If Only I Had Tears to Cry

Disclaimer: I don't own Raziel. I don't own the Soul Reaver or Legacy of Kain. I don't even own his cowl.

Tis my first fic here, and a one-shot. R&R please, constructive crits welcome.

Tonight, it is dark. The moon hangs high above a forest of thick, dark trees; reaching out, like children, trying to reach it. The moonlight shines on a cut – glass lake; so gentle, as though it is afraid of touching.

And a dark shape emerges from the forest. Twisted and skeletal, wings, that are no longer wings but rags, trail behind him. A brown cloth, the colour of old blood, covers his lower face and a gleaming swirl of a spirit is bound around his right arm. He lifts his cloven feet up high and delicately, like a high stepping horse – his lank strands of black hair trail over eyes, pupiless and staring, eyes so bright that they make the neon moon behind him look grey.

His name is Raziel.

He walks hunched, yet stands proud; he is tired, weary beyond all comprehension, yet ever vigilant; he is the redeemer and destroyer, the pawn and messiah.

And he is sick to death of it.

Slowly, he walks over to the lake. He lies down, on his front – something, he muses, that he has not done since his days as a Sarafan – and looks down into the lake. He looks at his reflection – and flinches. He is a wreck, washed up, he thinks. He pulls the cowl off, slowly and meticulously, to see two sharp eye teeth and a lower jaw conspicuous only by his absence stares back at him. Self pity, self –hatred and frustration well up inside his hollow chest. Slipping down his sword arm in a sign of defeat, the Soul Reaver touches the water. It hisses and water turns to steam. Raziel snaps back his head, startled – and he feels even more dejected at being spooked by such a stupid thing.

If he had eyes to cry with, he would have done – if his throat was intact for sobs to tear up it, they would have done. If he had lungs to snatch ragged breaths out of, he would have done.

If only he had tears to cry, he would have done.

But he doesn't, so he can't. He just lies there, blue body turned to silver in the dappled moonlight, a wraith staring at his pitiful reflection in the lake.