ciceqi (ciceqi) wrote in fictunes, @ 2008-02-03 20:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | characters: cloud/zack, fandom: kingdom hearts, month: feb 08, writer: ciceqi |
[Kingdom Hearts II] Umbra, Zack/Cloud, worksafe
Title: Umbra
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts II
Character/Pairing: Zack/Cloud
Rating: Worksafe
Warnings: None
Music: Liam Finn - "Shadow of Your Man"
Summary: Some things are like instinct.
Bright trails of scent latticed the dusty streets, wafted through badly-repaired walls: warm golden fat and filling, lean grey mean and stingy as starving wolves. Eating the grey ones was no good; it made the hunger worse, hearts bitter and stunted, but when there was nothing else, even a grey scent could be followed.
Tonight the pickings were better. A taste of green teased him for blocks, leaf sap and new grass and the brassy tang of healing, but he lost it in a confusion of cool amber, acrid blue, syrupy citrine that jangled his senses and had him backing away sneezing, melting into the shadows with a hand clapped over his mouth and nose.
Strong hearts, all of them, and well worth the chase. It'd be the work of moments to slide silent and unnoticed into their midst, trade fingers for claws and separate them from those hot points of light that burned inside them. Hearts that strong might even silence the hunger completely for a little while, long enough to let him think. Nothing else had; he was willing to risk it.
Putting his hand up to the rough wall of the building whose shadow hid him, he latched on and began to climb, agile as any Shadow. Clinging to the stone, he edged his way around the corner, peered down into lamplit streets as his quarry passed him by in a knot of unlikely companions. A lean young man with shaggy hair, fond of leather. A grizzled older man badly in need of a shave. Two women, one young and quick and chattering, the other...there was something odd about the other, something that both drew and repelled him. Healer, he decided, the one he'd first scented, but this close she smelled of old sorrow and determination and--flowers, a million flowers, white petals shining in a sun she brought with her, everywhere she went.
He hunched in on himself, resisted the urge to shake his head. They might see the motion, even in the shadows; they looked like people used to caution and battle. But that scent...it wasn't really a part of the healer below, but at the same time it was. It was something he'd only sensed once before, when he'd come too close to that not-Heartless, that Nobody, who wore his face.
Hissing quietly to himself, he crept up to the roof, torn, uncertain of himself for the first time in...he couldn't remember. It was hard to keep track of time with the hunger spurring him on, constant, consuming, pushing out nearly every thought but the driving preoccupation with how it might be fed. Springing lightly from roof to roof, he kept the small band in sight, but each time he gathered himself to drop down and attack, something made him hesitate. They were too strong to take all at once, even for an Umbra like him. He should let this party go. He could pick them off one by one some other time.
Poised at the edge of a high-peaked roof, he flexed his fingers to claws and dug his talons in, leaning out past the crumbling tiles and watching the four disappear. Foolish to let them go. He wouldn't find anything that tempting again in a hurry.
And then the wind shifted, or something shifted, and there was blue, endless and aching, shot through with cords of bitter green, snow and musty darkness and fire. That scent was warmth locked away, like lurking outside the lit windows of a cozy house in the dead of winter, and the taste of it on his tongue reminded him that he'd been cold for a long, long time.
He didn't stop to consider why the scent was so familiar. Throwing himself in chase of it, he bolted fleet-footed across the rooftops, not-boots making no noise at all; like the rest of him, they were pure darkness, his tread cat-footed at any speed. No one noticed his presence as he passed them by, even when he leapt over the streets below. He wasn't interested in small prey, weak hearts. He rarely bothered with them as it was.
Skidding to a stop at the edge of another crumbling roof, he dropped to a crouch and fell forward on his hands, digging his claws in. The blue scent was right below him, a blond man in black, swinging around a wide sword--heavy, heavy as stone, the sharp tang of steel hovering over him like a--as a pack of Neoshadows hemmed him in. Ten, twenty...there shouldn't be this many of them here. But maybe they could all smell the same thing: that heat, the strength of heart, the--days out in the hot sun, training until their entire bodies were one satisfying ache, bundling up in the winter and those eyes watching him over the edge of a pale scarf, smiling, always there--
A faint growl grated from him as he watched the man fight, frustration and confusion keeping him frozen where he crouched. He didn't like the strange not-scents these people carried with them; the hunger was simpler, almost comforting in its reliability. It never left him, was the second thing he'd known.
The first was that there was something missing.
The immense sword was swung easily, the muscles of the blond's bared arm bunching smooth and impressive under tanned skin. He wondered idly what that skin would taste like, wondered why he'd want to know; surely scent was detailed enough. Scent alone was all he needed to taste the resignation that underlay every stroke, every block, the stubbornness that kept the man fighting and the apathy that made him careless of minor wounds, though they were slowing him down.
Antennae shivering with excitement, the Neoshadows pressed closer. They'd swarm the man soon, bury him under their clinging mass and free that heart for themselves.
No, he decided all at once, yellow eyes narrowing. That's mine.
Launching himself soundlessly from the roof, he fell in a tight ball, arms lashing out to either side as his feet hit the pavement. Claws dug deep into shadowflesh, stolen hearts crackling up in trails of red sparks as sleek bodies shredded to nothing, but he knew the confusion wouldn't last long. Already the Neoshadows were backing away, but that was dumb instinct, giving ground to a larger predator.
There was no hesitation in him at all as he laid into the pack, clawing, tearing, punching through darkness and ripping them up out of the cobbles and the bricks when they tried to melt away and hide. The sheer satisfaction he felt was puzzling, if soothing; there was always something twisting in his gut when he hunted, always that toward-away double pull that made him go hungry more often than not. This was a kind of destruction he understood, and he almost found himself laughing for no reason, even drew one deliberate breath to give it voice.
Finding himself standing too quickly in an almost-empty alley where the shadows were only shadows was a faint disappointment, and he found himself using that breath to sigh with, sinking down in an animal crouch to lick his claws. Musty. Shadowflesh was musty, almost tasteless. Not very satisfying at all.
The clatter of steel on stone made him look up, cocking his head curiously. The man had dropped his sword. He didn't look that injured; how strange.
Blue eyes stared wide, and he thought he could hear the frantic pulse of the man's blood from here.
"Z-Zack?" the man breathed, his words strained, choked. "Is...is that...?"
He tested the name, considered the question. The Nobody who wore his face went by Zax, but he'd been warned to keep away from the thing. Umbra or not, he wasn't stronger than the Nobody, and he didn't want to be devoured, absorbed.
"Zack?" the man asked again, something pleading in his voice.
When he grinned an answer, the sharpness of his teeth didn't seem to faze the man at all.