Final Fantasy VI - Recessive
Title: Recessive
Author: Shaded Mazoku
Email: shadedmazoku@gmail.com
Part: 1/1
Disclaimer: FFVI belongs to Square Enix. As does its characters. The original characters in here are mine, but wouldn't be useful without Square Enix's setting.
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: Kefka is a hard child to love
Pairing(s): Gen
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Words: 1042 + bonus 71-word drabblet.
Notes: Have some head-canon! :) Kefka was one creepy kid in my mind. Not that his parents were parents of the year, either. The bonus drabble … Well, it's probably not true. Probably. Written for spook_me 2011. The prompt was "mutant", which I kind of used more as a guideline here. It makes sense in head-canon context, though. Giada's family originally came from the Thamasa area...
It wasn’t the night air that made her shiver.
Giada was hiding.
It wasn’t something she would ever admit, of course. It seemed such a foolish thing to worry about, but deep inside, she couldn’t shake the feeling.
Inside, she could see Santino with her husband. They were talking over reports of the estates, her husband grooming Santino to one day take over. Whatever they were talking about, it seemed they were having a good time. Alonzo would say something, and Santino would chuckle, pointing to something on the page that would have them both smiling. Santino was a lot like his father, and he’d no doubt make a wonderful successor to the estates. He was a good boy. Not that he didn’t have flaws, most of those shared with his father, but he was a good boy.
He brought her flowers every Sunday, always the same lilies she liked. She would pat his hair and tell him he was a perfect son, and he would duck away from her touch with an embarrassed grin, too old now to let her ruffle his hair like a child.
Chiara was inside, too, lying on the floor while she played with her doll. Giada wished she wouldn’t roll on the floor like that. It was so undignified. Chiara was only three, though, and she was still young enough to let it pass. The girl was certainly amusing herself well enough, giggling to herself as she threw the doll into the air and caught it again with only slight hints at clumsiness. That was good. Her daughter needed to learn the grace of a lady if she was to be a credit to her parents. Like Santino was his father’s apprentice, Chiara would be hers, groomed to be a lady and a wife, and Giada would teach her how to be the best at both of those.
Both of them, Santino and Chiara both, were their father’s children, dusky in colouring like he was, with dark hair and dark eyes like was the norm for the Tzenese.
Her third child was not inside. He never spent evenings with the rest of the family, and to be honest, she was relieved that he didn’t.
It was him she was hiding from.
If Chiara and Santino were their father’s children, Kefka was hers, and she couldn't deny him, his features like younger, somewhat more masculine versions of hers.
Kefka was not an ill-behaved child. With Giada’s pale skin, blue eyes and blond hair, he was certainly exotic compared to his dusky family, and he was fair of face and of speech. Only rarely did he raise his voice, and only if he was certain he was in the right to do so. He never really caused trouble, preferring his own company to that of the local boys his age.
There was no single reason why; he was just strange.
Too strange for Alonzo, who had treated Giada coldly until Chiara was born, and who still avoided Kefka if he could.
Giada knew she was supposed to love her children equally, but it wasn’t easy to love her youngest son.
Like Santino, Kefka brought her flowers sometimes. They were always lilies, too, but where Santino brought her fire lilies, Kefka would bring her white funeral lilies.
He was a clever child, skilled beyond his age in drawing and painting, but if he brought her art, it was never like other children who drew their houses, their families or animals. Kefka drew strange-looking blue women and twisted monsters, and if asked, said he saw them in his head some times. Sometimes, he drew fire.
As an infant, he’d never cried, not even when he was hungry. Not like his brother, who’d cried for attention. All their children had nurses when they were small, but Kefka alone showed no interest in any one of them, preferring instead to sit quietly and look out the window as though he saw something nobody else did. Even now, he rarely spoke to either of his parents if they didn’t talk to him first, but he could sit somewhere talking to his imaginary friends for great lengths of time. The doctors assured her that even though children were sometimes born damaged, those children showed it physically or mentally, and there was nothing like that wrong with him. Kefka was a pretty child; too pretty for a boy, in fact, causing his father to mutter about hoping he grew out of that. He was smart, too, reading by the time he was four and way ahead of any tutor that drew up a plan based on other children his age.
There was nothing like that wrong with him. Whatever it was, it was something else entirely.
She was sure he’d been born like that, though.
When the midwife had first placed him in her arms, his eyes had been unusually alert for a newborn, but he hadn’t looked at her, instead focusing on something beyond her. He still didn’t often meet her eyes, usually letting his gaze flicker everywhere else than to her.
The few times their eyes did meet, she always had the feeling of being measured and found lacking.
Earlier that evening, she had been walking in the garden when she’d heard Kefka laughing. He had such a strange laugh, oddly high-pitched and modulated. She’d found him sitting in the middle of the hedge maze her husband had ordered put in when they became fashionable, his boots kicked off despite the fact that it was late autumn and too cold to go barefoot. When she’d asked why he’d been laughing, he’d just stared at her with those pale eyes of his, even paler than her own, until she’d turned and left, unable to meet his gaze any longer.
It was easier to just run away than to try getting him to respond.
Shivering again, she pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and went inside to join her husband and their children.
At least her other two children actually saw her.
She didn’t want to know what it was Kefka saw. She suspected it was something far different from everyone else.
There was just something intrinsically wrong with that boy.
There always had been.
“You know,” Kefka mused, stretching in his warm spot in front of the fire. “People who knew my mother used to claim I had her eyes.”
Leo looked up from the report he was reading. “Do you?”
“Not any more. I've misplaced the jar.” Kefka giggled and returned to staring into the fire.
That was one of those thing where asking was a bad idea, Leo decided.
Author: Shaded Mazoku
Email: shadedmazoku@gmail.com
Part: 1/1
Disclaimer: FFVI belongs to Square Enix. As does its characters. The original characters in here are mine, but wouldn't be useful without Square Enix's setting.
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Summary: Kefka is a hard child to love
Pairing(s): Gen
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Words: 1042 + bonus 71-word drabblet.
Notes: Have some head-canon! :) Kefka was one creepy kid in my mind. Not that his parents were parents of the year, either. The bonus drabble … Well, it's probably not true. Probably. Written for spook_me 2011. The prompt was "mutant", which I kind of used more as a guideline here. It makes sense in head-canon context, though. Giada's family originally came from the Thamasa area...
It wasn’t the night air that made her shiver.
Giada was hiding.
It wasn’t something she would ever admit, of course. It seemed such a foolish thing to worry about, but deep inside, she couldn’t shake the feeling.
Inside, she could see Santino with her husband. They were talking over reports of the estates, her husband grooming Santino to one day take over. Whatever they were talking about, it seemed they were having a good time. Alonzo would say something, and Santino would chuckle, pointing to something on the page that would have them both smiling. Santino was a lot like his father, and he’d no doubt make a wonderful successor to the estates. He was a good boy. Not that he didn’t have flaws, most of those shared with his father, but he was a good boy.
He brought her flowers every Sunday, always the same lilies she liked. She would pat his hair and tell him he was a perfect son, and he would duck away from her touch with an embarrassed grin, too old now to let her ruffle his hair like a child.
Chiara was inside, too, lying on the floor while she played with her doll. Giada wished she wouldn’t roll on the floor like that. It was so undignified. Chiara was only three, though, and she was still young enough to let it pass. The girl was certainly amusing herself well enough, giggling to herself as she threw the doll into the air and caught it again with only slight hints at clumsiness. That was good. Her daughter needed to learn the grace of a lady if she was to be a credit to her parents. Like Santino was his father’s apprentice, Chiara would be hers, groomed to be a lady and a wife, and Giada would teach her how to be the best at both of those.
Both of them, Santino and Chiara both, were their father’s children, dusky in colouring like he was, with dark hair and dark eyes like was the norm for the Tzenese.
Her third child was not inside. He never spent evenings with the rest of the family, and to be honest, she was relieved that he didn’t.
It was him she was hiding from.
If Chiara and Santino were their father’s children, Kefka was hers, and she couldn't deny him, his features like younger, somewhat more masculine versions of hers.
Kefka was not an ill-behaved child. With Giada’s pale skin, blue eyes and blond hair, he was certainly exotic compared to his dusky family, and he was fair of face and of speech. Only rarely did he raise his voice, and only if he was certain he was in the right to do so. He never really caused trouble, preferring his own company to that of the local boys his age.
There was no single reason why; he was just strange.
Too strange for Alonzo, who had treated Giada coldly until Chiara was born, and who still avoided Kefka if he could.
Giada knew she was supposed to love her children equally, but it wasn’t easy to love her youngest son.
Like Santino, Kefka brought her flowers sometimes. They were always lilies, too, but where Santino brought her fire lilies, Kefka would bring her white funeral lilies.
He was a clever child, skilled beyond his age in drawing and painting, but if he brought her art, it was never like other children who drew their houses, their families or animals. Kefka drew strange-looking blue women and twisted monsters, and if asked, said he saw them in his head some times. Sometimes, he drew fire.
As an infant, he’d never cried, not even when he was hungry. Not like his brother, who’d cried for attention. All their children had nurses when they were small, but Kefka alone showed no interest in any one of them, preferring instead to sit quietly and look out the window as though he saw something nobody else did. Even now, he rarely spoke to either of his parents if they didn’t talk to him first, but he could sit somewhere talking to his imaginary friends for great lengths of time. The doctors assured her that even though children were sometimes born damaged, those children showed it physically or mentally, and there was nothing like that wrong with him. Kefka was a pretty child; too pretty for a boy, in fact, causing his father to mutter about hoping he grew out of that. He was smart, too, reading by the time he was four and way ahead of any tutor that drew up a plan based on other children his age.
There was nothing like that wrong with him. Whatever it was, it was something else entirely.
She was sure he’d been born like that, though.
When the midwife had first placed him in her arms, his eyes had been unusually alert for a newborn, but he hadn’t looked at her, instead focusing on something beyond her. He still didn’t often meet her eyes, usually letting his gaze flicker everywhere else than to her.
The few times their eyes did meet, she always had the feeling of being measured and found lacking.
Earlier that evening, she had been walking in the garden when she’d heard Kefka laughing. He had such a strange laugh, oddly high-pitched and modulated. She’d found him sitting in the middle of the hedge maze her husband had ordered put in when they became fashionable, his boots kicked off despite the fact that it was late autumn and too cold to go barefoot. When she’d asked why he’d been laughing, he’d just stared at her with those pale eyes of his, even paler than her own, until she’d turned and left, unable to meet his gaze any longer.
It was easier to just run away than to try getting him to respond.
Shivering again, she pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and went inside to join her husband and their children.
At least her other two children actually saw her.
She didn’t want to know what it was Kefka saw. She suspected it was something far different from everyone else.
There was just something intrinsically wrong with that boy.
There always had been.
“You know,” Kefka mused, stretching in his warm spot in front of the fire. “People who knew my mother used to claim I had her eyes.”
Leo looked up from the report he was reading. “Do you?”
“Not any more. I've misplaced the jar.” Kefka giggled and returned to staring into the fire.
That was one of those thing where asking was a bad idea, Leo decided.