A/N: I'm really not sure what you guys are going to think of this chapter... It's kind of controversial. I debated for a while about whether or not to post it, and I only decided to because... well... it's so controversial! I really, really, need to know whether or not I can use this style of writing and make it fit a fic like this! So, reviews would be incredibly appreciated, for this chapter if not any others.

Thanks so much, and hope you guys don't hate it...

So worried about what you're going to think... argh...

*cries*

Hate it when you get a new muse and it takes over everything...

Ƭħє ŞąЬяє'ƨ Şħąmє

Chapter Sixteen: Choices

Cyclicality and irony had never been two things that Diego had appreciated in life, and yet he could only let out a low, helpless laugh as he realized the bizarre parody which he'd worked himself in to. After a furious fight, he'd cornered Ray on a high pinnacle of rock, stretching out above the frozen waterfall. Now the fuming sabre was trapped with a nasty choice awaiting him: death by sabre, or death by jumping.

A choice which Diego had witnessed somebody take once before.

A choice which had started the whole chain of events which he was now an imbued part of.

A choice which had been made in this very location.

He couldn't believe he hadn't realized it before, but the truth was staring at him, right in the eyes. The landscape had changed almost to an extent where it wasn't recognizable, thanks to Nature's merciless rule, but the bittersweet nostalgia overwhelming him couldn't and didn't lie. It hit him, bringing an aching sense of confusing emotion as he reflected on everything that had changed since the first moment he had stood there. The human mother had chosen to sacrifice herself in an attempt to save her baby – the baby who Diego had abandoned his pack over and taken back to his father.

And he was here again. Alone with someone who was about to die, whether by his paw or their own. Diego had no delusions about what would happen if he decided to let Ray live; the younger tiger would attack him all over again, or escape back to try and hunt down Peaches again. Maybe his pack would even forgive him, although that seemed highly doubtful…

"Why?" spat Ray, nervously backing up another step as Diego oh-so-slowly advanced. "What would make you chose a herd over your pack?"

Diego took another stately step forward, and Ray took another reluctant step back, before slipping off the edge with a yell. His two front legs managed to catch the rock just before he fell totally, and Diego leaned over the cliff, hissing vehemently "Because in a herd, I would save you."

Ray's face contorted in fear, but he didn't scream as the weight of his body slowly dragged his paws along the rock, until the only part of him still attached to the rock was his claws. For a single moment, locked forever in Diego's memory, he hung suspended off the ledge, before he closed his eyes and retracted his claws. And as gravity took its course, as Ray fell through the darkness to the silver ice below, so did all of the guilt and pain that Diego had been carrying with him.

As Pinky's mother had fallen, so did Ray.

As the initial gesture of love and hope had lived, the hatred and rage which had gone with the sabre did not.

Life was a parody of itself, linking into an infinity symbol and repeating time and time again. Never were two moments the same, but neither were two loops of life's endless game of chance and fate. One human mother had managed to inadvertently change his life; one sabre had deliberately tried to change it back to how it was 'supposed' to be. Both of them had fallen and died in the river below; both of them would forever be engraved in his memory; but only one of them had succeeded. She had introduced him to alien concepts - love, forgiveness, sacrifice, redemption, grief and shame. None of those were familiar to a sabre, no matter the situation.

Yet for mammoths, humans, and every other race that was preyed upon for its 'weakness', they were common.

For the sake of pride, Diego had been content to be in a pack. For the sake of love for his newfound friends and all-encompassing shame when he compared himself -deadly, lying, accurate, intelligent and a killer- to them -fumbling, bumbling, moralistic, honest and caring- he loved being in a herd.

The truth in being a sabre was that you had to kill to survive. That was what nature had designed you for. The truth of being any other non-predatory animal was that you were going to be killed, but in return for that harsh ending that would almost surely be recieved, you were given concepts beyond that a normal predator could comprehend.

Peace… the idea of safety… happiness … joy … love …

Why would a killer ever need to love?

Diego's life had taken an astounding twist and journey as he'd travelled with Sid and Manny, protecting them and helping them, for the reason that he honestly could not understand them – or at least, not until he realized exactly how his 'prey' acted.

Not until what was supposed to be his next meal saved his life.

Once that had happened, a whole new foreign world had opened to him, filled with emotions that he could barely understand. Over time, they became more natural, until he could safely say he knew what the meanings of compassion and kindness were.

But he had never known the ignorance that comprised a sabre's life until then, and ashamed of that, he had turned away from his own race and lived with a herd. He was ashamed of the fact that what basically defined a sabre's life was their encompassing apathy towards their prey. Their prey; his friends. Ashamed of the fact he knew that he could never measure up to the simplistic happiness that dictated the life of a herd creature, and yet he could never fully go back to being a sabre.

So, ashamed at his own inability to exist peacefully in either race, he had simply chosen to hold his head high and live in a world where shades of grey took the place of black-and-white rules, where you could kill to eat, but only the weak or dying, and only because you knew you had no other choice. Where you could protect your friends against your own race, and know it was right because you knew what it was like to truly and honestly love them, and know that you would die to defend them…
And where you could seek that elusive ideal that had so far slipped from his grasp of comprehension; happiness.

Calmly and surely, Diego turned around and walked back down off the ridge, heading back to his herd.