follow on, 'til the grail sun sets in the mould
At resonation, a Blade takes a Driver in like a sacrament, a blood-body communion, breathes them in with all the aura and etherea around them and keeps on doing so until the day they - both - die. It is natural, it is simple, it is all they have ever known. And we never quite...question the need to breathe.
Air comes within from without; you cannot breathe of the air that keeps uncushioned padding sustained between your very organs, your gallow's own sinew's strings. You cannot be that support in and of yourself, but you do very much still need it.
Flesh Eaters are not supposed to exist. They're not. But exist did and does Minoth. And so now, too, did Jin, the one who wasn't even supposed to be alive at this very moment.
Even if he remained a standard Blade and merely kept his cautious distance, gulping shallowly at what pitiful influence Addam as a Master Driver could provide, Minoth would still be alive, because Amalthus wasn't dead. He didn't so much want him dead as brought to justice, anyway, if it mattered. But not many things did, nowadays.
No, Minoth was out of extra sorrow to spare, extra care to wax on the exact cause he'd like best to serve as his cruel, wicked, apathetic Driver's comeuppance.
He'd been the only free unit they'd had, so Addam had sent him to Uraya to check on any remaining business the king wanted done with sanctions on the militia. He didn't mind it; it was a simple, necessary duty, hard work mixed with a little bit of hardship, nothing ugly or subservient or cold-crawled about it.
And after that? He'd stayed. He knew where the survivors would be going - Spessia here, Leftheria there, maybe a handful of stragglers to Mor Ardain as a result of Hugo's involvement, and hopefully, desperately hopefully not anywhere near the Praetorium - and he didn't care to follow. So he'd be alone again. So that was fine.
Maybe Minoth was fine. Jin most certainly wasn't. Jin was a Blade, and Jin was alive when his Driver was dead. It wasn't just independence he had, it was full-on absolutionary ascension. Jin was another being, now. Jin was...
Jin wasn't looking for Minoth. Jin was probably looking for any manner of place at all that included just one crucial thing in its description: no ponytailed, bow-legged, blue-eyed cowboy with a penchant for hearty food and some peace and quiet to boot.
It wasn't that Jin didn't appreciate a fair number of those things himself. Minoth had moderate sensibilities, despite the more extreme parts of his personality, and Jin had always considered him a calmer, cooler head than most. It made sense that they would find each other.
But we know Jin. We know that sometimes Jin hates the most intrinsic parts about the truth. We know that Minoth, the playwright, sometimes hates predictability too.
Enough preamble; we're here.
Most nights, Jin could keep balance beneath his cloak. His boots had not been bloodied, only muddied, so swiftly had his sword moved, and they were the most stable part about him. When his Core pulsed a horribly prescient and volatile discomfort, matched only by the violent and violently inconsistent throbbing in his chest, he leaned against the stucco of the shops, and his feet stayed steady. He was learning to walk all over again.
As he stumbled towards the playhouse, then past it, then away, he thought it a stroke of the very oddest luck that no one had stopped him yet. He looked, indeed, like a wretched old drunk, not fit for his shoes.
But it wasn't a palace guard that caught him. No, it was Minoth, taking a walk and very nearly passing directly the other way.
A Blade's a Blade's a Blade. At base, they all will always be able to sense others' ether signatures, in presence if not in essence.
"You there...do I know you?"
He hadn't asked directly if it was Jin, and that could mean either that he was being cagey or that he hadn't a clue to begin with. That was...fine, but. But.
Jin only staved a grunt and kept walking, stepping up to a scramble in his haste. Minoth very nearly left well enough alone, at that, which leant more towards the conclusion that he was more or less unaware.
Jin kept walking. Minoth didn't.
"Jin?"
Well. If he was going to lay it out just like that, Jin could at least try to play his part. He straightened, again staving the urge to put a hand to his pitifully bent back, and made no move to turn around as he answered, "Minoth."
"So you do remember me. You don't quite feel like yourself."
"How should you know what I feel like?" Jin snapped back, suddenly feeling a thousand times more irritable than he had just a moment before.
"Like recognizes like, as they say. I remember what you told me. I remember what I told you, too."
Thinking of giving it a go yourself?
.I'm merely interested. As one Blade to another
Well, drop it. You don't wanna end up like me - a lousy mongrel.
"I don't owe you anything."
"I..." Didn't say you did, for one thing, but also didn't say you didn't. "Will you step in here?"
By now, Jin had completed his unwilling about-face and parsed Minoth's similarly cloaked form, hair pulled as tight as possible back into the ponytail with nary a strand betraying his impression. Of all the things to change...
"Fine." He still felt groggy, foggy, not entirely present of mind, so if this was a tactical error or a practical coup, he'd never know, but he knew enough to conduct himself through the conversation coherently.
Within the lobby, Minoth strode to a bench, sat down at one end, and patted the other invitation. Even if there weren't any other pieces of furniture to spare in the front of the place, Jin supposed he could appreciate a convening place that afforded him the opportunity to make eye contact as he'd will it, and as that alone.
But as he sat, his will took a vicious turn. "I don't...I don't want this. I don't need anybody, anymore."
"Jin..." It wasn't fair that that single syllable got to carry so much meaning. It wasn't fair that one singular soul had to be so much.
"What?" The flat retort was the sharpest uptick of Jin's general milieu of mumble that had seen itself out so far. "I'm right, aren't I?"
"Of course you are," Minoth answered quietly. "I used to think the same thing. I stayed itinerant for far too long because I thought I'd die if I got myself stuck around people."
"And?"
And? Of course Jin knew that there was something else lurking.
"And I found out, eventually, that that wasn't true. Even if you don't need someone to love you, you need someone, something, to love. There's no point otherwise."
Jin wrinkled his nose, but found the cartilage lacking in fortitude. "I don't need you," he repeated. "I don't need anyone."
The bench was hard; just sitting on it and keeping composed took so much energy. But he wouldn't slump, he wouldn't bend, he wouldn't break, he wouldn't do that brutal dishonor to Lora's memory, he wouldn't slip, he wouldn't fall, he wouldn't crack his core and shatter on flaming ice...
Broad, capable hands gripped his shoulders, feeling the same ridges of Tornan military armor flanked underneath the cloak. Ah. So being held by Minoth wasn't exactly horrible. So being caught by someone when you fell wasn't the worst thing in the world.
But Jin felt like it.
"When you and I are the only ones left...what do you think we'll do? Do you think we'll just wander the desolate world forever, chasing the ghosts of all the people that loved us?"
"Have you thought about this before?" There was the same old wry Jin come back again - in baby steps, anyway.
"Been thinking about it for years," Minoth replied, sliding his hands up to grasp at deltoids instead. Then, one moved even farther over, to tip up at Jin's chin. If Jin didn't know better, he'd think Minoth was about to do something wildly undignified and unfit for a well-paced story.
But Jin knew better. After all, Jin knew Minoth.
The feel of skin on crystal, man on Blade, was more natural than he wanted it to be. Minoth wasn't making advances; he was just tired, and lonely, and just about all out of breath.