In space darkness is the status quo. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never understand it. As dim little fireflies of gas and fire, they can only be eclipsed by the ever growing shadow of time and the propulsion of destruction that will slowly tear all matter apart until all that remains is all that it was. Darkness.
What we do in that small fragment of time is obsolete, and impotent to the every circling skeletal family of time itself waiting for the kiss of nihilism to tear it asunder. What we think we can do transcends universes and time itself, but to move forward, or to rewind requires far more than any mere realm could offer.
From the shadows a light, two dim little orbs flickered unmoved when Jax managed to pear beyond the shoulders of Kabal's fur colored leather coat.
Something's in the tunnel.
Humans, he remembered, do not have eye shine and he sure as his certainty of death knew it was no replicant behind the leader of the Black Dragon.
Those dim little starts began to slowly sway to and like a long ballad. They near enchanted him until his focus cut back to Kabal.
His eyes and skin were like a void. No humanity remained within him. Apathetic. A pathetic attempt at putting human flesh on cold, dark killer.
"You will tell me or I will find and rape your partner over and over again until her blood seeps into these buckets and the electricity courses that through your veins until you're both dead."
"She'll kill you first, and I'll die laughing." Jax mustered a response before his body slouched forward, exhausted, beaten, and scorched.
"She's right here though." Kabal turned back into the shadow that grew before him with every step the 'thing' took.
"That's not Sonya." He choked on his breath, but Jax didn't look. Didn't need to.
A pale form of near bare skin leaned before him. His weary eyes blurred and strained looked down at the black leather boots, bare flesh that raised to black padded fabric draped over her thighs parted by a long red sash that fell like blood between her legs to the ground. His eyes followed her hands that guided him up to hers.
He took in the sight of a pale face with two red lotus eyes that stared back at him.
"Look in my eyes." She softly cooed to him, her hands at his cheeks. "Be in me."
Some glimpses as he moved he could see the eye shine of an animal in those red irises, and sometimes he could have sworn it was Sonya, until he was only certain of it.
The index and middle finger of her pale, almost fragile looking hand traced the movement of his eyes and ensured they kept within hers until she had him locked. Those fingers, long pale nails then scraped down to his chin and let Jax fall slack a moment to break their gaze.
When he looked up, Sonya held him tight at the shoulders and looked as though she would free him of this prison.
"Jax! I've been looking for you!" Sonya rustled the chains at his shoulders, but he cautioned and moved his body away.
"Sonya, listen to me! You need to get out of here!" He wouldn't let her budge with the chains. "Save yourself."
"No, Jax, you're my partner, we're in this together."
"They'll torture us both."
Kabal watched from behind, several steps into the blackened mass of shadow beyond the faded light allowed over Jax. Arms crossed, attention drawn, and waited almost impatiently for the show to end.
"Why? What are the Black Dragon planning?"
"I don't know, but that son of a bitch is going to kill us." Jax budged her away again when she reached for the chains.
"Jax, stop! I need you."
"They can't find out."
"Find out what?" Sonya took his cheeks in her hands and raised his head to look into her eyes. "Did they find out about Raiden?"
"No."
He jerked from her, eyes scrunched and mouth screwed. Sonya wouldn't acknowledge Raiden. She barely acknowledged the tournament where she–
Sonya broke his thoughts, "Jax! They didn't find out did they?"
"No. After the tournament, we," he watched her eyes, a light shine peered back at him like gloss over her concerned gaze. "It's not you."
Kabal narrowed his eyes and readied to intervene.
"Jax, it's okay. It's me."
He could smell her, hear her so perfectly. It even felt like her touch, though slightly cold and colder as he lingered on that thought until she pulled away and forced his eyes back in hers.
"Do you remember what happened?"
Jax, lost, tried to pull those memories forward even as his mind held tighter to them, somewhere deep within him he knew he couldn't speak it, couldn't say what she wanted him to, but at the surface, the light in the darkness, he could not understand why.
"We came back to New York, but nothing was the same." He pattered around it.
"No, I don't remember what happened to Raiden, he disappeared, didn't he?"
"You were there, you should know."
"It was all traumatic, Jax, you know this."
A certain shadow crept within him. Thoughts of something that could have been avoided had he been with his partner more, but now as he gazed into her eyes, all he could feel was useless, pathetic, and sorry for her and himself.
"You were always the better one with this stuff." She let out a light laugh, so human, and yet so very much her laugh.
"I don't know." He slouched, the fight lost, but his words still felt guarded.
"What do you mean? Liu Kang, Sub-Zero, Shang Tsung, someone must know?"
"Fuck, I don't know. No one knows." His eyes pinched in and the tears began to scream what he knew she had to have felt on that island, forced to take in the sorcerer's ill intent within her. "I should have been there! Fuck I should have killed him when I saw him!"
Sonya paused. She watched with great concern as this man fell apart before her. She was unsure how to move forward and all she could do was hug him.
"We both fucked up." She kissed his ear with shared remorse, whispers that trickled in like centipedes one leg a thought and another a desire to see it through. "Tell me."
"I don't fucking know!" He reared back and roared. This startled her.
Sonya leaned back, hands folded at her waist and watched.
"Raiden disappeared not long after we got back to Hong Kong. At the docks. Just, disappeared."
"No one knows where he is? Fujin?"
"The hell's a Fujin?"
"Nothing! Thank you." She leaned in to kiss his forehead, and as she leaned back to look one last time into his eyes, he caught a glimpse of the true creature before him. "That'll do, pig."
Her maw widened and her fangs bared, she reached for his neck, just as Kabal reached for hers and tore her from her prey.
With a big brown boot pressed against her folded wings, the vampire brushed it off and pushed from the Black Dragon to pull herself back up, wings unfolded, eyes red as the blood moon and shined like it in the night.
"That's enough, Nitara." Kabal spat. "He's useless."
She shook her head and rubbed her lips across to smear the stain of lipstick from them to the pale creases of her index and middle finger. The vampire took Jax's chin and leaned him up to look at her, this time the true her and planted that stain upon his lips and gave one last hard look, this time for real.
"You and I, Jax, we've got hard times ahead."
Kabal watched as the vampire faded into the shadow until even the dim light of her eyes were obscured by the ever growing shadow that shrouded over them all.