#one day I'll change that tag to the ✌🏽 instead of the ✌️- anyways

[silverselfshippingchaos]

Pairing: Ash (self-insert)/Seifer Almasy (Happy Late Birthday, Seifer!)

Word Count: ~1.8k words

Warnings: A bit of swearing, brief descriptions of past self-harm, vague FF8 spoilers. More of a character study than anything. Ash and Seifer were both child soldiers and are learning how to live again. Just some good ol' hurt/comfort

Synopsis: It had been a few years since it had all ended and peace was returned to the world. Ash, an elite mercenary once known as the Garden's Perfect Ten was now living alongside her rival-turned-lover, Seifer. But despite their new, peaceful life, scars from the past remain. For the first time in his life, Seifer doesn't have to face his trauma alone. He is loved.

Seifer never fully recovered from Edea's mind control. He is in control of himself and his actions, but what of his mind? Sometimes his head aches, thoughts that aren't his feel so real again. He's 18 again, grabbing at his head and wanting nothing more for it to just stop. Chills run down his body, and he can't do anything but sit there and take it. The whispers aren't as bad as they were when he was a teenager, but they're not gone. Maybe they never will be.

Seifer is more than aware that he has done awful things in the past. He was once a teenager in charge of an army, he awakened an evil god from her slumber, and he tortured a man he now calls a friend. Seifer is different now, that much is a fact, but he considers it his responsibility now to live with the weight.

Would things have been different had he done something else? What if he made SeeD? He'd sooner die than admit it to Squall, but Seifer knows that going through would Squall did would break him.

Seifer has spent a lot of nights on his own after it all happened, staying awake and staring at the ceiling, sometimes even crying. Always thinking too fucking hard. Life had never been easy for him, and the one time he felt like he had a purpose... He fucked it up. He tells himself he was true to his ideals until the very end, but in reality? He was nothing but a scared little kid.

Seifer sits up in bed, his body covered in a cold sweat. He buries his face in trembling hands, trying to get himself to calm down, trying to get the throbbing in his skull to just stop already. He had gotten accustomed to waiting these moments out, drinking some water, and rolling over and going to bed once more.

But the days where he spent his nights alone were long since past. Warm arms wrap around him, and it feels like a safe haven. Ash holds him and pulls him into her chest.

"Seifer..? Heard your breath shake."

Her voice is soft. Gentle, but comforting.

"I'm sorry."

It's a quiet whisper, something so unlike him. Seifer always took it upon himself to be bold and brash, always leaving an impression (whether it was positive or negative was something he simply did not care for). Ever since he was a child brought to the Garden for the first time, he had one lesson drilled into his head. Personal feelings didn't fucking matter so long as you yielded results. He took that to heart.

But with Ash, for the first time in his life, he doesn't mind talking about how he feels. He knows that she'll listen and he doesn't feel afraid. Being vulnerable wasn't scary, the one thing in his life he could never do. Seifer never felt weak whenever he talked to her about his feelings.

Still, the last thing he wanted was to disturb her sleep. They bickered and they bought, even tried to kill each other as teenagers, but he loved this woman more than anything the world had to offer. If she wanted her to kill, he'd do it. If she wanted to see it all burn, he'd bring the matches.

This woman was his life. When they were children, she'd giggle and read him picture books, little fingers following the words as she tried her best to sound them out. Now that they're adults, she still smiles at him the same way.

"No, no, baby... Don't apologize. Tell me what's wrong."

Ash's soft voice is like a beacon of light in the night that was the aching headache. Nights like these were especially awful, and his head felt almost exactly like it did the day it all went fucking wrong.

Seifer wraps his arms around Ash's waist and holds onto her tight, maybe even too tight. Ash doesn't complain. Seifer lets out a soft whimper, and he knows that he must seem fucking pathetic, some sorry excuse for a guard dog. Seifer knew he could be himself around her and that she would never judge, but he was still her knight. Her protector...

Not that she needed protecting, of course. He learned that lesson all too well when they were still enemies and she didn't hesitate a moment before pulling the trigger, shooting him in the shoulder. Still, he'd rather be the one taking blows than her. It's a lot fucking harder to kill him, after all.

"Is it another headache?"

"Yeah."

And Seifer's voice breaks, like some pathetic, scared little kid. Maybe that's what he was, what he never really stopped being. A mask of fake pride and false bravado could only last for so long. He could only build the walls around his heart so high before they all came crashing down.

"Oh, Seifer..."

One of Ash's hands finds its way to Seifer's hair, freshly washed and soft as ever without its usual gel, and starts to play with it. Light scratches across his scalp, running her fingers through his blond hair in an attempt to soothe him.

Taking care of each others' hair had always been important to the two of them. Seifer had put so much time in effort in learning how to properly take care of Ash's curls, and the feeling of his hands as he braided her hair always brought her comfort. She thinks to herself that perhaps she can make him feel the same.

"It's okay, Seifer. I'm right here... It's all over now."

Ash kisses the top of his head, and stays there for a moment. His hair smelled like her favorite shampoo. Ash knows that she's changed him, impacted him, and she can tell by the way he smiles when they're on dates that maybe this is what he had always needed. Even when they were students and they "hated" each other, Ash never thought he was a bad man. Misunderstood and misguided, sure, but never bad. Never evil.

It was far from Ash's first time comforting him through one of these moments. Sometimes it was so easy to get caught up in the past... So Ash always reminds him that the past is gone. Now it's just them together their bedroom and Seifer is absolutely safe. Matron had long since apologized to Seifer for everything. After all, she was being controlled too, but the impacts of everything couldn't be reversed. Seifer would heal, yes, but never would he be the same. That didn't mean he had to face the past alone though.

The longer Ash plays with his hair, kisses the top of head, whispers sweet little nothings about how it'll be alright, how nothing can hurt him anymore... The headache begins to fade. His body still feels generally uneasy, trying to fight something that isn't even there anymore, but he's getting better. His breath evens, and he just holds Ash closer, snuggling his face into her neck. He smells the remnants of her cologne, barely clinging to her skin after a long day's work. What a lovely smell.

"Ash..?"

"Yeah? You feel better?"

"Mhm. Thanks."

"Good."

He can hear Ash's smile, and he likes it. He wants to protect that smile, make sure she never gets hurt again. Seifer had felt powerless against so much, and the only real constant in her life has been this urge to protect and serve. Being a knight was his duty and his calling. But protect what? Serve what? And now, he has found it. This is why he lives.

"I love you, Ash."

"I love you too, honey. More than anything."

Seifer's head is still buried in Ash's chest, so his words are a little muffled.

"Love you so much it hurts. Y-you're really too good for a guy like me sometimes, y'know that?"

"Hmm," Ash giggles, "I don't think so. You're the only person in the world I'd ever want, Seifer."

"With you I feel... safe."

It's hard for Seifer to be vulnerable, Ash knows that. But she's proud nonetheless. Ash kisses the top of his head once more,

"Heh, guess in a way... I'm your knight then."

"My knight... Think I can get used to that."

Ash chuckles, and before she knows it, her Seifer is fast asleep, bare arms still wrapped around her. Even in the dim light of their nightlight and the moonlight fluttering in through the window, Seifer was so beautiful to Ash, sharp and strong features so relaxed, blond hair like gold falling into his face.

The scar across his face had begun to fade, but it was still there. Ash was glad it was healing, but she couldn't deny a certain affection for that scar, finding it both equal parts attractive and adorable.

Seifer told her that if she feels that way, she can go fucking ask Squall to give him another since he had no intentions of getting his face cut open again. The memory almost makes Ash burst out laughing. Her life had become so happy these past few years. It wasn't without its hardships, sure, but nothing worthwhile ever was.

"I love you, Seifer. With all I am."

For too long, Ash had been a weapon, a tool, a SeeD. No one really wanted to say it, but the words were all synonymous. Whenever Ash is with Seifer, she can experience the same joy she had back at the orphanage... The honor to just be herself.

She wasn't the Garden's Ten, she wasn't the wielder of Eight and Two. Sometimes she remembers her earliest days of gun training. There she was, a scared child sobbing in a pool of her own blood because she shot herself and it hurt. She was scolded and reprimanded when she woke up in the infirmary, but she didn't understand why. If she was to inflict this pain onto others, she wanted to feel it for herself. From that day onward, she devoted herself to her guns.

For too long, Ash was the gunslinger that was forced to grow up too quick, barely an adult rushing onto a battlefield (quite literally) guns blazing. Pulling a trigger was as natural as breathing to her... No. Not anymore.

With a smile on her face, Ash drifts off into dreamland too. Ash is excited to see what tomorrow holds. Not just for her, but for the man she has grown to love with every fiber of her being, Ash rests easy, knowing that she will get to wake up to the sight of his smile. What a lovely life she led.