if only he saw me now
"Grandpa, look. Miss Fan is here."
If it had been just a couple of weeks before - and it had been, then -, there would have been an out-and-out exclamation in the childish lilt of Iona's cadence. There were very few people who weren't made uplifted and joyous by the very idea of meeting the Goddess of the Praetorium, lonely and chilled though they might feel when she left.
But now...now Iona knew. Now she knew that seeing Miss Fan in all her trumped-up anti-glory was as good as one of Cole's rusted-over daggers right through his fake-heart Core, fake-Core heart. It made him feel lonely from the outset, and it made her lonely, too. An open wound, blown through with blisters. It wasn't just gossip. It was real.
She also knew, had always known, that even talking about the Praetor, who was hardly ever seen in Uraya at all, let alone fair Fonsa Myma's side streets, made Cole grimace, the corners of his lips twitch, the line of veins in his neck jerk. And she'd always ask him, are you okay? Do you need some water? Because he looked more like a dehydrated vegetable she'd seen in the market stall than anything else.
Something left to rot, something not tended, something expected to exert itself for the intended goal but not given the more nuanced tools with which to do so. No, Iona, I'm fine, he'd say, I'm just remembering something I'd rather not. So it's not anything too bad? No, not anything too bad. Just a little...unpleasant.
Grandpa'd had to deal with a lot of unpleasant things and people, even just over the relatively brief time Iona had known him, had come under his care. For all she knew, that was what being an adult was; if you begged out of dealing with something unpleasant, you were lazy, avoidant, selfish, not fit for your mortgage.
Cole found it illustrative to use all these turns of phrase directly for Iona's benefit, once upon an every-other moon when he peered at her from an off angle and found her looking a little more like a teenager than a child. She was, indeed, far from being a squirrely, wit-winning youth who knew more than she let on and stored mischief underneath an unwieldy mop of hair. She was a sweet girl - even, she tried to be. If there was ever a caretaker who'd leave opportunity for a twelve-year-old to be a crotchety old woman in one, it was Cole.
But all of that aside. Iona kept all her wickedness, learned or otherwise, well below surface, and now that she saw that surface-level faux-filigree phony (Cole's words, she'd picked over in her mouth for their alliterative and accusative sounds) coming their way, she announced it sweetly, with no pretenses.
Grandpa knew what she meant.
"I'm looking, Iona. I'm looking," he said, with a crooked hand on her shoulder. "And just what do I see..."
Fan proceeded - preceded - in a still gait with her current master, almost far enough apart to be seen as separate but coincidental promenade-takers. It was the same outfit, habit and all, that Rhadallis had worn centuries ago, and that no one else had worn since, but Amalthus was taller. Certainly, more foreboding, with the upturned horns and the lack of collar piece gating neck from stole. Cole could easily count twice as many pendants hanging from the hood.
Whose responsibility was it, if not Cole's, to put nuance to the presiding man? To accept give and take, chip and change, on the reputation that was, again, unpreceded, that no one yet lived to truly characterize; to understand the peak of a hierarchical religious and oligarchal state as something other than pure evil, because that was his function? But he looked like a peacock.
Cole quite honestly wasn't sure what to say. Had he considered the potential of this moment a thousand times over in his head, and more? Of course he had. And he'd never come up with a satisfactory sequence of subsequent events. On one hand, speaking first was instrumental to gaining the metaphorical hand; to showing his former Driver that he wouldn't cower, wasn't cowed. On the other, if he made no rush to greet Amalthus, Amalthus might see that he carried no more presence than the strange fusion of an Urchon and a Quadwing he resembled.
Maybe he wouldn't speak first, wouldn't throw down a wild-west epithet that showed nothing but his hand: full of dime-a-dozen colourful phrases.
But he would, eventually, have to speak.
Should he be sardonic? Steely? Severe? Austere?
Completely unrelenting? Deceptively affable, afore cagey?
All variations of the same thing. He didn't want to talk to Amalthus...at all. Ever. He certainly didn't want to give up new information that the Praetor didn't already hold, hadn't already gleaned from Fan's last report back that had surely spurred this inauspicious visit.
But it wasn't polite and adult to be moody, was it? There was no presetting this stage.
They avoided eye contact, somehow, until Amalthus had settled to a stop directly in front of Cole - not in front of Cole and Iona, mind, just Cole. Sure enough, when Fan stood off to the side with a bow and curtsey supported by her staff, she drew an unwilling and suspicious Iona close to her side.
Amalthus said nothing.
A showdown, was it? With a captive audience. To hell with it.
"Can I help you?"
There. That was all the politeness he had.
"Surely we've let bygones be bygones, Minoth," Amalthus intoned, and seemed wholly polite. Cole couldn't tell if he was being genuine or not.
So then, Cole was doubly determined not to be so. On the count of the first, if not the second.
He smiled, closed his eyes, bowed his head, cleared his throat. "Of course, of course. I don't hold grudges."
Turn to the side (away from Iona), cough. "Bitch."
Amalthus raised an eyebrow, in that superior way of his. It was all Cole could do not to completely turn inward - though, if he did that, he was likely to lapse into his old penchant (call it improvisation) for slipping out of his real foothold mark on the conversation and just start spewing, spitting, and shilling beliefs that weren't even his. Defenses of his friends and humankind as a whole that discounted or misrepresented his own self-opinion, estimations of the worth of life that were far less charitable than what he'd become convinced of, et cetera.
Talking to Amalthus was always a dangerous game, because of the power he held in and over the world. For Minoth, it was downright deadly, because of the personal power this Driver had grasped over this Blade.
There they stood, robe to robe, with inadvisable beards and scared, confused chosen daughters. It wasn't pointless nor senseless, this struggle, nor mere short shrift, but it was...over, wasn't it? After it all.
What was it he'd said, back then? A lot of things. A lot of bullshit. Ah, yes. "If only he could see me now." He'd never been quite sure whether that was wishful, aspirational, or just useless snuff for shooting the breeze when Addam was around to catch it.
What would Addam say, though? If he saw this conversation unfolding, centuries on, after so many years, spans, epochs of successful, somewhat mutual, avoidance?
He'd protected Minoth with every extent their shallow public relationship (the bastard prince, the bastard Blade, the same old story) would allow him to. He didn't enact any grand measures of reinstatement for an emancipated individual, nor would Minoth have wanted him to. That was the rub of caring for people: you got ashamed of yourself if you weren't doing everything right to make them proud, even when they didn't lay a single expectation on you.
If only he saw me now, still skirting and shoving at the bounds of the box to try to figure out how I can run away from him. I'm five hundred years old, for the Architect's sake, and then not only his. I don't have to do a damn thing I don't want to do.
"I've got nothing to say to you. Nothing good, nothing bad. Nothing you can take, and of course nothing I'd even come close to wanting to give. That's all it is. That alright with you?"
Amalthus's expression, just then, did recall a look of Cole's own rueful acceptance. "I can't argue with that. Good day to you, Minoth."
"Good...day to you, too. Amalthus."