Alone in the hot springs, Skarlet rested her mind and body as best she could as the fog condensed around her. The hot air inside her lungs and the fresh crisp breeze above the steam cloud was almost enough to help her forget.
She'd love to forget.
Everything.
The hot spring was one of the few means for those outside the palace to rest alone and far, far away from the others. No interruptions, and no stalkers, nor fights to the death.
All she could hear was her heart beat and her thoughts. As few the good ones were, she replayed them, and each time she did, as little as they were, she desired to make more. Could run from all this?
No one among them were forced to fight, but for some reason they had to. If she ran, would anyone follow? Surely Raiden would try to sway her, perhaps Fujin, or even Rain, the sickening punk he was. Her stomach churned at the thought of him.
Perhaps certain people would die at the pyramid and she would live to be free and her own person without worries and without anyone thinking they owned her. No longer a slave to the war of the realms, nor anyone that felt the need to lord over her like Shao Kahn, Kotal Kahn, no one.
As her body sank further until her chin rest at the surface of the calm spring, her eyes began to drift asleep until a gentle ripple echoed across the water from the center of the spring. This alarmed her. Never once, lest something fall, had she felt a ripple in such still water.
Quickly she gathered herself and her things and dressed to leave.
The good times never last.
The whole day felt strange. The sun showers seemed to linger, the air stale and thick with tension. She could feel her muscles strung up on high with no release, no ability to lay slack and relax like she had in the hot spring. Something trickled up her spine and embedded itself in the back of her itching skull.
As night fell Skarlet retreated to her chamber, small and only fit for a bed and chest. She searched the chest for her battle gear, laid it on top as if she'd need it, though Taven and Raiden had made no plans to provoke Daegon just yet. She just felt as though something horrid was about to happen.
The bed felt the same as always, fabrics and furs for her to nestle in. The ceiling of wood to stare blankly up at.
Perhaps it was her guilt, or paranoia about the vial of Kitana's blood. She crossed the room and whispered the gentle chant to unlock the small chest beneath her clothing in the larger wood trunk.
Safe.
Hidden.
The vial, just the size of her pinky and yet filled to the cork with the blood of the fallen Queen, was safe.
It had begun to chip away at her mind. The thought of being cast out of the group was overwhelming and yet, though she desired it, she did not want to leave so soon. All eyes were on her, and not all of them allies. She she be alone, who's to say any number of their enemies wouldn't try to snatch her, or kill her.
Li Me and Kitana had already fallen.
Was she next?
Drip.
Drop.
The window called to her. She clutched the vial close to the chest, hidden within her hand and watched a tiny little puddle of tears dripped from the top of the stone window to the bottom. The last time it had rained was morning and the palace had dried since.
She reached for the chest to hide the vial and found a hand grab hers.
Rain towered over her, bent her wrist and pried the vial from her fingers.
"What is this?" He played, almost like it was a joke.
"Get out." She hissed. "It has nothing to do with you."
"You have everything to do with me." He asserted and popped the cork. If he could sense it, he'd know, but instead he relinquished it to her and she rushed the cork back in and stowed it away.
"You haven't changed at all." She spat. "The same little punk as always."
"You're just jealous." He sat back against the window, and she tempted to push him, though he'd just rain down onto the ground unharmed. Just as she would.
"Get out, or–"
"You'll call Raiden? Cry to Mileena?" He snickered, "I thought we were getting along, Skarlet. I thought you and I could form some kind of friendship again. Wasn't asking for a relationship."
"No one wants you, Rain. Not even your parents wanted you." She bit. She could see how deep through the glare in his eyes and the smug grin scratched right off.
"You know nothing of my parents." He stalked forward and backed her against the door. A hand on the knob so she couldn't escape, he leaned over her and stared daggers into those familiar glaring eyes. "You're jealous of all the people that followed me, of all the women–"
She pushed him off, "fucking child. All you think of is yourself. Nothing's changed with you, now leave."
"Or what? Maybe the others would like to know what's in that vial, perhaps Raiden? Fujin? Daegon? Mileena?"
She stiffened. Her fists were coils ready to strike, but how would they perceive this? The villain of the piece attacking a man that devoted himself to the cause? Would they believe her over him? Perhaps the fighters of Earthrealm would, but Mileena and Kotal Kahn?
To start a fight would be to split the entire group. She just wanted him to leave, and he smiled at the thought that he had her in the palm of his hand.
"I could fuck you right now and you wouldn't do a thing to stop me, would you?" He reached out to her face and grabbed tight as she turned away. "The end of the world is near, Skarlet, and you want to destroy it because of your little obsessions?"
"I'll kill you." She promised, her eyes narrow and red as the tears balled up at the peaks of her cheeks and her teeth bit into her lip.
"Like you haven't tried before?" He spoke as he wiped the tears from her cheek and drew them to his lips to taste. "You still taste the same after ten years."
She struggled with him. To push him off, to punch him away, when he finally laughed her efforts off. He cut her rush to the chest and swiped the vial from its velvet home. He popped the cork again and took a sniff of the blood inside.
"Smells familiar." He teased.
"I hate you." She spat. "Put it back, or I will kill you here."
"I think I'd rather see what the others have to say about this."
As his thumbed the cork back over, she raced for him and kicked his core. Rain dropped the vial just in time for her to catch, still upright and not a drop lost. He grabbed her hair, black and red and smelled just as he remembered it and threw her to the bed.
Her hip crashed into the wood frame and her body collapsed against the stone wall. The vial spilled over the wood floor and before she could gather it with her magic, his boot met her face.
Slam!
Bang!
Again and again he kicked until her own blood splattered over the floor.
Dazed, she felt her roots torn as he grabbed her hair and ripped the fabric from her chest. Her body slammed against the floor and he covered her. Wrists held down, and thighs spread, he forced himself on her.
"Going to make you feel it, bitch." He bit at her face, at her neck, and pressed her into the wood. "Like your father did to you!"
She screamed, cried, and hissed at him. She writhed and struggled with all her strength, but ultimately, he had complete control over her body. He cursed and cussed her out, bit her and twisted her twists as he entered her. His tongue swiped the blood from her nose and lips and swallowed like the pig he was.
Blood.
The very smell of it set her teeth on edge. As her body lay like a rotten corpse beneath death itself, she felt the heat within her boil her veins, and though her body couldn't fight him, she still had something he couldn't take.
Kitana's blood hardened like a bullet. Rain pushed her face into the wood and focused on his efforts inside of her, on her pain and her body, with little regard for the spike that formed above him.
The world screamed in her ear and the demon of her past tore away at her flesh like it didn't belong and as the screaming and the pain, and torture reached its peak, the rage within her, or the greatest sense of self exploded through his chest.
He stopped and gasped and pulled away. He reached out to her to stop her as she pulled herself up from the ground, from the rattled mess he thought she was and towered over him.
The bruises, the cuts, the beating he had given her bleed out daggers for her that now stalked toward him. Her eyes were blackened, and the magic taken over.
When the door shattered, she couldn't even see face of the three that had rushed into the room. The daggers of blood shot into Rain's body and a blood curdling scream bellowed from her that rattled the others.
Blood.
In a quick motion she cut herself and dissolved into the hot essence of life.
She left him to die, and for them to deal with it.
Whatever the outcome, whatever anyone thought, she could only trust herself.
She ran as fast as she could in the night to the edge of the world. To escape the battle, to escape the demons with good intentions and those without.
When Skarlet ran as far as she could and her legs gave out she dropped and heaved and pulled herself together as best she could. Her leather armor formed around her body like a protective shell so that no one would ever touch or cut into her ever again without intent to kill.
Boom boom!
Boom boom!
She felt her heart race even as her legs couldn't. When she turned her head to look back, to ensure none of the empty, shallow horde had followed her out, she felt the sting of a big boot smack across her skull. Her body twisted back first into the ground and the moon over head, a blood moon, began to fade to darkness as the fame of a woman leaned in and watched over her.