Back in N.Y.C.

From what Jin had seen of Malos back in Torna, he'd expected that the Aegis, up close, would always be all autonomy, all brutal efficiency that grinds to a halt exactly never because it has a purpose and it's going to get to it without stopping for anybody, not nobody, not now not then not here not there not for not ever.

So it's more than a bit of a surprise when, as they start to get closer, Malos seems to just...not know what to do. That should be Jin's job, right? Jin should be the one who's completely lost on romantic cues, because he'd so evenly ironed them out, for seventeen years he hadn't needed them.

Malos, meanwhile, understands everything. Not naturally, because he's (it's?) a machine, but preternaturally. Anything he doesn't know, didn't know, he could and likely did subsume and osmose with violent immediacy.

But apparently he didn't. He's fine at reciprocation, at perfectly matched levels of intensity that scale to Jin's needs and calls and whimpers and whims, but the moment Jin sits back on his heels and stops to consider everything that had just happened, Malos...shuts off.

"Amazing," Jin says, exhaling on the word and coating it in bitter frost that he doesn't know the source of himself. "I don't see how Amalthus could ever have had trouble controlling you."

Malos raises a malevolent, blocky eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

In the back of his mind, Malos recalls what it had been like: less of a wrangling, more of a directing. He had said, without saying, tell me what to do, because I need, oh how I need, to be told what to do.

Maybe that had been why he'd liked it so much. Not the killing, but the process of it all. It was one thing to have an intrinsic purpose, but any core directive usually lacks any sort of nuance that makes the lifegame interesting, intriguing, a puzzle to be solved.

But back in the present, it's "Nothing." Jin doesn't know why the judgement had been so academic, so (ugh) cool, anyway. It directly impedes whatever it is he thinks he's trying to achieve - a softer tomorrow, for mechanical men? a measured understanding, without explicit exposition? a woobification of the dark architect's messiah?

"You never mean nothing. You're not that stupid."

"It's stupid to say things that don't mean anything?"

"Tch. Obviously."

"Hm." The inn room in Alba Cavanich is dingy. "What of meaning - any real meaning, not just facts and figures, or deranged, singular beliefs - could be said in a place like this?"

Frowning, Malos scratches at the bare place on his neck where Jin had bitten. "What?" It means less now that it's over. Doesn't everything?

"What do you believe, Malos? At your...core?" Jin leans in as he says it, presses a flat thumb's pad to the surface of the crucifix shape. "If you like, what do you believe in?"

Malos shivers, but once again doesn't know why. "I-"

"Tell me."

Of a sudden, Malos achieves absolution.