Kratos/Anna Multipart, Chapter 6
Jul. 31st, 2006 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seikilosTitle: Currently untitled
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: PG-13; later chapters may hit R.
Summary: One woman's take on the untold love story between Kratos and Anna.
Chapter Title: 6 - Two Weeks
Chapter Rating: PG
Words in Chapter: 2336
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia.
Author's Notes: The rate at which I'm writing chapters will probably slow down over the next few weeks, just to warn you all, since I'm coming to the end of the material that was exactly written out in my head. I'll probably still write fairly quickly, especially for me, but not at the same chapter-a-day rate.
The next week of meetings was both sweet and bitter for Kratos. Understanding the changes in both his attitude toward Anna and himself was a comfort and gave him a deep sense of pleasure he had not experienced for far too long, but at the same time, he found himself wanting to add a new dimension to his relationship with Anna. It was almost a craving, and it turned his contact with Anna at the end of every meeting into a test of his self-control. It had been iron for centuries, but iron could and did rust.
He knew that, if their relationship were to change, it would have to be Anna to create that change. He could not take the next step, not now that he knew what had happened to her. She would only think him like the others were he the one to make the change—only worse. He had given her a chance to like him and enjoy his company. If he made any move at all, it would be a betrayal.
That was what he told himself. The other reason for his hesitation, the one he refused to think about, was simple.
For the first time in so very long, Kratos was afraid. He was afraid of the woman seated across from him, the woman who was seated across from him and talking about swimming in the lake as a child. If she rejected him, it would be the end of the new world he had found in her company.
He had made himself vulnerable and yet he found it did not bother him in the slightest.
“Kratos, are you even listening to what I’m saying?” Anna asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Anna,” he apologised. “I was thinking.”
“Could you pick a different time to do your thinking, then?” She smiled to take away any sting the words might have held. Her smile wavered slightly and her voice seemed a little forced, but Kratos, wrapped up in his own concerns, did not notice.
Instead, after a moment more of dismissing his thoughts, he sighed quietly. “Perhaps it would be best if we continued the conversation after I asked the necessary questions.”
“All right.” Anna sat back in her chair. “Although at this point, you don’t need to bother asking the questions. I could ask them myself, really.”
“Perhaps if you simply gave your answers without waiting for the questions, this portion of our time together would go more quickly,” he suggested.
Anna shrugged. “Why not?” Then she started talking.
Kratos copied down her report quickly. He was right; it was faster this way. He should have thought of this sooner.
When Anna was done, Kratos set down his pen and picked up Anna’s hand, as always. He moved through this part of their session as quickly as possible, before he found himself longing for more than that brief contact.
When he finished, their conversation resumed. For some reason, however, it seemed stilted and awkward. Eventually, after the fourth long silence in ten minutes, Kratos got up to go summon the Desians to take Anna back to her cell.
However, Anna stood as well. “Wait, Kratos, please.”
He turned to look at her, eyebrows raised in a question.
Anna took one step, then another. Then she closed the distance between the two of them so that they were standing with barely two inches of space between each other. Anna reached up and circled her arms around Kratos’ neck. His heartbeat began to speed up.
“I—there’s been something I wanted to do for a while now,” she said softly, rising to stand on the tips of her toes. “But I wasn’t sure if you wanted to as well. Then, last week, I realised that you probably want the same thing I do.”
“And that is?” Kratos asked in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. Their faces were so close now.
“This.” Anna closed the last little gap between them and kissed him.
Kratos closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Anna’s waist, drawing her closer. Pleasure shot through him as her lips moved against his. For one brief moment, worry mixed in with his pleasure—it had been so long since he had last kissed anyone that it was as if he had never kissed anyone at all—but then, fragments of memory began to come back to him and he slowly kissed her back. Their kisses began to grow faster and more passionate—
—until something else crossed his mind.
He made himself break away. “Anna, wait.”
“What is it, Kratos?” She looked up at him, confused.
Kratos forced his eyes away from where Anna’s chest rose and fell with her slightly accelerated breathing. He walked over to the door and pressed a button on a panel to the right of it. A section of the wall slide into a hidden socket, revealing a keypad. Kratos punched in a brief code and a clicking sound came from the general direction of the door.
He walked back over to Anna and held her close once more. “The door has now been locked from the inside. The only way this door can now be unlocked is via the control room.”
“Oh.” Anna gave him a relieved smile. Her smile grew as Kratos bent his head and kissed her once again.
Their kisses continued to grow more passionate. Anna ran her fingers through Kratos’ hair again and again while his hands stroked down her back, pulling her tight against him. The feel of her figure against him—usually concealed by the loose grey uniform of the human prisoners—combined with the way she was nipping and licking at his lower lip gave him so much pleasure that, with something approaching amazement, he found he was getting an erection.
As soon as Anna must have felt it, though, she broke her kiss and stepped away. It took only a moment for him to realise why she had done so. When he had, he compressed his lips and any lingering desire in him faded away.
She fisted her hands at her side. “I’m sorry, Kratos, it’s just—”
Kratos shook his head and gently rested his hands on her shoulders. “There is nothing to apologise for. We will go at the pace you are comfortable with.”
She looked up at him with frustration on her face and tears shining at the edges of her eyes. “It’s stupid of me, I know. You’re not them—you’re nothing like them and I want this, but. . . .”
He cupped her cheek with his hand and felt her lean into it slightly. He watched her close her eyes.
The words came out almost before he had thought of them. But as soon as he had said them, he knew they were the right words. “I’m going to take you away from this place.”
Anna’s eyes snapped open and she looked at him with such hungry, desperate hope that he felt a deep pang of guilt for not thinking of this sooner.
He went on. “I only need some time to plan and to carry out whatever plan I come up with.” He paused, then said in a gentle voice. “Two weeks is all I will need. I promise you that in two weeks, I will take you away from this place forever, and I will never let them take you back. Can you wait that long?”
“I can.” Determination was obvious in her voice and face. “Now that there’s an end in sight to this, I can wait. It will be hard, though.”
“I know.” He did not know, though, and he was aware of it. “Try. For my sake, and for yours.”
“I will. I swear it.” She looked up at him, and the soft look he loved came onto her face. “I seal my vow thus.”
She stood on the tips of her toes again and kissed him. This time, her body touched his only gingerly, and Kratos held her only lightly, but it did not matter to him. All that did was she was there and she loved him as he loved her.
* * *
Kratos sat in a room in the uppermost floor of a tall building in Welgaia and copied out his diary.
This was something he had to do periodically. He had chronicled his life for almost four thousand years; paper crumbled to dust far sooner than that. Therefore, every once in a while, Kratos would sit down with one of his older diaries and transfer its contents to a new book.
The diary he was working on was one from over two thousand, four hundred years ago. He had copied it out several times before, but his most recent recopying was beginning to fade and the pages were growing fragile.
As he worked, he constructed the framework of a plan to free Anna from her prison. It was far easier for him to rescue her than it would be for most, in that Kratos had access to supplies the average person did not.
He had hit one snag already. Eventually, it would become obvious who had freed Anna if Kratos took her away and then returned to Cruxis. Inquiries would find none of the Desians to blame and would soon turn to the one who had the most contact with her. As well, Anna would be unable to protect herself from recapture if left on her own, and she might not be able to travel fast enough to elude the mana signature-tracking half-elven soldiers. The only solution he had found was for him to leave Cruxis and travel with Anna to protect her.
The thought was an unexpectedly good one. Derris-Kharlan seemed a dead place now where he had not noticed before. The cruelty of the Desians, something he had been able to ignore before he had seen its results in a woman he loved, was something that disgusted him now. Being a part of it disgusted him even more.
To leave Derris-Kharlan and live with Anna, even if that life was one of constant flight—
The door behind him slid open, interrupting his thoughts. Though Kratos was the only one who knew the password to his rooms of diaries, he had forgotten to lock the door behind him. He turned to see Yuan stepping through the doorway.
“Kratos.” Yuan leaned against a bookshelf and folded his arms.
“Yuan.” Kratos went back to copying out his diary. Yuan had been attempting to kill Kratos for nearly a thousand years, but Derris-Kharlan was neutral ground. Kratos knew Yuan would be risking far more than he would gain if he attempted to murder Kratos right under the nose of Yggdrasill, and so he felt confident in turning his back.
“I see you’re back to copying out your diaries again,” Yuan commented.
Kratos nodded and kept working. Yuan observed him for a few moments.
“You’ve changed quite a bit in the past half year, Kratos,” he said bluntly.
“Have I?”
Kratos’ heart rate sped up just a bit. Yuan was more observant than Yggdrasill and more difficult to fool. The likelihood of him finding out the cause was fairly high—if Kratos was unable to conceal it with his eroded emotional control.
“You have. I didn’t notice it at first, but you’re becoming less and less like those machines every day,” Yuan said, referring to the other angels.
Kratos set his pen aside and turned in his chair. He raised an eyebrow. “I am amazed you are able to observe any supposed changes at all, Yuan, considering how often you’re here. On that note, what are you doing here right now?”
Yuan showed no visible signs of irritation, although the emotion appeared very slightly in his voice. “I’ve been examining the plans for the newest sentry robot in our Murder series.”
“You always were interested in magitechnology. Particularly magitechnological weapons,” Kratos added, once again raising his eyebrow.
Yuan could not have failed to miss Kratos’ implications. “Hmph. That’s beside the point. You can’t deny you’ve changed, Kratos.” A cynical look found its way onto Yuan’s face. “You’ve started acting like a human being, not an angel. I’d be interested to find out why.”
It was past time for that door of conversation to close.
“How are your Renegades?” Kratos asked, once again counting on Yuan not to miss the implication of his question.
“Fine. Just fine.” He gave Kratos a sardonic look. “I imagine they’ll be overthrowing Cruxis any day now.”
Kratos returned it with a blank one. “I will look forward to that day.”
“I’m sure you will.” Yuan snorted softly. He unfolded his arms and straightened. “I’ll leave you to your work. I’m certain you have plenty of diaries left to copy.”
“Goodbye, Yuan.”
Kratos watched the man who had once been his closest friend nod at him, turn, and leave, the metal doors sliding shut behind him. He felt a pang of regret at what had become of their relationship. Before, so long ago that only wisps of memory remained, they had been inseparable. Now, they were hostile strangers, one bent upon killing the other.
Briefly, Kratos envied Yuan, entertained the thought of perhaps joining his Renegades once he had rescued Anna. He knew it was a foolish, vain hope, however. Now that he found himself daily more sympathetic to Yuan’s cause, he knew that bringing Anna to them would be a death curse, as it would draw the Desians to their doors.
That was, of course, provided the Renegades did not use their magitechnological patrol robots to shoot the both of them dead on sight. Kratos’ face was no doubt known to every soldier in that army, from the freshest recruits to Yuan’s second-in-command.
Letting out his breath in a sigh, Kratos returned to copying out his diary and planning Anna’s rescue, pushing any thoughts of his former true friend out of his mind.
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: PG-13; later chapters may hit R.
Summary: One woman's take on the untold love story between Kratos and Anna.
Chapter Title: 6 - Two Weeks
Chapter Rating: PG
Words in Chapter: 2336
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia.
Author's Notes: The rate at which I'm writing chapters will probably slow down over the next few weeks, just to warn you all, since I'm coming to the end of the material that was exactly written out in my head. I'll probably still write fairly quickly, especially for me, but not at the same chapter-a-day rate.
The next week of meetings was both sweet and bitter for Kratos. Understanding the changes in both his attitude toward Anna and himself was a comfort and gave him a deep sense of pleasure he had not experienced for far too long, but at the same time, he found himself wanting to add a new dimension to his relationship with Anna. It was almost a craving, and it turned his contact with Anna at the end of every meeting into a test of his self-control. It had been iron for centuries, but iron could and did rust.
He knew that, if their relationship were to change, it would have to be Anna to create that change. He could not take the next step, not now that he knew what had happened to her. She would only think him like the others were he the one to make the change—only worse. He had given her a chance to like him and enjoy his company. If he made any move at all, it would be a betrayal.
That was what he told himself. The other reason for his hesitation, the one he refused to think about, was simple.
For the first time in so very long, Kratos was afraid. He was afraid of the woman seated across from him, the woman who was seated across from him and talking about swimming in the lake as a child. If she rejected him, it would be the end of the new world he had found in her company.
He had made himself vulnerable and yet he found it did not bother him in the slightest.
“Kratos, are you even listening to what I’m saying?” Anna asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Anna,” he apologised. “I was thinking.”
“Could you pick a different time to do your thinking, then?” She smiled to take away any sting the words might have held. Her smile wavered slightly and her voice seemed a little forced, but Kratos, wrapped up in his own concerns, did not notice.
Instead, after a moment more of dismissing his thoughts, he sighed quietly. “Perhaps it would be best if we continued the conversation after I asked the necessary questions.”
“All right.” Anna sat back in her chair. “Although at this point, you don’t need to bother asking the questions. I could ask them myself, really.”
“Perhaps if you simply gave your answers without waiting for the questions, this portion of our time together would go more quickly,” he suggested.
Anna shrugged. “Why not?” Then she started talking.
Kratos copied down her report quickly. He was right; it was faster this way. He should have thought of this sooner.
When Anna was done, Kratos set down his pen and picked up Anna’s hand, as always. He moved through this part of their session as quickly as possible, before he found himself longing for more than that brief contact.
When he finished, their conversation resumed. For some reason, however, it seemed stilted and awkward. Eventually, after the fourth long silence in ten minutes, Kratos got up to go summon the Desians to take Anna back to her cell.
However, Anna stood as well. “Wait, Kratos, please.”
He turned to look at her, eyebrows raised in a question.
Anna took one step, then another. Then she closed the distance between the two of them so that they were standing with barely two inches of space between each other. Anna reached up and circled her arms around Kratos’ neck. His heartbeat began to speed up.
“I—there’s been something I wanted to do for a while now,” she said softly, rising to stand on the tips of her toes. “But I wasn’t sure if you wanted to as well. Then, last week, I realised that you probably want the same thing I do.”
“And that is?” Kratos asked in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. Their faces were so close now.
“This.” Anna closed the last little gap between them and kissed him.
Kratos closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Anna’s waist, drawing her closer. Pleasure shot through him as her lips moved against his. For one brief moment, worry mixed in with his pleasure—it had been so long since he had last kissed anyone that it was as if he had never kissed anyone at all—but then, fragments of memory began to come back to him and he slowly kissed her back. Their kisses began to grow faster and more passionate—
—until something else crossed his mind.
He made himself break away. “Anna, wait.”
“What is it, Kratos?” She looked up at him, confused.
Kratos forced his eyes away from where Anna’s chest rose and fell with her slightly accelerated breathing. He walked over to the door and pressed a button on a panel to the right of it. A section of the wall slide into a hidden socket, revealing a keypad. Kratos punched in a brief code and a clicking sound came from the general direction of the door.
He walked back over to Anna and held her close once more. “The door has now been locked from the inside. The only way this door can now be unlocked is via the control room.”
“Oh.” Anna gave him a relieved smile. Her smile grew as Kratos bent his head and kissed her once again.
Their kisses continued to grow more passionate. Anna ran her fingers through Kratos’ hair again and again while his hands stroked down her back, pulling her tight against him. The feel of her figure against him—usually concealed by the loose grey uniform of the human prisoners—combined with the way she was nipping and licking at his lower lip gave him so much pleasure that, with something approaching amazement, he found he was getting an erection.
As soon as Anna must have felt it, though, she broke her kiss and stepped away. It took only a moment for him to realise why she had done so. When he had, he compressed his lips and any lingering desire in him faded away.
She fisted her hands at her side. “I’m sorry, Kratos, it’s just—”
Kratos shook his head and gently rested his hands on her shoulders. “There is nothing to apologise for. We will go at the pace you are comfortable with.”
She looked up at him with frustration on her face and tears shining at the edges of her eyes. “It’s stupid of me, I know. You’re not them—you’re nothing like them and I want this, but. . . .”
He cupped her cheek with his hand and felt her lean into it slightly. He watched her close her eyes.
The words came out almost before he had thought of them. But as soon as he had said them, he knew they were the right words. “I’m going to take you away from this place.”
Anna’s eyes snapped open and she looked at him with such hungry, desperate hope that he felt a deep pang of guilt for not thinking of this sooner.
He went on. “I only need some time to plan and to carry out whatever plan I come up with.” He paused, then said in a gentle voice. “Two weeks is all I will need. I promise you that in two weeks, I will take you away from this place forever, and I will never let them take you back. Can you wait that long?”
“I can.” Determination was obvious in her voice and face. “Now that there’s an end in sight to this, I can wait. It will be hard, though.”
“I know.” He did not know, though, and he was aware of it. “Try. For my sake, and for yours.”
“I will. I swear it.” She looked up at him, and the soft look he loved came onto her face. “I seal my vow thus.”
She stood on the tips of her toes again and kissed him. This time, her body touched his only gingerly, and Kratos held her only lightly, but it did not matter to him. All that did was she was there and she loved him as he loved her.
Kratos sat in a room in the uppermost floor of a tall building in Welgaia and copied out his diary.
This was something he had to do periodically. He had chronicled his life for almost four thousand years; paper crumbled to dust far sooner than that. Therefore, every once in a while, Kratos would sit down with one of his older diaries and transfer its contents to a new book.
The diary he was working on was one from over two thousand, four hundred years ago. He had copied it out several times before, but his most recent recopying was beginning to fade and the pages were growing fragile.
As he worked, he constructed the framework of a plan to free Anna from her prison. It was far easier for him to rescue her than it would be for most, in that Kratos had access to supplies the average person did not.
He had hit one snag already. Eventually, it would become obvious who had freed Anna if Kratos took her away and then returned to Cruxis. Inquiries would find none of the Desians to blame and would soon turn to the one who had the most contact with her. As well, Anna would be unable to protect herself from recapture if left on her own, and she might not be able to travel fast enough to elude the mana signature-tracking half-elven soldiers. The only solution he had found was for him to leave Cruxis and travel with Anna to protect her.
The thought was an unexpectedly good one. Derris-Kharlan seemed a dead place now where he had not noticed before. The cruelty of the Desians, something he had been able to ignore before he had seen its results in a woman he loved, was something that disgusted him now. Being a part of it disgusted him even more.
To leave Derris-Kharlan and live with Anna, even if that life was one of constant flight—
The door behind him slid open, interrupting his thoughts. Though Kratos was the only one who knew the password to his rooms of diaries, he had forgotten to lock the door behind him. He turned to see Yuan stepping through the doorway.
“Kratos.” Yuan leaned against a bookshelf and folded his arms.
“Yuan.” Kratos went back to copying out his diary. Yuan had been attempting to kill Kratos for nearly a thousand years, but Derris-Kharlan was neutral ground. Kratos knew Yuan would be risking far more than he would gain if he attempted to murder Kratos right under the nose of Yggdrasill, and so he felt confident in turning his back.
“I see you’re back to copying out your diaries again,” Yuan commented.
Kratos nodded and kept working. Yuan observed him for a few moments.
“You’ve changed quite a bit in the past half year, Kratos,” he said bluntly.
“Have I?”
Kratos’ heart rate sped up just a bit. Yuan was more observant than Yggdrasill and more difficult to fool. The likelihood of him finding out the cause was fairly high—if Kratos was unable to conceal it with his eroded emotional control.
“You have. I didn’t notice it at first, but you’re becoming less and less like those machines every day,” Yuan said, referring to the other angels.
Kratos set his pen aside and turned in his chair. He raised an eyebrow. “I am amazed you are able to observe any supposed changes at all, Yuan, considering how often you’re here. On that note, what are you doing here right now?”
Yuan showed no visible signs of irritation, although the emotion appeared very slightly in his voice. “I’ve been examining the plans for the newest sentry robot in our Murder series.”
“You always were interested in magitechnology. Particularly magitechnological weapons,” Kratos added, once again raising his eyebrow.
Yuan could not have failed to miss Kratos’ implications. “Hmph. That’s beside the point. You can’t deny you’ve changed, Kratos.” A cynical look found its way onto Yuan’s face. “You’ve started acting like a human being, not an angel. I’d be interested to find out why.”
It was past time for that door of conversation to close.
“How are your Renegades?” Kratos asked, once again counting on Yuan not to miss the implication of his question.
“Fine. Just fine.” He gave Kratos a sardonic look. “I imagine they’ll be overthrowing Cruxis any day now.”
Kratos returned it with a blank one. “I will look forward to that day.”
“I’m sure you will.” Yuan snorted softly. He unfolded his arms and straightened. “I’ll leave you to your work. I’m certain you have plenty of diaries left to copy.”
“Goodbye, Yuan.”
Kratos watched the man who had once been his closest friend nod at him, turn, and leave, the metal doors sliding shut behind him. He felt a pang of regret at what had become of their relationship. Before, so long ago that only wisps of memory remained, they had been inseparable. Now, they were hostile strangers, one bent upon killing the other.
Briefly, Kratos envied Yuan, entertained the thought of perhaps joining his Renegades once he had rescued Anna. He knew it was a foolish, vain hope, however. Now that he found himself daily more sympathetic to Yuan’s cause, he knew that bringing Anna to them would be a death curse, as it would draw the Desians to their doors.
That was, of course, provided the Renegades did not use their magitechnological patrol robots to shoot the both of them dead on sight. Kratos’ face was no doubt known to every soldier in that army, from the freshest recruits to Yuan’s second-in-command.
Letting out his breath in a sigh, Kratos returned to copying out his diary and planning Anna’s rescue, pushing any thoughts of his former true friend out of his mind.
