The rain pelted heavy on your skin, each one feeling like an icy bullet trying to slice down to the bone. Despite your shivering, fingernails desperately scrambled across black chitin-like wings - but slick and hard as they were, you couldn't find any rough edges to hold.
All the while, those pale lips kept spreading, more perfect teeth on display as he'd watched your panic with something of a clinical amusement. A critic viewing a theatre performance, trying to decide whether it was actually entertaining or just lingering pity for a sad display.
The arrogance of him tasted bitter on your tongue.
"Can't you even handle this much?"
Even when he was mocking you, Cell's voice was a delicacy of sin. The way it managed to slip into your ears, curl around your heart and tighten until you could feel every pulse pounding at you. Such a voice that had driven you to the madness of the situation you found yourself in now.
Led by the beauty of a siren song - now held over the abyss by bio-mechanical monster.
"You feel it, don't you?" He leaned down, closing the space between the two of you. Close enough now that you could see the finer details of his magenta eyes, the flawlessness of his skin. Your own skin quite naturally had things like hair, pores.. but his? Perfectly smooth, no freckles or obtrusions. Like marble. Perfection. "The difference between your body.. and mine. One little thunderstorm and you've lost your breath!"
"Although, perhaps.." As your legs keep kicking uselessly in the air, white fingers curl tighter around your throat, the black nails almost caressing your jawline. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. "..the reason for your breathlessness is more to do with me."
He leans down further still, and you reflexively close your eyes out of instinctual fear. Fingernails pierce easily into your skin like melted butter, a sudden viciousness thrust upon you. "Look at me!"
And you do. You can't help yourself not to. The way that the pupil shrinks, a tiny speck of black admits the pink that beckons you to drown in them. But there's a rage in that ocean, a look that you've seen him have before. Like your very existence and the continuation of it is an insult; a constant question of why he's chosen to let you live, when thousands of others were not so fortunate. The arbiter of their death, but here you stand, the outlier amongst the statistics.
For a brief moment, your lips part. A mere whisper, begging to your beautiful angel - or perhaps, the devil - to show you mercy. At the very least, to let you breathe or to have ground beneath your feet.
Your answer comes in the form of his head tilting, and the flare of rage fizzling out to cold calculation once more.
If the rain had bothered you before, now it felt like you were spiraling through a soggy hurricane, the world disappearing in a smear of colors and an angry wind screaming in your ears. You couldn't even find the air in your lungs to join in the howling, too paralyzed by the thought that this - this could be how your story ends. Not with anything so personal delivered by the object of your affections - but rather, tossed to the elements, to have nature ravish you instead and slam you back into the earth. To be broken down to the core, only to watch death stare back down at you from above.
But you ought to have known your monster better.
Mercy was never in Cell's capacities.
Mere seconds away from your demise, the angel of death swoops, catching you in his powerful arms and cradling you against his chest. You cannot form words, neither of thanks nor surprise, absolutely petrified of what he'd put you through - and of this, he knows. There's a silence that's shared between you briefly, before his lips press against your temple with a sneer.
"So weak. Such an insignificant species. Why is it that he fights so hard for your right to live? I cannot understand the logic of such sentiment."
Cell forcefully jerks your head up to look at him again, as if you might hold the answer to his quandaries by the expression on your face. All that he finds is your trembling form, waiting to see what he might do next - but still not fighting back, nor running. Terrified of him, certainly; but not enough to pull out of the monster's arms.
"You live because I let you." He murmurs, words that you've heard countless times before. "I will find out why they value you so. Even if I have to break you open to get an answer."
Once again, his hand strokes along your neck, loosely curling around your throat and holding it there. The tether that lays claim to your pitiful life. Even if you hadn't already given it to him, the rope he had around you would only reach so far.
Only every time he'd pull that rope, snap you right back into him - you could feel your resolve fraying just that little bit more.
