listen before i go

---

At first, when she thinks of it, she doesn't plan to tell anyone. Not a single solitary soul. They wouldn't care, certainly not enough to help her, so what would be the point? If she's caught, she figures she'll table it until the next night. Siren will still be there tomorrow.

Siren. The only thing - the only person, if she'll make the heavenly mech into such a sentient creature - that has always been and will always be constant for her. In her corner, even. It obeys no one but her. It would never think of obeying anyone but her.

Siren would never stop her from running out to the desert, climbing up onto Golden Twin Mesa, and calling down the targeting beam to take out both her and Interceptor Grace in one fell swooping shot. Siren, unlike the rest of the heroic jackasses Mythra is forced to keep company with day in and day out and night up and night down, trusts her judgement.

No need for the laundry list; we all get it. No one else does. It's always Mythra who is coarse and unrelenting, never Brighid or Jin or Addam who expect far too much from someone who is one year young, and contented with herself for exactly none of it.

Roll your eyes, sure, sure, no one'd notice if she left, they'd all be glad to see her go, they'd be even gladder if they didn't have to look upon the farewell parade, Mythra is simply much too much trouble and they can deal with Malos just as well without her, probably. She's unnecessary, and so is her angst.

Cruel, don't you think? There are no saints here. None of us, or them, have morals so pure.

Mythra's not old enough to know that youthful suicidality is only trite from the outside looking in - far, far on the outside, beyond the loved ones, to the spectators of the calamity. And that, of course, is precisely why her hushed-up hustle is almost immediately interrupted by an unmistakable, annoyingly familiar tenor voice calling after her: "Going somewhere in a hurry?"

Minoth. Captain Cowboy. The one who's always got that Father-damned notebook out and is always scribbling away at the slightest thing anyone mentions. Doesn't he ever get tired of always being keyed up to turn normal conversation into pocket philosophy, or whatever the fuck? Doesn't he realize how much of a jackass that makes him?

However, jackass or not, he did wait until they were both far enough away from the city gates not to be heard (he followed me, can you believe that? creep!), so that's...some kind of point for him. But only some.

"Why do you care?" But despite herself, Mythra stops running. Doesn't turn around, but sticks her hand on her hip, elbow jutting, as an explicit signal of fuck off, fuckboy.

"Not sure," Minoth answers, somehow having struck the perfect balance between rushing up on her and skulking far too slowly behind. "Could be I'd like to go there too."

"I don't need an escort," she stamps out with her boot and her voice in one. Oh, her tone is disgustingly haughty - she thinks so, anyway. Probably, he's just more amused.

The only sound for moments on end, then, is the sand shifting listlessly. He's not going to answer again until she turns around. And he's not going to go away either.

Eventually, Mythra relents. "What do you want?"

His arms are crossed, but his usual aura of dangerous impatience that he shucks at every random stranger who he's had the time to gauge is gone - that is, he's perfectly nice with actual non-acquaintances, until he gets a read on and in. So magnanimous of him.

So gracious of him to remain fucking pin-drop silent.

"Come on," she spits at him, cranking her elbow quite furiously, of a sudden, "say whatever it is you want to say, I'm fucking LEAVING soon."

Immediately, her Core starts to fritz. Oh, it doesn't like that. It can hear her. She'd never said it out loud before.

"Leaving, huh?" He stands up straighter, inclines his head down at the ground. "You sure you don't need that escort?"

Mythra points at exactly nothing hanging brilliant malevolence in the sky. "I've already got her. Now piss off."

"No can do."

Minoth takes a step. Mythra starts to wind up.

Minoth takes another. Mythra starts thinking again about using Siren on a two-for-one deal, tonight.

Minoth is walking, now. But Mythra isn't running. That'd be...pretty fucked up.

"I always end up with you," she complains instead. "Why do you think you know so much? Who do you even think you are?"

I'm the Aegis, damn it, why do I have this Flesh Eater - this self-professed "failed experiment" ! - following me around like he's my personal butler, and I can't be trusted to look after myself without him?

"Hey." Mythra crosses her arms to match.

"Hey." Minoth reciprocates, drops his own.

"Did Addam send you?"

Ah. "Addam doesn't know a thing."

Despite herself, Mythra huffs a laugh. "You got that right. If he did, he'd stop making my life such a living hell."

"Hell, huh?" Without ever once being obvious or awkward, Minoth guides them to sit on an outcropping of rocks that overlook the springlands. They're overrun with sand, well diverted from their original appearance. Mythra tries not to mind it.

"You remember what I told Addam, back when we first met?"

Dumbass question. "Uh, no. I wasn't there. I don't know when you two got to be friends and I don't want to know. You're just as bad as him, really. You've gotta know that."

"Ah...huh." Minoth scratches absently at his jaw. "Thanks for that. But I meant we as in you and I. Surely you remember just a couple of weeks ago?"

"I mean...yeah." Again she tries not to mind it, whatever it is, by staring insistently down at the lake.

"You and Malos being from the same stock, or however you'd like to term it...that's convenient, and reasonable enough, but I could understand if it's not true, in any obvious way that matters. After all, Addam and Amalthus, parallels and similarities though they may have, couldn't be any more different."

"And you would know, wouldn't you," Mythra shoots back flatly, to get Minoth to shut up (shut up! shut up! shut up!). Too late, however, she realizes that there couldn't be a truer statement.

"Yes," agrees Minoth. "I would. I'll never know exactly what's going on in either of your heads, because I'm not an Aegis and because I'm not an Aegis as far as our Drivers are concerned to act around me, but I would know."

That's...something new. To have someone acknowledge that there might be almost a different standard of expectations for an Aegis, not necessarily either higher or lower but more laterally flexible, to say that just as a Blade is allowed to engage in separate patterns of thought from a Driver (maybe not from their Driver, but hold that thought for later, because if we opened up that dichotomy then we might need to also examine the value and stigma of capitalization) an Aegis may be allowed to perceive the world somewhat differently, and be accommodated in that insofar as is necessary for their own most positive development.

Not that Mythra really cares about all that. It sounds like bullcrap, and it probably is. "Well...okay. So you would know. It's not like you like it around here all that much anyway."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"You're always standing in the corner with that stupid look on your face like you're the bearer of the curse or something. Oh, look at me, I'm Minoth, I'm so fucking sad."

Standing? Yes. Corner? Yes. Stupid look? ...he hadn't thought so, but maybe. And bearer of...what curse, exactly?

"I have experienced more direct sorrow in more recent years than most of our group, it's true."

"Direct?" Again flat, Mythra shoots now up an eyebrow.

"Lora's lost her mother, and Addam lost his. Well, really Rynea was only confirmed to be lost quite recently, or so I've heard. And...that's the thing. If it had been me, I would have given up a long time ago."

Oh. Huh. Huh? Mythra doesn't butt in this time, just watches silently for Minoth to take his pause and continue.

"I didn't think I'd ever have a chance like this."

"What, to observe the Aegis?"

"No, no...not really anything to do with you, though I am grateful for the opportunity to know a pair of Driver and Blade like Lora and Jin - and Haze, too, but that's a different kind of melancholy."

There it is, the soliloquoy. I didn't ask about Haze, for crying out loud, I asked about you. Ugh. God. I asked about you.

"Whenever you want to reach out for it, your bond with Addam is there. It may be fragmented, not to say fractured, but you can always count on it being there, if you'd ever need it - even if you just need something there to occupy your brain, because your hands are too fidgety. You know?"

Mythra sits on her hands.

"Meanwhile, me, for that same year you were living with the headache of his resonance - the man's a prince, but he's no prince, trust me when I say that I know..."

Trailing off, Minoth spares Mythra the discomfort of being looked directly in the eyes, instead grasping distractedly at his own upper arm. It's one of her own tics and tells. Odd that he feels the need to perform it too.

Then, he looks up. The eye contact is no frivolous choice made available to either of them.

"I had nothing. Not even Amalthus. I was drifting, aimless, because Blades aren't made to be free of a Driver unless they're deadlocked asleep, shut up dormant feeling not an Architect-damned thing."

"And you..."

"And I goddamn wanted to die."

Really. Could be I'd like to go there too, indeed.

Nah. Siren's not for grifting visitors, tonight.

"How'd you do it?" Mythra asks, like it's a game.

Minoth eyes her, well disturbed by the casual nature of the question. "I thought about doing it," the sternest stress comes, "a lot of different ways. Could have been knives on my wrists, guns to my head, blood on my Core and let a Volff tear it out directly..."

Blades' flesh is, more or less, synthetic. It has to be, in order to allow for the incredibly comprehensive quick regeneration and self-healing that they all have. Minoth, coldly humorous as it might be, didn't know how to kill himself. He didn't know if he could.

"I quit for a lot of different reasons. One of the biggest was that I didn't even know if I'd make it to the other side without leaving some or all of an undead self behind."

It's the eternal question, isn't it? What does it mean to be alive? If you don't know that, how can you even fathom waking up one day and ending up dead?

With all that said, Minoth promptly clamps his jaw shut and thinks about just what it is he's said. For all his boundaries, he'd been surprisingly free-flowing with the grisly tale.

That's proof, isn't it? Humans don't talk about their failures like they're anything worth speaking of, unless they want to try again.

What Mythra gets, initially, then, is that Minoth is telling her the cautionary tale of what you get when you don't go through with it. Somewhat the same, but very, very different on the face of it.

"So I guess that's proof."

The back of Minoth's ponytail judders. "Proof of what?"

But Mythra isn't listening, instead gathering her legs into position to stand and move towards the appointed place again.

"Would you...tell them? That I didn't hate them, not really. That I didn't want to leave this way?" A tidy little bow on it, something like that ought to be enough to satisfy anyone. Not that it would help their opinions of her, because nothing could, and not that she had any reason to care about those, or their overall feelings, now.

"Mythra..." This isn't exactly how he thought this conversation would end. No, it's the exact opposite.

"I'm not telling anyone any such thing."

"What?!" she whips around, splutters out. "You're just gonna say all that and then not expect me to think that you're on my side? I mean, no, like-- You're gonna say all that and not just plain be on my side?"

Minoth sighs. "The only sides here are life and death. To be on your 'side' is to want you alive and walking. Kicking, if it comes to that. Kicking and screaming, if you want to draw it all the way out into cliché."

"Will you stop making it all philosophical? What's the-- Argh, damn it, what do you want from me?"

"Just stay here, alright?"

"You can't make me."

"I'll hold you."

"I'm not a child."

"You're only a year old."

"And you're not even ten."

"Eleven, actually."

Eleven. Eleven years old, which isn't even half as many as Addam has, and Minoth's going to try to tell her what to do like he knows anything. If he hasn't learned what's up with life in a decade longer than she's had, plus the dead-defiling year, then...then what's the point?

"When you say it like that, I can't even tell if I want to make it."

Minoth shrugs, but doesn't roll his eyes. Sincerity radiates off of him like oddly mature musk. "Figure it out tomorrow. I'll be here."

No one ever wants to offer Mythra any continued purchase on their presence. They want to deal with the Aegis - the Aegises, really - as little as possible and then book it. And based on what Minoth just said, he's not even putting up with her just so he doesn't have to explain where she went later. He actually wants her to stay.

The way he'd said so is half a suggestion, half a plea, half a demand. Whatever the fuck that means. God, it's way too much free will, way too much choice, way too much owned volition.

Oh, how questions itch when they're tricked up with only one right answer.

"Why?"

"Why? I just told you why. I'm not going to sit here and tell you about how it gets better and your chance will come. That's bullcrap." Really. "Not that I don't deal in bullcrap all the time, but still. Life is a promise that you keep. Sometimes you're not allowed to know why."

"I--" Okay. Well. That's nice, but whatever. "Not that. Why will you be here?"

The smile makes its way across Minoth's forehead and the hollows of his eyes and cheeks well before it reaches his lips. "I think I just told you that too. We're not so different, you and I. And, I'm not so different from Malos. So we're stuck in together. I'm not going to give you advice that applies to me as well and then not take it, now am I?"

Codger. "That's not what you said - what you implied, or whatever. You're going to be here for me. You don't have to do that."

Minoth considers that for a moment, tilting his head to the side and watching the ambient light of the sand bounce across and over Mythra's face. No, she hasn't stumbled. Not yet.

"Those promises...once you start making them, they're addictive. It's something about how we're all in this together, I guess."

"In other words, you're motivated by spite?" She could certainly go for some of that.

"If that's what you want to call love, then sure. Spite works."

Mythra fidgets angrily with her fingertips, waggles the gems on her wrists to match those on her ankles. "Keep talking."

"You're sure you won't get pissed if I start talking in clichés?"

Clichés are, openly and admittedly, not philosophy. Not trying to be, anyway. "Try me."

"In life, you can either move by pulling forward on the future or pushing back on the past. If we make it about blame for what others have already done to us, rather than choices of what we can do next for ourselves, that's pushing back. I mean, I sure as hell wish they'd be nicer to you - and before you call me a hypocrite, you know I treat you as an equal, near as I can."

Mythra glares; Minoth doesn't duck his head. "Except for the Malos comment. That was...not so well-taken."

"Tch. I'll say."

"But anyway. Being the bigger person tastes like a sick kind of victory. Sometimes you're winning against other people, but sometimes you're winning against just only yourself. And if I know Mythra..."

The longer she watches him, the more Mythra can tell that Minoth is entirely unused to having any kind of conversation, much less that of a deep and feeling nature, sitting down. Whenever he exits the convenient realms of postures upright and closed-off, but for the single lurching knee, he splays all over the place.

It's the same with the way he talks, too. With Addam as a volley partner, his sentences are short and stung down to the point. He's inmitable, nigh cryptic. He says what he wants tied up with what he knows others want or need, but no more.

As standing, that is. Put in any other situation, where it's advice he's giving, any and all manner of bullshit can come out of his mouth, and the script remains completely in character. Of course, his most compelling talent is the ability to make absolutely any topic engaging and seemingly worthwhile. Mythra isn't half so good at talking about nothing of substance - and Addam's the same way, come to think of it.

She lingers with fingers dragged in the sand, catching on rocks and thinking of boring them full through with a Siren blast, for just a moment longer, then nudges, "Go on. Finish what you were saying."

He looks just as distracted as she must have; his back and attached ether deposits give a jerk at the prompt. He chuckles, once, twice. "No point, now. I botched my entrance."

If anyone knows Mythra, they know that she loves to win. Little things will indeed carry you from day to day. But for the moment, she saves her trump card.

Mythra stands, teetering on the stones and turning on heel back towards Auresco as she does so, and gives a gentle kick to Minoth's exposed side. The castle tower, sans seal, looms all too tall. She's not that much like Malos. She could never have made it up there alone.

So, back down she sits, knocking a closed fist roughly on his knee. All clear?

"Don't why I'm listening to you," Mythra mutters as Minoth opens his arms and bids her shuffle in to press her cheek to his Core. It's unstable as hell, feebly reaching for Addam but seemingly not being able to reach quite far enough, but it's so clearly fighting to stay alive.

"So don't call it that," Minoth replies dryly, ducking his chin down behind her diadem. "Call it listening to what's wrong with me, and then deciding to do the exact opposite."

"Wh- do you wanna...?" Does he know that she was scoping him out? Not like it's a leaping conclusion, really, but still. God, this guy's annoying.

"Nah. I'll get the hang of it. Eventually."

Just gotta give it time. A promise you keep...and a gift you give to yourself. And maybe the others around you, too.

Mythra grins. Fucked-up little game they're playing. But it's alright. For tonight, anyway. And...

"Figure it out tomorrow. I'll be here."