Final Fantasy VIII Existence

**Written by**: Chemotaxis

**For**: The lovely Baby Chiba & Wolkje

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Final Fantasy or any of the characters in this story, nor do I profit from writing this story.

**Warnings**: Language, Sex, Non-consensual, Yaoi (male x male)

**Word count**: 2.856

**Summary**: Seifer's life after the war.

**Notes**: This was written about a year ago. It's based on Baby Chiba's infection theme and was written as a response to a prompt by Wolkje.

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~ Existence ~

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Metal and blood. The heavy stench filled his nostrils; invaded his lungs. Coughing in vain to try and make the rancid taste and foul smell disappear, Seifer kept his hands and knees on the floor to try and steady himself. His clothes were tattered, covered in dirt and stained with blood. He was sweating, the floor burning against his hands, the hot air around him humid, unable to absorb the thick sheen of sweat cowering his brow.

At the sound of faint gurgling next to him, he opened his eyes and looked down at the man lying next to him on the metallic floor. He could almost taste the blood overflowing the other's lips as he watched the wide eyed stare of advancing death looming on the man's features.

"Come on Squall, hold on," he demanded, trying his best to keep his voice firm. He couldn't remember how many times he had been through this.

And failed.

Every single time. But he still tried.

Only minutes ago he had managed to free the brunet from his bindings. _What was left of the him_.

In her celebration his mistress had torn apart and tortured the foolish SeeDs that had fought her. For the world to see, she had taken them one by one and destroyed them, mutilated their bodies and razed their minds. After the urge for revenge had been sated, she had taken her retreat and he had seen his chance. He had cut the brunet from his binds in an act of desperation. At that point the others were already long gone; their bodies turned into twisted sculptures of burnt flesh and oozing wounds.

The smell of death was still lingering. It followed him as he carried the brunet away from the massacre; as he tried to escape the inferno that was his mistress' castle. But the further he went the hotter it became and the more his confusion grew. In the end he collapsed onto his knees as his muscles gave in to fatigue.

He didn't even know what he was trying to save; the man lying next to him was nothing but a bloody canvas, a horrid display of his mistress' cruel desires. Streaks of skin had been torn of, _peeled off slowly_, to reveal muscle beneath. The wounds were bleeding gently against bruised skin and large cauterized gashes. There was no way the man would survive. He never did.

. . . . .

Seifer couldn't remember a single instance in his life where he had felt this good. His heart was still beating hard in his chest, exhaustion heavy in his limbs. Drawing Squall close against him, he tightening his embrace. The man's naked skin against his, the soft nuzzle of his nose against Squall's neck as the brunet unconsciously moved closer; it was more than he deserved.

So much longing, so much pain. But that was all in the past.

He had watched as electricity had gripped Squall tightly when the brunet had hung on the metallic cross in the interrogation room. In that moment he had been certain his dream had died. But his mistress had saved him.

Maybe she had sensed her knight becoming nothing but a broken reflection of disillusion and pain. Maybe she had sensed him faltering. Whatever the reason, she had given him Squall. She had let him help the man recover; had given him a chance to apologize and Squall had accepted.

Warm arms moved against his waist and pulled him back into a world were everything was right and he was thankful for how well his mistress understood him.

"I won't give up on you," the man in his arms said, gray-blue eyes locked on his own, fierce and unrelenting, voice determined and full of promise.

He leaned in and kissed Squall. He would never doubt him.

. . . . .

The room was barren. A large metallic table stood in the middle and a handful of orange plastic chairs were scattered around it. Everything else was gray. Even the large mirror at the end of the room was gray.

A doctor had asked him to go there. _My doctor_.

He hadn't expected **him** to be there, but he had been. Sat there, waiting. Without any emotion on his face. Not surprising, really.

He kept quiet as he sat down. Why the doctor had thought putting himself and the Commander in the same room was beyond him. _Because you keep screaming his name._

It wasn't like there was anything between them anymore. Squall had left him behind; hadn't been there like he'd promised. It had been Raijin and Fujin who had come to get him and put him back together. _Tried to._

"Why are you here?" he demanded.

"They said you were losing it," the brunet replied, his voice unconcerned.

"Why do you care?"

"I don't."

Seifer immediately recognized the truth behind the words. He could hear the cold detachment beneath each single syllable.

"Then why are you here?"

"Rinoa asked me to," the brunet said, shrugging indifferently.

Another simple truth. But that didn't make it hurt any less.

"I can't believe you chose her," Seifer said, unable to keep the accusation from spilling over his lips.

When Squall had the audacity to reply with an incredulous "what?", something snapped inside him.

"After what happened—" he began, fuming, before pushing himself out of his chair in anger.

Then the world spun. The brunet's voice sounded distant, faint almost. The words were reaching him from somewhere else. '_I won't give up on you'. _And then all he could see was Squall in his arms, in a different time and place. Tightening his hold around the younger man, he exhaled slowly. But then the world tilted on its axis once more and when he reopened his eyes it was to the stern gaze of an annoyed Commander regarding him in barely concealed disgust in a gray, gray room.

He brought a hand up to his forehead when the floor started spinning once more and willed it to stop. He couldn't take any more of the visions. He tried to kill the nausea that settled heavily at the back of his throat, but it wouldn't go away. That was when the world disappeared. And when it came back, he was pounding into the brunet. He felt the man's firm buttocks slap against his hips, Squall moaning in pleasure at each one of his touches.

The world swirled again and he dry heaved. He was back in an uncomfortable chair in the cold room, hunched over a metallic table, his fists white from trying to keep his mind focused.

As other man's chair scraped across the floor, the man rising to stand, pain shot through Seifer at the loud noise, his face contorting in reflex.

The distant voice returned. '_It wasn't you'. _Words from a faraway memory. A memory where warm gray-blue eyes were reaching out to him, trying to pull him back from the abyss, but when he finally opened his eyes all he saw was revulsion instead. And then everything shattered.

"Squall—" he began, his need for forgiveness now the only thing on his mind. Yet as the name left his lips he had to close his eyes again, his vision blurring and the dreadful feeling of the world being a breath away from disintegrating right before him returning.

"I shouldn't have come," Squall pointed out from across the room, barely concealing his disgust. And then he left.

. . . . .

He could hear them through the wall. It was a thin wall and the door separating the rooms wasn't entirely closed.

"Will he be able to understand?" one of the voices spoke.

"He's been lucid for a couple of hours so far," another voice replied. "You should be okay."

He entered the room.

"Mr. Almasy?" the man he recognized as his lawyer greeted him.

Not replying, Seifer moved to sit down, ready to hear what the two men had to say.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news," the lawyer informed, looking displeased.

Glaring at the man impatiently, Seifer willed the other man to spit out whatever it was he was there for. Being locked up in a mental hospital was bad enough in itself. Things couldn't really get worse. _You know why they're here._

"Yesterday, in court, additional charges were raised against you," the lawyer spoke, directing his voice expertly, keeping it entirely neutral. Probably an attempt at making the 'bad news' seem more palatable. More negligible. The man didn't need to bother. Seifer didn't care. Apathy was his friend.

"Charges of sexual assault," the man in the black suit supplied flawlessly.

Seifer snorted.

"Who?" he asked. He had done many things during the war. But never **that**. He held nothing but contempt for men who resorted to such acts. _Disgusting pigs_. Seifer knew he had never sunk that low. For all he knew it was just someone, _one more_, seeking revenge, wanting to sully his name. Or maybe the poor bastard just wanted to catch a moment in the limelight and gain the world's sympathy. Seifer let out a sigh. He knew no one would believe his own version of events. The more they could make him out to be a monster, the better. He knew that. The more justified they felt in their hunger for revenge.

"Commander Leonhart," the doctor said with narrowed eyes.

Seifer snorted again.

This wasn't going to work.

They couldn't use Squall against him. They were just playing a game. He could still taste the other man's slick lips against his own; feel the younger man's breath hitch as he stroked him and hit him in just the right spot.

The two men sitting across from him remained silent.

"What the fuck **is** this?" he finally demanded, disgusted by their claim.

"Are his claims true?" the lawyer demanded in return, his gaze firm.

Frowning at the realization that they were making the accusations for real, Seifer gritted his teeth before commenting.

"What the fuck do you take me for?" he spat. "It was consensual. He fucking wanted it."

The lawyer's mouth thinned in distaste.

"Here are the transcripts," the lawyer spoke, pushing a folder across the table.

Opening the thin binder, Seifer scrutinized the first page. It looked like the real deal. He'd read enough court transcripts to know what one looked like.

"Page 23," the lawyer informed, leaning back in his chair.

Seifer turned the pages, finally landing on the right one.

Before reading what it said on the page, his subconscious picked out the important bits. With bile rising at the back of his throat, he stood from the table in anger. Massaging his clenched jaws in an effort to calm himself, his posture was rigid with indignation.

Grabbing the discarded pages once more, he started to read.

PROSECUTOR: During your imprisonment at the D-District prison, did you have any encounters with the defendant?

SQUALL LEONHART: Yes.

PROSECUTOR: Please elaborate.

SQUALL LEONHART: He interrogated me.  
_  
_PROSECUTOR: What did he want to know?

SQUALL LEONHART: The true purpose of SeeD.

PROSECUTOR: And to obtain such information, which means did he use?

SQUALL LEONHART: Torture.

PROSECUTOR: Which kinds of torture? And may I remind you that you are under oath.

SQUALL LEONHART: Electric shocks. Violence.

PROSECUTOR: Anything else?

SQUALL LEONHART: Sexual abuse.

Even as he read the last line again, he still couldn't grasp its existence.

Why would Squall lie like that? Squall's own reputation would be on the line with such a statement.

Clenching his jaws, he skimmed through the next pages. He felt sick as the details of the torture he had inflicted upon Squall were laid out for everyone to see.

PROSECUTOR: Concerning the sexual abuse. What exactly do you mean when you use the term?

SQUALL LEONHART: Anal intercourse.

A sickly voice sounded at the back of Seifer's mind. _You forced him._

PROSECUTOR: I see. And how many times did the defendant sexually abuse you whilst you were held at the D-District prison?

SQUALL LEONHART: Eleven times.

SQUALL LEONHART: That I'm aware off.

The vile voice returned._ You enjoyed it every single time. You enjoyed his screams. _

He closed his eyes firmly as he tried to drown out the words. He didn't want to hear them. They disgusted him. Taking a deep breath, he remembered the truth; that Squall was the one lying. Welcoming the anger that followed, he held back the urge to throw the binder across the room and instead tightened his grip on the paper in his hands, his knuckles going white under the strain.

PROSECUTOR: And, just to remind the jury, how long was your stay there?

SQUALL LEONHART: Two days.

He didn't need to read any more. This was some fucked up shit. Beneath him. He placed the folder forcefully on the table and strode out of the room. When two guards grabbed his arms at the other side of the door, he struggled in their hold. They had no right to do this; to keep him there when it was the rest of the world that was twisted.

The people around him began shouting and more people rushed to hold him still, their grip painfully tight as they forced him to the ground. He kept struggling and tried to get out of their grasp, but they were too many, their hold too strong. He couldn't even move his head, someone keeping it firmly in place. Feeling a sting against his right arm, he clenched his jaws even firmer in anger. They didn't understand; he needed to find Squall. He needed to set things straight. To beat some sense into the motherfucker.

_You're pathetic._

His chest constricted. The air felt thick and heavy. It wouldn't enter his lungs.

He no longer saw the faces of the people holding him down. The world turned black as a much more grim image appeared. Seifer's mouth went dry. Squall's ankles were bound to the legs of a black table, his backside exposed as his naked form was stretched against the table. Bent over, the man was posed in the most incriminating of positions.

Seifer stomach dropped. He couldn't breathe.

Streaks of bright red trailed down the insides of Squall's legs.

. . . . .

The world was gray. Much like the walls in the place he could barely remember. Only, this gray was moving; a curtain of fog obscuring any depth that may have existed.

Sometimes he heard voices, though he couldn't make out the words, only listen to the low murmurs.

Sometimes he would get lost and become trapped in a nightmare_._ Those usually involved **him**. Visions of torture and sordid truths; anguish usually the common theme.

_'Fuck you, Seifer'. _The disdain in the man's voice was clear but it also reeked of desperation. Squall's body was tense, awaiting the inevitable violation with absolute revulsion.

Seifer was sick of himself, disgusted by the sight in front of him. Yet the almost imperceptible shivers he felt beneath his fingers as he let them travel along smooth white skin brought on the beginnings of ecstasy.

_'Stop...'_ The voice speaking the word sounded dangerously close to pleading. It only made it sweeter.

After that, there was only resigned silence as the blood in his veins grew colder with each thrust of his hips. It was as if the ice queen herself had poisoned his body and was numbing all sensation except all consuming pain.

And then the world shifted and his nostrils flared at the nauseating smell of burnt flesh.

He knew the place didn't really exist. But that didn't make it any less real.

It never did.

It was the stillborn future of a demented Sorceress, yet as Seifer looked at the scarred remains of his one time instructor, his body felt sick. It was too real to be only a piece of his imagination.

The memories were vague. Seifer knew he had been there before but he couldn't say exactly what was going to happen.

He looked up at the loud sound of clattering chains and was met with an icy glare. Even when facing his end, Squall was holding his head high, that unbreakable aura of defiance and pride still clear.

Seifer had to look away when the guards began their work and prepared the slave for his mistress. Even though he knew Squall wouldn't break, he knew this was the end for them both.

. . . . .

A silent tear fell to the floor as the raven haired woman watched Seifer's face contort in anguish once more. It had been like that for hours. The doctor had told her it had been like that for weeks. That there was nothing they could do.

She knew what they were saying about Seifer wasn't true. She knew him better than that. He wouldn't have; couldn't have. Why couldn't anyone else see that? Why wouldn't they help him?

Squall hadn't wanted her to come.

She squeezed Seifer's hand again.

"I know you didn't do it," she whispered softly, her thumb stroking the back of his hand soothingly. "I know it wasn't you."

But it didn't help.

Instead another wave of seizures broke out, disfiguring the once proud man and leaving froth at the corner of his mouth in silent disgrace.

Her grip on his hand tightened painfully.

No one could help him.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


End file.

Final Fantasy VIII, Angst