Antony and Cleopatra

Oh, being Justice's Driver was a dangerous thing. If you were susceptible to others' bleeding feelings, such as Addam always was, then you were set straight up for a hard knock into the next century, being yanked around by your chain to this internal moral crusade and that.

He had Mythra tugging at one end, and Minoth straining at the other. Either could pick any time to dig their bite in and throw a stone of obstinance, at anyone and anything; at any time in any place.

Truthfully, however, Addam found it much easier to love Minoth, consistently, than did he experience the trials and tribulations of being the Aegis's conditional companion. She could say up, and it would be up, even if gravity was rooting them down.

Minoth didn't do that, so much. He was just so committed to his own ideas and how they were to be voiced, said, that if he couldn't say what he wanted to say how he wanted to say it, he just wouldn't say anything at all.

(This was in a mellowing contrast to Jin, who could indeed occasionally be caught stumbling over his words, and then sighing to stop and reconsider. He didn't lock up quite the same way Minoth did. Not yet, anyway.)

Always Minoth whose whims governed them. Never Addam who warped the milieu into a black hole, then stepped back to a bit part and acted like it wasn't even happening.

"Some stage presence you've got there, Minoth," Addam said to the shadow, and he wasn't even being sardonic. The double meaning was just a bonus.

"Not everything's a play," Minoth grumbled.

"I thought all the world was a stage?"

Demonstrably so. Indubitably. That was just the way things happened. Addam had been convinced of that much rather easily.

"Not if the board's been struck, and there are no players." Players who forgot their lines.

"Oh, Minoth." Addam smiled wornly at his beloved. "There are always players. At least just the two."