Solace
Disclaimer: I do not own Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner or any related characters/concepts/ideas.
A/N: Edit: Fixed some things.
A drabble of sorts.
His world was tainted, and Gale knew it. This thing called the Junkyard was vile, it was unclean, and it was damned.
He couldn't remember when he had come here, nor could he remember why. Small tidbits of strange memory would come to him sometimes of white walls and the smell of overwhelming hydrogen peroxide and acetone, but he dismissed them as merely proof of his constantly slipping sanity. He was slowly going crazy in this world of non-stop fighting, and though he was quite good at tactical advising and all the like, it still drove him to the brink of storming the Karma Temple and killing everyone so as to end this ridiculous strife.
And what irked him more was that none of the others could see it.
Serph was too wrapped up in his damn Karma to notice anything but the blood dripping from his claws. Argilla was engulfed in her baffling emotions--this "sympathy" she felt for those who died--to be able to sit down and think about it, otherwise, she probably would have already come to the same conclusion as he had.
Cielo was...something else. There were no words to describe Cielo--he was cool, collected, and didn't seem to have a worry in the world. What was more, was that he was much too incredibly nice since the arrival of Sera--whom he constantly says he recognizes from somewhere that he just can't pinpoint.
And Heat, as they all knew, was all but obsessed with the mysterious girl, Sera. To put it frankly, he was infatuated. Completely, utterly, head-over-heels, die-for-you in love.
This was one of the many things Gale couldn't understand. What was so incredibly wonderful about this girl? He had felt no emotions for her at all. If anything, perhaps a certain curiosity, but that was as far as it reached.
Until that horrid day.
He could remember it all too well. The thrashing; the screaming; Cielo's voice yelling for him to halt. And he remembered the bullets that bounced off his body in a torrent of deafening cracks like lashes from a whip--he remember it so well that he could even feel it sometimes in his dreams.
But then she had come upon the scene, singing that wonderfully terrible song--the song that made him remember another woman. One whom was long gone in his own ice-bearing heart, but very much alive in his mind.
All he could think about now was her, Sera...the one with the heaven-song and the eyes that made him feel the best thing that had ever happened to him and the worst all at the same time.
In Sera's arms, it had felt so sinfully comfortable. He wanted to never ever leave the shelter of soothing glowing grey eyes, a soft voice, warm body heat, and short black hair.
He looked up at her, mouth forming the words he knew plagued everyone's thoughts. And he knew he would kick himself later for sounding so dumb, so blunt, so like Heat, but he asked her, anyway.
"Who...who are you...?"
And as if she completely understood him--as if she completely forgave him for almost killing Cielo and acting like a fool--she smiled, her head cocking to the side to make her grin seem all that much more wide.
Just like that, Gale was gone--forever lost in the persona that was, and always would be, Sera. She was everything he needed, and nothing he wanted. The woman he would covet heart-wrenchingly at night in his quarters, and the girl he would protect mindlessly in the day on the battlefield.
She was innocent, but she was stained. She was gentle, but she was harsh. She was what would mend him, she was what would break him.
She was a contradiction in herself, and Gale loved it.
He loved her.