grok 'em if you got 'em
It's obvious that when Addam hunches over Minoth, both sitting, and reaches for his hands, he's trying not to be obvious, but this isn't like watching Lora and Jin quietly converse, which everyone knows is an inevitability that only continually secures from within its own security.
The others might have enough decorum or disinterest to look away, but Haze finds herself transfixed. Each flinch, each tug, each blink is an entire manuscript of reflection; nothing like this ever happens to Haze. Not where she might be able to understand it, to access it, to internalize.
"New company is always fascinating."
Haze jumps. "Lord Hugo! I-I-"
"I would be more worried about Minoth catching you staring." Such a gentle admonition, and Haze does well not to startle at it, but more immediate is the challenge Hugo has laid out for her: ask compassionately the next question I am leading to you, that we might treat this situation with dignity.
"Master Addam is so gentle with him," is what she comes up with at last. She also takes Hugo's cue to rotate slightly away from the quiet pair. "Like...like he's afraid of something."
Hugo's face gives approval.
"What is he afraid of? Do you think?"
Is it worse to ask the question outright or to frame it as speculation? She'll never know.
"Quaestor Amalthus was not kind to Minoth."
Haze nods. This much she knows, based on the Flesh Eater's brief but sardonic comments of the preceding afternoon. Nothing in her had been stirred to believe that perhaps the Blade was just ungrateful to the Driver; she felt all truth blow before her.
"Despite the Indoline view to praising the Architect and glorifying creation in Alrest by continually studying its origins, not all of its residents are able to keep that faith. Amalthus himself would have been a likely candidate for the refugee camps, had he not worked his way up to a higher standing. But the refugee camps...they are not wonderful things."
How easily the sweetness of charity sours when given from an unwilling heart.
"Imagine how Addam might host refugees at his manor, here in Aletta." Haze thinks of how Lora might do the same, and finds the result pleasantly on the side of good versus evil that she has come to know. Mistakes, the Tornan Drivers might make, most certainly, but they are kind people. The kindest she knows!
"For Minoth's old friend to be so counter to his Driver is quite the thing to wrangle with."
And this...the difference between Mythra and Malos? It makes one shudder.
Before her is the Ardainian Emperor, so solid and so small. While Haze wishes for her embroidery, something to do with her hands and eyes to fill the gaps in this overspective conversation, so much of her feels frozen and clumsy. How awakened could she really be, if all this information is new to her?
"But all people have pride, people who have been so hurt especially. And so Minoth bucks against the idea that Addam should want to treat him so tenderly."
Hissing noises from the direction of that pair confirm this. Haze knows her own pride to be quite small and surmountable, her love for Lady Lora that much greater so as to power overlook of any slights. But what Addam does is nothing like a slight. All he gives is...
"And why do you think..."
Haze pauses, sensing something transgressive in her curiosity which had at first only been meant to uplift she herself from the trenches of unbalance before a Driver whose preoccupation with Blade Original has stunted something important in all of them (and now, has that curiosity even changed...?). Hugo's returning look is encouraging, open, understanding. Yes, they're speculating. Yes, they're intrusive. But there are ways to have difficult conversations. This is one of them; half-way.
She gulps once, preparation, then blurts it out:
"Why do you think he loves him?"
Hugo's face, head, neck (what little there is) all but moves, an animal of its own, in initial answer. Not away, but around, owlish. As if there is some great gulf between trust and love? As if there is some horrid shame, which Haze is so desperately implying, in Blades who love their Drivers, and in a queer way most of all?
When his trunk has ceased revolving, he pats at his knees, just a short distance away afore the end of his thighs.
"I think that is the way Addam and Minoth love. I think the safety they find in each other is, to them, a star-crossed thing." Hugo laughs lightly, warmly, quietly and boldly. He, too, loves the way they love, from a distance, as a friend. "Addam might once have loved me in such a way. But it is not the way I love. I'm more like Aegaeon." Devotion, always, will they mark.
Haze nods, nods, nods, feverish and hungry for truth, for this trust, for this love. In a moment, she'll realize that Lora does not love in her same way, and perhaps that Hugo is smoothing over when he equates Addam to Minoth. What a disservice, to say prince and playwright were, truly, just the same. And, too, what a tender honor.
"Do you understand now, Haze?"
Whether she does or she doesn't, what she can glean of Minoth's fragile expression, firelit and purple as much as it is gold, makes up all the difference. Words can't settle it.
Will a Blade ever truly be safe?