El Hazard is distributed in North America by Pioneer, and
is not mine, nor do I have any rights towards it.
If you doubt this is short, just take a look at the size
of it. I dunno-- I felt like rewriting it, and thought we haven't
had an El Hazard fic on the list for a bit, and I thought I hadn't
posted anything in a while, either (Then again, I've not really
worked on anything steadily, for a while, either, so...).
What Time Until Eternity?
(a.k.a. the fic formerly known as: Too Much and Never Enough)
Consider time like an helix of semi-precious stones-- like the
one on Ifurita's wrist, the one Makoto bought for her, the one she
was staring at this very moment. Ifurita closes her hand, and
brings her arm back beside her. In the dark. In the night. In the
quiet. Makoto sleeping to the left of her, as she continues to
stare unthinking at and through the ceiling. Precious, spiralling
and eventually ending. Very much like this particular bracelet in
fact.
Time is an opponent Ifurita could never win against, she
realised. For a while, perhaps-- minor battles, skirmishes, but in
the end, never. Entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the one
attack that can/could not be copied, can/could not be subverted,
would not be deflected forever. The arrow of time was/is/will be a
perfect attack from which there there could be no respite. The only
enemy she could not defeat. The only adversary that mattered. Time
brought her and Makoto together, only so it could break them apart
and make her wait ten thousand years in an imperfect stasis to meet
him to send him away so that she could meet him and leave him so
that she could wait ten thousand years to meet him and then send
him away so that she could meet him and leave him so that she could
wait ten thousand years to meet him and... this line of thought was
worse than useless.
The problem with time was that there is never the right amount
of it. Time was either in short supply or greatly in excess. Too
much time since she was sealed away in El Hazard-- age had weakened
her somewhat. Too much time on Earth-- the years sapped her
strength further.
Too little time with Makoto, before she had to send him away to
El Hazard to meet him so that she could end up coming here so that
she could send him to El Hazard so that she could meet him so that
she could-- this line of though is still pointless-- too little
time with Makoto there, before he freed her from the staff. Too
little time now, together.
Now? Too little time now though? Was the rest of their lives
together in fact too little time? This is the crux of the matter:
what exactly did "the rest of their lives" entail? It was not the
problem of mortality itself, _per se_ which was the problem-- the
problem was that of exactly _how mortal_ she was.
Makoto, Makoto, do you know what will happen? Do you know who
will die first? Will it be Ifurita, with her waning powers and the
relentless push of entropy? Will she suffer a final systems failure
before you die? What will you do then, Makoto, Makoto? Will you
mourn, will you weep, will you love again? Or maybe it will be you
who will go first-- Ifurita has survived this long, after all, and
the lifespan of humans are very brief compared to that time. She
was very cunningly constructed.
What then? She could easily outlast Makoto by centuries, by
millenia even, potentially. Could she go on? Would she want to? The
emptiness from before she met Makoto would return, she could feel
it tug even now as she contemplated what would happen if she
survived him, whispering from just behind her eyes, an ebb in her
systems-- only worse this time, because of what would be lost.
Would she end up going mad with grief, and go back to her old ways?
Death and destruction? Forget herself that way?
Perhaps she would shut down, instead. Go into permenent
catalepsy-- a stasis from which she would never revive from until a
critical system failed?
Life, or existence, without Makoto seemed somehow-- blasphemous
was too strong a word, but perhaps the best one to use-- wrong, at
any rate. That was perhaps the more frightening thought; life could
go on without Makoto. Mental processes tried, but failed, to
completely grasp the concept. Waiting for him was bad enough, but
she knew he would come to release her from her self-imposed stasis
to send him to El Hazard to release her and free her so she could
come here to wait for him to release her to-- the loop again.
Afterwards though, after, when she sent him and his friends. After,
when she was by herself, alone, again, and perhaps this time
forever. No guarantee of seeing him again. No guarantee of further
life. Uncertainty for the first time in an extremely long existence
but a very short life. The possibility of not seeing him again
existed. Power systems failing, life without Makoto looked to be
short; but he came back.
There would be no going back next time, though. Not from death.
For all her arsenal, for all her power and ability, Ifurita could
not win the war against time. She could go through it, temporarily
gain a small foothold against it, but in the end time, and its
soldiers entropy and paradox would win. It was inevitable.
She turns over in the bed now, watching Makoto's slow and
regular breathing, studying his peaceful face and committing to
memory all over again that slight smile he wears only when
sleeping. She closes her eyes and frightened, desparate mask
replaces her musing expression as she wraps her arms around Makoto,
pulling him closer. She swears to herself, whispers in his ear,
that no matter what happens, there will be time enough.
Author's notes: Slightly expanded and somewhat reworked.
I'm not really in the mood for my usual labrinthine and
irrelevant notes, and I do not feel the need to use the
old ones here. C&C, but only if you please. Do not if you
wish not. :)
Matthew Lewis is:
a proud member of Lumpy Pot Productions:
http://www.lumpypot.com
in need of updating his webpage at:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/9345/index.html
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"The only people who see the whole picture are the
ones who step out of the frame."
-Sir Darius Xerxes Cama, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
by Salman Rushdie
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