Title: Contract through Blood
Author: Blackheart Dracon
Fandom: Utawarerumono (anime based)
Characters: Hakuoro, Witsuarunemitea, Mizushima
Genre: Missing scene
Summary: An archeologist makes a contract with the ancient deity while dying.
Rating: T for blood
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine.
"… so that means that you must die." his sentence sounded.
He heard the quiet cling of the trigger and turned abruptly. Fright rolled him over in a cold crushing waterfall. He tried to recoil and stepped back in an attempt to get off from the line of shot.
He saw the other man pull the trigger, and his first instinct was to shut his eyes and back away, but he held himself and flabbily tried to prepare for inevitable. A second later the bullet hit him in the sternum. He gasped, his breath torn from him, and fell awkwardly backwards for the first time feeling nothing but a hot wave of shock tear through him. The thunder of the shot crashed upon his ears.
Footsteps sounding away were heard by him as through a damp blanket. He fought for breath, which came in ragged and torn portions, and he himself had understood it was his own only after several moments. He felt blood, felt soaked with it all over. He was lying on the cold metal floor of the laboratory which was now warm and sticky with dark-red blood – his own blood, flowing freely from the wound on his chest and from the wound on his back.
He didn't think, he didn't fear. He simply lay still until the pain came. Slowly wrenching his soul from his body came the hard, cruel, burning sensation. He wasn't prepared for it. He opened his mouth in a try to scream but there wasn't enough air for him, and so his scream turned into a half-choked sob. There was nowhere to hide from the pain; it gnawed his body with thousands of hot, blazing spikes. Covering the wound on his chest with his hand in a weak attempt to call it off, he was left only to wish death take him away faster.
"I can grant you with life if you wish for it," said a guttural voice in his head.
"Wh… What?" he wasn't sure if he had been able to say it aloud or if he had just thought it, but the unnamed speaker heard him.
"I can make you live," the voice repeated.
Black circles started appearing in front of his gaze. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn't call them away. It only made them pressure on him with more force. He lifted his eyelids again and moaned as a new upcoming tide of pain buried him in itself.
"What say you?" the voice asked.
"Who are you?" he thought.
"I am Witsuarunemitea. The one of whom the songs are sung."
"Ughm… What?" he was so abashed that the pain eased for a moment.
"You wanted to know more about me," the voice continued, "know then that your blood awakened me, and I am grateful. In exchange I offer you life in terms of your body becoming my vessel."
He slowly made himself turn his head to the fossilized beast. And froze. Its eyes were burning with purple fire and its face seemed no more dead.
"You…" he started and was cut off by another wave of pain. The room was slowly blurring and turning as he blinked widely in order to look into the beast's eyes. "You want my body to become what?"
"It means I will sleep in you, human. Until the time comes for me to awake. I will become you, and you will become me."
He gasped in search for another breath. His time was ticking away, he felt it.
He still didn't fear. But a new feeling rose inside of him – a scientific interest. If he gives his body away to this… thing, then he would be able to learn what no one ever would.
"I agree." He spat the words with the blood coming from his mouth.
"Nice…" the voice hissed.
As it seemed before his blurred vision a smoky shadow with those blazing purple eyes broke away from the fossil.
"Will you tell me about yourself?" he asked in his mind, and, as he thought that, he heard a quiet laugh.
"We will be one, human," the voice said, "You will be me, and I will be you. And as I said – will be. Our memories will be shared."
He didn't answer – he was too weak to answer.
The shadow floated down to him and, bending and thinning, sleeked slowly into his body through the wound.
It was then when he actually screamed. For uniting with the old deity felt like a second bullet going through the same wound, or maybe, even like a sword because the pain that it brought tasted bitter-cold metal.
"Your body will heal, human," the voice whispered, "you must sleep now. You have to be here no longer. Your old life has ended. Our new life has begun."
The words bound him like a spell because his eyelids got heavy in a moment, and he closed his eyes, falling into healing drowsiness.
"Sleep… Till our time comes…" the voice mingled sweetly with his sleep.
"Iceman! Iceman! Can you hear me?" rough sound tore at his ears. He murmured something protesting and prepared to launch into another dream, when…
"Iceman!" the sound repeated.
He threw open his eyelids and suddenly stared at a metal ceiling.
"Iceman? You're awake…" the voice sounded pleased.
"Yes," he was startled at how weak his voice sounded. Iceman? Why was that voice calling him "Iceman"? He had another name. But it mattered not how long he struggled he couldn't bring it back. He remembered everything except his name. But where was he? And where did that memory pain come from?
A pistol shot? And blood… Lots of blood… His own blood. Is he dead, then? No, no, he feels like a living man – his head ache and his limbs were numb. No, he can't be dead.
The grey-metal ceiling reminded him of something.
A room… A square metal room… And a statue in the centre… No, not a statue. A figure. A fossil. With burning purple eyes.
That was when the last forgotten memories crashed down upon him. He jerked up, in one-movement sitting on the metal bunk and observing the room with wild eyes.
"Oh my God…" he whispered taking his head in his hands.
"Iceman?" the voice repeated once again.
He turned to that irritating man who called him by another name. And locked eyes with a glittering blue hologram of a human. He was in white long robes and had glasses which didn't sit well upon his nose.
"Iceman," the hologram bowed his head, "It's nice to see you awake."
"Who are you?" he asked.
"My name is Mizushima. And what is yours?"
"I…" he stumbled. "I don't remember."
"Ah, well…" the ghostly man smiled, "There is nothing wrong in this. Due to our scientific researches of your DNA you fell asleep in the ice nearly two thousand years ago. Your memories could well have been shattered…"
He thought he misheard something. That didn't make any sense. Only if…
"Sleep… Till time comes…" he heard the voice in his shards of memories.
He lay back on his bunk and stared into nothing. Too hard to believe, but true… He slept in ice for two thousand years! Well, at least "Iceman" now made sense.
"You're shocked?" sympathetically asked the hologram-man. "Maybe, you need a tranquilizer?"
"No, no," he shook his head.
"Iceman…" the man quietly started. "Iceman… where did your mask come from? And why can't it be removed?"
"What?" he raised his eyebrows tiredly not knowing that it couldn't be seen. "What are you speaking of?"
"The mask," imperturbably answered the hologram.
He cocked his head.
"There is a mirror in that corner," the glittering man shrugged. "It's strange, that you can't remember such a thing."
He rose unsteadily from his bunk and slowly took two steps to the mirror. He looked… And froze.
From the depth of the silver glass at him there looked a masked face. The white mask covered the upper part of his face, hiding his cheekbones, his eyebrows and his whole forehead.
Black hair hang down to his shoulders and blue eyes looked at him through the cuts in the mask. He took hold of the mask and pulled hard on it. It didn't give way.
He stepped back not willing to look anymore.
"Witsuarunemitea…" whispered his own mind, but he couldn't remember the name and refused to listen…
