#grieverled

@grieverled | i was hoping for some answers. "CAN WE TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED?" PROMPTS

"Suppose you would..." The keybearer answers, already sounding exhausted and eyes downcast. Selena had lost her gummi phone either during or after the fall of her village. She couldn't send a message or answer any of their calls even if she wanted to.

"Before I start, when did you realize it was gone?" She asks, trying to glean how much time has passed since her Star's fall and this moment. Given the time it had taken her to recover, she reckoned it could be several moons. However, tracking the time between worlds has always been tricky.

The keybearer anxiously scratches the phantom itch on her right prosthetic arm. It was covered, thankfully, by the long sleeve of her coat. Her hand was covered by a glove.

@grieverled​ asked:

“True, but, usually you’re the one controlling the change. This time you’re not. Now does that scare you? Because it should.”  

“What, are you a goddamned shrink now?” 

Feathers, rustling in his ear, a phantom noise (except they’re very real, just...buried somewhere in his back, gray like ash, like smoke, like an old leather coat.)

The dark from his fingers is slower to fade, like he’d shoved his arms into a gallon of black paint, straight up to his elbows-- there’s a tinge of gray there, too, left along his skin, black only at his fingertips. 

He stares at it, willing it to disappear, to suck back into his skin from wherever it came from as well. 

At least his face is normal, void of golden, murderous eyes, a bird of prey’s gaze in his face, limned in streaks of ochre gold and midnight dark. 

(He gets it now, why Rinoa packed up and left after the war, why she refuses to acknowledge who she is inside without an Odine bangle clamped around her wrist or ankle or throat.)

He reaches with fingers still fading to suntanned normalcy, wrapping his hand around the sweating bottle of water and unscrewing the cap. Drinking deep. 

(Why Edea had drilled it into him as a child-- stay in control, even if Seifer Almasy is, by definition, the antithesis of control.)

Maybe the water’ll extinguish the wildfire still running rampant in his bones, plastic faintly sizzling under his touch. 

Kairi doesn't know why the information wasn't relayed to the Restoration Committee sooner, but... she's sorry that they weren't immediately let in on the plan going forward — she's sorry they weren't told about Riku leaving for Quadratum, and about herself taking up training under Aqua, etc. If it had been up to her, she'd have told them immediately.

Apparently, though, Master Yen Sid and the Fairy Godmother had decided not to let Leon and the others know right away.

But it's been a little while now — at least a couple of weeks — since Riku left for Quadratum in the first place and when she'd learned that Leon and the gang still hadn't been told, yet, Kairi had felt a simultaneous twinge of guilt and hurt on their behalf. Why hadn't they been updated on any of the newer stuff? Didn't they deserve to know, too, after everything they'd done in the first place to help out in the search for Sora?

The answer is yes — they do deserve to know.

Which is why Kairi's paying a visit to Radiant Garden now. She's sat down with Leon, as he's the first person she'd come across from the Restoration Committee, and for the past five minutes has been explaining the recent development of things. "So yeah, that's... where we're at, currently," she says when she's finished, and gives him a small, apologetic smile." "I don't know why Master Yen Sid and the Fairy Godmother didn't already let you guys know."

@grieverled | Squall sent;;

That damned smile. It’s such a common feature on the other man’s face, something he knows would look so out of place being absent, but it stirs an uneasy feeling when he catches the way it twitches, as if strained, lilting like a sad dying flower with wilted petals along its edges. For a man known for being as genuine as they came, as honest. Things weren’t as they’d seemed when it came to Zack Fair. Something that only continued to hook at him & his interest as he stares with a deepened furrow notching itself comfortably between his brows.

When he turns to look his way, probably after feeling eerie cold sights on him for far longer than comfortable, Squall breaks the silence with a scoffed sigh, a quiet sound, before he takes a step in, arms coming to a neat fold atop his chest. Chin angling higher, wolf gray eyes flick below, lingering pointedly on the sunny man’s smile before raising again.

“Why do you waste your energy smiling if you don’t mean it?”

To say one has seen First Class SOLDIER Fair without a grin upon his face to some extent would be often seen as a lie, seldom did the man ever allow anyone to see him look anything but lively, ecstatic or giddy to some extent. That was something far easier before reality had finally sunk its claws into the once naïve man. What was there to smile for now? What was the point of SOLDIER, the point of doing much of anything anymore? Easy, those who were less fortunate, who couldn't fight for themselves and those who needed someone to smile for them. It's what he always thought about, even on days where familiar blues faded into lifeless greys and once lively tanned flesh sunk into the hollows of alabaster and crimson, it's all Zack could do, really.

He knows that his smile is bastion of hope to some within Shinra, knows it helps provide comfort to those like Cloud and Luxiere but he'd be dumb to pretend like it didn't also bother others. He's removed from his thoughts once he feels what seems to be a glare upon his frame, can tell he's being scrutinized and for a second shame boils hot within his heart, damn near laces his easy going smile with something self deprecating, he hated feeling like that; Hated knowing someone was observing him, waiting for him to crack and show just how pitiful a man he's become since he lost Angeal. When would he be allowed to have time to himself? To have his freedom back like what the role of a First typically implied?

Mako tinted eyes land upon the other man, eyebrows furrowed slightly as a saddened gleam rests within his turquoise gaze, that smile only softening ever so slightly upon noting the other's gaze. For a second the question leaves him shocked, confused and maybe even angry before he simply drops his smile altogether, some form of hurt evident within his slack expression.

“ Because I do mean it. ” He responds softly, and truly he does, “ I just... Sometimes I can't put my whole heart into it, so I do my best because I know that if I smile, someone else will see it and they'll feel a bit better too, someone has to do it around here and... People rely on me for that. ”

@grieverled​ asked:

🛑 

send 🛑 to clean blood off of my muse after they protected yours. add + to reverse so receiver is the one cleaning blood off sender.

--

Squall is fine. 

That’s really the important thing, that Squall is fine and in one piece and lives to fight another day (hoo-rah). 

Seifer’s nose wrinkles as the thin washcloth makes another pass over his brow, cheeks, mouth, scrubbing at blood basically caked in his pores-- you’d think, after saving his life, Squall might be the tiniest bit gentler. 

“I’d like skin left on my face,” he says, words muffled beneath the cloth, but it’s not malicious. Amused, really. 

He reaches, snags Squall around by the waist, pulls him right down into his lap. 

Squall is fine, and alive. He’s alive. 

“What d’you think? Still as handsome as ever underneath all this?” 

@grieverled asked: i’m impressed, you have class.

He can clean up well. He just doesn't have many opportunities to do so on this damn island. Tonight, it's a deep gray suit just shy of black, a dark red tie, cleanly-shaved and hair freshly-cut, gelled into careful disarray, and he'd called in the only favor Xu'd ever owed him to get this reservation at the nicest place in town.

(Neither of them are going to talk about how much this date is going to cost him.)

Seifer leans back in his chair, his incredibly overpriced beer in hand-- the least threatening thing on the drink menu-- and raises a brow at Squall.

@grieverled​ asked:

❛ i like being alone but i’d rather be alone with you. ❜  |  |  &. 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

There’s a stretch of silence, where Seifer lifts Squall’s hand in his own, uncharacteristically gentle in how he peels away one worn black glove. Squall’s hands are like his, always a couple shades paler than the rest of him thanks to the nature of their specialties-- you get one massive blister from the hilt of a gunblade without gloves once, and you tend not to want to repeat the experience-- but Squall’s hand is damn near porcelain against Seifer’s tanned one.

Not that much smaller, but smaller, fitting neatly into his-- he lets his fingers roam over bruised knuckles and healed cuts, tiny innumerable scars from cleaning sharp blades, before he lifts the hand in his to press his lips against the palm of it.

“I love you,” he murmurs there. Say it once, and he’ll say it a thousand times back.