i love you, i'm sorry

Maybe it's just one Radiance Bomb too many; just one Terminal Flash too powerful a sight for mortal eyes. How can they merely tolerate to exist in the same sphere as the Aegis, the fascinating scion that behaves according to how many infinite scriptures? Exactly none.

Minoth can feel his heart, which he doesn't have, yawning out of his chest like so many staggered sutures coming undone. If his links to this group are only piecemeal, mirror-match snatching at clouds, then he has nothing to lose if he seizes on to something, anything.

Mythra is more than something, anything. She's everything, and then again some.

His forehead burns as tightly as the corners of his mouth, riveted to discomfort with untouchable trauma's nails.

"Mythra...can I talk to you, later? Alone?"

Mythra is hypersensitive, even hypervigilant, to and for threats of oncoming discipline. Addam provokes this too, and often, though less and less now even though, counterintuitively, the group has grown and he should be more prone to pulling her off to one side.

Minoth usually doesn't ask this way. If he does use her name, and stray from "hey you", it's "got a few minutes" and physical representation of the move to the side.

This is different. Of course it is. And her answer is the same now as it is those very same few minutes later.

"What do you want from me?"

Not just confrontational. Shuddering, somewhat. Her elbows and knees both locked to a defensive stance. One of her calves began to vibrate, just widely enough to be seen.

Minoth bit his lip, worked his jaw. He looked down at her, and she up at him. Her arms were crossed, while his hung at sides.

How mournful. Mopey. Mawkish. Markedly unmundane.

"From you..." Minoth worked the thought in the air, casting his eye contact anywhere from the ground to the trees to the night-sparkling sky. "...no, not from you. With you." That settled. Forward, now. "Mythra, I want you."

Even admitting it had to be a betrayal. Of him? Of her?

How else to garner emotional stability, other than a policy of perpetual access, a prioritization above all?

And here they'd all always thought Mythra to be the greedy one, never willing to give an inch.

Minoth, meanwhile, refused to let himself believe that Mythra could ever want him in the same way - could ever want to be around him, value his opinion, dwell on him the way he dwelt on her. It was an intoxicating impossibility, to imagine existence without peer, such as that dream promised. A guilty one, too, but that...

To want something from someone was to get something given, offered, passed from one hand to the other and the next. The two parts, actors, remained separate, aloof. No, when Minoth closed his eyes, he and Mythra were nearly one, synonymous in desires for the future and judgements of the past.

Did he just want to be validated? Was that really all it was?

Minoth hated to have to apologize, but it was all he could think, could imagine, could consider, to do. If Mythra agreed, he would know it by now. Wouldn't he?

He hated to consider himself so stupid as to be hung up on an, again, impossibility like that.

So he looked at Mythra, willing the hurt out of his eyes, and set the line of his mouth against the cross of her arms.

"You don't want me," she said, less than spat, quiet and to the side. If Minoth could have put out a gentle hand to catch her words were they fell, he would have.

Instead, his hand was under her chin, just the tips of two fingertips. He met her gaze, her cant, where it already lay and stood. The weight of her head, by this axial point, in his palm, by the same, was more than enough.

Not enough for forever. But enough for now.

Something about whether or not she was uncomfortable. Something about boundaries, about running it back to the start and refreshing their collective memories.

But that was too weak, for Mythra. Babying her, very nearly. Not that she should need to be ravished; no, that wasn't what this was about at all.

It wasn't contempt that he should say something like that, so rawly delivered to her primmest ears. It was scorn for his absolute foolishness, to even think it.

And why should Minoth, master of words, have difficulty, now of all times?

(As if now was not the very most difficult of times.)

No better way forward than to think out loud. "I know I shouldn't want to convince you," he said. I know this. I admit this. "I really can't think how, anyway. Would you...trust me?"

A cheap out, isn't it, Minoth? To convince by way of a coy, faux-casually tossed-off blind faith? To make it about her guilt, that she doesn't trust you, instead of yours, that you even need her to?

To implicate, and bind them in together.

Oh, ridiculous. Everyone needs to trust someone. Everyone needs to be trusted, somewhere, somewhen, by someone, in order just to stay alive. The latter necessitates the former.

To comfort her? Was that what he wanted? To hold her physically, calm the nerves of neurons?

Still, Mythra's belying leg stirred.

It couldn't be. Minoth had never known himself to be strong enough, secure enough, to hold anyone, for any reason, let alone to reassure.

And little it mattered, what he himself wanted, when Mythra was quite unlikely - quite loath - into awaiting arms to go.

"I don't..." Minoth shook his head, defeated by his own incapacity. "Never mind. I'm sorry."

And now to listen to the crunch of leaves and grass underfoot as he turned, coasting his eyes aimlessly...

"That's it?"

He stopped, of course. She had the power to do that even to he who choreographed each and every stage direction of his own bearing.

"You're just gonna drop me...whatever that was, and then give up?"

Listlessly, Minoth completed the return arc. Mythra's left eye was squinted over an incredulous, irritated cheek; her lips were parted, empty frustration. This was she who had the power to move mountains, to galvanize people, to terrify emperors and kings and princes alike. This was a Blade who was a partner, a counterpart, to...him.

He rolled his neck, to give himself some courage.

"No harm in it, as far as I see," he began to sneer despite himself. "Now you know the truth. Honesty's a wonderful thing. You don't always have to do something with it."

Was that an accusation, then? Minoth's way of spurring Mythra into revealing herself, just for the art of it, just for the confessional's play?

"And what did you want to do with it, just now, before you remembered how you're a coward?"

The distance between them, minor gap, was canyoned wide by both sides' commitment to assail with spit. These mortars, levied with little to zero regard for the truth, were their own kind of useless, no-op statements. They were so surely the worse kind, however.

"No one loves Mythra more than Mythra," Minoth said, dejected, a sideways sort of non-answer. "No one hates Mythra more than Mythra, either."

After a stutter, Mythra replied, "I guess that's right."

"So one tends to feel foolish, if one attempts to compete with the Aegis, in such arenas."

"But one can't help but feel compelled to try?"

Maybe it was his own imprudent affectation that made it so easy for Mythra to mirror, and talk Minoth's own shape of circles all around him. He'd certainly believe it; his lack of thought toward idiosyncrasy in personal situations just like these had already been his undoing more than once.

Minoth sighed, winced, breathed. "You're not for me. It might hurt, but I can be convinced to believe. What I won't believe is that you're not for anyone, not even yourself. It might be true, but I'm hard-pressed to let it stand. Real hard-pressed, Mythra."

Opposite him, she tossed her hair to help emphasize her disagreement. "None of your business, cowboy. That's your fault, if it hurts you so much."

Of course, she meant the implied impingement upon her own autonomy. The love stuff, she wouldn't touch. The mutually sacrificial honor-defender bits were much more threatening, to start.

Now, Mythra wouldn't pace, wouldn't turn her own attention, but she would set her weight, from one foot to the other. While Minoth yet loomed over her, she'd just then gained access to the high ground, and he seemed to shrink right in front of her. Almost, but only almost, to bend and kneel.

"I would do anything for you," he mumbled. "It's...I don't know what to do with that. I'm sorry."

Mythra shook her head, tutted. Oh, she was mean. "There you go again apologizing." Her tone was unbothered, the detatched sort of sing-song. Even though he should have resented it, Minoth found himself appreciating even the suggestion of interplay, of Mythra coming across to his level.

That wasn't it, here, though. Minoth stared at her, studied her, wind passing idly through his teeth, and then his jaw and brow both set.

"This is a joke to you, isn't it? You didn't let me give up because you wanted to watch me humiliate myself."

And here he'd thought he was beyond others' active participation in his live, laconic debasement.

This time, as Minoth turned, he didn't listen for the sounds of the world acting in response. He just looked at the light of the fire, and made to its west.

Honesty. Morally neutral, holistically rare, operatively squirrelly; you could only play your cards by the likely lay of the ranks already fanned out on the table. You could only give your subjection when the players were all aligned ready.

When Mythra lunged for and grabbed at his departing hand, he had only the patience to stop, and no more.

"I love you," her awkward words hit his aching back. "Is that what you wanted to hear? I love you. Too."

Minoth shook his head - yes, he listened for the rustle of his hair over his collar. He listened for the twitch of Mythra's leg under her skirt and armor loops. He listened for Mythra's breath, slightly heaving from the physical and emotional efforts both.

He listened for a graciousness in the atmosphere, to bless unhappy people doing unhappy things.

Nothing.

"I'm sorry."