Come Talk To Me
"It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
"What's her name?"
If Minoth was the type to get jumpy, he would indeed have startled at Flora's words. She had come up behind him, originating from which of the cabin-like houses in the village he didn't know, while the Flesh Eater was stood watching, waiting, as Addam conferred something noiseless with the Blade that was not Mythra. Who was not Mythra. Who was not Mythra? In other words, who was she?
He turned to face her, Flora, and was again shocked to see that she hadn't even come alone. "I suppose I could ask you the same thing."
Flora furrowed her brow, as if recognizing that a laugh belonged in the air but finding herself unable to bring it about. "Funny that you should." So funny. Downright risible. "If it was a boy, we were going to name him after Hugo. His middle name, anyway, before this whole mess."
"And if it was a girl?" Because it, she, was. "We didn't have a middle name picked. We hardly even knew the first, but my own middle serves well enough."
"I don't know it," Minoth supplied quietly. There was so much he didn't know about any of them. His time away from Amalthus and his time away from Addam had more or less been the same. It was almost the mereness of de facto, that he was even there in Leftheria with them now, the only sane man since Jin was with Lora in Spessia and the Ardainians were...weren't.
"Evelyn." Dark hair, blue eyes. All babies had blue eyes, of course, but still. If anybody cared to make bones about the nonsense of being a pure-blooded Tornan anymore, they'd have no easy target in or on little Evie herself.
An easy target. An easy target was Torna. Had been. Oh, how Minoth hated the weight of tense. It followed you around like a subconscious clinging film. You couldn't escape it. If you tried, the incongruity would scream. The only thing Torna was was no more, and it had screamed. Read that any way you like. Hell if I care.
But he cared. He looked at the red-haired girl and the brown-haired girls and the gray-haired boy and he realized that this, in fact, was the royal family of Torna. This was it. You're the sole remaining retainer, because we're surely not going to make a soldier out of her. Not anymore. Not again.
What were they going to do with her, anyway? The totaled trio with dark hair walked closer, and Addam gave a hesitant tap to the barest border of the crimson pauldron. "Pyra," he murmured. So that was her name. And wouldn't she say it? Nice for her to be announced, and noble and all, but wouldn't she say it? Shouldn't she say it?
She turned, motion cautious. Something in her ears flattened back, and her eyes were brimstone red. Addam cleared his throat then, pathetically. "I suppose you should say your goodbyes, Minoth. We're sealing her in that beached ship, and then sinking the ship to the bottom of the Cloud Sea."
You're doing what? We're doing WHAT?
Pyra's expression was neutral. Oh, damnably neutral. Mythra, right now, would have been making all sorts of faces. Would have been grumbling up a storm, and tapping her foot, and crossing her arms, and rolling her eyes, and oh she would have been so much more animated. But the process, the task, that was Mythra had been suspended. Had been Mythra, was suspended. Oh, how I hate the tension of tense.
"Are you okay with that? Pyra?"
Her hair was short, and it didn't have half the snap of Mythra's mane. It fluttered, almost, curve of the bob hugging her face in its own display of warmth and affection, but Minoth could already tell that Pyra wasn't flighty. She had the grounding that Mythra didn't, hadn't. She had...oh, yes, there was fire in her eyes.
The fire dimmed, flickered, petered. Solvency swayed. "Yes, it's...it's what Mythra wants."
"I thought you weren't Mythra," Flora said, not unkindly. If it were Minoth, he might have hazarded something a little more brazen, something like, "Well are you Mythra, or aren't you?" That was what he wanted to know, anyway.
"I-I don't know." There was something all too intimately vulnerable about the sight of Pyra's fingertips clasped together, even as she tried to hide them under the bent-up bone of her wrists. Her forearms too. Minoth shuddered involuntarily. If she was Mythra, then...it made his neck want to crick over sideways, the sensation was somehow so obvious. Every part of Pyra's armor covered a place where Mythra's hadn't, at the behest of the same symmetry in the other direction.
Flora would notice things like that, wouldn't she? Probably, she had, but she was ever-unflappable, and so Minoth couldn't quite tell one way or the other. "That's fair," she pronounced with a nod, and again, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. "Can you answer me this, then? What do you want, knowing what you know about what happened to Mythra?"
"I don't know that either," Pyra answered, suddenly leagues more resolute. "I don't know anything about what happened. I just know Mythra doesn't want me to be here anymore."
"Mythra didn't want herself to be here," Minoth corrected. "Obviously she wanted you to be here, that's why she made you." Wanted, wants? Oh. Maybe something had changed.
And certainly, something had changed with Addam. Instead of considering along with them, giving his best princely regards to the matter, he simply stood back, let Pyra speak. Not the switch to flip, my prince. We need you alive now. We need every damn last soul we can get, alive. Alive.
"Addam, come here."
Damn, why'd he have to look so haunted? "I can't do that."
"No?" Minoth prodded, conversationally. Affable. Airy. No, not those two as adverbs. "You can't, or you won't?"
The gloved fists clenched tighter. Had they already been...? Again, damn. Probably. "I can't."
Head cocked, ponytail swung. Please, something, move. Dance. Laugh. Breathe, Addam. You're making me forget to. "And why's that?"
The fists would have swung too if they'd known there was something around to hit. So his spatial awareness... "I cannot turn my back on anything anymore. Who knows how many people will die because of it?!" ...his spatial awareness.
Like he'd turned his back on Hugo? On Torna? Oh, Minoth knew the symbolism, knew the setting of the stage, but he didn't blame Addam, and not just because he always had a hell of a hard time blaming his prince for anything that truly mattered.
"Addam, I'm not...I wasn't asking you to-- Okay, so don't turn your back."
"What?" As if the request to come closer meant anything dismissive, anything lax. But Minoth was nothing if not an obliging team member. No, really! Don't believe me, just look at this glorious team we've got arrayed before us, and their bonds and all-- It doesn't matter. You could make up any new representation of the cast and no one would be the wiser. No one left to be. Ain't that funny.
Funny. The laughter was still unpicked, but more like rottenly overripe fruit than that left still gently gestating. Addam shuffled his feet on the sand, clearly uncomfortable with the physical cadence of the shift, and that, there, was a sign, because he shouldn't have been. He grew up in Leftheria. If he truly was a bastard, this place was more his home than Torna had even been. No it wasn't. No it goddamn wasn't.
Eventually, he did as requested. His walk was slow, unsteady, every step still watching Pyra - not like she was dangerous, no, but like he didn't deserve the sanctity of being able to take his eyes off her. One watches a goddess, doesn't one. Oh, sick and twisted religion. I thought I left Indol. Deserving. Amalthus is deserving of the guilt you feel, Addam. And yet he'd never...
Eventually, more and more, and by and by Addam was close enough for Minoth to lay arms over and around shoulders and catch both hands across and together in a binding, grounding ring. Across his chest, and then his chest heaved. "You're okay, Addam. It's okay." One of those was a lie. The sand was white. Well, more a lavender. Bite your lip. Bite your tongue.
He didn't count the minutes that they stood there, cheek tucked against cheek. Surprisingly, Addam let himself close his eyes. Flora watched them, lips almost imperceptibly pursed, and Pyra did too. Scanning. Parsing. Compiling. The macros of Mythra's trace were there in her mind. To expand them...that was the forbidden thing.
Don't turn your back on her, Addam. No, not for the reason you're thinking. For the real reason. For what she deserves. If she is newly born, she deserves everything. Even if she is not, she still does.
"If it means anything, I don't want you to leave," Minoth offered at last. "If you're Mythra's second chance, I think you might as well take it."
Because Addam was my second chance. This wasn't my fault, not directly, and it was more directly his, but I still think you can do a hell of a lot worse than sticking with our clown prince for a while.
"I'm...who am I?" Hmm. Perhaps poor wording on that, Minoth. She doesn't know you like that yet. Not that Mythra really did either. Had. Not that she had. What had she had?
Flora cocked her head, smile worn and plaits swinging hospitality. "You're you, love. I don't think anything else much matters."
There was a liquid silence. Between Pyra's curled fingers, something red-orange glowed. Flora looked back up at Minoth, again worrying her brow so as to coax the thoughts into order, and he thought he understood where she'd been going before she'd had to stop and reorient.
"We just want you to be safe and happy. I don't know that we can really make sure of that correctly if we don't know how you best feel safe, but we can try, can't we?"
The sparks burst, and wrist-up gloved hands went down to side. There was still an arc to the repose of the fingers, but it was consciously relaxed. "That's...I might not know why," and trauma's blanking doesn't beget a lie, no, "but he's afraid of me. Addam, my Driver, is afraid of me. How safe could you really want me to be?"
Minoth hugged Addam closer, and Addam's hands went up to grip purchase on the gleaming gauntlets. Do you shine, then, Minoth? Are you the beacon, now? You're not. Pyra is. Fire is still light, is still warm, is still love and oh it's still light. You're still light. Don't extinguish yourself like I know you can. Please.
"I won't lie. Your Driver messed up. Bad. But he's my Driver too." Addam's grip tightened. Minoth pressed a kiss to his cheek, in that coveted spot opposite where the silly little braid hung on the other side, and though no amelioration came, it needed to be done. It needed to be done.
"Addam's just about the most perfect example of a flawed man you'll ever meet. Call it a flawed example of a perfect man, whatever you like. Maybe that's more my territory, anyway. Point is, I don't hold it against him. Maybe I should, but I won't. He shouldn't have held the reflection that you were against you, either."
Pyra's right hand moved up to grasp at her left forearm. The squeezing was painful to watch, but Minoth watched it. Leach it out, if you must. That's fine enough. Take your time.
"You're Minoth." The named man nodded. Easy to call him a man, where you'd never call Aegaeon a man. Why was that? Oh, it's obvious why, but still. Would you call Jin a man? Maybe. Would you call Hugo a man? No. Would you call Addam a man? Yes. Man of all our hearts.
"You're a Flesh Eater." Another nod. By this point, Minoth couldn't quite tell how much of the transfer had been selective, how much had been marked for deletion, how much was corrupted, how much Mythra there was left in there. Was she still in there? Had she written out the instructions for her own destruction and then logged out? Again, he didn't quite want to know. But she'd left the facts of what a Flesh Eater was. For whatever reason, that had been important enough to remain.
Pyra cleared her throat, swallowed. "You said Addam's your Driver, but you're not really bonded to him." Of course she knew that. Mythra hadn't ever really commented on it, so...so not of course. This...this was what had been important enough to remain. Not just facts, but figures, how their bonds figured and what Pyra needed to do her figuring on.
If Mythra hated Pyra, Minoth didn't want to know it. Didn't want to believe it. If Mythra hated Addam, Minoth would hate the fact of his own understanding, maybe he'd even hate himself for not doing the same, but he'd...he'd want to know it. Because that was important for Pyra. And Pyra was here. Mythra wasn't.
"That's right. I came to him broken, empty, raised from the Core in an environment that just wasn't suited to me. Wasn't so bad, even if my Driver was a real crumb, but I didn't like it. So I'm here firsthand wanting to give you the chance that Mythra didn't really get, to know Addam firsthand as that good man. And to know yourself as that good woman."
Good woman was Flora, implicitly. She leaned into Minoth's side, tried to make a comfort of the firmament, tried to say I know it's kitschy but we are here and you are here and Addam is too out of his mind to know that you should stay. You've not settled into your own, yet, and we're going to make sure you have the space to do that. Meanwhile, we'll have to knock some sense into his head, but softly. Sweetly. With love.
Because we do love him, after all. If that makes us flawed...well. We're all human. We're only human. We're not all only human, but...oh, Flora, silly Flora, see how much of Minoth's mind has gotten into you.
To complete the circle of kitsch, Flora, still holding the precious sleeping Evie - so many things yet unawakened, in this world - nudged Addam's side, and he let his eyes blink open to see Pyra still standing irresolute before him. Minoth pulled his arms back to settle palm on acromion, and gave a gentle shove forward.
Addam didn't touch, didn't feel. The space he was in was too rarefied for that. But he steadied the wobbling of his pupils with all his sternest princely will, and said, "I'm sorry, Pyra. I should have done better by you. And...and by Mythra. I'd like the chance to, now. Please, will you come talk to me?"
Pyra laid her hand at her sternum, over her Core Crystal, just as was Haze's way, even Lora's. She said, "Yes, I'd like that. Thank you," and then later when they went inside they found that she was a careful, expert hand at cooking, just like Jin, and Aegaeon. She lit the stove with control just like Brighid's, and made small, sniping jokes with the same adorable, ineffable comportment as Hugo.
She sat with Evie, and held her, steeled in the realization that she was not Mythra, and even though Mythra had left her the safeguards and the suggestions to make her into what her sister had always want to be, her focus was her own. Her determination was her own. Her flame, her breath, her light, was her own.
It was her own, to be sure, but it was also all of theirs. Minoth propped leg on knee and asked her, casually, would she like to know about what Mythra did? The good things, of course, because there was so much good. Her confidence grew with every passing hour, and she smiled and said of course, I'd love to hear about her.
Flora did much of the same, but she came armed with embarrassing stories of Addam from their teenage years together, and Pyra listened with unabashed delight. Addam just sat in between them, and leaned his exhaustion upon his partners, and they knew the tougher conversations were coming, but please, let us brace together, it's not time for that yet.
The time also came for news of the attack mounted on Spessia. Mythra would have gone in an instant, Sirens blazing, pulling Minoth and his guns with her, saying you might be the weakest but I'm the most powerful, so let's do this thing!
Pyra didn't do that, but Mythra's insistence of love and admiration for the ones they were saving, the ones they had to save now to make up for all the ones they couldn't save, didn't save, didn't even think to pick out from the crowd, how could you not have done that-- Those pulsed the strongest of anything in her Core.
"Addam, are you ready?" she asked him, fierceness on her face so so so crucial. "I'm ready," he replied, and he was steady now. "If you are."
Something golden flashed, just the minutest bit, but it was enough. "I was born ready."
What's her name? Oh, her name is Pyra. And you'd all better know it.
Conceived long enough before this tweet, but still... :c