Somewhere Among the Rocky Bits, Saturday Morning

[on_her_korhal]

Kerrigan could have let the little Protoss wait forever; it would've been hilarious, if nothing else. But... she also supposed he could become a problem in the long run, especially if he was planning to get in her way in the future.

So early on into the Saturday morning, she clambered up into the Rocky Bits, following her senses. There was an outcropping there, somewhere, with something that at least rudimentarily resembled a cave.

Yes, a cave. The Protoss were so horribly predictable.

[[ for me, myself and I! details of the conversation/fight = NFB, okay FB that Kerrigan met an old 'friend' in the rocky bits. thread contains minor spoilers for StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty ]]

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[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

There.

Zeratul had been searching for a long time: driven by whispers of prophecy and worse things in the dark. He had not expected to find himself in a Terran home like this when he had battled the Zerg at that sacred site; had not expected the psionics that took him so very far away.

It did not matter. It was here.

His body evaporated into smoke. A moment later, something struck Kerrigan hard across her side, sending her toppling into the relative darkness of the cave.

"Hiding under a Terran guise, abomination? Of course you would resort to such tactics!"

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

There was silence from Kerrigan's new resting place. At least, there was silence for a while.

Then her head slid quietly back out of the darkness, green-skinned and eyes burning. She was laughing.

"I should have known you'd find your way here... eventually," she spoke, her voice holding its old alien resonance once more. "But please. Protoss self-righteousness is so very overplayed."

[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

"You have defiled one of our sacred places, Kerrigan," said Zeratul. There was no other explanation as to why one of their temples held such a portal here. Why it found itself so riddled with Zerg infection.

He lit his psiblade. If there were to be answers from this creature, he knew they had to be extracted by force.

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

"Do you hear them, Zeratul?" she said, her voice a song, her eyes pointed at the heavens where she could, any moment, as long as she stopped and felt... "Whispering from the stars? Don't you understand? The galaxy will burn with their coming..."

Kerrigan heard them, always, not even here had rid her from it, it was inevitable, she was searching.

[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

Zeratul did not know if the Terrans of this island would care if its blood was shed here. But it was of no concern to him. The battle between his people and the Swarm was ancient. It transcended Terran concerns.

His body swept away into dark smoke as he tried to ignore the creature's words. An instant later, the smoke swept back together behind her, in the stark darkness of that cave. "But you won't live to see it!" he snarled in a heavy psionic cry, and struck out towards her--

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

--and found himself utterly incapable of moving.

Kerrigan held the psionic shield like it mattered little to her reserves. "Please," she snarled. "Our petty conflicts mean nothing now. A storm is coming that can not be stopped!"

She forced him back, his entire body flying back towards the hard rock ceiling. "Fitting, if we should face oblivion together, in this place."

[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

With a snarl, he fought back, striking at that cushion of nothingness with all his psionics, striking at it with his psiblade until it was too much, until he had to give in, until his back scratched against the rock and his feet hit the ground some precious seconds later.

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

She felt white-hot pain lancing through her left wing. She ignored it. It, too, did not matter.

A moment later, most of Kerrigan's wing struck the ground, neatly sliced off at the joint. She glanced at it. Curiously.

[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

Zeratul's form shifted and faded into thick mist yet again. He materialized a few moments later, back in the feeble sunlight of the early morning sun. There was pain, spiralling up his arm. It fell uselessly to his side, and he gripped it. The bones had broken.

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

Silence fell like an uneasy truce.

She met Zeratul's eyes across the distance. She had come here for a reason. Not to battle this great coming, she realised now, but to steel herself, to chase the ghosts of her oblivious past until she made something useful out of it, or left it.

Perhaps even nostalgia. How... Terran. Like the implacability, the oblivion she had felt when the news of Harriet Jones's death had sunk into that ancient part of her.

"Fate," she said, at last. "Cannot be changed. The end... comes." Her eyes flickered away from his, drawn anew to the stump of her wing. It itched. "And when it finds me..." Something roiled within bone and sinew, something fresh: the new wing pulled free within seconds, still twitching like a newborn butterfly.

"I will embrace it."

[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

Zeratul watched it -- her -- the creature as she slunk further out of the darkness. Watched her body twist and turn, felt the psionics bend the last inch of her being to obscure it. The new wing drew closer, then vanished, and red, Terran hair curved up and filled the space of the creature's twisting spines.

"The prophecy..." he said, something twisting in his own innards. Doubt. Desperation. ...Sympathy? How strange. "...is uncertain."

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

Kerrigan reached up and yanked her hair back into a ponytail. This meeting had sent her mind roiling quite enough. She would not stay here and listen to the Protoss yammer on, no matter how much one part of her--

No matter. She paced between the rocks. Away.

[the-tortured.livejournal.com]

"...There is always... hope."

And now, he watched the Queen of Blades vanish among the throng.

He did not follow. He would find some way out of this strange prison on his own.