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damned_lounge2007-10-31 08:41 pm
continuum.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_lounge2007-10-31 08:41 pm
Entry tags:
Oktoberfest 2007 Entry, Endgame, by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melanthe_v
Title: Endgame
Author:melanthe_v / Maia
Beta: None because I suck and worked too close to the deadline to really get one. |D
Word Count: 2,042
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Kadaj, Elena, and mentions of Reno
Summary: Elena. Kadaj. At night. Alone. 'Nuff said.
Notes: Oh God...DON'T KILL ME, EMI AND LINA. D: D: This idea just kind of came and alfdjsdf; YEAH. I hope I didn't slaughter your chars too much, either. DX
Why was it so dark, even with a flashlight? This was just creepy. And Elena was having a hard time juggling the flashlight with her gun, too. A gun with only one bullet in it, but it was better than nothing.
Or so the saying went.
A quiet skittering noise, like scratching claws, stopped her dead in her tracks. She peered around the corner, scanning for any creepy crawly and trying to keep calm. Augh. This was so not good. Wandering the hallways alone was never a good idea. Or—no, wait, what was she saying? She could totally do this. Needed to do this, really. The others were trapped in the Sun Room. The doors had started to swing shut and being the smallest one, only she had managed to squeeze through before they closed completely. Which left her with the task of trying to find something—or someone—who could pry those doors open again before that freaky chick on heels did...whatever scary thing she was meant to do.
At least the girl had been sort of pretty? In a way? Elena was sure that would be of some comfort to Reno. Or maybe not.
Anyway.
Elena slipped further down the hall. Now that it had happened, she couldn't say that she wasn't glad she was...on her own. In a sense. A chance to prove herself, right? She was off to rescue someone else for once. And she was determined not to screw it up. For both the sake of the others, but for her own sake, too. She could never do anything right and though lately, things had been looking up, it was still...sometimes she wondered if maybe there was a reason why she was always in her sister's shadow. It would just be nice to let herself know that she wasn't totally useless. That she could actually do something.
But not alone, she had to admit. She needed to find help for this one. Even if she did stumble on some kind of tool to help her bust open the doors, she hardly had the body strength to use it. Perhaps AVALANCHE. Or someone else. Elena was willing to accept anyone who came along at this point.
"Well, look at who's all alone. What a perfect little surprise."
She froze at the silky, familiar voice snaking up from behind. Her blood ran cold. She whirled around, dropping her flashlight to free up her hands to better grip the pistol. The flashlight flickered as it clattered to the floor, but stayed lit. Somehow, she kept her aim steady, but the rising panic was near impossible to quash.
Oh God. Shit shit shit. She took that back about anyone coming along. Took it back completely.
Anyone but him.
"Stay back," she snapped. She took an involuntary half-step back. She could've sworn she saw Kadaj's eyes light up at that.
The temptation to look behind her, back where she'd left Reno, was strong, but she managed to resist. The timing for this was so perfect she had to wonder if Kadaj had made a deal with the...woman-thing in the Sun Room.
The sword glinted in the beam of the flashlight.
"You can't possibly be considering actually shooting me again," he said, sounding both disdainful and amused at the same time. "Surely you recall what happened the last time you did something that foolish."
One bullet, right? She could take out the bastard. But her fingers were frozen and her vision was shaky and all she could focus on was that flashing silver
(scalpel)
sword and why couldn't she think straight dammit—
She felt the movement before she could even register it. Her pistol went skittering across the tiled floor. She didn't even have a chance to curse the loss of her only weapon as she found herself pinned to the wall and with fingers crushed against her windpipe. Not to choke her completely, but enough to make each breath an effort. Her mind was blank, thoughts no longer processing.
"Pathetic. You make it so easy, you know. It almost takes the fun out of it." His eyes glittered with a playful wickedness. It should've been hard to take him seriously, with those stupid happy-face clothes. He should've looked like a retard by all means. But it wasn't and he didn't and
(i'mgonnadie)
That skittering. For a second time now. She hardly noticed at first, too fixated on the fact that this wasn’t happening again, but the scrabbling turned into a cat-like yowl and she suddenly felt Kadaj's grip loosen a bare fraction.
The irony that a monster at Landel's had just rescued her never had the time to cross her mind.
Elena yanked one arm free from his grasp and raked her nails across Kadaj's face. She missed the eye she'd been aiming for, but the chunk of skin that curled off his cheek and buried itself beneath her nails was enough. His snarl of pain sounded more irritated than hurt. She didn't wait around. She dove straight for her gun, almost tripping as she snatched it up, Somehow, she kept her balance.
And then she ran. Sprinted, actually. It was dark and she couldn't see and it was a really good thing that these hallways were pretty straight and without obstacles. Her surroundings were deathly silent despite her own heavy breathing. Her ears rang.
She didn't even know where she was running. Or why. This was a stupid plan, she had nowhere to go and he was completely gaining on her, gaining on her so fast she didn't even realize how fast until his fingers curled in her hair and she went flying against the bathroom counter. The sharp edge crushed against her chest. When the hell did she end up in the bathroom?
She swung her pistol up to smash his face with it, but she only found her wrist caught and the gun being twisted out of it for the second time and this was really getting stupid—
"It's almost cute how you thought you could run from me except I'm really—" The mirror shattered as Kadaj sent the handle of sword into it— "quite infuriated by the way you scratched me like that."
Nightmare. This was a nightmare. It was happening again so it had to be nightmare. There was no way this could happen twice, not like this, and somewhere in the midst of her panic she stopped trying to struggle free and simply threw her entire body weight forward as hard as she could. Kadaj had already been pushing her forward, and the combination of both toppled the two of them over.
He landed on top of her, crushing her against the shards of glass scattered over the bathroom floor. Something had crunched when she landed, too, not the crunch of glass but like a squish of a bug. The roaches.
Acting on pure instinct, Elena kicked in a panicked effort to shove Kadaj off of her, to keep him off balance, to do anything. Her hand pressed down on shards of glass. She could feel the blood, but not the sharp pain. His weight was still on top of her, pinning her down, and she was pretty sure he was saying something because he was always saying something but the words had stopped processing. A fleeting thought flickered through her mind
(Shin-Ra Academy training sucks)
before the blade of the sword fell against her throat, just brushing the surface. She stopped struggling. A curtain of silver hair fell into her line of sight, obscuring everything else.
"Do you know why I don't like you, Elena?" he purred. "Because nobody else seems to get it, treating you like something worth protecting simply because you're blonde and useless and they feel sorry for you. They all rush to your defence. What do you give them back in return?"
Elena flinched. "Shut up."
"Doesn't it make you wonder?" His lips were close enough for her to feel his breath against her ear. "Doesn't it make you wonder?" A giggle. "It does, doesn't it? It should. I should kill you right now and do everyone a favour, relieve them of their burden. You and your boyfriend. You're both useless. It's pathetic."
Tamaki. "Don't you dare touch him—"
"Oh, how very sweet of you to worry like that."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could spot the black shadow of her pistol a few feet away. Kadaj either didn't notice or didn't care. If she could reach it...at this close range, she couldn't possibly miss. Could she?
(doesn't it make you wonder)
The blade travelled thoughtfully over her collarbone. "I don't feel like doing what I did last time," he said, sounding almost as though he were thinking aloud to himself. "It's rather boring and uncreative, you know. Not that you're deserving of my talents, of course." He was so close to her, she all she could see were his eyes, slitted and cat-like.
An involuntary shudder ran up her spine. Her arm tickled as a cockroach scurried over it. For some reason, she felt its creepy little legs the clearest. Like the time when they were kids and Rosalind had snuck into her bedroom at night and dropped a tarantula on her pillow. Elena had woken up in the middle of the night with eight furry legs creeping along her neck and screamed so loud her father ran into her room with a baseball bat in hand, thinking his daughter was being kidnapped or something.
And she wasn't sure what it was, whether it was desperation or hysteria or a combination of both, but all of a sudden, she stopped caring whether she'd be able to reach the gun in time. All that mattered was that she needed to reach it because damned if she was just going to roll over and die because she wasn't useless—
Elena head butted him, a move that was surely suicidal but somehow wasn't. She heard the crack, but didn't wait to see the spurt of blood from his nose. She scrambled for the pistol in the dark, catching the glimpse of its metallic gleam. She didn't even bother wasting time getting to her feet.
Fingers snagged her ankle. She shrieked as he flipped her over. Her back slammed hard against the tile floors, her head banging against a bathroom stall.
<>(ohmygod)
It was as though he were hunting her, his stalking predatory. She was going to be slaughtered and there was nothing she could do about it. Her breath came in short, hyperventilating gasps.
She started to scramble backwards, the tiles cold beneath her fingers. She made it about half a foot before Kadaj moved. Either her mind simply couldn't keep up or he really was that fast, she couldn't tell, and it wasn't until she caught the sight of his sword slick with blood
(whosebloodmyblood)
that she realized he'd—
No. This wasn't happening, none of it at all. It vaguely occurred to her that she was quite possibly in shock. She was aware of the blood pooling around her but couldn't feel it, like an out of body experience.
Kadaj leaned over into her ear. "If you're growing cold," he whispered, his words a bare hiss, "you shouldn't be afraid. It's a natural part of dying, you see."
(dyingi'mnotdying)
She tried to speak, but couldn’t. He was inches away from her, filling her blurry, heavy vision with nothing but bright eyes that stared down at her and cruelly proclaimed
(i win)
and somehow it was the worst to have him so close, so intimate, with her. She moved her arm in desperate attempt to push the bastard away only to find her fingers brushing against something. Solid and unexpected. What…?
He was still whispering to her. She couldn’t hear him anymore, but it didn't matter. She could see him. She could see him and that was all she needed, that and one split second, a single opening because
(guess what i win too)
"Hey, Kadaj."
She didn’t think he could hear her. Her lips barely moved. But she knew he felt it pressed beneath his chin, knew it from the way his eyes widened just a hint.
And she pulled the trigger.
Author:
melanthe_v / MaiaBeta: None because I suck and worked too close to the deadline to really get one. |D
Word Count: 2,042
Rating: PG-13
Character(s): Kadaj, Elena, and mentions of Reno
Summary: Elena. Kadaj. At night. Alone. 'Nuff said.
Notes: Oh God...DON'T KILL ME, EMI AND LINA. D: D: This idea just kind of came and alfdjsdf; YEAH. I hope I didn't slaughter your chars too much, either. DX
Why was it so dark, even with a flashlight? This was just creepy. And Elena was having a hard time juggling the flashlight with her gun, too. A gun with only one bullet in it, but it was better than nothing.
Or so the saying went.
A quiet skittering noise, like scratching claws, stopped her dead in her tracks. She peered around the corner, scanning for any creepy crawly and trying to keep calm. Augh. This was so not good. Wandering the hallways alone was never a good idea. Or—no, wait, what was she saying? She could totally do this. Needed to do this, really. The others were trapped in the Sun Room. The doors had started to swing shut and being the smallest one, only she had managed to squeeze through before they closed completely. Which left her with the task of trying to find something—or someone—who could pry those doors open again before that freaky chick on heels did...whatever scary thing she was meant to do.
At least the girl had been sort of pretty? In a way? Elena was sure that would be of some comfort to Reno. Or maybe not.
Anyway.
Elena slipped further down the hall. Now that it had happened, she couldn't say that she wasn't glad she was...on her own. In a sense. A chance to prove herself, right? She was off to rescue someone else for once. And she was determined not to screw it up. For both the sake of the others, but for her own sake, too. She could never do anything right and though lately, things had been looking up, it was still...sometimes she wondered if maybe there was a reason why she was always in her sister's shadow. It would just be nice to let herself know that she wasn't totally useless. That she could actually do something.
But not alone, she had to admit. She needed to find help for this one. Even if she did stumble on some kind of tool to help her bust open the doors, she hardly had the body strength to use it. Perhaps AVALANCHE. Or someone else. Elena was willing to accept anyone who came along at this point.
"Well, look at who's all alone. What a perfect little surprise."
She froze at the silky, familiar voice snaking up from behind. Her blood ran cold. She whirled around, dropping her flashlight to free up her hands to better grip the pistol. The flashlight flickered as it clattered to the floor, but stayed lit. Somehow, she kept her aim steady, but the rising panic was near impossible to quash.
Oh God. Shit shit shit. She took that back about anyone coming along. Took it back completely.
Anyone but him.
"Stay back," she snapped. She took an involuntary half-step back. She could've sworn she saw Kadaj's eyes light up at that.
The temptation to look behind her, back where she'd left Reno, was strong, but she managed to resist. The timing for this was so perfect she had to wonder if Kadaj had made a deal with the...woman-thing in the Sun Room.
The sword glinted in the beam of the flashlight.
"You can't possibly be considering actually shooting me again," he said, sounding both disdainful and amused at the same time. "Surely you recall what happened the last time you did something that foolish."
One bullet, right? She could take out the bastard. But her fingers were frozen and her vision was shaky and all she could focus on was that flashing silver
(scalpel)
sword and why couldn't she think straight dammit—
She felt the movement before she could even register it. Her pistol went skittering across the tiled floor. She didn't even have a chance to curse the loss of her only weapon as she found herself pinned to the wall and with fingers crushed against her windpipe. Not to choke her completely, but enough to make each breath an effort. Her mind was blank, thoughts no longer processing.
"Pathetic. You make it so easy, you know. It almost takes the fun out of it." His eyes glittered with a playful wickedness. It should've been hard to take him seriously, with those stupid happy-face clothes. He should've looked like a retard by all means. But it wasn't and he didn't and
(i'mgonnadie)
That skittering. For a second time now. She hardly noticed at first, too fixated on the fact that this wasn’t happening again, but the scrabbling turned into a cat-like yowl and she suddenly felt Kadaj's grip loosen a bare fraction.
The irony that a monster at Landel's had just rescued her never had the time to cross her mind.
Elena yanked one arm free from his grasp and raked her nails across Kadaj's face. She missed the eye she'd been aiming for, but the chunk of skin that curled off his cheek and buried itself beneath her nails was enough. His snarl of pain sounded more irritated than hurt. She didn't wait around. She dove straight for her gun, almost tripping as she snatched it up, Somehow, she kept her balance.
And then she ran. Sprinted, actually. It was dark and she couldn't see and it was a really good thing that these hallways were pretty straight and without obstacles. Her surroundings were deathly silent despite her own heavy breathing. Her ears rang.
She didn't even know where she was running. Or why. This was a stupid plan, she had nowhere to go and he was completely gaining on her, gaining on her so fast she didn't even realize how fast until his fingers curled in her hair and she went flying against the bathroom counter. The sharp edge crushed against her chest. When the hell did she end up in the bathroom?
She swung her pistol up to smash his face with it, but she only found her wrist caught and the gun being twisted out of it for the second time and this was really getting stupid—
"It's almost cute how you thought you could run from me except I'm really—" The mirror shattered as Kadaj sent the handle of sword into it— "quite infuriated by the way you scratched me like that."
Nightmare. This was a nightmare. It was happening again so it had to be nightmare. There was no way this could happen twice, not like this, and somewhere in the midst of her panic she stopped trying to struggle free and simply threw her entire body weight forward as hard as she could. Kadaj had already been pushing her forward, and the combination of both toppled the two of them over.
He landed on top of her, crushing her against the shards of glass scattered over the bathroom floor. Something had crunched when she landed, too, not the crunch of glass but like a squish of a bug. The roaches.
Acting on pure instinct, Elena kicked in a panicked effort to shove Kadaj off of her, to keep him off balance, to do anything. Her hand pressed down on shards of glass. She could feel the blood, but not the sharp pain. His weight was still on top of her, pinning her down, and she was pretty sure he was saying something because he was always saying something but the words had stopped processing. A fleeting thought flickered through her mind
(Shin-Ra Academy training sucks)
before the blade of the sword fell against her throat, just brushing the surface. She stopped struggling. A curtain of silver hair fell into her line of sight, obscuring everything else.
"Do you know why I don't like you, Elena?" he purred. "Because nobody else seems to get it, treating you like something worth protecting simply because you're blonde and useless and they feel sorry for you. They all rush to your defence. What do you give them back in return?"
Elena flinched. "Shut up."
"Doesn't it make you wonder?" His lips were close enough for her to feel his breath against her ear. "Doesn't it make you wonder?" A giggle. "It does, doesn't it? It should. I should kill you right now and do everyone a favour, relieve them of their burden. You and your boyfriend. You're both useless. It's pathetic."
Tamaki. "Don't you dare touch him—"
"Oh, how very sweet of you to worry like that."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could spot the black shadow of her pistol a few feet away. Kadaj either didn't notice or didn't care. If she could reach it...at this close range, she couldn't possibly miss. Could she?
(doesn't it make you wonder)
The blade travelled thoughtfully over her collarbone. "I don't feel like doing what I did last time," he said, sounding almost as though he were thinking aloud to himself. "It's rather boring and uncreative, you know. Not that you're deserving of my talents, of course." He was so close to her, she all she could see were his eyes, slitted and cat-like.
An involuntary shudder ran up her spine. Her arm tickled as a cockroach scurried over it. For some reason, she felt its creepy little legs the clearest. Like the time when they were kids and Rosalind had snuck into her bedroom at night and dropped a tarantula on her pillow. Elena had woken up in the middle of the night with eight furry legs creeping along her neck and screamed so loud her father ran into her room with a baseball bat in hand, thinking his daughter was being kidnapped or something.
And she wasn't sure what it was, whether it was desperation or hysteria or a combination of both, but all of a sudden, she stopped caring whether she'd be able to reach the gun in time. All that mattered was that she needed to reach it because damned if she was just going to roll over and die because she wasn't useless—
Elena head butted him, a move that was surely suicidal but somehow wasn't. She heard the crack, but didn't wait to see the spurt of blood from his nose. She scrambled for the pistol in the dark, catching the glimpse of its metallic gleam. She didn't even bother wasting time getting to her feet.
Fingers snagged her ankle. She shrieked as he flipped her over. Her back slammed hard against the tile floors, her head banging against a bathroom stall.
<>(ohmygod)
It was as though he were hunting her, his stalking predatory. She was going to be slaughtered and there was nothing she could do about it. Her breath came in short, hyperventilating gasps.
She started to scramble backwards, the tiles cold beneath her fingers. She made it about half a foot before Kadaj moved. Either her mind simply couldn't keep up or he really was that fast, she couldn't tell, and it wasn't until she caught the sight of his sword slick with blood
(whosebloodmyblood)
that she realized he'd—
No. This wasn't happening, none of it at all. It vaguely occurred to her that she was quite possibly in shock. She was aware of the blood pooling around her but couldn't feel it, like an out of body experience.
Kadaj leaned over into her ear. "If you're growing cold," he whispered, his words a bare hiss, "you shouldn't be afraid. It's a natural part of dying, you see."
(dyingi'mnotdying)
She tried to speak, but couldn’t. He was inches away from her, filling her blurry, heavy vision with nothing but bright eyes that stared down at her and cruelly proclaimed
(i win)
and somehow it was the worst to have him so close, so intimate, with her. She moved her arm in desperate attempt to push the bastard away only to find her fingers brushing against something. Solid and unexpected. What…?
He was still whispering to her. She couldn’t hear him anymore, but it didn't matter. She could see him. She could see him and that was all she needed, that and one split second, a single opening because
(guess what i win too)
"Hey, Kadaj."
She didn’t think he could hear her. Her lips barely moved. But she knew he felt it pressed beneath his chin, knew it from the way his eyes widened just a hint.
And she pulled the trigger.