a prison in sand is a haven in hell

"He said it was hell, living here."

It wasn't Jin's usual style to lie out under the stars fully prone, without a blanket or other barrier between him and the natural world, but Minoth was doing it, hair undone and hanging down, so he acquiesced, coalesced, assimilated. In a twisted sort of way, he could be said to be good at that, and then again very much not.

He almost looked like a different person. Minoth, that is. Jin wondered, then, how different he'd look if he put his own hair up - but, then again, maybe the mask did enough of that. What if he had no hair at all? What would Minoth look like without the scar?

What would...oh, yes. The conversation, supposedly currently taking place in real time. "What, in Torna?"

Minoth swallowed, retrieved his hands from where they'd reposed automatically behind his head to rub worn fingers over the depressions delineating his eye sockets and cheeks. "No, no...on, in, Alrest itself. Not that the Titans have done anything wrong - though, they probably have. But nevertheless. It's about the humans."

"Ah." Isn't it always? Isn't everything always about the humans? And isn't that the...

Almost as if he'd heard Jin's inner dialogue, Minoth laughed, but where every other half-conscious sort of similar sound he made seemed very placed, like the most beautifully genuine playact, this one sounded more confused, like it had escaped him because something was meant to but no one, truly no one, knew what.

"He never liked Torna anyway. Hated how diverse the climate was while still being temperate. He thinks places should be very set in the way they are, instead of having a forest here and a desert there and a city up at the top."

A confusing arrangement indeed, when the crux purpose of the biome isn't made clear. "That's...true. It doesn't make all that much sense."

Of all the one-note places that had ever existed, the Praetorium was certainly one. Jin struggled, even shuddered, to think how anyone could feel...anything, about anyone, for any reason, while living there. The only possibility he could come up with was that selfsame bland hatred Minoth was describing. And perhaps Amalthus liked not having to be so confused.

"But what would you do, Jin?"

"If I...?"

"If you weren't from Torna. If all this-" he gestured up at the sky, complete with blazing orange aurora that penned meaning in to the grand and glorious dragon in a way that the idle, itinerant stars never would "-wasn't meant to be yours."

If I didn't have Lora. If you didn't have Addam.

Off the cuff, Jin suddenly felt like being clever. Coy, even. "And your opinion on humans, as someone who, for all intents and purposes, isn't one, is...?"

He didn't exactly know how he expected Minoth to take that - rather, how he wanted it to be taken, as separate from how he had learned that it might be. Minoth was a hard one to set off, and a few weeks was more than enough time for the two of them to have gotten acquainted to the playwright's standards such that there were very few major missteps Jin could make.

So what did Minoth do? He squinted one eye shut and one eye open and rearranged his eyebrows quite a few times, kicking away a stray Dharma Cricket with the toe of his boot. The sand rustled in a comforting way that Jin didn't think sand could.

"I think they're a hell of a lot better than Amalthus made them out to be. I think he's far and away one of the worst of the bunch. I think it's funny, only I'm not laughing."

Jin nodded, satisfied with that. He wouldn't press on whether or not the two that they had were the best. He wasn't ready to enter that critical mode quite yet, but he knew that Minoth indubitably was.

"And," Minoth continued, "my opinion on Blades, as someone who for all intents and purposes isn't one but for all role and motives is, is that I'm mighty glad-" he paused to reach down and wrap his hand over Jin's, if only because the Paragon hadn't yet settled in enough to move it somewhere more useful and intentional "-that there are those of you who understand why I feel the way I do. Who don't want to push me out for the choices I made."

They had to stick together, didn't they?

"Who would I be, if I had more loyalty to one of them than to one of my own?"

Us. Them. We are not one. We could not possibly be, for we are not, in actuality, two halves of a divested whole. We are only people, one or two or three, and so we should be free to make our own choices. We should be free to live our own lives.

"I don't know, Jin. But I do know that eventually you're going to find out."

Minoth wasn't yet. Minoth might never be, somehow. Wasn't he better off being loyal to no one than to choose, truly, between Addam and Amalthus?

But right now, he was simply choosing Jin. So the night wore on, and so they lay there together. If the others had spied on them, they weren't making sign.

Jin asked Minoth, what do you make of Lasaria? Have you ever been? And Minoth ran his thumb over the crest of Jin's cheekbone and said it's not quite as alive as Gormott, is it? That's odd, don't you think?

Minoth asked Jin, how do you like Dannagh? Did you know it's always been my favorite? And Jin interrupted his intimate study of Minoth's scar and said it's not quite as dead as Mor Ardain, is it? Does that mean anything, do you think?

"I feel trapped here," Jin admitted quietly, when the moon had half come down again and his Core Crystal lay buried in Minoth's sideburns, the other man's hands marking division between his waist and his hips. "I feel like I've seen the world, but only by accident, and I don't really know what it's like."

"Do you want to go again, then? After this is all over?" The Flesh Eater only got halfway through the act of placing a kiss on Jin's nose before second-guessing and hiding behind the bridge instead. But it wasn't false. It wasn't playacted bluster.

"Lora wants to build a house."

"And Addam wants to live in one. But that's not our problem, all the time."

"I think you're right, Minoth."

"Yeah?" If he didn't sound so tired, Minoth would almost sound youthful with such an expletive.

"Well, no." Sorry. "I think you're intriguing, but I can only hope that you're right."

"Oh, Jin," laughed Minoth, pushing Jin away but pulling his hand back to rest at the place on his chest just above his Core again. "Come on, where's your wanderlust, anymore?"

"Lost it," Jin mumbled. He hated how petulant he sounded, how discomposed. He missed the cover of a warm, if slightly gray-shaded, body already. "Don't know where to look." Don't know if I want to, despite all I just said.

"Ah. Are you afraid it might not be on Alrest?"

"Maybe." Maybe I'm too far in to get out of hell now. But...at least it's pretty down here.