Title: Where All Roads End
Rating: SFW
Wordcount: 700
Summary: The trouble is that the Torc is never wrong.
Notes: Written as a treat for Sout for the 2015 round of everywoman. I like drabble sequences maybe more than I should.
Opportunities come to the right people in the right places at the right moments, even when those people are orphaned teenage girls half-blinded by the sun. The world is riddled with cracks and loopholes, and the Torc guides her through even the smallest of them. The world is less terrifying when she knows she can't lose her way in it.
As a child, Ishizu believed that the Rod was more powerful than the Torc. Now she understands that knowing what people will do is as good as telling them. With patience, she can accomplish almost anything.
(She can't save them.)
The processor is tired and distracted. The seventy-third application that crosses his desk today will be stamped without scrutiny. If Ishizu gets in line now and acts out her vision, hers will be the seventy-third application. The Torc shows her every detail, just as it shows her that every step she takes, no matter the direction, leads to the same end. Tragedy warps every path toward its maw.
As soon as her paperwork leaves her hands, she knows, but she is sick with fear and hope until confirmation arrives.
(Just once, at any cost, she wants it to be wrong.)
Officially, Ishizu is thirty years old. The illusion is easier to maintain than she expected; her outfits age her, and her eyes don't give her away. When she began, at sixteen and twenty-six, she studied the faces of older women and was surprised to find that her reflection already matched them. Her frowns have left grooves around her mouth, and the skin under her eyes is like ink-stained paper.
A life lived in the dark must be harsher than one lived in the sun. She has never felt young, anyway.
(The day is fast approaching beyond which all is dark.)
Few are surprised by Ishizu's appointment as Secretary-General. She is young and has been on the Council for only four years, but she is a perfect fit for the role. They couldn't have asked for better, they say. Of course they couldn't have. She made herself the right shape in the right place at the right time.
By her own design, no one can question her security clearance. When she wants armed men, she gets them. She is powerful enough to protect a god, but she cannot save her brothers from themselves.
(The Torc denies her the comfort of hope.)
The march to the end is bitter. She knows and cannot pretend otherwise. She will draw them together; she will win back the card; she will watch them die. The Torc pours the future into her, relentlessly. She has done much to mitigate collateral damage, but they three are doomed.
She knows, but love makes a hypocrite of her. She lies awake at night, digging intricate canals in time. She splinters tributaries and dams rivers, but the ocean is unchanging. In the end, she has come here to drown.
(In every future, Rishid never wakes, and Malik burns to ash.)
Just once, it is wrong.
Losing the duel feels like leaving the tomb for the last time, like taking her first irreversible step into the sunlight, half-blind and alone.
The walls around her crumble. Uncertainties whirl around her like sand, swallowing every path. She's as lost as anyone else. She finally feels young.
There is a chance now, however slim, that they are not all spiraling together into the dark. The noose of destiny is unraveling. Without the Torc around her throat, she can breathe again.
(The future is dark, so she ignites her own heart to find her way.)
They are alive and nothing is certain anymore, except that their hearts are still beating. The last time Ishizu held Malik, his head fit under her chin. Rishid's embrace is stronger, but still gentle.
She has a house, she tells them, with more bedrooms than the Torc told her would ever be used, as well as a job, which she'll have to learn how to perform without uncanny intuition. One or both might be lost in an instant. The future before them is vast and dark, devoid of certainties.
(The ocean is treacherous, but they will help each other float.)