wear leveling
Malos used to be so unpredictable. The Aegis, capricious and wicked. Acting according to a logic only he understood, and one whose divinity acted itself out.
Had Malos changed, or had Jin just gotten used to him?
Learned him. Grown with him. Grown around him, as a plant and trellis.
They would never truly leave behind the experiences that had shaped them so irreparably, five hundred and four thousand years ago. They would never be Jin, the Paragon, and Malos, the Aegis, the purest Blades in all of Alrest.
And they weren't concerned with purity. They were concerned with Rex delivering on his promise, and the possibility that the young man's grand plans would fall through as soon as they had finally passed on from this world for good, but knowing that they could fight themselves no longer, they tried to find other outlets.
Jin kept cooking. It would be a lie to say that he'd never truly stopped, but the skill had never left him. Malos had found a passion for baking, and they shared many a homemade flatbread, decadently scattered with tomatoes, crab meat, and caramelized onions.
They gardened. It was the type of carefully-cultivated garden that was more of a display, catching the eye of every single passerby and making them wonder what kind of kooky old bachelor lived there. But wasn't a fantastical garden far preferable to stagnant, dying grass?
The backyard, of course, was practically a forest, so overgrown and full of the ropey plants Lora would use to braid with. Some wildflowers peeked out from under the tallest fronds, too.
"Y'know, Jin...I never saw this coming."
"Peace?"
"Living together. With you."
Jin smiled, the slightest thing. "You did it for four hundred years."
"Yeah, but..."
It was the peace that disturbed, there was no denying it. This wasn't how they were supposed to live. They were not meant to settle, with their goal left unaccomplished and justice unserved.
"Maybe this is all there is, for us, now. Maybe Rex is right."
There was more work to be done. But not for these two.