Smokethoughts
Wha' happens?: Cloud awakens in a lab.
Rating: R, language
Smokethoughts
Cloud awoke to find three disturbing things were true. One, he couldn't move. Not the simple 'can't move' of being trapped in one's covers, or even of being on a medical table, strapped down for an operation. No, this was drug-induced, tied-up and confused not-going-anywhere immobility. The worst, WORST kind. Except trapped-in-mako-tank immobility. Second, he was cold. And that coldness was the direct consequence of being, for reasons he could not fathom, very naked.
Third? ...that dream about some creepy pervert who liked to talk about darkness didn't appear to have been a dream.
Oh, fucking, fucking /hell/.
Peering drowsily up at his captor, the blond blinked once or twice, trying to make sense of why he seemed so familiar. Silver hair? ...wrong color eyes...but he couldn't place what the /right/ color was...and he couldn't really remember anything since coming out of that damned castle...
Couldn't even remember where he'd been coming from. Or what the name of the castle had been. "....uh?" he groaned intelligently.
"Hello," said the dark-skinned spectre of a man above him, smiling with terribly sharp-white teeth and frightening red-amber eyes.
Cloud tried valiantly to repress a shudder, with less than exciting results. "...wh...what...who...?"
"Ansem." The man's rich, dark voice seemed to close all around his mind, like some kind of horribly enticing gilded cage, touching his thoughts and wrapping them in smoke and something colder than ice that he thought might be helpless fear. The 'an' sound was like a hook, the trail end humming 'm' a buzz behind his eyes that made him quiver, wanting to say 'stop it' and unable to speak coherently, eyes fluttering.
He was very, very drugged, he realized. His thoughts felt like they were going the speed of a small child jogging through thick, sucking mud. And he had the distinct headache of being drugged nearly senseless.
Annnnnseemmmmm, as he'd heard it, Ansem, Ansem was still talking, and it all caught up very quickly, telling him in low, bass-baritone purr-mind-choking tones, "I found you at the gates of Kingdom Hearts and brought you back to my laboratory for study. You needn't worry. When we've done here, you won't," The words began to slow back down again, his head throbbing with his impossibly slow heartbeat, "rememmmmberrr--" His breath caught on the need to hyperventilate. He couldn't. He was too out of it. "A thinnnnnnng...."
No, he thought, fighting the molasses-stain on his thoughts, the way that nothing was working. No, no no, I don't remember anything anyway, no, leave me alone, I hate labs, I don't even know why I hate labs don't touch me leave me alone no, don't take anything from me I need my memory no--
"No," he whispered, crying-soft, voice breaking, and that was all he could say.
Ansem's hands were on his face-- no, just one hand, with the thumb pressed over his lips to forestall any further words (as if he could manage them like this)-- and the mans fingers were rough with work, his skin dry and warm and spice-scented and dark, just like his voice was dark, just like his eyes were fire and dark and smoke and black at the same time.
His thoughts died in his head before he ever had them, and Ansem was suddenly gone from his vision, the logical explanation that the man had stepped out of his sight not occurring to his fevered, sedated brain. Now Ansem was gone, his words, slow fast slow lingering on Cloud's train of thought like the most terrible of promises...
No, he wanted to say again, and couldn't.
No.