Cuckoo Cocoon
don't tell me this is dying, 'cause i ain't changed that much
the only sound is water drops, i wonder where the hell i am
Whenever any one of them's going to go help someone, it's always Rex and Pyra first, maybe Mythra, a wise word from Mòrag or something inanely insightful from Zeke. Shellhead and all, but turtles are smart. And then turtles are old, and slow.
Cole is old and slow. When Rex mentions to the group something about maybe trying to help him, because they've got Pneuma's (Pyra's? Mythra's?) power now, unlocked because he let it be so and they trusted him, Nia thinks no, this is my time. This is where I've got to step in. After all, better to save someone when they're not on the brink of death, for once, right? Of course it is. She's a healer, not a miracle worker.
A healer. Not a miracle worker. His ether flow's, quite simply, busted, and she can't reroute the dimmed-out canals to unbust it on a jingle-bell wing and a priestess's prayer, that's for damn sure. Is it because he doesn't have a Driver, anymore?
Iona's too young to do much more than care uselessly, and she makes him smile as he hacks his dry, empty...things, things that are almost virus-like the way they're not alive but take him so wholly anyway. Maybe it'd be easier if he wasn't smiling. Doesn't matter. Iona shouldn't have had to take Vandham's place, if that was even what was going on anyway. By rights, nobody should need to take a Driver's place. Not like this.
A Driver and Blade are one in body and soul. Mythra mentioned it to her, not as brokenly as Nia might once have thought that she would, after she told the story - the real story, the one where she had to become a one synthesis of body and soul herself. It made her squirm in her jumpsuit, think augh, that's not what that proverb's for, and certainly it wasn't what they were thinking of when they made old man Cole.
Made him? Where did he come from? He came from a Core Crystal, of course (of course?), but just as she was not fully made into the Nia she is now until Sister, until Dromarch, he was not fully himself until the experiment. In a twisted way.
They made him twisted. He told her bits and pieces every time she came back, almost just to pass the time, maybe to strike courage into her by way of blunt analogy. She never got very far, herself, before she'd choke up, a little bit, and he'd look at her with this peculiar expression that didn't connote understanding, but it wasn't pity but it wasn't love but it wasn't fear--
It was love. Kindred spirits by a turn perhaps not so unfortunate, and of course he's a caring person, not just because Iona is so easy to care for, but because you can go one of two ways when something bad happens to you, and Nia thinks in all this time that he's gone both. He doesn't want to see her go the first way. She doesn't want to see him go at all.
"I could be your Driver," she blurts out at last. No preamble, no "you remember that thing you said the first time," no eggy shells because she's too old for that - he's too old for that, he's dying right here, for cripe's sake why aren't I just letting him die?
Because he'd be dying of the sickness. He'd be dying of the pain. When Sister died, well, she was a human. She was too young to go, but she was a human. Blades don't hurt when they die, she saw Dromarch and knew that much, so if she has a chance to at least make it so he doesn't hurt...isn't that, like, his birthright or something?
He deserves better. Even if he doesn't hate himself (because that's the only thing Nia knows to judge it by), he deserves better. He wasn't made to be solitary. Blades aren't made to be alone. If she didn't have Dromarch...and that's not even the same kind of alone. Somehow Nia thinks the only thing his Core's even doing anymore is missing the men that used to make it tick.
He gets paid to miss them, even. Sit around and write stories to read to his granddaughter and think about how much he misses them, memorialize them for others to know that these were the men I knew, the men I loved, who so loved me not even in return and I won't even tell you about that because it's the least of who they are- were.
Nia wishes she remembered Sister half that well. And that's why it's so horribly bad, right now, in the damp stale room where Uraya is so beautiful and lush and literally ethereal but he can't know it, and it's all because the bloody Praetor thought he owned the world.
She thinks all these thoughts terribly quickly, and none of them even seem to make sense, but here's Cole cracking a smile at her that he shouldn't be wasting his energy on, does he even have a will, Blades shouldn't have a will, just give everything to Iona but then Iona will be alone and people shouldn't have to be alone Architect DAMN IT why is the world so cruel?
"My Driver, huh?" He chokes on his laugh. "Never had a girl. Don't quite know how to treat a lady, in that way." "I just...don't want you to die," Nia forces herself to say, staring down at his wavering hand (is she even glad it's still moving?) instead of looking into his wobbling eyes (only they probably aren't even, because old man Cole doesn't make any sense).
"Why not, Nia? You've heard it a thousand times, and thought it probably another count of the same, besides, right now: I'm old. Everybody has to go sometime." Everybody has to go sometime. And every time is different. If Father had just understood that, she wouldn't be this thing, now. Neither would Cole, because Amalthus...she won't pretend to understand it. But she knows something's not right here.
"Do you want to die?" she finds herself asking. "I used to," he answers, calm as anything. "In between each Driver. But then, the pattern breaks, doesn't it? Not much of a pattern, only two iterations deep. The point is, the peace that comes with death isn't all that different from the peace I have now."
Peace? How could it be peace? He can't even double over because his back is so wrent up. She shouldn't care. But she does.
(Even, she thinks maybe he's lying, because when she came and saw him and told him in a small, broken voice that Jin had killed Haze, not Fan but Haze, his lips had curled and his jaw had worked and he'd made a seemingly offhand subject-changing comment of "Nia, what kind of weapon do you have?" She hadn't told him.)
"You're not supposed to be alone." Jin and Malos's agenda be damned, Blades aren't supposed to be alone, aren't supposed to have to be alone. Amalthus's experiment did exactly all the worst things to Cole, to Minoth, even as it granted him the brightest things in his too-long life.
"I wasn't alone," he says in as a warm a tone as a half-carcass can manage. "I'm not alone now." He seems, yes, like he's in a room with another person, but only barely. And old man Cole is very polite. So maybe if she wasn't here he'd not bother seeming it. Or is that...it hurts to think.
Hurts or not, he's hurting more. How has he lived this long without something, anything, stimulating his Core? He sags. Like an old oak tree that never got to be as bright as the saffronias or even the other willows he sags. I have to hold him up, Nia thinks, this isn't the way he should fall.
"Do you mind if I...?" Whether she can't or won't finish the sentence is immaterial, because he makes a shrugging motion that encompasses the whole of his weakness and he might even have been about to crumple down on the floor if she didn't catch him.
His Core isn't even burning. It's dull, weak, even as it tries to be so proud. Gradually, it warms, hydrates in a sea of green-gold oceanic spray. Then the purple feeling springs up, like it's dancing on delightfully incongruous bootsteps. It's him, very him, though she never saw him before, and it's certainly not Vandham or even any ghost of the Addam from his play.
"Do you want to die?" she asks again, and he replies softly, "Nia, you're not letting me." "Good," she says, and she's triumphant even as her own water leaks from her eyes. "I let too many things happen to let you go now."
"Am I your personal basket case, then?" he asks, and he's so wry it hurts. "You've always been a Driver's personal basket case. You're crazy. And so am I." So am I. I'm Nia and I keep people alive and I don't let people cross the ones I love because they're a part of me.
They're a part of me. There'll always be a space in her Core for Cole now. She didn't-- Of course she didn't get so gory with it, and isn't that the beautiful part? She has everything in her and she can give it if she wants and no one's going to make her and she has life, is life in her tides.
"Now don't you dare go dying on me while we're off up that bloody tree!" Nia warns, and she almost shakes him before she remembers that, well, he's fragile. Coulda fooled her though. Listening to his grinning chuckle as he pulls himself up off of her, isn't pushed...coulda fooled her.
In one insane second of her own she thinks what if he could be my Driver, for the same moment? Because I trust him and I want him to feel trust, the way a Driver can from a Blade like Dromarch. Am I like Dromarch? Dromarch is loyal, and yeah, I'm loyal to old man Cole. Somebody should be, around this freak of a world.
"Do you feel okay?" Oh. It wasn't her asking. "I feel fine, thank you." Sounded snipper than she wanted. Try again. "I'm better than fine, because you're fine now. It feels good to have stood up for you."
Cole's entire shadowy face lights up then (as much as is appropriate for the setting of a room so dim). "Oh, Nia...I know exactly what you mean." "You do?" What's he mean? He's never talked about being so alone, but she's felt it.
"Of course I do. I couldn't have gotten by for five hundred years if I didn't. And Amalthus...he never stood up for anybody." You're crazy, only not crazy at all...and so am I.
Nia flutters her fingers in her sleeves and finds Cole's hands, lifts them up as far as she can feel is comfortable. "It's not even that I'm patting myself on the back. It's just...right."
"Careful there. I know you, by now. What you're saying is, it feels not wrong." Her fingers clench tight around and between his, but she knows by now, weeks or days or minutes gone by, that he can take it. "I hate that you're right." "Fine by me. I hate it a little bit too. Just so long as you don't hate yourself?"
And then the violet nonviolent sparkling rumble is reaching for the shining crest of her wave, and Nia doesn't even have to think about trying to fruitlessly lie as she says, "No, I don't. You're not letting me."
Never thought something like this would be self-indulgent, but here we are. I just think that she should hug Grandpa.
As it happens, this lovely art posted while I was working on this piece fits remarkably well. :)