Author: Lucinda
For mature readers due to violence
disclaimer: I do not own Vic Creed/Sabertooth. Marvel does.
distribution: please ask first.
note: this follows 'Shadow of Myself'.
He couldn't remember who he had been before, only the name Vic Creed, and the feeling that he had killed people. He'd discovered that it was something he could do quite easily. He was faster and stronger, and had these sharp claws... almost as if he wasn't really human like everyone else. If he wasn't human, what was he?
At somewhere over seven feet tall, with odd yellow eyes and sharp teeth and claws, with his shaggy mane of blondish hair, he had been mistaken for a strange and feral creature on several occasions. He had crept into a building once, a museum, and there had been all these... shaggy elephants.
Near them had been something else, something big and powerful, a hunter. A cat creature, big, powerful, with sharp claws and long teeth...the sign had called it a Sabertooth Tiger, and had said something about the ice age. He'd been fascinated. A big, lethal cat-hunter. This creature was like he was. He would use its name, Sabertooth.
The sabertooth would be a good namesake, not like naming him after a father... the idea stirred up an unpleasant feeling inside of him, and he could almost hear this voice, like a small boy, screaming: I'm sorry I didn't mean to I just forgot it won't happen again I'm sorry and this remembered noise, like leather hitting flesh, and it made his back twitch, and his stomach burned. A low growl rumbled in his chest, and he felt cooped up, felt the city closing in around him, confining, constricting... too many people, nowhere to hide... He had to get out of here.
He felt different once he was out in the country again. The voices, the half remembered child and the angry bellowing of the man with the leather strap had faded. He no longer felt as if the buildings and the smells of so many people were smothering him, the buildings about to fall over on him.
He felt better among the trees, with only the scents of nature, the trees, the stream, birds and animals, damp soil. He understood those scents, knew what every single one of them meant. The city was full of scents, harsh, strange scents that he didn't know and could barely make sense of. It was as if he was trying to find his way though a maze, and the signs made no sense to him. He wasn't a city boy.
Eventually, he moved on, and he found himself in another town, trying to buy himself a few odds and ends to take with him back into the woods. A nice straight razor so that he could shave, some soap, a package of salt. He was trying to be as patient as he could, although he was rapidly loosing his temper. Finally, he finished paying for his things, and put them into a sack, leaving the small store. He had the feeling that things were not done in this town... He could hear them following him, three young men.
They reeked of alcohol, which made his skin crawl, and he could smell a smoky fire, and some sort of stew, the memory of the fire and stew, could almost see the small room.
He could almost see the large man in the corner, sitting in a chair, smoking a cigar. Then, he was back in a small shed, the image blurring, almost visible in the present, and the man was looming over him, angry, shouting about something, the words garbled, indistinct. He could hear the boy crying again, crying out in pain.
One of the men attacked him, his fist connecting into his back just below the kidneys. They were all there, swarming him, trying to take him down like a group of wolves attacking a caribou. With a snarl, he ripped at them, and they began to scream and yell, their voices in the present loud, the scent of their fear and blood drowning out the shouts of the boy in his head. He didn't want to hear the boy. If their screams would silence those of the boy... well, someone should have taught them not to attack people in the night.
He hit them, slashed his claws over them, their screams and whimpers drowning out those of the shadow of memory of the small boy. The boy that something deep inside whispered that he had known. Whispered that he might have been that small boy. The idea made him angry, made him want to hit something, to make something suffer. These fools would do nicely. He hit them over and over, drowning the memory ghosts with their screams, with their blood. Beating them in place of the shadow figure in his memory of the large man. Hitting them to force the almost remembered screams away.
The air filled with screams, and the scents of fear, of blood and pain, a hint of urine and the scents of the fluids from the entrails, now slashed open under the darkness, like an augury of a dark and terrible future. Sabertooth had been here... and he had left the mark of his passing on the savaged remains of these foolish drunken bullies.
End Screams.