The sun burned away his eyes until all he could see was the yellow and white flash of light above. Harsh and dry, his body was caked in blood and sores, his open wounds had scabbed and scarred. Rain's mind was lost, adrift in the vast expanse of nothing. Having been torn into the watery realm to wash the blood into the sea of eternity, he was too weak to remain and fell into the hot sands of the Edenian desert.
His flesh burned, and his mind spiraled like buzzards until a camel leaned down to inspect the languished corpse. On that camel dropped a woman. Adorned in a white silk and linen hijab, and covered in white robes, she dropped to her knees and stared at the wide open eyes of the fallen man.
Her hands checked for vitals, inspected the wounds, but his response was as vacant as the dead. Still, a dry whisper of breath peeled off his tongue, and the feeble cymbal snap of life pulsed from his wrist when she checked.
She pried the dying man from the sheet of sand that baked him and with all her strength leaned him on the lowered camel until he fell slack between the hump. She'd walk the rest of the way with the lead in hand.
The crisp spring of water poured down the river of his face. The curves would guide it over him from face to chest. He felt himself stir within and suddenly pull out of this near death state. An older woman had rescued him it seemed, or perhaps she was just the one here that washed him. When he woke, she reached for a clay mug and ensured he drank from it.
No words between them.
The old woman draped him in thin cloth and let him drift off yet again into the wild nothing of his mind.
When he came two a second time, it was night. The air had cooled and he felt better, not from his injuries, but full and filled with the desire to stand.
She urged against it, but her pulled the cloth from his body and through the great pain peeled himself from the clay and cloth bed.
She rushed to give him back his clothes, and insisted he return to bed, even without words. He grabbed her shoulder and stared into her eyes. The same eyes as his, or perhaps the injuries had gotten to him.
Sure of himself as he always had been, Rain pushed forward the three steps to the exit and collapsed.
"I love that you do this to yourself." A voice woke him.
It seemed like midnight, the air was colder, but the voice sounded young. It couldn't have been the old woman. He jarred himself from his sleep and the first thing he saw as his eyes widened in horror was Skarlet's face smiling down at him. His body leaped against the wall and crumbled beneath pain she had inflicted on him.
He reached to grab her and strike her, to push her away, anything. Rain had little strength and if she wanted, he'd be dead before he could blink.
His hand travelled through the seated Blood Witch.
It was the entity come to haunt him again.
As he laid back, Skarlet spoke, "Half-God, Prince of Edenia, you have it all and yet you have no control over yourself."
When the pain subsided to a numb state, he responded, "I wanted to cut one final string from my past."
"I get it, you wanted to kill me because of all the pain and suffering I've put you through, right?" Skarlet toyed with him,.
"Because of the pain and suffering I inflicted on you." He corrected, "her."
Skarlet's eyes narrowed and she leaned in with a sickened smile, curious and disheartened.
"That's almost romantic if it wasn't for the fact that your version of fixing things was to destroy everything around you, including yourself."
"What do you want?" He tried to swat the entity, but his hand could only go through it.
"No matter how hard you try," Shao Kahn replaced Skarlet, "you will always be that arrogant child desperate to become ruler. You don't have it in you."
Rain ignored him.
"I raped her and I beat her day after day, night after night until I instilled everything I had over her into her. Tore away the girl she was until all she knew was me." Shao Kahn admitted, "I loved every moment of it, and she wasn't the first."
Rain stared up at the ceiling, unable to stop it.
"I created Skarlet, just like I created Mileena, Shang Tsung, and even you."
"We served you as slaves." Rain finally glared back and snapped.
"In Kitana's world, you were still my slave as she lived happily ever after. Until Triborg killed me." Kitana finished the sentence.
She wanted to feel Rain's heart, her hand hovered over, but she could only pass through him.
"You should kill yourself." Kitana suggested, she pretended to tend to his wounds as she spoke, "you've tried so hard to be something other than an absolute waste of life."
"You just want me out of the way." Rain tried to grab her hand, but it was useless.
"Of course, but I think deep down you know it's t time to let go. You can't come back from this, Rain."
"Didn't say I wanted to."
Kitana smiled, curious expression from him.
"The old woman has knives for cooking. I'm sure you can use your power to force it through you, or maybe you can kill yourself before I tell Daegon where you are."
"Not going to happen like that."
She fussed and pulled away from him and off the chair. Argus turned back toward him.
"You disappoint me son, just as you always have." He crossed his arms, and watched the door as the old lady entered. "Perhaps I'll have her killed too. She does look familiar after all."
He wasn't sure what to think of the remark. Her life wasn't anything special to him, but once she walked out having seen him awake, and in need of water, he responded.
"I owe it to my enemies a fair chance to kill me, as I deserve a chance to kill them."
"Fair?" Argus approached, even stalked forward and lorded over Rain. "Was it fair when you raped her? Was it fair when you killed serf after serf that followed you when you were angry? I admire the darkness in your heart, but you're useless."
Skarlet sat back down at his side and waited for the old woman to return. She made sure Rain drank, oblivious of the entity she passed through to do so.
"Daegon is already on his way. You get what you deserve." Skarlet faded as her last word echoed in his ears and rang like a high pitch sting.
With what strength and pain he could muster to fight through, he threw the woman aside and bolted to his feet. His body cracked and ached and stung him to a crippled mess, but he pushed himself to reach the door.
The night hung high, still midnight, and he could sense the fire that brewed over the horizon for him. All of his enemies seemed to line up in rows for him. Each would lash him, each would slash him, but he was not ready to give up.
They deserved their right to kill him, but he would not gift it to either one.
Her eyes, the same as his. The complexion of her skin, though much older, the same as his.
Strange woman.
He thought somehow, in some twisted way he had saved her by dissipating into the watery realm. What would become of her, he would never know.