I posted the start of this fic on my ij ages ago, and finally got around to finishing it. It didn't turn out the way I thought it would, largely because it felt like I was trying to force a situation to happen and in the end decided to stop trying. I'm not entirely satisfied with it. Takes place during DDS, with some foreshadowing references to DDS 2.
Spoilers: Takes place near the end of DDS1, and has some heavy references to in-game bosses, gameplay, and the end-game face of the Junkyard. Do not read if you haven't finished at least the first game and don't want to be spoiled.
Mantra
by Anria
"Why the hell are we even back here," Heat grumbles, but he knows why. It's not the reason Gale is giving him, either, calm and reasoned and oh-so-logical about how the walk back to Muladhara gives them the chance to rebuild their strength from that punishing fight with the giant fly underneath Manipura.
No, that's not the reason, Heat thinks, looking at Serph looking at the blood on the walls of their former base (home). Gale is half-right; Heat can feel the pulse of that weird Mana Walk mantra rebuilding him with every step he takes. But that's not the reason they came here, rather than Svadhistana or somewhere else with a vendor much closer to the entrance. The reason they came here is plain to see in the claw marks on the door, on the walls. The blood and the lingering smell of pain and flesh. Agni shifts even though Heat's thinking, Comrades.
Argilla hands the cells they've collected – that one Heat recognises, pulled from his teeth after munching on a Titania – over to Serph, who nods to her and walks into the vendor. When the door shuts behind him, they're left in silence. Even Cielo says nothing.
Snarling under his breath, Heat slings his grenade launcher over his shoulder and stalks off down the hallway, kicking the door to their former strategy room open. He stops just inside the door, not sure why he's even there – only yes, he does know.
He's spent more time in this room than he can remember spending anywhere else. They've run all over the Junkyard now, conquered every tribe, explored every corner of every base. And he can remember the details of all those bases – logistical details, layouts and blind corners, good places for ambush – but this room ... he remembers differently.
He remembers the way that one light at the end of the room flickered occasionally, how it annoyed him even ... before. He remembers dropping a grenade just a little too carelessly on the main console, once, how it hadn't exploded (he'd always had weird luck, and that was and wasn't a new thought) but had scratched the surface, chipped it on one corner. Heat remembers how he'd been in the habit of pressing his thumb to that scratch, just once, every time they returned from a mission. As though touching it meant, I'm here and I'm still alive and I'll be coming back next time, too.
Heat drops his grenade launcher to the side, a little more carelessly than he should, but he has weird luck and nothing happens, just like nothing happened with the grenade before, just like nothing ever happens when he wants it to and too much happens when he doesn't. He walks forward into the wreckage of the strategy room, grabbing the edge of the console and pulling it up – just so he can put his thumb to that scratch, just touching, thinking, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm still alive.
The thing is, Heat's starting to think that Sera didn't change him after all.
He'd followed the law as totally as everyone else, but he's getting the feeling that – that all the feelings were there, before. He'd been thinking that Sera changed him when she arrived, changed all of them, but now he thinks that this weird hunger that isn't hunger that he gets whenever he's around her was always there, before.
It's just that she wasn't.
It (worries) makes him feel weird, like someone's cast Tentarafoo on him, only they got it half-right and left him there with artificial panic wrapped in (cotton wool) something soft, clenching in his guts.
Because if ... if he was like this before, if the only difference is that Sera is here rather than not, then Heat's thinking that maybe there was no version of him that didn't hurt Sera. That that hurt was all him – Heat shies away from thinking "blame", because he doesn't blame Sera for anything, because blaming someone means they did something wrong and how does he know that, anyway? He doesn't blame her. For anything.
It doesn't matter.
Heat shakes his head. His thoughts are all jumbled up and he doesn't know right from left any more, but if there's one thing he's certain on it's that Sera is nothing but kindness, nothing but good.
No, the bad stuff is all him.
He just can't work out whether Sera changed him, or whether he was always like this.
Heat stares at his thumb, almost-but-not-quite covering the dent in the console. It means battles, and survival, and safety, and home. It meant all of those before Sera came.
And now it means the supremacy of the Embryon in the Junkyard and the bloodied, wrecked hole of their former base.
"Damn it," Heat grits out, teeth clenched, and smashes the console halfway across the room. The surge of anger is gone even before the console hits the ground, but he curses anyway, because – again – he'd moved before he thought. Before he realised he was angry.
He keeps doing that. He hates it, but Gale's right – he's acting irrationally, making decisions he doesn't remember making, not reasoning through anything, just doing.
And he keeps fucking up with it.
There's a soft swish-phut behind him, and Heat knows Serph's there even before his leader says his name, softly, weirdly, like "Heat" means more than "that irrational angry fuck-up". He always does that. It pisses Heat off.
"You done yet?" Heat snarls without turning around, knowing it's a stupid question as soon as he says it; why would Serph be here if he wasn't done with the vendor? But Serph is everything Heat is not, even after all the changes the Embryon have gone through, and Serph makes Heat angry with himself for being angry with himself – which doesn't make any sense.
Heat doesn't turn around as Serph walks up to his side. He keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the fallen console, grinding his teeth and pretending that Serph doesn't (make him feel inadequate) piss him off just by being alive.
Serph walks past him and picks up the console, setting back upright again just as Heat had done. Heat watches as Serph manoeuvres it easily with just the one hand, something that his leader could never have done before the atma and the strength they all gained with it. He rests his hand gently on the top of the console when he is done, skating his fingers across the surface until they pause at the edge, thumb going to that groove in the corner.
Anger boils up so sudden and fierce in Heat that he hears a roaring in his ears and can't tell if it's Agni raging or just blood rushing to his head. He slams into Serph fists first, fingers not-quite-claws hooked around Serph's shoulders as Serph's back hits the far wall, head rebounding off the surface. "You think that's fucking funny?" he snarls, shaking his leader a little even though a large part of him can't believe he's doing this. Leader, it says, and, louder, Serph, and just like that the anger is all him.
Heat lets go and steps back swiftly, turning around so Serph can't see his face. ". . . Sorry," he says, and for once is glad that Serph never fucking says anything because that means he won't ask what Heat's sorry for, which means Heat won't have to say too much and not enough and finally admit he doesn't know.
Serph touches his shoulder, too lightly, and Heat wants to yell at him to touch him if he's going to touch him, not just pussy-foot around it like some stupid coward, only he knows that it's not Serph's way.
And Heat. Doesn't want Serph to change.
He lets his breath out all at once, uncontrollable. He doesn't want Serph to change – doesn't want the others to change, doesn't want Argilla being miserable and hating herself and Gale being all angry and grieving and – he doesn't. Want to change.
Not into this.
It's stupid and self-destructive but hey, that's him now, so Heat lets himself just stand there for a moment, Serph's hand on his shoulder, and wish that he'd remained in that cold, clear-cut world where the law was so clear and so easy to follow, where there was no rage and no grief and no pain, just ... the law.
No Sera.
Heat takes another breath and shrugs off Serph's hand. "Come on," he says. "We can't waste any more time here. Sera needs us."
He takes a risk and glances back at Serph, but Serph is just looking at him, calm and cool as always, and it steadies him. Their whole world is going to hell in a hand basket, and Heat doesn't even know where half the stuff he thinks is coming from any more, but Serph is the same.
If he has to change, Heat thinks, then Serph had better not. Because he's not sure what would happen to the Embryon without their leader – their foundation – around. If Serph were to change like the rest of them have, Heat doesn't know what he would do.
But, he snorts to himself, given his track record, it would probably be fucking stupid.
End