lay your hands on me
rebooting my ao3 as a women zone apparently
A man known as Malos. That was the allegedly simple truth as Jin recorded it. A destructive force shrouded in darkness. With bulky shoulders and deep-voice swagger, the Alrest that subscribed to systemic sexism as told through the common wills of poor and wanton men certainly saw the male persona.
(That is to say, women weren't pillagers because they so rarely had the opportunity. Lora being as nobly good as she was...well, that was a nice bonus.)
Malos, known as a man. Perhaps it was yet to be seen. While Jin was the perfect individual equipped to question such a statement, she knew anthropomorphizing the issue would only exacerbate it.
Whether or not Malos's efforts as a "diligent student" ever actually paid off in any meaningful sense was a consideration best left to the thumb-suckers in the Praetorium. In some sense, their views aligned: study the world in order to be able to better judge its merit. If one found convictions good enough to stand on, one shouldn't need to glue one's tired eyes to the pained-glass windows any longer.
So, the Paragon of Torna. New information, or a useless distraction?
Obviously, just another prop of the people. They had no heroes of their own. They held up their Blades as aegises - also stolen.
Their Blades didn't usually hold up convictions.
Malos, implemented as a tool. Malos, made to fit the mold of the Architect and of Amalthus.
Then, of course, cast off. No good even as an all-powerful being.
Malos, with no ally, no conscience, no companion, no guide.
It made Jin teeter, for a moment, on her belief in the hidden, inherent independence - the worthiness - of Blades. For if this were really all the Aegis could come to...
But no. Blades, blessed and doomed to eternity, could guide each other.
And Jin had to ask.
"Are you really...?"
Malos cracked a crooked grin. "I am nothing at all. But, it wasn't all bad."
"You're free, then. Be whatever you want."
Masked, Jin had long been referred to as "sir", with her lean, imposing figure and her admittedly deep voice. Lora had always just called her Jin, and as she grew older, she might mention the name before remembering to call back to "the Blade I came with."
But, too, as Lora had grown into the androgyny of a borderlands childhood, so Jin had indulged her. Pleated skirts, worth the extra gold. Silk hair ribbons, when possible. Not a single mention of how it might be "ladylike" to fight.
And in that happy secret, the agency of a Blade's supposed true calling became just a bit closer to golden.
So now: Malos.
Malos could be convinced, more easily than Jin ever would be again, to have a little bit of fun with their centuries of waste hour. To have "girls' nights" on the Marsanes that Mikhail reluctantly endured, for the quiet pleasure he could see it gave Jin. To try a flowing battle skirt whose form Patroka critiqued and act alternately the heroine or villainess, as Akhos wished.
To consider Jin, her quiet lover, who swore never to change, and wonder if this were all just an experiment in the Architect's laboratory. What blind rats they must then have been.
But she decided that there was something to performing it, all the same.