you play the hobby-horse, i'll play the fool
"I, uh-- Hello."
Drawing his knees in to his chest, the boy off in the mid-draw distance clears his throat. "Hi."
"How-" how are you? how are things? how is it, in here? or shouldn't I know? "-how can I speak to you now?"
Now is the comatose state. Fei has nothing to do but be alone with his thoughts. How? It's a little offbeat, maybe a little stupid, but very genuine nonetheless. A very Fei-like question, all round.
The boy stands, turns, faces Fei. His clothes are, in many ways, the childish (childish, or merely childlike?) version of Fei's own, with a bow instead of a belt and full long sleeves under and within which his arms are hidden. They swish against his shorts, or at least Fei imagines that they do.
"I didn't want to watch anymore."
Didn't want to? But wasn't that...? "So it's not your most treasured posession anymore?"
"I didn't say that!" he snaps, something sharp moving in the general vicinity of his neck and the bow flopping impotently. "How would you even know?!"
"I would try." Again, a strange thing to say, but it's only true.
"Of course you would," the boy says. "I know you. Even though I'm the Coward."
Silence sets, perhaps as it should have always been. Thoughts pass, aimless, less between and more around the two of them.
"You're very brave," Fei says after a while.
"I know that," Coward answers.
"I never would have thought..."
Coward laughs, and it would be haughty if he weren't so humilitous, so meek. "Of course you never would have thought it. That's why I'm here."
"How is Id?"
The conversational pause is only brief. "He's fine. He's sleeping."
"Are things...good, between the two of you?"
"They're fine," Coward says. Somehow, and it's not because they share all that they share, Fei knows he's not lying, not just repeating the affirmation for mediation's sake.
"Xe told me that if I saw you I should...should tell you that xe's counting on you. Not to let him down."
"Oh, really?"
"I won't lie to you." The firm nod brings with it a shake of the dangling bang. It's nowhere near as long or unruly as Fei's, but it connects them all the same.
"Heh," comes the start of Fei's reply. "I guess you won't. We all...we all have our role to fulfill."
The fall of Lahan, meeting Elly and Bart, the manuevers around Bledavik, D Block, even the Tournament..it had all been fighting, fighting, fighting - and he hadn't even always gone unwillingly. Everyone thought that Fei should use his power to great effect, and strike out against his path instead of walking it. But even here, among his alters...no fighting. Not peace, either, but not fighting.
"I'm...glad to know you, Coward."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Fei looks up, face as clearly fallen as it can be inside headspace. "N-nothing, I-"
But Coward is grinning, wide as anything. "I'm only teasing, Fei. I'm glad to know you too."