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They all call him Nasch, every one of them, and in a way he's glad for it, glad that he doesn’t have to be reminded every time someone speaks of everything that he doesn’t have anymore (everything he wishes he still did, even though he locks the part of him that’s still Ryoga Kamishiro behind a cold mask of rock and crystal and claws that belong to him but feel like they don’t and insists that he isn’t that person anymore - when really he can’t be that person, it hurts too much to be that person). In a way, he’s glad that he never hears Rio call him anything resembling Ryoga or even ani, only Nasch, only a sad, soft Brother.
And yet sometimes, he does a particularly bad job of keeping the part of him that’s still irrevocably human locked away, the moments when he wants to scream that he’s not Nasch, he's Ryoga, and doesn’t he have every right to live, to exist, just as much as Nasch did, as Nasch does? The moments when he feels phantom tears prickling at eyes incapable of crying and he feels a thudding in a chest where there’s only a crystal, nothing human, so completely, utterly alien (Barian) that he uses it to reign that part of him back in until he’s Nasch again. Because - because he doesn't have the right to exist as Ryoga and not Nasch, because everyone who relied on Nasch and needed Nasch were let down and if this is how he has to make up for it, carrying around a fractured crystal-heart that feels neither human nor Barian, then isn't this what he has to do?
(he has to break his bonds, because he can’t be both, can’t be Ryoga while being Nasch and even from the beginning Ryoga was never supposed to have those bonds in the first place)
Only when he sees Yuma again, it cracks into a thin veneer, a mask that’s harder to hide behind because it’s breaking when he hears the yell of “Shark!”, not Nasch, because Yuma would never accept that, and he knew it, and that’s why he didn’t want to come here and be the one to duel him - except he’s the leader, he’s the king and it’s his responsibility now, so even though he wants to scream and cry as Ryoga, it’s Nasch who challenges him to a duel, something resembling a D-Pad on his arm. But he can’t focus - can’t focus because even though he’s locked in a body made of rock and crystal and can’t even cry at all, he feels it, and he feels his heart breaking all over again the way it did the first time he’d been Nasch again, only this time it’s the crystal cracking and fracturing, spiderweb-thin lines across it in his mind’s eye as he duels, and god, but he can’t do this, can he? He’s pathetic.
“We don’t have to be enemies at all!” He hears Yuma only distantly, something like a roaring in his ears even though he doesn’t have a heartbeat, but his voice is sad and frustrated and Astral is by his side again, too, so now all he needs is Shark, except he isn’t Shark anymore.
He wonders if maybe, if he keeps thinking it, he’ll stop feeling so human.
“You’re wrong,” says Nasch, and if his voice breaks halfway through it’s only because he’s unfocused, not because of how much this hurts him. He’s winning, and that only makes it worse because he doesn’t want to win no matter how hard he tries to convince himself that he does, no matter that Nasch has to win because it’s his duty, it’s what he needs to do, but Ryoga Kamishiro doesn’t want to win this duel - Ryoga Kamishiro wants to run over to Yuma’s side and act the way they did before, the jokes and the laughter and he misses it but he shakes his head because he can’t do that, won’t ever be able to do that again. “I have to do this, Yuma. I can’t fight by your side. This,” - he pauses, briefly, gestures to the clouds and crystal and the people in the distance - “this is what I have to fight for.”
He attacks Yuma directly, and Yuma only has a few hundred life points left, and Nasch is going to win but he still feels the spider-thin cracks spreading along his crystal-heart, swears he can hear blood rushing in his ears even though he doesn’t have any, feels tears running down his Barian mask even though none are there, and Yuma lets out a frustrated cry.
“I can’t accept that!” He drags himself to his feet, and Nasch wishes he would stop - Ryoga wishes he would stop, because the moment where he delivers the final blow is going to kill him, it feels like, but of course Yuma doesn’t, all shining eyes and a loud, determined shout. “Why is fighting the human world important? Why do the Astral and Barian worlds have to fight at all - because some stupid god said so? I won’t accept that!” He draws, but he’s not done, and every word leaves a ringing in Nasch’s ears, his chest feeling less hollow with every sound that comes out of Yuma’s mouth. “I’ll make all the worlds get along if I have to duel Don Thousand myself!”
(and Ryoga knows, the way Nasch doesn’t, that Yuma would - and Ryoga has every confidence that Yuma could)
Nasch doesn’t win that duel. He falls to his knees when his life points hit zero, and he looks at his hands, sees how human they look even though they’re not, and wonders how much of that is because of Ryoga. Because of him - because he’s realizing, now, that even if - even if he tries to be Nasch he can’t, he can’t just ignore those fourteen years he was never supposed to have because Ryoga Kamishiro is just as real as Nasch ever was, and he lets out something like a strangled sob even though he can’t cry, squeezes his eyes and his fists shut and feels like a failure, because Nasch failed everyone before and now he’s failed them again by not being the same Nasch that they need.
“Shark,” says Yuma, softly, but he can’t - he doesn’t open his eyes, because he can’t cry, he doesn’t have tearducts, but he feels fat, wet tears running down his face anyway and feels a heart beating in his chest where there wasn’t one, shouldn’t be one. “Shark, stand up.”
“Don’t do this to me,” Ryoga says - because he’s not Nasch anymore, was never really Nasch from the second he started this duel - and it comes out like a plea, his voice cracking on every other word. “I can’t, Yuma, I can’t keep failing them, I can’t be Shark while I have to be Nasch!”
But when he opens his eyes the tears are still there, and his hands are human again and he chokes on another broken sound that he never would have thought he could make before all this; when did he revert back to this, he wonders, when did he lose the mask he’d been hiding behind since that first day so completely? And the answer is, of course, when he saw Yuma, because Yuma was what brought him back before and of course Yuma would be what brings him back now, even when he’s trying his damnedest not to be brought back.
“You don’t have to be one or the other, you know,” says Yuma, and he kneels in front of Ryoga and grabs both of his utterly human hands in his. “You were Nasch a long time ago, right? But you’re Shark now. You’re both.”
And he tugs Ryoga back up to his feet, and, damn him, Ryoga lets him, because he wants to believe what Yuma’s saying, wants so badly to be able to acknowledge himself because he hasn’t been, this whole time acting like Ryoga Kamishiro had never been real. “I --”
“You’re both,” Yuma says again, firmly, still holding Ryoga’s hands. “And if you can be human and Barian, then the worlds can coexist. You’re the proof of it, you know?”
Ryoga almost collapses again at that, his fingers held tightly between Yuma’s, and he’s still crying but he’s - he’s relieved, because of this, because despite all his guilt and his stupid mistakes Yuma still tries to bring him back, even if he still doesn’t know what to do, what to say to Nasch’s army or to Durbe or Rio or any of the other Barians, except maybe, now that Yuma’s beaten himself back into him, he kind of does.
“...Alright,” he says, and his voice doesn’t crack. He doesn’t revert to his Barian form when he pulls away from Yuma, turning around with a stronger voice and a strong heartbeat thudding in his ears. “Alright. Come on. I’ve got some people I need to talk to.”
When Ryoga walks back to where everyone else is, his head is held high, Yuma and Astral behind him. “We’re not fighting them,” he says, and even though he only halfway feels it his voice is strong. “If you want me to lead you, then we’re not fighting them. We don’t need to.”
He turns to Yuma, and lets him take over from there, Yuma with the bright eyes and enthusiastic smile, and he feels happy for the first time in weeks.