jheti | Positive Negative (Charge)

Notes: HAY GUYZ it totally matters that I edited it. Italics abuse and too many adverbs. Run, run away!!1 Baraka and Mileena aren't mine, because Midway won't sell them to me. Teh sadfaces for me. Sadfaces, I tell you! Sadfaces I say! Parts One and-a-Halfish of Three. Updated when/if I feel like it.

Indicators: m/f (omfg ACTUAL HET BBQZ!), otp, violence, blood, general power-game and muddy consent. But, well, it's m/f, so she doesn't have to say yes. *Halo.*

I: Equality

Mileena inhaled sharply. The stifling afternoon breeze blazed in off the arena and brought too many smells with it. Too many scents and voices. The shrieking approval of the masses and the reek of the dead. The overwhelming velvet stench of blood.

She was going to drown in it. She'd go mad, right here, and run screaming into the stands to attack the nearest person stupid enough to get in her way. She'd tear his throat out and bathe in it. Wash her hair. Peel his face off--the same as skinning a grape--and lave his eyes clean from his skull with her tongue.

She shut her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. It didn't work. Air came and went in short, hard huffs past her teeth. Her hands shook like things possessed. She clenched them again. She needed to be still. It would go away soon if she could be still.

Her knuckles crackled; her nails sliced into her palms.

Somewhere far away there was the dull, solid thump of guts and corpse hitting sand. Another cheer went up. She had to get upwind as soon as her legs remembered how to move. She could not afford to put her fingers in her mouth again.

She watched her palms with interest. Wine-dark crimson welled to the surface in thin sharp crescents where it leaked past the silk. She'd never bleed true red; that was for humans. Mileena's humanity was as deep as her skin and as easily shredded.

“That's not to be helping much.”

She rounded on the noise, growling, her fangs bared and wet under the veil.

Baraka stood there unblinking. He didn't move when she recoiled.

“Go away,” she barked, sneering.

His gaze raked over her from top to bottom and came to rest on her hands, frozen smeared and trembling just a few inches from her face.

“Sure'n you're in a pretty mood.” The ends of his lips curled back, into that smirk they all said mutants weren't smart enough to know how to make. He brought his palms up, slowly, playing at surrender.

“Don't touch. I'll tear you apart." Conviction and anger helped her move, stilled her fingers and coiled them into fists at her sides.

“Should be hoping so,” the smirk twisted apart into a grin as he deliberately misinterpereted the threat. He made threats of his own, and promises, using only posture.

“Wasn't a pickup line, soldier,” Mileena ground out.

“You're wishing I leave you be?" He shrugged, kept his voice down. They couldn't be noticed together, and she looked too ready for a screaming match. “You're wanting I'm to go?"

What she needed was a good clean kill and a round of two-backs-beast, but he knew her well enough by now. She'd not put up with any such suggestion. There was too much palace lady in her.

So he wouldn't ask. Fixed that problem nicely.

"Yes." It was a sharp hiss. "Get lost."

“Go on, then. You're a strong one." He shrank back, dropped his weight, prey-like. Hot nothings in a woman's ear only went so far, whether they were whispered or not. He left himself open to attack and waited. "Make me."

“Don't know who you're playing with,” she said.

Her sai whistled in her grip and lashed forward. His head snapped back against the wall so hard that his ears rang. Her knee flew up the inside of his thigh and stopped short, nailing him to the wall as she forced her weapon higher, flattened against his throat. She grabbed the sai's tip with her other hand and beared down hard.

"Don't I just."

The hoarse, half-gagged cast of the words drained their power, but nothing wiped that stupid grin off his face. He had to be seeing stars. A human man would have passed out cold. Mileena snarled in frustration and squeezed.

Baraka's hand swallowed hers up to the wrist. His grip crushed the feeling from her arm, forced her fingers open. He kicked her weapon across the ground without much trouble.

"I'll scream," she growled.

"Oh." His chest bucked under her elbow as he coughed. He tasted blood. "I'll bet."

"I mean it," Mileena said, and joggled her knee up, hard.

Pain creased across his face. He breathed out, a low whistle of hurt, and did not let go.

The monster, the animal, was shrieking in the back of her head, starved and intent. He smelled like male and dust and just faintly of the arena. The control and precision that spoke of drove hot hungry spikes of want down her spine.

If he felt the same, he gave no obvious sign. She would have noticed, this close. If she strained she might have been able to taste it in the air between them. That meant he already could.

"Was I saying I doubted you?" He squirmed aside, breath whickering through his fangs. "You'd scream, all right."

"Fuck you." Her free hand clawed his collarbone. They were metal inside, mutants were, and she was going to crush him like an old tin can, starting with the thinnest pieces.

"Promise?" He twisted forward, into her grip, eyes alight. It was more fun when she fought back.

"Fuck you," she insisted, snarling, trying to think, to rationalize, to do something more than grind up against him like a bitch in heat.

“Come on, then,” he said, his interest pressing against her thigh. “Let's go.”

"Not here," she said, and it was just noise, and he wanted her back.

But he took her seriously. Enough so that he swore a hair-curling oath. "This way, then."

He scooped her up with one arm. He could snap her neck with a flick of the wrist and smile about it. Her heart squeezed in her throat; she hissed and kicked.

"Put--"

"Quiet!" He growled, shaking her. "It's faster. Hold still, too."

---

II: Libertie

Hahaha Jeelintar was my bright idea; Lei Chen wasn't. I have some minimal use for "new" continuity. Unfinished-ish. We still need to get to the sex part. She opened up the exposition box and threw some down.

He did not slow down. The streets leaned together, reeking of filth. Buildings ground against each other, drooping in the heat, raining plaster and sand when the wind hit them. Baraka hairpinned down an alley, turning so smartly that her head whipped to the side, forced against his chest. These were side-ways she'd never taken, slums she'd never crawled through. Capital was the largest city in Outworld, but she hadn't spent much time there, not since she was old enough to escape to duty posts far away. She understood mainly farming towns and garrisons. The scale and intensity of this new squalor was astonishing.

It rankled that Baraka knew the city--that he was invited more often. As a common officer, he drew more of the Emperor's interest than she did. She was heiress presumptive, his younger daughter by some eight minutes, and his best assassin, celebrity in that accursed arena.

Nothing she did mattered to Shao Kahn. She hadn't even seen him in over a century. She'd almost found her footing in the interim--Jeelintar was no Lei Chen, but it was hers, and as loyal and effective as she could make it. The Shokanni were practically wizards with all manner of stuff that came out of the ground, not just glinty Edenian baubly junk, but water. Spark trained that up clean; her Nomads were dedicated and capable, if entirely uninventive. They'd all gotten a laugh out of selling water back to Capital for a ransom.

She'd assumed her summons were to correct that. She'd prepared with her lone scribe for a month, browbeating the poor girl just past the edge of a nervous breakdown to secure all the right paperwork. All those blasted files. Officials in the city thrived on such things. They could literally afford to wait for them. Mileena had run for more than a week, accursed forms in tow, certain that her only welcome would be the hangman's rope.

No one said anything whatever about them. She got some odd looks from the rabble--she looked and smelled like one of them, but ordered them about. Two silver thi shut up most of them right quick. Madwomen and clerks were standard fixtures in Capital. Perhaps she was slumming.

They had, of course, never heard of Mileena. Or they'd heard and forgotten. The guards at the gate were no better. Wasn't that the princess' sister? Hadn't she died years ago in a training accident? Wait, wait, Kahn got tired of her ugly face and sent her packing.

She killed all but the squad leader. He let her through. She did not stop for anything or anyone else, and kneeled prone on the floor before the great Emperor. She pressed her face to the blessedly cold flagstones and looked humble. Passing out might be taken as an insult, but supporting herself with the floor could be taken for the proper awe and fear.

No, this was not about her work at all. This was about the princess. Kitana needed a babysitter. Her father had, naturally, thought Mileena best for the job. She'd done so well with Jeelintar.

Just like that, he took it away. All of it. She'd worked so hard. She could hear him smiling as he gave the formal edict.

She left deep fingerprints in the floor and focused on coming up with as many words for "illustrious" as she could. Flattery and bile had always tasted the same to her, anyway.

Now she was a nursemaid. Now she was a citizen of Capital, now, now that he fancied her sister needed to be spied upon. He called for Mileena, and she came, and in doing so met this Baraka, this Wasteland monster who seemed to think she would lay slack in his arms and roll over, smitten.

"Let go." She was startled by the venom in her own voice. None of this was his fault.

He almost dropped her. "You're not hurt," he said. Inquiries lost their question marks in a Major's mouth.

"It's faster," she said. He didn't take it as mockery. Perhaps if she'd sounded less desperate.

"In a minute." In a little less than half that she was on her feet again.

It was tough to tell if this...crevice...was indoors or outdoors, a rough-hewn tangle of beams barely wide enough to let them past all the falling-in plaster.

"Poor cover," she said, not caring, breathing deep. "We'll be seen."

"We only do it when you're bored," he said then. She'd never bothered, in Jeelintar, to learn more than a few Wasteland facial expressions; his was blank. That could be lust or murder or nothing, or all three. "Or pissed off, or hungry."

"Refuse me, then." She could play this game; there was nothing courtly to it. She hooked her arms around his waist, sank down against him. This stupid uniform was wonderfully small in the right places. "Tell me no."

He drew a blade and snipped her belt off instead. She was the one with enough patience for drawstring knots. As soon as his were undone, she was on him, scrambling to get his trousers down far enough.

He peeled her loose and held her a bit closer than arm's length, backing her into the wall.

She squalled in outrage. "Will you just--!" Her words were mostly noise, a long tangle of harsh aspirants with some spit at the bottom.

"Get a grip."

Her fingers scraped and clawed uselessly against his. "I'm trying!"

Baraka smirked. "Patience."

And then his face was against hers, scraping. She pushed back, snipped with teeth at whatever she could reach. He growled when she caught his lip and pulled. He hissed and bled and pressed his tongue into her mouth when she relented. He always took more than he gave. She should have cut him for it. She couldn't think that far ahead. Somewhere, there was the sound of linen tearing. He was hers, taste and scent and pressure, and she was never going to give him up. Not for anything. Her vision went red, gold, screaming violet from lack of air; she stole his breath, breathed his curses and pulled back at last.

"Expensive," he managed, the end of whatever sentence she'd swallowed.

His shirt had two large, ragged chunks missing, each about the size of a closed fist. She blushed and forced her fingers open.

"Haven't heard? I'm royal nanny. Bought and paid for, I." She smiled. "Buying you a new one."

He made a low, hungry sound and reached for her. The wall bit into her back as she twined one leg around his, lifting her hips. She thumped her head against the stones in her haste; spangles burst across her vision as their tongues met again. His arm was strong and hot beside her neck, pressing in, holding them both up. She could have supported her own weight, but that would mean letting go--besides, there wasn't room. It was all perfectly justified, she thought. She could always make it up to him later.

Then his other hand had her, and she had him--back, backside, front, inside--and she thought about nothing else for several minutes.