How do you know anyone? The holes in their eyes build a mystery that could never be dug out of yours. Hers locked into his he moved inside of her. His scanned her flesh, flush with blood beneath him, but she tried to keep hold of him, his eyes, piece that puzzle together.
"Stay with me." She took his cheeks in hand and leaned in to kiss, but he leaned back from her touch and continued to move into her.
Skarlet moved him back, hands tight on his face and her eyes narrowed on Rain's. He pulled their bodies up tighter to lock her legs and his hands held her wrists down.
"Stop it." He demanded.
She focused then on the light that spied on them from the large opening in their chamber, the open air panted inside to cool them down as her blood rushed to meet his. When his hands let go, she returned them to him, to the chest, to feel the heart of this individual she's known closely for hundreds of years, he removed them and grabbed her chin like a claw that dug into her flesh and pushed her head back into the thin layer of cushion.
"Enough, Skarlet." He scraped his hand across her face to dig her in, then let them roam down to her neck.
She could bleed him, cut his throat, cut herself and use that to strike him, even just slightly, but she wouldn't. He had a temper, but she knew he was off this night, something had happened, but she couldn't unravel that mystery. She let his aggression find her flesh as its scapegoat and her jaw stretched out the bruises that colored her.
"Why are you so pissed?" Her question was met with a tighter grip and he watched her eyes on him as he squeezed.
No words. Just the sensation of her lungs scrounging for air through the crumbled cavern of her throat and his focus of his blood that punished her body from within. This wasn't the usual rough and tumble, he didn't enjoy her beneath him, only the sensation he gave himself through this assortment of flesh and blood.
When her breath became a whisper, he slapped it from her face and watched the blood meet the surface of her skin to please him.
"Get off of me." She pushed.
Rain obliged.
She watched him, his mannerisms the usual as she knew him, but something was off. Something was different and she had loved so much to ignore the creeping of this new wave of emotions and social distancing he had begun, but as she remembered those moments, those red flags, she let them go, because that's what you do when you love someone. You don't let them go, you let the problems float away instead.
She cracked her neck, pulled herself from the bed to dress and kept her back toward him, her front to the door and the torch lit upon the wall.
"This about the Jarrod Accords?"
No response from the shadow at the edge of the bed.
"Whatever it is, don't take it out on me again." She looked back, his eyes to the spires outside. "You hear me?"
"No." He responded after a long, ugly pause.
"Tell me, Rain."
Nothing.
She resigned herself to getting dressed. The soviet clothing tight and matched her well, but she felt her skin crawl beneath the attire as this man that once confessed his love of her refusing to speak another word about himself.
"We'll kill Raiden and his wacky pals." She approached once the last lace of her boot had been secured. "One by one until there is nothing left."
"I don't care about the tournament."
"Do you care about me?"
He leaned in a glance, a hidden smile she decided was a yes, and he turned.
"It's been an interesting few days." He added, "been thinking about my place in all this."
"Our place." She continued, "King of Edenia, and the Blood Mage of Outworld as your Queen."
"Yes, of Outworld, not Edenia."
"Where you're from means nothing when you have power, when you have blood."
"You're right." he approached, slow, and rested a head above her breast between the second and third rib to feel the blood fill her heart. "I can feel yours. Hot, broken, begging to be whole again."
"You've made me whole." She confessed.
"I fill your holes." A jest.
"That too," uncertainty of how to answer that, no words came to her as he pulled away and reached for the door. "You'll kill King Jarrod. Even if we have to go through Kotal Kahn to do it."
He paused. If there was a crack in the mind from the window of your soul that could etch the answers to the universe within, she felt she had found just a sliver of one.
"You would betray Kotal Kahn for me?"
"I would kill him for you, Rain. For us."
She searched for approval in those eyes. She saw the light shin in the darkness and for a moment felt as though darkness could understand it. The door creaked open, a thin birth thrown wider and before he could leave, adorned in simple tunic and pants, slip on boots and no telltale signs of his nobility, nor power, he turned toward this woman he had taken in so long ago.
"Looking forward to it."
Her eyes closed with the door. The pulse of her heart inked her flesh faster with the bruises he had beaten into her. Less than normal, but she knew he would stop any time she told him to. He wasn't Shao Kahn.
Not yet.