Digital Devil Saga: A War With Such Casualties (Gale/Lupa, Gale/others, 1/1)

[zephyrocity]

Author: Chiara (zephyrocity, zephyrian)
Pairing(s)/Main Character(s): Gale/Lupa, Gale/Cielo, Gale/Heat, Gale/Roland. References to others.
Rating: Light R
Length: ~6,000 words
Spoilers: For safety's sake, through the end of Digital Devil Saga 2.
Disclaimer: Digital Devil Saga belongs to Atlus!
Summary: In his experience, most things ended in death.

Comments

[danse_amore]

OKAY finally finally doing this, three months later. (Three months since October. Hmmm.) And I have a lot of favorite lines. Favorite paragraphs. Whatever.

FIRST OFF the thing with Heat, where you make Gale the most unconnected and the best and I love it forever.

Gale thought often of those crucial moments, Serph appearing with Heat draped across his shoulders, pale and white-faced but silent. The bullet had been lodged deep in the meat of Heat's thigh, and there were moments where Gale thought he would be unable to retrieve it.

And then contrasting that to enlightened!Gale inbetween memories -

To him, it sounded a little-wrong, too hard and too harsh for the man Lupa once was. It made his chest hurt, made walking difficult, and the sheer feeling welling up inside him brought him to his knees on the edge of a pocket of light.

And back to robot!Gale:

Gale turned back to the window. Cielo's electric gaze made him uneasy, like Dyaus was moving just beneath the surface of his skin. It made Vayu twitch restlessly inside him; he knew that if he looked down he would see green lines spreading over his leg, a sheath of blue bone erupting from his ankle, but he did not know why.

Lupa's red eyes shone in the blue-grey light of the waterway and there was a strange curl to his lips; Gale looked at him and thought that he was what the Dissemination Machine must have meant when it discussed Nirvana, when it called Nirvana 'beautiful'. He knew what the heat flaring in his cheeks looked like; he had seen it on Sera's face when she looked at Serph: a strange pinkish hue to the skin as if flushed with exertion.

"Your face," Lupa said suddenly, and his fingers brushed across Gale's mouth and up, over the bridge of his nose and coming to rest on his cheekbones. Gale had not even noticed Lupa closing the distance between them; that above all else made Vayu, sensing danger, rise inside him.

Lupa's fingers dropped to Gale's throat and Gale froze in place as though an enemy wielding electricity had caught him off guard. He swallowed twice against the gentle pressure on his larynx and waited, knowing that he could run or use his knife to give himself the advantage. But, strangely, he did not want to; stranger still, he was not afraid.

That might be what's so amazing in this fic, there's a whole game's worth of incredible character development packed into 6,000 words. And it's all woven together ("the weave along hidden paths of light") really well and I want to know how you wrote this because I think if I'd tried to I would've fucked up the characterization of him somewhere along the way.

"Know that I understand this no better than you," Lupa said, and then leaned in and pressed his lips to Gale's.

Just. Because. Perfect.

Canines were also called cuspids, dogteeth, or fangs, and were often the largest teeth in a mammal's mouth. Copper was a chemical element, symbol Cu, atomic number 29; a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity.

His own thoughts made no sense to him. And then also the rest of that paragraph because like. It's one of the only places we see him being AI, not just "a human remembering things" and I really adore it, okay.

This might be my favorite favorite line in the whole thing (except maybe that Gale/Lupa line):

Heat shoved him up against the nearest wall, and Gale briefly contemplated using his feet to snap Heat's neck.

It's just so. God. All of this, ALL of this, I can see happening, in-game, which is madness. But. Actually though, perfectly, because not only did you capture (as I said above) the distance of the gameworld, but you also somehow caught HOW I FEEL WHEN I PLAY IT, so. YEAH.