#(putting vakama through the washing machine of anguish) just like mr farshtey would have wanted

[randomwriteronline]

"We had deluded ourselves," Vakama answered simply. His shoulders had risen and fallen with his words in a disheartened, resignated shrug as he had simply gazed forward, never tearing his eyes from them. "We had grown accustomed to calling them ours. But they never were. They had never been meant to be."

Vastus followed his gaze.

"They were never ours," the Turaga repeated softly. "They were Mata Nui's first and foremost - from the very beginning."

They watched in silence, for a while.

Discussions typical of these situations were still on hold, hanging in the air with their jittering inevitability as they went unspoken in awkward glances and weights shifted from one foot to the other, cautious not to shatter the careful filigree of new pain that only the inhabitants of Spherus Magna were already familiar with.

The Toa looked beside themselves in a distant, lost manner. They kept touching them as though it would have done something. It didn't, and they knew it wouldn't; but they continued.

"It doesn't quite matter whose they were meant to be, in the end," the Glatorian murmured.

"It does," Vakama said, but there was no emphasis in his statement.

"It doesn't," Vastus insisted. "In the end, if you feel like this, it's safe to say they were yours."

"They were not," again, without conviction.

The Matoran touched them too.

As if that would have done something.

It didn't, and they knew it wouldn't; but they continued.

"They were yours," the Glatorian repeated. He recognized that quiet anguish; he had seen it, on many faces, across many years. "It always hurts," he continued, though he had changed the subject somewhat, "To see your children die before you."

A wordless moment passed. Many hands, smaller and bigger, kept touching them, their limbs and chests and masks, as if that would have done something.

It didn't.

And they knew it wouldn't.

But they continued.

"I don't understand that word," Vakama confessed. He still did not turn away from the sight of the gathering crowd touching them as if that would have done something. "I don't know what 'children' are."

Vastus thought quietly.

"Younger beings," he explained at last, hoping it would make sense: "Little ones, or bigger ones. They can come into your life as easily as they can not, planned or otherwise: they start knowing nothing, aimless, confused and scared, and it's your duty to guide and care for them. You teach them what you can; you tell them who you were, what they never saw. You love them despite it all and they love you too, hopefully. You teach them and they teach you back, sometimes. You watch them grow. One day they might be bigger than you. One day they might be the ones protecting you. One day you might watch them leave, and it will hurt. One day they might see you die, and you will always hope it won't be the opposite."

"Ah," Vakama spoke.

They kept touching them, as if that would have done something.

As if that would have kept the protodermis warm, the muscle taut.

It didn't, and they knew it wouldn't; but they continued, because there was nothing else to do except touch as if that could have done something.

"Yes, then, I suppose," the Turaga said very softly, in an unsteady, wavering breath, the mechanism in his throat which gave him his voice creaking like a door gone unoiled for far too long: "It must have been so. Or something like it."

Among the many cruelties bestowed by the Great Beings, he counted the ability to grieve in a body that cannot cry.