your grace is wasted in your face

[turkinabox]

Who: Veld Dragoon [chief_mendacity], Vincent Valentine [turkinabox] { closed }
When: A while after this.
Location: Veld's place, Junon.
Rating: R for inevitable profanity and possible descriptions of Hojofuckery.
Summary: He just couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

Comments

[consummateturk]

People did not pound on the doors of Turks. That was a swift way to a bullet in the head. Elfe was still in the hospital and his kids would not pound. No one pounded on Veld's door, not since...

he got up and ran to it, throwing the door open. While Veld had his gun on him, he hadn't even bothered to turn off the safety. Instead, he knew it would be Vincent somehow.

No one else had ever banged at his door.

[turkinabox]

Vincent just fell, bent low, head to Veld's shoulder so his human hand could clench in the other ex-Turk's shirt. The other, still gauntleted, kept hold of his files.

"I'm sorry," he all but whimpered, voice thick and shaking and inherently wrong. "I can go, I don't--want--" He choked, the hand fisted in Veld's shirt tightening, the other digging into the envelope clutched to his chest.

He took another breath, struggled to speak, tried to think of something to say, anything, but all he wanted to do was stay here and break. Just break.

Vincent had never let himself openly break before.

Another breath, and for the first time since well before his induction to the Turks Vincent sobbed, clinging and shaking and choking, and said nothing more.

[consummateturk]

Veld managed to pull Vincent back far enough to close the door behind him. He'd known Vincent for many, many years. He'd never known Vincent to cry. Even when they had fought, even when Veld made the worst mistake of his life, Vincent hadn't cried. Veld knew what was in those files. The twisting in his gut got worse. There wasn't a day in his life that Veld didn't regret sending Vincent on that job.

Every day for over 30 years, he'd had the same thought.

This didn't make it easier. Veld tried to guide his ex partner to the couch at least, there was no use in talking to him until he'd calmed down. The files would wait.

[turkinabox]

Like a child, being led off to sit while he just cried, like an infant with a complaint, like a fool--Vincent was nothing short of humiliated, but he couldn't stop. He led Veld pull him to the couch, still clinging to the older man like a lifeline with one hand and the envelope with the other, let himself be coaxed into sitting down, leaned heavily on Veld and just.

Kept.

Crying.

He felt like such an idiot. He was better than this, stronger than this, he'd just been waiting for the other shoe to drop with his mother this entire time--he knew something was going to happen!

But he'd never expected anything like this. There was no force in this world that could have prepared him to face his Sayoko after she read his files, after she learned everything, after she knewNo one was meant to know what he'd been through, what they'd done to him, what he still remembered. The nightmares were his, just his, no one else was supposed to face them down, no one else was ever meant to see what a monster they'd made of him, what he'd lived

[consummateturk]

Veld hadn't comforted anyone when they cried. He'd soothed Elfe when she was a child, but a skinned knee or a salamander in the pool was not this. Veld had not caused the skinned knee or the frightening creature, he made those things go away.

This... this he had caused.

If he hadn't sent Vincent away, or if he had done the correct thing by his partner, then Veld would have put away his emotions and followed protocol. He would have gone with Vincent and sent him away when he fell in love with Lucrecia.

And he would try very hard to not let that knowledge hurt him.

But that didn't happen. Veld had made his partner go alone after a horrible fight. He'd lost Vincent completely in one deft movement and left him open to what happened. Reduced him to this mess that was sobbing and crying.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." Veld meant that, he bit back the "I'm sorry" in his own mouth. What could would his apologies do now? He didn't have anything to add but his own guilt really. Veld's guilt was earned and he shouldn't put it on

[turkinabox]

Vincent just shook his head again, still shaking and choking at odd intervals, but all too aware of the way his strength leeched from his limbs, the way his vision faltered slightly, his lungs locking for a split second while his heart finally settled back into its slow, immortal rhythm.

"My mother." He held the file as tight as he could, which wasn't much as his grip on Veld's shirt was almost slack. "My mother...she read..." He closed his eyes, swallowed back another hiccough. "...everything."

And then, at last, the transformation caught up with him, and with no further announcement whatsoever, Vincent simply passed out onto Veld in a tear-soaked heap.

[consummateturk]

He could guess, from the few words that Vincent squeaked out, what had happened. Veld could also figure out what was within the files. He waited for twenty minutes before moving. If the circumstances weren't there, this action would have been exactly the same as Veld had done a million times before

[turkinabox]

Vincent slept. Sleeping, he dreamed. Dreaming, the nightmares came back in full force. Simple enough at first--being shot, hearing the way Hojo cackled--but more ornate as they went.

When he woke up, it was with visions swimming in his eyes of Sayoko opening him up, hollowing him out, humming lullabies in his ears and asking if her baby was really still in here, wondering aloud how deep she'd have to carve to find him; Grimoire stood back and watched with a smile on his face, interjecting occasionally with some bit of advice to push harder, break that because he wouldn't need it anyway, use the higher gauge from now on.

Vincent pushed himself up and away from Veld, stumbling off the couch in a frenzy of tattered scarlet and black leather with wide, panicked eyes. His lungs struggled to work again, breathing short and just as uncomfortable as ever.

He felt hollow, somehow, and part of him was surprised that he didn't shatter when he slammed himself back into the wall and froze in place for the fight to calm down.

[chief_mendacity]

Veld started up swiftly when Vincent launched from the couch. He was glad his cup was empty as it fell to the floor. He jumped to his feet with less speed and grace than Vincent. Panicked trainees were things Veld had dealt with before. "Vince." He said Vincent's name with force in the hope to get his attention.

Veld made a mental note to contact Sayo later, to see how she was fairing. "Vince, it's me."

[turkinabox]

"I know," Vincent hissed through clenched teeth, clutching at his head; he clenched his eyes shut and forced the visions down, forced back the whispering in his ears and the sight of warm amber eyes and cold, bloody hands.

Slowly, the ex-Turk got his breathing under control, fought back the tremors, swallowed it all down and boxed it all up somewhere too deep for anyone else to see. The tension drained out of him, for just a second, only to snap back into place a split second later when he opened his eyes and found his hands were empty.

Glowing eyes cast about the room in a flash, from the couch to the floor to Veld.

"Where's the envelope?" The edge of fear in his voice was as apparent as in the look on his ashen face. Veld couldn't read it all too, not so soon after Sayoko.

[chief_mendacity]

Veld sighed and picked up his tea cup. He then walked to the kitchen, checked the water that he had and poured water into the cup with the lavender leaves. "It's locked in my desk and it will stay there until a rational choice can be made about them."

Veld didn't turn around. He could hear the pain in Vincent's voice and it rubbed raw against the guilt Veld carried. "I... could never read them, Vince. I tried once, and didn't have the stomach for it." Veld busied himself making the tea to give his hands something to do.

[turkinabox]

Vincent withdrew slightly at the thought of Veld trying to read them, mind racing in a thousand directions, wondering how far he'd gotten and what sickened him too much to keep going while something in him cackled that Vincent had always known he was disgusting, what part of hearing it from someone else was so bad

[chief_mendacity]

Veld didn't flinch. "I ... felt like I should, after ... everything that I caused." Veld didn't know why the words were so hard to come out. It felt like explaining himself to Elfe, though instead of an angry person he had one that was utterly destroyed. He took a breath and added an inordinate amount of sugar to the tea. "I couldn't, Vince. It makes me sick to know what they did to you, and you didn't deserve it."

With that said, he turned around and walked over to Vincent. Slowly he offered the cup of tea down, half certain that Vincent wouldn't take it and mostly afraid the other man would run off again.

He wished that Vincent would be angry at him. It wasn't in the cards.

[turkinabox]

Vincent kept his eyes down and didn't take the tea. Instead he kept his face hidden in the mess of his long hair, pressed against his knees.

"Doesn't matter if I deserved it," he whispered after a long second. "It happened. It matters that they did it. It matters that--" He broke off, lifting his head again, letting his legs straighten in front of him before slowly, carefully, reaching up and taking the offered cup without looking.

He held it in his lap, eyes averted, not looking into it. He'd just had tea with Sayoko a few days ago...

"I'm disgusting," he hissed, jaw tense. "I'm disgusting, and she...I didn't want her to know. Didn't want anyone to know." He pushed out a burst of breath that was nowhere near a chuckle, but might have been trying, and his mouth pulled up at one corner as he lowered his head again. "It's...foolish. You'll all find out eventually. Shouldn't bother anymore. But--"

He bit his bottom lip.

"But I was so happy to have her back, Verudo."

[chief_mendacity]

Veld took a deep breath and sat the cup down. He breathed and fought back the urge to just break down himself. How could Vincent say that it didn't matter? It mattered to Veld, at the very least. Every. Single. Day. It mattered.

"Goddamnit, Valentine!" He snapped when he heard Vincent call himself disgusting. Veld couldn't simply stand there and hear it. It wasn't true, and it was wrong. "You're not fucking disgusting! What you went through was horrific by every standard. If anything, your mother's horrified for the same reason I am. and it isn't fucking YOU. It's the fact that someone we love was tortured and we can't do anything to fix it!" Veld didn't care that he let it slip, his own grip keeping it together was slipping. "How in the fuck can you run to me after all of this? I did this to you!"

[turkinabox]

Vincent narrowed his downcast eyes, part of him preparing to snap about how wrong Veld was, to talk about the color of Vincent's blood and the way he died when he slept too deeply, the incision scars and trails of long-dissolved stitches all over his body, how it was possibly to rip out his organs and he'd just writhe and choke in a mass of bleeding flesh and bone until they grew back--

And then Veld slipped.

And Vincent's eyes went wide.

The claim that any of this was at all Veld's fault went more or less unheard as he raised his head to stare up at his former partner.

"...What?" Somehow it sounded almost accusatory.