His Choice | Tales of Symphonia

[farina]

Title: His Choice
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Words: 959 words
Summary: He’d known all along he would outlive her.
Pairing/Character: Zelos/Sheena, mention of others
Extra Info: This was originally written and posted June 22, 2008 for my friend Nico. His prompt was “Finality.” The original title of this work was “Curse of a Man.”
Rating: T
Genre: Romance with some friendship vibes, also sort of a character study piece for a more mature Zelos.

Notes:

This was a surprisingly big rewrite again.

When I re-read the original ‘fic last night I honestly felt I’d keep more of the original structure, but once I started rewriting I just...couldn’t.

So my usual rewriting habit is to open the original in one document, open a blank document and place them side by side. I retype everything and edit/leave things out/etc as I go. 

While the original had some good bits in it (the line about Regal’s death and Raine disappearing did hit pretty hard I think) the theme was based more around love being a curse, which...yuck, no thanks.

I think there’s room for “ageless” (or slow-aging) characters to feel bitterness and loneliness regarding love, but I ended up wanting to explore that relationship dynamic without the cynicism. After all, Zelos did, in the end, get to choose what he wanted for himself. He might be a bit of a dunderhead sometimes, but like Raine, Genis, Yuan, Kratos, and any other person in this game with a long life expectancy, he’d be well aware of what he was getting himself into.

I’m not 100% satisfied with the end result, mostly because it’s really hard to hit on the characterization of an older and wiser Zelos who isn’t chasing down voluptuous hunnies all the time, but I think it turned out all right. If he commits himself to something of his own free will he’s not the type to back down from that IMO. And there’s something intriguing about a character like Zelos taking love seriously when he does decide he wants it. I wanted to show that in the rewrite above all else—that he loves her and the journey they took to get to where they are, aging and all. (Even though it hurts to see the journey coming to an end, even though it makes him feel helpless.)

Anyway, the year I wrote this was the year my grandmother died. She spent the last months of her life in a nursing home and shared her room with a woman in her 90s named Naomi. Naomi was there for end of life care and was never awake or even fully aware, but every day her 101-year-old husband came to visit her and just sat there holding her hand for hours and hours.

I’m sure that inspired at least part of this story.

And while I didn’t have time to explore it fully in this story I did want to touch on how friend groups start to fall apart when no longer united by a commonality. Since the line about Regal dying and Raine disappearing was in the original, I expanded slightly on that relationship and connected it to Zelos’s current predicament. There’s a tiny implication in there that Regal’s funeral was the last time the group was together and he’s heard almost nothing from anyone since. 

I REALLY wanted to explore the funeral more (Raine losing her struggle with grief, Genis unable to comfort her, the group feeling disjointed, unbalanced, and unfamiliar now) but there wasn’t room for it. I guess you can imagine it for yourself. ;)

I almost titled this “Chosen’s Choice” for the sweet alliteration but worried it read too close to Ladies’ Choice and/or Sophie’s Choice and couldn’t do it.