i'm a fucking lesbian matthew
"Sad those guys had to leave, isn't it?"
Understatement of the century. What the Liberators had done was monumental, irreplaceable work. Linka and Panacea had their footsteps cut out for them, for sure. And Na'el, too, of course. He had yet to adjust to the task of finding new children to nurture, new vestiges of Chyra, and those who hadn't even been born yet, but he'd do it, somehow.
Even now, he sat at the piano, aimlessly flexing joints and staring at the inscription on the inside of the fallboard. Yamaha, it said. Would Alpha have brought such an instrument to the new world? Had this instrument belonged to Alpha's old world?
Matthew, standing with his back to the case, surveyed the inside of the room to which Na'el's beloved piano, salvaged with minimal burns from the destroyed City, had been relocated. Yeah, it was an odd feeling, bein' here again. And Na'el didn't even know...
"Kinda miss A," he said, because the thought of traveling alone had reminded him.
From Alpha to A... Na'el's hands untensed at the thought. He realized that he missed A too, despite the minimal time they'd spent in each other's presence. Alpha's control had rejected, rebuked, A, but Na'el himself had been enchanted.
"What was A like, really?"
Matthew smiled. "Oh, y'know." Easy question, for him, should be. "No nonsense. Well, maybe a little nonsense. Thoughtful, reserved 'n' all, but more nimble than Shulk or Rex. Knew how to explain things..."
After all, it had been A that had suggested to Matthew that he explore all of Aionios for himself.
"Always lookin' real smart. And committed like anythin', obviously. Damn! A was good, man. Biffed up Moebius like nobody's business. Played the lute, too."
"Sounds dreamy," sighed Na'el.
"Yeah, but like...A is just A, y'know?" Literally.
Na'el groaned. "I'm a fucking lesbian, Matthew! Of course I get that A doesn't have a gender, but that doesn't stop me from thinking that A is beautiful, and handsome, and interesting."
"Alright, alright." Matthew waved placating hands at his sister. "I get it...I think." After all, A certainly was interesting, and no one, regardless of orientation, could deny that. A defied description, in so many ways.
With a snicker, Na'el turned back to the piano keys and began exercising two fingers and thumb in a chromatic ostinato around middle C. Ostinato, Matthew had once said, because it sounds ominous. Like something's coming to get him and not wait for him to put up a fight. But then Na'el added the major chord underneath, so Matthew could relax, and began speaking as his right hand wandered out to shape a nondescript melody.
"You don't get it, right? Because you don't get...hung up on people. Not like I do."
Matthew frowned. "Not true. I thought I had a crush on Clarity and Dillon for months, maybe years, before I realized it wasn't like that." He leant his forearms on the lid of the piano, frowning deeper still. "That it didn't have to be. But they're still important to me. Obviously. I still think about them, like, all the time."
A shocking amount of all the time. Matthew was funny like that - so independent, yet so interdependent. So close to so many people, and never in the way that true conservatives would expect (and we mean expect).
As he searched for a worthwhile groove, eventually letting his fingers slide off the keys in perfectionistic frustration, Na'el hummed a tuneless acknowledgement. Then, wrists drooped, he caught onto something. "I think that might explain it, actually. You're always thinking about Clarity and Dillon, themselves. Those two, bright and wonderful. Your best friends, the most important people in your life.
"But I'm thinking about A because A reminds me of women, the same way I might think of...I dunno, Panacea."
At this, Matthew quirked a brow. "Panacea?"
"If you want to choose someone more obvious, someone who's not 'just A'," Na'el explained. Maybe it was a bit of a tricky topic, referencing the genderless discarded conscience of Alpha, but it also seemed to strengthen Na'el's point, in the same. "I'm attracted to women, so the features I see in any specific person that make me think of bonding - or, spending time with, I suppose - a woman in general are what attract me. Abstractly." Sort of.
"And I'm concrete?" hazarded Matthew.
"Head thick as bricks," agreed Na'el. But as they'd continually been stressing, the thing of it was obvious. Na'el found himself difficult to connect with, traumatized. He didn't have chums like Clarity and Dillon to rely on. So, he got daydreaming about A, when A was gone into Origin and Alpha had been so nasty to him.
"Bit of a disaster, aren't I?" Na'el chuckled. "But I'll figure it out. Shouldn't be the first of my worries."
Maybe he could offer to teach liberated soldiers about music. Not as useful a skill as knowing how to till fields, but it was what Na'el knew, what he could give, and what he could give to himself to keep himself going.
Maybe there'd be a partner for him. Eventually. After all, it wasn't like he was living on a soldier's timescale, bound to seek out what little he could within ten years.
Na'el stood, covering the keys. "I'm really happy for you, Matthew."
"Huh?" He'd been rolling his neck back to get out a crick in one side or the other, so it was with a sudden drop that his gaze met Na'el's. "Me? What'd I do?"
Nothing at all, and everything. "Well, for one thing, you're a great big brother, and for another, you're a dream of a friend. We're all so thankful for you, you know."
Matthew grinned that inimitable grin. "'S great to hear! And I 'spose I'll be lookin' out for any lovely ladies I see, to send your way."
"Better not!"
Grinning broader still, Matthew dodged Na'el's swipe at his side and hugged his sister tight.