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All Kabal remembers is the overwhelming, all-encompassing pain. The heat that licked up every inch of his body, that surrounded his very soul, that took him apart millimetre by millimetre. It was agonising, a force he couldn’t handle. He truly thought he has experienced enough pain before, but this was something else. This was his entire being, and it was burned alive.
He remembers falling quickly as the flames overcame him, almost as if an invisible hand pushed him to his knees while Kurtis called out for him. The hard tarmac was beneath his legs, then his torso, then his arms, and then his face as he was forced further down by the sheer anguish of the fire that seeped into every pore and destroy every organ.
Then it was nothing. All the pain in Kabal stops as the flames destroy his nerve endings and layers of skin tissue. All he feels is the warm, rough texture beneath his cheek. His scalp itches, his body tingles, but everything just feels numb. His vision is blurred, and he can tell it’s fading fast. In his chest, he thinks his heart has already given up.
So this is how he dies. Kabal can’t say he expected this. As his heart beats just a few more times, his thoughts snap back to every moment he had ever nearly died before. A lot of them involve Kano, and a few of them were directly caused by him. A handful of times on the force. One time when he was only little. But he could never have guessed an otherworldly monster would be burning him to ash.
At least he was on the right side. At least he went out saving the world, not stealing and killing for a cheap thrill or for a man who he never even really liked. Maybe it’s good that Kabal got to go out alongside Kurtis instead of Kano. It makes things more… tolerable as his lungs quit on him. His brain will be next. The numbness spreads to his face.
Then his body goes out entirely.
He sees, feels, experiences glimpses of what happens next. Hands on his legs, the vague understanding of being dragged somewhere despite the numbness and the tingling. Then he goes again, and comes again, and goes again. Distant sounds, all lost to the void, nothing sounding real. Nothing feels real. He feels fake. He should be dead.
Is this death? Is this what happens when you die? Maybe he’s in hell. Or purgatory. Definitely not heaven. Perhaps if he could pray quick enough to a god he doesn’t believe in, then the white light of heaven might greet him. Before that thought even ends, he’s gone again, his head heavier than ever. Definitely purgatory.
His vision comes back a few times, and one time, he truly feels dead. Everything in Kabal’s body is airy, light, not quite his. There’s the sensation of floating as his vision comes back into existence, nothing on his body touching anything else that could possibly be around him. Even still, there is a heavy feeling in his stomach that doesn’t alleviate when exactly what his eyes came back to see becomes clear.
Two orbs. Two glowing blue orbs. Hovering right in Kabal’s view, the ever so undefined face that accompanies them. It doesn’t move, or maybe he just can’t make it out if it does. It doesn’t speak, but Kabal’s ears are ringing so painfully that he definitely wouldn’t be able to make it out if it did. But the face lingers. It hovers over Kabal. He doesn’t see anything else.
“Are you an angel?” He asks, his voice hoarse and croaky, but he doesn’t even realise he’s speaking. Kabal fades out again, but it isn’t like he could hear the sound from the ‘angel’ if it even responded.
Every time his sight returns, he sees the same thing. The obscured face, the glowing blue orbs. If this is not death, then it is some sick otherworldly punishment. All Kabal wants is to see that face, understand what those orbs are. If he could, he would reach out and touch it. If his body wasn’t a useless husk of flesh now, then that’s what he would do.
In and out, in and out. Nothing matters anymore to Kabal but the face as he slips in and out of consciousness and time itself. Maybe it is only a day, or maybe a few, but he feels like he ages a lifetime between each time he comes around again. The face remains exactly where it is, the blue light never leaving either.
In and out.
In and out.
The face.
The light.
In and out.
In and…
Out. Kabal blinks a few times, his body sluggish but his mind seeming to have worked its way into repair. Immediately, he can tell something is wrong with his eyesight. He closes one eye, nothing changes. He closes the other, the world goes dark again. Opening them both, Kabal just groans. The sound echoes metallically, and he thinks he’s dead again.
But no. He most certainly is not. Kabal slowly lifts his hands, staring at the gloves that cover them. While his hands shake, he feels his whole body come alight with pain again. With a thump, his arms fall to his sides. Blearily, his one working eye searches for that face, that blue light, that one thing he could see when he was fading in and out of life.
Then he spots it. Standing at the foot of his bed, staring at him, is a man. A very odd looking man. With war paint down his face, armoured shoulders with spikes and lots of buckles, what appears to be the most unfortunate all on top none on the sides haircut ever. But his eyes are what catch Kabal’s attention the most. That’s the light. The glowing blue orbs. They were just this man’s eyes.
Both of them stare at one another for a while before Kabal moves to sit up, and the man moves over to push him back down by his chest. It isn’t a light shove that one would expect someone to deliver to a person recovering from injury, but a whole hearted push back against whatever table or bed or contraption Kabal is lying on.
“Who the fuck are you?” Kabal asks, his voice sounding so completely different to what he’s used to that his chest twists like he’s on fire again. He realises now that there is something over his mouth, he assumes something helping him breathe.
“General Reiko. Of Outworld. We invaded your realm,” General Reiko explains, keeping his hand on Kabal’s chest for much longer than he needs to. In fact, he doesn’t take it away.
“You’re with those freaks?” Kabal says, but Reiko has such a strong arm on him that it doesn’t take much for him to press down the immediate instinct he has to lunge at the man.
“I made sure you stayed alive. I observed you, watched you, every moment until you came to,” Reiko says, a smug lilt in his tone, like he’s showing off watching someone sleep. That makes Kabal like him a bit more on the spot, as whatever is wrong with him causes him to wheeze slightly. “Do not do that.”
“You aren’t a doctor. Fuck. Where am I?”
“Outworld. I carried you back. You are… deceptively heavy.”
“Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
“I was being sarcas- never mind. Just get me back home,” Kabal says, moving slow enough that Reiko’s hand on his chest follows him, allowing him to sit up. He wonders who this man is, and why he thinks he is the authority on Kabal’s health. But then again, he was watching over him. “I should be dead.”
“Indeed you should. No soldier has survived Kintaro as you have done,” Reiko says, finally pulling his hand away from Kabal’s chest, but he looks almost pained to do so. “It is a miracle you survived. You are a worthy soldier.”
Kabal shakes his head. He is not a soldier. He wants to fall back down again, hating the pain that wracks through him as he sits up. All he can think about is that city being torn up by legions of monsters, and his only friend in the thick of it alone now that he has been carted away by some general who looks at him with unnerving intensity. Kabal clears his throat.
“What now? Now that I’ve survived? Are you just gonna keep watching me?”
“I am supposed to be keeping watch at the door. But that is below me. I am a general not a foot soldier.”
“There’s not always much in between them,” Kabal says bitterly. He looks around the room before his eyes land on Reiko, whose lips are curled in disagreement. “Can I go now?”
Reiko shakes his head before there’s movement elsewhere. His head shoots up, and the stoic expression turns sour. He looks around before he looks at Kabal.
“I must go. I am not actually allowed to inside this room.”
“So what, you just snuck in here to stare at me while I was under?!”
“Yes. Goodbye for now.”
“Reiko!”
But before Kabal knows it, the man is gone like he wasn’t even in the room in the first place. He stares at the door, his heart racing. Kabal wants to get up and follow this bizarre man to his post of presumably keeping guard of him. Something in his stomach twists at the association. He falls back against the solid surface he’s lying on.
The door opens again, and instead of Reiko, it is probably the last man he wants to ever see again. Kano blabbers on about exactly what he did to keep Kabal alive, but Kabal can’t find it in himself to argue back while he’s in such a terrible condition. His breathing is ragged as Kano adjusts some device on Kabal’s hip. His eyes remain on the door, wondering if his guardian angel was real or not.
Whatever the reason is, Kabal can’t seem to stop thinking about Reiko, even if he seems to have no understanding of normal human interaction. Part of him almost enjoys the fact he wanted to watch Kabal drift in and out of existence. It was almost comforting, almost romantic. Maybe when he’s out of here, after defending the world, he’d go find the general who made sure he survived.
How was he to know he would die a second time within hours of returning home?