gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss

"This isn't true, you know."

"What's not true?"

With the ink not even yet dry on the page, Minoth was feigning ignorance to the cardinal and cardinally-committed sin (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, the system is rigged and corrupted and you'll be lucky if you're not the culp-one to blame for it) of rewriting history - before history itself had dried, and its players died.

Addam stood firm, waiting for Minoth to fetch his head back out of his notes. Only time would tell if this wanton untruth he'd seen the day to read would live itself out as such an insult, or if it had merely been an unthinking misstep on the auteur's part.

So Minoth appeared, forming voiceless words under his breath in quick repetition. Addam wasn't even going to bother attempting to make them out, lest he interfere with the master's concentration. The words were penned, the notes rechecked, the hand stilled in doubt then set into motion again, more notes, more muttering...

"You know as well as I do that I'm practically the only one who never suffered an injury as a result of that war. Ever. Unless you count Mythra's cooking," he winced at the thought of his own callous jab at the practically-deceased (eternally-rested, anyway, right?), "I was never anywhere close to being a militia footsoldier."

Minoth made a generous look that indicated his quasi-faux consideration of the facts and testimony presented - as if he were a judge, an arbiter, and Addam were merely a contestant batting at the idea of having had a hand in the whole mess. Maybe that was the way he viewed it. Maybe that was the way he wished it had been. But if that were so...

(Flora, dead or not dead it didn't matter, had never been in for the politics. She'd picked up a fledgling career as a teacher, which was great for girls and especially girls who'd graduated early but would never have cut it if she'd grown up a boy in this age. Even Torna, progressive Torna, plucked the boys quicker than the girls from their erstwhile occupations, militia though this particular force might have been.)

Regardless, at length Minoth made another inclination of his head, setting it back to conversation level. "You're a stand-in for the people of Alrest. If we packed an ensemble up on the stage, it'd be impossible to balance the appropriate scale of the dark forces with the gentlefolk. The world-weary hero, scion and bastion of the people, alone among swathes of grisly hellions..." Minoth shrugged. "Just an unfortunate accident that the emphasis has to be on the hero part."

(Flora, Addam imagined, would have been perfect for poking her head in right about here to purse her lips and look from man to man and make something equanimous out of the guilty affair; not just arranging for a compromise but actually getting Minoth to change what was ridiculous and clamp down on what was load-bearing. She was perfect for so many things, except those things that were entirely out of head, and Aegis or not, wasn't this just - hadn't it always been - real life? He still couldn't wrap his head around it.)

Addam chewed on his unpursed, unpuckered (well, not yet, anyway) lip. "Mhm. Right, I see. An accident."

(Just like the two of them ending up as Driver and Blade had been an accident. He pursed and puckered and clamped down on that jab.)

"Knew you'd understand," Minoth called back from a fluidly resumed hunch over his work, as if Addam had already left the room and wasn't still sharing a floorboard with one leg of his desk.

Good for you, Addam thought, staring conflictedly at the nape of Minoth's neck while the thousandth ring of confusion set itself up for display in his head.

Good for you. Good for me. Good for us.

Keep it dramatic. Everyone who actually knows what went on is dead, anyway.

Dead...more or less.