Never live,
Never die,
Your life has been denied
They call you,
Lucifer's Angel.
"Lucifer's Angel" by The Rasmus
Title: "Lucifer's Angel"
Warnings: Neglection, mutilation, underage/human experimentation, semi-graphic non-con, very graphic [minor] character death
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy X (other than my PS2 disc) nor do I own 'Lucifer's Angel'. All rights go to their respective owners, I only use them for my own entertainment.
UPDATE 01-18-15;
For the longest time I've wanted to rewrite LA to better explain my thoughts to the readers, though I've gotten some very great feedback in the two years this has been posted. I'm pleased to announce that I've completed the second version and have now uploaded it, hopefully with even more dark themes to send shivers down your back... or at least make your stomach flop. The previous version was poorly written and edited, so I fixed it up and added much more detail and hopefully this will turn out fantastically.
Please keep in mind that this new version has different warnings since it's much more graphic than its predecessor. Neither Jecht nor Tidus die, there are minor character deaths in this story. Enjoy the gore!
Loud rapping came from the front door, rousing Jecht from sleep. Grumbling, he made his way over to it and swung it wide, eyes blearily staring at whoever decided to interrupt his mid-day nap. "What can I do for ya?" he asked gruffly, staring with barely concealed displeasure at the small army of excited news reporters crowding outside his home.
"Jecht, Jecht!" One sturdy blonde woman pushed her way to the front, shoving her microphone into the blitzer's face. "Is it true that your son has been admitted to the hospital for rape?" A cameraman behind her captured every moment of the man's shock.
"What?"
To say Tidus was upset would be an understatement. He wandered the streets of Zanarkand in a seething fury, cursing his life with everything he had. It was past midnight, well after his curfew and probably not the safest time to be out with little purpose. But he didn't feel like going home; the pain in his chest was renewed with the thought of how his parents never paid him any attention.
Now, just because Zanarkand was known for being a grand and welcoming city, didn't mean bad things wouldn't happen, especially to seven year old boys who strayed outside after dark by themselves. The problems weren't heard of often, but they weren't uncommon. And unfortunately for Tidus, they were going to happen to him that very night.
Hands wrapped around his neck and chest, rendering him immobile and cutting off his air supply. Something strong knocked him out before he could scream for help.
When he awoke, he was lying on a bed in a dimly lit room, a gag inside his mouth and a faceless man approaching him with a very intimidating-looking needle. He struggled to get away, but powerful straps kept him attached to the bed beneath him. The blonde gave a muffled cry when the needle entered him, the man injecting him with some unknown substance. It made him drowsy, but he was immediately roused when another man came up from the opposite side and flipped him over.
It was then that he realized he was naked.
"Ahh!" He screamed and thrashed, trying to free himself so he could escape the man clambering onto the bed. He only laughed at the struggling boy, and spread his ass cheeks apart, revealing the puckered hole that was Tidus' entrance. Without any warning, the man thrust into him, all the way to the hilt.
Spots of blood stained the crisp sheets beneath them.
"Are you saying you didn't know of this?" another reporter demanded, a man with thick, bushy eyebrows and a bit of scruff on his chin. "Why were you not the first to find out? Why did no one tell you your own son was raped?"
Jecht waved his hands wildly, at a loss for what to do. "Yes, I didn't know! I don't know why I'm finding out just now and I have no idea why no one told me," he answered roughly, eyes narrowed in irritation at the pressing questions. A lump formed thick in his throat, and for once the man felt a twinge of regret gnawing at his heart.
Three days he had been in some unknown place. Three days with men who wore creepy white formless masks with black screens where the eyes should be. Three days where all he knew was pain and the panicked adrenaline rush his drug-induced lucid dreaming caused, where his spine ached and rippled between his shoulder blades. Whatever the men had injected him with contained an unhealthy imbalance of growth hormones and avian genetics - taken from a hunting falcon, the men said - and was mutating far too quickly. Of course, these men (later Tidus understood they were deported scientists from somewhere outside of Zanarkand) were ecstatic with his progress and continued to administer the compound at irregular intervals, then they proceeded to use him to their imaginations.
His body rapidly underwent a sudden growth on the fourth day, and the men left his body to himself, choosing to observe his mutation from behind a small corridor window hidden beside the doorway. For little over two hours Tidus writhed on the bed, frozen between vivid hallucinations and horrible reality as he felt his body tearing him from the inside out. It was a strange, out-of-conscious experience; something else was moving around, controlling his movements, forcing him into something different. In a moment of searing rationality he remembered staring at himself in the mirror across the room, looking on with sick fascination as dark brown and tan-streaked wings protruded from his back, his own warm blood dripping from the feathers that had come loose. His eyes—not his own, but so sincerely close—glittered with liquid fire, orange pools that sunk into violent, painful instinct, watching him with feral intensity so strong he could not help but accept it.
The scientists later came in after the process was mostly over, praising themselves and Tidus for a job well done. They gave him a strong dose of morphine and other substances, he couldn't hear them well enough to care. Whatever it was made him nauseous and his head spin; he did not fight when they tied his wrists and ankles to the metal bedposts, even as the rough sheets scratched at the open wounds littering his tan skin. The boy simply watched the scientists with half-lidded eyes until they left, then allowed himself to sleep. The fifth day passed with little event—one man entered the room and took basic tests, but Tidus was far too groggy from the drugs to pay attention. They let him rest with no interruption.
A third anchor stepped in his path, ushering her crew forward. "Your son has been missing for nearly a week; how could you not know?" she all but hissed. Jecht met her upset eyes with a glare of his own, pushing back the tightening crowd of cameramen with a sweep of his arm.
"Stop crowdin' me," he muttered gruffly, ignoring the accusing stare the unanswered news anchor shot at him. "I-"
It was on the seventh day that something finally went awry in the masked scientists routine. Tidus had been resting in the windowless room, lying in wait for the men's inexorable return. Swimming between consciousness and delirium, he'd no idea how much time passed from their last visit. But when the door finally opened, the entrants were not whom he expected.
Someone must have figured out he was missing for—how long had it been? He honestly couldn't remember—some time and called the police. Two uniformed officers strode into the bedroom with their weapons drawn, a doctor hurrying in behind them. The female officer nearly dropped her pistol when she saw him on the bed, covering her mouth to muffle a horrified gasp. The doctor and the other officer both had equal looks of alarm and pity as they stared at the boy, and Tidus knew he must have been a sight to see. Splayed out in the nude for all to see, with his limbs restrained and numerous cuts lacing his weak body in his private places; not even mentioning the wings awkwardly folded beneath his bloodied back, shivering and scattering loose feathers all over the floor.
Yeah, he was a wreck.
"Are you going to visit him?"
Jecht ground his teeth and fought the urge to lash out at the annoying flock of reporters. "Of course I am. Now get the hell out of my way before I break your damn neck," he growled, and the crowd parted aside. The blitzer pushed his way through them and made his way towards the hospital several blocks away, wondering what could have happened to the brat this time.
He could barely focus on them removing his restraints and the male officer picking him up so very gently, like he was something fragile and he'd shatter like glass. Then he was laid on a gurney and brought to a hospital—the lights were so bright compared to the windowless room, he cried and thrashed and three nurses were holding him down, trying to reassure him, telling him he was safe and to relax—where he was forced to suffer in the recesses of his own mind as the doctors set him through surgery. Hours felt like weeks as he was constantly wheeled from the emergency room to the critical health ward, slipping from his feral reality to the strange dreams the anesthetics gave him during the operations. He couldn't care less how many days went by; his mind was running on sole instinct, and the constant prickling in his feathers as the countless doctors and nurses tugged at his wings was driving him up the wall.
His nerves thinned as time dragged on (in truth he had only been in the hospital for three days, but it felt like months), and he soon felt himself about to snap. One visit while he was semi-conscious was the final straw; a doctor accompanied with two nurses came in brandishing a fairly large needle. Something triggered at the sight and his mind became desensitized, feral instinct making him lash out and attack the nurse who strayed too close to the bed. She had no time to react when his clawed hand struck her chest, gouging a wound deep enough to cut something inside. She let out a choked noise and fell to the floor, already fumbling for some sort of cloth to staunch the bleeding.
The other one let out a shrill scream and yelled for help while the doctor inched closer to the door, eyes wide as he stared at the boy. A burly male nurse ran in and fought his way to the bedside, carelessly stepping over the bleeding woman in his haste. His strength threatened to overpower the flailing boy and Tidus began to still, allowing the doctor to come forward. But before the needle could pierce his skin Tidus let out a bird-like screech, seeing red and sinking his claws into the doctor's face. The man screamed and fell back, a domino effect falling into place—the nurse jumped back in surprise as Tidus ripped himself free of the thick leather restraints, leaping onto him with inhuman speed.
The doctor watched with mute horror as the nurse failed to win against the feral avian, quickly succumbing to fang and claw. With loud, angry screams and not more than four wild punches was the man taken down, his blood staining the crisp blue hospital raiment Tidus wore. When the man finally stilled with a shuddering breath those burning, orange eyes turned on him and the doctor flinched back, staring fearfully up from his place against the wall as the boy stepped over the two corpses towards him. He scrabbled backwards towards the door, but his escape didn't last longer than a second or two before the avian caught him as well. He was killed swiftly but messily by him, blood splattered all down his forearms and the front of his gown. The female nurse and any nearby medical personnel had fled for fear of being torn open and having their entrails strewn about.
As the door in front of him opened with a soft click, Tidus heard a deep, rumbling gasp. He looked up to see whomever had entered the room, and his mouth stretched into a grisly smile when his orange eyes met dark brown.
Jecht was not in the least expecting the pristine white room where his son was to be staying splashed with red, nor the kid in question to be standing over three clearly dead bodies with broad, bloody wings outstretched behind him and blood covering clawed fingers. Upon entering he let out a shocked gasp not of his own accord, and froze when the boy looked his way, mouth set in a toothy, wolfish smirk.
There was a long, pregnant pause before one of them broke the disquiet. "Hey, old man," Tidus murmured, his throat raw and scratchy from his earlier screams.
"...Hey." Jecht looked between his kid and the corpses for a moment, taking everything in. He let out a deep, uncertain sigh and crossed his arms over his chest, falling into his usual stance as he appraised the avian. The kid sure had guts, ruthlessly slaughtering three health workers with no thought of the murder charges that would be pressed on him.
When he took a step further into the room, Tidus instinctively stepped back, keeping the distance between them. "Why are you here?" he snarled.
The blitz star sighed again, taking his time in answering. "I heard you were here for rape. Wanted ta come see how you were doin'."
Tidus scoffed, quick to retort, "Like hell I'm believing that! You've never cared in the last twelve years, Jecht." Fixing the man with a hateful glare that contrasted the wide grin across his lips, the blond resisted the need to laugh, literally, in the face of his personal death. "I hate you."
The brunet blinked slowly, not moving a muscle. "Final words?" he asked.
Now it came out, bubbling in his throat until it burst out in loud, wheezing gasps that left Tidus almost doubled over as he struggled not to collapse right there. His wings shook from the effort, several more brown feathers already dotting the floor. "You better fucking believe it, Jecht," the boy hissed between his laughter. With those words he turned and leapt for the nearest window, smashing through the glass without so much as an "ouch!" as the shards cut through his skin. Soaring upwards and away from the building, he didn't look back.
Jecht watched him disappear. "Damn brat. He ain't never gonna make it on his own," he grumbled to himself.
But little did he know in the years to follow, Tidus would renounce himself with a new fame as Zanarkand's own murderer-at-large, amassing a name for himself as the people dubbed him the 'Angel of Death'.