A Promise Kept
Title: A Promise Kept
Author: Hairann
Rating/Genre(s): Comedy, Drama
Word Count: 1185
Warning(s): Mentions past character death
Summary: The last one standing, isn't always the winner.
Note: This is not part of Jaken's Ballad.
The noise around him effortlessly drowned out his exhausted sigh as he stared in shock and disbelief at the carnage around him. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering why he had chosen to do such a thing; why he had taken it upon himself to bring this strange group back together. But he had done so, he had found every last one of them. They were all here, but good did it do? They no longer knew him, knew what they had once meant to each other.
Most of them shouldn't even have mattered to him, remained forgotten by history as they were destined to be, and they would have if not for that stupid promise he had been tricked into making. Well, he wasn't really tricked, but he may as well have been since he had not know what he was signing himself up for. This, he decided as he took in the sight before him once more, was certainly not part of the deal.
And of course he couldn't really blame her or her promise, even if she was around to be blamed, as it was his fault for not searching for them later, but how could he have known that it would result in this? That was just it, he couldn't have known; neither could she. As he began to wonder if she would have told him had she known, a loud screech drew his attention away from his inner questions toward the one who had made the sound just in time to be hit with some flying object straight in the face.
Grumbling under his breath about what it would take for a death to be ruled justifiable, he wiped his old, withered hand across his forehead and glanced down at it to find it covered in what looked like blue paint. Squishing the glob of paint in his hand as he made a tight fist, he inhaled one deep breath after another as he tried to calm himself. It was just a little paint, easy to wash off and hardly even had a scent; it always could have been worse considering his present company.
As he gave said company another glance over, he decided that it could have easily have been much, much worse. Opting to let the matter drop, he turned his attention to finding something to wipe his face off with and quickly set about doing so once he had found a suitable towel; tuning out the loud noise around him for the few moments he was busy. It wasn't much, but it was enough to lessen the pounding headache that their constant screaming had caused.
Soon enough he was cleaned off, as much as he could be without actually taking a bath, and he turned his attention back to the room's other occupants to find they really hadn't changed much since the last time he had seen them. In fact, with the exception of their age, most of them had not changed at all. Well even that wasn't exactly true, other than himself, there were no demons present. Even the one-time half demon now stood before him as a full human; and he wasn't the only one.
Besides him, those that had demon blood in the past now stood before him completely mortal; he had out lived them all once and would no doubt do so again. And because of the promise he had made with the strange priestess he had known so many years ago he was stuck in the very spot he was in now. Standing before a group he should have never seen again; lived to know again. Five hundred years was far too long to be alone, waiting for their return.
But she hadn't thought about that, what he would have to go through and suffer, when she had made him swear to keep a promise just moments before she died. She hadn't even given his life, if you could call the last 500 years a life, a second thought before tying him to them in this life and the next with a simple vow. He had promised to protect them and keep her family together after she was gone, only they hadn't known at the time that she was the only one left.
And the only way he could keep his promise was to live long enough for them to be reborn and bring them back together. That meant five hundreds of waiting for all of them; as they tended to be reborn only a couple at a time. And finally his long wait was over as they were all standing, and some of them sitting, before him. Only his problems didn't seem to end there, in fact he was certain they had just gotten worse.
Not a single one of them-neither the two priestesses, the once half-demon or full demons, not even the lord he used to serve under or the little girl that would follow after them singing and picking flowers-was over the age of five. He had found them all and brought them back together, but they were all children. Jaken had kept his promise, but she never told him it would include babysitting a bunch of snot nose rug-rats.
Sighing softly to himself, Jaken turned his attention toward the sound of a door opening behind him, only to be run over by a stampede of children a moment later when they heard the call of “Who wants WacDonalds?” Shaking his head at how quickly his assistant was relieved of his bags and the food was being consumed, Jaken turned toward the much, much younger man who grinned as he made his way toward him.
“You should have seen the people outside of WacDonald's as I was leaving. They were all looking at me like I was crazy for having bought so much,” he joked as he crossed the room and sat down on the couch just a few feet away from the elderly demon. “You sure you want to open this daycare center for these guys? They'll eat you out of house and home,” he warned as he gestured to the obvious children on the other side of the room.
“Sure? Not even close, but I have a promise to keep and I am hopeful that when they are older, I will be able to see those that I have missed for so long within them. And do not think you can get out of helping me, grandson. I am far too old to be chasing after small children, however, at 85, you are the perfect age.
“I do not know if opening a daycare just for the reincarnations of those I knew 500 years ago is a good idea, but I do know that I have missed them terribly and it will at least give me the chance to be around them. I was the last one standing after the battle that claimed all their lives, but I have never once felt like the winner. Perhaps now I will.”