i like being in pain (it makes me feel like i'm going to heaven)
the title is something my dear real-life friend of many years, julie, said to me while we were discussing her indie music recommendations. we later moved on to discussions of abuse and compassion. but two hours earlier i had read my dear online friend viivi's fic, so this is also about that.
It isn't that Mythra doesn't cry. (It never is that it is such a simple, basic fact.) It's that Mythra is never sad. Naught the capacity. Mythra doesn't do sadness, doesn't hardly do grief.
She doesn't know how to handle it. And why should she? That's not what the Aegis is for. Not for compassion.
The Aegis is for a machine. A purpose. An exaction. The Aegis is a part of a whole that comes complete.
Mythra tests her anger on many an unsuspecting subject, and then again on just as many who know what's coming to them. Jin tests her, and backs off, satisfied. That's quite enough of that. I know all I need to know. Addam tries (curse him, he tries). Brighid tries, and tries, and tries. Mythra doesn't have patience; it's not her fault.
Minoth jibes her and she narrows her eyes and bites his head off, and he gets sorrowful about it, because he hurt her, but he doesn't cry, because Minoth doesn't cry, has never cried. Why should he? Nothing for it.
But all that grief builds itself up in the back of Mythra's skull, doesn't it, and then Pyra comes out when it's all just too much, what she's done and what she's suffered, and there isn't even any anger that Pyra's replacing, because it's all just gone, gone, gone.
Pyra, the pinflame of infinite patience. Pyra, the one who can take it, and hide her tears. Pyra, the perfect.
Mythra, the mad and the moody. Mythra, the unmartyr. She wakes up in Olethro with all the pain suspended from the last time her process'd been seen in foreground, and then she disappears, and then the anger is less, less, less. Pyra takes some; takes some nerve.
The first time Minoth felt an ache, he fell mute and wrestled with it. Is this to be my sentence? What kind of salvation? Why won't it go away?
The five-thousandth time he feels it, he welcomes it. Ah, yes, the grim reaper, my old friend. Have you come to take me yet? I've not much else to do. Sure, we can chat a spell.
As if Minoth, by taking a crick in his back, can pay for Amalthus's sins. Can pay for his own sins in...being. In being whatever it was Amalthus that had seen fit to scrap with, to impugn and profane. In being, of course, such a failure then and now. As if Minoth need pay penance just for stumbling along.
(But he must! Mustn't he? If you only knew, oh, if you could only see what lies within his skull. All the imaginary thought-crimes and transgressions of all size. All the history unrecorded. All the impotent stories, unfaithful caricatures. All the uselessness and unspecialness. Because if Minoth were a real Flesh Eater, then, well--)
And is Mythra so different? Mythra, with power abused, that which she didn't ask for and doesn't really want?
It's not like she wasn't trying. Not like she woke up every day and decided to dig her heels in because stretching her legs was too tiring, too difficult, too plebeian, too plain.
Mythra has always been in earnest. Pyra is Mythra's earnestness in earnest form.
So then. When Minoth sees Pyra, and sees that same dying light in the red (tired, so tired) reflection of erstwhile gold, he knows nothing's changed.
Mythra had wanted to kill herself, way back when. Pyra just wants to die.
Elysium...indeed, that's the ticket. Stands to reason that the only one who'd actually be able to talk to the Architect is his daughter, right? His most finely-crafted tool, and the one that at least hadn't willingly gone on a killing rampage.
And how could a person want something so badly and not do too much of a thing about it?
Oh, sure, she asked Rex. Not a moment of hesitation. She knew it from the start. But if Rex said, hey, Azurda's gonna fly us up to the top, right now, easy-peasy, would she do it?
She wouldn't. She's too apathetic.
Minoth gets apathetic, of course. He's never tried to kill himself because he's never been convinced that he'll actually get to die. Since he's trying to escape, and all. Why would he get what he wanted, for taking the coward's way out?
So Minoth likes being in pain. Never too happy. Always looking out for the kids. Always stewarding along what he can. A feigned self-righteousness.
And Pyra?
Well. He can't in good conscience chase her to the top, now, can he?
She'd like to enjoy it. To be able to enjoy it. Where Mythra had been frustrated with her lack of cohesion, Pyra fits in quite well - because she's not being seen as a weapon, not regarded as anything all too other.
Maybe she feels like the journey's not begun, yet. So she doesn't have to commit to it, hasn't started wiping the data quite yet. Mythra, been there, done that. Pyra, only ever on the way.
Sounds like he's judging her, them, doesn't it? But no, that's not it at all. Minoth is in awe of their resolve, of their ability to never show a thing.
Pyra, who cries and frowns but never shouts. Mythra, who frowns and shouts but never cries.
Minoth, who never shouts, never cries, and hardly ever even frowns, anymore.
He does know he's dying. Not as attached to his life as he used to be, and good riddance. Not that he'd ever have said it if he'd known Iona was listening...
"Maybe" I've had enough. Hah. Undoubtedly.
And what I've had in five hundred years doesn't even touch the point of the pin upon which Mythra had spun, danced, tumbled for what amounted to Amalthus's pleasure.
He'd promised Rex the play about Vandham. And it's important, sure. But if he dies...who's to say?
They'll remember the great man far better than he ever will. Isn't the Driver of the Aegis a much better source for the tales of an awesome Driver than a Flesh Eater who never really got his own?
No, it's just as well, girls. I think you'll live. I do think you'll get there. But don't drop a line for me.
You won't be angry, Mythra. Maybe Pyra will get a little sad. But you're on your way, so get on with it.
There. I've said it all, now. My own final gift.
And Pyra stares back at that relic of her other self's memories, wondering how it is he's survived all this time, still with so much to say.
She doesn't ever want to get that old. And she, undoubtedly, will live forever.
Mythra?
I don't wanna see the play. A guy died.
Mythra's sick of guys dying.
Shall we go, then?