From The Gallows
Mor Ardain is a place of volatile weather, of myriad jumpscaring electrofire storms. Things are always changing, travelers always passing in and out in the night.
Doesn't make it a place of all that much meaningful change, though.
Really, it's just about the last place Jin would have liked to spend this unorthodox period of regeneration, a time when he should be dead and, of course, isn't really sure if he wants to be alive.
And Malos?
Malos is...quiet. Reserved. He, definitely, is different than he had been. It's explicit, where's Jin's transmuted transmigration is more implicit. And that matches their natures, of course, then and now, now and forever, well enough.
They've long moved on from gripping, bloody bouts in the rain and the grit, sparring hand to hand rather than blade to blade, socks across the jaw and shins kicked in and kicked off, trying to reconcile their innate weaponized natures through battle, the only way they know how.
Malos had tangled his hands in Jin's hair, and not in an erotic way, likely wishing he could toss him to the city floor and lay a boot on his chest and question why it was that he didn't have a Core Crystal in the same damn place as every other Blade, why are you the same as me because why are you so fucking different, what's your fucking DEAL icicle boy?
Blades lack genitalia. Jin can work his foot around the codpiece and kick Malos in the crotch all he wants. He hates it, it's stupid, he wishes it could be erased from both of their memories and minds, but it can't. It is indelible. It is graphic. It is loud.
Yes, Malos had always been that way.
If he could, Jin would prefer to develop impressions - new ones, old ones, whichever - on Gormott, or in Uraya. Fertile, leafy places. Places of spawning and growth. Places where life is meant to flourish and take hold.
Well. The absolute preference would be Torna, and then beyond that an even split between Coeia and Spessia, which each captured equal attributes from his mother and home.
But we can't have nice things anymore, now can we?
Can we?
Time is a luxury Jin doesn't exactly think he wants, here in this stagnation. Surely, there must be a goal. Surely, all the things he hadn't considered when thrusting on ahead with ripping out Lora's heart weren't deciding to come back and smack in the ass now.
Surely.
Brittle cliché, is certitude.
He and Malos question each other, over-civilly, about the states of their Cores. Mine is red, Jin says - that is my mark and my curse. And yours?
Mine is cracked, Malos says. Understated, mine is missing something. Mine needs yours to fill me in.
Understated? Rather, unsaid. They gulp guiltily and look down at their hands, far too large to be so impotent and useless, and then Malos says something vague about going out to see a man about a dog, which of course makes absolutely no sense to Jin, and thus breaks the scene.
Huh. It's...unsatisfying.
This whole damn set of circumstances is unsatisfying. He's sided down and shacked up with the man, the Blade, the Aegis who caused the sinking of Torna, and they're just sitting at the crummy old table in the crummy old room in crummy old Alba Cavanich with no allies, no weaker, sweeter, kinder souls to look after, no purpose, no money...
Architect. Fuck this.
Up he gets, hesitating for a moment on whether or not to sheathe his sword and bring that along too, and spends as little time in the city, cloak dragging pathetically in the side-streets' mud, as possible.
Whether Jin was a normal Blade or a Paragon or a Flesh Eater or an Aegis's closest unbonded companion, he'd still be able to sense for Malos's distinctive signature, even fragmented, on the outskirts of the city, near the port and the rocky backlands that definitely threaten someday to turn over into barren desert, crawling with creatures and creatures alone.
So sense he does. And it's as he's doing this crucial, unorthodox thing, that he realizes he doesn't exactly know what to visualize Malos as. What, who, how?
Malos is...handsome, objectively, and menacing, also objectively. Perhaps he might be described as beautiful and evil, sinister and vile but pure in a rigorous, vigorous way.
For all of his sins, Malos is in some ways so sincerely untainted.
Only some, though. Oh, that man is sure as heaven and hell both so overwhelmingly tainted. No, he doesn't belong in either.
A shame, really. Jin recognizes so much power, so much potential in him - oh, and please, not in Amalthus's slimy way.
Recognition of the self through the other, don't they call it?
So Jin looks for a signature that shines the same as him, wandering closer and closer to a lonely cliff. It is dark, vaguely clear and a bit starry.
Malos is everywhere, Jin feels. Almost.
Almost, and then it flickers. Then it is very nearly gone.
First Jin's walking. Then he's running. Then, without thinking, he has slipped briskly across the fabric of spacetime and landed directly at Malos's side.
The Aegis's head is in his hands, dark, dark hair gently ruffled by his rough fingers and the clip of his gauntlets. Faint weak noises issue from him, half creak and half groan.
"Malos? What are you doing here?"
Wrong question. Deadly, sickening, mirrorshattering, stepstumbling, wrong wrong wrong DEAD wrong question.
Because now Malos is full out sobbing.
"I don't know, Jin. I don't know."
"That's okay," Jin finds himself saying, without knowing why. "You don't have to. Not yet, anyway."
Really? Really, jackass? That's your comeback, your defense?
What happened to the anger? What happened to the rage?
What happened to wanting to know why, why, why?
"I'll die for you, Jin. I'll kill myself, if that's what it takes. It doesn't make any sense, but sometimes, all at once, I just. I just."
Ah. Guilt. Something this Aegis, and the other too, had never had.
Suddenly, Jin loses all his tact.
"You're evil, Malos. We both know it. The things you did were unconscionable and are unforgivable."
Maybe his point had been to get Malos to rise up; it works, nigh instantaneously.
"What the fuck is your problem?" The tears are all dried away. Maybe he's tuned to be combative, again. "That's your answer? Aren't you human, at all?"
Don't you have any understanding, at fucking all?
Malos stands, turns, shoves both hands into Jin's chest. He's about to speak further, but then--
"I always wondered what it would be like to fall in love."
It's an inane, pompous assertion for Jin to make, now. But Malos stops, processes that, and bites his lip bloodless agreement.
The kiss is beautiful and vile. It tastes purple, just as all those adjectives of earlier would have dictated.
Malos's teeth, clicking against Jin's, are cleaner than any have been in history, probably. Jin counts them, one by one.
Oh, yes. He wants to see what can change in Mor Ardain, and Uraya, and Gormott, and Indol, and all across Alrest.
With Malos. Never without. He - they - couldn't bear that ever again.