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

[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?

He knew that wasn't what Veld meant, or at least he hoped he did--if Veld was that sickened by him he certainly had an odd way of showing it--but it stung all the same.

He was too vulnerable right now, that was all.

Vincent detested feeling vulnerable.

Still, he closed his eyes and let out a breath, sliding down to sit on the floor and rake a hand through his hair; it caught on his headband and with a growl he pulled it off, tossing it away like it burned. He knew where it had come from, after all, and didn't want to think about it.

In another jerking motion he reached up and ripped off his cloak, throwing it to join his headband, then did the same to the belts on his arms, around his waist, on his leg. Cerberus fell to the floor with a clang that sounded almost musical as Vincent ripped off all the accessories, all the flashes of color, until he was left in nothing but a nondescript set of black leathers with a pink ribbon around his right arm.

He'd been dressed like his father. He had no right to that.

The ex-Turk pulled his legs up to his chest, circling them with his mismatched arms, and leaned his forehead to his knees so he could breath without having the see Veld refusing to look at him.

[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.

[chief_mendacity]

"You think I don't consider it everyday, Vince? That if I would have been... doing what I was supposed to do. Even if I would have just changed one thing. If I would have done the right thing by you just once, you wouldn't be in this position."

If he hadn't slept with Laura, if he had told Vincent that he had, if he had told Vincent about Elfe, if he had gone with Vincent to Nibel and sent him home when he fell in love with Lucreica. Any of those things would have saved them.

Veld hadn't done any.

[turkinabox]

"...This is not your fault. This has never been your fault." Vincent's tone was matter-of-fact, no room for argument--unless you were Veld, generally, but he continued before any such thing could be done. "But that wasn't what I was asking about."

It wasn't so much what Veld had said that struck Vincent as the tense in which he said it.

He hadn't said "someone we loved." He said "someone we love."

That? That was nothing short of striking.

[chief_mendacity]

Veld blinked and sat himself down on the sofa. "Then what are you talking about?"

[turkinabox]

"Your reasoning." His expression was still too open, raw and exposed and hurt, now more confused. "The...tense. Of your reasoning."

[chief_mendacity]

Veld looked up from the sofa. He ran his hands through his hair and leaned forward. Veld relaxed and propped himself up with his elbows on his knees. "Vince, I'm old, but I haven't forgotten my tenses in Common."

[turkinabox]

Again Vincent fell silent, but now at least he was looking at Veld, confused and surprised and searching. It took a full minute, two, maybe more, before he closed his eyes and shook his head. "...I don't understand you."

He leaned his head back against the wall, still holding that cup of tea in his lap.

"I know you say otherwise, but..." He took a deep breath and cut that thread of conversation off before it could tangle them any more. "How far did you get? When you tried to read the--when you tried to read my project files."

[chief_mendacity]

"I skimmed around and in the end I only read the abstracts, Vincent." Veld looked back down at the floor between his feet. It was like admitting a failure to Vincent, that Veld couldn't own up to his responsibility and even read about what he'd done.

Veld shook his head. Enough to be horrified that someone did that to you. I'm... I'm so sorry."

It was stupid to apologize and it didn't fix anything, but it slid out of Veld's mouth regardless

[turkinabox]

"Stop apologizing." It came out with an edge of bitterness, still sharp with pain. "I'm...glad. You didn't finish them." He lowered his eyes to look into his tea for a second, then finally took a sip. Jasmine, oversweetened and still just barely warm.

It made him want to break down again, but once was quite enough for what little pride Vincent had left, so he bit it back.

"Thank you."

He didn't know what he would have done if Veld had gotten through the files too.

[chief_mendacity]

Veld only shrugged. There was little else that he could do. It was time to move on, try to make Vincent as comfortable as possible before Veld fell asleep.

"Where would you like to sleep?" Veld had room to give Vin his own bed so he figured things were covered regardless.

[turkinabox]

Something flickered in Vincent's vision, so pronounced it was almost tangible--serrated blades and needles the length of his palm, driven deep into his skull and pumping him full of glowing green to keep him awake while pale, delicate hands sliced through flesh and sawed through bone--but it was gone just as fast.

He took another drink of his tea.

"I won't be sleeping anymore." Probably not for a while, if this newest batch of terrors was any indication. The way he phrased it sounded strangely permanent.

[chief_mendacity]

Veld sighed. He wished so deeply that there was something he could do. Some way that he could even attempt to fix what he'd done. Veld was no man of science. Hell, sometimes he managed to make mistakes balancing his checkbook, what could he do to help his partner?

Veld wondered if he could taste the tea or if the action was simply automatic. From what he'd managed to read, Veld understood that even if the layers of trauma were removed, Vincent wasn't going to age, he was going to always be able to turn into monsters. Unpacking that alone would take years and Veld didn't have time to bone up on psychology.

He clenched his real hand tightly in a fist, nails biting into the palm. It helped him focus. "Well do you want a room at least? Or do you just want to sit next to my fireplace?"