Undertow
By: The Hatter Theory
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Inu Yasha
A/N: This is an unrelated one shot. From now on, all the wangsty what if's will get dropped here.
Fate has a funny way of taking you by surprise. Despite my centuries of wisdom, or perhaps it is only experience, I am still surprised on occasion, still shocked into stillness. The rare moments this occurs, I feel as if the world speeds up around me as I slow down, and water pours into my lungs as I struggle to breathe.
You are on the other side of the window. I see you, and I know you. It has been centuries since I felt the peculiar tingle of your ki, innumerable moments since I tasted your scent on the air.
I want to walk in. I despise the restaurant, a fast food chain, and I want to walk in anyway. I want warn you, watch you, woo you, indulge in your presence.
I had not thought myself a masochist until this moment.
You are so happy, and it shatters what peace I had found these past years. You are happy and carefree and everything a human should be. Surrounded by friends, you are eating some vile concoction this century calls food and giggling as you read over a magazine. I can hear them asking which man in the picture you like best.
You are blessedly normal, blessedly happy.
It is nothing like my past, nothing like your future.
For a moment the idea of paradox flits through my mind. What would could I create, or shatter, if I simply walked inside and began speaking, if I told you who I was, if I imparted a name that had not been spoken in centuries, and explained the truth to you.
Your friends would think me mad, but you wouldn't. You would know better, wouldn't you?
Or perhaps not.
Now, in this moment, you believe that it all happens for a reason., that every pain is a pathway to happiness.
And now, as much as then, I think that it's not only ridiculous, it's insane. It's weak and pathetic and I hate it. I feel the old anger choking me, suffocating me, and you are oblivious. You are as blind to me as you are to the tragedy that awaits.
I could warn you. I could tell you that he dies a horrible death, and that you will not be able to save him. I could tell you that your beloved son is destroyed by slayers trained by Kohaku, who will have no hand in it, but will always feel responsible. It will be an end and a beginning none of them will survive.
Except you.
Families will be broken and beyond repair.
Even Rin will fall beneath fate's heel and be ground into the dust by a sickness that you understand but cannot fight.
I will watch this all happen within a decade, perhaps a little more. Human years are so short to me. It will amaze me how quickly your world fell into disrepair. It will always numb me how little I know, even though I know just enough to understand.
Enough to hurt. Enough to hate.
You are so happy now. I want to go in and tell you to stay in this time, with your friends and family, with your modern medicines and conveniences. You are happy and alive, and perhaps you can avoid the pain.
I want to keep you safe, as I failed to keep her safe.
I wish, knowing how foolish wishes are, for another chance. For a way to earn forgiveness, to erase the past.
But wishes are the root of evils I have often fought.
Or did, as it were.
But you're standing, and you're walking to the exit. The door opens and you and your friends are joining the bustling crowd of other humans.
Fate is something that, once invoked, we are forced to travel along. Even fighting the current, all that happens is that we grow tired and get pulled under, pulled by the current, and end up where we were eventually meant to be.
I have fought fate. I have escaped the near extinction of my species, I have battled time and I have raged against the injustices wrought on a small pack of people that once saved this land from utter destruction.
I am tired now.
I could fight, could try to keep you here.
But I am tired, so tired.
I watch you walk away. Soon you will be in my past experiencing your future, and nothing will be done. There is nothing that can be done. I turn away, and hope to forget.
I let myself be dragged beneath, let the water fill my lungs.
