Work Text:
Kain’s dungeon walls are papered in resentment, covered as they are with Rosa’s face and Cecil’s uniforms, light and dark both. It is worse than mortifying, as Kain can hear their sharp intakes of breath and see the way that Rosa’s fingers tighten on Cecil’s shoulder. Kain looks around him, feels his own regret and self-loathing in the very air, and wants nothing more than to sink into those hodgepodge walls himself and disappear. Their reactions are worse for Kain’s knowledge that they have been through here once before. They need him more than he hates himself, though, so he starts walking forward.
Fighting shadows is nothing like fighting men; their forms give way and change around Kain’s spear in a way that human flesh cannot, and the blood that spills when their skin and muscle give way smells nothing like human blood. Looking at them is better than looking at his surroundings or at his friends, though, so Kain focuses on the fight and nothing else.
After Kain’s recovery, Cecil had suggested this visit, for practice. Kain had looked at him and nodded without thinking; he had made the choice to defer to Cecil in all things, after what had happened, but now Kain regrets it. They might have visited Rydia’s, or even Cecil’s own dungeon. Instead they are here, where the walls stretch upward far enough that Kain can see Rosa’s face twisted grotesquely in pain and pleasure even at the crest of a leap, and where the atmosphere matches that of his heart’s interior.
He knows that it is untrue, but he can’t help but feel as though this is a punishment.