Close Encounters (Bi-Han/Sub-Zero x Reader)

Close Encounters of the Last Kind

Ice surrounded you. It painted the walls and draped down from the ceiling like jagged puppet strings. You recognised this place as the one from your previous visions of Bi-Han. What looked like a fighting ring stood in the centre of the room. The ring seemed as though it had suffered its own personal ice age, no doubt Bi-Han's doing. You stood in the very centre, letting the tiny flakes of snow flutter all around you as you spun around. It was beautiful. Ice shone like crystals in the sunlight as it streamed.

You wandered around a little more, softening snow crunching beneath your feet as you went. The way the light glistened off the meltwater as it dripped from the hanging icicles was captivating, so captivating in fact that you didn't realise what you were sent here to see had already begun until a foot phased through you. You jumped back and away from two men as they fought. They paid you no mind but then again you weren't actually there. You were just an observer, a crow perched on a garden wall sent only to watch what occurred within.

A woman and a child were stuck frozen to the sides of the cage now and you rushed to them. They were still alive, their breath slowly melting the ice at their chins. Why on Earth had he done this to them? What crime had they committed against his precious clan? You turned your attention towards the two men fighting now. Bi-Han you of course recognised. His movements were swift and calculated but brutal, ferocious. The other man had difficulty keeping up with him. He looked familiar, the man you had seen in this vision before.

He was losing the fight. Quite badly. Maybe your gut had been wrong for once? Maybe Bi-Han didn't die here. You dared not let yourself hope.

You watched them fight for another small moment. Bi-Han was quite mesmerising in the way he moved, the same way a snake did when she slithered towards a shrew in the grass. He looked like he was going to kill that man, a dagger of ice raised and aimed at his throat.

A kunai pierced his arm from behind then and yanked him back with such force that he was flung near twenty feet through the air. You cursed and moved to get a better look. One glance at Bi-Han's bright eyes told you he was afraid of that man. When the hooded man took off his mask and revealed his face, Bi-Han for all his might and composure looked frightened, pale. You had never seen him afraid of anything, he didn't seem capable of it. The hooded man seemed to have some control over fire, it oozed from him, radiated from his flesh, but that didn't seem to be why Bi-Han was afraid of him.

They fought. The hooded man a much more even match for your lover. He seemed motivated by something deeper, some foul rage or retribution, not duty.

Bi-Han was once again flung across the room, this time he crashed into the cage. You could hear his heaving breaths, saw the way his movements slowed from exhaustion. Both the man you presumed to be Cole Young and the hooded man came at him at once now and although he held his own, his energy was draining. One of them even managed to knock off some of his armour and pierce his flesh. He knew he wasn't going to win this fight, you saw the pain in his eyes.

He turned towards the door and your heart leapt. For the most fleeting of moments he looked as though he would walk away from the fight.

But he didn't.

He slammed the door behind him and turned to face the two men again, ripping off his cowl to reveal his battered face. Blood oozed from his mouth, his nose. It clung to his chin as though he'd just torn some animal apart with his teeth. You noticed the red flowing from his chest then too and trembled, helpless.

"For the Lin Kuei."

You shouted and it of course fell on deaf ears. He couldn't hear you.

The kunai pierced his chest again, right between two plates of armour. He froze. Cole lifted his body and threw him against the cage wall before the hooded man pulled the kunai from his chest roughly, blood spraying from the wound. He fell forward but knelt back up once again, seeming as though he was gathering all of his strength to make one last effort to win this.