Ever cried so much you can't breathe? That's... somewhat the feeling I'm trying to give in this fic.
It was the kind of darkness Ultimecia had given him. Crushing, claustrophobic darkness where he couldn't quite breathe and the sobs tore their way out of his chest like flesh being ripped out by unseen hands. He struggled to breathe, in and out, an eternity in each breath. Darkness. Darkness and death and the cold earth.
"Seifer!"
The voice called him. The voice woke him, slicing through the dark, and he felt tingles of light cascading around him. He caught a breath, another, and there was more light. Heaven? He wasn't afraid that he was dead or dying. No, he was glad. Death is the end of suffering and Ultimecia had cursed him to suffer...
"Seifer! Damn it, come on!"
A phoenix down, he thought, as his breathing steadied. Squall's hands, he thought, as leather wrapped hands gripped his shoulders, pulling him up and out of the dirt. Squall's lap, he thought, when his head rested on cool leather, smooth and almost slippery.
"Seifer, what's wrong with you?"
He let himself lay there for another moment, and in that moment he found tears running down his cheeks and that his chest hurt from sobbing. He reached up, wiping his eyes, and in that movement, felt himself pull together, like a stack of cards thrown down and then mashed together, quickly straightening up, but jumbled. He stood up, pulling away from Squall, ignoring the concern written over the smooth face as clearly as the scar he had put there. "Nothing. I'm fine."
Squall didn't say a word. He got to his feet and just stood there, a steadying presence. There was a long silence, a waiting silence, and Seifer almost feared the onset of the dark again. He was just about to speak when Squall did, stripping off his leather gloves. "Sounded like a panic attack. We could get it checked out by Kadowaki... the way you were breathing, maybe it was an asthma attack."
"No. It wasn't."
"If you're sure," he said with a shrug, maddeningly apathetic again, all traces of caring wiped from his face. Seifer would have minded that, once, because he liked to make Squall care, but now he just wanted to get away from him and rest. The aching in his chest continued, along with a sharp pain in his throat. It was like he was carrying the shards of something precious inside him, cutting and painful, but too precious to let them go.
"I'm going to go get some sleep," he said, with some difficulty, fearing the return to his dorm and the darkness he would find there with his eyes closed. He didn't even wait to hear what Squall might've replied, but it didn't matter anyway. It was probably just 'whatever'.
----
Kursed knight. Literally.
He woke with that voice ringing in his ears, that laughter, that voice, and it was dark, and shit, had he forgotten to leave the lights on? Had he slept too long? What had been his plan when he went to sleep?
But it was too late for that, think of that in the morning. For now, live through the night.
He'd come to view it with some kind of detachment by now. It was a carefully rehearsed play, another way to torture him, but this time she wasn't around to notice that he'd become detached and change the nightmare. It was an agony of pain, breathlessness, and boredom. At first, there had been an intoxication in the pain, a high that came from a lack of oxygen, but now it just bored him.
That wouldn't, he thought, have pleased her. That witch was all about the showmanship, after all.
"Breathe, Seifer," a voice told him coolly. Tingles of healing magic again. What the hell? Had he fallen in battle, then?
Curaga. He kept his mind on the curaga, bathing his body in healing cool, slower than usual, as if the caster was taking his or her time, drawing out the spell. It was a pleasant contradiction to the usual nightmare heat of this darkness.
His lungs eased, almost before he noticed that they had constricted, and he took a long breath, for once not sobbing, the tears running freely but without pain. Focus. That was the key, wasn't it? So he focused. Focused on the soft murmurings of a voice he recognised but couldn't name.
"Sleep," the spell whispered, and somehow, in the midst of pain and breathlessness, he did.
----
For once, he wasn't tired. He carried Hyperion as openly as ever, and something in his jaunty stride told all the students that Seifer Almasy was back, as he hadn't been before. He had no idea what had happened for the past few nights, four nights, but he'd slept enough to have strength to strut and be himself again, and even if that benevolent voice didn't return to combat the whispers of kursed knight, he could count on the mask now firmly in place to shield him.
Leonhart looked like shit this morning. Tousled hair, as always, apathetic stare, as always, but something different in the way he sat. As if he was tired. As if the weight of the world sat evenly across his shoulders, pushing him down. Damn dramatic bastard. He'd probably just stayed up all night doing paperwork, like an idiot.
"Leonhart," he greeted him, putting Hyperion down on the table in front of him, drawing out the chair and lowering himself into it with a smirk. That was something he had shared with Ultimecia. A love of presenting himself perfectly.
"Seifer," the infuriating young man replied, and he wondered, just for a moment, when he had become Seifer. Wasn't it Almasy, with that flavouring of contempt and rivalry?
"You look as if you haven't slept in weeks."
Squall actually checked. He looked down at his watch, and shook his head in denial, "Ninety six hours, more or less."
"You're insane," he said, leaning back and making himself comfortable. If he didn't pay attention, and he sat just so, he almost forgot that dull, ever present ache in his chest. The ache that had, somehow, eased a little, in that confusing healing of the night before. But he preferred not to think about it.
"No. I just have important things to do," he said, with a shrug, standing up.
"Have you even eaten?"
Squall nodded, a wry smile coming onto his face. "Earlier. At... oh-five-hundred hours."
"You're insane."
"Perhaps," he agreed with a nod, gathering up his things. "Same time as usual?"
"Same time," he agreed, and smirked in anticipation of one of those exhilarating fights that completely wiped the ache and the whispers and the darkness from his mind for the duration of the clashing. It wasn't just a meeting of bodies and steel, but a meeting of the minds, steel-sharp and deadly, behind the blades. Tactics and feints and the satisfying smell of gunpowder and magic and sometimes blood.
----
Kursed...
"Seifer..."
Knight...
"Seifer! Damn it, Seifer! Breathe!"
He recognised the voice. That voice. Another sob ripped it's way out of him, sparing him nothing, as he realised who had been healing him, who had been sitting with him, who was trying to help him. The person who he least wanted to join him in the darkness.
"Don't," he choked out, and there was a pause in the magic and the whispers all around him, except that voice which carried on whispering, kursed knight, kursed knight, literally...
"I have to." Regen. Curaga. Esuna. All the healing magic Squall had, in one desperate rush.
"It's sorceress magic, you're not going to be able to wish it away with a cure," he hissed, but his breath caught and strangled and he couldn't breathe, panic signals and adrenaline and the damn sobbing...
"Damn it, Seifer, breathe..." and Squall's voice was almost a plea, was as emotional as Seifer had ever heard it. "I need you alive."
I need you.
He almost felt the spell break, more painful than ever in that moment as the last shards of something were literally dragged out of him. He felt as if his sobs were bringing up blood, great jarring choking sobs. But he also felt something different, something entirely different to the crushing of the dark.
Squall was holding him, and he clung back, like Squall was a rock and the spell was the tide and he was a limpet. Like Squall was a cure to wish the sorceress magic away.