Digital Devil Saga (Argilla/Jinana)
Jul. 6th, 2007 12:49 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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kinkfestTitle: Absence and Hues
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
puella_nerdii
Fandom: Digital Devil Saga
Pairing: Argilla/Jinana
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 515
Spoilers: Takes place after the first trip to Manipura in DDS1.
Prompt: Fall from grace - is this the world we have made?
Notes: Uh, it's still kind of the fifth? Sorry I didn't manage to work in the prompt line per se.
The transition from Manipura to Anahata should be just that -- a transition, a brief pause between departing from one base and arriving at another. But this isn’t brief. Argilla counts silently to sixty to keep herself busy; once she’s cycled through the sequence of numbers thirty times, she can’t bring herself to resume the count. Instead, she stares at her hands, bright pink fingernails at their tips. Why are her nails so vivid? She thinks it has something to do with the way her body flares out at the hips and torso. Her comrades have thicker arms and heavier shoulders, and though their chests are broad, they don’t curve outward the way hers does.
Argilla glances up at Jinana, who presses her ear to the thick canvas as the transport shudders and halts, the steady hum of its engines becoming uneven. Jinana is shaped like she is. Heat drew attention to the fact near the beginning of their journey, when he stared at Argilla hungrily through the curtain of his hair and asked her if she thought Jinana’s breasts were better than Prithvi’s. (She slapped him on the arm. It seemed like the right thing to do.) She squints, trying to make out the details of Jinana’s hands in the fading grey light filtering in through the loose flaps of canvas. Are Jinana’s nails colored like hers are? Argilla gets a picture of the tips of her fingers brushing against the red ink beneath Jinana’s eye and shivers.
Jinana’s eyes have no color at all. They remind her of the sky in the way that Cielo’s and Gale’s don’t. With Jinana, it’s less of an absence than it is a -- a something. No new thoughts enter her head to explain what it is that she really means.
“Like the skies are about to break,” she says aloud.
Jinana turns to her slowly. “The sky cannot break.”
“No,” Argilla agrees. “It can’t.” She runs her teeth over the edge of her lip. “But there are things in the sky. Clouds, I think. And in the clouds, there’s -- the rain comes from them, doesn’t it?”
She blinks slowly. “I think I understand.”
“That’s what I thought your eyes looked like.” She trails off. It isn’t a very good observation. It sounds...she thinks the words cliché and stupid at the same time, and if the first word means the same thing that the second one does, both of them are true.
“Why?” Jinana’s voice is soft, the way her lips are.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It has to do with ‘sad,’ I think.”
“My eyes remind you of the sky because they are sad,” Jinana says slowly. “And sad is the way I feel about everything changing. Everyone dying. That was what you told me earlier.”
“Yes.” Argilla nods.
“So the sky is grey because it knows that the world beneath it is cursed,” Jinana finishes.
A hard knot materializes in Argilla’s throat. “Maybe.”
The press of Jinana’s hand on Argilla’s cheek is soft, almost too light to register as a touch at all.
Author:
puella_nerdiiFandom: Digital Devil Saga
Pairing: Argilla/Jinana
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 515
Spoilers: Takes place after the first trip to Manipura in DDS1.
Prompt: Fall from grace - is this the world we have made?
Notes: Uh, it's still kind of the fifth? Sorry I didn't manage to work in the prompt line per se.
The transition from Manipura to Anahata should be just that -- a transition, a brief pause between departing from one base and arriving at another. But this isn’t brief. Argilla counts silently to sixty to keep herself busy; once she’s cycled through the sequence of numbers thirty times, she can’t bring herself to resume the count. Instead, she stares at her hands, bright pink fingernails at their tips. Why are her nails so vivid? She thinks it has something to do with the way her body flares out at the hips and torso. Her comrades have thicker arms and heavier shoulders, and though their chests are broad, they don’t curve outward the way hers does.
Argilla glances up at Jinana, who presses her ear to the thick canvas as the transport shudders and halts, the steady hum of its engines becoming uneven. Jinana is shaped like she is. Heat drew attention to the fact near the beginning of their journey, when he stared at Argilla hungrily through the curtain of his hair and asked her if she thought Jinana’s breasts were better than Prithvi’s. (She slapped him on the arm. It seemed like the right thing to do.) She squints, trying to make out the details of Jinana’s hands in the fading grey light filtering in through the loose flaps of canvas. Are Jinana’s nails colored like hers are? Argilla gets a picture of the tips of her fingers brushing against the red ink beneath Jinana’s eye and shivers.
Jinana’s eyes have no color at all. They remind her of the sky in the way that Cielo’s and Gale’s don’t. With Jinana, it’s less of an absence than it is a -- a something. No new thoughts enter her head to explain what it is that she really means.
“Like the skies are about to break,” she says aloud.
Jinana turns to her slowly. “The sky cannot break.”
“No,” Argilla agrees. “It can’t.” She runs her teeth over the edge of her lip. “But there are things in the sky. Clouds, I think. And in the clouds, there’s -- the rain comes from them, doesn’t it?”
She blinks slowly. “I think I understand.”
“That’s what I thought your eyes looked like.” She trails off. It isn’t a very good observation. It sounds...she thinks the words cliché and stupid at the same time, and if the first word means the same thing that the second one does, both of them are true.
“Why?” Jinana’s voice is soft, the way her lips are.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It has to do with ‘sad,’ I think.”
“My eyes remind you of the sky because they are sad,” Jinana says slowly. “And sad is the way I feel about everything changing. Everyone dying. That was what you told me earlier.”
“Yes.” Argilla nods.
“So the sky is grey because it knows that the world beneath it is cursed,” Jinana finishes.
A hard knot materializes in Argilla’s throat. “Maybe.”
The press of Jinana’s hand on Argilla’s cheek is soft, almost too light to register as a touch at all.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 03:52 pm (UTC)Very awesome!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 05:49 pm (UTC)Beautiful voice.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 04:39 am (UTC)They break my heart sometimes, they really do. *nods*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 10:40 pm (UTC)Alright, with that out of the way, I'll try a more thought out response.
First off, I love how you handled the makeup; I keep wondering how one gets cosmetics in the Junkyard.
It isn’t a very good observation. It sounds...she thinks the words cliché and stupid at the same time, and if the first word means the same thing that the second one does, both of them are true.
I adore that line; it's so like the character. A little uncertain, but with a slightly dry and sardonic sense of humor. And the last part is just "Awwwr!" inducing.
(Also, Junkyard soldiers trying to figure out poetic language is FTW.)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-07 04:43 am (UTC)I wondered about the makeup, too -- I eventually just guessed that the Embryon would consider it another secondary sex characteristic
like boobies. Silly things.I'm glad you thought I got Argilla's voice with that line; I love how she thinks and I really did want to do her justice. And yeah, they're all so literal-minded (even the ones who aren't Gale) that any kind of metaphor is "huh"-inducing.