This fic fleshes out (ahaha sorry) the Underworld drabble from the last chapter of Journeys. It's another old one, but I made some significant changes and finally finished it up. (I promise the next fic has zero Cloud abuse. SOLDIER's honor.)
Disclaimer: dood, fanfiction. Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and the characters and universes therein are the property of Disney and Square Enix. I receive no remuneration for this work; it is a parody and as such utilizes the Fair Use clause of the Copyright Act.
"Done."
The contract disappears with a snap of the god's fingers, and the sudden pain that flares up inside him is staggering, as if every single nerve ending in his body has frayed and caught on fire. He doesn't even get a chance to lash out before he's on his knees, his breath coming in shaking waves and his vision whiting around the edges. His fingers gouge into the unforgiving ground, leaving streaks of bright red blood in their wake.
This was not what he agreed to.
He feels more than sees the thick tendrils of darkness seep up from the ground, snaking their way up his arms and curling over his back, where a sudden searing agony centralizes just between his shoulders. His mouth opens in a silent scream and his body curls in on itself, trying to distance itself from the lancing heat tearing down the edge of his left shoulder blade. In one ruthless slash, the darkness rips him open as if it were a dull, rusty blade, cleaving apart cloth and skin and muscle and tendon and bone, and suddenly his scream isn't so silent, torn so violently from from his throat that it bleeds.
He's too far gone to hear the smug chuckle of the god lingering before him, or register the hot streams of blood that pour down his back, soaking through the shredded remains of his shirt. He has been no stranger to pain, but pain has never felt anything like this before. He can feel individual bones grinding sickeningly against one another, the snap and stretch of tendons and ligaments, each fiber of tender, exposed nerves spreading out to encase whatever grotesque, aching thing is wrenching itself out of his flesh.
He is just this side of vomiting or passing out when his suffering finally begins to ease. Heavy throbs of nausea come and go with each anxious beat of his overworked heart, and he is dimly aware of sinew and skin knitting back together at an agonizing pace.
When their task is finally complete, the dark tendrils around him relinquish their hold on his body and slink back into the earth, sizzling away with soft, airy hisses. He breathes one shuddery sigh of relief, and then another. Eventually he struggles to his knees, but he can rise no further.
"What an interesting development," the god drawls, tapping one long blue finger on his chin. "Reminds me of someone else I've seen around here. Maybe you'll meet him someday, who knows. Now remember," he snaps, suddenly all business and no sarcasm, "keep up your end of the deal: Wonder Boy dies, or your pretty little soul? Doesn't belong to you anymore."
Then there's an abrupt, hollow crack in the air and he's left alone—alone with the pain and the blood and the black, shivering thing draped wetly over his back. He slumps forward, defeated, and he doesn't move.
"Cloud?"
He's still exactly where he'd been abandoned some time ago: on his knees in the dirt with his bloodied hands limp on his thighs, staring vacantly at the red earth before him. He recognizes the voice as belonging to his main sparring partner from the training grounds, but he doesn't bother to reply. He's bound too close to the darkness now. He can feel it in every cell in his body—feel him in every cell in his body, stronger now than he ever has. It pulls at him incessantly from the inside, and he knows he has no choice.
He has no choice.
Carefully, slowly, he grips his thigh and uses it to push himself into a crouch, then as smoothly as he can to stand. He straightens his back and attempts to disguise his wince as the foreign weight stretches out and away from his shoulder, arching and aching and dark.
What have you done? Leon's unspoken words hang heavy in the air.
He chooses to not acknowledge the other man at all beyond being the catalyst to get him moving again, instead striding out of the bleak, misty cavern and leaving a thinning trail of blood behind him. But despite his air of indifference, a whisper of doubt follows him down the Cimmerian path, slipping through a tiny chink in the metaphorical armor Hades has tricked him into wearing.
What have I done?