Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction / Fan Fiction ❯ Akirame Norwen ❯ Mein Herz Brennt ( Chapter 43 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

(A/N: I don’t know why but... ever since I picked up on listening to Rammstein, I’ve found myself obsessed with the idea of Erik speaking German.. That make sense to you? Maybe it’s because my dad speaks it so well... anyhow, once again I owe a *huge* thanks to my boyfriend Kenny, and I have noticed that some of my readers have read his story “Black Orchid”. If you haven’t, please check him out, he’s suuuuch a great guy!”

43: Mein Herz Brennt

Once again his closed his eyes and found his mind catapulting backwards, memories flashing by like lights in a tunnel. Things began slowing down, and he could make out the images in the moving time-line. They were the dark memories from the isolated years he’d lived in the presence of his father, released from the box they’d been confined in for so long. Swirling through the wormhole Serena had opened in his mind, ghosts come to wreck havoc with his emotions. But he had no way to stop them, run from them, cover his eyes or ears to block it all out. He stopped panicking, took a deep breath, and prepared to face the skeletons in his closet.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was a summer afternoon and the heat would have been unbearable if it weren’t for the cool breeze blowing in from the ocean. They both sat in the sand next to the ocean, a small boat flipped upside down in front of them and various tools lay aside atop a towel. Erik was elated to be working on what would soon be his very own boat, and even happier that his father was going to spend this day with him. He squinted as he looked up at his father’s face, so much like his own, even at his young age. Eugene (as Erik called him now, having given up using the title of “Dad” since he didn’t consider him as one anymore) smiled back, but in a less eager and more exhausted way. “You okay Dad?”
“I’m fine.” His father reached beside him and pulled a glass bottle out of a carton which contained five more similar bottles, popped the metal cap and took a sip.
“Hey, is that a root beer?” Erik excitedly asked, getting up on his knees to check.
Eugene smirked at his son’s naive question. “Nah, just the regular kind.”
“When did you start drinking that stuff?”
His father sighed and pulled a golden strand of hair away from his rough, unshaven face. “When I was sixteen. Married your mom and she made me promise to stop drinking.”
“Then why are you drinking now?”
There was a pause as the man sought out the words to explain what was beyond a child’s understanding, and he came to realize the child would be better off if he didn’t know. “I guess if she doesn’t know it won’t hurt her, will it?”
Erik understood what his father was saying, gave a quick nod and looked away.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I wasn’t very close to him, even before we left the Destiny Islands, huh?” murmured Erik, his eyes fluttering briefly back open to look into Serena’s face. She gently shook her head.
“I think that you wanted to be… but he didn’t want you to be,” she told him softly. “Now close your eyes. We still have much to see.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Living in a small town like Winhill isn’t so bad, everyone seems to have a good idea of what’s going on in everyone else’s life, people are close-knit and support each other. But for Erik, it was Hell. The very last thing he needed was people knowing what went on in the only run-down house in the area. “Erik... you’re already altering the truth... you didn’t live in that house.” Serena’s voice corrected.
“But I remember—”
“You remember what you want to instead of the truth. Think.”
Not the yellow house across the street from Kira... a remote cabin-style house outside of town, just outside the forest that bordered the endless field that spanned between the mountains and his ten-year-old heart. He hated the place, and was ashamed of the fact that he was poor and forced to live like this. The clothes he wore alone were enough to keep him from going into town for four years straight. If it weren’t for Kira he wouldn’t have had any friends.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Hang on... I don’t remember living there that long... the fire...”
“Erik, you lived there until you were twelve.”
“I was in Winhill just a couple weeks ago, I saw Kira face-to-face... she didn’t even say anything about it!”
Serena paused before answering, thinking of the best way to put it. “Erik she... thinks that... you’re insane.”
“Insane?!”
“Or at least schizophrenic, most likely because of the fire and your father’s death.”
“Hey, those were a gift from Hyne; I believed in him back then and I prayed for those things to happen.”
“Erik... shut up, we’re not getting anywhere.”
By now Erik was fully out of his trance, sitting up and turning to look at her, an indignant look on his face. “I just don’t see what the importance of my knowing all of thi–”
Her patience having run thin, she grabbed his shoulder and roughly pushed him back into place, and her hands took their spot on his chest again, although a little less lovingly. “*Please* Erik.”
Erik groaned and gave up. “Fine. . . but don’t think that once we get out of here you can still tell me what to do!”
“Erik, you’ll do *exactly* as I say, no matter where we are.”
“Awwww. . .”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

October. The night was cold, and a breeze chilled by the mountains found a way to creep into his bedroom, despite all the newspaper filling in the cracks in the walls. He curled up tighter in his worn-out blanket and shivered. Somehow he’d lived through colder weather last year; he’d have to do it again this time. He reached under his shirt and grasped the wooden paopu charm with his hand, rubbing the smooth surface with his thumb and feeling the groove where the other half would have connected. It brought some warmth to the room shaded in blues and blacks, knowing that wherever his sister was, she had the other half. But as much as he tried, the faint memories of his mother and sister could not abate the cracks in his soul, and the darkness bled into him. He’d put up with the torment for so long now, just sitting here thinking about it filled him with a burning hatred. More memories came to mind, fueling the flame and making it burn brighter, and it began to show in his eyes, turning from their usual dead brown to a flashing burnt sienna. A plot started to draw itself in his conniving twelve-year-old mind. The plan for his escape, his revenge. Go to town, tell Kira goodbye. Run to Deling City, make a way to get to Juno as fast as possible, get on a ship, go to Costa Del Sol... and he’d be that much closer to his freedom. Balamb Garden, the place he’d dreamed of enrolling in for so long... There he’d prove himself, become an A-class SeeD, and prove his father wrong, once and for all.
He let out a sigh and pushed himself up in bed, and grimaced at the pain that shot up his arm. Hissing he placed a hand over the spot where his father’s fist had connected. He’d have to learn to dodge a lot faster if he wanted to make it to Balamb Garden alive. His master plan dissolved and for a moment the flames were quelled when the sound of a shattering bottle caught his attention. “Ugh, dad must have passed out... well I have my stuff packed... maybe I’ll make it if I leave now... I can’t stay here any longer,” he thought to himself as he stood up and slowly pushed his door open.
The air was even colder in the bare hallway, and as he stepped down the hall, shadows flickered and shifted around him as the night became alive, possessed by evil beings created by his thoughts. His father was slumped down in the couch, a hand lazily draped over his chest while his other arm hung over the edge of the couch, the bottle he had been grasping had slipped out of his hand and glass fanned over the floor. “Da... Eugene?”
His father’s head was tilted down, chin resting on his chest, hair forming a curtain around the dirty, unshaven face. He appeared to be asleep, but something struck up a chord of fear, and the room became the stage for a nightmare. Slowly the boy crept forward, wooden boards creaking under his light weight. Something felt wrong. His heart raced, and he very slowly knelt down next to his unresponsive father. Even though his mind was screaming at him to run, his need to know outweighed it and he leaned forward and tilted his head to see his father’s face. Eugene’s eyes were open. Erik gasped and quickly drew back, and in his scuffle his hand landed on a long shard of broken glass that ripped through his hand, tearing through his palm and jutting out of other side. He swore and carefully pushed himself up, then looked back at his father, who hadn’t moved so much as a finger. As he stared at the man in shock, the burning pain of the glass embedded in his hand demanded his attention, making him abandon the body and head into the kitchen to take care of it. Whimpering in pain his hand dripped a trail of blood onto the floor, which shone ebony black in the moonlight that stabbed sharply into the dark kitchen like a knife. He pulled a towel off of the oven handle and braced himself as he gripped the blunt end of the glass shard and prepared to pull it out. His mind screamed, and whether or not he screamed himself, the pain that shot through his hand made him blank out for a moment. After a moment of breathing heavily and keeping whatever little food in his stomach down, he heard a groaning noise coming from the living room. “What the... alive?”
Eugene shifted slightly on the couch, and his face was wrought with struggle. Erik stepped back into the living room, and his mind raced as he watched. Would he help him? Or would he take the chance to run? This was the only time in his life he’d ever seen his father weak, vulnerable... the burning flames rose in his chest again, and inside something broke and he could hear it, like the shattering of the beer bottle, the melody of his life. A wicked smile made his lips turn, and he stepped forward, grasping the glass shard in his uninjured hand. His steps on the wooden floor were as the steps of death, the footsteps of a killer. He stared down at his father, who now was nothing more than an insect in his eyes. “For once Eugene... I’m right.”
A fanged, malicious smile, eyes flashing with a fire about to burst out. He struck, and the glass shard sank easily into his father’s neck, like a knife piercing butter. His father’s screams were lost in his son’s cries for revenge.
“Keep screaming, keep asking for mercy, just like I did!”
Chaos.
“Why the hell did you hate them? Why did you take me away?!”
Vengeance.
“Stop struggling, just die!”
Murder.
But it wasn’t enough, he wasn’t going to watch his father simply bleed. He leaned down, and wrapped his arms around the gasping man’s neck, warm blood smearing on his skin and splotching his clothes.. “Goodbye.” With a simple twist and strength fueled by adrenaline and loathing, a loud, sickening crack was the sound that signaled the end of the boy’s imprisonment.
He froze in place, his heart beating loudly, trying to escape his shrinking chest. He slowly let go and took a weak step back, struggling to keep his balance. Dead. Those eyes wide with fear stared right back up at him. Cold, unmoving, fixed on his face. He had to get out of here, he couldn’t let his father see where he was at. His mind weakly fumbled and ideas frantically crashed in his mind as the blood spilled onto the floor. The smell of death was overwhelming him, and he quickly stumbled backwards into the kitchen and felt the fear leaving a smear in his mind. He looked around. He could feel his father, no, the body, still staring at him. He had to get rid of it. They always said, that fire cleansed all… there was a book of matches laying on the counter by the sink.
He stood outside, watching blankly as his house burned to the ground. The anger was gone. The fear was gone. So was the hope. So was the vengeance. He was empty. He wouldn’t feel any sense of loss until the next day. He wouldn’t feel regret until the next week. He wouldn’t try to move on until the next month. But by summer, he would have forgotten almost all of it. But for now, he was empty.
The night was no longer cold. But his heart was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Erik’s eyes were wide and unfocused as he convulsed and struggled to crawl out of her lap, his stomach churning as the heat of the flames burned his skin. “Oh Shit!” He gasped, falling onto the floor and throwing his head over the waste bin, trembling as he tried to hold back his nausea.
Serena placed a cool hand on the back of his neck, hoping to help him calm down.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before coughing, and a sour stench poisoned the sweet air and lingered in his mouth after his stomach emptied itself. “Why… why did you have to dig that up again?” he sobbed out between labored breaths. She could see his body tremble all over.
“Because… a man once told me,” Serena stated sadly to him, “that ‘what you bury has a way of blossoming’. I’m…”
“What?” asked Erik, coming partway out of his own trauma to worry about her.
“I’m just… afraid,” she said quietly.
“Afraid of what?” He wiped off the back of his mouth and pushed himself away from the fouled waste bin, and sought out the darkest corner of the room, leaning against the cold stone wall. “That I’ll kill you too, and then maybe just for laughs I’ll take out Riku and Akira?”
“Afraid of what would bloom from your buried past.”
“So that’s why you brought these memories back?”
“Yes… because… I wanted you to deal with them now. I think that… if we had let them fester until they came for you, then… I’m not sure you would have survived.”
“But… it still hurts…” He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around himself, not wanting to look at her as she walked across the room and knelt down in front of him.
“It should. I would be more afraid if you saw these and it didn’t hurt.”
He paused to think on this. He turned his face further away from hers, his body shaking, but he couldn’t hide the tears from her. She gently cradled his head and shifting to lean back against the wall next to him. For a moment they quietly lay in each other’s company, each gaining comfort from the other. Erik began to feel uncomfortable, unable to ignore the steadily growing crick in his neck. “I need to move.” He quietly said, after regaining the ability to force words out of his mouth.
“Sure.” She released her hold on his shoulders and watched as he sat up, stretched and shyly avoided meeting her gaze as he turned and re-took his spot, laying on his stomach and resting his head on her chest, or at least in that general area, it was hard to tell as the geography of her body was obscured by countless layers of fabric. “Comfortable now?”
Erik blushed and buried his face in the creamy, bland layers and tried to relax. It was so strange... knowing that he was a murderer, yet it was if somehow those things had never happened, and he was filled with a sense of peace and felt content. Perhaps somehow, by recognizing his past he’d atoned for the present? The stench of blood still bored into his brain, making him twitch. Serena’s hands gently stroked his cheeks, and he melted under her touch. “Tell me Erik... who was it that moved you to join Riku?”
“It wasn’t just people, it was feelings I had.... but I guess... at first it was because I was so interested in Akira....” here he paused to shudder and felt his stomach twist, “but other than that... it was because Red and Irvine were pushing me to open up more, crawl out of my box...”
“And... how did you find out about me?”
“Now that’s a weird story... well Akira had locked me in her room...”
“Erik, enough about her.”
“Oh right, some dude in a black coat...what was his name...um... An....dang...”
“Ansem?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Serena sighed and gently kissed his forehead. “I knew my father would come looking for me.”