The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging

Try as they might, the rest of Org Torna has a hell of a hard time stopping Akhos from seeking out whatever cultural haunts it is he sets his sights on when they move from Titan to Titan, city to city, role to role. Oh, he's committed to Malos's motive, alright, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to expand his horizons, repertoire, oeuvre, what have you...while he's still alive, heart beating, to do it.

Most days, he says he's living for his sister, kept inspired by the fact that she is here with him, the fact that she's reciprocating their archimedian contraption of impossible flight so boisterously (so bravely, oh, dear, dear sister) when neither has anymore the strength of will of wings to fly, but if he had to be selfish - and at some point he does, because all people do, Blade or not or otherwise - he'd admit to his own pursuit of self-betterment and gratification.

Who would he admit it to? Not Patroka, because she would bark bitter laughter at him and then perhaps go sulk about their continued predicament. Not Mikhail, because he would titter about it before doing the same. Not Jin or Malos, because they would...

No. They wouldn't understand. But every time they hover close to Fonsa Myma, and the precious pilots bemoan the prickly presence of one apparently so surly and aged playwright, Akhos toys a little more boldly with the notion that perhaps Sir Cole is, indeed, the bit player, the artful cameo, that he has been looking for.

Perhaps he would understand not just what Akhos does to occupy himself but why. Why shouldn't he? He, too, is a Flesh Eater. He, too, has been bereaved of all other purpose - whatever it is that drives him to continue staging that ridiculous bit of farce about the "Great Hero" Addam is...well.

Well, well, well. What is it, in the end? So the inquisitor will try the tropes and see if he can't just find out.

Cole cocks his head, squints the scarred eye when he spies those red glasses glinting out from beneath the hood of Akhos's cloak. He can gauge the scene well. Maybe it wouldn't be a misplaced maneuver, a half-crazed cue, to trust him - or his judgement. Aren't those two things only just the same?

"What brings you here? I won't call you friend, because we both know you're not."

The dramatic sigh of a response places itself all too easily. "Well, I suppose you could anyway. We could...play pretend. Couldn't we," - here a just-so-coyly-suggestive waggle of the eyebrows - "Maestro?"

"Tch. Always with the games. You've only been here a minute and I'm already starting to think I'd prefer Jin's mum-man act over this. That is, assuming he's still at it," comes the quiet, nigh-sorrowful amendment.

Not that Akhos particularly cares for or about the flavor of the offering. "Ah, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it?"

Oh, he has to bite his lip at the sheer pleasure he gets from seeing Cole suppress a roll of his eyes (blue like ether, brown like earth...oh, you're poetry, are you? what a clever little metaphor...).

"Come on, kid. Is this an errand for your ringleaders, or some kind of a social visit?"

"Fine, fine." Now Akhos rolls his own eyes, complete with nose stuck not-so-primly up into the air. "I'll be brief. Why do you write?"

Cole blinks, quite obviously tries to school his eyebrows back down to where they're so accustomed to sitting, shielding his bones and eyes and bony lies. No, he didn't expect this. Mark that one point for the underdog, then.

"Why don't you tell me first?" he grinds out at last.

"Touché," Akhos grants airily with a click of his tongue and a purse of his lips. He'd been busy studying the place where he knew the old Flesh Eater's Core lay underneath his own cloak, and not studying up an answer to suit this repartée. But, of course he could always...improvise.

Not that instinctual improvisation ever draws, most immediately, from anything buried anywhere harder to find than the truest of truths.

"I write to make sense of it all. To fit everything into categories, costumes, cacophonies of claps and cheers and comebacks and comedowns...it thrills me, but it also comforts me. No matter the age, the audience, the aftermath, there is always the theater. People - all people, no matter good or bad - love to tell stories. I'm no different."

I'm no different. Not a statement he ever thought he'd make, all round, but what will out will out.

"Did your Driver like those things too, then?"

Ah. So the old man is...really, really no sham. Akhos grunts, a light thing with eyes lidded. His Driver, and not so much his sister. Not so much the moment that's real, here and now.

"Call yours power, call mine courage. It's all for love, in the end."

He stifles a gulp. He feels...very small and young, no matter how many endless years it's been. "And in the end?"

"It's just a bandage on our overall predicament, and that's not so bad. We might end up on opposite sides of the dichotomy, when all's said and done, but it's like you said. We're no different."

It keeps it going. It keeps us alive. No, not so bad, in the end.