A small WMD (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miniroth) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
childrenofbahamutlogs2024-12-01 06:45 pm
miniroth) wrote in childrenofbahamutlogs2024-12-01 06:45 pm
Entry tags:
In which there is messiness.
Who: Smallerroth, Angeal; maybe Olderroth and Genesis if they wish
What: Tending to the inconveniences of new limbs.
Where: At home!
When: First week of December.
Warnings: Blood, violence .. kind of, self harm, kind of, homebrew cosmetic surgery, topics of self harm likely. Body horror, gore.
The faerie festival was good for at least a couple things, one of which being the cup that kept refilling with strange, sweet drink that numbed the aches deep in his bones and down uncomfortable lines through his back. Most of the ache, he was pretty sure by its familiarity, meant he might finally be on his way to working to matching his future self's considerable height though that would still likely take a couple of years. But the pain down his back was of a different sort, and over the course of the last week more and more difficult to ignore.
He could, if he twisted carefully to look in a mirror, see the long distended shapes under his skin.
As they grew, and nerves and muscle with them, his habitual knitted turtleneck became unbearable, and then the jacket as well, unless he made ample use of the cup of pain-dulling nectar. Skin stretched to accommodate but didn't break, and waking in the morning to being able to move the things on his back, feel through the things growing under his skin, rub them against the inside of his back and the nauseating mix of sensations that caused as even the barest restless twitch lifted his skin away from muscle and fat in painful wrenches. It was like being skinned from the inside.
The nectar makes it bearable. For a while. But inspection morning and evening made nothing obvious about skin getting ready to split, and the urge to twitch the things he could feel, both under skin and wrapped over other, hidden skin was beginning to get maddening. Enough that a pair of stolen belts is used to keep them ratcheted tight and immobile one late morning, jacket carefully shrugged on, more faerie drink to dull how incredibly unpleasant that is, and slip quietly from the room he'd taken over as his own.
Ordinarily he'd have long since left the house in the relentless search for things to do. This time it's to pick his way delicately through, checking the most obvious places first in tracking down Angeal, the skinning knife he took with him when running trap lines still sheathed in one hand.
He would not be, if he knew the history Angeal had with his own changes. What he knows is that the SOLDIER has a very steady hand with a knife, and that his older self trusts him absolutely. Genesis he'd never seen wielding small sharp objects - swords certainly, but this required fine control that the redhead surely had, but ...what if he didn't? His elder also, might refuse, well aware of how uneasy the thought alone of handing someone a knife and asking them--
...It had to be enough.
What: Tending to the inconveniences of new limbs.
Where: At home!
When: First week of December.
Warnings: Blood, violence .. kind of, self harm, kind of, homebrew cosmetic surgery, topics of self harm likely. Body horror, gore.
The faerie festival was good for at least a couple things, one of which being the cup that kept refilling with strange, sweet drink that numbed the aches deep in his bones and down uncomfortable lines through his back. Most of the ache, he was pretty sure by its familiarity, meant he might finally be on his way to working to matching his future self's considerable height though that would still likely take a couple of years. But the pain down his back was of a different sort, and over the course of the last week more and more difficult to ignore.
He could, if he twisted carefully to look in a mirror, see the long distended shapes under his skin.
As they grew, and nerves and muscle with them, his habitual knitted turtleneck became unbearable, and then the jacket as well, unless he made ample use of the cup of pain-dulling nectar. Skin stretched to accommodate but didn't break, and waking in the morning to being able to move the things on his back, feel through the things growing under his skin, rub them against the inside of his back and the nauseating mix of sensations that caused as even the barest restless twitch lifted his skin away from muscle and fat in painful wrenches. It was like being skinned from the inside.
The nectar makes it bearable. For a while. But inspection morning and evening made nothing obvious about skin getting ready to split, and the urge to twitch the things he could feel, both under skin and wrapped over other, hidden skin was beginning to get maddening. Enough that a pair of stolen belts is used to keep them ratcheted tight and immobile one late morning, jacket carefully shrugged on, more faerie drink to dull how incredibly unpleasant that is, and slip quietly from the room he'd taken over as his own.
Ordinarily he'd have long since left the house in the relentless search for things to do. This time it's to pick his way delicately through, checking the most obvious places first in tracking down Angeal, the skinning knife he took with him when running trap lines still sheathed in one hand.
He would not be, if he knew the history Angeal had with his own changes. What he knows is that the SOLDIER has a very steady hand with a knife, and that his older self trusts him absolutely. Genesis he'd never seen wielding small sharp objects - swords certainly, but this required fine control that the redhead surely had, but ...what if he didn't? His elder also, might refuse, well aware of how uneasy the thought alone of handing someone a knife and asking them--
...It had to be enough.
no subject
And maybe they all need a little bit of space, sometimes, to be clingy.
As for him? He tends to go to the kitchen first thing in the morning, clean up what might need cleaning up over the night, and tending to the hearth. Get breakfast ready so Genesis's complaining will be minimal.
And he's also been using the time to practice a bit his.... fire breath, he guesses it is. Which isn't what he would haven chosen for himself, but he does have to admit it could have its uses. For example, as he crouches down in front of the hearth, and tries to get it to work properly so that he can light the fire. Get the heat of the room up a little bit for everyone else. Especially Sephiroth - the small version - he knows he's been having a time of it lately-
Speaking of which.... He glances up at the sound of someone at the doorway. "Oh, hey. Phi." It's his latest attempt at figuring out a nickname to use around Sephiroth. He's... not sure if it's a winner. "Up earlier than normal. Going to meet Gaia...?"
no subject
And some other small things, like getting his claws re-filed down to a comfortable smoothness instead of razor sharp points. Gaia was emphatically not a friend, but she was his age, and understood more than he'd have expected an offworlder to about some things. In any other situation, he could acknowledge she probably would make a decent friend, by what conclusions he could draw from remembering how his team acted together. "There is ... something I require assistance with." Asking for help directly wasn't especially common, and usually ended with comparatively minor things. Like entire bags of sugar being needed for candy making efforts.
But this isn't about something so easy. Not this time. Not with the dull ache beginning to gradually sharpen back to distractingly unpleasant. "I can no longer manage adequate rest, or wearing shirts or jackets comfortably." Sure, he's wearing one right now, and a pair of stolen belts. Sure, he might be understating how it feels by a fair bit, but that's what the faerie drinks were for, and right now it was merely unpleasant and thus under rigid control, stifled to countless tiny signs of stress. Earlier was the breathtaking agony that made staying still that much harder, and every twitch made it so much worse, when all he could do was lie there in rigid silence and wait for the compulsion to move to pass.
There's a deep and profound unease with knowing that scales and claws he could reasonably hide. But wings? "I think my ... my scales may be too thick to rupture from the inside." The skinning knife is held out, hand almost steady. If those things emerged, he'd never be able to pretend to be human again. He could move them as easily as moving a finger, feel the sickening pressure of his own skin keeping them wrapped, feel the sting of tissue tearing and trying to re-heal back into place as every twitch pulled it free. The straps kept the worst of the impulse to move still. "I can likely manage with my sword but there's a reasonable chance I'll make a mistake."
He didn't like knives anywhere near his skin. Allowing even the tiny ones Gaia used to keep nails short and smooth was a struggle, and the idea of deliberately asking anyone to take such a thing to him dredged up the prickles of fear and sickening dread.
no subject
They're also, ultimately, not important. Not compared to the uneasy way that Sephiroth seems to shift, that subtle look on his face... and then the confession.
It says a lot, about the kind of life he's been dealt and made to live, that he already has an inkling of just what Sephiroth is about to ask him simply from the first sentence. From the idea of shirts being no longer easy to wear. Yet even knowing that, and having the time to brace himself for the end result, his stomach still twists almost painfully when he hears about it.
When that knife is held out.
Hand almost steady. But only almost.
Angeal breathes in deep through his nose, and forces his lungs to work with him as he forces his own hand to reach out. "So you think a skinning knife is enough to get through scale?" he asks, glancing down at it. Surely it doesn't feel that easy. It was built for other creatures. Not - them. Or, rather, not scales from dragons. "Well. We can see how it goes." Another steadying breath.
Sephiroth is asking him to do this. And it is not... to get rid of them. To ruin them. In his mind, he can recall being trapped in a mirror, and watching his worst impulses be allowed to run rampant, a dark doppleganger.
How it had frantically torn at white feathers, leaving behind a bloody and sagging mess attached to his back, before going off to find something that could do the job far better.
This is nothing like that. This is - practicality. Simple practicality, to do the healthy thing. To get struggling wings out, like how sometimes you had to help a chocobo chick poke through its shell before it suffocated. He can do that much, can't he? For Sephiroth?
"...We should do this somewhere that won't make it so noticeable so much blood will be spilled too. Even if it ends up neat as can be, I don't think that a completely clean job is possible. Did you have a preference?"
no subject
If the scales grew back, if the claw he cut straight to bone grew back, so too would the wings.
Eventually, so too would a tail.
As soon as the skinning knife is taken he drops his hand, running it almost absently along his forearm and the scales under jacket there. He's too preoccupied with skin shifting against the underside of skin to note subtle cues that this is anything but how it looks in Angeal; it looks like calm and acceptance and reasonableness. He didn't know how everyone accepted it so calmly, as if it were fine and all of this was perfectly normal--
For a moment the blunt claws dig in, as if they were still sharp enough to do damage. The leather doesn't puncture, made to resist more damaging things than dull talons. "...I can put down blankets in my room." He had plenty of them. Leaving was asking to be spotted, and remaining out here was asking for one of their housemates likewise to turn up. "They can be cleaned later." He'd see to it himself.
It's not the ideal location but it'll do. He didn't have much else in there, besides a bed and a growing number of blankets, quilts, comforters, fur pelts and one wall tapestry. Sacrificing a few was acceptable. He turns a little too quickly back the way he'd come, nerves frayed; Angeal seemed calm enough and that would do too, calm and steady hands was the entire point.
no subject
So he keeps the blade careful in his palm and rises up to his feet, taking in how those claws dig into Sephiroth's leather. Right, what the hell use are his feelings anyway? This isn't about him. Sephiroth is the one suffering here. What the hell is his problem, getting caught up in his own bullshit?
"...I understand the logic here-" Especially the animalistic logic of it all, wanting to keep one's pain and transformations on lockdown. "-but, alright if I suggest the basement instead...?"
It's a bit of a change, he knows, but... "It's colder down there, so that might be able to help slow down the blood a little bit. Temperature and all that. I'd recommend whatever thin and thick towel you like the least."
Angeal hesitates only a second before revealing the sentimental reason. "Besides... I know it probably doesn't matter to you right now, but... I don't want your bedroom to be stained with that memory inside of it." He doesn't want Sephiroth to remember the smell of his own blood while laying in his bed, waiting to go to sleep, or getting dressed up for a day out with Gaia.
Sephiroth, at this age, no doubt thinks it ridiculous. But Angeal wants him to have something.
no subject
He pauses momentarily, the suggestion of the basement considered for a few seconds before he nods. That was better. Fewer chances of someone turning up. Sensible, reasonable, and apparently beyond his ability to think of himself. There's a reason the labs were always freezing, after all. Towels were probably better than blankets, but wouldn't be as comforting, and maybe that's important too.
When the perfect reasonability of a cold location out of everyone's way gets the addendum of something like worrying over whether or not the memory would tarnish where he sleeps, Sephiroth pauses again, glancing back, brow furrowed. "..I don't see why that matters." Except it did, and it's a distraction to seize upon. "..I will find a towel or two."
And maybe a blanket. It won't take him long, he keeps things scrupulously organized.
Something's amiss, that he can't quite get his teeth around while his heartbeat is a rapid staccato in his own ears, but focusing on that instead of his own situation is at least something to try to force a similar calm into place.
no subject
And Angeal waits a moment, waits until Sephiroth has left his line of sight, before he shakily sets the knife to the side. He just - he needs a minute. A minute to grind the heels of his palms up against his eyes, tangle fingers into his hair. Breathe. Ignore the distant voice in the back of his head - he's gotten good at that.
Breathe. And then get to work. He can't get lost in his own emotions, no matter how much he can feel his skin standing on edge.
He's needed.
And that's all that's ever mattered.
Considering he only has to grab a towel and blanket, Sephiroth might reach the utter chill of the basement before Angeal. This is because when Angeal finally makes it down, he's carrying a couple more knives on his person, a washcloth, a large basin filled with water, and some bandages. Just... Just in case. "I sterilized the knife as best as I could," he explains. "Can't be too careful. Want something to bite down on?"
no subject
Sephiroth knows, knows that if his older self, his brother for all intents and purposes, trusted Angeal implicitly, he could too. It led him to asking at all, this isn't something he could even begin to trust almost anyone with. But the bite of cold and knowing what he'd asked to be done keeps him from even beginning to relax. He's endured worse. But not by choice.
The added things, more knives, basin, bandages, somehow makes it more real.
And for a moment he looks perplexed about the necessity of sterilizing anything before realization flickers back up. Right. None of them are as protected as they should be. Infection's actually a risk. "..No. My teeth are too sharp." He'd just bite through a whole lot of things! And what he couldn't might well break those same teeth.
The teen shifts from foot too foot, a slow restless motion, unwilling to remove the jacket he knew needed to come off, or the straps keeping things still. "... I can ask another, if this is unacceptable." It's quiet. Very quiet, and in it all the uncertainty and unease and disgust and numb horror he didn't otherwise give voice to. Is it about Angeal's concerns at all, when the First had been nothing but calm and in control, or his own spiraling anxieties? "Elidibus .. has surely seen far worse than this."
no subject
Like right now.
So he keeps to it, instead nodding at Sephiroth's words. He thinks that they could still find something that might help, even if that might mean tearing through cloth because of sharp teeth... But before he can mention that, Sephiroth says he can step back.
His heart freezes in his chest, in a way that has nothing to do with how cold it is down here. Has he actually noticed the various little reactions that give away Angeal's own trepidation? That would have been beyond the Sephiroth that he can remember in his own youth, but, well, while it's just been a few months here for all of them, that can still be enough for great change. Or maybe he's just that much off his game.
"...You asked me to do something, and I'm not the kind of guy who will bow out when it's important. If you want Elidibus over me, that's one thing, but... I won't abandon you, Sephiroth."
He's already done that once in his life, and he thinks it was one of the greatest mistakes he ever made.
"...Want to sit down and think it over? I can get everything set up and, if you still want him over me, I can fetch him easy enough. I know he'd come in a heartbeat if I came calling."
no subject
Almost certainly, except doubts and fears have a way of insidiously undermining everything, and he trusted slowly if at all.
Slowly, he shakes out the blanket he'd picked as a sacrifice and sets it on the floor, then settles on it sitting on his knees, as comfortable that way as any other way of sitting around. He's not really thinking it over, not weighing whether or not the thousands-year-old ancient Emissary might be better suited, he'd made his choice when he didn't leave the house in search of aid. The problem was he didn't want to upset anybody with what he knew would be as unpleasant for them as for him. What if their calm was an act as much as his was? What if Angeal was as afraid of what was happening to him, as Sephiroth was?
Maybe worse. He can't see what's happening, he can only feel it. "..No, I know he would." But it wasn't really an option. "....If you're agreeable then it's fine." It isn't but he was going to ignore that until it was no longer an issue.
He'd been careful since these changes began to keep everything he could utterly hidden as so many others did, gloves and boots and high collars and concealing overcoats, and though it's necessary he's reluctant to shed that covering. He doesn't have to see what's surely going to be disgust, at least, as he finally carefully sets the jacket aside and works with unsteady fingers to hook a claw under the stolen belts and work on unbuckling them. There's no mirrors here. Though he'd gotten away with sparse scales on his face and throat, the same can't be said for his back or shoulders, the scales there heavy and considerably thicker than the delicate fish-scale like ones elsewhere, only a ghost shade of green in otherwise matte black marked by more vivid green splotches edged in gray, high up between his shoulder blades and a bit at the base of his neck similarly dark short, rounded feathers immediately fluffed uselessly against the cold. He'd need to get his hair trimmed soon, it's getting long in the back, almost enough to touch those little feathers. And the problem, the long, wide distended shapes beneath his skin, folded from shoulder to hip, back up and then back down, peeling hide and scale off the muscle below it without ever managing to break through with a muffled wet sound, what skin can be seen through the pattern of scales mottled dark with trapped bleeding. They can be made out, in a vague sense, to look something like flattened arms in their shape, the slide of them under skin something that looks vaguely fingerlike but on a far larger scale.
And it is very, very hard to hold still. Nothing makes it harder than knowing he shouldn't, knowing it will hurt if he does, and the long misshapen digits under the skin of his shoulders twitch visibly like some barely restrained impulse to clench a hand that isn't a hand. He's probably been losing sleep longer than a single night.
no subject
This is nothing he hasn't seen before.
Angeal tells himself that, and tries so hard to dissociate his mind from the view in front of it. From what it means. From what he's going to do. It's easy, with the little things - scales and feathers and all that. He's seen that before. He's had that before, had to make some sort of peace, however fragile, with the fact that wings spread along his back and that his tail could whip through the air with all the force of a speeding car. Worse.
He tries to tell himself that, and it doesn't work as much as he'd like to see the grotesque way those limbs warp and press up against skin. No, against scale.
Angeal waits for him to lay down, before he reaches over with the basin. Begins to carefully clean the skin there, with a bit of warning so that Sephiroth doesn't jump as much. "...You took some of that numbing nectar beforehand, right? Smart move. But you're still tense. We need to get your mind off of this, to help make this smoother. You and Gaia go out regularly hunting together, right - why don't you describe for me how that goes? Step by step. Every detail, no matter how you might think it inconsequential, like the color of the bark on the trees."
And maybe as long as he keeps talking, that will help distract him from the fact that a knife will be pressing into his flesh.
no subject
"..Have been for a while." It helped! A lot! And with more than just the things that may or may not be wings growing, nectar helped the general ache of adolescence too. What's the point of having something if it's not being made use of? And without any connection whatsoever to the Professor or Shinra, it was easier to do without feeling unsettled by it.
He knows what Angeal's going for, such recommendations had been part of more than one course on battlefield first aid and rescue. "I don't know how you're okay with this." That's not what Angeal suggested, and it's threaded with a note of painfully obvious bleakness that manages to actually make him sound like the kid he is and not the trained killer he was made to be. "Any of it. Doesn't it bother you? ..Any of you?"
Was it simply training, or was it some impossible level of acceptance that he couldn't even begin to emulate? No wonder he was seen as a child, cowering as children do, afraid of the unknown when the adults simply accept it as a part of life and move on.
"...I don't need distraction," he adds after a moment, choosing determination and stubborness as best he can, waiting for the sharp edge of the knife. One of them; there'd been several brought down besides his own. "I've been through much worse pain than just a knife." Angeal would know that though, if he was close to his future self. He can hold fairly still, but the impulse to flex the encased limbs was relentless and strong, strangled into a quiver and little more.
It's going to be harder than it should be to get through even the softer skin under a lifted scale, a durability that, while nowhere near the toughness a SOLDIER could enjoy at the peak of their strength is still beyond what a human should possess, or perhaps even the amalgamation of dragon they've become. And any wound doesn't bleed ... quite as long as it should, either. Weak, unused muscles had no chance of ever breaking through, should have days ago if they could.
Bad timing, having even a small part of the enhancements mako and Jenova afforded him choosing to return just as biology would have wished more fragility to allow for easier fledging.
no subject
Finishing a clean up of Sephiroth's back, he presses down just one more time with the cloth in an effort to reassure before removing it, and then sets it on the rim of the bowl. Waste of cloth if he just sets it down into the dirt again.
"The simulation we were all in would regularly throw curveballs at us," he starts to say, inspecting the knife he's chosen for one last look-over. Just in case. He probably doesn't need the others, but... Just in case. The constant mantra in his head, a terrified rhythm of words. "Every other month or so, it could be something else that was an absolute mess. Some of it was just things we were doing on our own, of course, or the result of bad actors. One of the last things that happened, as a matter of fact, was that one person murdered another. We had to organize a whole investigation into it, made all the more difficult by the fact that the guy responsible not only could teleport, but had a pair of fuckbuddies - one his second in command, the other just a useful idiot - who tried to give him alibis."
Okay. Okay. He can do this. He knows the basic idea of what he needs to do. So, carefully as he can, gentle, he starts to test the pressure of the blade. They're in uncharted territory, here. While they're not at full ability as either SOLDIER or dragons, that just means a whole lot of in-betweens they could be at. Going too hard right off the bat would be a disaster, so he'd rather be more careful.
He keeps talking. Tries to keep his voice loud enough that maybe it can ease away the feeling of the blade against skin, no matter how numbed.
"But a lot of other times, it was those outside the simulation - some of them responsible for its maintenance, some not - just fucking around. Sometimes by accident, but other times on purpose even if they didn't say as much." Gotta encourage the fucking to save the world or.... whatever. Angeal still doesn't get it. He still half suspects a lot of it was bullshit.
"One of those times... It was one of them that had a thing for truth. Pure, unfiltered, exposed truth. And she thought all of us trying to hold back, to not show all of ourselves to everyone else for no damn reason... She didn't really see the point in it."
Ah. There. That's it. That's the pressure he needs, blood slowly and so slowly oozing out along metal. It doesn't come rushing out as fast as he expected and he doesn't think it's because of the cold.
He keeps talking. He keeps slowly cutting through.
"She changed people's forms to reflect the darkest parts of themselves. What we considered the worst aspects of ourselves, made physical in some way. It affected everyone differently. Genesis became more birdlike to an immense degree. Mithrun was actually similar in a way, gaining feathery legs and talons, his arms replaced with wings."
Is he getting to a long enough cut? Should he go in a little deeper, to help more? What if he risks accidentally snagging the wings with the blade? Angeal doesn't want to cause undue suffering but he doesn't want to make things worse from his own worry either. Regardless, he makes sure not to be in the way for a smack from a bloody wing.
"I didn't escape that either. And-" His voice grows just a little rougher, just a little more jagged around the vowels. "I hated it. When my brain wasn't otherwise compromised from a distraction, I hated it.
"All I could do was tell myself that it would pass. And I had to make that be enough."
no subject
The edge of the blade flashes in the lamplight, and he turns his gaze away from even where it might reflect, eyes closed. Asking Angeal questions always came at the dubious risk of a story, and when it seemed this too would, it's accepted. In the face of everything else, it was nothing to be bothered by, and he maps it onto what little he knew of the simulation automatically even with a thin sheen of sweat breaking out, driven by adrenaline.
A bite of cold metal and then pain is marked only by a brief hitch of breath and clenched teeth. The Professor tolerated no cries on his table. No thrashing. No complaint. Lessons he can apply here, while focusing instead on the endless differences between a sterile lab and a dirty dark cellar. And Angeal isn't a scientist.
They wouldn't be so gentle in the gradual excision of a trapped limb they wanted to get a look at. The blood inside, older and thicker, is clotted and dark, sticking to an array of what looks awfully like short, thick pinfeathers when exposed to air, little more than dark keratin knobs. Not the elegant, fully feathered things that was a hallmark of Jenova, for better or worse, but the unfinished look of a hatchling, if that hatchling happened to have wings that looked crossed with the handlike limbs of a levikron. But for all the bright pain of cutting blade, there's more relief than agony in having the immense pressure of too-tight skin suddenly released.
This was not the story of a hot spring turning people into dragons that he'd heard before. This was .. more specific. Why the darkest part of Genesis' personality would be birdlike, or Mithrun's, who seemed a terribly sober and unchirpy sort of person to him, he didn't know. There was likely some meaning to it he didn't grasp. "Did it?"
Angeal wasn't describing what form this 'she' changed him into. "Pass." It must still hurt, nectar or no nectar, by the wire-tight tension in every muscle, words as steady and articulated as he could make them. Obviously Angeal looked human now - or ... had, before progression towards dragon began changing that too. When my brain wasn't otherwise compromised had an ominous tone. How often was he compromised, to not hate it? To not, perhaps, fear it?
A simulation that could change the body could surely also warp the mind. Like the whispers of a long dead dragon.
There's no sudden flail for freedom as cold bites far deeper than it ever should. It's strange to move limbs he wasn't born with, to try to sort out moving only one and not both, to deliberately try to fold what seemed like fingers but couldn't be up against the naked wing and with awkward imprecision begin a more controlled effort to wriggle the thing free in little cautious fits and starts. It's not as coordinated as he'd like, the untried muscles weak. "That's not the ... the dragon spring, was it?" It's not really a question.
no subject
"But few things stayed with people permanently in that place... Not unless they really worked to keep them that way." Stamp purchases, in other ways, playing into the whole system. Angeal can't judge; he bought things with his own hoard too. "So when Legion had gotten satisfied with the results of her bullshit, she reversed everything back to how it was. Just like that. It... passed."
Probably, he could further dig around in the knife to help that little wing have even more room... but Angeal doesn't feel that would be the best choice. Not only in potential injury, but in robbing away a chance for a new body part to have a little exercise.
So, gently, experimentally, he presses his hand down against the skin, gently massaging and trying to coax it out like that with little pushes, make it realize how it should work.
"...I manage to trick Charlie into the bakery a decent amount, and I've got him talking. Plus with the things he's said in that first meeting we all attended." Well. Almost all of them, huh, Cloud Strife? "If he's to be believed, if this is the same as any other past event similar to it, then... It's the same here. One day, at some point in the future... We'll be able to look normal again. It's just... going through everything first, before we can get there."
no subject
Probably for the best. Anything that looked like it might head that way was a fantastic way to get him to immediately retreat, out the door or into his room. They were all allowed to do as they pleased, but he wasn't going to hang around to overhear any of it. He'd only been there for part of that town hall meeting, had missed that part as well but it had been explained afterward and found little consolation in it. They'd all know what lies beneath looking normal. "..but we won't be." They'll be monsters, wearing human appearances.
The long incision at least only felt like an incision and not a deep wound, dulled by cold a bit and moreso by the cup sitting off to one side; it still absolutely hurts, but it's ignorable, well within his tolerance. Surface level pain was better than muscle deep or bone deep, but it's still messy, brighter fresh blood mingling with the older and darker clots formed over several days and now jarred loose. It's easier to tell what sensations come from his back and what come from the wing being worked free by degrees, bloody little pins pulled upright in some unconscious effort to fluff against the cold and getting nowhere with it. And being able to feel it so distinctly from the cut scales is somehow worse than the wound itself, not because of pain but its indelible, inescapable marking of something he won't be able to hide. Won't be able to pretend isn't there, or continue to delude himself that he was in spite of all appearances, still human. The hitch in his breathing is subtle, squashed into regularity as best he can, but the tremor's back.
Through gentle nudging and massage, working the 'wrist' free of its scaly prison seems to be key to getting the rest out smoothly, for once it gets loose, long clawed not-fingers tightly curled as possible with so little coordination to try to prevent more damage, the rest slides free in a bloody smear, the still-trapped counterpart instinctively trying to follow the motion but still trapped where it was in another rolling distortion of hide and scale. When the feathers actually come in, by those little pinfeathers, the limb won't look so grotesquely deformed, might even cover most of the handlike structure and render it all a little less hideous. Right now though, a specimen jar might be better suited for something so ungainly looking.
no subject
They won't be.
Then again... They weren't normal for a long time.
Angeal doesn't say that. This is something he knows his Sephiroth is struggling with on how to handle - the kind of bizarre situation that neither of them would ever have realized they'd run into years ago. Instead, he just tries not to look at the soaking red limb which fumbles out from the opening, focuses on the muscle beneath his fingertips. If he doesn't look, maybe it will help him feel a little better.
It won't, really. Still, he tries, and picks up the blade again. There's another wing struggling to emerge, after all, and he can't just linger.
"Maybe not normal past skin-deep," he mutters, struggling to gather all his own internal arguments together. The things he's tried to tell himself, so that he's not as much a burden on Sephiroth and Genesis. "But considering the percentage of people here who are going through the same thing, technically, we can say it's a kind of normal. And Charlie never said anything bad about those who have experienced this in the past." So they have to hope. Or at least pretend they're hoping, and maybe that will pay off.
Carefully, his guides the blade beneath skin and scale again. Tries to grab hope that the other side will open up as neatly as its sibling did. "And as SOLDIER... One could argue we were never normal to start with. But that hasn't stopped us from living lives, right?"
no subject
Not anymore, not with the sharp chill of cold creeping across wet, scaleless new skin in a way sixteen years of familiarity can't quite map properly onto an old and familiar bodyplan. It's a preview perhaps of what Angeal and his closest friends would soon be enduring themselves, if they weren't already.
Sephiroth knows he's supposed to formulate a response, hold a dialogue as Angeal had seemingly wanted with asking about his traplines and Gaia, some mundane task to keep his mind focused on anything other than the suffocating tide of emotions that made his hand shake when he raises one to scrub at his face and erase the suspicious wetness there. It's not conscious action but rote experience that makes him go once more as still as he can at the bite of blade under scale, moving always made things worse. Even if he couldn't quite stop the minute quaking of his entire too-tense frame, he tries. Compliance is not an option. There's no protections on the inside to preven the knife from doing its work, only cutting through the annoyingly tough skin, easier form below than above. Generously, it doesn't seem to be more of a struggle than the first had been, save that the first lay in the dirt carefully still. The limb still trapped beneath dark scales is as stained red as the first as it's exposed, just as strangely shaped and as unmoving as he can make it.
This isn't the sterile rooms of Research and Development. It isn't the Professor and a few handpicked aides, pursuing some new experiment.
He knows it. But the dread and despair tastes the same, tinged only new by a change of circumstance; this isn't a test, this is the destruction of ever being able to even pass as human again. Any impulse to fight back against the pain, resist in any way, do anything at all but remain still and as quiet as he can manage, has long since been driven out. It's useful here; he'd asked for this. Deliberately. The least he could do is try to bury anything like sniveling childish nonsense and endure.
Answer. "Charlie-" His voice doesn't sound right to his own ears, a betrayal. He tries again, desperately working to match what seems awfully like utter calm in Angeal. The second time it's less of a strained squeak. "..Charlie means well."
Better. Not good, but better. Just reasonable stress of the moment, surely, and nothing more. Breathe. Slow and deep. "But.. he's guessing." No, that's not the response anyone would want to hear, even if he knew it wasn't accurate there was an expected response. Doing otherwise was insulting the aid he's being given. "... Everything is living a life." Aside from him, SOLDIERs were perfectly normal to start with. "I'm sorry. You're right." Technically it's a kind of normal.
Technically they're all going through this. They're just dealing with it better.