Notes; Digital Devil Saga more like Digital Devil Cryga. ): I'll never get over this game for it has imprinted itself on the bruised tomato of my heart.
.
It's been five years, five years since they've known each other.
More than that, it's been five months since the demon virus and awakening to Agni's snarling in his head, five months since the disquieting rush of feeling that is emotion and he still doesn't understand.
He doesn't understand why he's always angry, why everything Serph does makes something bubble and coil in the pit of his stomach, like he's eaten something that doesn't agree with him. It's worse than a stomachache, worse than the rush of acid and bile at the back of his throat when he vomits and heaves everything back up, bitter and stinking. It's worse in the way a heartburn is, an incessant ache that lodges beneath his ribcage and worms into the marrow of his bones, a persistent feeling, one he carries with him from Muladhara all the way to Coordinate 136, and it only gets worse from there.
Heat makes no secret of how he feels - towards the others, towards himself, towards Serph and Sera; he remembers the term from somewhere - to wear your heart on your sleeve - and thinks it fits, even if he doesn't understand what it means. He thinks it's a stupid phrase, because only fools do that, only fools would place something so fragile and important in plain sight for all to see.
"It's simple, isn't it?" Gale says when Heat confronts him, attempts to get an explanation for what he's feeling because - because Gale always has the answers, Gale always knows the solution.
He doesn't have time for Gale's casual mockery. Heat snarls and slams his palm against the table and Gale stares stonily back, doesn't even do him the favour of flinching or reshuffling his damn papers as they settle back in place.
"Come on, just say it, I know you're dying to-"
"It just means," Gale says calmly, "that you are a fool."
.
(He's always disliked Gale, or maybe Agni's always disliked Vayu - because Gale's a cold bastard and everything is just data and figures to him, nothing but logistics to be processed. They're more than that, so much more than that, more than experiments and specimens to be viewed with dry clinical curiosity.)
.
He doesn't remember being so angry before; maybe something's wrong with him because there's only the slow burn building and crawling up inside him, the kind that makes him want to dry-heave on the floor until there's nothing left inside. He doesn't remember wanting to rip Gale open from throat to belly with Agni's claws and make him eat his words and take them all back. He doesn't remember wanting to devour anyone - but especially Sera, not in the usual visceral way but something more tender, kinder, less vicious but still so, so desperate. He doesn't remember wanting to do the same to Serph - only he wants to devour him in those two distinct, separate ways, to sate two different hungers that burn in Agni's heads.
.
At first, Coordinate 136 is just another obstacle in the way, just another troublesome base to be scoped.
Agni grows increasingly silent in his head; he dislikes the story of the princes, dislikes the way the princess looks too much like Sera and the two princes can only be him and Serph. He doesn't know how he feels about them any more, all that he knows it that he's sure it's treason to want his leader dead for something he can't remember.
He doesn't fucking comprehend anything.
.
At their new base, he corners Serph, bars the door and stands there and looks at him like his chest isn't burning and tearing itself apart, like Agni isn't roaring in his head.
"Answers, Serph," he spits without preamble, and Serph's eyes narrow as he follows Heat's pacing across the room. "I need answers."
Serph doesn't say anything. He never does and truthfully, Heat thinks he's forgotten the sound of his leader's voice - or maybe it never existed, in the first place. He tries to think back, to endless rain and grey skies - and before that there's blue and warmth and then yellow, but he still doesn't remember Serph ever raising his voice, doesn't remember Serph saying anything-
(To study the body, you cut it open; to study the mind, you isolate it by crushing the heart.)
-and something puddles unpleasantly in his gut and he wants an excuse, anything.
"Why don't you do anything? It's treason to think about betraying your leader, isn't it? Attacking you, daring to turn on you - all that should have been a death sentence and yet you don't fucking do anything."
He's read some of the books he's seen around, pored over the data Gale hacked from secure servers. Varna, he knows, is order and law; judge, jury and executor who hangs the liars by his noose. Serph, he thinks, is the furthest thing from that.
He feels like a caged animal; the room's too small, far too small to contain Serph and him and their demons. If he wants to, maybe he can show Serph once and for all who's the strongest one - that mercy means nothing in the Junkyard, not after Bat and his string of alliances.
Serph's smile is thin, a crooked, bitter thing that doesn't reach his eyes. He steps forward, slowly, measuredly, like he thinks he has all the time in the world and Heat will just stand there like a fool to await his judgement - and the thing is, Heat's starting to think Gale had it right, that maybe he is a fool after all, for believing he'll ever get anything out of Serph.
"You know how I feel about you," Heat says, and he's already thinking, thinking about the old anger like an open sore that stings every time he brushes against it, thinks about Coordinate 136 and how he could've ended it right there - but he knows he couldn't have, because thinking about it right after made him feel something else, something heavy and uncertain that settled in his chest. Sadness, Argilla had called it, and Heat hadn't understood then but he does now. "You know I could've - would've killed you ... and you never, you don't-"
"Comradeship," Serph says simply, so softly Heat thinks he's imagining things - like the whisper of his leader's voice, the unreadable look in his eyes. He looks at Serph and Serph walks right past him, and rests his hand on Heat's shoulder. "Because we're comrades. Because you've always been my right hand. Because I trust you."
The room is too large, too empty when he's the only one in it.