Work Text:
All of this wasn't new to me.
The death, the destruction, the endless conflict within humanity.
I've seen it all.
Tapputi was the one, the group had felt, who had witnessed the most events in her life.
Hailing from ancient Mesopotamia, and having retained the knowledge of a culture faded in humanity's memory, she was the living link to a distant past.
A history.
A reminder of how far humanity has progressed.
But in some ways, humanity has never changed.
Not really.
Having lived for that long, having witnessed history firsthand rather than through textbooks and lectures, it would have meant that she would have witnessed the change of power between hands and empires, how young, ambitious idealism overthrow the old order, and make new ones.
She's seen it happen enough, how the powerful start believing that they have the world in their hands. Untouchable. Invincible. Saint-like.
Man, believing to be a god.
But the illusion of godliness, like all hubris, had its price.
She had seen how those in power struggle to wrestle against the tide of tyranny concocted in their minds. Darting eyes shifting from person to person, trying to uncover some non-existent plot of disloyalty. Minds silently overanalysing every minute change in an ally's face or demeanour, wanting nothing more than to catch them in attempted assassination. Friends turning into nothing more than strangers, figures with a face they once recognised, silently plotting their downfall. And when they drowned in their own delusions, they died alone, losing everyone that ever meant anything to them.
She had seen how humanity is desperate to start wars with each other over meaningless motives.
Greed.
Lust.
Self-preservation.
Vengeance.
Or perhaps, an overinflated sense of entitlement.
It was nothing new.
Or perhaps, what stuck with her the most about humanity was the fact that despite its desperate desire to prove itself better than those who came before them, lusting after a deluded belief of superiority, it ends up committing the same mistakes as it had done before.
They never truly learn anything.
And so, the cycle repeats itself in a way that is twistedly Sisyphean.
And though she tries her might to hide it, they could see it in her eyes.
The way she looks at the war raging outside their door with a look akin to a disappointed parent. The way she, not once in the entire duration of the war, believe that this war would actually change anything. The way her face, in pensive moments, almost seemed to ask a single question.
How many times can humanity make the same mistakes, paying the consequences each time?
This isn't the first time I've witness any of this happen.
So why, oh why, does it embitter me still?