Title: Cables and Bridges
Characters/Pairing: Kyougo
Genre: Gen
Rating: G
Warnings: n/a
Word Count: 331
Summary: Monou Kyougo, on his duty to the earth and the fate of his family.
You'd stop this, if you could. You and your wife hold your children's hands while you watch all the people you love slowly walk away: they tread the path to their own destinies, and while all roads will someday point back to death, you wish there was some way that you could adjust their length, to add warning signs and cables and bridges where you could.
You know your wife doesn't love you, and though your son and daughter will smile for you their true hearts go to each other, but mostly to that Shirou boy. It is magnetism, an internal intuitivity that tells both your children that this Kamui is the axis on which their worlds are turning, even now.
If only, if only you could save them, but your duty is only to protect the Holy Sword that Saya will bear, years from now. At night, you'll light candles and pray for happiness, but you'll feel the energy of the universe, its turbulence, and know it is not your place to interfere.
Your beautiful children... Kotori, the unknowing Atlas, the whole world on her shoulders. And Fuuma. He'll grow up to be strong, responsible, honest, but already you can sense the faintest glimmer of darkness in his heart, the stench of decay from the moment his soul was born.
It's autumn, and you're sweeping the shrine grounds, watching the children play. You can overhear their games of pretend, and you hear Kamui "propose" to your daughter, hear your son vow to be their shield forever. Your hands still on the broom, and the wind that rustles the leaves from the tree whispers foreboding things.
Their destines are foreordained. You cannot change them: all you can do is let them jump in the leaf piles you've spent hours raking, wishing you could capture this moment, to saturate it in their exalted joy and stow it in their dreams, a transient instant of golden light for the years of darkness coming.