Notes: Missing scene for ep. 27, "Wake Up, Agri!"
As his transformation fell away, Agri slid to his knees, head pounding as he tried to reconcile the day's events.
Alata knelt beside him and touched his shoulder, but even that gentle touch made Agri flinch away. "What happened?"
Agri just shook his head, unsure where to start.
Moune was in front of him, her worry a nearly physical force. "What did you mean about it not mattering what people thought about you?"
"You didn't say those terrible things about me." It wasn't a question. "About me. About how I'm useless."
"What?" Moune reared up, ready to beat anyone nearby. "No! Who said that?"
"You did. I mean, I thought you did." Agri rubbed the back of his neck, which felt strange. "The Yuuma Beast did something to me when he attacked and I started hearing...things."
"Things?" Moune asked.
Saying the words was like chewing glass but he knew that the only way to exorcise them was to speak them. "That I was impatient, that I thought more power was the only solution, that...you didn't need me and I was no longer a Gosei Angel."
"Oh, Agri," Eri said, kneeling next to Moune. "That must have hurt. But we would never say such things."
"It seemed real. It was your voices." That was not a tear, absolutely not. He planted his hands on the ground, which he could hear trying to comfort him. "I started to believe you-believe them. I thought you didn't need me."
Hyde was on his other side. "You're a valuable member of the team," he said in his most uncompromising voice.
Agri grinned through the tears that absolutely weren't falling onto the ground. "I forgot."
"Don't do that again," Alata said in the leader's tone he rarely used when not transformed. "You scared us."
"When you didn't respond," Moune said, shivering. "I..."
"We thought the worst," Hyde finished for her.
"But everything's okay!" Eri said.
"You are well, Gosei Black?" Gosei Knight asked.
Everyone looked up at him and Agri considered the question seriously. "Yes. I think I am." Gosei Knight nodded and walked away. Agri couldn't help a small chuckle and if it was a bit watery, nobody commented. "He really loves us."
"Uh-huh," Moune said.
And then they were all touching him and he didn't flinch. Alata's hand on the back of his neck, Hyde's on his shoulder, Moune taking a hand, and Eri touching his knee. Their warmth seeped into him, filling all the places that the Beast's spell had emptied.
-end-