If you give a cat a gun...
Dedicated to a deleted Tumblr post by lgbtunis that read "lesbian/gay man besties is so fun like we're best friends we're married we're the same person we're siblings we're each other's grandparents. what's not to get."
So they're fixing him. Awesome.
Well, that's what Nia would think if she wasn't doing it in secret, still hidden away with only Niall knowing her true identity. Not so awesome. She'd let Dromarch come with, not for moral support so much as...yeah, it was for moral support. Like it or not, his healing abilities were far and away paled in comparison to hers. Sorry, furball. I'll still let you cuddle me when it's cold in Tantal, spiky fur and all. You probably need it as much as I do.
And speaking of needing it, there was Cole, hunched up in the back room of the playhouse, scribbling away - truly scribbling, because it was somehow viscerally apparent that the thoughts were aimless. He'd left the front door open, likely to get some fresh air circulating in the place, so Nia hadn't knocked, hadn't even called out.
Stopping off in Uraya before they moved on to summon Genbu was honestly kinda ridiculously convenient, but then, she supposed, she was in the playwright's house now. Plot is as plot does, and plot does what plot wants. So there she is.
Cole startled at the sound of Nia's voice giving a tentative "Heya", nonetheless stilling his quill with remarkable expediency. "Oh, Nia." The veins nigh blistering out of the back of his tensed-up left hand disappeared then, thankfully. "Where on Alrest did you come from?"
Like an idiot, she blurted out, "We were just at the Praetorium." She knew perfectly well what the monks' coven had done both to her, indirectly, and to him, quite directly, because Jin and Mik had told her about the experiments, Patroka and Akhos even giving their snipdictive input. Malos had stayed silent, almost guilty. She put two and two together there in Fonsa Myma those couple of weeks ago, of course.
Two and two? One and one. One and a half. She had at least been two whole people put together. He couldn't have possibly had half that luxury. Ironic, wasn't it, for the monks to be chasing after her screaming literal bloody murder of and over cannibalism, when they were the very original perpetrators, or even descendants thereof. Not those exact individuals, no, and it was stupid to sit and point fingers at such an obvious thing, and she knew it was all politics politics politics of the Praetorium's horrid legacy, but still...of all the gall. A lot of nerve, and all.
"Not my favorite place." The veins were back, coursing over the grip of his thighs beneath the cloak. Bloody hell.
"Not mine either," said Nia with a shudder. "Why did you send us there?"
Cole studied her, lips slightly parted with the faint twist of a grimace. Wasn't studying up trust, no, but care. Disappointment, the way an adult has to realize they've done the youths wrong. The way they have to be confronted with something they knew was wrong, but were just too tired to center better. Ain't that okay? Sometimes? ...it's alright. Sometimes.
"Because I..." A relenting sigh. "Because whether I like it or not, my Driver was the only one who ever went up that old tree. It was a means to an end, the same way everything he does now is a means to his so-called grand and glorious higher plan. The same way Jin and Malos took you in as a means to their greater end. They're not monsters, neither of them, but there's an element of cruelty, of misplaced mutualism, in how they treated your breaking away."
My what? "You know about that?" It came out sharper than she would have liked. But, Cole was ever-wry.
"An old man's got a lot of time to learn about a lot of things. Those skulkers come around here sometimes too. In a way, mine's a bit of a treasured haunt. Even though no one actually cares to ask how I'm doing."
Oh, that's right. "'S actually what I came here for today. If you don't mind," she added hastily. "Dromarch thought-- Hey, where is Dromarch?"
As big of a lead-in cue as that was, Cole didn't drop pace one iota. "Your feline friend? Iona probably co-opted him as soon as you came in. She's been going on about the big white kitty for weeks now."
"Indeed, Sir Cole," came said big ol' kitty-cat's terminally even rumble from Architect knew where in the house. Iona's giggle at his frankly adorable, though still vaguely nonsensical, posturing followed close behind. "My lady, will you be needing me?"
Will I be needing you? For what errand? For what ends are my means meaning? Who's the Blade and who's the Driver here, anyway? Agh...damn it.
"No, Dromarch, I've got it." Whatever "it" is.
"It?" Cole echoed her inner thoughts. "A social visit, or no?"
Straight to it. In you go.
"You weren't always so...crusty like this, were you?"
It was painfully obvious that Cole's jagged eyebrow didn't, wasn't able to, arch as high as he intended, but Nia got the gist all the same. "'Crusty'? You'd better watch your descriptions, young lady."
"I'm not wrong," she huffed, crossing her arms and hooking her foot around the back leg of a spare chair to pull it into sitting range. "I cannot imagine any normal Blade coming out of the Core Crystal looking like hell warmed over. Not even warmed. Room-temperature. No more than luke."
Instead of dragging out offense at Nia's little tirade, Cole simply shook his head and reached for a bookend at the back corner of the desk. Or, rather, he reached under it, and pulled out a well-worn but plainly well-loved scrap of paper.
"I don't often show this to...anyone, anymore, but if it'll stop your sassing..."
Lora was the one she recognized first. Standing proud, if a little awkward, hand on hip and smile on face, actually posed and animated, not frozen up still by Jin's anger and sorrow. Then there was Jin, behind her, with an unreadable emotion on his face. If Nia didn't know better, she'd almost think it was contentment. Then again, with Lora there...it probably was.
Wait a minute...Niall? Couldn't have been. He was only fifteen now. Barely even lived to still fully be it. But still, Brighid and Aegaeon (they the same as ever, of course, to no question) were standing proud behind some plainly Ardainian boy of the exact same countenance, if a little more robust of stature; the exact same carefully-combed deep blue-black hair, the exact same searching, soulful blue eyes.
"Was he an Ardanach?" A clumsy way to say it, but somehow she knew he'd get the point.
"Indeed. But it's not his direct line that was carried forward."
"It wasn't? But he looks exactly like Nia- the current emperor." The itch of "and he's the only other one who knows who, what, I am, besides you," died in Nia's throat (somehow, just then, she forgot to count Mythra). Focus, focus.
Cole scratched at the corner of his jaw, seeming to search for something hidden underneath the faded ruddiness of his beard. "Story for another time, okay?"
"O-okay." It felt like she'd entered some memory space, then. Some liminal-subliminal place where humans weren't meant to tread. Not anymore. Never would have expected it from a people so stout and grounded as the Ardainians, but I guess everyone's gotta have their secrets, huh?
Anyway. Who else was in the picture? Oh, Fan. Haze, Mythra had called her. She looked so happy and exuberant here, and thus so wholly different, that Nia must have completely missed her on first pass viewing. The halo seemed real and true, not just a glimmering disguise, but a reflection of the joy and light within. She looked like someone you could be friends with, someone you'd want to have on your team. Someone who wouldn't have wanted that stiff old funeral.
In front of Haze, two boys, one who seemed to have the polar opposite mood to Haze, and one who was even twice as enthusiastic about the whole affair. Architect, Nia couldn't imagine trying to wrangle her group, their group, awakenened Blades and all, into such a square little frame, no matter how great Rex could be at banding them all together.
"Who are these two, here in the front?" As she said it, Nia turned her gaze upwards, committed to the intensity, caught Cole's piercing stare. He was observing her, had been for the past five or so minutes. Again, the history haunted. And haunt's a haunt is haunted, and all. Great.
"Oh, Nia..." The joint-shaded care and disappointment flooded over her once more. "Oh."
Mikhail. Of course she'd known that - she'd overheard the nibbles of relevant details, once, and squirreled them away as part of her bigger storehouse about the who and the what and the why and the where of Torna. The when was immaterial; it was constant, it was limitless. The how didn't bear thinking about; it was bound to be gruesome.
And it'd be kinda rude to keep on about all the young people in the picture when he'd handed it to her as evidence of something about himself. Huh. She hadn't seen him yet. Scratch the Gormotti boy (probably if she'd ever actually been his age she really would have, play fighting and all), and who else was there?
Mythra, behind him, and even though she looked more truly exactly the same than the rest Nia had seen so far, obviously she'd changed. There was something striking in the stance she took now that wasn't here. Her unconfidence beamed right through the laminate of the photograph. Because cockiness isn't confidence. Nia knew that firsthand.
"She's like night and day, now. Not just Pyra, but Mythra herself. I never would have thought she could change so much."
Nia paused, thought about that. "But you've only seen her be angry, and frustrated with Rex. I know if it was me I wouldn't want to be judged by that part of me alone, even if it can happen a lot more than I'd like it to." Not that she wanted to be prissy, or people-pleasy, no. She wanted to be more like Pyra, it was true, but not in a way so transparent and empty as all that.
A single gray finger tapped meaningfully over the bright blonde face. "That's a fair point. But still...I know." The tip moved then to drop once on the man standing behind Mythra, and once on the man next to him, nearly cut or perhaps more edged out of frame. "I know."
Nia squinted in. Gray hair, golden eyes, goofy smile... "Is that Addam, then?" Was it? Perhaps the difference came in both reality and in Cole's historical fantasy.
"That's Addam." The warmth in his voice then was nigh intoxicating, so stark-unstarkly different was it from the prior tone of her so-called and perhaps so-beloved Mr. Luke. It made Nia want to hug him, made her want to help him half-doubled twice as much. Made her realize how wholly she was missing something crucial...
"Bloody 'ell...and that's you." All the more painfully obvious and obtrusive, was the leatherette of her gloves as her own fingertip stroked down the entire right-hand side of the picture. Over the ether lines, along the pride-lifted arm, even so small as they were. Is you. Was you. Nah. Couldn't've been! Because he's so...and you're so...
Not that her first pronouncement thereof was so gracious. "You had a ponytail? Get out!"
"You get out," Cole replied, but his lips were quirked upwards with the first cracks of a smile, "it's my house. You're just lucky I'm such a gracious host."
And gosh, wasn't she? Again Nia studied the picture, tapping fingertips on the upper corners back and forth until eventually she was drumming them down full out, feeling the half-hollow thump of the desk, the way it was well-worn but mostly well-loved. Huh. "So! So. This was like five hundred years ago, right?"
"Four hundred and ninety-four, to be precise. I think you can imagine that I won't mind if you round up."
Damn it all, old man, why are you still counting? You ain't foolin' anyone. "Or down?"
"Or down. But we're well beyond that stage." Very well. Very, very well.
"So." With a final unisoned clap on the table, Nia stood up, stood back. "I'm a healer, right? And a damn good one, at that. So I should be able to fix whatever's wrong with the human part of you, at least."
Cole laughed, dry and humorless. "And what good will that do? A Blade's useless without a stable ether flow." Never mind that just being able walk upright without doubling over and hacking up blacklung every five minutes would be a blessing sent straight from Elysium.
The guilt still chased, then. What good is a Blade, is me, am I, without my ether flow? No good at all. No earthly good, and no good up in heaven, either. Because I'm not going. I'll never be there.
"Well first of all, you old coot," Nia started with hands propped to hips and chin jutted forward humble haughtiness, "you wouldn't be in pain all the time. You're not a fighter. Iona's not your Driver. I should think just being alive should be just fine for you."
What was that? Would you repeat it to me? I'm a little hard of hearing now, you see.
No I'm not.
I should think just being alive should be just fine for you.
Been a long time since I'd thought like that. Or, on the other hand, it's been a long time since I didn't think like that. Oh, hell.
"Okay," Cole allowed. "So just being me is just fine. But what if it wasn't? What would you do then?"
"Well..." Chewing on her lip, biting into it, with a single canine's fang, Nia considered this. I said I was a damn good healer. Not so good if I can't heal Blades.
Not so good at all. "Never mind. Just let me-"
"Nia." Oh, stop looking at me with that face, old man. I know I'm silly. I know I'm screwy. I know I'm a scared little child and I'm just dragging Rex down by being a pessimist and there's no reason he even needs to take pity on me because I used to be aligned with the people who he's more or less fighting against, the people who quite literally wanted him dead and probably still do, and-
Down she slumped. "What?"
"You don't need to do any of this, if you don't want. You don't need to prove anything to me, and technically there's no reason at all that you need to prove anything to your friends, because they don't even know. But even if they did, you wouldn't need to. You know that, don't you?"
Because I didn't have to, only even really to the kids, and, well, they were smarter than all of the adults, then, weren't they?
Petulant, fidgeting, itchy in her jumpsuit of a sudden, Nia shook her head. "I do want. I'm proving something to myself. And I...I gotta do that."
Now that she was really prepared, or perhaps only willing, to observe Cole's expression, she saw it painted worn and gentle. Of course you do. And I love you for it.
Ugh. Gross. But...not all that bad, all things considered. There were worse people to garner pity, not to say sympathy, from. Or, no...it really was sympathy, wasn't it? Because he knew. So...so.
"Sit right there." As if he'd been planning to move. But anyway. She sat back down again, and scooch-dragged the chair forward with a hand on the crossbar until it was perpendicular to Cole's. Then, without any further preamble, she passed a hand over her proverbial heart and switched, glimmered, shone, faded into her Blade form.
It was weird. Oh, yeah, it was really, really weird. Because she felt bloody well naked without the jumpsuit on, all of a sudden, but there's a hell of a lot to be said for being comfortable in your own skin, and being able to breathe for once, for flippin' once...and all that. Weird. Really weird. And speaking of weird...
"Huh," said Cole. Nia's eyes snapped open. He wasn't ogling, wasn't even staring, but he was doing a fair bit more than just looking, just observing. "Not too shabby at all. You and Jin sure got off a hell of a lot better than I did."
"Really?" I'd never have thought anyone would describe what happened to Jin as getting off good.
"Well, yes, I mean," and gosh, he was almost shaking in his sudden animation, "you're glowing! No one could ever mistake you for a human."
"I..." Nia could feel her ears flick up confusion, and resisted the temptation to reach up and cover them.
Pull the lens back: Cole was indeed leaning a bit far into her personal space. He quickly caught himself, though, and brought up his arms to cross a boundary between them once more.
"I'm sorry, that's...heh, well, that's quite a strange thing to say, isn't it? But that's always been what's plagued me: I don't look like a Blade. I don't feel like a Blade. The first, I never really did, but the second...oh, I still miss it."
As Cole trailed off, Nia abruptly pulled her fingertips up off her thighs; they'd been tracing over her ether lines, now in their rare bare form, and wasn't that just a little bit of cognitive dissonance, if not just plain rudeness.
"Do you miss it?"
Huh. Did she? There was time, here in the playhouse, but Nia found herself not wanting to dwell the pace of the story to think about it. So she didn't, just offered lamely, "Not really? Like, the fact of it makes me angry, but I'm fine being...you know. Nia. Normal Nia."
Normal Nia. No you're not. You're a freak. And you freak out about being a freak, and then you calm yourself down and say I'm normal, I'm normal, I'm a human and I'm a Driver, and I'm normal. But you're not.
Anyway. "Dromarch's more like a butler than a Blade, so it's not like I feel so awkward bein' his Driver or anything."
"I heard that, my lady," he intoned from the other room with that horrible, horrible constance. Jeez, Dromarch, don't you ever get tired of hearing every stupid thing that comes out of my mouth?
A Blade can't. A Blade has no choice. But Dromarch didn't listen so patiently, so stupidly, so wonderfully, so lovingly, because he was her Blade. And so that was the thing, wasn't it?
"I'm sure you did, furball," she called back. "And thanks for listening." Really. Thanks.
"Anyway," said Nia.
"Shall we?" said Cole.
She motioned towards his Core Crystal, and he obliged by pulling the cloak further down, mostly on the left side to reveal a scar dragged over the left side of his chest. "An accident," he clarified, explaining exactly nothing, but she didn't prod any more. Hands to heart, now.
Death. Death, everywhere. Cells just hanging around without any base to call home to. Blood mingle-mangled stagnant in the veins that weren't really veins. A disorganized, raggedy mess. Jesus, old man, how are you even ever still standing? And how on earth did I think I was going to fix this?
But...hang on a minute. These cells are here because they put him together wrong. So if I can just regenerate them, and hook them in properly this time...
"I can do it." The confession tumbled out before she could so much as think, but her hands stayed on the gray-green muscleless pectorals nonetheless, no gloves clapped up to her mouth to signal her shame.
"Do what?" Of course he sounded more than a little alarmed. The pipedream was ringing, and the hands were wringing. Something's coming.
"I can fix you."
"Very confident of you."
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."
"And how about the ether?"
"I...I don't know. But I can stop you from hurting, at least?"
Please. Please let me do at least this much. I couldn't help Sister, and I couldn't help Father, and I couldn't help Vandham--
Please. Her eyes were pleading, liquid in their gold, and the blue in Cole's pulsed as her hands clutched uncomfortably tighter over his Core.
"I'd end up as a Blade again," Cole mused.
"Oh, you don't have to keep drilling so hard on that, still. You know you already are." Somewhere in there.
"I...I don't know. It's stupid." Self-doubt from you? So explicit as all this? Go figure. Nia kept browsing as he chewed his words. "Torna now is all about how Blades shouldn't have to have Drivers. Torna then was all about how Drivers and Blades were one in body and soul. I'm not saying I'm pining over something like that, anymore, but it feels like if you're going to fix me, you should really fix me. You know?"
I do know. I know that the fact of Flesh Eaters not needing Drivers is so overwhelmingly tremendously alienating and that's half the reason I'm scared to come out, because then I won't fit in the two by twos, and all the Blades in Garfont will feel like they've been cut a raw deal, and...yeah. I know.
"Well, you wanna...?" Nia jerked her whole head over to gesture at the general concept of Iona, rather than just flicking her ears, even though she knew the old man'd be well attuned to the subtle motion.
"No." His answer was so immediate it almost scared her.
"Why?"
"She's too young." And Nia would have protested, would have said hell, I was too young for whatever the hell it was got dropped in my lap, but you don't see me complainin', and what's so tough about you, anyway, but when someone who's too old says someone else is too young...you listen. You bow your head, you beat your heart, and you listen.
"So...who then?" She should have known, shouldn't she. Blades have a Driver, that's how they work. Not she, then, after all. Her independence pervaded as much as his the very didn't.
Cole propped his cheek in his palm, looked lazily at her (far more charismatic than he had any right to be, the blighter), and said casually, "Dromarch's an old man, isn't he?"
Nia was no dumb bunny - or dumb kitty, as it were. "That's a pretty odd way to proposition a girl!" she snorted, hands snatched away from where they'd been shifted to merely hovering over his chest with proper fresh immediacy. Cole shrugged, and suddenly looked another fifty times older. "Just a little humor for you. You're certainly not going to try to bond me to Rex, are you?"
"I mean..." She looked over at Dromarch, who was curled up in a not-so-neat pile of fur in the other room, Iona's hands petting through his thick white coat just visible around the threshold. Hey, I thought I was the only one allowed to do that - and would you look at that, he's even purring! Furball. I hope you hack up a hairball because she doesn't know how to do it right.
Old man, indeed. But Dromarch wasn't nearly half so learned, and so decrepit. So aged.
"Everybody says Rex reminds them of Addam. Well, Gramps and Pyra and Mythra, I mean." Pyra and Mythra? Myra? Pythra?
Cole nodded. "And I said it too. Because he does. But in all the ways that matter most to me, as a Blade, he's nothing like Addam. I don't want him to think he has all that to live up to."
All that? All what? The stuff from the play, he was saying already did align. And then again, by Mythra's - no, Pyra's, it had been her giving that exposition on the part and the past of the Aegis, whoever she really was... Anyway. Apparently the truth of it was that Addam's wasn't really even all that. So there was something else. Nia didn't understand that, no, not viscerally, not intuitively, but she could guess that it must be pretty nice. Must have been.
"Yeesh, I guess I get it," was her ultimate reply, not nearly as eloquent as perhaps the conversation deserved. "Not like you made it easy for the poor kid."
Cole laughed, a breathless, almost mirthless thing. "Well. It wasn't quite my goal to pave the way for our fair Mr. Origo to become a role model amidst his heroism. I don't think I could bear it if people started going around talking bad on his name, without knowing how much of it he deserved and how much he didn't. No one besides me, and maybe Mythra, will ever really know that. So I had to choose a path."
Give in to the poet, if you please. "And which one are you choosing now?"
His scarred-up lined-up face was appraising, now. Considering, too. Pensive, yet open. Not one-dimensional in the least, he would say. "I'd like to help you kids. Really, actually help someone, like I haven't done in a long time."
"You helped Iona," Nia put in uselessly. Well, it felt useless, but maybe it wasn't. "What would happen to her, anyway? If you weren't here, I mean."
"Roc will take care of her," Cole provided back, just as simply. Will, not would. "If we leave them in Garfont, I'm sure everything will be alright."
Now it was Nia's turn to look him over. "You're really serious about this, huh? Like, I thought you'd laugh me out of here when I said I'd come to try to help you feel a little better. And now you want me to be your Driver?"
Knuckles went pressed onto knees, old wrinkles smoothed out only in service of new. "Let's just say I really have had enough of being like this. And, I always like to stick it to Amalthus. Show him that I'm still both a Blade and a person in my own right. Be my own personal bit of vicious catharsis and symbolism."
Nia snorted. "We've already been to Indol. Too late to be giving him the middle finger now."
"Oh, no." Cole grinned. Cocky old blighter, indeed. "We've both been alive for over five hundred years, and me probably another thousand before that. It's never too late."
Never too late. Very well then. How to...how to do this? It wasn't exactly clear - that is, she wasn't exactly sure. Talking a pretty big game, aren't you, there? But I know how to knit. You use two strands when the individual skeins don't have enough plies to each their own name. So for every bit of his ether signature I weave in to his body, I'll put another thread in there from me.
Oh, god. That's terrifying. Resonating myself with another Blade - another Flesh Eater - by hand. But I'll do it. I said I could. I said I would. I said I should. So I'll do it.
Nia wanted so badly to squeeze her eyes tight shut and look away from the whole thing before it pulled her in to fascination like a work of manslaughter, but that wouldn't be right. You're in this, now. Again, so annoying. You'll do it.
"Wait."
"Waiting."
"What about Iona?"
"What about h- oh, I see. You're right. Iona, darling, would you come in here? And bring the kitty-cat while you're at it."
So Iona trotted in, and was greeted by the sight of a fox-eared Blade in a priestess's robes who she'd never seen before pressing her hands, now stripped of the gloves, against her adoptive grandfather's pitifully weak chest. That's quite a lot, isn't it? Imagine if they hadn't thought to say anything.
"Grandpa, are you okay?" She leaned against Dromarch, and Dromarch leaned into her. So you're good for something, aren't you, Jeeves?
Cole smiled, and this time his grin was breathy. "I'm fine, Iona. Nia here's going to try to...fix me," because it still wasn't a particularly delicate or sincere phrasing, even if it was straight to the point, "and we just didn't want you to be surprised if I looked any different the next time you saw me."
There wasn't anything else for her to be scared about, was there? At the age she was, and with the lives they were all living, well, Cole tried to stave any extra guilt about the fact that she would be changing guardians, yet again.
Surprisingly enough, that wasn't what had hooked the girl. "Nia?" She peered in. "It's still you?"
Nia laughed, and...and felt like an older sister again. "Yes, Iona. It's me. I'm...I'm like your grandpa, here. Though he never really looked quite like this."
"And you're going to help him?"
"I'm going to try."
Nothing more to be said about it, and nothing more she'd really have wanted to hear. With that, Iona and Dromarch padded out to go fetch Roc, and it was showtime.
I think we'd all find Nia's head a little too frenetic, a little too cluttered-up with her actual vital concentration, to take a visit inside right now. So we'll simply have to observe, and posit that she found her task very difficult and disorienting, and yet incredibly natural, intuitive, comfortable, right, all at the same time. To revisit the fiber arts analogy, she'd never learned to knit at what anyone would call speed, but she could beat along at a reasonable pace with a just as reasonable level of confidence that she wouldn't drop a stitch.
Soldier on, Nia. Weave the fabric. Drop down a column of stitches, and ladder them back up again. Work carefully, but work quickly. Is he falling asleep, or is he dead? How many hours has it been? Why do I feel warm? Why do I feel cold? Why do I feel...dark?
The room was dark. Purple, starry, thunderous. Gritty, invisible rats skulking-scritching along the floorboards.
"Old man?"
"Don't feel quite so old, right about now. Did you blow out the lamp or something? You're not a Wind Blade, I can't imagine why you would have."
Not a Wind Blade. But you...
"Cole, I think that's you. You never told me, what's your element?"
"Oh." The shadows trembled, but only for the briefest second. "You're right. Heh. I'd almost forgotten."
As the gravity washed away, Nia once again became conscious of the status of her hands, which were no longer perched upon dry, flaky skin, but upon brown leather, and the gold filigree setting marking the placement of a shining - yes, glowing - blue and pink marbled, not marred, Core Crystal.
Trace up beyond that, and there was an obnoxiously large breastplate (really the smallest and most useless possible facsimile of one) strapped down by a collar made of some sculpted red-orange material that looked to be fairly waxy in texture. Around the shoulders, more of the same but in a deep charcoal with wide ribs.
Who wears armor like this? This...this is a Blade.
Shooing away the final traces of her apprehension, Nia pulled her eyes up to the face of whoever this was. He was deadly serious, and yet an undercurrent of voyeuristic amusement played at his lips.
"Cole?"
"Howdy."
"You're..."
"Minoth, actually. Since I'm a Blade again."
She'd been halfway through absorbing the enormity of the fact that his jaw was square and clean-shaven, his scar wasn't quite half as deep as it had looked just a...however long, ago, and his eyes were twice squared as deep ocean blue, and the ponytail and all, but at this, she had to pull back and squint.
"Minoth? What the bloody hell kind of a name is that?"
Oh, and now he grinned full out. "Now, Nia, what kind of a thing is that to greet your new Blade with? Have some respect, come on!"
What a voice. What a voice! Quit yelling, can't you see these feelers I've got are sensitive? But hey, at least I haven't got to squint with those too, anymore.
"Oh..." Screw up her lips her damnedest, Nia still couldn't keep the infectious enthusiasm away. "Well, but that's another thing! Don't let's start out here saying you're my Blade, or whatever. Or even that I'm your Driver! You're you, and I'm me. And...and that's all."
"Sure enough," Cole - no, Minoth, conceded, "but Nia," and here he tapped a finger, gloved, on her Core Crystal, "you are my Driver." The thread lingered blue, between them. "Just wanted to thank you for it."
Cripes, didn't this guy ever shut up? It was looking like not, so Nia shut him up manually, by lunging forward and tossing her arms around his neck.
"You know we couldn't have done it any other way," she murmured over his shoulder. "If you didn't have another Blade for a Driver, you'd probably keel over within a week."
"Oh? How come?" On his back, decorating the apparatus that now seemed in total to make up a jacket, were two glowing points of tetchy, volatile ether, with a banner trailing and coursing from each. Just there, goes to show.
"I think I'll need to keep sending you ether, to make sure you're able to take enough in. Especially since we won't be in Uraya for much longer."
Ah. The broad shoulders sagged a bit from where they'd been tensed up enough to reciprocate the hug. "Fair enough. Just let me know if I ever start looking gray again, eh?"
"Will do." Never had to...send things to Dromarch. So I hope that won't be too weird.
Eventually, Iona came back, and Roc didn't know up from down to say anything about their old friend looking like a real cowboy, now, but it was no matter, because they and Dromarch, and Nia moved to join them, had no choice but to stand back as Minoth scooped Iona up, up, up into his arms, strong now once again, and spun around in a gleeful circle - he was almost too tall for the ceiling of his office, but then if Vandham had been able to fit, anyone could, right?
Too little too late, for Vandham, but...well, it was something, anyway. Wasn't it?
"Oh, Iona...I feel alive."
Her response was more or less muddled in a giggle: "You feel it, Grandpa! You feel so strong and healthy!"
Why, how, had she even recognized him? The answer was simple. He was still the same person. Still the same old, caring soul. Children know what matters most, and a Blade's a Blade's a Blade, innit? Of course. Always. Forever.
Eventually stacked upon the eventually, the five of them left the playhouse, in a way for good - after the destruction at the ruins and the re-revelation of the Aegises, no one was really in the mood for idle topical entertainment, revisionist or escapist or otherwise - and made their way to Garfont where the rest of the team was waiting, taking care of this or that business.
"Nia, there you are! Ah, who's this fine-looking chap?"
Shellhead. Of course. Nia muttered it under her breath, and wondered, perhaps hoped, that Minoth could hear. The most prominent urge was to pass it off, "Oh, he's just a Blade I found without a Driver. Thought he'd like to come along with us," but that was only double the hiding, wasn't it?
"You wouldn't recognize him," she started, crossing her arms. "This is old man Cole. We met him here in Uraya, around when Mythra woke up."
Now it was Minoth's turn to mutter: "Old man?" He didn't seem to take issue with the fact of being Cole, but that'd need some squaring up later, for sure.
Some semblance of maturity must have surfaced, because the Crown Prince of Tantal did not, in fact, make announcement of his very status, instead continuing to be perfectly cordial and conversational. Like a normal person. Who woulda thunk it?
"Oh? That so? You know, in my meeting with the Praetor last week-" So not so normal.
"Your what?" The heartier, less gravelly tone was still a fresh shock to Nia, and it nearly knocked her forward - probably would have, if Minoth hadn't clamped a steadying hand (for both parties, really) on her shoulder.
"That's right," Zeke answered, completely undeterred and perhaps oblivious as he rolled his shoulder back and thrust a thumb towards his ridiculously unclothed sternum. "I'm an ambassador to Indol, you see. Help keep everything running for good, as best as I can. And, keep an eye on ol' Amalthus there."
Possibly, even probably, he'd winked, but with his left eye, so it was all for naught. Not that Minoth would have been any appeased either way. "Oh, Architect save us all. He really is Zettar's descendant."
"Sorry, I'm what?"
"Never mind. Haven't we got quests to be getting on to? Or whatever it is you kids do."
Free of his recent inquisitive shock and now rubbing his chin in a failed attempt to appear sage, Zeke nodded. "Sure have. Say, what's it like having Furry-Ears over here as your Driver? Dromarch's never got anything good to say about it, I was wondering if you could give me some insight."
Minoth snorted, looked Zeke over. "Insight? What do I look like, a five-hundred-year-old wise man?"
Oh, you... Nia had to clap her hands over her mouth to keep from breaking out into a full-belly guffaw, and as Zeke stood there gaping like a fish, twiddling with the "old man" title and wondering if he had in fact ever met such an anti-surly resident of Fonsa Myma in all his adolescent travels, the two Flesh Eaters walked on.
So they fixed him. Awesome. Even if he wasn't really broken to begin with.
(And neither are you, my dear.)
And maybe a little later...a lot later, really, Nia took pity on the poor old man and gave him her sword. That meant, of course, that she had to live through the nightmare hell of the entire Spirit Crucible, of choking on her ether or the lack of it for no allowably ostensible reason at all, had to watch Minoth and Roc look at her with the rawest understanding (Yew and Zuo were far and away good enough acting parents for Iona by now) and not be able to say anything. It had been a dipped-out part of the conversation, that first time, that she didn't have a weapon of her own without just taking his gunknives, because of course she did, but she didn't, and it wasn't a Driver's weapon like he was used to, and anyway it'd probably be way too light for him, because the only sword he'd ever held had been Addam's, offhand.