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FFVIII: Penance
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Pairing: Squall/Shiva
Warnings: Angst, deathfic
Rating: PG
Summary: The Guardian Forces are all transformed demi-gods who are paying penance for what they did, but they are growing so tired of their imprisonment. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ff_epicfic, inspired by the relationship of Artemis and Hippolytus in Euripides' play.
The ice dances from her fingers, the area caught, crystalised, and the T-Rexaur paralysed, unable to fight. He doesn't need her, but he'd hate to fight without her ready help now -- summoning her is second nature, she comes almost before he calls and always working perfectly with him, through him, lending her power freely. He raises Lionheart and strikes as the ice fades --
Except that as the T-Rexaur falls, she doesn't fade. He turns to her, startled, looking up into her beautiful face. She isn't smiling, not even her mocking smile, and Squall almost feels a physical pain in his chest at the look on her face; sadness, regret, pain. He doesn't understand why, but he wants to reach for her -- reach for her as he never reached for Rinoa, cradle her close and...
"Shiva," he says, softly, to push the thoughts from his head, because it isn't like that, with her, and it can't be, and it won't be.
"Little master," she says, just a little mocking as always. She starts to fade then, that sad look still on her face, and Squall would reach out, touch her, hold her, but he can't. Shouldn't. Won't. He feels her settling back into the back of his mind, and silently implores her to be okay, to be happy.
She doesn't respond.
He cleans Lionheart's blade carefully, annoyed by the Rexaur's blood smearing the bright blade. Work calls: there are hours to spend at his desk, papers to spend hours signing, missions to accept, reject, and assign. All the things he never wanted to do, could never see himself doing. The things he's trapped into doing now which make him spend as much of his free time -- and there isn't that much of it, enough to sleep and eat and have an hour or two of slack to work more or to come here -- in the training center.
We need out of here, he thinks, to Shiva.
She still doesn't respond, but seems to settle more comfortably, a cool, comforting presence. He has a feeling she's content now -- pleased, in fact, that he's thought such a thing. He wonders why she wants him thinking along those particular lines...
He shakes his head to dislodge the thoughts and turns to leave the training center. He passes a sleepy-eyed cadet on his way to his office and doesn't smile, even when the sleep clears from her eyes and she gives him an eager, interested look. He's tired of that, too, the undeserved adoration.
In some ways, he thinks, savagely, he was just as bad as Almasy during that war.
His secretary smiles at him as he steps into his office. Secretary. He's always despised their smiling, prettily-bland faces. He walks past her without acknowledgement, into the inner office, shutting the door behind him on her smiling face and the haunting feeling of discontent. Work is work, in the end.
---
His dreams are as confusing as always. Now he only sleeps in snatches -- like that brief period in training, but that was transitory, a period to get through, and this seems to be forever -- they are always strange, reminders of the war and brief flashes of battles he fought, with Shiva laughing and throwing her ice outwards, killing, killing for him. He barely remembers the others in those dreams: just himself, and Shiva, and the sense of freedom that came with fighting on the front lines of a war to save the world.
Like a television screen the image flickers, steadies. Shiva stands before him, one hand on her hip. This isn't a memory, this is --
"Reality," she says, shaking her head at him. Her expression is sad again: noble, long-suffering, a mask slipping to reveal pain and a haunted, fearful mind. Squall wonders what is wrong.
Perhaps it's simply the same discontentment he feels.
"What's wrong? Why are you here? Why am I here? Why aren't you -- " he closes his mouth on the last word, forbidding it. Happy. He's never really been that, so he's hardly qualified to analyse it or its lack. He shifts his stance slightly, from defensive to more relaxed, and keeps his eyes on her.
"Why am I not happy?" she asks, musingly. She shakes her head, then. "Slaves are never truly happy in their imprisonment."
"You're not a slave," he says quickly, stung by the thought. Shiva isn't a slave, she's -- well, a guardian, a companion. A friend. A willing ally to SeeD, or so he'd thought. Had he thought wrong? Been told wrong?
"Am I not?"
He holds his tongue.
"Once upon a time, there were many more guardians. All sinners, all human, once. We were transformed, changed, empowered and yet enslaved by the gods of this world. To pay penance for what we had done, what we did to your race. You were our slaves. Some of you served willingly, but most... We were imprisoned until the day one of your race willingly freed us. Many of us have been freed. The ones who remain... some are content to slavery."
Squall watches her face, trying to guess what the flickering emotions are. A sneer, at the last, and little regret from the first. True unhappiness at the imprisonment, but -- "Imprisoned?"
"I can't leave you without you casting me aside, can I?"
"You could if you wanted to, you're powerful enough."
She laughs bitterly and shakes her head. "I could not. That's our punishment, to serve humans, to fight alongside you, never to be able to be free... never to fight the old wars that devasted the world once."
"It can't have been very devastating."
"The world has had a long time to recover."
"I still don't understand," he says, quietly. "You say you're imprisoned, and yet you're standing in front of me. You fight in my battles, you come when I call -- I almost don't have to even concentrate anymore, you anticipate my every move..."
"And yet I can't leave your mind. You are my prison, like other humans before you."
He shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes. "I don't -- "
She reaches out. He gasps at her cold touch, icy, and closes his eyes as her fingers trail up over his cheek. They pause at the center of his forehead, and then move in a small pattern. The coldness doesn't fade there, but burns, cold-hot, bringing white light to his vision somehow. A spell. He tries to open his mouth, to speak, but suddenly --
A huge cavern, or a dome, yawning up above him. There are dead there, and wounded. Some humans, some -- guardians? Blood, not all of it red. Shiva is there, straight and sleek and slim. Naked, but she wears that like a proud cloak, her eyes full of hate and focused on something he can't see. The look on her face is almost savage -- not quite the pure enjoyment he sees when she fights, but close.
He knows, suddenly, somewhere in his bones, that she really did destroy the world. And enjoyed it, as she enjoyed all her fights at his side. And yet somehow he can't believe that she did it for no reason. There is hate here, tension. A war, then.
"You can't do this to us!"
"It isn't right!"
A deep voice, that. Ifrit, Squall thinks, though the tall man doesn't (yet?) look like the powerful guardian force they summoned -- will summon? is this the past? -- in the battles against everything. He looks around, catching sight of others, others that stir some recognition in his mind. A small, childlike one, eyes wide... Carbuncle? A woman, beautiful as Shiva but more seductive, her eyes narrowed. Siren.
You have to pay, both sides, a voice whispers. Squall feels it rather than hears it, sees all the guardian forces flinch at some hidden power, writhe suddenly with pain, a transformation beginning with some. Bright light flashes, and he hears a high-pitched scream -- not Shiva, he thinks, she's too cold, too proud, too --
He opens his eyes. He is on his knees at her feet.
"Do you understand?" she asks him.
He wonders if this is all just a dream. A crazy dream, like most of the dreams he has. He feels as if, maybe, he would like to be sick. He gets to his feet unsteadily, looks her full in the face. "Do you really hate it so much?"
"I've paid my penance, now, have I not?"
"Do you hate it?"
If she does, then -- then there's no point, is there? He enjoys fighting with her, but if all this is just a sham, if she really hates it and wants to get away --
Her fingers caress his cheek again. "Little lion, you know I have enjoyed fighting alongside you. That, after a time, I gave you my help willingly. But I have paid my penance. Is it fair, to keep me? All I want now is to go -- "
"No!" he says, furiously. "You can't leave me!"
"Can you keep me?" she asks, but she's fading. He tries to claw his way back into the dream, to stay there and talk to her, persuade her to stay, force that cold unhappiness from the back of his mind --
"Squall, are you okay?"
He wakes to Quistis' face, her expression concerned as she leans over him. "Wha...?"
"It's nearly midday. Your secretary was worried," she says, in explanation, straightening up. Somehow, for a moment, in cool professionalism she reminds him of Shiva, her straight back and her hard, unhappy eyes. He sits up, jamming the palms of his hands into his eyes and forcing away sleep.
"I haven't been getting enough sleep lately," he says, in the closest to an apology he will get, the anger at Shiva's longing to leave him still there, not yet evaporating. Quistis pauses for a moment, as if waiting for more, then turns to leave to give him back the privacy of his room. He wishes he could make it so that nobody can ever come in, but -- regulations. He'll never be free of them.
He gets out of bed, once she's gone, reaching for his clothes. He'd like to go to the training center -- the best place to summon Shiva, and perhaps, perhaps, to remind her of the joy they both found in fighting together. But there's work to do, or at least seem to do, and he's already late.
---
Squall puts anything fragile out of the way quickly -- not that there's much. His secretary is under orders to field all calls, leave extra work outside his door, and not disturb him on any account. For a moment, he gives the pile of papers a guilty glance, but then shakes it off, shoving them into a drawer so they can't be blown about or knocked over.
And then he calls her.
He isn't sure if the hesitation is reluctance or what -- was she resting? Does she need to rest? Or was she trying to avoid this confrontation? But he isn't offended. He just stays there, patient, calling. If she's a prisoner, she has to come. He's not sure if it's proof when she does come, the ice spiralling out about them both, locking the room in a chilly silence as she stands there, eyes downcast.
"Do you really want to leave me?"
"I want to end my imprisonment."
"Will you leave me?"
"No, little lion," she says, sounding tired, perhaps sad. Perhaps just, as she's said, tired of imprisonment, tired of fighting, tired of him. "You'll be the one to leave me, if you free me."
For a moment, he's silent. Then he looks up, his eyes all ice and fire. "I'll do it. If you tell me what I have to do, I'll do it. I can't -- if you don't want to be here, it isn't my right to keep you," if you love something, let it go, "so tell me what I have to do."
She reaches out to touch his cheek, caressing for a moment and forcing him to look right at her, at the smile on her face. Gratitude, perhaps, or some complicated emotion beyond a human's fragile knowing of a heart. "Thank you, Squall," she says, claiming him as equal.
"Shiva," he says, in acknowledgement. And then, impatient, heart breaking at the look on her face, as if she's glad of the idea of leaving him, losing him -- "What do I have to do?"
"Will you really give your life?"
"Anything."
Her kiss is sudden and startling and cold, and it leaves his mind reeling, brief as it is. She steps away, smiling again.
---
The air is chilly in a way that only oh-four-hundred hours can make it and Squall's footsteps crunch a little on the frosted blades of grass. It makes sense to him, really, to be leaving on an morning like this. There's absolutely no one awake to see him go -- the cafeteria staff will be up in an hour, Quistis in two, his secretary in three... but for now he can make his getaway.
Lionheart is a comfortable weight in his hand. Sometimes, he thinks the weapon has a soul, and if it does, today its heart is light, ready to sing in battle with speed and death. He almost hopes the monsters do challenge him.
He intends to make the most of what seem to be his last hours with Shiva.
---
It's cold in the dome that has remained hidden so long. Looking at it now, Squall doesn't even know how, except that maybe Shiva's eyes see it while his own do not. The door closes behind him -- a slow, ominous scrape that makes him clench his jaw tight to keep his resolve. He's never run from anything. Not Almasy, not the dreams, not Shiva leaving him, and so not this.
"There," her voice says, in his mind, and there indeed is the shrine, her altar, somewhere to the right. The dome is huge -- there are many altars here, many bloodstains. He has a feeling he knows what he really has to do, though she spoke around it when she first told him.
He walks towards the blue altar. Flames burn red and hot around an altar opposite -- Ifrit's, he guesses. But this one is obviously Shiva's, bright and cold and treacherous with ice. There's a ceremonial sword stuck into a sheath of ice; he'd hate to fight with such a flimsy thing, but he knows it could be used -- once. The steps are of ice, of course, unmelting ice that is barely even slippery, but he can feel the cold beating up through the thick soles of his boots.
"Take the sword," she says, aloud, and he turns his head to see her there, waiting at the bottom of the steps.
"Stay with me," he says, softly.
"Take the sword."
He does, wrapping his fingers around the grip that is just a little more slender than he's used to. A sword to be wielded one handed. Aloud, he says: "I wouldn't use Lionheart anyway. There'd be no one to clean the blood from the blade."
"You know what you have to do."
"Will you stay?" he asks, but now he doesn't expect a response. Let it go. Let it go. He moves up the steps, one, two, three, and then he's standing there, ready to be a sacrifice. "Do I do it to myself?"
"Of course. A willing sacrifice, with me still a prisoner in your mind. It's the only way."
"I swore I'd never do this..." he says, musingly, but he's already moving to place the point in the perfect position. He'd always imagined Seifer killing him, in his nightmares -- the slow slick slide of the blade, sickening, and bright-hot, but this --
Squall can't help but cry out with the pain, but then he holds his breath and pushes grimly, his teeth gritted hard. She watches, watches, watches as he wrenches the sword free and collapses forward, letting his blood pool out onto the altar. Sacrifice. Penance. It doesn't really make sense anymore, why he's doing this. Why she's doing this. Freedom.
He feels Shiva leave his mind at the same time as the steps seem to grow warm under him, at the same time as her form slips from the edge of his vision and vanishes. He waits for it, the thanks he expected, wanted, needed. The touch, grateful and loving. Or just grateful. There's nothing.
If you love something...
If it doesn't come back, you never had it.
The ceremonial sword clatters to the floor. The blood is bright, hot. Squall is cold. He reaches down for his own blade, his fingers not quite closing around it in the familiar tight grip. He closes his eyes.
At least now he knows.
Pairing: Squall/Shiva
Warnings: Angst, deathfic
Rating: PG
Summary: The Guardian Forces are all transformed demi-gods who are paying penance for what they did, but they are growing so tired of their imprisonment. For
ff_epicfic, inspired by the relationship of Artemis and Hippolytus in Euripides' play.The ice dances from her fingers, the area caught, crystalised, and the T-Rexaur paralysed, unable to fight. He doesn't need her, but he'd hate to fight without her ready help now -- summoning her is second nature, she comes almost before he calls and always working perfectly with him, through him, lending her power freely. He raises Lionheart and strikes as the ice fades --
Except that as the T-Rexaur falls, she doesn't fade. He turns to her, startled, looking up into her beautiful face. She isn't smiling, not even her mocking smile, and Squall almost feels a physical pain in his chest at the look on her face; sadness, regret, pain. He doesn't understand why, but he wants to reach for her -- reach for her as he never reached for Rinoa, cradle her close and...
"Shiva," he says, softly, to push the thoughts from his head, because it isn't like that, with her, and it can't be, and it won't be.
"Little master," she says, just a little mocking as always. She starts to fade then, that sad look still on her face, and Squall would reach out, touch her, hold her, but he can't. Shouldn't. Won't. He feels her settling back into the back of his mind, and silently implores her to be okay, to be happy.
She doesn't respond.
He cleans Lionheart's blade carefully, annoyed by the Rexaur's blood smearing the bright blade. Work calls: there are hours to spend at his desk, papers to spend hours signing, missions to accept, reject, and assign. All the things he never wanted to do, could never see himself doing. The things he's trapped into doing now which make him spend as much of his free time -- and there isn't that much of it, enough to sleep and eat and have an hour or two of slack to work more or to come here -- in the training center.
We need out of here, he thinks, to Shiva.
She still doesn't respond, but seems to settle more comfortably, a cool, comforting presence. He has a feeling she's content now -- pleased, in fact, that he's thought such a thing. He wonders why she wants him thinking along those particular lines...
He shakes his head to dislodge the thoughts and turns to leave the training center. He passes a sleepy-eyed cadet on his way to his office and doesn't smile, even when the sleep clears from her eyes and she gives him an eager, interested look. He's tired of that, too, the undeserved adoration.
In some ways, he thinks, savagely, he was just as bad as Almasy during that war.
His secretary smiles at him as he steps into his office. Secretary. He's always despised their smiling, prettily-bland faces. He walks past her without acknowledgement, into the inner office, shutting the door behind him on her smiling face and the haunting feeling of discontent. Work is work, in the end.
His dreams are as confusing as always. Now he only sleeps in snatches -- like that brief period in training, but that was transitory, a period to get through, and this seems to be forever -- they are always strange, reminders of the war and brief flashes of battles he fought, with Shiva laughing and throwing her ice outwards, killing, killing for him. He barely remembers the others in those dreams: just himself, and Shiva, and the sense of freedom that came with fighting on the front lines of a war to save the world.
Like a television screen the image flickers, steadies. Shiva stands before him, one hand on her hip. This isn't a memory, this is --
"Reality," she says, shaking her head at him. Her expression is sad again: noble, long-suffering, a mask slipping to reveal pain and a haunted, fearful mind. Squall wonders what is wrong.
Perhaps it's simply the same discontentment he feels.
"What's wrong? Why are you here? Why am I here? Why aren't you -- " he closes his mouth on the last word, forbidding it. Happy. He's never really been that, so he's hardly qualified to analyse it or its lack. He shifts his stance slightly, from defensive to more relaxed, and keeps his eyes on her.
"Why am I not happy?" she asks, musingly. She shakes her head, then. "Slaves are never truly happy in their imprisonment."
"You're not a slave," he says quickly, stung by the thought. Shiva isn't a slave, she's -- well, a guardian, a companion. A friend. A willing ally to SeeD, or so he'd thought. Had he thought wrong? Been told wrong?
"Am I not?"
He holds his tongue.
"Once upon a time, there were many more guardians. All sinners, all human, once. We were transformed, changed, empowered and yet enslaved by the gods of this world. To pay penance for what we had done, what we did to your race. You were our slaves. Some of you served willingly, but most... We were imprisoned until the day one of your race willingly freed us. Many of us have been freed. The ones who remain... some are content to slavery."
Squall watches her face, trying to guess what the flickering emotions are. A sneer, at the last, and little regret from the first. True unhappiness at the imprisonment, but -- "Imprisoned?"
"I can't leave you without you casting me aside, can I?"
"You could if you wanted to, you're powerful enough."
She laughs bitterly and shakes her head. "I could not. That's our punishment, to serve humans, to fight alongside you, never to be able to be free... never to fight the old wars that devasted the world once."
"It can't have been very devastating."
"The world has had a long time to recover."
"I still don't understand," he says, quietly. "You say you're imprisoned, and yet you're standing in front of me. You fight in my battles, you come when I call -- I almost don't have to even concentrate anymore, you anticipate my every move..."
"And yet I can't leave your mind. You are my prison, like other humans before you."
He shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes. "I don't -- "
She reaches out. He gasps at her cold touch, icy, and closes his eyes as her fingers trail up over his cheek. They pause at the center of his forehead, and then move in a small pattern. The coldness doesn't fade there, but burns, cold-hot, bringing white light to his vision somehow. A spell. He tries to open his mouth, to speak, but suddenly --
A huge cavern, or a dome, yawning up above him. There are dead there, and wounded. Some humans, some -- guardians? Blood, not all of it red. Shiva is there, straight and sleek and slim. Naked, but she wears that like a proud cloak, her eyes full of hate and focused on something he can't see. The look on her face is almost savage -- not quite the pure enjoyment he sees when she fights, but close.
He knows, suddenly, somewhere in his bones, that she really did destroy the world. And enjoyed it, as she enjoyed all her fights at his side. And yet somehow he can't believe that she did it for no reason. There is hate here, tension. A war, then.
"You can't do this to us!"
"It isn't right!"
A deep voice, that. Ifrit, Squall thinks, though the tall man doesn't (yet?) look like the powerful guardian force they summoned -- will summon? is this the past? -- in the battles against everything. He looks around, catching sight of others, others that stir some recognition in his mind. A small, childlike one, eyes wide... Carbuncle? A woman, beautiful as Shiva but more seductive, her eyes narrowed. Siren.
You have to pay, both sides, a voice whispers. Squall feels it rather than hears it, sees all the guardian forces flinch at some hidden power, writhe suddenly with pain, a transformation beginning with some. Bright light flashes, and he hears a high-pitched scream -- not Shiva, he thinks, she's too cold, too proud, too --
He opens his eyes. He is on his knees at her feet.
"Do you understand?" she asks him.
He wonders if this is all just a dream. A crazy dream, like most of the dreams he has. He feels as if, maybe, he would like to be sick. He gets to his feet unsteadily, looks her full in the face. "Do you really hate it so much?"
"I've paid my penance, now, have I not?"
"Do you hate it?"
If she does, then -- then there's no point, is there? He enjoys fighting with her, but if all this is just a sham, if she really hates it and wants to get away --
Her fingers caress his cheek again. "Little lion, you know I have enjoyed fighting alongside you. That, after a time, I gave you my help willingly. But I have paid my penance. Is it fair, to keep me? All I want now is to go -- "
"No!" he says, furiously. "You can't leave me!"
"Can you keep me?" she asks, but she's fading. He tries to claw his way back into the dream, to stay there and talk to her, persuade her to stay, force that cold unhappiness from the back of his mind --
"Squall, are you okay?"
He wakes to Quistis' face, her expression concerned as she leans over him. "Wha...?"
"It's nearly midday. Your secretary was worried," she says, in explanation, straightening up. Somehow, for a moment, in cool professionalism she reminds him of Shiva, her straight back and her hard, unhappy eyes. He sits up, jamming the palms of his hands into his eyes and forcing away sleep.
"I haven't been getting enough sleep lately," he says, in the closest to an apology he will get, the anger at Shiva's longing to leave him still there, not yet evaporating. Quistis pauses for a moment, as if waiting for more, then turns to leave to give him back the privacy of his room. He wishes he could make it so that nobody can ever come in, but -- regulations. He'll never be free of them.
He gets out of bed, once she's gone, reaching for his clothes. He'd like to go to the training center -- the best place to summon Shiva, and perhaps, perhaps, to remind her of the joy they both found in fighting together. But there's work to do, or at least seem to do, and he's already late.
Squall puts anything fragile out of the way quickly -- not that there's much. His secretary is under orders to field all calls, leave extra work outside his door, and not disturb him on any account. For a moment, he gives the pile of papers a guilty glance, but then shakes it off, shoving them into a drawer so they can't be blown about or knocked over.
And then he calls her.
He isn't sure if the hesitation is reluctance or what -- was she resting? Does she need to rest? Or was she trying to avoid this confrontation? But he isn't offended. He just stays there, patient, calling. If she's a prisoner, she has to come. He's not sure if it's proof when she does come, the ice spiralling out about them both, locking the room in a chilly silence as she stands there, eyes downcast.
"Do you really want to leave me?"
"I want to end my imprisonment."
"Will you leave me?"
"No, little lion," she says, sounding tired, perhaps sad. Perhaps just, as she's said, tired of imprisonment, tired of fighting, tired of him. "You'll be the one to leave me, if you free me."
For a moment, he's silent. Then he looks up, his eyes all ice and fire. "I'll do it. If you tell me what I have to do, I'll do it. I can't -- if you don't want to be here, it isn't my right to keep you," if you love something, let it go, "so tell me what I have to do."
She reaches out to touch his cheek, caressing for a moment and forcing him to look right at her, at the smile on her face. Gratitude, perhaps, or some complicated emotion beyond a human's fragile knowing of a heart. "Thank you, Squall," she says, claiming him as equal.
"Shiva," he says, in acknowledgement. And then, impatient, heart breaking at the look on her face, as if she's glad of the idea of leaving him, losing him -- "What do I have to do?"
"Will you really give your life?"
"Anything."
Her kiss is sudden and startling and cold, and it leaves his mind reeling, brief as it is. She steps away, smiling again.
The air is chilly in a way that only oh-four-hundred hours can make it and Squall's footsteps crunch a little on the frosted blades of grass. It makes sense to him, really, to be leaving on an morning like this. There's absolutely no one awake to see him go -- the cafeteria staff will be up in an hour, Quistis in two, his secretary in three... but for now he can make his getaway.
Lionheart is a comfortable weight in his hand. Sometimes, he thinks the weapon has a soul, and if it does, today its heart is light, ready to sing in battle with speed and death. He almost hopes the monsters do challenge him.
He intends to make the most of what seem to be his last hours with Shiva.
It's cold in the dome that has remained hidden so long. Looking at it now, Squall doesn't even know how, except that maybe Shiva's eyes see it while his own do not. The door closes behind him -- a slow, ominous scrape that makes him clench his jaw tight to keep his resolve. He's never run from anything. Not Almasy, not the dreams, not Shiva leaving him, and so not this.
"There," her voice says, in his mind, and there indeed is the shrine, her altar, somewhere to the right. The dome is huge -- there are many altars here, many bloodstains. He has a feeling he knows what he really has to do, though she spoke around it when she first told him.
He walks towards the blue altar. Flames burn red and hot around an altar opposite -- Ifrit's, he guesses. But this one is obviously Shiva's, bright and cold and treacherous with ice. There's a ceremonial sword stuck into a sheath of ice; he'd hate to fight with such a flimsy thing, but he knows it could be used -- once. The steps are of ice, of course, unmelting ice that is barely even slippery, but he can feel the cold beating up through the thick soles of his boots.
"Take the sword," she says, aloud, and he turns his head to see her there, waiting at the bottom of the steps.
"Stay with me," he says, softly.
"Take the sword."
He does, wrapping his fingers around the grip that is just a little more slender than he's used to. A sword to be wielded one handed. Aloud, he says: "I wouldn't use Lionheart anyway. There'd be no one to clean the blood from the blade."
"You know what you have to do."
"Will you stay?" he asks, but now he doesn't expect a response. Let it go. Let it go. He moves up the steps, one, two, three, and then he's standing there, ready to be a sacrifice. "Do I do it to myself?"
"Of course. A willing sacrifice, with me still a prisoner in your mind. It's the only way."
"I swore I'd never do this..." he says, musingly, but he's already moving to place the point in the perfect position. He'd always imagined Seifer killing him, in his nightmares -- the slow slick slide of the blade, sickening, and bright-hot, but this --
Squall can't help but cry out with the pain, but then he holds his breath and pushes grimly, his teeth gritted hard. She watches, watches, watches as he wrenches the sword free and collapses forward, letting his blood pool out onto the altar. Sacrifice. Penance. It doesn't really make sense anymore, why he's doing this. Why she's doing this. Freedom.
He feels Shiva leave his mind at the same time as the steps seem to grow warm under him, at the same time as her form slips from the edge of his vision and vanishes. He waits for it, the thanks he expected, wanted, needed. The touch, grateful and loving. Or just grateful. There's nothing.
If you love something...
If it doesn't come back, you never had it.
The ceremonial sword clatters to the floor. The blood is bright, hot. Squall is cold. He reaches down for his own blade, his fingers not quite closing around it in the familiar tight grip. He closes his eyes.
At least now he knows.
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Epic, indeed. Keep up the great work!
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I really love your style; it's rare I actually find a writer whose work is good all the way through every time.
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*grinning* Thanks!
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OT, your icon makes me giggle.
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That's the idea. :D I made it because a favourite author of mine said all fanfic is nothing but "personal masturbation fantasies". So I've made a point to use the icon when posting porn and horrible angst alike.
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I like the ice-imagery, and the care Squall takes with his weapon. I also like Shiva's arrogance and reserve, and the regret beneath it. (When you play FF12, you are going to LOVE the Espers for ficthings like this.)
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(I so cannot wait for FFXII. It's coming out soon in the UK. I'm pre-ordering it soon and my sister is picking up a strategy guide. Omg.)
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