Hey Guys! Thanks for sticking around! I was in a bit of a depressive funk which is why this chapter took so long. This one is mainly just a filler between the fight between Sam/Raiden and his second mission! Much love to those of you reading this and actually liking it! Please leave any reviews/criticisms of my story, but no flames please. Much love to my beta, JJKMagic for checking up on me and helping make this story what it is! Enjoy!
He was used to this by now. A weightless emptiness that encompassed his mind as his body was put back together. Enhancements, alterations, upgrades and everything else his body required could be fixed. He was akin to a toy able to withstand so much damage, to be taken apart and put back together with the same flow.
His mind was the only thing that remained his own; everything else from the neck down had been taken from him by the Patriots. Even his lower jaw had been destroyed, replaced with a cybernetic component. More man than machine, it was a thought that stung deeper than any personal revelation.
The complex machinery that kept his mind active and separate from his body while it was being rebuilt allowed him to think freely as if he was back in his body. His thoughts could be monitored, tracked or even recorded but in these moments his comrades allowed him some peace. Some privacy, especially after the condition he had returned to them in.
It would only fuel Raiden's rage to know that they had peered into his thoughts and what shaky ground they managed, they wished to keep. It made them uncomfortable to look at Raiden when he had been brought back, the glazed hate in his barely functioning eye. They had an idea of the battle that had transpired from the condition of his body.
Washington could barely swallow the bile that rose seeing Raiden as defeated as he had been in those moments. The sound lashing having soured his mood and sharpened his mind even as it pushed from his humanity. If he had any left inside of him. He could barely stand to watch Raiden's body be upgraded and put back together like a sort of life-size doll. An expensive doll that tried to always be a step forward even as he took several steps back with every decision.
Without Raiden's conscious driving his body, he was motionless and seemed so much like a machine. The dark, tight wires that formed his thick bodily form and layered with thin, flexible armor to give him an agile shape. Doc had insisted Raiden maintain some sort of human functions even going as far as to synthetically include anatomical features that a real body would have. Washington was certain Raiden would simply turn them off, since he found most things that were once needs to simply be inconveniences during his vendetta.
He sighed into his coffee and put it away as he pushed from his seat to take a walk. It was too small in that room and Raiden's situation too gruesome to bear for much longer. It was too morbid a thing to dream of…too disturbing to imagine as anyone's reality. The taste of coffee turned to ash in his mouth as his steps faded in the silence of the hallways.
Raiden's mind was plundered in memories, avidly searching through the past to find something to hold onto. His wife. His son. It felt dirty to hang them in his ideals, to sully their innocence in the blood of those he slaughtered.
They deserved to die…Didn't they?
The thought was shoved from his mind as quickly as it flickered, having escaped any coherent notice as his mind replayed the battle he had lost over in his mind. He continued trying to find weakness, to find something that would give him the upper hand against Sam. His vision had blurred, had hazed in the rush of his own blood coloring his vision.
Now, he could see it clearly as if it had happened to someone else…As if it was a memory of another man, another time but still with the same result. The burning of a red blade cutting through flesh and bone as if it was as frail as a butterfly's wing. He could recall the taste of the air, the bitter tang of his artificial blood bursting from steel veins and filling his lungs.
Even with the memory of blood in his vision, he could still see that smirk. That condescending twitch at the corner of his lips, the mad gleam in dark eyes as the blade came down…No, went through him.
It had been so long since Raiden had felt pain, as in those moments his pain receptors had failed him. Every second of that burning, electric fire tearing through ligaments, through intricate and delicate wiring as in those seconds he dared to scream.
Those seconds, intimate and violating, he could barely remember the act, the strain of his voice reaching briefly, just briefly, above the roar of the train. The smirk had danced in Sam's eyes, a crazed fire that laughed without sound. It mocked him silently with every moment.
He wanted revenge. It burned in his mind intimately, setting his thoughts to fire even as he destroyed any chance to become rational. His mind darkly wandered to adding sensors into his blade, he wanted to know what it would feel like sliding his blade through Sam's body. He wanted to feel the metal edge cut through artificial bone and ligaments.
The monitors tracking his brain's activities began to speed up, alerting loudly as he continued to think about it. Plunging his sword again and again in the twitching mechanics of Sam's body, watching him squirm viciously with every jab. That smirking ass grimacing, howling in agony while his body twisted. Raiden could only focus, only think of the rush enveloping his mind at the thoughts and his readings began to escalate off the charts.
He wanted it. He would strike him down and savour every minute of it.