an ending of sorts

[vescas.livejournal.com]

Title: After
Re: Everyone
Summary: a short and dismal, but peaceful end

After...

It was too late.

They’d locked him up because he was too dangerous thinking they could still use him.

They’d tried to kill him, but he healed within seconds even from what should have been fatal wounds

They’d tried to move him from his underground prison, but no known wards were strong enough to control him during travel.

The evacuation of the village began when Tsunade announced only thirteen more days left to their waiting.

And now there were only hours. Squadrons of shinobi were standing by after the Kages realized the danger they would soon be in. Entire countries were solemn in their silence as they waited to find out which way death would flow when it began walking on four legs once more.

They didn’t wait long.

Afterwards; there was no recounting of names, no numbers or lists of how many. There was only constant screams of lonely agony around a small depression of dead rock. People would leave flowers there, small trinkets and notes. They would all eventually char and burn in that spot of final strength, but they continued knowing that this tragedy would never happen again.

The Mizukage was commonly named as the first death. He had valiantly chosen to attempt the forbidden seal first, but his seared body fell to the ground before he could finish the last seal.

Not one single village complained that they lost more than the others, they were finally united in their utter loss. And for years they celebrated, calmly, all of those deaths that led to the last one. The Mizukage was commonly named as the first death, but no one knew the name of the last one, but they knew it had happened.

It became a tradition, a yearly meeting for the first few years, then changed to every three years; a meeting to remind each Kage, new or old, that they were now bound by innocent blood spilt. The hosting village would display a blade that some say still bled and hand it to the Kage of the village where they would meet next.

It was an unassuming knife; it hadn’t even belonged to the one who had wielded it. It was a short tanto, frayed cloth wrapped around its hilt. It had been held out to the man who held the new vessel as it cried, and he had used it to do what everyone knew should have happened the first time. The tiny corpse was the first thing to disappear in the spot that people would come to leave their memories.

No one knew the man who had held the child, no one had even tried to find out. The survivors had all been dirty; their uniforms torn and charred, their weapons dull and squandered on the ground. No one knew who was from what village, or who they should begin hating again. They just knew that no human, no family, no clan, no village or country together could ever hate as much as the being they had just destroyed together.

And they all finally found peace.

end

I blame Swissarmyknife’s 23rd chapter of Ripples in an Ocean that prompted me to write this… just kinda had to.  No names, some details, kinda how we get our news from across the world.  Let's all hope that whatever disasters occur, be they in real life or in a story, that everyone can come out of it stronger.