The Birth of Pain

Disclaimer: All of the characters save Paine's mother are property of Final Fantasy as is the setting. Only the story is mine. A/N: Though there is no REAL proof that the people I hint at are Paine's real parents it is entirely possible and, I feel, extremely likely. Enjoy!

A/N2: Also, I am terrible with updating as some people know which is why the first chapter has enough content to stand alone. I'm sorry if I never finish this but you should be able to get a lot from the first chapter.

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The infant sobbed, long, loud and shrill somehow managing to pierce the panicked voices and moans of the wounded and dying that surrounded her. It was a cry of hunger, not of loss but it would be echoed, years into the future as a child then a young girl then a young woman who mourned in the middle of the night for what she had lost on her first day of life. She scrunched up her face for another long wail and her eyes opened momentarily, blood red eyes dark in her blood gorged face. The tiny tuft of her black hair was still wet from her first washing and her face was damp from the tears that soaked her angry, wrinkled face.

Yet the man who held her was not impressed, unlike many new fathers who would be scrambling to return the child to its mother at the onset of such newborn rage. For unlike those fathers, he did not have that luxury. He simply cradled her in his red-clothed arm, not an inch of human flesh contacting hers. There was no connection between them save blood and loss. And there never would be.

"Paine," he said his voice hoarse from smoke and screaming. It held only an echo of warmth and love, as if like colors they had been washed out long ago. Not only a few hours. "Her name is Paine."

"Why?" a young white mage said as she peered at the babe in arms hesitantly. She was just an aid, barely more than a child. Her magic had been used up long ago on the endless stream of wounded that had come in through the temple doors and now she had to resort to crude bandages and salves and softly spoken words of comfort to aid those who may not survive the day, much less the night. "She's too young to bear such a sorrowful name."

The man looked at her, hardly old enough to be called that but already so much older than his young face could show. His clothes, torn and blackened from fire and blade, the blood almost invisible on the crimson wool, told the story in fragmented words of the loss he had endured that day. Only his eyes, chestnut colored yet cold and dead as day old corpse could tell the true tale. "She is Paine, because it is all she has ever known." He looked back down at the babe, perhaps memorizing her face, perhaps trying to forget it;, and the sorrow in his heart flooded then froze like tears in winter.

He looked down at her newborn face and remembered a time when all had been right with the world, a time before the birth of pain...