Timeline: part way through MKX
Shortly after the defeat of Quan Chi, Scorpion and Sub-Zero have been returned from revenent states to the living. Sub-Zero has challenged Sektor for leadership of the Lin Kuei and defeated him. He now works to try and mend the Lin Kuei of their old corruption. Scorpion's time has not been so productive...
New, softly falling snow covered his tracks almost as fast as he made them. He hesitated in his path now and again, allowing the crunch of his footsteps to cease and the silence to reconvene. When he breathed, he saw the air form slight clouds. He marvelled at this. He had forgotten breathing could be beautiful. The cold caused him to shiver. Not for the first time on this trek did he long for an inner fire to warm his chilled skin. He trudged on.
Steep mountain sides were crusted with deep snow. Sunk in the valley before him were the stacked, curved roofs of the Lin Kuei temple. He body quivered but this time not just with the cold. Even the idea of setting foot in this place stoked rage from the pits of his new found soul. Under the cover of the growing darkness he started towards the snow steeped temple.
.
Kuai Liang awoke with a sudden start. For a moment all was dark and he was left only with a prickling sensation in his spine that all was not well. He sat up in the covers of his pallet and froze. Crouched on the other side of his room and lit only by the half light of the moon streaming through an open window was his nemesis. All the muscles in his body tensed. His eyes locked upon his enemy's, and he studied them for the first time without the burn of hellfire behind them. Scorpion crouched, ready to leap, his kunai wrapped around one arm ready, katana pointed straight forward. Once Kuai had collected himself and studied his opponent, he saw the defensive curl in the other's posture, the hunted, corned look in his eyes and the heard the frustration in his breathing.
"Hanzo...?" He ventured cautiously.
"Do not speak that name!" The reply was as venomous as usual and muffled behind the hannya mask obstructing the lower half of his face. He did not move however, Kuai noted.
"Do the Shirai Ryu have so little honour that they would attack their opponents while they sleep?"
The shinobi leapt up,
"You dare speak of honour to me, Lin Kuei dog!? You dare after all your clan have done!? I should never have come! It was too much to think a Lin Kuei would find honour after all these years!" He moved to attack. Kuai sat still in his bed, legs folded calmly.
"So you did get my message. I sent word over a year ago, Hanzo. Why do you come to me now in the middle of the night?"
Scorpion stopped where he stood, katana raised to strike and kunai pulled back to release. His breathing was laboured behind the mask.
"What I do is none of your concern."
The weapons were drooping though, Kuai was glad of that at least. Kuai narrowed his eyes and looked harder at his enemy. Now that he stood in the moonlight, he could see a haggard look in his face, and dark rings beneath his eyes.
"You do not look well."
Scorpion snarled and retracted into the shadows. He dropped one arm to his side but pointed his katana forward.
"Speak, Sub-Zero! I mean to depart this place as soon as I can."
"Now? Here? Can we at least do this in a more civilised fashion?"
"So that you can summon all your Lin Kuei mongrels and have me watched and surrounded? I think not!" Scorpion glanced through the open window then round at the paper walls of the room. His head twisted this way and that as if trying to see into every shadow.
"I invited you here as my guest, Hanzo. The Lin Kuei will not harm you."
"Forgive me if it sounds like I do not trust you." Now that the man before him was free of his servitude to the Netherrealm, Kuai thought he could hear all the layers of hatred and suffering behind the sarcasm in that voice.
"Walk with me, Hanzo. Let me put on something warmer, and walk with me beyond the temple grounds."
"You mean to deceive me!" He was a wildcat hunched into the corner again.
Kuai ignored him. He got up and with great difficulty turned his back on the spitting, tortured paranoia of the other assassin. He knelt before a wooden draw and drew from it his blue garb. He unfolded it and donned it slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. When he had finished dressing himself he turned back to Scorpion.
"Will you insist on exitting through the window or may I lead you through my front door?" He tried to keep the irony from his voice, knowing it would only send his old enemy into another rage. As he had hoped, the man's furious pride forced him to follow Kuai through the wooden passages and out into the courtyard. He was troubled by the hounded, fraught movements of his guest however. He had hoped that release from Quan Chi's control would bring the Shirai Ryu warrior peace, at it had in many ways himself. Instead he seemed to have retained many qualities Kuai thought had belonged to the spectre and not the man.
They walked out beneath the crossbeamed wooden archway and out into the snow scudded valley. Black clouds moved over the half smile of the moon and loaned the night increasing shadows. Neither spoke as they walked. Kuai took them up one of the old paths that bent up the steep slopes and navigated them between knife tooth rocks and gnarled leafless trees.
"Where are you taking me?" His bitter guest grated.
"Only a little further. There is an old shrine at the end of this path. It is quiet there, and sheltered. It will be a good place to talk."
"This had better be worth my time." Some of the fire had left his voice with the exertion of the climb and the plummet of the temperature.
Nothing like a little cold to cool off Scorpion's temper. He thought to himself. He kept this unhelpful reflection to himself.
The path curled into a natural hollow in the cliff face. The rock leant over the ancient remains of a small stone statue, too weathered to retain its features. Here, Kuai sat and looked out over the valley in its bleak monotone shades. In the corner of his eye he saw Scorpion stalk back and forth, trying to work out if he should sit or stand for this long-anticipated meeting. Kuai kept his gaze on the valley until his guest had dropped himself on a low carved stone seat. Then he turned.
"I do not know what you have heard from others, Hanzo, but regardless I wish you to hear this from my mouth, here and now."
"All I want to hear from your mouth is confirmation that the Lin Kuei name is mud." The familiar hostility sounded a little forced and tired.
Kuai tilted his head,
"It is true my clan has had a dark past. I do not deny that. I am trying to amend that now though, and reforge our name again." There was a pause, "I think you know what I wish to say, Hanzo. You know that the Lin Kuei are not responsible for the death of your clan."
The man before him flinched. It was too dark to see his face. Kuai continued,
"The suffering inflicted on you was not done by our hand. You were deceived in this. Quan Chi-"
Scorpion leapt from his seat. Kuai tensed, instinctively feeling the rush of the cold flow to his fists as he readied his defence. Scorpion stalked the ground before the shrine seething through his mask.
"I know!" He spat, "I know!" Kuai failed to understand how every advance in conversation managed to make Scorpion even more enraged. Surely the man must have a limit to how furious he could be. He carefully continued when it became clear that Scorpion was going to keep pacing and hissing.
"Quan Chi came to you in the wake of everything and fed on your hatred and grief. What happened and what you became is on him, and not the Lin Kuei."
"I know!" He sounded more angry still.
Kuai regarded him. This was not how had hoped this discussion would go.
"Well... in light of this, Hanzo, I thought we could put away some of our old animosity... and that this might set some things to right between our clans."
"Set to right?! What about this is set to right?! What about this dispels animosity! To know that everything in the past was deception and lies!? To know that my family are unavenged while Quan Chi is untouchable in the Netherrealm? That the first time I want to go to that place is the only time it is impossible for me?! To know that Bi-Han died for nothing!? That I gave up everything, my very soul, for nothing!? What about this is set to right, Kuai Liang?!"
In this tirade one thing in particular struck Kuai as peculiar.
"You... regret Bi-Han's death?"
"I did not say that! As if I would every feel guilty for killing any Lin Kuei dog!"
Kuai looked at him. Scorpion clawed his mask off in frustration. His hair fell loose about him and a wild stubble was on his chin. It was easier to extend empathy to his nemesis with that human interior exposed.
"Quan Chi is to blame for Bi-Han's death, not you."
"It was my hands that did it! You Lin Kuei are truly honourless if you cannot see that your own brother-"
"Hanzo." Kuai said firmly. The shinobi stopped pacing and turned.
"I told you... not to call me that."
"Hanzo Hasashi did not kill my brother. You have suffered enough without taking another soul onto your conscience."
His enemy was breathing hard and trying to calm his temper. His eyes were dark and suspicious.
"If you knew of all this already, then why did you come here?" Kuai shook his head, "You knew what I wished to say to you."
"I know nothing of the thoughts of a Lin-"
"What is it that you wanted?"
There was silence. The snow had begun to fall again. Kuai waited. There was some kind of inner turmoil being weighed in the other man's mind. After a long while Scorpion turned his back to him.
"Where else was I meant to go?!" He managed even to make this sound hateful, "I cannot get to Quan Chi. My clan are all dead! Everything that is meant to be dead is alive and everything that was meant to live... is dead. And I can do nothing. I longed to be rid my chains and become human again, and now that I am, I am nothing but weak! I cannot avenge my people! You served under Quan Chi for almost no time. Everyone remembers Sub-Zero and what he did for Earthrealm. All that is remembered of Scorpion is a hellfire demon! Sometimes I wish that fate back! There is so much I did not recall about humanity – I cannot travel as I please – and I must eat and... sleep. A Netherrealm creature has no dreams, Sub-Zero! A Netherrealm creature has no nightmares." He was still turned away.
"Han-"
"Why is it I cannot even recall their faces in my sleep!? What is wrong with me!?"
There was silence. The snow fell heavily between them.
"I did not mean to say that. I will go now."
"No." Kuai got to his feet, "You were right to come here. Do not go."
"And how do you mean to stop me?" Scorpion turned, voice all cold sneer.
"I mean to ask you. Stay here with us at the Lin Kuei temple. I can help you."
"Do you think me mad?"
Kuai dodged answering that,
"I told you before, as my guest you will come to no harm."
"Sektor is not even a year dead, Sub-Zero. You are a fool if you think your Lin Kuei pets will extend their loyalty to you for my sake. A Shirai Ryu amongst them? I'd be disappointed if I wasn't poisoned in the first week. And believe me, I have no intention of dying any time soon. Quan Chi's probably waiting for the moment someone finishes off my short spate in Earthrealm." His words were said in black humour, but his body shuddered involuntarily.
Kuai was loathe to admit there might be some foundation in that fear,
"Then come with me. I know of a remote old shrine used by monks in ages past. We can spend some time in the temple there. It is isolated and easily defensible. I can help you work through this and build your life again, Hanzo."
"You cannot help me, Sub-Zero. I wouldn't trust you the distance I could spit at you. Deceiving Hanzo Hasashi seems to be a rite of passage in everyone's life. I was a fool not to see that before. Not again! Not this time. No one will be able to manipulate me ever again, because I will never trust and I will never make the mistake of holding things dear that can be ripped from me. Goodbye." He turned to the path.
"Hanzo."
"Don't Hanzo me." Scorpion looked back. Kuai had moved from the stone he had been seated on to kneel in the snow. "What is this?" Scorpion snarled.
"You may not trust me. But I trust the man you used to be. If you truly believe me to be your enemy, kill me."
"You sorely tempt me. You do not know me at all if you think to speak to me this way."
"Do it."
Scorpion drew a knife from his belt lightening fast. He pressed the blade to Kuai's throat.
"The man I used to be is dead. Dead along with everything else." Scorpion locked his stare onto those still, unmoveable, glacier eyes.
"Then get a move on. Do it. Kill me. What are you waiting for? Lost your nerve?"
"Do not mock me, Lin Kuei! I only delay... because I will not kill you with a blade but with my own hands. I will squeeze the life from your proud neck." Scorpion tossed the knife and seized Kuai's throat. His fingers tightened and he pressed his thumb into the wind pipe. Still Kuai did not move. Scorpion saw his victim's eyes twitch as he squeezed harder. He felt the pound of a heartbeat pulse through his fingers, skin warm with life beneath his hand. He had forgotten what skin felt like, what a heartbeat felt like, fragile in his hands. He paused in the pressure he asserted. The uncertainty caused him to falter. He reached for the fallen knife. Better to do this without that feeling of human contact. As he turned the blade over he looked at it. It was his wakazashi, a samurai's honour.
He relinquished his grip. He barely heard the thirsty draw of air Kuai reached for. Instead he looked only at the blade. He wondered what had become of him that he could draw this against one who knelt unarmed and offered him aid. He sheathed it and swallowed. He did not know what words he could say to explain those thoughts just then. He was forever thankful that Kuai did not require any of him.
Kuai got up. He ran a hand about his neck cooling it with the frost that ran so naturally through his fingers.
"Wait here for me. I will set my affairs in order and bring provisions for our journey. I will come to this place at dusk tomorrow. Be ready."
Kuai Liang begun a steady pace back down to the temple.
Author Note: Many thanks for reading. Comments and critique welcome, especially from those wanting to point out any MK canon flaws. I'm being fairly loose with it, but will try to take on board any suggestions. I have a second chapter written and further ideas planned. Inspiration for this story comes from many places but I am most indebted to the film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring and the comic series Lone Wolf and Cub.
Characters belong to Ed Boon, John Tobias et al.