has a lot of stories.
Anna will often wake up and find them both in a tree, Lloyd fast asleep and Kratos still murmuring softly about the Tethe’allan sky.
Lloyd’s ceiling is the stars, for the first few months of his life, and when they do stay at an inn or a church, he grizzles and grumbles and refuses to settle until Kratos takes him out onto the roof. He’s remarkably resilient for a baby, and even when he does catch a cold, Kratos can easily heal him. Anna thinks he’s silly about it, over-protective in the extreme, but she smiles fondly whenever she sees it.
“You’re a good father,” she tells him. She manages to get a painter to make a miniature for them, and mounts it in a locket. “So you never forget us.”
“How could I?” Kratos asks in return, holding her tight. “How could I ever?”
He wears the locket around his neck, hidden under his clothes, and never takes it off.
When Lloyd is bigger, walking and talking, he sits on Kratos’ shoulders and they walk out at night and look up at the sky. They can’t go to Tethe’alla, so there are some constellations they can never see, but Kratos tells Lloyd all about the Sylvarant stars. Lloyd loves it; it’s one of his most favourite things to do, to the extent that he always wants it to be bedtime, because then Kratos will tell him fantastical stories about the heroes in the sky. Sometimes, Kratos half thinks Lloyd believes Kratos put the stars up there, just so Lloyd will have countless stories to hear.
Anna calls him his daddy’s little boy, and Lloyd doesn’t even try to deny it.
The first time Lloyd sees Kratos’ wings is when he’s tried to climb a tree by himself. He isn’t very high off the ground, but the branch he’s on is far too thin to support Kratos’ weight, and Anna is buying supplies in the nearest town. He goes wide eyed and stops crying, and all but leaps into Kratos’ arms when he’s near enough. When they’re on the ground, he wriggles over Kratos’ shoulder and tries to touch them – instead of being upset when his hand goes almost through them, he shrieks with delight.
“Daddy, you’re magic,” Lloyd tells him, and Kratos smiles and sets Lloyd down so he can see them better. By the time Anna comes back, trailed by Noishe, Lloyd is demanding to be flown everywhere, and can’t get enough of Kratos’ wings.
He takes Lloyd flying sometimes. Not as often as Lloyd would like, but they’re still running from Cruxis and the Desians, even if Lloyd doesn’t understand that. Anna sometimes says it would be nice to settle down, her voice wistful, and Kratos wishes they could because it’s no life for a child, to always be running. Lloyd doesn’t agree in the slightest, but then again, he hasn’t seen what they’re running from. To him, living outside and never staying in one place long is normal. It’s safe. And Kratos wants it to stay that way.
But one day, the Desians catch Anna near Iselia, and Kratos knows what they’re going to do to her.
“We’ll get Mummy back, Lloyd,” Kratos promises Lloyd. “Don’t leave Noishe.”
“Okay,” Lloyd says, and even though he’s obviously scared. He clings tightly to Noishe’s fur, and stays quiet. Kratos reaches Anna before they can remove her exsphere, and he tells her to run, yells at her to run, run now, and Anna does. Noishe follows right after, but so do more Desians. So does Kvar.
They must catch Anna again, but Kratos doesn’t see it. He reaches her just as she’s transforming, and Lloyd is watching wide eyed and terrified.
“M-Mummy,” Lloyd says, slipping from Noishe’s back.
Kratos lands in front of him and scoops him back up. “Lloyd. Go with Noishe. Stay on him, don’t let go for any reason. Mummy and I will be back soon.” It’s the first time he’s ever lied to Lloyd.
Noishe runs then, because Noishe knows to, but Anna gets to her feet, swaying and moaning and she’s faster than Kratos is expecting – or maybe he’s just slower than usual, because she’s Anna and-
One of the Desians must catch Noishe, because there’s a yell from Lloyd, and Anna heads towards it and Kratos has no choice but to follow. He gets there just as she’s swinging her massive claws at Noishe, and Lloyd screams high and terrible, and it snaps her back to herself.
Kill me, she asks of Kratos, and thank you when he does.
She falls with Lloyd and Noishe, and the Desians try to follow after. But Kratos is furious and hurting, and he calls lightning down from the sky, and he fights with the fury of a thousand angels, and when he’s done not one of them is alive. He jumps off the cliff, and he runs as fast as he can, and he calls for them both, desperate-
But all he can find is Lloyd’s shoe and Anna’s corpse.
The world is ripped from beneath Kratos’ feet, and remade into a new and terrible thing.
Mithos’ agents find him there, kneeling in Anna’s blood and cradling Lloyd’s shoe. He doesn’t react when they haul him upright, or when they take him back to Derris-Kharlan. He doesn’t react when Mithos asks, “Did you really think you could escape me? Did you really think I’d let you?”
He doesn’t react when Yuan clasps his shoulder and says, softly, “I’m sorry.”
Mithos takes the shoe from him then, and Kratos starts, reaching for it- his fingers are singed by the sudden fire, and Mithos says, “You won’t need this anymore.”
Kratos never remembers drawing his sword. He never remembers the grief stricken, animal noise he made as he swung it. He never remembers the sword slicing cleanly over Mithos’ cheek, the cries of shock that resulted. He never remembers his fingers going limp and his sword falling from his grasp.
His eyes track the ashes of Lloyd’s shoe, and it feels like the ashes of his whole world. An angel crushes them into the ground beneath his boot. Mithos raises a hand to his face, his fingers touching blood. A drop hits the floor and Mithos says, “You overstep your bounds.”
Kratos does not care. The angels pull him to his feet again, and he’s led away from the lavish rooms of Mithos’ domain. He’s led down to the darker, harsher rooms, and he’s locked away. They push him into a room with no windows and they bolt the door behind him.
He doesn’t speak for a year. He doesn’t eat or sleep, and he drinks only when he remembers to. The pattern on the locket Anna gave him is rubbed clean away and the clasp refuses to click shut properly. He thinks he’ll have to get it reframed. A new locket and chain. When he’s finally released, he tucks it back under his clothes. The metal is warm against his skin.
Mithos does not ask if Kratos is recovered. He does not ask if Kratos has forgotten, or if he’s coping. He just says, “Exsphere production is up in Sylvarant. And they still demand more in Tethe’alla!” He sounds excited about it. Joyous. Kratos inclines his head, and listens silently to Mithos’ continued plans to revive Martel.
Across from him, Yuan’s face is carefully blank. Mithos does not notice when Yuan slips out, and Kratos does not tell.
When Mithos dismisses him, Kratos walks to the edge of Derris-Kharlan and contemplates jumping. Removing his Cruxis Crystal beforehand, or on the way down. Drawing his wings out and watching the mana bleed out of them. Falling through the mana of Derris-Kharlan and the atmosphere of the planet below, burning bright like a falling star. He contemplates holding Anna again. He contemplates holding Lloyd again, mussing his hair.
He contemplates dying.
“I wouldn’t let you,” Mithos comments. His adult form. The words are light, but the promise is still there.
“I know,” Kratos replies. He walks away.
The next day, Pronyma informs Mithos that the Asgard human ranch is exceeding its quota by twenty-eight per cent, and asks if they should cut back. Mithos looks at Kratos and says, “No.”
Even if Kratos did die, there’s no-one to wield the Eternal Sword in Mithos’ place. No-one Kratos would trust to do so – the Chosen of Tethe’alla shows promise as a swordsman, but he’s too young yet and there’s no guarantee he’d want to help. He’d have every reason not to.
So he falls into line, and he follows Mithos’ orders and he exists.
Mithos sends him to watch over Sylvarant’s Chosen – “She has a higher chance of being compatible than most of them have,” Mithos says – and he gets there in time to fight the Renegades. They dress like Desians here, and Kratos has little difficulty cutting them down. He’s done it before. Mithos has little patience for traitors.
“Stay back,” Kratos tells a boy in red; he doesn’t pay attention when the boy starts to shout at him, focusing instead on the giant of a man aiming to kill him.
When the other man falls, the civilians – the Chosen herself, an old woman, a boy with a shock of white hair as well as the one in red – all stare at him in awe. The Chosen thanks him, and begins to go into the temple, only pausing when the boy in red says he’ll accompany her.
“Lloyd,” the old woman says. Lloyd.
“Your name is... Lloyd?” Kratos asks, and it’s like his heart is beating for the first time in fourteen years.
“You should give your name first,” the boy – Lloyd – replies, but he doesn’t deny his name. All through the temple, it’s all Kratos can think of. He can’t be sure. Lloyd is dead. This is the truth he’s lived with these past years.
But there’s a grave outside Lloyd’s house, and the name on it is Anna.
It hurts that Lloyd doesn’t recognise him. That Lloyd calls another man Dad. It’s like splinters of ice in Kratos’ chest, but there are less of them now than there were when he thought Lloyd was dead. But maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better that Lloyd doesn’t know, and that everyone assumes he’s dead.
If Mithos knew Lloyd was alive, then Kratos doesn’t doubt he’d use Lloyd to keep Kratos loyal. He doesn’t doubt that Mithos would hurt Lloyd if it would keep Kratos compliant.
He’s glad that Colette chooses to leave Lloyd behind. He’s glad that Lloyd is away from him – but of course Lloyd follows. And of course, the Renegades catch him. Someone must know, Kratos assumes. Someone, somewhere, has discovered that Lloyd is alive, and that Kratos knows.
He can’t send Lloyd back, and he can’t leave Lloyd behind, so he agrees to let Lloyd accompany them instead. The Chosen’s mood improves, and the Professor seems happy to have her brother with her, so Kratos lets it be. He teaches Lloyd when he can. Lloyd’s excitable and takes half of everything Kratos says as an attack and it’s-
It’s different to how it used to be. It’s different to when Lloyd was little and naïve, and believed Kratos hung the stars in the sky. It’s so different it hurts, but sometimes Lloyd is so much the same that it hurts even more.
He still won’t eat tomatoes. Anna would have been so disappointed.
Some nights – the early nights, before Colette loses the ability to sleep – Kratos wants to ask Lloyd to watch the stars with him. But he can’t. They’d know something was wrong, that something wasn’t as Kratos was saying it was. The Professor doesn’t trust him anyway. He has to be Kratos the mercenary towards them. He can’t be the Kratos who was Lloyd’s father.
He climbs trees when everyone’s asleep, and he tells himself all the stories he never told Lloyd. All the stories he never will tell Lloyd.
When he betrays them in the Tower, his heart is full of apologies.
Twice now, he thinks, twice now I’ve lied to you.
His intentions don’t matter here. All that matters is that now, Lloyd will see him and think traitor.
He begins to collect the materials that will allow Lloyd to wield the Eternal Sword. There is no-one else he can ask – he considers, briefly, asking if Tethe’alla’s Chosen will wield it. But Zelos Wilder is a hard man to read, even for Kratos, and a man he’s not sure he can trust.
He has little choice about it in the end.
And Zelos knows about Cruxis already, has been working with Pronyma since he was a child. He’s hardened and cynical already, and the only reason Kratos needs him is because he can move freely without much suspicion, where Kratos is watched near constantly.
He thinks Mithos suspects. Perhaps Mithos even knows.
Sometimes, rarely, Kratos misses the idealistic fourteen year old he met four thousand years ago. But that Mithos has been dead a long, long time.
When Yuan tells Lloyd, Kratos despairs. It’s over, he thinks. He’s always known how his life would end, known it since the day he sealed Origin with his life. But now- now he can go through with it. The hope he’s been carrying these past few months, drains easily and quickly away. He’s glad. He’s glad Lloyd is alive and he is glad Lloyd will live, but Kratos can’t anymore.
His wife is dead. His son has rejected him. His best friend has betrayed him and his protégé is tearing the world apart with his grief.
Acceptance is such a relief Kratos almost smiles. As long as Lloyd is okay, nothing else matters.
He doesn’t want Lloyd to kill him, but he does want to die. When Yuan saves him again, it’s a further betrayal, and even Lloyd’s words don’t lessen the sting of it. He waits with Dirk, uneasy, and he spends long hours sitting beside Anna’s grave.
“This is the closest I will ever be to you again,” he says. “Forgive me.”
He means to ask the same of Lloyd when they return, but the words never quite escape him. Instead he gives Lloyd the locket, and he says, “Don’t die before I do, Lloyd, my son,” and then he runs.
When he leaves in Derris-Kharlan, Kratos is leaving the constellations behind him. They’ll never be the same again, and there will be no new stories for him to hear.
He tells the angels to leave him be, and he descends into the heart of Derris-Kharlan and he thinks to himself, as long as I am alive, Lloyd will never die, and it isn’t much but it’s enough.
He sinks into slumber for the first time in over four thousand years, and he hopes he never wakes up again.