[Digital Devil Saga] Pulse
Title: Pulse
Wordcount: ~2000
Pairing/Characters: Uhm. Gale/Heat, Argilla. Mentions of Heat/Sera, Heat/Serph (sorta), Gale/Lupa, David/Jenna.
Rating: PG-13, I guess?
Disclaimer: I do not own this wonderful video game! In fact, I have still not even played the last two hours. But I hope to very soon (this weekend? Eh, Chiara? Eh?) and I love it forever.
Note: So I don't actually expect anyone to read this other than zephyrian and it is SUPER SPOILERY for this game but I kind of like it so if you don't mind having no idea what is happening, please, read on.
Humanity has always focused on the moon as a source of inspiration, of mystery and romance. Lovers walk in moonlight when there are still things they’re not ready to reveal - things that they’d prefer to remain in shadow under their joined arms, secrets they let their partners taste in the darkness between their lips but not see, not yet.
In contrast, the sun brings with it a harsh honesty that burns away all self-delusion and all secrecy with it. Aging couples gravitate to places with lots of sun when they’ve picked apart each other’s mystery - when the secrets that hid between their teeth now sit in glasses of clear water, where everyone can see.
Thus, it makes a sort of distant sense to Gale that the first step on the strange porous surface of the sun brings absolute clarity.
He looks around at his comrades, and for maybe the first time remembers who they are. Not what - he knows that. They are computer programmes. They are members of the Embryon. They are demons. They are the only people who can save the world.
But they are also people, and that’s not a feeling Gale’s used to. It slips in under his skin - not like the strange thing that eats at his stomach, no, that’s a cold sort of flame that slowly inches his way up his throat until his head splits down the center and he must eat. This slips under his skin like maybe his skin was never real, but a layer of paper someone pasted carefully over muscle and blood and a heart that is remembering why it beats.
Argilla meets his gaze, and he looks back, curious, trying to see the human in her eyes. She lowers her chin, after a moment, and lets her eyelids fall. He doesn’t blame her. She’s scared - the demon in him can smell it, tells him to take advantage of that weakness.
The human in him takes a step forward, wants to draw her into a hug.
Gale touches his forehead. It is an action that he is just beginning to understand. He is adjusting the glasses that should be on his face. He is feeling, lightly, for the corner of a gaping jaw. And it helps him think.
“I am sorry,” he say to Argilla, and she looks startled. In the junkyard, she was the first to know what that meant. Now she seems as baffled by it as he was then. He half expects her to shake her head, to say “I do not comprehend,” her eyes slipping silver, but instead she opens her mouth and lets out a much more human, “Why?”
He doesn’t have an answer for that, so he stays silent, and she says, “I did what I thought I had to.”
Gale nods, more a drop of his chin than anything else. He waits for a second, expecting Heat to chime in with an angry, “You fucking killed me,” or maybe a biting, “You shot the wrong guy, bitch,” but there’s just the soft whispers of solar data, sliding pinprick trails over his skin.
He takes a step back and keeps turning, and there’s a face missing in the group surrounding him. He closes his eyes and touches his forehead and looks for the bright-dark signal in all the data around them, the strange smell-taste-sound that is Heat. When he finds it, the demon in him surges and hums.
He slips down into one of the crevasses to find him leaning against a wall, hand splayed and shaking, his eyes tight-closed. He’s beating fast and steady with blood, like all he has left is the pulse of his heart.
“Heat.” David wants to run. Vayu wants to bite and suck and taste the life that’s practically dripping from his comrade. Gale wants to take a step forward, so he does.
“What do you want?” Heat snarls, not looking around. He doesn’t have to. He knows who Gale is, has known since Gale first found him.
“I wish to talk to you,” Gale says, and Heat spins.
“Me?” He asks, a little crazily. He lets out a short laugh more roar than chuckle. “Which one?”
Gale takes another step forward, too far into Heat's space, too far. He raises a hand, tracing a long finger along the line of Heat’s jaw, not to antagonize him, not to test anything, just because he wants to. He half expects Heat’s paper-skin to flake off in the wake of the pad of his finger, but Heat just shudders, his eyes caged in their sockets.
“This one,” says Gale.
Heat jerks his head away. “Aren’t you going to tell me the same bullshit you told them?” He asks. “That what we are and who we were can combine to become who we are now, that it doesn’t matter what we’ve done in the past because we’re different here?”
Gale parts his lips, but doesn’t say anything. There are words written along the insides of his paper skin, tracing in lines where veins should be, but somewhere along the way he lost his ability to read them.
“It matters,” Heat continues. “It matters because me, the me that I’ve always been, the me that you know, was made by someone who hated me.” His eyes narrow. “Who feared me.” He slides a hand up the front of Gale’s uniform to fist it in his wide collar. “Look around you, Gale,” He says. His wide-eyed gaze holds Gale's, keeping from doing so, but he doesn’t need to to know what Heat means. “The whole world is data. The me that Sera made, that’s data. In this world, I am hated. I am feared. And you know what I did to deserve it?”
Gale lowers his eyes, and Heat drops him with a snarl.
Gale isn’t sure that’s what he’d wanted, but he stands straight anyway and says, “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Heat snarls in painful echo, and turns away. There’s a moment of silence - only from him, the whole world is buzzing in Gale’s head - and then he says, “He’s going to save the world.”
Gale could ask who, but there’s a certain tension in the line of Heat’s shoulders that tells him. “Sera will save the world,” he says instead, because it’s just as true.
Heat shakes his head. “Sera’s gone. Serph’s gone.” He closes his eyes, bares his teeth. “Now there’s just that, that thing that is neither of them, and Sheffield.”
“Heat - “ Gale starts, but something slips sideways in his head. No. Not Heat. Not Gale, either.
“O’Brien,” David says instead, “Sheffield’s dead.”
“So are you,” says O’Brien, and there’s a shade of something to his accent, something very different from Heat’s anger, a resentment and a deep sadness. “So am I. So is everyone in this gods-forsaken place.” He turns to fully look at David, and then it’s just Heat looking at Gale again. The sadness, though, lingers, a window to something huge and empty behind Heat’s eyes. “I was just trying to help her.”
Gale tips his head to the side, wonders if that makes the tears suddenly at the back of his eyes more or less likely to fall. “Do you love her?” He asks.
Heat clenches his jaw tight, a hardness returning to his face. “Do you love Jenna?”
Gale tips his head the other way, considering, feels the tears slip closer to the corners of his eyes. “I loved her,” he says, and his feet make little noise on the surface of the sun as he moves. “I loved Lupa, too,” he says, and that brings the tears right to the corners of his eyes, stinging and hot. “But now,” he says, and Heat is shaking, he sees it, feels it when he traces fingers down the tendons in the side of Heat’s neck. “No.”
Heat raises his hand, covers Gale’s with it. It’s warm and it’s heavy and it pulls the tears down Gale’s cheeks. He’s surprised by them, a little - it feels as if he is letting tiny pieces of himself slide down his face and away, feels like he should be able to feel them hit the ground, but the moment they leave his eyes they are just water.
Heat gathers one on his thumb and puts it to his lips, his tongue lapping out like it’s a wound that needs cleansing. He frowns at the taste of it. “What are you doing?” He asks, but he doesn’t move away, doesn’t let go.
“Crying,” says Gale.
“Stop it,” Heat says. “I don’t like it. Stop.”
Gale shakes his head. “I can’t. I think it has to stop by itself.”
Heat growls, the sound of it making the cold fire in Gale’s stomach unfurl, and then he lunges forward.
Gale should dodge. He knows what Heat’s teeth can do. He’s seen Heat tear into dozens, hundreds of lesser demons. He’s seen him rend and kill and devour. Heat has killed so many of the voices he can hear streaming past, Heat killed Serph -
He doesn’t dodge, and Heat’s lips land, soft, warm, and surprisingly gentle, on his own.
He opens his mouth. He doesn’t know, quite, if it he meant to say something, or to bite, or whether it was just surprise moving his jaw but Heat doesn’t let him decide which him he is, right now, Heat’s licking into his mouth, Heat tastes like metal and warmth and a little like blood, Heat’s arms are around his waist, pulling him in and holding him there.
Gale lets his eyes slip closed, makes the very conscious decision to let himself go boneless, doesn’t even notice that he’s still crying.
Heat does. It’s like Gale’s tears burn him, he jumps away so fast. His lips curl into a snarl, wounded and angry in the only way he knows how. “I told you to stop!” He shouts. “You’re not her, this is not me making you -”
He stops himself with an effort, the misery in his voice drawing Gale forward even as he smirks, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. “Heat,” he says, following as Heat retreats, across the surface of the sun, into himself. “Heat.”
Heat looks at him, eyes tortured, and Gale leans in, his fingers closing hard around Heat’s chin and keeping his gaze locked. “I’m not Sera,” he agreed. “Do you really think you could force me into anything?”
He watches as the part of Heat he loves most takes that as challenge, and the part of Heat he knows least takes it as truth, and he watches those two Heats catch fire enough that they cannot be blown out. He lets the edge of his lip curl up to show his teeth, and then he leans in.
Heat freezes for an instant. Gale can feel his fingers trembling at his side, curling into a claw, the muscle shifting under his skin. He knows Heat has to fight off that same rush of kill that he did, and for a moment he thinks Heat might not win. He wonders if for them it will end here on the surface of the sun, tearing each other’s souls to little pieces and sending them spinning off into the dark.
He feels Heat’s lips drawing back in a snarl - no, a smile, because his hand is just a hand on Gale’s hip and he’s kissing back and he’s won.
Above, Heat’s killer and the man he killed speak in bright blips of information about the world they will save. Those they’ve loved and those they’ve murdered rush in streams and hang in clouds around them, flashing in and out of Gale’s mind in bursts of passion and revenge, need and rage. Gale’s fingers are tangled in Heat’s hair, and when he tugs, he can feel Agni rise in Heat’s chest, but it only makes Heat kiss him harder.
He’s won. For now.
Wordcount: ~2000
Pairing/Characters: Uhm. Gale/Heat, Argilla. Mentions of Heat/Sera, Heat/Serph (sorta), Gale/Lupa, David/Jenna.
Rating: PG-13, I guess?
Disclaimer: I do not own this wonderful video game! In fact, I have still not even played the last two hours. But I hope to very soon (this weekend? Eh, Chiara? Eh?) and I love it forever.
Note: So I don't actually expect anyone to read this other than zephyrian and it is SUPER SPOILERY for this game but I kind of like it so if you don't mind having no idea what is happening, please, read on.
Humanity has always focused on the moon as a source of inspiration, of mystery and romance. Lovers walk in moonlight when there are still things they’re not ready to reveal - things that they’d prefer to remain in shadow under their joined arms, secrets they let their partners taste in the darkness between their lips but not see, not yet.
In contrast, the sun brings with it a harsh honesty that burns away all self-delusion and all secrecy with it. Aging couples gravitate to places with lots of sun when they’ve picked apart each other’s mystery - when the secrets that hid between their teeth now sit in glasses of clear water, where everyone can see.
Thus, it makes a sort of distant sense to Gale that the first step on the strange porous surface of the sun brings absolute clarity.
He looks around at his comrades, and for maybe the first time remembers who they are. Not what - he knows that. They are computer programmes. They are members of the Embryon. They are demons. They are the only people who can save the world.
But they are also people, and that’s not a feeling Gale’s used to. It slips in under his skin - not like the strange thing that eats at his stomach, no, that’s a cold sort of flame that slowly inches his way up his throat until his head splits down the center and he must eat. This slips under his skin like maybe his skin was never real, but a layer of paper someone pasted carefully over muscle and blood and a heart that is remembering why it beats.
Argilla meets his gaze, and he looks back, curious, trying to see the human in her eyes. She lowers her chin, after a moment, and lets her eyelids fall. He doesn’t blame her. She’s scared - the demon in him can smell it, tells him to take advantage of that weakness.
The human in him takes a step forward, wants to draw her into a hug.
Gale touches his forehead. It is an action that he is just beginning to understand. He is adjusting the glasses that should be on his face. He is feeling, lightly, for the corner of a gaping jaw. And it helps him think.
“I am sorry,” he say to Argilla, and she looks startled. In the junkyard, she was the first to know what that meant. Now she seems as baffled by it as he was then. He half expects her to shake her head, to say “I do not comprehend,” her eyes slipping silver, but instead she opens her mouth and lets out a much more human, “Why?”
He doesn’t have an answer for that, so he stays silent, and she says, “I did what I thought I had to.”
Gale nods, more a drop of his chin than anything else. He waits for a second, expecting Heat to chime in with an angry, “You fucking killed me,” or maybe a biting, “You shot the wrong guy, bitch,” but there’s just the soft whispers of solar data, sliding pinprick trails over his skin.
He takes a step back and keeps turning, and there’s a face missing in the group surrounding him. He closes his eyes and touches his forehead and looks for the bright-dark signal in all the data around them, the strange smell-taste-sound that is Heat. When he finds it, the demon in him surges and hums.
He slips down into one of the crevasses to find him leaning against a wall, hand splayed and shaking, his eyes tight-closed. He’s beating fast and steady with blood, like all he has left is the pulse of his heart.
“Heat.” David wants to run. Vayu wants to bite and suck and taste the life that’s practically dripping from his comrade. Gale wants to take a step forward, so he does.
“What do you want?” Heat snarls, not looking around. He doesn’t have to. He knows who Gale is, has known since Gale first found him.
“I wish to talk to you,” Gale says, and Heat spins.
“Me?” He asks, a little crazily. He lets out a short laugh more roar than chuckle. “Which one?”
Gale takes another step forward, too far into Heat's space, too far. He raises a hand, tracing a long finger along the line of Heat’s jaw, not to antagonize him, not to test anything, just because he wants to. He half expects Heat’s paper-skin to flake off in the wake of the pad of his finger, but Heat just shudders, his eyes caged in their sockets.
“This one,” says Gale.
Heat jerks his head away. “Aren’t you going to tell me the same bullshit you told them?” He asks. “That what we are and who we were can combine to become who we are now, that it doesn’t matter what we’ve done in the past because we’re different here?”
Gale parts his lips, but doesn’t say anything. There are words written along the insides of his paper skin, tracing in lines where veins should be, but somewhere along the way he lost his ability to read them.
“It matters,” Heat continues. “It matters because me, the me that I’ve always been, the me that you know, was made by someone who hated me.” His eyes narrow. “Who feared me.” He slides a hand up the front of Gale’s uniform to fist it in his wide collar. “Look around you, Gale,” He says. His wide-eyed gaze holds Gale's, keeping from doing so, but he doesn’t need to to know what Heat means. “The whole world is data. The me that Sera made, that’s data. In this world, I am hated. I am feared. And you know what I did to deserve it?”
Gale lowers his eyes, and Heat drops him with a snarl.
Gale isn’t sure that’s what he’d wanted, but he stands straight anyway and says, “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Heat snarls in painful echo, and turns away. There’s a moment of silence - only from him, the whole world is buzzing in Gale’s head - and then he says, “He’s going to save the world.”
Gale could ask who, but there’s a certain tension in the line of Heat’s shoulders that tells him. “Sera will save the world,” he says instead, because it’s just as true.
Heat shakes his head. “Sera’s gone. Serph’s gone.” He closes his eyes, bares his teeth. “Now there’s just that, that thing that is neither of them, and Sheffield.”
“Heat - “ Gale starts, but something slips sideways in his head. No. Not Heat. Not Gale, either.
“O’Brien,” David says instead, “Sheffield’s dead.”
“So are you,” says O’Brien, and there’s a shade of something to his accent, something very different from Heat’s anger, a resentment and a deep sadness. “So am I. So is everyone in this gods-forsaken place.” He turns to fully look at David, and then it’s just Heat looking at Gale again. The sadness, though, lingers, a window to something huge and empty behind Heat’s eyes. “I was just trying to help her.”
Gale tips his head to the side, wonders if that makes the tears suddenly at the back of his eyes more or less likely to fall. “Do you love her?” He asks.
Heat clenches his jaw tight, a hardness returning to his face. “Do you love Jenna?”
Gale tips his head the other way, considering, feels the tears slip closer to the corners of his eyes. “I loved her,” he says, and his feet make little noise on the surface of the sun as he moves. “I loved Lupa, too,” he says, and that brings the tears right to the corners of his eyes, stinging and hot. “But now,” he says, and Heat is shaking, he sees it, feels it when he traces fingers down the tendons in the side of Heat’s neck. “No.”
Heat raises his hand, covers Gale’s with it. It’s warm and it’s heavy and it pulls the tears down Gale’s cheeks. He’s surprised by them, a little - it feels as if he is letting tiny pieces of himself slide down his face and away, feels like he should be able to feel them hit the ground, but the moment they leave his eyes they are just water.
Heat gathers one on his thumb and puts it to his lips, his tongue lapping out like it’s a wound that needs cleansing. He frowns at the taste of it. “What are you doing?” He asks, but he doesn’t move away, doesn’t let go.
“Crying,” says Gale.
“Stop it,” Heat says. “I don’t like it. Stop.”
Gale shakes his head. “I can’t. I think it has to stop by itself.”
Heat growls, the sound of it making the cold fire in Gale’s stomach unfurl, and then he lunges forward.
Gale should dodge. He knows what Heat’s teeth can do. He’s seen Heat tear into dozens, hundreds of lesser demons. He’s seen him rend and kill and devour. Heat has killed so many of the voices he can hear streaming past, Heat killed Serph -
He doesn’t dodge, and Heat’s lips land, soft, warm, and surprisingly gentle, on his own.
He opens his mouth. He doesn’t know, quite, if it he meant to say something, or to bite, or whether it was just surprise moving his jaw but Heat doesn’t let him decide which him he is, right now, Heat’s licking into his mouth, Heat tastes like metal and warmth and a little like blood, Heat’s arms are around his waist, pulling him in and holding him there.
Gale lets his eyes slip closed, makes the very conscious decision to let himself go boneless, doesn’t even notice that he’s still crying.
Heat does. It’s like Gale’s tears burn him, he jumps away so fast. His lips curl into a snarl, wounded and angry in the only way he knows how. “I told you to stop!” He shouts. “You’re not her, this is not me making you -”
He stops himself with an effort, the misery in his voice drawing Gale forward even as he smirks, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. “Heat,” he says, following as Heat retreats, across the surface of the sun, into himself. “Heat.”
Heat looks at him, eyes tortured, and Gale leans in, his fingers closing hard around Heat’s chin and keeping his gaze locked. “I’m not Sera,” he agreed. “Do you really think you could force me into anything?”
He watches as the part of Heat he loves most takes that as challenge, and the part of Heat he knows least takes it as truth, and he watches those two Heats catch fire enough that they cannot be blown out. He lets the edge of his lip curl up to show his teeth, and then he leans in.
Heat freezes for an instant. Gale can feel his fingers trembling at his side, curling into a claw, the muscle shifting under his skin. He knows Heat has to fight off that same rush of kill that he did, and for a moment he thinks Heat might not win. He wonders if for them it will end here on the surface of the sun, tearing each other’s souls to little pieces and sending them spinning off into the dark.
He feels Heat’s lips drawing back in a snarl - no, a smile, because his hand is just a hand on Gale’s hip and he’s kissing back and he’s won.
Above, Heat’s killer and the man he killed speak in bright blips of information about the world they will save. Those they’ve loved and those they’ve murdered rush in streams and hang in clouds around them, flashing in and out of Gale’s mind in bursts of passion and revenge, need and rage. Gale’s fingers are tangled in Heat’s hair, and when he tugs, he can feel Agni rise in Heat’s chest, but it only makes Heat kiss him harder.
He’s won. For now.