FIC: Bitter Snow (MFU)
Aug. 3rd, 2003 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keelywolfeToday was the worst flu day ever, but my fever finally broke about an hour and a half ago, so I celebrated by writing something short and angsty. :)
Bitter Snow
by Keelywolfe
Rated R
Disclaimer: I do not own these wonderful characters, because if I did, all their episodes would be on DVD by now...but I digress. I also make no money off of them.
Summary: Written for the 'red' challenge on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
muncle
~~*~~
Steam rises off blood in the snow for the one instant it first hits it, before it disintegrates into reddish slush, a corruption of once untainted white.
He barely has to look to know he hit his target. The surprise of his enemy's appearance did not spoil the deadliness of his aim, not even the sudden warm spatter against his face distracts him, and he watches a faint trail of vapor escape the dead man's mouth as his life seeps out in a growing ruination of purity.
Adrenaline is throbbing in his ears, a deep thud timed to his heartbeat and he touches his face with icy fingers, numb from the cold and notes distantly that they are trembling. Delicately, he strokes the pad of one finger over his cheek and looks at it. Brilliant crimson is stark against his skin, shining wetly and he knows it can't possibly be from the man he just shot, he was much too far away and there is no flower of heat blooming up from his own chest.
He hears it before he sees it, for the second time in as many minutes the sound of a body collapsing in the snow, and no, no, it isn't possible, he shot in time, he had, he knew he had....
He hadn't. Deafened by his own gunfire, he hadn't heard the other man shoot and he should have known the only reason his partner wouldn't have fired would have been that he couldn't.
Pure, guttural panic rises like nausea in his throat and he is on his knees in a second, fumbling with hands deadened to stupidity from the cold to open his partner's coat, and please, it can't be too bad, it can't, their backup team should be here in only minutes.
More crimson splashes his hands in revolting, unwanted warmth. The sight of blood has never been so appalling to him as when it belonged to his partner.
My fault, I should have heard him sooner, should have shot him faster, my fault, please, it can't be bad, it can't.
"Napoleon! Damn you, say something! Napoleon!"
A sudden gasp for breath fogs the air between them, and Illya's exhalation joins it, one a beautiful sign of life, the other pure relief, mingling together in warm vapor. Dark eyes flicker open and meet his own, pain-glazed and filled with rueful amusement.
"Don't you dare die on me," Illya hisses, the tremble in his voice belying the threat and Napoleon chuckles weakly.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he murmurs, hardly more than a breath of sound that is barely heard over the whirring blades of the choppers. Illya watches as they load his partner into one, assured it was a shoulder wound, nothing serious, and the moment it left his sight, he knelt on the ground and wiped his partner's blood into the snow, until his hands were as clean as he could make them.
-finis-
Bitter Snow
by Keelywolfe
Rated R
Disclaimer: I do not own these wonderful characters, because if I did, all their episodes would be on DVD by now...but I digress. I also make no money off of them.
Summary: Written for the 'red' challenge on
muncle~~*~~
Steam rises off blood in the snow for the one instant it first hits it, before it disintegrates into reddish slush, a corruption of once untainted white.
He barely has to look to know he hit his target. The surprise of his enemy's appearance did not spoil the deadliness of his aim, not even the sudden warm spatter against his face distracts him, and he watches a faint trail of vapor escape the dead man's mouth as his life seeps out in a growing ruination of purity.
Adrenaline is throbbing in his ears, a deep thud timed to his heartbeat and he touches his face with icy fingers, numb from the cold and notes distantly that they are trembling. Delicately, he strokes the pad of one finger over his cheek and looks at it. Brilliant crimson is stark against his skin, shining wetly and he knows it can't possibly be from the man he just shot, he was much too far away and there is no flower of heat blooming up from his own chest.
He hears it before he sees it, for the second time in as many minutes the sound of a body collapsing in the snow, and no, no, it isn't possible, he shot in time, he had, he knew he had....
He hadn't. Deafened by his own gunfire, he hadn't heard the other man shoot and he should have known the only reason his partner wouldn't have fired would have been that he couldn't.
Pure, guttural panic rises like nausea in his throat and he is on his knees in a second, fumbling with hands deadened to stupidity from the cold to open his partner's coat, and please, it can't be too bad, it can't, their backup team should be here in only minutes.
More crimson splashes his hands in revolting, unwanted warmth. The sight of blood has never been so appalling to him as when it belonged to his partner.
My fault, I should have heard him sooner, should have shot him faster, my fault, please, it can't be bad, it can't.
"Napoleon! Damn you, say something! Napoleon!"
A sudden gasp for breath fogs the air between them, and Illya's exhalation joins it, one a beautiful sign of life, the other pure relief, mingling together in warm vapor. Dark eyes flicker open and meet his own, pain-glazed and filled with rueful amusement.
"Don't you dare die on me," Illya hisses, the tremble in his voice belying the threat and Napoleon chuckles weakly.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he murmurs, hardly more than a breath of sound that is barely heard over the whirring blades of the choppers. Illya watches as they load his partner into one, assured it was a shoulder wound, nothing serious, and the moment it left his sight, he knelt on the ground and wiped his partner's blood into the snow, until his hands were as clean as he could make them.
-finis-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-08-03 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-04 09:05 am (UTC)But I agree: it's a very descriptive and angsty piece. Great work, Keely.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-05 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-05 09:57 am (UTC)Thank you! Napoleon just screams 'abuse me' in my mind. I just can't seem to help myself. *G*
no subject
Date: 2003-08-03 11:17 am (UTC)Glad you're feeling better, too. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-08-05 10:01 am (UTC)Yes, I'm slowly returning from the pits of eternal coughing. *G*
(icon applies to you)
Date: 2003-08-21 09:58 am (UTC)And, as someone mentioned before, I also really like Illya's attitude towards the blood; how he reacts so calmly to that unnamed agent's blood, yet is sent into a panic with the thought that it's Napolean's blood.
"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."