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A/N: No idea where this one came from. Written in the closing minutes of 2006. Happy New Year, y'all.
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A Taste of Irony
© Scribbler, December 2006/January 2007.
They were seventeen the first time they kissed, and he said, "We're going to save the world, and we're going to look good doing it."
She laughed and called him crazy, but he was that kind of boy. Master Chang called him cocky and overconfident, and he was, but he was also dedicated, loyal and ruthlessly principled when it came to the difference between right and wrong, dark and light, us and them. He was exactly the kind of leader they needed.
They were twenty-one when she came to him with a small life growing inside her. She disputed being made to stay behind, but saw reason and watching him and their friends go off to battle evil. She bandaged his wounds when he returned, but not before smacking him on the head and calling him a risk-taking fool.
They were twenty-two when the Heylin came to the temple and left an empty crib. She cried – of course she did – but she didn't collapse. She was stronger than that. She bunched her fists and chased the thieving demons, and left claw marks on his face when he pulled her back from the closing portal.
"We don't know where they took him," he said, though there was anger in his voice.
"I'll find out," she replied.
They were twenty-five when she finally returned to the temple, defeated but not broken. For weeks she kept to herself, a part of his world only in name. She'd spent too long apart from the Dragons to just slot back into place, and watched as he and the others trained like nothing was wrong. She slept in her own room and turned her back when he tried to talk to her, unable to forgive him for staying to do his duty instead of coming with her.
They were twenty-six when she left again, and this time she didn't come back. She was too much a square peg now than she'd been even when she carried a baby on her hip. Leaving their son for the temple monks to look after, going off on missions, not spending every moment she could with him – the memories and guilt were more than she could bear. So much of that part of her life was bound up in the temple that she couldn't bring herself to be there anymore.
They were twenty-eight when they saw each other again, just briefly, across a raging river of ice. She was tracking a lead she picked up in Athens. He was tracking a Shen Gong Wu. She felt a pull to go to him then, to help him and Chase and Guan and be a part of that world again. There was still time. There was still a chance she'd be welcomed back.
Then he looked up and caught her eye, and she was too paralysed to move. She watched them defeat their opponents but left before he could follow or tell the others of her presence. They didn't need her anymore.
They were thirty when he broke her heart without even trying. She still loved him, for all time and distance and reproach had driven a wedge between them. Yet when she looked up from the Heylin warrior's body and saw him watching her; when she registered the appalled expressions on the faces of her old friends and felt blood trickling between her fingers … that was when she knew she's crossed a line and could never, ever go back.
They were thirty-one when she met the new Dragon of Earth. The newly-called warrior was a small girl with skin the colour of treacle. The girl wasn't half as strong as the three men who looked after her, but she was half their age. Chase and Guan acted like helpful uncles around her, but it was him she followed around like a puppy, full of teenage hormones and dreams of happily ever after. New wouldn't listen to Old when told that on this path there was no such thing.
They were thirty-three when she killed the stupid girl. She felt no remorse, but then by that point she'd been chasing shadows for over a decade without success, and with only her own mind for company on her chosen path.
She refused to believe her son was dead, so her quest had taken on a frenzied hostility that bordered on madness. Part of her longed for the life she lost when she knelt by his overturned crib. That part of her resented her replacement enough to drag the girl into the jungle and leave her dangling in the creepers. How dare this chit come in and take over her life! How dare she think she can ever replace her in his affections! She was nothing, a nobody with no place in history, and the world was better off without her.
They were thirty-five when she joined the Heylin. Originally it was just to gain access to their secrets, but as others would learn after her, dark magic is a corrupting influence. Her mind grew clouded, and she went to the temple just to laugh at his expression at what she'd become.
"See what you did to me?" she giggled, flicking her hair and rolling her hips at him.
"You've become what you hate most!" he shouted so loudly his voice cracked, and Chase exchanged a worried look with Guan.
She looked at him then, really looked at him, and spat, "Wrong. I don't look like you."
They were thirty-seven when they faced each other for the last time.
She'd gathered a lot of power by then. Somehow she thought that if she was powerful enough she could do anything, even find what couldn't be found. Eventually the power itself became what mattered, and she grew more and more merciless in her desire for it. She was going to be queen of the world. Then things would be right again. Then she would find release from her torment. All she needed was enough power to remake the world the way it should be. It was the last thing she thought as she was sucked into the Puzzle Box.
She was 1500 years old and he was dead when she returned to the world. She got tangled up in someone else's world-domination scheme, hurled herself into finding a way to become corporeal again, and marvelled at how different the world was compared to when she was defeated.
She also found a small boy with glowing dots on his forehead.
She couldn't explain the connection. She was too far gone to accept the possibilities her mind presented. She took the here and now, regarded him as an enemy, and fought him just as she had the man most precious to her in all the world.
Yet when she'd regained her body, when she'd allied herself with another fallen Dragon, and when the world had been remade and changed back again … then she stopped and shook her head and looked.
She examined the little boy with the powerful magic and the startling resemblance to the greatest Xiaolin warrior who ever lived. Chase had seen the potential for evil in him and tried to twist it the way it'd been twisted in her, but the boy proved to have too much good in him. He was dedicated, loyal and ruthlessly principled when it came to the difference between right and wrong, dark and light, us and them.
She was 1503 when she discovered the zealously-guarded Heylin scroll that told of how they were the first to find the Sands of Time, and had planned to use it to gather powerful warriors when they were still impressionable babies. The Heylin had planned to make an unstoppable army dedicated to evil, carefully chosen to have the best chance of defeating the new Xiaolin Dragons. Of course they'd been defeated, the kidnapped babies scattered across time and space, and the Shen Gong Wu safely hidden.
She read the scroll twice, and then burned it. Then she left Chase's citadel and used spell stolen from Chase's cache to teleport into a mausoleum far beneath the Xiaolin Temple – deeper than the Shen Gong Wu vault stretched, deeper than anyone had been for thousands of years. There she found a burial chamber that was far simpler than she might have expected when Master Chang showed them where they would one day be interred.
Of course, only one of them had ever taken up their place down here. There was an irony to that she might once have savoured, but which now only made her feel tired.
When she opened her mouth she had a thousand things to say. She'd changed more times than she could count since love's first kiss as a seventeen-year-old girl. She had plenty to talk about; yet for a few moments she couldn't think of a word. Her thoughts and emotions were scattered on the floor like a dropped tea tray, and she wasn't sure which one to pick up first.
In the end all she said was, "He takes after you."
Fin.