Watching over Zyanya's restless husk of a body while she slumbered the undisruptable sleep of the near-dead was one of the most boring tasks Scorpion had ever had to do in any of his lives, and what was more was that it was a task he had appointed to himself! Well, better to kill the time watching over some girl than to lose any lead he might have had if she were killed before he could get the information out of her. Besides, it wasn't all that uneventful to watch her; at various times, she would speak in her sleep, but any thing she said were the mutterings of a mad woman, so her vague mumbles went unheeded - at least they did, until she happened to say something that caught his attention: Scorpion. Maybe it meant nothing, but it was troubling to hear the young shell speaking of him while unconscious...

What would she have to say about the ninja-wraith anyways? He pondered upon the possibilities...

No longer in a hall filled with the blood of her father's countless victims but outside of the Netherrealm altogether, Evren was in a pocket of space divided from the main realms; it was a rather small plane, big enough only to support a small gathering of humanoids really, but it was more than enough for her. The sky was eternally torn someplace between early morning and a dusky dawn, with a golden pink tint to an otherwise orange-purple sky, a range of glass-like crystal shards walling the boundaries of the land. The land itself was a field of strange flowers unknown to most botany books, and it smelled sweet, but not overly powerful, almost like a woman's perfume.

Kneeling in the middle of the field, ignorant of the distant buzzing of unseen insects, a man's unmasked head was perched in her lap and his hand over own, forming a protective barrier from the cool sea-like breeze blowing through their private world. More than just the hand over her own, she felt safe in this haven; safe even from the outside world and all of her problems, "I'm glad that I could finally tell you everything, that we could reach this paradise without too much bloodshed."

"You sound so sure that it can last," What had been a skull-face Scorpion not moments ago was now in the form of a rather imposing Amazonian-esqe beauty, her sandy blonde curls tumbling freely down her back, just like her mother before her, "What a shame that you have no shortage of enemies to see you suffer."

Evren tried to back away from the Kreeyian Queen Vorpax's daughter, to shove the other woman off, but she was physically stronger than the necromancer's offspring and not giving up an inch, not even to tease her with a false sense of hope, "Get off! Where is Scorpion? Where is-"

"Your lover?" The woman laughed coolly, flipping them both over so that she was straddling the weaker, the dream demon transforming itself once more into a seamless copy of Quan Chi himself, "How you disappoint me..." He sounded not quite sad, but definitely he was far from his normally smug self, "I made you for my own gratification," He proved this by running his hand up the sheer garment clothing his daughter's trembling form, rolling her thigh over so that he could look more closely at her nether regions, "and here you repay me by throwing open your legs to the first man that looks twice at a miserable failure like you. You know that you're not beautiful, that no one could ever want something like you... Oh," He smiled, nibbling at the shell of her ear, "You're mad at me."

The fair-haired female was beyond furious at that point, shaking her fists at him, but for all the damage she could do in her position, she might as well have been hitting water, the tears welling in her golden, pupil-less eyes saturated with blood, "Let me go!"

The living mirror of Quan Chi merely chuckled at the girl the same way that the real one would have if she had ever tried to show her disapproval of their actions, revealing in her futile despair, kissing her full on the mouth, sucking away all protest in her breath, clearly getting aroused by the bitter resent in her eyes as she continued to squirm beneath him, "Fight all you want to, because you can never escape. Even if you could kill me - which you can't because you're weak - no one could ever want you. So why struggle? Give in to the truth, and admit to yourself that you can never be loved..."

The tears running down her face were almost impossible to distinguish between the marks on her face by this point, "NO! No... No." She shook her head, trying to convince herself more than the man gaining satisfaction merely by beating her down verbally, "No, father, no..."

Her words came out in the real world, but instead of broken fragments serving as the remainder of a girl, they were screamed out, as if she were being attacked; the way she was flinging her arms around, it was a miracle if someone didn't walk away with a black eye. Alarmed by the sudden violent outburst, Hanzo jumped from his place between the chair and the door to rush to her side, grabbing her just beneath her shoulders to restrain her from hurting herself. His eyes were wide as he watched her calm down and come to, a look of vague bafflement on her face to see him standing so close.

"Ha...?" She trailed off as her vision righted itself, "What are you...? What am I...?" Evren glanced around the room as the last several hours came back to her, thankfully not at a break-neck pace, "Did you hear me? Is that why you're holding me?"

So these incidents have occurred in the past? He didn't take his eyes off her, but he did drop his hold on her, realizing someplace in the back of his mind that he might have been standing a little more close to her than he might have needed to, "How often has this happened?"

It was obvious that she was deeply flustered by this incident, but she was honest in her answer, "That depends, what all did you hear?" She had had maybe two or three different reoccurring nightmares, but as they slipped back into her subconscious with every waking moment, she was only able to tell which dream she had by what she had said that night.

For whatever reason, he felt a bit embarrassed to have to tell her that she had uttered his name, but at the same time that might have been important, so he knew that he should report back to her everything he had witnessed her doing in her sleep... But why would it be important? They had only been in contact for a short period of time now, so what could she possibly have to say or even think about him? Besides, if he did tell her that he had been attentively watching over her while she slept, wouldn't she find that to be a little bit strange? It made sense to watch the back of your comrade, sure, but she was a trained assassin, so surely she must have been trained in sensing killing intent even in her sleep... So why did he spend all night guarding her while she slept...?

Hanzo told himself he was keeping an eye on her to be absolutely certain that the Outworlders weren't taking advantage of her weakened condition, and he told Zyanya the same exact thing, "I was keeping watch so our numbers weren't depleted. I didn't hear anything."

He understood what he told her, but he didn't understand why he lied...

While not especially fond of the topic under discussion, Zyanya thought that it was something that deserved a little more attention than what it was being given, "What was I screaming when I woke up? My voice was so loud in my own head I couldn't even hear if I was saying anything or not."

Actually, she did scream out something, and he conceded that that was worth a look at, "You said 'No, father, no'." He saw her face fall in horror, so he assumed that she had not had a good relationship with the man, and the thought struck a cord deep within, as he had not had the best of relationships with his own father, but had hoped to give his son nothing but good memories of his old man, "What happened to him?"

Evren looked at Scorpion uncomfortably, unsure of what to say to that, as she didn't want to lie to him any more than she had to. She also wasn't sure what to say after her discovery last night, "...I'd rather not talk about my father. I thought when I was younger that we were close, that I would gladly have done anything to earn his approval, but looking back, I can see now that I was a fucking idiot."

Hanzo took her guarded response to be a cover-up for being abused as a child, which was not that far off base, "He used to beat you, didn't he?" He did not have to be a ninja to see the hurt way she looked away, so he went on, "My father used to beat me. He said that it was 'training my endurance to pain and tolerance to the outside world's harsh cruelties', but from I a young age I knew that he was lying to justify his own faults."

The demoness looked up at him, unsurprised to hear that he had undergone a rigorous training regiment but outright shocked to learn that he actually been abused; she was nothing short of completely flabbergasted that he was opening up this much to her, but she could tell it was probably only for the sake of their mission, but all the same she was grateful, "Quan Chi..." She shook her head, sighing as she decided to just say it out right, a knot forming in her chest at the confession, "Quan Chi trained me for so long, my master practically replaced my father. It wasn't long before he started to train me in other ways..." She choked, realizing now just how much it had always disturbed her, "I knew that it was wrong, but I couldn't stop him, because I owed him so much, and he was just too strong to fight..."

Hearing her heart-felt words, Scorpion liked the sorcerer even less than what he already did, and that was saying something. The poor girl was apparently orphaned at a young age from a father who abused her, and then she went straight into an even worse situation with the kind of monster that would take advantage of a little girl on her own in the world. Quan Chi was the absolute worst kind of creature there was - he didn't know when it would happen or even how, but Hanzo Hisashi knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that that son of bitch was going to pay for every wrong he had ever committed. But before that time could come, he sincerely hoped that this poor girl could take revenge on that bastard and get back something that could never be taken from her - strength, courage, and most importantly hope.

Zyanya seemed like a harmless enough thing - so not cut out for what she was supposed to be doing - and no one deserved to be treated that way...


A/N: At least if this does get pushed back, I finished one of my many ongoing fics, so it has a little less competition... And no, if you're wondering, Zyanya's dream in the last chapter has nothing to do with what she said in the beginning of this one - people have different dreams (or appear to) while sleeping during a single time period. Man, I wish I could remember that class better! And I'd like to thank Cold Recluse for your review! It's always appreciated to know that the same few people aren't re-reading this five times over (which isn't a bad thing by any means).

And while it should be a well-known if not outright obvious fact - Abuse of any kind is bad, whether or not it be verbal, physical, emotional, mental, sexual, animal, or substance. If you are the victim of any form of abuse, you really should not suffer it in silence, and if you're not but know someone who is, you should be supportive and do everything you can to help them overcome the darkness and take that first step into the light! Stop the abuse!

Disclaimer: I don't own Mortal Kombat. That honor goes elsewhere. Like (but no limited) to Netherrealm Studios, the WB (or whatever they're calling themselves over at Warner Brothers), and Ed Boon. There might be more, but I'm no lawyer, and I'm certainly not versed in ownership rights, so I don't know exactly who owns what. I can, however, lay claim to Zyanya and other minor nameless characters, and I do.