After The Ordeal

Addam wakes with anger burning on his forehead and shame bubbling in his gut. And that's not right, is it? That's a little backwards.

Addam feels a little backwards. More than a little, in truth. Addam feels, constantly, like he's about to lose his grip, his entire grasp, on reality, and have to start adding things back up from the very beginning.

What's a Blade? What's a Driver? Who was his father? Where was he born? Who loved him? Why did the people who loved him think it right to do so? Who is even left to love him now?

Who. Who, indeed? Flora, to his left, and Alexander and Evelyn, in the other room...none of them judged him, or would ever do so, for what he had done. They didn't even judge the world for what it had done to him, so much. Sadness was something to be understood, accepted, and loved away. That was all.

Wasn't it?

Minoth, also, is in the children's room. Though his designated resting place is the guest bedroom, he often comes to sit in the nursery, to read Xander stories and to rock Evie to sleep.

Why does he do that? Addam...Addam can't piece it together. The awkward anger that the Flesh Eater himself has always seemed to harbor is nowhere to be seen, never appears at corner of mouth nor wrinkle of brow.

When Addam sees him passing by outside, walking from one end of the peninsula to the other, Minoth only waves mildly. Maybe a trace of melancholy something or other crosses his cheeks, but for the most part...nothing. And it's not that he seems empty, particularly, just...oddly content.

How could anyone be content, when they've all just survived...ah. Yes. They've survived not only Torna, the calamity, but Torna, the Titan herself. The shame starts stabbing instead of just simmering, and before he can think Addam has stumbled out the door and over to the sea and emptied the little that had been occupying his stomach into the clouds. As long as Nuncle didn't complain about it later, no one would have to know.

No one would have to know, yes, but once Addam gets sluggish enough to decide that he'd not actually like to return to the cottage and try to chase a few more pitiful moments of sleep, the shore is plenty more than just accommodating; it's damned comfortable on the purple, spongy ground. A few springs back at his shaky touch and he's puking again, more bile than buckshot. Lovely.

In case of further...accidents, Addam arranges himself with his feet and lower half keeping him balanced, cantilevered, back on solid-ish ground, with his arms and neck flopping over the border, ready to dunk. If he slips in, face-first, that'll be alright. He knows how to dead-man's float. What he doesn't know how to do is swim, nor actually enact the...dead part. Aha.

Soon enough, however, the sway of the sea and surrounding air ceases to be sickening, and becomes more soothing, more calming instead. Do you deserve that, Addam? Do you deserve life? Do you deserve death? Did humanity truly deserve the Aegis, whatever it meant?

No. Absolutely not. Much as he hates the...what is it, nuance? The gritty taste on his tongue as he thinks it? Addam knows that Lora wouldn't have been much better. It's not about any one man, not about any one particular foible or folly. It's not even about the Aegises themselves. It's about what Amalthus had said, to Minoth, on that day. What Mythra had predicted, and what Malos had preached.

Humanity is a dump heap of garbage traits just waiting for the bonfire's torching. It's not just Zettar, not just Amalthus or Malos himself. It's all of them. And that is, of course, no comfort to Addam, the focal point of the failure.

Here's, again, the backwards part: Addam knows to blame himself, knows where to pinpoint and laser-target destroy by way of erosion down to bare nerve endings. He knows, or at least thinks he knows, the lay of it. Yet he is still angry. There is something violent in him still, something he wishes he could swallow such that it might eat him alive for good instead.

The children didn't die, either before or after the time when Flora might have been crushed with them, and of course everything would have been so many thousands of times worse if that had happened, but what chance do they have, now? No family, no home that means anything (and Addam had never been one to care about the status of an estate, but a family home, a home in which family can be put, had become quite important, by very near the end of it), no other children their age, no world that's even worth living in.

Cruel world. Worthless place. Worthless people, too, and isn't that the worst of it? Oh, Addam doesn't even know what he believes anymore. He just knows he hates, he hates, he hates, and he is sick and tired, so thoroughly fed up, with hating.

He rolls over onto his back, slams shoddily curled fists to his eye sockets, and tries to hide, hide, hide from the morning sun. Even now, even still, Addam wakes up with the sun. The sun, the morning, the promise of a new day like which there may never be another. He used to like to wave at the sun. But that was only...that was only when he knew the sun would speak in kind back.

Yes, the sun is still kind. But Addam does not deserve it.

The next time Addam uncovers his eyes, what feels like several somber hours later, the sun is in fact not there. Well, it's there, yes, but it's blocked out by another, less all-encompassing shape. It's Minoth, still with that same ragged smile on his face.

"Can I help you?"

"If you'll let me help you help yourself, Prince. You lose something out here?"

My sanity, Addam thinks, my life, my love, my capacity to believe in base human goodness which has always been the very inner lining fabric of my heart and you know that better than anyone, oh, Minoth, no, you can't help me, I am far, far beyond that.

"Why aren't you angry?"

There is curiosity in the question, but also a heaping measure of the essence of something held at gun-point-blank. Why aren't you angry? I don't really care why, actually, because what I know, what I really, truly know, is that you should be.

Minoth shrugs, and his own smile becomes curious. "I dunno. Why should I be?" So maybe he knows. Maybe he does know, after all.

"Your entire life was ruined well before you met me." Maybe not quite right, but then again it depends on how you measure. A Driver very well does have the capacity to ruin a Blade's life. Right? Yes, indeed. There it is.

"You have been shown nothing but the scum of the earth ever since you were born, and if that's not what you thought you saw it was only because you were being tricked, having the wool pulled over your eyes for the sake of that wretched man's own personal gain."

Long has Addam regretted ever calling Minoth Amalthus's Blade. Very long.

"I have not been hurt by the world any more than I could have been, and certainly not any more than I should have been. I am...equal to my suffering, I rather think." And only that. No more.

A minute snort escapes Minoth. Addam notices, but doesn't make mention of it.

"I am very angry, Minoth."

"I know you are, Addam."

Ah. Addam. Not just "Prince". So that's something.

Addam starts up, ignoring the subtly offered hand which Minoth retracts back to his side unbelievably gracefully.

"I am furious. There is pitch clapping thunder in my throat. I want to climb out of my skin and cut the chaff of it down with the haying scythe."

Minoth's expression becomes unreadable. Addam realizes how tightly he'd been clenching his jaw, but does nothing about it.

"These are petty words, the most complex I can muster to describe the vermin swimming so cavalierly inside my skull. And I want to know, Minoth."

Eye contact cuts to the bone, but not in the way that Addam had apparently so wanted. For you, for me, for anyone...

"Why don't you have better ones?"

Wind, more a breeze, plays gently at their faces. At the parting of Minoth's lips, something ticks out in Addam's brain. The Flesh Eater makes a small crossing motion, a plea for strength over the sacrament of his mottled, profaned, desecrated Core Crystal, and then he begins to answer.

"I do have better ones. I think so, anyway. Words like patience, and blessing, and gold, and joy, and growth, and..." he looks Addam dead in the eye "...and salvation."

If Addam had tipped backward into the Cloud Sea, Minoth would have caught him. He doesn't want to think about it any more deeply than that.

"Those aren't even half of them," Minoth adds, crossing his arms. "I've got plenty more, whether they're written down or saved up in here." He cocks an eyebrow up and gives a jerk of his head to the slight inclination of one side, rather than retrieving a tapping, telling finger from its current place of security.

Security. That's another one. Hope, too. And challenge, and worth, and balance, and warmth, and closeness, and happiness, and love.

"This world gave me you. You can't possibly think I'd be mad at it."

"I-" And shouldn't Addam just be saying the same? But there's been no such cruelty to him.

"C'mon." Again the ponytail beckons. "Back inside - back home. If that assessment doesn't sit right with you, then I'll say I'm glad because it gave me Flora, and because I'm not all cocked up like Amalthus after all, and because you've got great kids. Pick one of those - no pressure to tell me which one. And take some of my better words. Please."

Please is a...rare word, in Minoth's vocabulary, in his normal parlance. We don't need to double back over folded on words again, but it's only true. Addam swallows, carefully, and thinks about where the vermin are crawling now, and whether or not he can pick them out, or if he might need some metaphorical tweezers to help.

"I can try, anyway," he offers at last. Not quite sheepish, no, but a little hangdog. It suits him.

Flora is waiting patiently in the doorway when they arrive back, hand in hand. It's an odd sight, pajamaed Mr. Origo with armored Mr. Minoth, but she tries not to laugh anyway.

"Are you alright, love?"

Addam doesn't respond, busy chewing his words as he is. So Minoth replies, "Peachy." Addam is, indeed, perfectly content with that assessment until the Flesh Eater adds, "I've been out for morning walks that ended worse."

If Addam is trying not to laugh now, it's definitely not working. "Conniver!" he chokes out between the guffaws arresting his jaw and lungs. "She wasn't asking you!"

"Oh, wasn't she? Then if I do this-" Minoth leans forward and kisses Flora's cheek, and she blushes well in kind "-who's that for? A little too late to stop me now, my prince."

"Just you? Not the both of you?"

"I let the lady speak for herself."

"And the lady says...?"

She reaches up and tweaks both their noses, and says, "The lady says she loves you - the both of you, and all. Now come help me make breakfast."

Make breakfast? Say eggs, and tomato jam, and toast, and coffee? Coffee, which isn't anything like what Addam had been brewing at first but also isn't so far off the mark? A liquid wake-up call?

"After it all, I find it's..." They're sitting at the low table in the kitchen, Evie on Minoth's lap with his nose practically planted in her hair and Xander sitting in his own fourth chair. "Very simple, to love you, Minoth."

"Hey, I'm a simple man, Addam."

"You are not."

Minoth shrugs, and this time Addam agrees. "So I'm not. But I do love you."

"Bull." In other words, Minoth. An odd epithet, and not one that will stick, but it gets a broad laugh out of the man himself.

"Sure, sure, it's a load of you-know-what. Evie, what do you say to Daddy?"

Lending a listening eye and ear or not between her sips of porridge, she's always so clever, far too wise by far for a child of only three or four years. Blue eyes perk up: "I love you!"

Sigh. "Which one?"

She points, and Flora clarifies: "Both."

"And what about you, Xander?"

He doesn't answer, much busier and undistractable with his meal than Evie had been. Addam leaves him go, nonetheless. There'll certainly...be time, later. Once he's sorted everything more fully out. Once he stops waking with his old, smoldering anger, and perhaps starts waking with Minoth and Flora both.

"I can't just pick one, Minoth," he says, without thinking.

Minoth grins. "S'alright, Prince. Me neither."