Authors Notes: This chapter was a lot later coming out than I wanted thanks to Thanksgiving. I'm one of those people that rather dislike the holidays and the constant back and forth and visits from family really throw me off my groove. Gotta love meltdowns from over-stimulation. I promise to do better next chapter and will most certainly have it out before Christmas. But anyway, enough of my whining, on to the chapter!
-0-0-0-
Looking back on it, Raiden could have kicked his own ass for falling into such an obvious trap. He had been careless and cocky and had paid dearly for it. Victory after victory in hunting down the minds behind the brain training programs had only fueled his bloodlust in his righteous crusade. He had brought down the organization, eliminated its leaders, scattered the next in commands all across the globe, and had been picking them off one by one. Never again could they try to revive the program under another banner.
There were not many of those individuals left. For many months Raiden had waged his war. He slaughtered many, but also saved many lives too. Trafficking rings were broke up, cartels wiped out, and even the odd individual here and there had been helped by him on his journey. It was almost contradictory the way he would kill nearly indiscriminately yet go to inhuman lengths to save the lives of others. Raiden never tried to reconcile those two halves of himself, he learned to live with them as they were.
The World Marshall incident had done a number on him. He had emerged victorious but not unscathed. Old wounds that he had thought were long closed and put far behind him had been savagely ripped open to bleed freely. The darker parts of himself that he had spent a lifetime trying to separate away from had come back with a vengeance. It was simultaneously horrifying and liberating. Hiding behind morals and a code name had done nothing to smother who he truly was.
Instead of being crushed by the mirror he was forced to look upon, Raiden had learned to use it. He had been given no choice in being crafted into a weapon, a monster, but he was now free to choose what to do with what he was. He was now a monster that hunted other monsters, so that no others like himself would be made.
Accepting himself and being in denial no longer was like breathing fresh air for the first time after a lifetime of captivity. Like an animal that had been raised caged by concrete and steel but was now running free. The self acceptance coupled with a worthwhile cause made him driven. Confident. Careless.
Raiden should have expected that something would go wrong. Life always found a way to rip away control from him the moment it touched his hands. It was his own fault that he had not been wary once things had been going well for too long.
Raiden's hunt had nearly been over. After he had disposed of the last few individuals on his list, the war would be won and he would gladly head back home although not to retirement. He was under no delusion that he had rid the world of abusers and men like Solidus that sought to craft living weapons. As long as humanity walked the earth there would always be those that tried to carve what they wanted from the flesh of others. But there would also always be those like himself that would rise to the occasion to stop them.
But that would be for later, for another war, another crusade both for others and for himself. As gratifying as it was to kill and save, he was growing weary of blood and screams. Although it was not gone, the bloodlust had run its course. Like a sated predator that had earned its rest. More than anything Raiden wanted to go home. He wanted to play in the kitchen with Rose, to help John with his homework, to settle down with the both of them and enjoy some new movies. He wanted to go back to his family and bask in peace and calm once more.
It was not meant to be.
The kid crying in the alleyway had caught his attention but Raiden had nearly ignored it. Crying kids were not exactly uncommon in this run down corner of western Europe. There were more children then he could ever hope to save and he didn't have a company at his back this time. That cold reminder in his head sounded a lot like Wolf, reprimanding him for illogical actions when he could not save them all. 'I cant save the world, but it means the world to those I can save'. Raiden turned towards the ally but he had stilled in hesitation.
His suit was filthy and torn, wet with the splatter of a successful hunt. Raiden would have probably terrified the poor child worse then whatever ills were causing the weeping. It was only when the tears cranked up into shrill terrified screams, did his feet carry him in the dim alleyway making the decision for him. No one had come for him when he had screamed, he would not let others go through the same.
With his enhanced vision Raiden instantly identified the child in the dimly lit alleyway that was cluttered up with boards, broken down furniture, and garbage nearly piled knee deep in places. Some sadistic bastard had tied the grubby looking kid in clothes way too large for the emaciated frame upside down high upon a chain link fence. And circling below were several feral dogs, wild eyed with lolling tongues and snapping teeth.
He had shouted aggressively at the dogs, hoping to scare the beasts away but apparently they had grown accustomed to the sound of threatening humans. The wild dogs hardly cocked a tattered ear his way, far too intent on grabbing a bite of the child's fingers before they could be driven off by the larger creature. Hoping to run them off before the child could be harmed Raiden had charged forward...
...only to break through the boards on the ground to a cleverly camouflaged pit in the midst of all the garbage. A bitingly sarcastic voice in the back of his mind mocked him as he fell through. 'You would have seen this had you bothered to use your AR display'. Another voice, quieter and one he had been trying to silence as the months rolled on during his occasionally lonely hunt, commented almost remorsefully. 'The old team would have caught this and had given me a heads up'.
Any further thoughts were drowned out by the splashing of himself and the broken boards hitting dark repugnant water. The next thing Raiden heard was the high pitched whine of an EM grenade going off.
That was the last thing that he heard for a long time.
-0-0-0-
Coming back to awareness was a slow and sluggish process. Every time Raiden had nearly surfaced from the black and senseless mire, he was quickly yanked back under. It was almost as if he were underwater and the barbed tentacle wrapped around his ankle would drag him back to the depths should his outstretched fingers reach too close to the surface.
When the man did manage to fully awaken it was with a clarity that was almost startling after the daze that he had been in for so long. Old habit kept him entirely motionless upon waking in case he was being observed. Raiden took that moment of still wakefulness to take stock of his surroundings. Soon came the terrible realization that there was not much to be aware of. The most noticeable thing about his current situation was the darkness.
'Blindfolded', Raiden noted almost detachedly at the feeling of cloth wrapped around his face. Testing if he could see around the edges of the cloth brought a disturbing discovery. There was no input. It was more than just darkness, it was the absence of sight at all. It was then he realized he had no eyes left to see from.
'Oh those bastards', Raiden seethed, thoughts of vengeance running through his mind. He ultimately resolved to simply kill in retaliation rather than give in to more sadistic impulses only for the sake of being able to get home quicker.
If he had to take a stab at a guess, Raiden would suspect his captor was a cruel individual yet squeamish at the same time. Why would they bother to put out his eyes and then cover it up rather than enjoy their handiwork? A sadist, but a coward. Sounded like the mind of someone that Rose would be interested in picking through. But those were concerns for later. The now was a far more pressing and worrisome problem.
Knowing that it was no doubt a futile effort, Raiden tried to access his comms to send out a request for help. To who he didn't know yet, but it was pointless to try and select someone as he was met with silence from the network. In fact, the entirety of his user interface was being disrupted and he couldn't access any of his systems.
'Bastards have been messing inside my head', Raiden thought with bitter resignation. It wasn't the first time someones messed with his head. Probably wouldn't be the last either, but complete comm silence meant that he had now way to call out for help, and no one knew of his location. His problems did not stop there he realized.
The man strained his ears for any clues to his surroundings. The soft breathing of a drowsing guard, cars from a highway nearby, hell, even the sound of rain to let him know if he were above or below ground. There was nothing to be heard, not even the sound of his own heartbeat. Growing increasingly disturbed, Raiden wondered if there simply was nothing to be heard or if his hearing had been disabled as well. There was no pain in his ears, nor in what may have remained of his eyes for that matter.
'That's annoying'. Pain would have given him something to work with at least.
The temperature was at a comfortable enough level. There was no tell tale tickle of wind across skin or through his hair. 'Inside then. Temperature controlled environment. Little to no air currents.' Raiden added to his assessment. No tilt nor sway that would indicate being on the water. No vibrations running through his skull that indicated aircraft or vehicle. If only he could see what was around him.
The absence of light and sound became a lesser concern as Raiden realized that not only could he not hear his heart, he could not feel the subtle sensation of his pulse in what little remained of his face. He was very familiar with this lack of sensation and it most certainly meant bad news for him. He tried to draw in a breath. A small part of him knew that it was pointless to try, that he already knew what had happened, but Raiden tried to breathe anyway.
He could not.
Uncaring if any guards or security cameras picked up the motion, Raiden tested to see if there was anything left of him that he could move. There was no feedback to be had whatsoever. He willed movement stronger this time on the off chance that the EM pulse had damaged his BMI. But once again there was nothing. Just like his vision, there was nothing there to control at all.
Raiden would have let out a resigned sigh had he still possessed lungs, but there was no denying the truth. His cybernetics had all been stripped away. He was well and truly fucked. Without a body and no way to call for help there was absolutely nothing he could do other than wait for whoever had captured him to make their move.
Irritation and anxiety warred with resigned apathy. Raiden had no idea how long he had been here at...well wherever he was. It was not an uncommon tactic to soften up hard cases a little bit before you got to work on them. And this was not the first time he had been subjected to this particular little mind game.
At least this time he was relatively comfortable with no need to concern himself with loss of circulation due to restraints or a need to relieve himself. Dehydration was a possible concern as well as a drop in his blood sugar over time. Raiden vehemently wished that he could access his systems so he could see what sort of life support he was hooked up to. Was it just circulating oxygenated blood or did it have his full gauntlet of needs as a cyborg? It would tell him a lot about how long they planned to keep him in this particular location.
There was no point in wondering about it, Raiden conceded reluctantly. Perhaps he could use the time to get some good sleep before whatever tortures they would conjure up would start. With the birth of VR simulators, a whole new world of torture techniques had been born. It would be interesting in a macabre way to compare them to the flesh and blood methods of his youth if they chose to go that route.
And so, with no other choice, Raiden waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
-0-0-0-
Days passed. At least Raiden was fairly certain days had passed. It was difficult to tell with his systems malfunctioning He had drifted from wakefulness to sleep and back several times. Without being able to see any changes in light, hear traffic patterns or morning birds there was no way for him to tell the passage of time.
Sleep when it did come was difficult. His long time bed companion, nightmares, followed him even to this abandoned place. Without being able to root himself in reality it was becoming increasingly difficult to pull himself back together after each one. Distressingly the barrier between wakefulness and his nightmares was starting to wear thin.
Raiden was fairly confident that he was being observed by his captors and did his damnedest upon regaining his senses to not distress show on his face. He knew that his vitals gave him away every time, but it was not exactly as if he had many other ways to rebel here. The only silver lining about the nightmares was that at least there was no violent thrashing awake, no attacking any living thing that was within striking range.
Raiden remained stoic through it all refusing to give in to hopelessness, but by God was the darkness beginning to crush him. He had never been too proud to admit that he was afraid of the night. Now darkness was all that he had. Raiden wondered if his captor knew of his fear. It seemed to be a little too deliberate for mere coincidence.
Everything else about this situation was personal and tailored for him, why not the psychological torture as well?
No matter how many times he slept and woke, how many days had passed, his blood sugar levels remained steady and constant. Raiden had come to accept that he was hooked up for the long haul. At least it gave him a little more info on his captors.
This person or person had to be well off or were generously funded. Keeping a cyborg alive was a delicate and expensive process. He couldn't simply be connected up to any computer and life support system. It took a great deal of money and knowledge for a cyborg to be so flawlessly maintained, and it was done on an individual basis. This whole setup screamed that it had been personalized just for him. His capture had been planned and prepared for over a long period of time.
The thought was not a comforting one.
Raiden wondered conclusions Rose could draw about his captors psyche profile based on what little information he had. Cruelty and cowardice. Meticulous planning and money. This seemed like the kind of individual she would love to dig into while going through cup after cup of coffee until she had rooted out all the secrets of their mind. She was a tenacious hunter as he was although their domains differed greatly. One of the mind and one of the body.
Raiden's thoughts drifted to her often in his lonely captivity. He thought of how they seemed to be made of opposites. How could two people so different fit together so naturally despite the artificial and deceptive start of their relationship? He was all hard angles and edges, cutting others despite his best efforts to take care. Rose seemed to flow like water heedless his roughness, and always seemed to understand even when he himself did not. She didn't blunt his claws, but rather sheathed them. Every time he looked at her he was reminded that the world could be a better and gentler place than what he he had been taught life was.
He missed her so badly it hurt.
His thoughts also turned to John. He was eleven now, nearly twelve. The boy grew so fast it was almost unbelievable. The man swore the kid seemed to grow and change by the day. And he was so sharp too. Raiden was by no means an expert on childhood development but his son seemed so much smarter than his peers. John most certainly took after his mother in that department.
John multitasked like he breathed. Many times Raiden had gone to remind his son about his encroaching bed time only to find the boy simultaneously playing a game, watching a movie, and video chatting with a friend back in the states. It amused Raiden but drove Rose mad. She insisted that it was bad for his attention span but Raiden had never found John wanting for focus whenever he was teaching him something. Cowardly? Perhaps. Bad parenting? Maybe. But Raiden always chose to be neutral territory in that particular war.
In addition to his looks, John unfortunately seemed to be inheriting his fathers temper. Raiden couldn't protest, John got it honestly after all. The boy was a sore loser and breathtakingly hardheaded at times. But if sulking over a lost game or having to be carried when he was in full passive resistance mode was the worst that John got up to then Raiden was not particularly worried. The man knew a thing or two about childhood misbehavior after all. Raiden imagined that John's teen years were going to be a very interesting time period indeed.
That is, if he managed to escape this mess that he had gotten himself into to be able to see it.
Other than a highly unlikely change of heart by his captors, or some equally unlikely divine intervention, Raiden did have one avenue of hope that he clung to: Rose.
Rose had been wholeheartedly supportive and understanding of his decision to quit his job once she had learned the truth behind the World Marshall incident. She had even given him one of those soft smiles that said 'you did something right' when he had told her of George and the other children he had freed. She had all but ushered him out the door when he had told her that he planed on stopping it from happening to any other children.
During his hunt he had regularly kept in contact with his family. Visiting them when it was safe, calls and video chats as often as he could manage them. It actually was not all too different of a situation than when he had been stationed in Africa by Maverick. Except this time he didn't have company backing.
Raiden had told Rose, promised her, that when he had left that he would stay in contact as often as he could. No less than once a month, even if shit had hit the fan for him. If three months had gone by without word, then things had gone wrong and to call in the calvery.
Raiden didn't know how long he had been here already, but he knew that he had already been due a call by the time of his capture. All it would take would be the passage of time to indicate that he was in trouble and then help would be on the way.
So time was his only hope but unfortunately it was also becoming Raiden's greatest enemy.
Raiden knew the effects of sensory deprivation and solitary confinement, yet he was completely powerless to stop their onset. He could only observe as the effects began to slowly invade his psyche. The darkness, the silence, his utter lack of any ability to move beyond crinkling up his nose and furrowing his eyebrows...it was starting to wear at him. Raiden knew that the passage of time would eventually lead to him being saved, but he was terrified of what this place would do to him before his rescue.
All he had to do was wait.
-0-0-0-
First came the auditory hallucinations. Faint whispers at the edge of his awareness. Initially he did not realize that what he was hearing was the sound of a brain collapsing in on itself, he thought his captors had finally come for him. If he could have sighed, Raiden would have let out a gust of relief at the voices in the distance.
Finally it was time for the questioning, the torture. Raiden was certain that his vitals had displaying enough stress levels that he would have been deemed properly 'softened up'. But the indistinct voices remained just that, voices. It took him far longer than he would care to admit to realize that what he was hearing was all in his head. Damnably, he couldn't stop the surge of hope that someone was there every time the voices started to whisper to him.
But one ever came.
Raiden would see spots of light and smears of color when he would be too far lost in thought. Nothing like the nearly distinct voices, more like the confused sensory input the optic nerves would send to the brain when one rubbed at their eyes too hard. Raiden idly entertained himself by finding patterns in the visual hallucinations. It was like cloud watching, but instead of water vapor, it was the scrambled sensory input of encroaching insanity.
As the days and weeks passed by (or had it been months by now), Raiden could feel his thoughts become far more disjointed and erratic. He tried to get lost in his head to pass the time but thinking seemed to be harder and harder by the day. The thoughts and memories, regrets and wishes, they all swirled together. Switching from one to the other to the next without direction or purpose.
Raiden valiantly tried to marshal his thoughts, to forge some kind of focus in the nebulous nothing, but concentration skittered away from him like insects gliding over a pool of water. Meditation techniques of the east that he had studied came to mind but was forgotten when the next round of nightmares, hallucinations, memories rolled through and laid waste to his attempts. He would forget all about meditation for some time (days, weeks?) until he had the idea all over again to strive for some control that way.
The same happened with the methods of centering oneself Rose frequently referred to with her work. It was difficult to focus yourself by controlling your breathing when you could not breathe. To ground yourself in reality and not your thoughts through the use of the senses was also a laughable course. He could not see, hear, taste, or smell. All Raiden could feel was the tickle of cloth against the bridge of his nose when he wrinkled it and a slight sensation of pressure where his jaw should have been. It was an even worse idea than meditation, but inevitably he would forget that it was pointless and try it all over again.
The cycle repeated over and over.
Raiden clung desperately to thoughts of his family when he could manage to pull them forth. He clung to memories of one of the only few individuals in his life that he could honestly say that he looked up to. He wondered what Snake would think or do in this situation? But even those thoughts and memories seemed to crack and fade, like an old photograph that been taken out and placed back in a pocket one too many times.
He wondered what day it was. Was it April 30th yet? Was it even the same year?
Old missions were pulled forth with great effort. 'What if's' and 'should have's' colored the thoughts of his old exploits. For lack of anything more, Raiden let himself second guess away. Every detail that he could recall (which were becoming fewer by the day) was turned over and he allowed himself to daydream the various outcomes if only he had done something different.
More often than not, these exercises of thought drifted away and left him wondering what exactly he was doing again. After pondering and getting lost and derailed many times would he recall and the process of thinking-forgetting-remembering and it would start all over again. It did not help that the hallucinations and nightmares were seeping in on every front distorting what was, and corroding his recollection with horrors and nonsensical imaginings.
Raiden knew that his grip on reality was slipping badly. He knew it, and also he knew that he was utterly helpless to stop it. Sanity trailed through his fingers like streams of water. The more he tried to hold on the worse it seemed to get. In the end all he could do was let go and drift along with the stream of his consciousness, helpless to fight its swirls and eddies nor did he have the strength to after struggling for so long.
And so Raiden drifted and waited.
And waited.
-0-0-0-
Raiden had been sleeping when something new happened, or at least he thought he had been sleeping. It was getting so hard to tell anymore. The whispers and the lights, dreams and waking. Nonsense and reality blended and blurred, meshing together without any distinction from one to the next. Nor was there any need for any barrier between the nightmares and the hallucinations, it was all amalgamated together by his mind in the omnipresent darkness. But what separated this newness was neither sight nor sound or thought. It was motion.
After being still for untold ages, being moved about was enough to make him pray to any deity that would listen to give him back his hands so that he could hold onto something for dear life. Once his equilibrium had settled, angry from been woken from its slumber and the vertigo had quit sending him through a loop, Raiden realized he could feel someones hands on him.
'About fucking time' The man raged within. The surge of adrenaline that rushed through him helped shake off some of the mantle of madness that had settled about him. The mire he was sunk in would not let him free, but Raiden found himself revitalized enough by the change to struggle once more. Soon the questioning, the revenge, and the torture would begin. It was about time that they finally came for him.
To be honest, Raiden was relived that something was finally happening. Not relived, he realized, intensely grateful. He was ashamed to admit that being alone in his own head for so long was far worse than any of the many torments that had been inflicted upon him in his life. The man had endured far more than enough of the torture of his own distorting thoughts and nightmares. Someone real being here was a blessing despite their intentions towards him. Raiden drunk in the novelty of the situation like a man dying of thirst upon finding water.
The hands moving him about were no nonsense, to the point. Raiden could feel them poking and prodding at the base of his skull, no doubt checking the condition of the ports and connections that were there. There was no sound to be had during this process. No rustling of cloth or sound of breathing and he had his answer once and for all if his hearing was missing. Raiden accepted the extra layer of helplessness easily. It was the least of his concerns at this point.
While he was immensely thankful that someone was actually there, Raiden made sure to snarl his defiance to the owner of the hands. They were the reason he was in this situation after all. His nose crinkled up, and he bared his teeth the best he could with the facial muscles that hadn't been severed years ago. The helpless man was sure it was quite a pitiable expression, with most of his face either covered or missing entirely.
A new sensation came: coolness. There was not much feeling to be had at the base of his skull and at the back of his throat where tissue had been carved away in exchange for metal, but Raiden could still tell a difference in temperature with the sparse flesh that remained. The hands moved about underneath and the feeling of fingers against the exposed roof of his mouth made him want to push out the intrusion with a tongue that was no longer there.
He wondered what they could possibly be doing to him. Several possibilities came to mind and none of them were pleasant. Before he could get truly worried, there was a sharp smell of alcohol. It was a fleeting scent and more like the hint of a smell with his inability to draw in air, but he had spent an unfortunately large portion of his life in medical environments and he knew disinfectant when he smelt it.
The ever present cynical side of himself supplied unhelpfully, 'Can't have you set up some kind of brain infection and end the fun early, now can we?' The long term implications were disturbing and the expression of rage he was trying to maintain faltered a little at the thought.
Raiden didn't have long to dwell upon the thought however. He was not sure how his attention had managed to drift off considering the circumstances but the sensation of the blindfold being pulled off of his face certainly drew him back to reality. He tried not to flinch or yield in his projection of defiance as the sensitive skin of his eyelids were manipulated. The coolness in his eye sockets was an intensely offensive sensation although it was completely painless.
It was a pity, truly, a good dose of pain would have done his frail focus a world of good. The feeling of the area being cleaned was unpleasant, but it was not the first time fingers and tools have become acquainted with that particular part of his anatomy and he doubted that it would be the last. Raiden could have shivered in relief at the sensation retreating and the feeling of cloth wrapping about his face once more.
Whoever was tending to him went about their cleaning without hesitation and seemingly without emotion. Not once did the owner of the hands try to inflict pain upon him. There were no strikes, no digging in fingernails on sensitive areas, even when Raiden felt his hair mildly wetted and worked through did the person not even tug at the strands harshly. Nor had the hands trembled in the slightest when dealing with the ruin of his eyes.
The hands did not treat him with harshness or contempt that he would have expected of his captors. They did not linger in reluctance nor pity of a savior. Not even a gentle brush of a thumb over his cheek to offer reassurance or regret to the man. It was an odd combination of insulting and infuriating. He wished that they would give him something, anything, to glean from the interaction.
Raiden would have suspected that he was being maintained by an AI if it were not for the lingering heat on his skin from the stranger and the calluses he could feel on several fingers when they had brushed against his lip. Not particularly large hands, but sturdy. He felt fairly confident that it was a male that was touching, cleaning, and seeking out with questing fingertips any problems or cause for concern. It was invasive, to be touched like this without being able to give the slightest bit of resistance. The worst part was...deep inside Raiden knew he didn't want them to stop.
There was someone here. Not nightmares, or hallucinations, or figments of his imagination to draw up and have conversations with. No, this was flesh and blood and here. Raiden kept his look of rage, of defiance, but when the hands withdrew and did not return he felt that rage turn to denial. Then horror. Finally despair.
How long would it take for the whispers to come back? They had been blissfully silent as Raiden had tracked the hands' progress. The nightmares and memories of bloodshed, his or others, it didn't matter in the end, would come. There would be gunfire, the sound of a blade cutting through flesh with the screams and laughter that usually accompanied it. Enough. He had had enough. Raiden prayed for the hands to return and for whoever was doing this to him finally tell him what they wanted. Unless they already had what they wanted…
He rejected the possibility savagely. To even entertain the thought was to invite utter and complete madness. It was coming, surely and not exactly slowly. There was no denying that he was losing it but that didn't mean that he had to accept it. Instead of such thoughts, Raiden focused on the memory of touch and lingering warmth that had somehow become more precious to him than the memory of his wife's touch.
Raiden waited for the hands, no, prayed for them to return.
He waited.
-0-0-0-
A new sensation crept in one day, or rather, one day he realized that it had been there for quite some time but only its extremity allowed him to be pulled from his desolate mind to realize it. It was cold. It had always been mildly cool in whatever forgotten corner of the world he had been abandoned in, but the temperature regulated blood that was hatefully pumped through him keeping him alive in this hell never allowed him to feel more than average.
Raiden had raged back when he still could rage that he wasn't even allowed the grace to feel uncomfortable in his captivity. He was beyond such caring now. Some days he forgot that he even had skin, that he still existed outside the blackened waters of his mind. With the outside world so far out of his reach, it took Raiden far too long to realize that the air about him was actually cold.
Unfortunately it was nothing that would prove lethal, or even dangerous as he was artificially warmed from within. It was just a mild chill on his nose, but the cold was something. Something new, something different. It was more precious to him than any happy memory that his mind could still manage to conjure up. He basked in the chill like an animal in the sun, crawling from its den after a bitter winter had finally come to an end. Raiden would wrinkle his nose then relax, the chilled muscles slightly sluggish in their response. It was delightful. It was different.
It was quickly forgotten.
Realization that there was a change in temperature would fade away in his haze only to be discovered again. The joy of it was celebrated and forgotten over and over and over until there was no more cold left to be discovered. The outside world was forgotten and back down into senselessness and dark did he sink.
The hands came back one day. The dream that Raiden had been having seemed a little bit more solid than usual. Even in his dreams and memories had he been reduced to stillness and darkness. He was snarling his displeasure at being shaken from his numbness before he even realized what he was feeling. It took him ages to remember what the strange sensations were or why he was responding as he did.
The hands went about their routine exactly the same as before. Vertigo at being moved would have been disorientating and nauseating if he could manage to recall what those sensations were. When Raiden's mind did manage to coalesce feelings and impressions into something more relating to thought than the murky stupor that was his mind anymore, he wished that they would work slower. Touch, something different, something outside of him, it was a lifeline even if he couldn't quite remember or grasp why.
Something somewhere deep inside hinted that this was not going to last. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Raiden attempted to move. To reach out with and desperately hold the hands against his face so he could keep on feeling them. So that they would not leave. So that the nothing would not take over once more. Inevitably, the hands pulled away from his phantom grasp and did not return. If Raiden still possessed the ability to cry, he would have sobbed at their loss.
Time crawled on but Raiden no longer waited.
-0-0-0-
He was without thought or wish. Adrift under the surface of his mind that had twisted and folded in on itself so many times that it had run its course and had finally fallen still. Memories and thoughts would bubble up to the surface every now and then. It was mostly flashes and impressions rather than anything cohesive. Memories of endless green splattered with red. Phantom sensations of steel and flesh under hands that held no more substance than their memories.
It all drifted by without reaction or awareness. Whenever there were moments of clarity and emotion that disturbed the peace, Raiden ignored them until they went away. If he were even aware that he had lost his mind, the only response he could have given would be one of heartfelt gratefulness that he was finally free of it.
The hands eventually came back. Forgotten facial muscles twitched of their own accord until the event was over and forgotten entirely. The cold came back, although it was not greeted with the same heartfelt joy as before. It passed unnoticed like snowflakes dancing across the surface of a stone. Time passed and the cycle repeated unnoticed and uncared for.
If he was the lightning, the rain transformed, what did that mean for him once the storm had passed? The skies would clear, the world fresher and brighter place once the sun took its rightful place in the skies. Perhaps others would remember him, like the faint hint of ozone trailing off in the calmed breeze. The world would move on and the storm would just be a memory until that too faded away. There was not enough left of him to even care that he was no more.
In the void stretching out endlessly like the expanse of space, the return of the hands tried to reach across the distance but could not touch him. There was some movement from him of its own accord. A reflexive twitch in response to prodding. The weak response was just a part of the cycle, even if the hands seemed to be straying from their usual routine. The difference in their pattern was of no importance, just another stage in the cycle of eternity.
Eternity being flipped seemingly upside down was enough to disturb the emptiness of the void however.
Dizziness and motion washed over him, sensations of the outside world threatening to reach him from where he stayed hidden and buried. Raiden shied away from the feelings, choosing nothing over something. But the something was persistent. The something had tilted existence itself sideways and for the first time in ages did an emotion form within him and remain: distress.
Everything remained skewed and a persistent drumming vibration like a heartbeat prodded at him constantly. Raiden fought against it, if one could call rejecting all thought and emotion in favor of nothingness fighting.
Eventually like the cold, the hands, the nothing, this new quickly became the is and its presence faded off into the mists along with everything else that was not the cocoon of catatonia. It all lead to nothingness in the end anyway. Why even bother to try?
Raiden chose to stay wrapped up in the nothingness. The outside sensations would eventually fade away and leave him alone once more. The outside world would continue on without him. His world was the void and he was a prisoner in the vast emptiness of his mind.