I do not own Golden Sun.

The Sorrow

Matthew was an ideal child until the age of eight. Always laughing, always loving, always smiling.

(A happier time, a more innocent time, his parents recalled. A time when their son had loved to hear of their tales, had devoured every scrap of memory of their journey simply for the love of it, and them. A time when he had so often declared his desire to be a Hero, just like his parents.

A more ignorant time, he felt, bitter taste of shame in his mouth at the remembering of careless waste of idle times of joy and never questioning where that night's dinner was to come from. A time they could have spent, he could have spent, preparing for, doing, something, anything, to help the world, rather than indulge him in childish stories.)

And then he saw, learned, knew the price of his Parent's peace.

(The only thing unique about these refugees was that they had made it so far, to here. He had never seen such a thin woman before, let alone the nearly skeletal child that she clutched to her chest, and reddened at the sound of his own stomach's grumbling at a mere missed meal. His father left to turn the woman and child away, at least to take them to Patcher's place, while his mother tried to divert his attention with a carefully hidden apple. He bit into it, hungry as he was, but the memory of the starving woman's eyes, looking at his fed form, never faltered. The apple tasted like ash.)

At the age of eight, Matthew bit into that apple and his eyes were opened to both the good and evil that existed beyond his little home.

(Nearly all food afterwards tasted like ash, and in his dreams those two figures became truly skeletal figures, always fleeing some unseen evil, always crawling and clawing at him.

'Why you?' they asked with lipless accusations. 'Why do you get to eat, while we do not?' And as his knowledge grew, knowledge of his parents guilt and responsibilities, knowledge of the world beyond the area, so did the dreams. The number of skeletons grew, as did their accusations.'

'Why do you get to enjoy your parents, when mine are gone?'

'Why should you live in peace, when the war never ends?'

'Why are you safe, when your parents could protect so much more?'

'Why must we suffer the consequences of your parents' actions?'

'This is their fault!'

'Their fault! And they are your parents! Yours!'

'Your responsibility!'

'Why do you lay there, doing nothing, while we die?'

And then he would awake, panting, and the words would recede to the back of his mind, never letting themselves be forgotten.)

At the age of eight, Matthew nearly stopped smiling entirely, trying to assume a responsibility he could not take.

(He had that dream again, he confided with his friend Tyrell. Just as he had the night before, and the night before that, and every night. Just as he would every night for the next eight years.

Tyrell couldn't change that, and so didn't dwell on it. Instead, he turned to what he could do, with a direct reasoning and honesty that made him Matthew's best friend . 'Want to train?' he offered. 'So you can get stronger?'

Not play. Matthew didn't like to play anymore. But Tyrell knew how to make Pebble Toss appealing, and now rough-housing was fighting, and even the tasks he asked his father to come up with were still a guiltless fun with Tyrell around. Fun with purpose was ok. Fun without benefit was immoral.

He rewarded his friend with an increasingly rare, grateful, smile. 'Yeah.'

Tonight, at least, he could look at the Lost and say 'I'm trying.')

Why should he smile when so many others couldn't? How could he?

At the age of eight, Matthew dedicated his life to everyone but himself.

Little bit of context below.

This actually spawned from a concept of how/why Matthew might be something other than a cheerful boy. I've little doubt that the Fannon will eventually make him as a cheerful, calm, mature person, ala the usual depiction of Felix and Isaac, but I've thought that the emoticon system made Anger and Sad responses... well, more interesting. Less usual. But how could you really justify it?

Easily. It's a sad, dark world out there, and one day Matthew is going to see it and realize just how well off he was, is. Children respond in a lot of ways to such a thing: guilt is one of them.

To be honest, while this fits a 'sad' Matthew, it's actually a basis for an 'angry' Matthew, which really didn't fit in this piece. Angry!Matthew, in my mind, isn't raging or hateful or doesn't care: rather, he cares too much, and can't stand the sort of injustices in the world that go by when no one else acts. Someone who would look at the world, hate it for the state of it, and want nothing more than to change it for the benefit of everyone in it. Righteous fury: how can you not be angry at a world of starvation, of war, of rampant disasters, a world your own loving parents inflicted on everyone else?

Serious potential issues there.

Hopefully I'll be able to capture that spirit some other time.