Impossible Soul

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No one asks Mythra what they want to do when it's all said and done. No one asks what's to come of the Aegis.

Really, no one cares what's to come of this Aegis, but they sure as hell want the other one dead. Obvious enough.

Is it such a mystery? Maybe they really are just a weapon. One whose programming hasn't gone haywire (yet), but a weapon nonetheless. The most Blade of all Blades, the Blade of ever, the Blade of never. Wasn't supposed to be here. Doesn't want to be here. Has to get through it somehow.

The same as anyone else, really. Everyone has something they offer, something the rest of the world wants from them, and if they can't give it, what good are they? The thing is, for people - humans, that is - they seem to be able to make that offering one of their personality, of their company, of their very fact of living itself. But Mythra? Nobody wants that from them.

Not good at cooking, not good at phrasing their thoughts eloquently, only beginning to be able to scrap together crude depictions of the world around them, Mythra doesn't have anything but Siren. Nothing but light.

Of course they look at Jin, they always look at Jin, and see someone who provides companionship and the food of life, someone who is perfect in every way and even has the sparkling personality that he always fails to veil to boot.

Jin is whole. Jin is closed-off. Jin is complete.

So is Brighid, so is Aegaeon, so is even Haze.

But Minoth is not. By so much of his very nature, Minoth is incomplete.

Would Mythra say malformed? They would. The remorse would be minor, niggling, but there. They know Minoth wouldn't mind it, even spoken from another about him, and not forced up from within himself.

Jin and Haze will stay with Lora. Brighid and Aegaeon will stay with Hugo. Mythra knows without even having to think that Minoth will not stay with Addam.

The confrontation, the supplication, the undone moment of righteousless venting comes. The dark of midnight is, in our parlance, slightly less than tropish or cliché. Mythra never sleeps, not fully, and Minoth can easily be woken. They don't kick him; he's already down.

What will you do? Where are you going? Can I come? I don't want to, but I'm asking anyway. Just so I know.

"Feels like I'm just here with the rest of everyone because the job has to be done, and because if I'm not here it'll be- I'll be..."

"Incomplete?"

Of course. I don't want to go where you're going. That's only one, out of the many, and then that's...ugh.

Minoth knows they're not lying. Minoth knows without even having to think that they never lie. Just like Addam-- No. No, it is Mythra who never lies. This is not about Addam.

There is the lead-in. Minoth asks them, when you cover your eyes, what do you see?

Mythra snorts, rolls them as-yet-uncovered. There's nothing to see without the light. The reflections won't make refractions won't hit retina to cornea to basest core of brain stem, the shapes will not be made out nor made in and the information will not flow. There's nothing, nothing, nothing out there if you don't keep your eyes open (peeled, strained, hulled, shucked, shelled, prisen open until they ache, until they burn, until they bleed).

Why does one blink? One blinks to rest their eyes, to recall moisture and to fix what may be half on its way to being broken. Blinking, pausing for the tiniest fraction of a second to collect and recollect, is what lets us keep looking. Don't you ever blink, Mythra?

Not unless I have to. And no one tells me what to do.

And isn't that just the point? Yes, that's my point. Do it, if you don't mind, or even if you do, and tell me what you see.

Mythra had been right; there really isn't anything. It's dark, dark, dark as hell. Not even the outlines of the objects just seen linger for too long.

But what does stay?

"Now reach out your hand. Touch mine, or my arm or my elbow."

There is silence for a moment as Mythra petulantly thinks through the oncoming exercise.

"Can you do it?" Minoth prods.

A swipe comes, halfhearted, and the middle fingertip of Mythra's right-hand glove sweeps unsatisfyingly down past the outermost gauntlet of his cross of arms.

"Over here," he reassures, reaching down and shaking lightly at their wrist. "Now reach up and put that same finger to the very center of your diadem." Can you do it?

Though the gem studded into their diadem is not actually a remote portion of their Core Crystal, it can sometimes serve for the same point of connection. Of course, as naturally as anything, the touch comes into sync.

Mythra knows about spatial awareness - both intrinsic and not, both intrinsically and not. Mythra knows about dimensions, and the way time still isn't one we've become well acquainted with because one can't move in any direction they like within it, like they can in the other three put together. But this is still uncanny - because they know it's homing, homing, homing to a metaphor, an analogy, an allegory, an anecdote of advice.

"Cover your eyes, walk away from everything else...that'll always be there. You'll always be there with yourself. Sometimes you have to be. You can't measure yourself by the way you walk alongside someone else. I don't know what it does to the rest of them. Could be good, could be bad, could be plain livable."

Livable? Mythra reads it as he means it: simply enough to keep you alive. Really, not any more than that.

"I walk alone. Outside of all...this," he gestures at the array of sleeping silhouettes, "I don't have anyone else who defines me. I don't come in any matched set."

Mythra bites their lip; sand throttles among the vorous noise in their throat.

"I had to work for that. And I hated it. It was hard. Some people might blame me for not sticking with Amalthus, but then where would I be? I couldn't have it both ways. And I didn't want it both ways, either."

Not incomplete. Independent. In a sad way, but in a good way. In a self-possessed way, as far as they can see.

Minoth continues, and even if Mythra had been sure exactly how they wanted to respond, how they should respond, how they could respond, they would have let him.

"I'm not saying Addam's manipulating you, routing you in to any one way he wants you - you, Mythra, not the Aegis, you - to think. I'm not saying he's a sinner, and I'm not saying he's a saint. I'm not saying Jin is wrong for being so dependent on Lora, and I'm not saying he's right to be such a model Blade."

So what the fuck is it that you mean, Mythra wants to snap, I never thought it was like you to be so ambivalent. But they wait. Strange, bemused patience overtakes them.

"We can do much more, than...than whatever it is we can do alone, if we work together. Not just work, but...be, and do, and..."

Of a sudden, Minoth looks incredibly angry. His brows furrow, and his jaw clenches, and his lips purse, and something behind his eyes pulls back. Scratch all that.

"You have to do what you're doing for you, Mythra. And I know that's what you want. Sure enough, it's what you seem to be doing. There's something to be said for courtesy, and normality, and..." He gulps, looks away. His fists are down at his sides, and they shake impotently there.

"Don't ask me where I'm going. Ask yourself where you want to go. And if you need help getting there, then I'll consider changing what I'm doing so I can lend a hand. But it's not a blank slate. It can't be."

Mythra still hasn't spoken, not since...not since saying that no one tells them what to do. And that's not what Minoth's doing, is it? It's hard advice, but that's all it is. It's facts, but only facts as any single individual can surmise and osmose them.

"If this is right, then why does it hurt you so much to tell me?" Minoth isn't a liar either. Right?

He doesn't grab them by the shoulders, he doesn't get something wilder in his eyes, but he grits his teeth. "Do you know what you are?"

So Mythra still feels like their chest has been body-checked. "No," they answer, without thinking.

"You're an Aegis. My baseless suspicion is that you won't die with your Driver. The same goes for me. So when you close the curtains, when you shut everything else out, when you understand that all of this - ALL OF THIS - does not matter, cannot matter, as much as you matter to yourself, you realize how alone you feel."

"But--" But they told me to be compassionate. But they told me to think about others, and their actions and their opinions and their hopes and their fears and their wants and their dreams. And you're telling me none of that means a fucking thing? That I'm weak if I let it put paid to my attention? I don't buy it. I won't buy it. I won't have bought it.

After an untidy moment of glancing angrily at the ground, Minoth sits, and with his elbows propped forward on his knees he looks smaller than Mythra's ever seen him. They follow him down, and that evens out the perspective somewhat. But only somewhat.

"It's a long time, Mythra. Long life, long death. Trauma makes days feel like years. As much as it's a hell of an assumption to think that things really are this hard up, I've got a grim feeling I'm right."

There are darker things Mythra had been ready to believe about the world. That Amalthus is eager to bring about and celebrate its downfall, that the actions of the few can never countermand the evil of the many or even the one, that Addam jokes about ejecting them from his resonance because he really just can't be arsed to understand their nature, not even that he's afraid of it.

But to insist that the cold they felt, the alienation, was not just their own personal choice of "do it to them before they do it to you" but a stable, stolid fact of the very life they had yet to wrap their Core around?

"You make it sound like I'll never be happy." Each looks up from the cage of sleeves crossbarred. It takes more energy to be disquieted than one usually thinks.

"You'll be happy. I hope you will. Around Addam, around Milton, around yourself. I know you will be. But shutting the entire outside world and your entire inside self out at the same time will kill you. You have to be able to live with the nagging doubt. You have to make it your friend."

"My friend?" The juvenile phrasing sends a rutting shudder through Mythra's shoulders. I don't like myself enough to be my own friend. I don't want to have to rely only on myself. I want to be wanted. I want to be needed. I need to be wanted. I need to be needed.

Minoth waves his hand, stops halfway through to look at a midfield point in the sky, almost to catch something immaterial in his fist. "I dunno, friends close, enemies closer? However you want to call it."

So if I hate myself enough to distrust all my doubts, that'll get me through it? That doesn't...I don't...

"This is a weird dream. I hate this."

In response, Minoth looks at Mythra, nods slowly, and lowers his head into his hands, gloved fingers digging into the strands of hair just above his forehead. Soon enough, he's messed it up thoroughly enough that he has to take his whole ponytail down, and then he sits silently once more, tie in his hands being twisted over and around his fingers.

"You think I'm giving you a lecture, don't you?"

"I...I don't know," Mythra admits. "It doesn't really make any sense, but it also makes more sense than anything anybody else has told me. I don't know what to say. I mean...thank you? I guess?"

Minoth sighs, scrubs the heel of his hand over his forehead and between his eyebrows. "I should be thanking you. I'm saying this as much for myself as I am for you."

"Did it help?" They pick silently at shoots of grass poking through the sand, loose but not wholly disconnected from their roots.

He cracks a tired grin. "Maybe. Sometimes you just need to say shit and see if it sticks."

It's the first swear said aloud. Mythra chews on it.

"Mind if I reinterpret?"

"Go right ahead."

They pop their lips together, bite off all the flagging skin, and sit on their hands. Is it normal to want a good grade in off-the-cuff shell-shod group therapy? Sure it is. Especially when you - neither of you - have ever been in school.

"Amalthus was your Driver. He didn't care about you, and you didn't care about him - at least, you realized you didn't after you went through with that experiment, and saw that it was all a sham."

Minoth gazes softly at Mythra, thinks, I never said all that but I'm not surprised that you know, and nods to bid them continue.

"You realized that you had to be comfortable with yourself before anything else, but you can't just pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, either. You have to be in it, deal with it, somehow."

An Eks brays, somewhere in the distance. Neither pays it any mind.

"I like having you around, Mythra. I like you a hell of a lot. But you have to know that what I think of you doesn't matter in the least. You're a new character, in my mind. The only one who will ever truly know you is yourself."

"That sounds lonely."

"It is at first. But, you know...don't be a stranger."

Mythra gulps, nods. Minoth lies back down, hands clasped way too tightly over his eyes.

"I still hate it."

"I know. I hate it too."

What was that about being closed off, in the liminality both within and without yourself? Mythra soars uncertainly, with Siren. They are all they have ever been, all they ever will be...but it's a hell of a backfire.

Nothing but light.

Nothing but light.

Nothing but light.

Mythra is gone. Minoth watches them go, and crosses himself in a silent salute.

Glad I met you. Sure I'll miss you. Hope that wherever you are, you're feeling better.

Always do the right thing for you. For you, yourself.

Don't be distracted. Not by anything.

There is nothing so important in this world as the chase, the race, the ultimate search for reunion with your own most impossible soul.