He paced along his cage restlessly, his lean legs gliding forward with lethal grace.
Chains rattling as they slithered across the floor; holding him back and chaffing against soft fur and tough skin.
He raised silver-gold eyes and his vision was cut through by those hated dull bars.
Pale fur rippled across his back as he flexed his shoulder, and a child stared in awe.
He nearly snarled at her, but kept his temper in check.
Brown guards stood on watch, waiting for any movement that would allow them to pull the trigger. They were cold in a way his homeland never was.
He laid down, side pressed against freezing bars. The icy feeling seeping through his dense fur, sinking past ebony spots and winding around sinewy muscle.
It reminded him of home. So close and always, always so far away.
A child's hand reached out, short and stubby, but another replaced hers. A fragile illusion that shook him to the core. A phantom, a memory. Warm fingers gently reaching for his neck, coaxing him forward.
The young girls smile overlapped with a one that would never be mistaken as something other than insane. Gentle, maybe, and caring but insane nonetheless. A promise of love wrapped in piercing thorns (fool me once, but never twice).
Ignoring the young girls startled look he stood quickly. His eyes roaming trying to find something to ground him, keep him from the memories… and met with cobalt blue.
He saw war in those eyes, he saw death and Chase and Fight and LIVE. He say a forest of tall thin green wrapped in pale brown. A long thin claw that whistled, deadly, through the air guided by thin fingers and strong hands. He saw a bird with long green feathers dancing in the sky and a scarlet wolf (why insist on rabbit?) weaving around the ground laughing as he turned his enemies to ash. He saw a river of blood on this man's odd claw, and yet none his own although it took something else. He saw a lotus, blooming gently in the dark, caged by a curvy golden bars(hated cage, burning rage), slowly reaching towards its end. And he saw fur, black with a sheen of deepest blue. Slitted eyes piercing through darkness, looking out, and meeting his own
He wondered what this…. Cobalt-Blue-Man-that-was-not-a-man saw in his own silver eyes. Did he see the tall mountain ranges, with sprawling misty valleys that he had once called home? Cold water drifting softly down as the sky went from pale blue to a pewter grey, to become the ground from which he leapt? Did he see steaming blood splatter on black stone and melt the pale ground? Did he see a master with half his face encased in bone and magic sparking at his fingertips? Did this Cobalt-Blue-man-that-was-not-a-man see the towering peaks that had stood guard against any that planned to harm? That for years had shielded him, had let him walk across their back and led him unscathed away from danger. Did he see the leash that had ripped him away? The rage that had misted over his eyes until he never knew if he killed friend or foe? He looked into that Cobalt-Blue-man-that-was-not-a-man's eyes and decided that, yes, he did see. Now what would this man do?
A tall Japanese man sighed, why the hell was he at a damn zoo?
Oh, right. Stupid sister-complex with his "this is important" and " I am your supervisor you have listen to me". Tch as if he'd ever follow his orders. Except... he was, fuck. he made up his mind to turn around right then and there just to spite the drill wielding idiot, turning on his heels ... and saw his target.
Crap, well there goes the excuse of "I didn't see him".
The target was lying down, pressing his side against the bars. The fur on it's shoulders was rippling in agitation, the guards (all wearing uniforms that were obviously for show because they were ridiculous and he ought to stab them to relieve himself of the eyesore), shifted their weight, hands going to the guns at their waste. Were they fucking stupid? They acted like the target would break out of the cage and attack the mini human in front of it, not that he would be able to do it, the damn thing was tiny (The target, not the cage, obviously)
Wait, cage, shit now he was going to have to break the damn thing out before dragging it's ass back to HQ because there was no way sister-complex actually planned ahead for once and bought the damn thing. Plus, it would be a cold day in hell before he sent him on a simple pick-it-up-and-drop-it-off mission. Not since the last time he had been forced into one and the target had ended up in the psychiatric ward. Tch, typical he should have left when he had the chance.
The mini human started to reach towards his target and he nearly snarled at the utter idiocy in that act, he almost hoped it would bite the girls hand off, maybe that would teach her not to stick them where they don't belong ( Although he doubted it, mini humans were just as stupid as older humans). As it was, it only rose suddenly moving away and scaring the crap out of the small thing (ha serves her right) and locked eyes with him.
Immediately images slammed into his mind. Towering mountain peaks and sloping valleys, snow falling from a pewter grey sky, he say large paws running across hard rock and sliding over top of snow, he saw a man with red hair and half his face covered in a white mask, magic weaving between his fingertips and he saw blood as fangs ripped through meat and claws cleaved through bone. Silver eyes blinded by rage while they slowly turned cold. The second the images stopped he saw the silvery gold of his targets eyes and nearly bared his teeth, because if he could see that, then what had his target seen? It grated on him and he needed to know because if he saw... that, then he would have to kill it and he really didn't even want to think about the screaming match he would have with the Lenalee and the rabbit if he dragged back a corpse. Although, maybe it would finally get sister-complex to stop sending him on these useless missions and send him somewhere important, like a battlefield or for soba.