[KH2] - Blood, Sugar (Xaldin/Xigbar, Cloud, Leon) (Part II)
Title: Blood, Sugar (Part I)
Author: Xanthos Samurai
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts II
Pairing/Characters: Xaldin/Xigbar, Cloud, Leon, Larxene.
Rating: Hard R
Length: 2,171 words (4,692 total)
Warnings: Yaoi, extreme violence, gore, mutilation, disturbing themes, foul language, implied cannibalism.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor claim to own anything but the arrangement of the words on the page.
Notes: I'm not completely happy with the end of this, but I'm tired and I've had this half-finished for ages and i really just want to get it done. I'll think about adding more and/or re-writing the ending if I get any opinions on it. This fic stemmed from my desire to kind of turn the tables and show just how much scarier Xaldin can be than Xigbar, if he so choses. This got split into two parts because it was apparently too long for LJ wtf.
Continued from Part I.
“That was a cute trick, Larxene.”
The girl had been sleeping in her cell and was none too happy to be woken up to have to go back into that same uncomfortable interrogation room to talk to these two jack-offs again. She glared first at the one who had spoken, then at his blonde partner.
“What trick? I didn’t do anything.”
“Sending us to that apartment. Real cute.” Leon pulled out the chair opposite of Larxene and sat in it. Cloud remained on his feet, pacing the room slowly. “So who was it? Who’d you kill?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything?” The girl frowned deeply at Leon and twisted around as Cloud walked behind her chair. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The apartment you sent us to, little girl.” Cloud leaned over her from behind and put his hands on her shoulders. “Was painted red. Blood red. It looked like somethin’ out of the worst parts of the Bible. “
“I don’t get what the fuck you’re talking about.” Larxene snapped and shoved Cloud’s hands off her.
“The apartment. When we got there, it was covered in blood. In fact, covered’s an understatement. It looked like someone was trying to redecorate using bodily fluids as a medium.” Detective Leonhart looked right at her. “There was no body at the scene. You sent us there, so you’re the most likely candidate to know who was the lucky paint donor.”
For the first time, the girl looked genuinely confused.
“Wait, you’re asking me who got splattered? How the hell should I know?”
“You’d better start gettin’ an idea right quick before we start getting bored enough to overlook the fact that you were incarcerated when the murder took place. ‘cause nobody would care if you got thrown in jail for that, you know.” Cloud was practically whispering into her ear at this point. “Violent murder like that… doesn’t look good for the city, Larxene. People want to make that stuff go away. They want people who do things like that to go away too. Even if it’s a cute little blonde girl like you. I don’t think you want that to happen, so I suggest you’d start thinkin’ of which of your little friends could have done this real quick.”
“I told you I don’t know!” A note of panic had crept into Larxene’s voice and she began to struggle with her handcuffs. “I don’t know who could have done this!” She stopped suddenly, eyes widening to the size of saucers. “…Oh fuck.”
“Think of someone?” Leon leaned forward.
“It… it could have been Braig.” She turned and looked at him, eyes still wide. He noted with interest that she had gone slightly pale. “But Braig… nobody’d ever get the drop on him unless… Oh shit. Unless Dilan found out.”
“Braig’s your little boyfriend, right? Who the hell is Dilan?” Leon gave Cloud a look and the other detective left the room to go look up this Dilan character. They had heard of him before.
“Braig’s partner or boyfriend or whatever. I didn’t really pay attention when he was being gay.” Larxene began to sound a bit panicked. “He’s a doctor or something. Braig always said he was a jealous bitch but he laughed when he said it, so I didn’t really pay attention…” She looked up at Leon. “If he killed Braig, he’s gonna try to kill me. I know it.”
“Not if you’re in here he won’t,” said Leon grimly. “You’re in a police station. They’d be insane to try to get to you in here and we’d get them even if they did.”
“Yeah… Yeah you’re right.” She relaxed a little bit.
“That’s right. Do you know where we could find this Dilan guy? Any ideas?”
Larxene thought for a moment.
“…Braig mentioned something about having a room in a building off Castle.”
“That’ll work. Now I’m gonna ask you one last time, Larxene, and you’d better answer or you’re going to find yourself in even more trouble.” Leon’s eyes leveled at her. “When we picked you up, you had blood all over you. What was it from?”
“Oh. I was drinking blood.”
Even the usually stoic and unflappable Leon blinked at that.
“Drinking blood,” he repeated.
“Yeah. Braig’s a cannibal.” Larxene looked increasingly nervous, although her tone was misleadingly casual. “You know. A people-eater.”
“I know what a cannibal is.” Leon was growling as usual, but he was rattled underneath. This case had been strange already - kids and bloody murders but now cannibals? This was too much. “Okay look. I’ll arrange for you to stay here tonight even though you’re acquitted. How’s that sound? Like I said - nobody’s dumb enough to try to get to you in here.”
Larxene nodded. “Okay. Thanks Leon.”
The detective got up and left the interrogation room, making a mental note to get an officer to place her in a holding cell for the night. He walked over to his and Cloud’s desks to find his partner at a computer. He was standing, leaning on the desk with one hand as the other scrolled the mouse through the information on the screen.
“You find anything on this Doctor Dilan asshole?” Leon looked over Cloud’s shoulder.
“Did I ever.” Cloud stood up, wincing as his back cracked four or five times. “We don’t got much on the guy, but what we do got is enough to make your toenails curl. Used to be a surgeon over at Radiant Garden Memorial Hospital until he was accused of torturing some patient to death. Before he was arrested, he vanished almost off the face of the earth. He keeps under the radar now and nobody’s ever gotten a solid lead on catching the guy, but apparently he’s taken his practice underground and acts as the pet doctor to the rich and corrupt.”
“Sounds like our guy. A surgeon would be able to do what we saw if they were good enough. Probably good enough to keep someone alive for a while as they did it too.” Leon squinted at the screen, growing more and more uneasy by the minute. He glanced at Cloud to see how his partner was handling it, but Cloud’s demeanor was as calm and unruffled as usual. Leon wondered sometimes if the horrors Cloud had experienced undercover with the JENOVA project had made him immune to all other frightening things. “Cloud, I got one other thing out of Larxene.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” He glanced over his shoulder at Leon.
“Braig, the boyfriend, well… Larxene says he was a cannibal.”
Cloud’s eyebrows almost vanished under his spiky bangs.
“A cannibal. Like a people-eatin’ type cannibal?”
“According to her.”
Cloud shrugged. “She’s a kid. Kids make shit up. Either way, the guy’s dead. He ain’t gonna be munchin’ on us. I’m more worried about our evil doctor. I’ve already dealt with one crazy sadist doctor, so dealing with another one is just fuckin’ peachy.”
Leon glanced at him, but Cloud’s eyes had gone hard and distant and Leon knew better than to ask.
“There any leads on where to find this Dilan guy?” It was Cloud who broke the silence several long seconds later.
“Actually yeah. She said in a building off Castle, so I’m thinking body armor is a must.”
“Yeah, just a little.” Cloud pushed himself up again. “Let’s go.”
“I know you left your little girlfriend alive, although I don’t know why.”
Dilan spoke around the curved suture needle that he held in his teeth. It tasted like blood whenever he pressed his tongue to it, although it was difficult to say whether that was due to the nature of the metal itself or the fact that it was bloody. He was somewhat surprised to find that he didn’t mind the taste as much as he thought he would - it was quite a contrast from his usual predilection for sweets, but the coppery tang certainly wasn’t bad. Maybe Braig was on to something with this whole cannibalism deal.
The surgeon’s hands were encased in thick leather gloves, sturdy and nearly impervious to anything. They were perfect for handling sharp things, such as broken glass or barbed wire, but ill-suited for surgery. Or the normal sort of surgery, in any case.
He looked down at his operating table, at the slabs of flesh and skin pierced by metal hooks and rings and strung together with chains and wire. Braig would live again when all of this was said and done, but he would be living in a constant state of catastrophic pain. Dilan had ensured that.
Soon, it would all be done… only a few more things…
It was Strife and Leon’s tendency to work alone, much to the chagrin and occasional anger of Captain Highwind. But since the two of them so consistently outperformed all of the other officers and detectives in the department, he couldn’t really criticize them. All he could do was scowl at them as they left and gruffly tell them to keep their senses sharp and to call for help if they got into trouble.
A source who knew the neighborhood was able to point them in the direction of Dilan’s place on Castle Street.
It was a darkened old building that seemed to crouch between the street and the waterfront like a predator. Castle Street was one of the oldest in the city and one of the worst reputed. It was a district so fully controlled by the mob that cops rarely even ventured there.
The two of them stood at the back door. The filthy harbor water slurped at the bulkhead only a few yards away and insects buzzed around the one grimy yellow bulb above the door.
“I’ll go in first and you cover me.” Cloud glanced over his shoulder at Leon as he drew his gun from its holster. He always offered to do this - go in first and have Leon cover him. At first Leon had wondered if it was because Cloud didn’t think he was experienced enough to handle it, but eventually he had realized that it was because Cloud valued his life a lot less than he thought Leon valued his.
“Yeah.” He too took his gun in hand. “Let’s go.”
Cloud threw his shoulder into the door and threw himself inside.
Dilan looked up as the back door crashed open and two men with guns burst in. Their expressions had been icy and serious, but had almost immediately turned to shock and possibly even fear as they took in all of the sights and horrors inside the room. They lowered their guns as they stared at the thing in the center of the room.
It looked like… like… a scarecrow made of barbed wire and flesh. Skin had been grafted and sewn together over a barbed wire base. Metal joints and chains were visible in the gaps between the tattered skin. It was lying in a heap in the center of the room, chained to a metal pole that ran from floor to ceiling. It was unmoving, possibly dead.
“What… in the name of God…” The words left Leon’s lips before he even realized that he was speaking out loud.
Dilan picked up a scalpel and walked slowly over to where his new little pet was resting.
“Sugar, wake up. We’ve got company.”
And then the thing moved and shambled into a crouch. Yellow eyes and rusty wire gleamed in the dim and flickering light of the laboratory. It moved disjointedly, like a marionette being held by a mad puppeteer. With every movement, pain visibly wracked its body as the barbs penetrated his skin from the inside out and the wires twisted and pinched the delicate nerves in the flesh. Both of the detectives stared as it moved, each imagining being stabbed a thousand times with each movement from the inside out. It bared its teeth in a smile. Its jaw was chained on to the rest of its skull. The skin dangled off its face like wet cloth.
“Dr. Dilan, you’re under arrest for murder and whatever the fuck else all this is.”
It was Cloud who found his voice first. He pointed his gun straight at Dilan, lip curled and eyes blazing that peculiar green that they did whenever he got angry enough.
Dilan actually smiled. These two were amusing… maybe they would even make good pets as well. He was always looking for more living bodies to vent his rage upon. And if he ended up treating them too hard, well… Braig would need company. And fresh meat.
Braig hissed long and low, straining first towards them, then back to Dilan. He licked Dilan’s hand supplicatingly, wanting to go play with the guests. He was hungry. With a simple flick of his wrist, Dilan unchained Braig’s jaw so that it dangled off the bottom of his skull.
“Get them, Sugar. But leave them alive. Can’t miss your opportunity to have some new little brothers, can you?”
Author: Xanthos Samurai
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts II
Pairing/Characters: Xaldin/Xigbar, Cloud, Leon, Larxene.
Rating: Hard R
Length: 2,171 words (4,692 total)
Warnings: Yaoi, extreme violence, gore, mutilation, disturbing themes, foul language, implied cannibalism.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor claim to own anything but the arrangement of the words on the page.
Notes: I'm not completely happy with the end of this, but I'm tired and I've had this half-finished for ages and i really just want to get it done. I'll think about adding more and/or re-writing the ending if I get any opinions on it. This fic stemmed from my desire to kind of turn the tables and show just how much scarier Xaldin can be than Xigbar, if he so choses. This got split into two parts because it was apparently too long for LJ wtf.
Continued from Part I.
“That was a cute trick, Larxene.”
The girl had been sleeping in her cell and was none too happy to be woken up to have to go back into that same uncomfortable interrogation room to talk to these two jack-offs again. She glared first at the one who had spoken, then at his blonde partner.
“What trick? I didn’t do anything.”
“Sending us to that apartment. Real cute.” Leon pulled out the chair opposite of Larxene and sat in it. Cloud remained on his feet, pacing the room slowly. “So who was it? Who’d you kill?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything?” The girl frowned deeply at Leon and twisted around as Cloud walked behind her chair. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The apartment you sent us to, little girl.” Cloud leaned over her from behind and put his hands on her shoulders. “Was painted red. Blood red. It looked like somethin’ out of the worst parts of the Bible. “
“I don’t get what the fuck you’re talking about.” Larxene snapped and shoved Cloud’s hands off her.
“The apartment. When we got there, it was covered in blood. In fact, covered’s an understatement. It looked like someone was trying to redecorate using bodily fluids as a medium.” Detective Leonhart looked right at her. “There was no body at the scene. You sent us there, so you’re the most likely candidate to know who was the lucky paint donor.”
For the first time, the girl looked genuinely confused.
“Wait, you’re asking me who got splattered? How the hell should I know?”
“You’d better start gettin’ an idea right quick before we start getting bored enough to overlook the fact that you were incarcerated when the murder took place. ‘cause nobody would care if you got thrown in jail for that, you know.” Cloud was practically whispering into her ear at this point. “Violent murder like that… doesn’t look good for the city, Larxene. People want to make that stuff go away. They want people who do things like that to go away too. Even if it’s a cute little blonde girl like you. I don’t think you want that to happen, so I suggest you’d start thinkin’ of which of your little friends could have done this real quick.”
“I told you I don’t know!” A note of panic had crept into Larxene’s voice and she began to struggle with her handcuffs. “I don’t know who could have done this!” She stopped suddenly, eyes widening to the size of saucers. “…Oh fuck.”
“Think of someone?” Leon leaned forward.
“It… it could have been Braig.” She turned and looked at him, eyes still wide. He noted with interest that she had gone slightly pale. “But Braig… nobody’d ever get the drop on him unless… Oh shit. Unless Dilan found out.”
“Braig’s your little boyfriend, right? Who the hell is Dilan?” Leon gave Cloud a look and the other detective left the room to go look up this Dilan character. They had heard of him before.
“Braig’s partner or boyfriend or whatever. I didn’t really pay attention when he was being gay.” Larxene began to sound a bit panicked. “He’s a doctor or something. Braig always said he was a jealous bitch but he laughed when he said it, so I didn’t really pay attention…” She looked up at Leon. “If he killed Braig, he’s gonna try to kill me. I know it.”
“Not if you’re in here he won’t,” said Leon grimly. “You’re in a police station. They’d be insane to try to get to you in here and we’d get them even if they did.”
“Yeah… Yeah you’re right.” She relaxed a little bit.
“That’s right. Do you know where we could find this Dilan guy? Any ideas?”
Larxene thought for a moment.
“…Braig mentioned something about having a room in a building off Castle.”
“That’ll work. Now I’m gonna ask you one last time, Larxene, and you’d better answer or you’re going to find yourself in even more trouble.” Leon’s eyes leveled at her. “When we picked you up, you had blood all over you. What was it from?”
“Oh. I was drinking blood.”
Even the usually stoic and unflappable Leon blinked at that.
“Drinking blood,” he repeated.
“Yeah. Braig’s a cannibal.” Larxene looked increasingly nervous, although her tone was misleadingly casual. “You know. A people-eater.”
“I know what a cannibal is.” Leon was growling as usual, but he was rattled underneath. This case had been strange already - kids and bloody murders but now cannibals? This was too much. “Okay look. I’ll arrange for you to stay here tonight even though you’re acquitted. How’s that sound? Like I said - nobody’s dumb enough to try to get to you in here.”
Larxene nodded. “Okay. Thanks Leon.”
The detective got up and left the interrogation room, making a mental note to get an officer to place her in a holding cell for the night. He walked over to his and Cloud’s desks to find his partner at a computer. He was standing, leaning on the desk with one hand as the other scrolled the mouse through the information on the screen.
“You find anything on this Doctor Dilan asshole?” Leon looked over Cloud’s shoulder.
“Did I ever.” Cloud stood up, wincing as his back cracked four or five times. “We don’t got much on the guy, but what we do got is enough to make your toenails curl. Used to be a surgeon over at Radiant Garden Memorial Hospital until he was accused of torturing some patient to death. Before he was arrested, he vanished almost off the face of the earth. He keeps under the radar now and nobody’s ever gotten a solid lead on catching the guy, but apparently he’s taken his practice underground and acts as the pet doctor to the rich and corrupt.”
“Sounds like our guy. A surgeon would be able to do what we saw if they were good enough. Probably good enough to keep someone alive for a while as they did it too.” Leon squinted at the screen, growing more and more uneasy by the minute. He glanced at Cloud to see how his partner was handling it, but Cloud’s demeanor was as calm and unruffled as usual. Leon wondered sometimes if the horrors Cloud had experienced undercover with the JENOVA project had made him immune to all other frightening things. “Cloud, I got one other thing out of Larxene.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” He glanced over his shoulder at Leon.
“Braig, the boyfriend, well… Larxene says he was a cannibal.”
Cloud’s eyebrows almost vanished under his spiky bangs.
“A cannibal. Like a people-eatin’ type cannibal?”
“According to her.”
Cloud shrugged. “She’s a kid. Kids make shit up. Either way, the guy’s dead. He ain’t gonna be munchin’ on us. I’m more worried about our evil doctor. I’ve already dealt with one crazy sadist doctor, so dealing with another one is just fuckin’ peachy.”
Leon glanced at him, but Cloud’s eyes had gone hard and distant and Leon knew better than to ask.
“There any leads on where to find this Dilan guy?” It was Cloud who broke the silence several long seconds later.
“Actually yeah. She said in a building off Castle, so I’m thinking body armor is a must.”
“Yeah, just a little.” Cloud pushed himself up again. “Let’s go.”
“I know you left your little girlfriend alive, although I don’t know why.”
Dilan spoke around the curved suture needle that he held in his teeth. It tasted like blood whenever he pressed his tongue to it, although it was difficult to say whether that was due to the nature of the metal itself or the fact that it was bloody. He was somewhat surprised to find that he didn’t mind the taste as much as he thought he would - it was quite a contrast from his usual predilection for sweets, but the coppery tang certainly wasn’t bad. Maybe Braig was on to something with this whole cannibalism deal.
The surgeon’s hands were encased in thick leather gloves, sturdy and nearly impervious to anything. They were perfect for handling sharp things, such as broken glass or barbed wire, but ill-suited for surgery. Or the normal sort of surgery, in any case.
He looked down at his operating table, at the slabs of flesh and skin pierced by metal hooks and rings and strung together with chains and wire. Braig would live again when all of this was said and done, but he would be living in a constant state of catastrophic pain. Dilan had ensured that.
Soon, it would all be done… only a few more things…
It was Strife and Leon’s tendency to work alone, much to the chagrin and occasional anger of Captain Highwind. But since the two of them so consistently outperformed all of the other officers and detectives in the department, he couldn’t really criticize them. All he could do was scowl at them as they left and gruffly tell them to keep their senses sharp and to call for help if they got into trouble.
A source who knew the neighborhood was able to point them in the direction of Dilan’s place on Castle Street.
It was a darkened old building that seemed to crouch between the street and the waterfront like a predator. Castle Street was one of the oldest in the city and one of the worst reputed. It was a district so fully controlled by the mob that cops rarely even ventured there.
The two of them stood at the back door. The filthy harbor water slurped at the bulkhead only a few yards away and insects buzzed around the one grimy yellow bulb above the door.
“I’ll go in first and you cover me.” Cloud glanced over his shoulder at Leon as he drew his gun from its holster. He always offered to do this - go in first and have Leon cover him. At first Leon had wondered if it was because Cloud didn’t think he was experienced enough to handle it, but eventually he had realized that it was because Cloud valued his life a lot less than he thought Leon valued his.
“Yeah.” He too took his gun in hand. “Let’s go.”
Cloud threw his shoulder into the door and threw himself inside.
Dilan looked up as the back door crashed open and two men with guns burst in. Their expressions had been icy and serious, but had almost immediately turned to shock and possibly even fear as they took in all of the sights and horrors inside the room. They lowered their guns as they stared at the thing in the center of the room.
It looked like… like… a scarecrow made of barbed wire and flesh. Skin had been grafted and sewn together over a barbed wire base. Metal joints and chains were visible in the gaps between the tattered skin. It was lying in a heap in the center of the room, chained to a metal pole that ran from floor to ceiling. It was unmoving, possibly dead.
“What… in the name of God…” The words left Leon’s lips before he even realized that he was speaking out loud.
Dilan picked up a scalpel and walked slowly over to where his new little pet was resting.
“Sugar, wake up. We’ve got company.”
And then the thing moved and shambled into a crouch. Yellow eyes and rusty wire gleamed in the dim and flickering light of the laboratory. It moved disjointedly, like a marionette being held by a mad puppeteer. With every movement, pain visibly wracked its body as the barbs penetrated his skin from the inside out and the wires twisted and pinched the delicate nerves in the flesh. Both of the detectives stared as it moved, each imagining being stabbed a thousand times with each movement from the inside out. It bared its teeth in a smile. Its jaw was chained on to the rest of its skull. The skin dangled off its face like wet cloth.
“Dr. Dilan, you’re under arrest for murder and whatever the fuck else all this is.”
It was Cloud who found his voice first. He pointed his gun straight at Dilan, lip curled and eyes blazing that peculiar green that they did whenever he got angry enough.
Dilan actually smiled. These two were amusing… maybe they would even make good pets as well. He was always looking for more living bodies to vent his rage upon. And if he ended up treating them too hard, well… Braig would need company. And fresh meat.
Braig hissed long and low, straining first towards them, then back to Dilan. He licked Dilan’s hand supplicatingly, wanting to go play with the guests. He was hungry. With a simple flick of his wrist, Dilan unchained Braig’s jaw so that it dangled off the bottom of his skull.
“Get them, Sugar. But leave them alive. Can’t miss your opportunity to have some new little brothers, can you?”