The laugh is nice. It feels like progress and allows Squall to be good natured when Seifer obfuscates his words. "They tell me I'm here in a broken ass cabin in the woods and not...lost in time somewhere imagining it." He takes a beat to consider the fact that Seifer doesn't know about his experiences in Time Compression. That the only ones who know he'd been lost to it are the friends who were there with him at the end. And even then, he's never told them everything that entailed.
A frown pulls at his mouth and he's grateful Seifer can't see it while he wars with how much to divulge. Even now he feels a faint undercurrent of distress thinking about it, ebbed only by the hand that tethers him to the moment as it wipes the sweat from a hard day's work off his back. "I still feel like that sometimes. Like I'm drifting through the current, experiencing things through a pane of glass while someone else lives out the present in my skin." Who else was looking through his eyes at any given moment? These weren't fears exclusively caused by Ultimecia but his own sister too.
"This helps," he says quietly while reaching to brush his fingers over the scar at his shoulder where the ice had penetrated. When Squall reaches further to cover Seifer's hand, he adds, "So does this." And then he's turning so they can look at each other, so he can return the favor of cementing this into reality through careful touches.
The scars are agonizing to look upon but Squall does not divert his eyes or flinch. If Seifer can bear them, so can he. But it doesn't make the ache that it was done to him lessen. A raw, primal fury vibrates through him as his fingers skate over the claw marks. Some part of him intuitively knows it must have been Griever even if he hopes it wasn't. "I would do worse if I did," he says flatly. Killing has never been personal before but it would be if he ever found the monsters responsible for what's been done to Seifer's body.
He cleans it reverently, slow and mindful of the marks before offering Seifer the other rag so that he isn't trapped under the microscope of Squall's gaze. So he too can have something to do with his hands. "I thought I hated you after you tortured me," Squall confesses as the rag follows one of the jagged claw marks, knowing that it will still be there no matter how many washes.
"Not because you did it but because the way you did it was so impersonal. I thought, surely, I had to be worth more than someone else pulling the lever. Garden taught us all the gruesomely efficient ways to break someone but you didn't use any of them on me...And that hurt in its own way until I realized you weren't entirely there. That eventually lessened the sting, but I think She knew if you had done this to me...If She compelled you to hurt me like She hurt you...It would have broken whatever spell or hold She had. I think that's why Fujin and Raijin made it out unscathed. I think somewhere deep inside She knew She could never make you a monster no matter how monstrously you were treated."
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2025-01-26 08:24 pm (UTC)A frown pulls at his mouth and he's grateful Seifer can't see it while he wars with how much to divulge. Even now he feels a faint undercurrent of distress thinking about it, ebbed only by the hand that tethers him to the moment as it wipes the sweat from a hard day's work off his back. "I still feel like that sometimes. Like I'm drifting through the current, experiencing things through a pane of glass while someone else lives out the present in my skin." Who else was looking through his eyes at any given moment? These weren't fears exclusively caused by Ultimecia but his own sister too.
"This helps," he says quietly while reaching to brush his fingers over the scar at his shoulder where the ice had penetrated. When Squall reaches further to cover Seifer's hand, he adds, "So does this." And then he's turning so they can look at each other, so he can return the favor of cementing this into reality through careful touches.
The scars are agonizing to look upon but Squall does not divert his eyes or flinch. If Seifer can bear them, so can he. But it doesn't make the ache that it was done to him lessen. A raw, primal fury vibrates through him as his fingers skate over the claw marks. Some part of him intuitively knows it must have been Griever even if he hopes it wasn't. "I would do worse if I did," he says flatly. Killing has never been personal before but it would be if he ever found the monsters responsible for what's been done to Seifer's body.
He cleans it reverently, slow and mindful of the marks before offering Seifer the other rag so that he isn't trapped under the microscope of Squall's gaze. So he too can have something to do with his hands. "I thought I hated you after you tortured me," Squall confesses as the rag follows one of the jagged claw marks, knowing that it will still be there no matter how many washes.
"Not because you did it but because the way you did it was so impersonal. I thought, surely, I had to be worth more than someone else pulling the lever. Garden taught us all the gruesomely efficient ways to break someone but you didn't use any of them on me...And that hurt in its own way until I realized you weren't entirely there. That eventually lessened the sting, but I think She knew if you had done this to me...If She compelled you to hurt me like She hurt you...It would have broken whatever spell or hold She had. I think that's why Fujin and Raijin made it out unscathed. I think somewhere deep inside She knew She could never make you a monster no matter how monstrously you were treated."