denouement

Why did Minoth only speak three times in the whole game after his introduction cutscenes, and all throwaway lines, even though they made sure to use his model liberally? We were robbed.

"Mikhail!"

Nothing would be effective in snapping the six of them out of their traumatized reverie (if you could call it that - the word was far too bright), so Lora's thin gasp only slid them all sideways, luckily towards the interior of the ship and not careening over the railing.

Jin braced Lora from behind; Addam made a half-hearted (half-assed because full-scared, Minoth knew) motion to follow after Mythra as she hobbled towards the boys huddled on the floor; the Special Inquisitor held Brighid and Aegaeon cupped in his thickly-gloved hands. Hugo, their brave and noble Driver...immobile ad infinitum.

Haze felt Driverless and rudderless. Whenever Jin was around, Lora always occupied herself with him, turning there for comfort, teasing, private jokes, whichever. Jin was the default for her, so her mode was rarely set to include Haze. As secondary, even support Blade, she couldn't begrudge the dynamic. They fit together always, no other responsibility ever more important.

Then there was Addam. As their group's other remaining Driver, he flitted back and forth between Mythra and Minoth, the night and day (day and night?) woefully apparent as he situationally dispatched himself to duty and discipline, then comfort and companionship, then mostly back to duty again. Addam chose someone different depending on his mood, largely, and Haze didn't think that in an unkind way; literally, his emotional needs guided his steps. Nothing wrong with that.

So what of Minoth, then? Standing behind her, an absolutely morose look on his unbreakably chiseled face. He shifted his role based on what was needed in the group. If to aid he was called, to aid he would go. If the milieu neutrality, he stood off unburdened. And if he was wanting...she felt he was always afraid to ask.

Yet, Haze knew he endeavored to match his self-respect to the scope of the characters around him. If he needed something, he would ask, she decided. And, Haze further determined, she would make no obstacle of herself to being the party of supplication.

Therefore, in this moment, Haze focused the sway of her backward stagger and lightly, perhaps "accidentally", brushed the back of her hand against a gloved-- fist. He was tense, striking contrast to the morally unwound bunch they all were. All the more reason for her nudge. She knew what would make Minoth embarrassed, and played opposite to it.

Gradually, the fists relaxed and moved to her shoulders. Too casual. He uncurled the fingers fully and grasped deltoids. Still too casual, and now rather like he was about to shove her off a cliff, or else threaten to enact petty malice on her day-to-day life. Now the hands cupped around the shoulders themselves. Like piloting a warship.

Minoth refused to be defeated by his own inability to easily comfort Haze. But didn't he need the touch just as much? He kept reasonably low demands; he owed it to himself, and a kick to his own self-loathing. His face felt haggard, skin hanging off the bones of his cheeks and eyelids. It wasn't premature Flesh Eater age that made it so. Just tired. Tired of being tough.

Gently but firmly, Minoth twisted Haze around and folded her into his chest. A slow motion, then all at once. Her arms damn near squeezed him out of breath as he shuddered over her maiden's height.

He wanted Addam, but Addam was busy. Never asked for him, kept his chin straight, sucked all the fatigue up into his damned perverted core. It spilled out of him all at once, and he daresaid the others all felt it.

Lora pulled herself, dreamlike, towards Haze, and of course where she went, Jin followed. Addam's lost expression was jerked into another dimension of pain as Mythra screamed out over her failures. It felt cruel to leave her there. Minoth half caught himself justifying the prospect - she wanted to be alone, didn't she?

Nobody wanted to be alone. He knew this not empirically but from years of corroboration. Stretching his focus into a vice grip on his own thoughts, he pulled Haze down to the floor of the warship with him. The floorboards were too damned eternally long.

Up again, stumble over to the space in between Addam and Mythra. Gather both into his open arms and ministrate his care and concern over them. Haze brought Lora and Jin, and they all clung to Minoth, a storm's own port.

He'd thought he was being greedy, reaching for his prince. Not at all. They all needed him. It was the only fucking thing in this whole mess that felt any semblance of good.

With Hugo, Aegaeon and Brighid gone, and Lora's team focused on the Spessian refugees from Torna, it was left to Minoth to travel to Uraya and summarily ease leadership tensions among Addam's militia, or what had remained of it behind, and there he'd stay. The prince, meanwhile, would journey to Leftheria to seal away the remanants of Mythra's brief existence in this age, though he knew undoubtedly, nay inevitably, that someday she'd return.

There may never have been a plethora of Alrest's people truly sympathetic to or even aware of the plight and personality of an experimental Flesh Eater, but things were about to get uglier in the coming age of Amalthus, so Minoth silently longed to bask in the affections of those he had come to know while he still had the chance. Uraya was beautiful, plenty of inspiration there, and they say show not tell, it's true, but the time of parting is a marked one. If ever there was a time to more truly humanize himself, this was it.

Torna was sunk, Gormott barren in a lacking, restless way, and Mor Ardain too politically wound up to inhabit a lone Bladekind playwright with a disconnected, academic grasp on society and people's whims. He put on an avuncular bravado, to be sure, but all too often feared himself prey to tropes. Well, tropes be damned, he'd written his own character, and it was time to step into the role with gusto, commitment, and love despite the fear. Ha, sounded enough like him.

Minoth's connection with Addam was always slightly strained, though deep, and he knew that that resolution would come later, if the prince could find his way clear to become that farmer he'd always waxed about. Mythra alternately amused and bemused him, but he hadn't minded working alongside her. It was hard to find the balance of age, the intemperate girl she was miscast for the resolute feminine force she was meant to carry. Once again, all would come in due time. If he was really invested in that storyline, well, the Architect knew he had it.

It was the Ardainian trio he missed most at this denouement. He and Aegaeon shared cooler heads with complementary senses of joviality, and Brighid was, oh, a lovely flame he minded to keep kindled in the corner of his eye. Temper it, his compassion, like he'd always chided his "Brighid dear". He still had a vial of his favorite cologne she'd always kept prepared for him, reluctant to make all-too-fleeting use of this last tangible memory. No pressure for her to replicate, but his manuscripts on the other hand...he'd challenged himself to bring out a new best every time, for her.

If he ever was able to meet with her again, he'd wear the cologne, he rather thought. Perhaps it would help to jog the memories she couldn't keep down in her journal - had she written about his own scent mixed with that of the perfume ! Oh, but enough of the exposition on a quietly romantic companionship. There was still young Hugo to think of.

His adolescent approach to his status as Emperor and work as a Driver on the field were both wonderfully admirable and incredibly endearing. It was sobering simply to think of all the years he had had left to live, not least because the voyeur in Minoth mourned the loss of an arc of character growth that'd make any acquaintance proud to bear witness thereto.

Did he regret not saying more to those lost? No, history was written as it lay, and he wanted no pretense of a larger role than the one he saw himself fitting into in the present moment. With the party shrunk, however, now was a time for mightily staving grief and regret.

"You're a darling, Haze." He wrapped gloved fingers around her delicate palms and pressed his warmest affection into their shared grasp. "If you'll pardon the expression..." here he shared a glance with Lora, "don't ever change." Haze giggled, but there was an understanding of the moment's melancholy in her tone, a laugh that always gave so much.

"To be sure, even if I did change, I'm sure you'd always know just how to capture a past version of me. You're something of an expert at that!" Minoth chuckled. "That you're right! Of course I can."

"Thank you, Minoth," she said as she dropped his hands and circled her arms about his waist, not tall enough to justify reaching higher. He didn't startle, not at the embrace nor the address - after all, he'd considered the many ways this moment could play out - but simply reciprocated with forearms resting on her shoulders and head. "Thank you, Haze."

Such a gentle soul she was, the sweetest he'd known in his admitedly brief years so far (even if only compared to those continuous many that lay ahead). Well, but enough dramatis personae. Drawing apart from Haze, Minoth turned to Lora and took only one of her hands.

"Lady Lora! I trust you'll do well on your travels ahead. Make me proud - I like writing about a spirited subject such as yourself, and I like it even better when it's only the transcription of events I've got to do, without a lot of embellishment to obscure the character."

Lora beamed and gave a faux curtsy against his outstretched hand. "Will do, Maestro Minoth," she teased. "I'll be your stuff of legends." He smiled, pressed a brief kiss to the back of her hand, then finally directed his attention to Jin.

"Jin, you're a man of few words, so once again I'll just say the parting mine. Understated strength like yours is truly valuable in every sense. Few can strike the balance and do it so humbly. It's been an honor to serve Torna and its memory alongside you, Paragon or not. Godspeed to you, Jin."

The two shared a gaze less terse than usual, but that was all. Minoth nodded, and made his exit. "Don't let this be the last I see of you - if you can yet find me on this world's stage!"

Cole gazed at the well-faded photo and softly peeled around the corners in a futile attempt to slow the rolling edges. "How did this become a group thing?" Lora had said. Well, maybe she had asked "when". How was usually less of a mystery with that group. Then again, indeed, how had it?

There were Lora and Jin first of all, of course. Then old Teo began rustling and clanking about with the camera apparatus. Addam had gotten curious, and come over to help him. But, he hadn't tried to drag them into the picture. Goofball that he was, he still understood that the two were having a private moment.

Well, but if Addam hadn't...Mythra certainly wasn't going to be interested, and he remembered Aegaeon being distinctly uncomfortable with the whole situation. Brighid was more amused, and Hugo - what a grand young fellow, he was just enjoying the casual familial atmosphere. Mikhail was shy as ever, and Milton was game but certainly not so much as to be intrusive. And he? No, he hadn't done a thing.

That only left Haze. Of course! Sweet Haze, who insisted that "you can't have done this in secret anyway" and had pulled each and every one of them in position, at no complaint from Teo and only mild resistance from Mythra. They all had a soft spot for her, after all. Whether Hugo ever actually made doe-eyes at Haze or that was just Aegaeon's rose-colored goggles, the water Blade's participation was half duty and half an extension of the same way he very conspicuously handed her sweets at the slightest opportunity.

Now for Cole's part, he hadn't really intended to be in the picture at all. Haze hadn't quite warmed up to him all the way yet, and it took Addam's insistence before she was confident enough to grab his hand and put him practically shoulder-to-shoulder with the prince. Not that he minded, of course, but did he really belong with this merry band?

("We all drink from the same well, don't we? That's a wise saying, I think." "I don't think that's strictly applicable here." "Oh, come off it, Minoth, you're making me look bad!")

After the shutter had snapped once, twice, three times, a copy for each team, and Addam had used the arm he'd slung around Minoth's shoulder to draw the Flesh Eater closer, steady the side of his head with an open palm, and kiss him proudly on the cheek, well, he rather thought he didn't much care. But, in the end, this was a more precious memento than he had ever expected it to be when Addam entrusted it to him and the frontmatter pages of his most recent manuscript.

Either Aegaeon or Brighid had kept Hugo's copy (he couldn't quite remember how that little spat had resolved itself), and it had vanished with them, unfortunately somehow separated from the Jewel's coveted journal. Jin had burnt his unfeelingly, or so Azurda had said. And here was Cole, once again the chronicler of history he had indeed lived through, but only as a side character. Still, it was more than good enough to have been cheering in the wings for that wonderful group of leading men and women.

"Pyra, there's something I've been wonderin' about." Certainly there were many things on minds as they wended their way up from Morytha. In that referenced form, she turned to look at him. "What is it, Rex?" Her Driver was sheepish.

"About that new power we saw - you mighta guessed that's what most of my questions are gonna be about. But anyway...it feels like you can do most anything, with the ether in the air and your Artifices and all. Is there much you can't do? Probably raising people from the dead is where it stops, I reckon."

Pyra, with a modicum of resolution channeled from the very same Pneuma, answered, "Yeah. It's the power of the Master Blade, right?" Rex nodded, still a little too fatigued from their journey to give more enthusiasm.

"Well, what I wanted to ask is...I know we're on our way up to the World Tree, for real this time, but I can't help thinking about old Cole back in Fonsa Myma. If we haven't shaken things up for real yet, we're about to, and it was bad enough to see Vandham die when we were there fighting with him. Strange to say it, but I don't like the thought of a peaceful death in his sleep right about now."

He looked over at Pyra and was surprised to see Mythra there instead. "I know what you were doing, asking Pyra like that." "But- I didn't even ask!" She waved a gloved hand. "It's obvious what you were going to. Heal his sorry bones, maybe fix his Core Crystal."

Rex clenched his fists, but the gesture was impotent. "You don't have to be so unfeeling about it." She rolled her eyes over one rotation with a tocking noise from her tongue. "Whatever. Trust me, I'm the one to handle this - even if it's really both of us," she finished, catching Rex's forthcoming query without pause or even much intoned patience.

Rex frowned, but went with it, the next obstacle more pressing. "How would we even get up there? I've been looking for the past few minutes now and I haven't caught sight of Uraya in the Cloud Sea at all." To his surprise, Mythra left no pause for smirks or annoyance as she stamped out a definitive, "It'll surface in seven minutes, just enough time to wait for everyone else to circle up."

Rex was cheered. "That's great! It's coming close enough for us all to be able to make clear passage? Eighth rule of the Salvager's Code: if you're in luck, make haste and don't duck!" She couldn't tell if he'd made half this shit up by now. Nah. The kid was too sincere for that, and this moment didn't warrant anything more or less than the simple truth.

"No. Just you and me will go." Rex glanced up at his Blade, trying to catch any telltale signs of an internal conversation - one of the sort that regular humans or Blades didn't have with themselves. Nothing. "No use trekking everybody in there when they could be making progress for us to meet them at when we're done."

Oh. Made enough sense. So, when the gang indeed caught up, they were summarily briefed and sent onward, not without questioning looks pinioning back. Weird timing, Rex thought, a little too convenient for his bleeding-heart whim. Could it be the Architect? He supposed they'd find out in a few days' time.

As the titan Uraya broached the scuddering cloud surface, Mythra channeled Pneuma's heightened abilities for a split second to boost her short-range teleportation, just enough to push out into the path of the whale's maw. Rex felt himself falling without dread towards the once-uninviting caves. The trip to, then through the stomach was buoyed along by memories of Vandham and the enchanting ether particles filling the air - some of them probably were Vandham, Rex thought, more glib than glum.

Throughout it all, Mythra seemed preoccupied, stony. He twinged with the need to ask her, tap into her worry, but the deliberate shift away from Pyra clearly locked that option out.

Up the steps, steps, steps, cross the gromrice paddies, round the fountain. There was Iona, hurrying back from the apothecary with step handicapped by worry. "Iona!" The girl turned around and her face half-lit with recognition. "Rex, M-Mythra..." she offered. It was like she'd aged a half decade, but was yet stuck in that child's body.

"How is he?" Rex and Mythra started in tandem - they both reddened, despite the setting. "Grandfather...'s dying. It's not his body that hurts, just his brain. But that's bad enough-- Oh, Grandfather..." She trailed off, not wanting to say more. Rex's "can we see him" went unspoken, and they wound into the back rooms of the playhouse.

No wretching, hacking coughs greeted them. In a bed barely architecturally discernible behind myriad towering piles of books and posters lay Cole's aged body, no longer struggling against the pain of its mortality. Before Rex could make motion to greet, Mythra had stepped past him in measured strides, taking up the decrepit hands with purpose.

"Can you hear him?" Hear who? Cole startled. "You...I thought it would have been..." She shook her head just enough to be perceptible. "It was Rex's idea - for us to come here at all - but I'd been thinking about it." The old man groaned.

"Can we- Can I do what I should have done all those years ago?" Never mind that she couldn't have, then. Talk of plot holes was for later. He returned the gesture made with chin, grunting.

"Rex." The young Salvager was glad he wasn't being left out of this weighty moment. It had been his idea, after all! Not that, you know, not that it mattered much, o' course. "I need you to help control me. Keep me steady. Focus the ether, don't give too much."

Questioningly, he pulled off a glove and placed his hand on one of her wrists, just shy of the touch the two Blades (of a sort) shared. No direct acknowledgement. A teal flash, and she was Pneuma. Expert fingertips moved to cast about the red miasma hanging over a tainted Core Crystal.

When the ether started to whir, Rex found himself holding his breath. It felt wrong to disturb whatever was going on - healing, restoration, freedom, it must be - with even the smallest motion. Mythra had said she should've done this "years ago", and he could understand why their first meeting with Cole hadn't been the right time to deal with whatever this was either.

He frowned and tried to parse the vibrating frequencies. Was it more mechanical or organic? It was both, he decided. Mythra (he knew it was her most strongly) was being agonizingly tender with her exacting machinations.

Cole had been silent throughout the procedure. Of a sudden, as Pneuma drew back her hands, he began to stir. His face was clouded and only patches of life could even be attempted to be discerned beneath the blankets and cloak that shrouded his shrunken soul. Rex, hands immobile, jerked his head clockwise. No expression.

When he turned back to the figure in the bed, he could only gasp. The scar remained, distinctive and now even distinguished, darkened skin twisted into a violent and clearly storied crease as the only blemish in a right handsome visage. The eyes fluttered open. Gorgeous deep crystal blue, and fierce. Realization crept over Rex.

Oh, Architect, it was the most beautiful awakening he'd ever seen, and that included Pneuma's herself. For a Blade to awaken knowing their own self intimately, as a person. For a Blade to awaken stretching not just into the space of a body after a Crystal for so long, but into a body they'd mourned for its own corporeal loss.

"Minoth." It was Mythra again, emotion now being allowed to spring into her cheeks and eyes. "Mythra." came the simple reply. The voice was wonderfully hale and had a certain constant shouty quality, an urgency laced underneath. Decidedly theatric. Rex felt a grin tugging at his cheeks. He dared gaze into those ocean eyes. Recognition, and a roguish smile.

"Iona! Iona!!" She'd been puttering about aimlessly in the kitchen, and came darting in now, catching the lift in Rex's voice. The two strangers wordlessly parted to open a path. The frame in their minds was still "clear a way to the bed", but miracle after glorious miracle, that very model was now obsolete.

Minoth stood to his full height and came forward to scoop his granddaughter up with a strength and facility that, Rex suddenly realized with a pang, he'd never been able to use in such a way before. Happy noises and murmurs of "Grandfather...!" echoed in the well-strewn space. Purple sparks showered from a crystal that matched the hue of his eyes. When Minoth's long legs began to wobble with new use, he sank back down onto the bed, settling Iona's feet into the solidity of the floor. It was solidity he himself had lacked for hundreds of years.

"We're resonated now, you know, Iona dear," came the first full rumblings as he stroked her chin with a gloved hand. "Now I can get back to protecting you - the way it was always supposed to be." That age Rex and Mythra had seen in the town square more fully befitted the girl now. Her blue hair no longer portended the whimsy of a child, but instead carried the peaceful idylls of her namesake the dove.

Iona squeezed Minoth's other hand in her two. "I'm just glad to see you back in health, Grandfather. It may have been your time, Flesh Eater or not, but all the same...thank the Architect for second chances." Minoth mused on that one a while. "Well, I'm sure these two will let me know about it, soon enough." Salvager's honorable promising nod, "I will." Minoth chuckled.

"I know you've done the math, Mythra. Many times over in your long slumber." Her eyebrows quirked assent. "It's not an economical thing all round. Indoline live hundreds of years, plenty long enough for me to have eked out a modest playwright's knowledge and still end off in better shape than I was a moment ago. I hand-wave my part in majorly altering the course of events, as you well know."

He gave a faux-stricken sigh, complete with wrist clamped to forehead. "What price my freedom! So, perhaps better for the trade to be on the side of the people." The side of the people? "I should have been bonded with Addam. In all but actuality I was."

This was the crux of those past issues, at least those that came to a head here, Rex saw. Mythra was about to speak but pursed her lips shut. Minoth knew the lay of it. "Having to live on past him made me a figurehead of a historian, but it made me rotten in my not-quite-human heart. A man can know too much, live too long." Iona leaned into his side with supportive composure, not tween weepiness. It was easier to be strong when yours wasn't the only flare of will you could scrap to find.

The spoken words were what captured Rex. Was that what the Architect felt? Rex wanted to stay longer with Minoth and Iona, this wise, nimble, giant of a heart of a man and his resolute yet playful ward, the perfect resonance pair, but there were answers to be sought.

"I'm glad I thought to come back for you, Mr. Cole- er, Minoth." "Don't think I'm not even more so, Rex." The way Minoth said his name made it sound like the regal meaning it carried, but it was the prince his darkness missed. "Mythra, suffer an old man his human foibles, would you?"

Rex's more aloof Blade was unexpectedly mutual as Minoth pressed a kiss to her temple, just under the peaking line of hair and skin carved out by her bang. Grinning, she snuck a punch to his now-firm tricep in response. "My arm, my good arm!"

Iona giggled at the scene - thank goodness, Minoth was beginning to worry her character had been irreparably warped by the whole ordeal. Rex also picked up on the ridiculous scenario: the playwright was ambidextrous. One more dose of histrionics from the old Blade this afternoon. "Alright, alright, out with the both of you!" he ordered, mirth in his eyes and a loud laugh threatening to jump loose. "I've got a lot of writing to do."

a definitional title + summary? indeed. just a little love letter to my favorite character in all media, if not ever than at least at the moment. i'm not actually all that disappointed with the way they handled his screentime, because it makes for such fertile ground upon which to write, but still, i wanted to hear Trevor Dion Nicholas's fabulous voice acting on some real important lines!!!

this little collection is generally more self-indulgent and less themey than the other that i've posted with a similar first scene, and that one stands better on its own as a serious piece (i may have been a little too implicit with the parallels though). and yes, Ao3 user yoshizora (the brilliant figurehead of Mòraghid if i ever saw one), don't come for me, Brighid Xenoblade is allowed to do one (1) straight thing and this is it :)

funny thing about the last scene: i got so wrapped up in school plus Torna that i kinda forgot about the main game, and wrote that without knowing that you actually get to fix his shit-rocked self in the game (thank you Monolith Soft). their caveat about the human side is more well-balanced and complex, but i like to think that Aegises doing most stuff is not godding out of bounds because it's just literally that in general you don't have one around. if in fact you do, lots of nice things outside the confines of the regular system have the potential to happen (and to go wrong...)!