a learning experience
"It always pays to help out your fellow man," quips Hugo, apropos of nothing. Being that Hugo has never been prone to unthinking outbursts, however, Minoth knows that it is indeed apropos of something; it's just that what that is has yet to be revealed.
He says it clearly, even though his actions give more of a mumbling affect mixed with a peculiar efficiency as he picks woolen pills off of his tunic. Maybe it's been inadvertently felted. Maybe it used to be larger, and shrank.
"Is His Majesty positing that MacNeth's recidivist betrayal helped play a role in your downfall, such as it was and is?"
No sardonic asterisk needed for what they said, because they never said to harbor turncoats, or anything about fun - not the general public, nor the specific private. All roads and rooftops lead back to it. It's just the most notable thing that happened to Hugo, in Torna.
Well. Almost.
And Minoth needs no outside insight to ensure him that Hugo is not referring to his stalwart defense of Addam, behind the woefully compact shield, no matter how tetchy the bastard prince may get.
It's about something else. It always is, more and more. Minoth can't decide whether Hugo is more apt to have hidden depths or overt symptoms of trauma in this new stage of his life, where what once was clandestine now is commonplace and what once was ordinary now is arcane.
He wears the clothes of a Tornan boy, for one thing. Not even a Tornan teenager, although the cane and the scarring ages him some (it's probably uncouth to say so, even if the diminutive emperor would enjoy it). His energy is far from stereotypically childlike or childish, however. Where he used to be able to comfortably work on his miniature sculptures and automata piecemeal, picking them up and putting them down in rhythm with the dinner plates, now he mopes listless for days on end, then works manically, then tires inexplicably just prior to completion.
There's nothing Minoth can do about it, even though he hardly feels himself changed in any significant way. It's just one more tragedy in a nostalgic necklace string. It's almost more sad when there's less of it, when a single bead hangs alone.
Hugo turns toward him now with that orphaned empty eye. He recalls Aegaeon more than ever, now. It's resignation. Recalcitrant, uncoagulated liminal peace.
"It's something Addam said. To Marcus."
Meanwhile, the Tornan diamonds decorate the other, unburned side of his body.
"To Marcus?"
Minoth remembers the kid, sure. But what "fellow man" was he acting in aid of?
"And Mythra," Hugo amends. Of course, now the reference is subtly more poignant, if not potent: Mythra had seemed to need reminders of such a concept that most others took for granted.
"Here I am, in a land that is not my own, that I have hardly once visited, that is hardly aware of its role in peacetime, let alone within the ongoing war theatre, never to see my own Blades again, with the Blade of another man for vizier. Another man who knows not of my life but if he did would surely seek my death."
Without family. Without his truest family. For perhaps the very first time, without Aegaeon, who had always abided so closely, and Brighid's unguarded tongue.
(It occurs to Minoth at this point to forgive Hugo his indelicacy in his time of such great distraction.)
"Is this not the life the Aegises faced? Is this not the bewilderment known to all men who come unmoored? Is this not difficult for everyone, regardless of their maturity?"
Few, and far, are those who truly know what it is they do, what it is they stand for.
"Anyone would become self-interested and forget the meaning of it all."
Even, Minoth thinks, if only by default, and so rigorously interested in the rights of others, otherwise.
"So we linger upon happenstance. And here is mine: for whatever reason, this Perpetual Music Box seems to be attracting Mystery Fireflies." At the artifact's mention, Minoth realizes that it's been quietly trundling along through its airy, guileless tune all the while. Of course, since it never shuts off. "And I seem to be forgetting my community spirit, because my first inclination was to chase them away, as if my brother in arms would not want them."
With short, mechanical movements, Hugo bends down, lifts the squat box from the ground, and places it into Minoth's hands - unbothered, indeed, by the beat it takes for Minoth to bring his palms up to receive it. The soft-bodied beetles follow at a lag - it might not be the best time to mention that fireflies cannot hear, and must therefore be solely magnetized by the damp dark surface of the Forrestone that feels velvety in the night.
Hugo has never, at least not openly or aloud, questioned him; questioned Minoth's place in these affairs. They're misfits, fugitives, together. They are owned, in body or spirit and mind, and cannot escape without, nearly, reinventing themselves to the point of non-recognition.
What use would it be, if Brighid and Aegaeon saw him again? Would they spy an estranged emperor at pace? Would they need a Jamming Megaphone to cancel out imperial interference, reach past their invisible ears and lure from the crux of their Cores?
Another Gideon. Another Torna. Many hands, light work. Another Belgium, Armenia. Another wanton genocide.
Pretty explanations for all of it, when the point is that they've been reduced to directionless children, at heart, for as long as their bodies hold out. Too languorous, are we, even to think about refusing aid. We just can't give it. Not well.
(He used to think, to ponder, with elbow propped upon fist. The threat of tipping is too great, however, and his arms remain at his sides, not even harped upon hips.)
A vizier, eh? So Hugo sees fit to tolerate his own eccentric ramblings. And all because his hypervigilance led him to eavesdrop on a teachable moment, once upon a time.
"Oh, is that what that was?" Covertly, Minoth shifts his fingertips to lay over the patch of topside Forrestone. "And here I thought you yet had a chance of being mistaken for a child of school age."
In apparent preparation for further speech, Hugo opens his mouth, inhales halfway, and falters, clamping his lips shut once more. A good idea, too, because the lightning bottles might take a chance at getting in.
"This," prods Minoth, "is the part where you tell me you were never that young."
"Why? What's the point of telling you something you already know?"