How To Save A Life
Part I: Trauma
Chapter VI
May 11th, εγλ 0028
„Proceed with neurostimulation."
„But, Professor – sir – she's tachycardic."
„I said proceed!"
The bellowing voice scarcely reached her ears as she stilled on the table to which she was strapped anew, her sacrificial altar of steel and cold. In her heart threads tore and in her mind a voice cried that wasn't her own. It was ethereal and eerie and so familiar and so saddened as it began to fade and she cried, losing all self-control at the face of loneliness as the voice that was within her became strange and tore itself from her.
The song became a whisper and then a memory as her abused mind screamed for her dear friend not to abandon her and yelled her apologies all at once. But no voice came. Warmth withdrew and she gasped and pleaded. And then she stilled.
„Ventricular fibrilation! We have V-fib! Professor we have to halt the procedure if we're still to have a subject to proceed with."
„Fine! Charge to two-hundred and push one of epi. I'm not done with her yet. So close..."
It all sounded so far away, so unreal as her body was still and her eyes wide open, wondering why the white lights above seemed to welcoming now and mourning the desperate lack of spiritual voice to comfort her as her chest burned.
„Charged, clear!"
Shock wrecked her body and she convulsed involuntarily, gasping at the pain. The screeching sound of the machine that now declared her heart in distress was all the could make out and for a second she noted how similar the sound that named someone dead was to the screeching voice she had heard once in the head of the silver haired general who was not there now, when she died for the second time.
„Again, charge to three-hundred. Clear."
„We have sinus-bradycardia!"
That word, the exclamation of a word she didn't understand was all she heard before the world went dark.
He heard them bellow outside the white room of torture and he rose from his seated position when something in his head snapped. Ever since he had woken up and seen green eyes stare at him widely through cold glass, it had been there. A thread, tender and fragile but white and different from the other strings in his unconscious mind. And now, unceremoniously, it tore, eliciting a strange feeling of unnamed loss in his heart. The muffled voices outside of his confinement were too scrambled to understand, even his ears not capable of extrapolating meaning from their barking commands. What he did hear though was silence where there had been sobs and screams moments before, a heart wrenching, bone chilling scream the last sound he had been able to make out as hers before hell broke lose and she made no more sounds to reach his ears.
Inwardly he cursed himself and her all the while reaching out to find what was too far gone to be found. Too many days and nights with nothing else but her had made him go soft, it had made his priorities shift when he had sworn to remain level-headed. Sentimentality was not for him and neither was she, that much was painfully obvious. It was simple psychology, he scolded his mind as it threatened to mutiny against his discipline. Prolonged exposure to only one source of comfort while subjected to trauma was the highway to addiction, it was what they had wanted when they had decided to lock them up together when they could have easily been held separate. It was manipulation of the lowest degree and he was not the kind to be manipulated. He scolded himself anew, beginning to understand that knowing the game and being a master manipulator did not mean that he was immune to it's effects. She had grown attached, he had noticed it as soon as it happened. He had kept his distance, knowing that yielding was submitting to disaster, was handing the crazed scientists what they wanted and was setting up for more heartbreak when they left this place behind and discovered that any and all comfort they might feel in each other's presence was linked to promise of torture from all else.
The pathway to hell was paved with good intentions, his heart mocked his mind as it searched still for the severed thread. Dreaming delusional dreams of whatever this was being real and not a psychological ploy.
Sephiroth straightened his pose, dispelling such nonsense from his mind with one forceful swipe of his will that sent the whimsical wishes of his heart quivering. It would be disastrous. No matter how gentle voice or how warm her small hands felt, he could not and would not give in to temptation, not when none of it could be real. It was a ploy, it was psychology and it was, what he did not realise, unavoidable and irrevocable.
Silence pierced the wall as all voices stilled and he tried what any rationally irrational man would. He remained immobile and waited. And then, what felt like hours later, the thread began to reattach, silently.
May 13th, εγλ 0028
He was waiting, immobile, as the white door opened and revealed three anonymous scientists and her.
She was carried by the largest of the three men, who deposited her just inside the door and quickly stepped back a few paces as he noticed the shift in their second subject's pose. He had been leaning against the wall, eyes closed in contemplation but was now leaning forward, the feral gleam in mako green eyes stark against the whiteness of the walls. The door shut before he could charge forward, if that was really his intention, leaving him alone with a form he had not laid eyes on for two full days. The professor had mocked him, speaking of her fragile state in riddles when continuing his tests with his now extremely hostile subject. Sephiroth had been right in his internal musings. Addiction to comfort had been their plan for him who never had had access to such relief but their plans had not stretched to cover the catastrophic side-effects they would endure should he be deprived of the drug they had forced on him. His detox had been violent as had his actions, killing one, injuring three. He had felt no sorrow for either but anger at himself for letting his composure slip over the absence of a girl who a few weeks prior had been all but inconsequential to him.
And now he found himself flickering around the room, teleporting out of instinct and without noticing, to the side of the girl whose absence had been a mind-altering experience for the lone one-winged angel. She was pale, paler than she had been before, rivalling his own skin in her translucence. But besides her pallor, she looked the same, her bruises all but gone and no new scars added to the few that she had accumulated during their captivity. Her eyes were closed and he found himself almost waiting for her to open them, to make sure that the spark was still there.
Instead he bent down, kneeling next to her immobile form and lifting it up as was his custom, revelling at the feel of her soft skin against his own but resenting the lack of warmth that she emanated.
She stirred as he remained motionless, not quite ready to release her onto the cot. Just one moment of weakness, he assured himself, that was all he was going to allow himself. Just a moment of aching.
„It's gone..." her voice was small and torn-up and so hopeless and it sent an unsuspecting jolt of rage flying through his veins.
„What is?" He forced himself to move, to walk towards the cot, while her arms tentatively and desperately raised to snake around his neck. He closed his eyes, blocking out the pleasant feeling that was about to drive him insane in ways that Jenova's seductive voice never could.
„The song...it left me," her voice was empty and so small and fragile and he understood. He had spent what felt like aeons inside the Lifestream hearing the whispers for himself that he knew to be singing in her core.
„It will return to you," he promised though he knew not if his words were true, „so long as you remain strong."
She did not reply at first, clinging still to him like a frightened child or a desperate lover, what of which she truly was neither of them knew.
When he bent to place her gently down, she didn't relinquish her hold. When his hands reached for hers to loosen her grip all she did was intertwine her fingers with his and look up at his strange eyes with desperate verdant orbs that screamed at him and pleaded all at once.
„Don't leave me too," she whispered and that was when all his principles and honourable intentions went out the window in favour of instinctive need.
One swift movement was all it took for her to be pulled into strong arms and enveloped in inhuman heat. Stray tendrils of silver silk tickled her nose as she buried her face in the crook of his neck, half lying, half sitting supported by his arms as he held her, one hand entangling in her auburn locks and the other secure around her waist. He didn't speak and neither did she as she closed her eyes. She had no more tears left for her lost song, she had cried them all in the past two days which she had spent in a strange bed in what they called their critical damage unit. No more tears would come, instead she simply lingered, soaking up the warmth he offered so readily and wondering if he would be angry at her for leaving him alone for so long. She had been as acutely aware of her loneliness as the connection snapped. The Planet's song and her awareness of him gone in an instant, with only one returning hours after they had removed her from the operating table.
It had been weak but returning and she had wept and cried. And now, she simply resorted to being, existing within a moment of warmth that she was sure he would blame her for forcing him to grant.
No such thing happened however. Instead she found his fingers toying with a strand of brown hair and the sound of his breathing to be fascinating her senses.
„Sephiroth?" Her voice sounded too scared to her ears when all she had meant for it to sound was inquisitive. She needed him to speak, to explain, to promise that he would not be angry at her or withdraw as she was quite sure that she would not survive it if he left her too. Lines had blurred long ago, the second she heard his voice in her head the first time. Whatever had been mattered little here, where he was warm and calm when she needed him to be.
„You will be the death of me," he murmured and a weak chuckle fell from her lips.
„We're even then."
„We can never be even but I find myself caring less and less."
And with that he pulled back his head, searching her eyes for something she knew not. All the while she was drowning in jade and chrysocolla, yearning for something she could not label. If he found what he was looking for, she knew not but it became inconsequential as a pained sigh escaped his throat.
„Forgive me."
Before she could ask for what she owed forgiveness her thoughts went quiet and her vision blurred as tender softness fluttered against her lips. Gleaming eyes locked with hers and she gasped, as warmth enveloped her further, holding her still while feathery lips remained firmly locked with hers, urging and prompting, wondering in their stillness until she responded with inquiry with reply. Lips brushed lips and she sighed as her eyes fluttered closed, the intensity of his stare too much to bear. Gentle and tentative and desperate and passionate all at once, she felt the kiss ensnare her senses. When it broke, her eyes remained closed as fingers ghosted across her cheek, leaving behind a maiden blush and swollen lips that beckoned more. And when she opened her eyes to the world again, all she saw were glowing eyes that spoke of pain and pleasure and of dreams long since abandoned.
Months spent in mutual comfort and misery had led to this, formed whatever bond from which actions sprung. Endless pain, physical and emotional. And though rational thought screamed in his mind, decrying his emotional response a farce, Sephiroth found that he no longer cared. Violence was in his nature but for her, just for her, he would reserve gentle touch instead of burnished steel.
Yeah...so that happened. Let me know what you think!
