Dégel hated himself.

He hated how his lungs sometimes burned. When they failed him, the world around him would spin in everlasting blue and green, with cold sense of weightlessness detaching his consciousness from his own body. He hated how the ground would turn frozen whenever his hand unceremoniously touched it during his fit, and how his brother-in-arms' worried voice kept calling him as he slowly descended to unconsciousness

He hated the fact that he could be the liability that may doom them all one day. Perhaps, during a fight where his comrades need him, his lungs would fail him again, leaving an almost uncontrollable power in its wake to destroy without picking its foe, thanks to the (partly) godly blood that kept him up and running, but continued to disrupt his iron-grip control over his own cosmo.

Those were his last thoughts moments before he lost consciousness, every time.

"Were you trying to kill yourself?"

Those were the words that rung in his mind every when he woke up, in every time he failed to call his medical assistant for help. Scorpio Kardia may not have proper medical background to back his informal title, but having Aquarius Krest as a master would turn anyone into the best he needed to be. This was enough for him to score the position under the Pope's consideration when they were finally staying at the Sanctuary; both of them had already lived together for years under Krest' harsh tutelage, after all. Kardia would naturally understand Dégel's frail condition.

(As his medical assistant, Kardia took his job seriously.)

"…Sometimes, I tried."

(Dégel hated him for that. A little.)

Kardia halted his healing attempt then. His wild fiery cosmo that enveloped both of them burst for a single moment, before retracting back to himself so scathingly that Dégel flinched. He could then feel his stinger tracing his hands pressure points on his arms and pricking one of them so slowly that Dégel groaned. This was how he knew that Kardia was beyond pissed at his response.

(Despite his fiery persona, Kardia had always been gentle during this moments.)

"When will you understand that I freaking have your back, you ass," he muttered, "so what if you're ill? So what if you'll become a liability? So what if, one day, you will lose control of that power of yours just because of freaking godly blood in your system? You're still a freaking saint of Athena. Don't you want to live for that purpose, to serve her–and hence, the world ?"

(He did not reply. Kardia's words rung felt too surreal to be true, because… how should he serve her while his own existence may prove as a liability?)

But Kardia did not just stop there, his blue eyes burning with rage and... was that sadness? Dégel could not tell. "I have your back, damn it. I will pick you up when you fall, I will burn you when you freeze, and I will always be freaking here every time to remind you that they do not make you any less than a saint of Athena."

There was another prick through his pressure point; Kardia's scarlet stinger was poisoning him with heat to counter the freezing effect that his cosmo had–the same phenomenon that might as well be the source of his detached feelings towards reality. After all, the lung illness that he had already set him differently. While he gave no mind to those who thought that he was incapable of being a saint, the thoughts of being a liability haunted him forever, always driving him to that corner of mind-where reality did not matter, where he thought that maybe it was okay to let it end.

He had his personal ice cage.

(Kardia knew this.)

But then the warmth swept in; Kardia's words slowly sank into his psyche, breaking the ice that had long trapped his poise-–his reality–-if only for awhile. The ice would grow back, and perhaps he would be thrown to this situation again and again. But Kardia's warm presence remained a solid rock for him to depend–a silent promise that the Fire Knight will thaw it again, until the end.

"…Thank you, Kardia. And I'm sorry."

Kardia never replied back to his murmur, but his cosmo burned ardently, like a hearth of fire–like life itself–and fought to warm him up. For Dégel, it was answer enough.