(This story contains the following and probably more: references to past sexual assault, references to torture, suicidal behaviours, depression, alcoholism and foul language).
(I don't own Final Fantasy 8 or its characters.)
(Cross post from ao3 because I guess people still read here?)
"There is starlight in your blood
It seems that our shadows are wearing us."
Evil Friend - Deadboy & The Elephantmen
1.
It's late. The hour undetermined. The only things that move are the boats moored in the port and the slow, steady roll of the tide to shore. He might be the only one left awake in this entire town that he used to call home.
Home.
He can't go home. He's drunk again and Ma won't let him in.
Garden wouldn't turn him away. He's their property, after all, but they're the reason for the bottle in his hand and the the cause of wounds entrenched too deep inside his head to heal properly.
They're the reason for the second bottle beside him.
It's empty but for the rolled up farewell inside. His final soliloquy. Not particularly poetic a goodbye, but it will suffice.
It's too much. Too much. He's gonna drown in it.
He takes a pull from the bottle. It's the cheap stuff. Better used for stripping paint than ingesting, but it does what it's supposed to and he can't bear to shell out the cash for something better. He has his Ma to think of. Wants to leave something for her after he's gone.
He's already wasted. Wants to be more wasted than this. Wants to drink until he's brave enough to submerge himself in salt water and never surface again.
Tonight. Tonight. He's going to finally end this, for good.
2.
7 months, 5 days and 9 hours ago, Zell Dincht returned from a mission strapped to a gurney. Both legs were broken. His left wrist. His body, a collection of scrapes and lacerations and bruises. His jaw, dislocated, and the vision in his right eye compromised.
Every breath he took was a struggle. A terrifying rattle in his chest. He couldn't get enough air.
Drowning.
He smelled and felt worse than shit, but Squall's face hovered above him and a hand slipped around his bicep. A creepy-crawly sensation at his touch, an immediate aversion, and his mind perceived not support, but danger.
I'm here. You're alive. I'm here.
Zell closed his eyes. Squall's chant soothed him where his touch did not. Lights flashed behind his closed lids. Sparks. Phantoms.
He was home. It was over. The worst was behind him.
"It's bad," Dr. Kadowaki said. "He'll require surgery immediately if I'm to save him. Even that isn't a guarantee."
There was a question in her voice. A question Zell would later wish Squall answered differently.
"Then do it," Squall said.
"He's signed a do not resuscitate order," she said. "If I lose him -"
Squall cut her off, but Zell didn't hear his reply. His ears filled with the sound of the sea, waves crashing against rock and a steady one-note singing.
All the lights in the room winked out one by one.
3.
Zell peels himself up out of the sand beneath the dock. He sways and wraps an arm around the nearest piling to steady himself. His other arm is curled around the nearly empty bottle. Only a sip left, but he's not gonna waste it. He'll drink that before he strips off his shoes and steps headlong into the sea to meet his maker.
The idea of drowning, of dying in the embrace of something so vast is more appealing than drinking poison or eating a bullet from his service pistol. Mother ocean will welcome him home, make him food for fishes, and his bones will grind to sand. He will become one with her, his very essence spread out to every corner of the globe.
It's a nice thought. Becoming one with creation. He'll still exist but without a consciousness. Without the pain and shame of his life as it is. All of that will be behind him.
No more bad dreams. No more lies. No more waiting for someone to finally see it in the lines on his face. He can't ask for help. No one can help him.
He lets go of the piling and takes a step forward. The world starts to spin.
Crawling would be easier. He's drunk enough that he can justify this, but he wants to go out with his head held high.
4.
Zell died on the operating table. For five full minutes, his heart ceased to beat.
For five full minutes, he knew what it meant to be at peace.
He remembered it. Not the spectacular lights of heaven or fluffy white clouds in the palace of the Gods, but a calm, drifting sensation. Like floating on his back in the ocean, beneath a clear blue sky. Nowhere to be, no responsibility. No pain. No memories. His soul purged of sin.
Then it slipped away and he was back, wrists bound in duck tape and every inch of his body a church choir of pain. Hands, touching. Hurting.
For over a week, Zell's vitals improved, worsened, improved, and worsened again. Dr. Kadowaki believed he would not come back intact. His friends held vigil over him in turns. Selphie wept and pleaded. Irvine consoled Selphie. Rinoa tried magic. Quistis read interesting articles aloud from the paper in case he could hear her.
Squall said nothing, but he was there the most. Watching. Waiting.
If Cid came, it was to see if his investment would continue to turn a profit or not. There was talk of discharging him and returning him to Ma Dincht. A full recovery was not expected.
Ma was only allowed in once, and they asked her not to come back. Too disruptive, they said. Interfered with his recovery. Might've called Cid a cocksucker and told Dr. Kadowaki to go fuck herself. He couldn't blame her for either.
Zell slept and healed. Wounds closed up. Bones mended.
There was no salve, no potion or magic for the wounds no one could see.
5.
"Where do you think you're going?"
The voice is gravelly, little used, but familiar. All the hair on Zell's body stands on end at the recognition of it. He puts a name to it and spins gracelessly in the sand, one arm still in its protective embrace around the bottle, a fist raised.
He takes a swing and his hand connects with something rough and hard instead of Almasy's face. His knuckles split, skin tearing open and a bone in his index finger breaks with a too-familiar pop. If it hurts, he doesn't know it. The pain is just a throbbing pulse beneath his skin.
There is laughter. A gritty, hacking sound. Like he hasn't laughed once in the last twelve years.
"Mother fucker!"
"Good to see you, too, Chicken-wuss."
Zell sways, reaches for the piling, but slides to the ground. He lands on his ass and folds himself around the bottle. Seifer will try to take the last sip for himself. That can't happen. Zell needs it.
Seifer looks as bad off as Zell. A scruffy beard. Long, stringy hair. The distinct scent of ocean and fish guts on his clothes. Only the scar identifies him. Old and puckered and faded, but still there. A mirror image of Squall's.
"Fuck. You look like something Poseidon barfed up."
"Back at'cha."
Seifer laughs. It's a warm baritone, full of life.
It doesn't fit. Seifer should be the one eaten alive by the past. It should have siphoned the best parts of him out and left him nothing more than a husk shaped like a man.
Zell did everything right. He followed the rules. Did what he was told.
It wasn't his fault. He shouldn't hurt like this.
And here's Seifer, quite possibly as drunk as Zell, laughing like it's his best day ever.
Zell uncaps the bottle and sucks down the last of his cheap liquor before Seifer can take it. Savors the burn on his tongue, in his throat, and it spreads out inside his chest and soothes the lurking monster that won't be caged.
It's not fucking fair. That's the last of it and it will be hours before he can find more.
He tosses the bottle aside and flops back into the sand.
Death won't come tonight.
Maybe tomorrow.
6.
He woke up for good two weeks after his surgery with oxygen tubes in his nose and hyne knew what plugged into the veins of his arms. One tube fed pale yellow liquid into his bloodstream. The other, something clear. A third snaked out from under the sheets.
That one brought bile to the back of his throat. A violation. One more to add to the list.
Quistis sat by the door, a newspaper unfurled in her lap and a half eaten bagel held between two fingers. The clock on the wall said it was going on six in the morning.
Zell opened his mouth to say something, but only a dry rattle came out. Quistis took a bite of the bagel and turned the page.
He tried again. Shifted his upper body to sit up but cried out in pain. Gasping, he dropped back into the pillow and clenched his teeth through the firestorm in his chest.
Quistis moved to his side and swept a hand across his forehead. Her smile was sunshine and tenderness.
"About time you woke up," she said. "We were starting to think the worst."
Quistis. Beautiful, fucked up, perpetually insecure Quistis. Always trying to relive a time when she could do no wrong, a shining star who burned out too soon.
This place did that to her. Talented. Smart. Pushed too hard before she was ready because she was special.
She cleared her throat. Touched him in a loving, motherly way.
"We thought you were going to die."
If only. There were things worse than death.
"Just relax," she said. "I'll get the doctor."
The scent of home wafted in from the open window above his bed.
He was home. He was safe.
It was over.
Dr. Kadowaki bustled in alone with a warm greeting and a smile. She checked tubes and monitors and wrote things on her clip board. Said something about oxygen levels and tests. Zell wasn't listening.
Eventually, the doctor rolled her chair to his bedside and stilled. She knew what happened. It was written all over her face.
Of course she knew. She was a doctor. A thorough exam would have yielded the evidence.
He hated her pity. So much so that if moving didn't hurt like hell, he would have taken a swing, just to make it go away.
"Would you like to talk, Zell?"
Talk. About what?
"Naw, I'm good," he said.
Dr. Kadowaki clicked her tongue at him. Like he was some naughty child and not a grown man. Thirty years old and still treated like a boy.
"You've been through a great deal," she said. "Sometimes, it can be very helpful to speak to someone in the aftermath of – trauma of this sort."
Trauma. It wasn't trauma. He'd been leveled. Bulldozed like a condemned building.
His skin prickled. His stomach twisted. He'd rather fight Ultimecia again than ever mention it out loud.
"I'm okay," he said. "Glad to be home. Now, tell me when the hell I'm getting out of here, Doc?"
Just like that, Zell buried it.
Over. Done.
Part of the job.
7.
He's dimly aware of an upside down world, a steady rocking to and fro and maybe that means he's accomplished his final mission.
It doesn't feel like drowning. The air around him is warm and humid. He smells brine on the breeze.
He's not dying. Someone is carrying him. Somewhere.
No.
Not again.
Not again.
He struggles and his captor's hold tightens around the back of his knees. He kicks and claws. His stomach knots up and his mouth fills with saliva.
"Stop fucking moving," Seifer says. "You want me to drop you?"
"Just kill me," Zell says through a nasty wave of nausea. "Finish it."
He's going to throw up. If he vomits, he'll be safe again. Seifer doesn't do well with puke. Might even puke himself because of it.
Zell lets go and the contents of his stomach spill from his mouth and out his nostrils. He chokes and coughs on bits of supper caught in his throat, and there's a burning from whatever got stuck in his sinuses. Hot dog. Relish. Who knows. Or cares.
Seifer swears and drops him on the ground. Zell pukes again. And again. And again until it's all gone and he's near unconscious.
He lays there on the cobblestones for so long, he thinks Seifer has cut and run. He closes his eyes, fully prepared to sleep on the sidewalk – he doesn't care who finds him – when hands lift him again.
"You're a fucking trainwreck, Dincht," Seifer says. "On your feet. Walk it off."
Zell does.
He doesn't know how Seifer knows where his Ma's house is, only that they're standing on the welcome mat outside. He is not welcome here. Neither are.
The door opens a crack and half Ma's face is revealed in the streetlights.
She shakes her head, the only eye he can see hard and cold as winter in Trabia.
"No," she says. "Not again. I told you, I can't do this."
"Mrs. Dincht -"
"No," she says. "I'm sorry. I love you, Zell, but I can't clean you up anymore. I can't do it."
Seifer stops her from closing the door.
"He's your kid, ain't he?" Seifer asks. "Take care of him."
Ma shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes.
The answer is still no. It will always be no until he cleans himself up.
"You're his mother. He needs you," Seifer says. "The fuck is wrong with you?"
"He don't want my help."
Zell does and he doesn't. Just like he wants to live and wants to die. She can't help him until he finds the bottom, and Zell is still lost in free fall.