Disclaiminess: Nomura wants me to write gayness with his characters. He told me so.
There's a fire inside of him.
And it's not hot; it's not cold. It's just burning, blazing for eternity because it can. It's not feeding off of oxygen or spilling out ash. It doesn't exhaust or waver, it doesn't bleed fumes or wither in the rain. It's certainly beautiful, though, with sparkling but dull rages of red, the ageless angles of orange, and the screaming sightlessness of yellow.
It wants to be touched, but it doesn't know by whom. It's no misogynist, it's got no sexuality, and it's never been tampered with or whored out. It's a pure flame, maybe: purer than him, surely.
It just burns ... and burns ... and burns ...
And everyone can see it; the oranges in his eyes, the silvery light in his hair, the scold on his tongue, the embers on his fingerprints.
His Second In Command has commented on it but once, when his gaze was lost and his mind encompassed, arithmetic and analysis coalescing in his mind.
"Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch, but it's a mistake to leave the fire for a filmy sight."
His Second is strange in this manner, saying little when there is much to be said and saying too much when all that's wanted is silence. And he knows he'll never understand these things his sometimes superstitious assistant says, but he will sit and think on them, let the gray substances cloud his vision for just a bit longer.
When he doesn't respond, the man with the yellow eyes gives a final state and shows himself the door.
"Stay here at the flame's core."
But the ashes are in his ears by that point, dulling out the sound waves and seeping into his brain, making everything taste like tragedy. A very ... tragic ... tragedy.
He knows Saix can drink it in when they share their tasteless kisses.