let me tell you why i hold you so dear, my dear

When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.

Minoth comes in from rain and merciless wind as a beast, a bull, an escaped creature whose master never treated it well but who didn't quite know if it was even meant to mind that standard, one way or another.

No humanoid Blade ever succeeds in seeming a monster (if they do, they're very, very lucky and very, very special), but Minoth cuts it close.

He is brazen. He is tortured. He is wild. He is deadly.

He is aloof, and Addam and Flora do not change that. Rather, they don't try to. But their love does all the same.

There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

Addam, too, is impermeable. He's sealed himself up, a complete package of warmth, ever since his mother's passing and his father's passing judgement.

So afraid is he of causing irreparable change in others that he's very nearly warped himself in kind, doomed to always be as he has always been.

But there are cracks, under the inexplicable ponytail, the jaunty-pointy nose. There are crevasses where more meaning burrows; it wouldn't do if the sun up and ran out.

They look to him, always, and despite the fear find him bursting with light.

If they weren't there, perhaps he wouldn't shine.

I will soothe you and heal you
I will bring you roses
I too have been covered with thorns

Flora carries herself as a simple woman, born of simple people in a simple place with simple ambitions. She holds in highest regard her ability to make sense out of the world, to do just as much as she should, always equal to her task.

But Alrest is not so simply a human place. When she is hurt, she does not expect their flowering sympathy.

It comes in fits and starts, leaps and bounds.

They have known self-doubt, the itches of being so prickly and confounded.

They comfort her. They cherish her. They lay her upon their breasts with pride.

I'll take care of you.
It's rotten work.
Not to me. Not if it's you.

"No, you don't get it. My Core won't accept you just like that. It's not so easy, the way you want it to be."

"Who said we wanted it to be easy? We just want you."

"Yeah? You want the rotten deal of having to cart around a Blade that just plain doesn't work?"

"I think you work just fine. You can breathe, can't you? And you can feel?"

"Yeah...yeah, I can feel. I feel plenty. You two are saps, though, you know that?"

"Not quite, Minoth. I don't know that it'd be so easy if it wasn't you."

Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.

"I feel as though I'm living a lie. Everything the people think of me is just a sham, something they dreamt up."

"Really? Did they dream up how kind you are? How giving?"

"Perhaps not, but they did dream that I'm not a coward, that I have it in me to be a hero - their hero."

"And is that really so bad, Prince?"

"Gah...I shouldn't be the way that I am, so feeble when faced with responsibility. Really, I just shouldn't be."

"But we're glad of it."

"Ecstatic, even."

"Oh, shove off. You're terrible."

"Then so are we all."

love is insane you feel like you're always subtly asking "do you still love me even though i'm flawed" and the answer just keeps being yes

"Loves?"

"Yes, Flora?"

"I wonder what it would be like if I could...if I could help you. More than I already do."

"Don't quite think that's possible, little lady. I don't see how you could ever be any more to us than you already are."

"Well...I could be stronger. Faster. Bolder. Less talk. More action."

"You could fight, in other words? You could do for Mythra what I can't?"

"No, no, that's the trouble. I can't either - what good am I, if I can't?"

"No one's asking you to."

"And you don't mind?"

"We couldn't ask for better."

I cannot rise. Too heavy with filth and sin.
Give me your hand.
I'll stain you.
I'll take it.

The aftermath of battles with Malos down in the ruins of Judicium, that horrible place made somehow even worse wrecked, leave Minoth dripping in broken futility.

He stands away, when they return to Aletta to dress their wounds.

"Minoth?" Addam queries softly. It's unclear from his face whether he's prepared to regret it.

"I'm no different than anything else that came from down there. I'm scum. It's a wonder I was even able to get back up here."

"Minoth..."

"Don't, Flora. Don't let yourself be stained too."

"I don't want to be clean, if clean means I can't love you."

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

After Torna's fall, Addam is reticent, somber. Sometimes they count the time of his silence in hours, sometimes in weeks.

They wait patiently, if sorrowfully, for news of his heart, sounds of his solace. Spare movements, they covet.

"You're fine, love. We're safe here," Flora nods encouragingly, arms clutching at his waist.

"We're always here for you, my prince," Minoth confirms, and takes his trembling, trembling hand.

They catch him back from an end of fatal wallowing. They tell him only that their love is there.

They will always be there, and thus he cannot leave them, cannot be gone.

I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.

On calm days, Flora is bright and collected. In storms, she dashes willfully out to spread her arms wide.

But on this day, in the midst of the greatest electrofire storm Alrest has seen in a thousand years, she is none so self-possessed.

"Darling, can you hear me?" Addam frets, frets, frets. "Are you alright?"

Bundled up in Minoth's arms, her breathing is ragged, but then it slows, and she smiles, and they are once again in love. Oh, they were all along, but with her safety assured they can allow themselves at last, so blessedly desperately, to admit it.

I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind.

Lain in bed, close as possible, they cannot sleep, hearts too full with musing.

"I'm so glad to be with you," Flora starts, since her voice is the one to cut a solid center line between Minoth's gruff pronouncements and Addam's whimsical fluff. "I'm so glad to have...oh, to have fallen in love."

"I don't think we'd have lasted if that was all it was." Minoth stirs as he answers, pulls her closer and nuzzles her cheek.

"Indeed," Addam agrees. "I have you, and I have had you, but keeping you...it's the most wonderful choice I've ever made."