it needn't be so complicated

Grab your things, it's time to take us home.

Lora had been the first one to suggest it, of course.

When they'd delivered the final blow to Malos and driven him off the edge of the Soaring Rostrum to hurtle screaming and broken down into the Cloud Sea, Jin, Brighid, and Mythra had been in the vanguards. Minoth put a careful, questioning hand to the Fire Blade's arm, and she moved quietly, neatly, elegantly aside to let him observe the death of the Aegis born under his same horrid Driver for himself.

They stood there for several watchful seconds, waiting for the clouds to cease their roiling and calm back to quietude. The horde of approaching Gargoyles deactivated, not one by one but all at once, and followed a shutdown protocol to systematically issue back to wherever the whence was that they had come.

Silence. Put no descriptor on it, but silence.

Then, it was Haze's turn to peek in, and her presence at Minoth's side was met with the Flesh Eater turning on heel and quite literally picking her up and spinning her around, laughing like they'd almost never heard him do before. Mythra was fiercely hugging Jin with much of the same spirit (and he hugging back), as Minoth cried out, "We did it! We actually did it! Oh, Architect, I didn't think we were going to. I didn't think we could."

"Minoth," Addam started, in as dour and disappointed a tone as he could manage when, well, they had done the very damned thing and his own smile was wider than it had ever been, "must you always be such a pessimist?"

And Minoth laughed some more and set a gleeful Haze down with a squeeze of her hands and kissed his prince's cheek and said, "Of course I must, Addam - that's why we work so well together!" Mythra rolled her eyes but didn't doubt it, and the objects of rotation shone as she buried her still-heaving chest and head into the beaconing light and comfort that was her Driver's open, waiting arms.

So excited and relieved she could hardly think to do anything else, Lora punched Aegaeon's arm, expressed her deepest and most immediate apologies therefor, and was then shocked herself by him bumping her shoulder all but ungracefully back before Jin came to join them and offer his rare smiling embrace. Brighid and Hugo's proud, not to say prideful, moment of shared solidarity and triumph was easily interrupted by Minoth surging in to give much of the same treatment to the young man who was as much like his nephew as Haze was like his niece.

In short, they were celebrating, as much as one ever can celebrate death, but our purpose here today is not to consider morality and humanity or the lack thereof, is not to ruminate over Malos's motivations and inspirations, what he deserved and what he got. To be sure, they were all simply too tired for that.

And that, my friends, is when Lora gathered, or perhaps released, her scattered thoughts and declared with a clap of her hands in front of her chest, "Well! I'm so tired I could fall down on the ground right here. Anyone care to join me?"

They did, of course they did. There was of course the nagging thought of the boys back in Auresco, but no assault had been lain thereupon. Nine of them, even with the staggering proportion of both their collective and individual foci that Malos had taken up, was certainly plenty enough to keep meticulous tabs on anything evil making wayward target towards and of the beautiful city. Even though the battle had taken longer than Malos's priceless promised ten minutes, because he'd extended the time limit pretty quickly once he'd gotten the lay of the fight, they were a smart, capable, and highly compatible team.

That's right. They were a team. Or no...no, by now, they really were a family. Lora had no parents left, regardless of whatever questionable relation Gort had been, only the strongest and most loyal companions she'd ever want or need in Jin and Haze. Hugo's jealous brother was no grand familial tie, and Aegaeon and Brighid were closer to him, more righteously protective and loving, than any stray middling noble, palace aide or regent had ever been.

And Addam? The group well knew in broadest strokes of all that he wasn't much of a member of his own heritage. He had his wife, and none could doubt that he loved her with all his heart no matter the miniaturitude of her introduction, because the prince couldn't ever seem to do hardly anything else as regarded any living soul, but when one counted the souls standing at and before the very Core of Torna herself, it was Mythra and Minoth that buoyed him somehow higher and brighter than he'd ever been.

You may say, why must we devote an entire paragraph to Team Addam? And of course it's because the Blades thereof were the most contrarian by choice, most unique by design; darned hardest to fit in. Indeed, at times they turned more easily and naturally to the members of the other teams than they did to the man who bonded them all together. But if there's one thing a good family can do best, it's stitching together wounds and warinesses alike, large and small, by a thread of love that one can't hope nor wish to ever dye, taint, or unravel.

Haze and Lora, practically giddy of themselves and certainly when paired together, tumbled enthusiastically to the stone first, and Jin was soon pulled after them - he was laughing, bless his splendid soul, because when there were no threats around one didn't have to look very hard to see how much he loved his Driver, precious Driver, and fellow sweetest Blade.

Mythra grabbed Brighid's hand then, and if the mutual milieu was still one of bullying each other as they descended into the pile of warm and warmth, well...girls will be girls. As for boys being boys, Hugo hooked his elbows around those of both Addam and Aegaeon, dear friends each despite their thankfully infrequent penchant to get a little tetchy between themselves, and even if a short lever arm is less effective about the same fulcrum than is a longer one, he was perfectly able to level the standing troupe and burrow himself down into the open embrace of Haze, or Lora, or Brighid, or whomever.

Minoth, summoning back some of his so recently unbound social trepidation, was the last to go just as before he had been the first. But after all, it was Addam who tugged at the flare on his pants and near about made him trip over to fall down with them, and he could never deny his prince, even if he often staunchly pretended to be so able.

I'd draw a picture for you if I could, but that's simply too many limbs, legs and arms alike, to keep track of, such that I fear I wouldn't do them justice. (Could I ever do any of these wonderful gals and guys true justice? It remains to be seen.)

Instead, I must deal in detail shots: Aegaeon and Mythra interlacing fingers and not caring whose the other's were, except that they did care quite a lot because the touch was bright and steadying; Lora squirming up from her unfortunate position at the base of the tower and ending up cuddled to Addam's ever-inviting chest; Minoth getting Brighid's hair flipped up onto his face and sneaking a kiss to the corner of her jaw when she couldn't see; Jin and Hugo bracing forearms before Haze came wriggling into their not-so-personal space and flung her own flapping-sleeved arms about both their necks...likely there was and is more, but just as likely you can imagine it.

After a few, or perhaps many, intoxicating, if partially physically suffocating, minutes, they untangled themselves and lay now symmetrically in a ring, hands held and hair pooling together in the center (oh, Haze was going to have a field day with a braiding train some time in the very, very near future). Ears and mouths strung up close meant that every stray trace of laughter and tearsound made its intended goal, and they almost forgot that they'd been hearing the roar of Malos's dreadfully majestic Monado not one quarter of an hour before.

Have you ever been in a close, even tight-knit, group of so many as nine people, and all those ready and willing to care and share and give everything to the others because they truly thought they were all they had left, when it came down to the final count? It's quite a many; I don't think I ever have. Such beautiful chaos it must have been and must continue to be, because of course eventually, dearest eventually, they all sat up, still laughing like there was no tomorrow but really in fact because there was one, and Addam said, "I think I'm a father right about now, can you believe it, Lora?"

And of course she could, and they all could, and they patted him on the back and shook his hands and in four (maybe more) saccharine-sweet pairs kissed his blushing cheeks, and Azurda swooped in with Milton and Mikhail to officially deliver the dear, dear news, congratulate them on their rousing success, and fly them obligingly back to Aletta - and you know just as well as I do that the stout old Titan is in some circumstances unfortunately small. In this situation, however...one maximizes a dearth of lateral space by expanding upwards, does one not? Stacking things, perhaps. Piling them up, if you will.

Indeed, stumbling up to climb hand over hand over hand onto the great stony, grassy back (after the boys had jumped down into strong arms and were hugged tight themselves, by everyone from the most traditionally affectionate to those who'd more usually not cast them a second glance [and not that there actually were any of the latter case]), and falling back down just the same, now numbering eleven and now even more headily happy for the sheer joy of being so blessedly alive. In a way, their beloved old Nuncle was even joining in, and how about that?

To greet new life with the exuberance of old is the only way to do it, and so the only mar on the scene was the near-to-slapfight arguing as they tussled over who should get to hold little Alexander (Alex for short and Xander for style, their resident wordsmith had pronounced it) first, after he had left Flora's flushed and weary arms and before Minoth had monopolized him as the principal uncle and preternaturally appointed spoiler of the young.

Then, Lora and Hugo realized in almost the same moment that they were feeling a bit peckish, if you wanted to mince words (the imperial way), and were positively ravenous, if you didn't (as a mercenary would), so they all crowded with abandon into the manor's spacious kitchen, and if Mythra wanted to lend a hand to Jin and Aegaeon and whoever else had a culinary bone to throw, they didn't stop her.

It was after dinner, the most easily assignable meal alignment, that the revelation came that it was in reality the very middle of the night (so an early breakfast, perhaps it had been?). Brighid made to count out time with Aegaeon first, and then the rest joined in with muddled-up ticked-off fingers before Jin led them swiftly back into the bedroom, where Flora was waiting and watching on with endeardest beaming smile at the magnificent merry men and women, and pointed bluntly, if lovingly, out the window at the starry dark.

In continued contented form, they all broke down laughing once more and shuffled in that giggling horde to the den to roll out blankets (and not their ratty road things, because they really weren't quite so attached thereto) and toss down pillows and perhaps to build a fort, if you believed Mythra that it was tactical and not just a hiding place for her and Haze to get catty-chatty about Brighid. Mikhail, secretly, wanted to mount an invasion, but Milton cautioned against the virtuous plot - not until we have the element of surprise, Mik!

Addam, of course, wanted to stay with Flora and the baby, but the rest, Minoth most of all because ah, there go the cowboy's boundaries, don't they, wanted him to stay down among the masses, so after a concentration of not-so-careful calculation (they suspected that Minoth wouldn't have objected to sleeping with his Driver and wife in the very bed anyway), the Lady Origo herself was escorted in a bridal carry by one of the courting lads (which? I'll never tell) to join them.

Let's list out those who got the true sleepover treatment, shall we? But in fact it's easier to list those who didn't: only Milton, Mikhail, and Hugo, their youngest and slightest sorts, were left out of Haze's exhilaration made corporeal by way of running hands through hair, braiding and weaving the same, and just feeling casual closeness. But not to worry - they approximated with adoring attention thereto, and perhaps a distraction in the form of tickling, if Haze got over-vexed by a particularly complicated pattern.

They finally fell asleep in just such a collapsibly calamitous fashion, with Aegaeon and Jin made their serious foundation, Lora, Mythra, and Brighid a confidently crosshatched second layer, Haze and Hugo slipping into easy pockets that their statures would suit, and Milton and Mikhail doing just the same, but snuggled in more underneath.

Flora, Addam, and Minoth had managed to make their own circle a ways off, the ostensible reason being that they were protecting Alex there in the center from being crushed (but shouldn't a baby want to have that event effected upon him in the form of absolute affection?), yet it was almost ostentatiously obvious to see that it was really something a long time coming. After all, if none else among them were bonded by romance, well...let it alone. It needn't be so complicated; just let them, and us in extension, all be happy.

I wasn't sorry about (the last) hugs when I posted it/them. Not at all; I was practically triumphant in my evil, evil adumbration, because Mature Art is the thing, is it not? I thought myself very clever and nuanced, if I do say so myself (and unfortunately I do). But if I can present you this? Well then, apologizing's not so bad, now is it?

(Also wasn't intending to have soft husband Minoth but what can you do. It's my brand. Deal with it. :P)