Blood of Eden

If you want to be tripped out: here. If you don't: here.

"Did you plan it this way, Jin?"

Malos's voice had an odd way of not echoing, of remaining focused, even in the steel-paneled walls of Megrez. The floors were named. Why were they named? Whose benefit did that serve? Surely not beauty (and of that, not aesthetics, because those didn't fucking matter). Humans always had to have a benefit to everything. A benefit to themselves, through everything.

"I-- No, I never-"

"You know, as things go, you're closer to being my Driver than he ever was."

What was the point in saying the name, to spit it out one last time? They both knew it. They couldn't but know it. There had never really been anything else. And that was why they were here...

"Oh, Malos. Did you think I don't know that?"

Maybe he shouldn't have known it. That was their goal, wasn't it? To get rid of Drivers, even the very concept of them, by tossing the world a baby out with the Architect's musty bathwater.

"You- but then-- But why?"

"It's the only way."

The Blades, then really not Blades, two of the most powerful the world had ever seen, a mutual aid society. A symbiosis, between the eleven, then nine, then seven, then five, then four, then two, then one and one. It's the only way. You can't get through it alone.

"We said we'd go together."

"We did."

Words didn't matter. Deeds only. What you want is nothing compared to what you will.

"And so we end as we began."

"We began with you taking my hand."

Jin's beauty, to Malos, was indeed not one of aesthetics. He was a fragile, broken man. Is there beauty in terror? Of course there is. You have to find beauty in whatever it is you're forced to know.

"Huh. So we did. Wishful thinking, I guess."

If there was one thing Malos didn't regret about that damned system, it was being able to feel the death of his Driver. Not the first, but the last.

When I write Addam/Minoth, it's definitely "I am cringe but I am free" momence, but anything else? Why do I write, if not for other people? So hopefully this is not cringe, even if it is free.