Chapter Text
Raiden didn’t feel much anymore, besides the pulsing beats of apathy and misery. With every swipe of the scalpel, every nerve painfully transplanted into his new cybernetic body, his ability to feel had been cut away. The Patriots had stripped him down to his core components, and stray emotions were thrown away the same as stray body parts.
They had designed him to be their perfect killing machine, nothing more than a conscience driving a cybernetic body. But they had failed, and their weapon was now pointed against them, dedicated to taking them down no matter what it took.
Just like he had been, back when he’d had her at his side backing him up. Streamlining his plans. Telling him where to hit to inflict the maximum amount of damage, researching weak spots in places he wouldn’t dream of looking in. Forever steadfast in her faith in him, no matter his weaknesses and foibles.
He could almost remember every touch they’d shared, every fond night spent teasing and ribbing each other, every mission they’d done together. The stricken look on Emma’s face as he was dragged away by Patriot thugs painted a vivid picture in his mind to that day, no matter how shattered his memory had been even before everything.
She had kept him sane, when they’d performed their twisted surgeries on him. The knowledge that she wasn’t the one on the operating table fueled him, made him determined to get out of that hellish lab alive if only to see her one more time.
Raiden didn’t feel much anymore. But when it came to Emma Emmerich, his feelings were as strong as ever.
Which was why white-hot rage filled his body as soon as Vamp waltzed into his line of sight, drawing a knife from behind his back and twirling it in his hand.
He knew exactly what Vamp was capable of, how he’d given Vamp the puckered scar on his forehead - just a second too late to keep Emma from nearly bleeding to death in Otacon’s arms, back in the Big Shell Computer Room.
She was lucky to get out alive and relatively unharmed, after what Vamp had done to her.
Vamp would be too, once Raiden was done with him.
Seeing Vamp lick his synthetic blood off of his knife would have made his stomach roil, once upon a time. But that instinct was beaten out of him years ago, even before he’d lost his body.
And after everything he’d seen and been through, he couldn’t bring himself to care .
“You, too,” Vamp said, smirking around a taste of Raiden’s new, nanomachine-filled blood, “Immortal?”
“No,” he snarled, “I just don't fear death. Not anymore. But you should.”
Vamp laughed, a manic thing full of teeth.
“Presumptuous, aren’t we?” he said.
Raiden didn’t bother replying, in favor of using his body weight to launch one of the Gekkos he was tied to in Vamp’s direction.
Which Vamp nimbly dodged, much to Raiden’s chagrin. He had always wondered if Vamp’s regeneration would work even if his body was crushed.
It was rather a shame that he couldn’t find out then and there.
Then, he made his escape in record time. He lifted his calf, palming the High-frequency knife at his ankle. Cut through the ties binding him to the Gekkos in one fell swoop. Launched himself at Vamp, in hopes of turning him into delicatessen before his nanomachines could knit him back together.
Every blow was dodged or parried with Vamp’s own knife, despite Raiden’s enhanced reflexes. But Raiden wasn’t exactly a master at using knives, no matter how often he’d been drilled in their use during his childhood. No, machetes and swords were much more his speed.
And he planned on utilizing his strengths to the fullest.
Raiden grit his teeth, dodging a series of slashes from Vamp’s knife before parrying the last one with a swing of his sword, sending Vamp’s knife spinning from his hand.
Vamp’s eyes traveled after the knife.
A rookie mistake, taking his eyes off the enemy. One he shouldn’t have made, after years under the command of Solidus. Raiden knew exactly how heavy-handed the man could be, especially if you gave the enemy any quarter.
But Solidus wasn’t there, and Raiden was all too ready to use Vamp’s little lapse in attention to his advantage.
He ran his sword through Vamp’s torso, digging through sinew and flesh before leaning in, almost close enough to feel Vamp’s body heat against his sensors.
He could feel Vamp’s rancid breath on his face as the man turned towards him, eyes wide with disbelief.
“Do you feel it, yet?” Raiden said, twisting his sword and relishing in the anguished groan it elicited from Vamp, “The fear.”
Vamp merely chuckled, brandishing his blood-stained teeth in a rictus grin.
“Am I supposed to?”
Raiden growled and kicked Vamp away, off of his blade and onto the ground.
Vamp forced his way upright, uncaring of the blood and innards spilling out of him.
“Interesting,” he mused, a smirk on his face as he palmed another knife, stepping into a ready position.
Raiden charged back in, ready and all too willing to wipe that smirk off of his face.
Forever.
Block. Parry. Dodge. Kick. Stab. Slash. The moves may not have been ingrained in Raiden’s muscles, not anymore, but this little song and dance was more familiar to him than anything else. It’d been the song and dance of his childhood, his adolescence, his adult life.
The song and dance of battle.
Vamp remained frustratingly elusive, dodging every one of Raiden’s blows with relative ease despite the ever shrinking hole in his torso. He must have realized that Raiden would only redouble his efforts if he tried to flee and heal himself fully. That, or he wanted to see the outcome, to stand over Raiden’s dying body while assured of his own immortality like the sick freak he was.
His rictus grin hadn’t faded one bit.
Neither had Raiden’s determination to see him dead, to see him suffer for what he’d done to Emma.
He was the one to hold her, when nightmares about what happened at Big Shell would wake her up. To comfort her. To make sure she kept up with her doctor’s appointments and scar care and physical therapies, when everything became too much and she’d slack. He knew how much her injury weighed on her, how it made her feel like she wasn’t capable because of what it’d cost her.
And he wanted Vamp to feel that pain ten thousand fold.
“Someone’s testy today,” Vamp said, interrupting his reverie.
Raiden didn’t reply, in favor of brandishing his sword yet again. Vamp’s little jibes weren’t worth his time or his effort.
But his slow, painful death definitely was.
Vamp dodged his sword by mere millimeters, a joyful chuckle on his lips as he grabbed yet another one of his knives and aimed the tip at the space between Raiden’s shoulder blades.
Raiden spun around and grabbed the knife by its blade, wrenching it out of Vamp’s grip and into his before plunging it hilt-deep into Vamp’s shoulder.
Their dance resumed, and they twirled around one another, a tornado of blades and fury and self-assuredness as Raiden capitalized on Vamp’s blase attitude with singular focus.
Vamp didn’t seem to care that Raiden was determined to see him dead. That damned smile stayed on his lips even after Raiden had turned all of his knives against him, his bloody teeth glinting in the sunlight as he fell to his knees, blood dripping from a dozen strategic stab wounds.
The tip of Raiden’s sword met his throat, tilting his head upwards to meet his gaze.
“It’s over,” he said.
Vamp merely chuckled in response.
“You think so, hm?” He said, “I wouldn’t be too sure.”
“Well, I would,” a new voice cut in.
A tranquilizer bullet hit Vamp in the shoulder, and he staggered forward from the force.
Emma Emmerich stood tall as she walked towards them, Raiden’s old tranquilizer gun held high.
Just the way he’d taught her to, when they’d been traveling together.
“That was a bullet I specifically designed to counteract your nanomachines,” she continued, peering down at Vamp from the corner of her eye as she moved closer, “But only after you’ve felt every single one of them short-circuiting in your bloodstream.”
Vamp screamed in fury, clutching at his newest wound with desperate hands before turning to glare at his newest opponent.
“You,” he sneered, falling onto unsteady hands with a low groan. “I should have guessed.”
Emma ignored him.
“In twenty seconds, every single one of your nanomachines will deactivate,” she said coolly. “And then, you’ll succumb to your wounds. How does it feel, Vamp? The knowledge that you’re going to die, and you can’t do anything about it?”
Vamp let out a guttural, pain-filled scream, clawing at his chest as the tranquilizer worked its magic. He convulsed, steam radiating from his skin as every nanomachine in his system failed in rapid succession.
And then, at last, he fell to the ground with a choked cry, blood flowing sluggishly from every wound Raiden had inflicted.
His body twitched once, before stilling for the final time.
Raiden lowered his sword to his side, watching Vamp’s dying moments in stony silence before flicking the blood off his blade and placing it back into his sheath.
Emma stood besides him, gun lowered as she stared at Vamp's unseeing eyes for the final time.
A thick silence stretched between them, lingering like a taught string. It was strange, Raiden thought. He'd come up with a million things to say to her while he'd been imprisoned. Imagined conversation starter after conversation starter for when he'd finally see her again. But for some reason, no matter how hard he tried, the words just wouldn't form on his tongue.
But before he could work up the courage to say anything, her gun clattered onto the ground.
And Emma slammed into his torso, arms circling him tightly as she started to sob into his chest.