What if Roshan didn't survive the falls? What becomes of the herd then? [Character death]
Title from the song 'Kings and Queens' by 30 Seconds to Mars. Someday I am gonna make an AMV for Ice Age with that song I mean it!
The water is frigid, piercing the skin, as the mother attempts to escape from the sabretooth after her and her child.
The baby is heavy in her arms, making her struggle, as the currents batter her. Her son coughs; it hits her that he's struggling to breathe as the many waters assail them. She must not let him drown!
Her baby's swaddling slips on her fingers as she desperately clutches him nearer to her chest, trying to keep his little head above the angry stream.
Debris, buried low in the water, snatches at her leg, pulling her under. She hoists the child as high above the swell as she can manage, but it's too late.
The current drags them under, and neither she nor the babe has any time to cry for help as the black water covers them in a deadly embrace.
The father discovers the bodies of his wife and child washed ashore a few days after his failed expedition after the sabre pack.
His wife's dead body cradles his son's limp form, and he realises they must have died together as she tried to save him.
He gathers them close, uttering a wail of grief and rage that echoes throughout the still tundra.
The sloth is having the worst of luck. First, he wakes to find his family abandoning him for the migration, again, and he managed to anger two murderous rhinos!
Fortunately, the mammoth he ran into helps him in his pinch, but wants nothing to do with him.
The sloth glues himself to the mammoth's side, disgruntling the huge beast. The sloth, however, remains oblivious.
The mammoth ditches him after it rains one night. The sloth stirs, jolted awake by the epiphany that he is freezing. His warmth and protection deserted him in the night.
Initially disappointed, the sloth resolves that he can take it from here to rejoin his family on the migration route.
Unfortunately, he stumbles across the two bloodthirsty rhinos again, still angry at him for ruining their salad.
They satisfy their need for revenge by trampling over him in a rampage of hooves and blood. They give him no mercy.
The mammoth is heading north. North, the opposite of south. One reality awaits in the north - unsurvivable sub-zero temperatures.
The migration heads south, seeking great valleys brimming with plentiful food and water, but this mammoth doesn't care whatsoever.
He wants to head north, hoping to either starve or freeze to death, but that sloth interrupts his plans by bumping into him when he's contemplating his plan near a cliff.
The mammoth reluctantly protects the sloth and regrets it. The sloth won't leave him alone now, disrupting his intention to travel north.
He may want to die, but it's unfair to drag the sloth along on his death trek. The mammoth manages to escape the sloth to continue his journey within a few days.
His journey takes him past the smouldering remains of a human village, and out of the corner of his eye, he notices a lone tiger inspecting the wreckage. The tiger, from the mammoth's vantage point, was looking for something.
Usually, he'd be a good citizen helping out, but the mammoth ignores the tiger to refocus on his journey. As he takes his leave of the settlement, an all too familiar scream of anguish reminds him of his own pain.
The mammoth is heading north. As he makes his way further up and further into the mountains, the snow begins to cut through his fur, biting into his skin.
He doesn't mind it though. His physical pain echoes his emotional pain, overriding even the incoming storm of the Ice Age.
He doesn't watch where he's going; his feet scramble against scree as he falls into a pit. It's a human hunting pit, he notices, but his thoughts are slow to surface, reaching him through a long, dark tunnel.
Snow buries him in the pit as the winds howl overhead, piling higher and higher as he struggles to breathe.
He sighs, and waits for death to overtake him. Cold or humans, he doesn't care. Just so long as he can join his family again...
The sabre feels frantic. He last saw the human mother dive over the falls with the precious child he needed to abduct, and he hasn't been able to recognise their scent since.
His pack members catch up with him on the hill overlooking the settlement. His alpha's face, along with his implied threat of violence towards him, communicates everything.
Without the child, his life is forfeit.
Unless...
His pack departs in the direction of a peak at the river valley's end, leaving him to find the child alive.
He's nosing around the humans' deserted campsite when he sees a lone mammoth heading north. The oddity of such a sighting distracts him when a scream pierces the air.
The mammoth continues on, seemingly not having heard it or ignoring it, whilst the sabre scrambles to the edge of the cliff.
The sight below confirms his worst suspicions. The father cradles his son and his mate in his hands, their bodies rigid in death.
Serve yourself as a replacement… the words echo through his head as he tries not to wince.
Left with no other choice, he turns his paws in the direction of the mountain. His fate awaits him, and, deep down inside, he wishes he could run from it.
His pride won't let him, though. He failed his simple task so punishment makes sense and is, in some way, welcome.
He deserves it for denying his alpha's revenge and for failing to provide food for the pack.
His alpha hungers for vengeance, and the sabre knows he will do anything to get it - including killing him in place of the targeted child.
He reaches the mountain, and in sight of its jagged, ominous peak he considers running away. But he doesn't.
He forges ahead into the crevices of the long-dead volcano, finding himself face to face with his alpha.
The alpha glowers down at him, a low growl rumbling from his throat. The growl sends chills down his spine but he stands his ground, his eyes alight with defiance.
His alpha leaps down from his perch to meet him as other sabres materialise beside him as he pads towards him. The rest of the pack surround him and he sees his alpha's eyes sparkle with malice as the gap closes between them.
As his alpha's fangs pierce his jugular he wonders if his fate might've been different, somehow, some way, if the child had survived.
A/N: The story was born out of several things, the first one being a "What If?" scenario that apparently no one has tackled before - the repercussions of Roshan dying in IA1 at the falls.
He is very much the reason for the herd's bonding and eventual friendship, and I'm surprised that I never put forth such a scenario on the Ice Age forum 1 discussion board under my own topic 'What If Scenarios Up for Grabs.'
I did consider making this all turn out to be a happy ending but I decided that writing it out as a straightforward drama (Ice Age 1 IS a dramedy) with Roshan's death creating a domino effect in the lives of Manny and Diego and Sid worked better and had more impact.
Without Roshan - there is no Ice Age. This is my premise.
The second thing this fic was born from was, what is, in my opinion, bad characterisation, namely of Sid, starting in Meltdown. Sid goes on and on in Meltdown that he is the "glue" of the Herd - something obviously done to keep Roshan written out - and it has always bugged me.
Sid isn't the glue of the herd. It was the baby they all saved. Without him glueing them together as they bonded over delivering him to his father, there is no herd.
The first time I saw Meltdown, I remember being so disappointed and irritated over Sid saying he was the glue because the text of Ice Age 1 doesn't support his self-aggrandizement.
Erasing Roshan and only loosely referencing IA1 doesn't do Meltdown any favours, on top of the bad Sid characterisation since he got hit with flanderizing before Manny or Diego did.
Heck, the tvtropes WMG page even has people mistakenly believing that the herd (M/D/S) in Meltdown aren't the same characters from IA1! And they thought that because of the Roshan erasure and because Meltdown's tone shifts so abruptly and overly comedic instead of the harsh, dramedic tone of IA!
Anyway, this is my answer to that. Enjoy! Discuss this with me in the comments!
(Review?)
