Kinetic Vision

---

Look around wherever you want, Cole had said. I've got no secrets.

Was his memory going? Nia had to wonder - did Blades even ever worry about that?

She thought, like an outside observer who hadn't just exactly the same problem coming upon her, in a number of years' time.

But she didn't deny a curiosity to peruse, regardless; to find something truly rare and special among the junk that the old man was still collecting (was there perhaps more, since Vandham had died? maybe some of the things from Garfont had ended up here, even). Honestly, she hadn't seen this much stuff since Da had sold the estate. House? Manor?

Cole's office wasn't in a house, except that was in a playhouse. She'd had to wonder if he'd been the one who founded Mymoma, given that Olethro had been where Mythra'd been woken up. If this place...jeez, if old man Cole had practically pulled this place from the ground.

So many volumes, with ornate covers and custom artwork designed across them all. As many came in neat-matched sets of even heights and thicknesses as did those that scatter orphaned: one labeled "Tales from Old Torna" that was just a book-shaped case for some very, very old paper, thick and brown and curling except where it's cracking, Nia decided she'd leave be. And then there were the various sibling works to The Heroic Adventures of Addam - perhaps Addam's Love and War was a distant, derivative relative.

At the very end of one shelf, tucked into the softening (aging, crumpling, collapsing) cover of the book behind it, there was a shorter, almost completely nondescript notebook; no spine, no label, no gilding, no bookmark.

Nia took it, because this was exactly the sort of thing she'd been looking for, and peeled back the cover.

09/13/3561

Today was my first truly independent exposure to life outside the Praetorium. I've got no excuses anymore...but, I've also got no one to lean on. No choice but to record my thoughts here.

Prince Addam smiled at me today. Not an unusual sight, but to me, well, it's honestly frustrating not to be able to express how it made me feel. To pin down those feelings. Well, not that I have anyone to tell them to. But since I spend so much time talking to myself. In my head, anyway.

The thought that anyone should smile at me. The thought that I, by existing, might have brightened someone's day. It's...

Addam must brighten everyone's day. It's part of the profile. Comes with the job description.

We'll see where the days take me. The weeks, the months, the years.

Poor old blighter... Nia felt, if she had to consider it objectively, that the worst of it, for her, had come after Da passed. All in all, she'd had a happy life, before that. As happy as anyone could be, with a sick sister. But then, the monks...

Meanwhile, Cole had wanted like anything to get away from Amalthus - how could anyone blame him? And then realized that he couldn't grip with how nice people could be.

Wanting to see for herself where the days took Minoth, Nia turned the page.

10/29/3561

I've been awakened and walking eighteen years, today. Fitting, for my independence, isn't it? And I could go out and buy myself a cake, to celebrate, but I probably won't.

Instead, I'm on my way to Torna. Better use of my pocket money, I think. Although Addam, if I've judged him right, will want to pay for it. I guess I won't say no.

I should say no, right? Should be my own Blade, my own man. But maybe...maybe if someone wants to care for me, that's not all bad.

Nia skipped the rest of this entry, written as it ostensibly was during the flight upon a transport Titan. Exciting, though, huh? He sure seemed to get turned around faster than she'd done! Good for him.

There was no entry on the next leaf, however. In fact, there were no entries for quite some time; only smudges and a few scribbled-out starts of dates here and there. It seemed that even though this wasn't a dated journal, with individually prepared pages, Minoth had marked the passage of time by cracking it open to the middle when next he wrote.

01/07/3562

It's been hard, and ultimately futile, to get down any coherent thoughts. Maybe things aren't as complex as I originally feared, when I decided to start journaling. Well, and maybe they're more.

I've realized that Indol didn't have seasons because it didn't have nature. Torna's transition from late fall to winter was a good time to have a companion, I suppose.

(Ah, so he'd stayed? Nia let out a mental cheer.)

When Addam touches me, I forget that anyone else ever had, in any way. My mind, my Core, my body - it's all a new chance at who I want to be. I feel seen without all the sin, all the failure.

Something of Addam, inside me--

His WHAT?

Nia's eyeballs itched to match her shoulder blades the longer she stared, twitchy, into middle distance, willing herself to decide a way out of this shock-driven paralysis.

Her own cat's curiosity, baked her in, did it? And so, obviously, she should abandon ship, as soon as, but the book yet lay in her hands, innocent, tempting.

She could close it. Or she could know more. But how could there possibly be more ?

She squinted, grit her teeth, and peeked.

Something of Addam, inside me, as great as life and greater. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, piercing me to my core.

No. Absolutely not. Quite enough.

Before she could get herself caught into any further...sticky confrontations (augh, augh, augh!), Nia had a very important question she needed to ask. Much easier stuff than any o' this.

See the facts: Cole's play said Addam was a great man. The creaky, croaky reminiscence of the man that was half Cole and half Minoth said Addam was a great man. Minoth's...private material said Addam was a great man, in multiple ways.

"Alright, Gramps." She swaggered mightily, for her hypothesis. "Just what kind of a man was this Addam fellow?"

"An accident," intoned the tiny Titan. "A loving man, and a fool."

"An accident? How d'you mean?"

Lora had resonated with Jin by accident. Mikhail had told her that. Nia's pretty sure Jin would have skinned her alive for knowing (and not Mik, for the telling, thank you very much), but it had been Lora that had told the story in the first place, so it wasn't about Jin and his secrets, then, was it? Certainly not about Jin and the law, anymore.

But since Addam hadn't been a Blade, it could only be... "His father was the king of Torna. But his mother was not the queen."

Right. That. "Really? And they let him be a prince anyway?"

"Fourth in line," smiled Azurda. "So, not much of one. But good enough, for the people, and good enough, for his father, who didn't think it right to deny him his mother's dying claim. Even as he regretted that he could not provide a truly safe, enriching life for his child."

"Makes sense," said Nia. "Wouldn't look very good if he turned away one of his own subjects, and they started in gossipin' about it."

"Oh, no. Addam's mother was Leftherian."

"Leftherian? So then..."

"Like Rex?" Azurda finished her sentence mildly. "In some ways. But Addam did not often refer back to Leftheria, though he left it around the same time as did our Rex."

Except for the matter of the third sword, that was, but where else could he have gone? Had to be somewhere out of the way, but not too out of the way. Imagine if Amalthus had blown that up, too.

All of that did pretty much add up, to Nia. Though it made the whole Tantalese cover-up a bit funnier yet, given that Addam himself wasn't full-blooded Tornan. "But he was a good man?"

"The best," replied Azurda, "for he was human."

Human. Not half at all, but full through.

"And is that why Cole- er, Minoth, y'know, was so...enchanted with him?"

Nia held the novel (such as it was, really both more and less than a journal) out at arm's length, dangling it for Azurda's inspection as if the cooties contained within were poised to jump out and infect her with infatuation for golden-eyed Leftherian golden-hearts.

"I cannot claim to speak for Minoth," Azurda said, now airy as he hovered, "but he was quite devoted to his prince."

"His prince, my foot - he was Indoline!"

"He might have been Tornan. You know how it is, with Blades..."

Well, sure, she didn't mean that Minoth, the face and the Blade, was of Indoline descent, but he certainly didn't have to swear fealty to a prince of Torna, bastard or otherwise.

But either way either Nia or Azurda meant it, it didn't make so much sense, because all the Blades Nia knew of retained affiliation to the place they'd been born from. Jin from Torna, Pandoria from Genbu (must be, right?), Brighid from Mor Ardain, or whatever the Titan itself was called - Chansagh, perhaps, or something else. Chansagh and Melnath, long-legged brothers. Somewhat like Ephem and Estham, only those two had both been short.

Nia herself, she always supposed, had come from Gormott, because where else on Alrest were such felines found?

"What about me, then?"

"It is...difficult to say. I myself had never seen a Blade matching your description, but I have lived for many years."

"You forgot, you're sayin'?"

"He never forgets," declared Cole, entering the room just as if it were his very own; with no ceremony, only fatigue. "And if I had seen you, Nia, I'd tell you - well, so long as you were wanting to know."

Wanting to know. Speaking of wanting to know, Nia tried her best to conceal the journal swiftly and discreetly - well, say naturally - behind her back, because she knew that even if caught the action would be no more conspicuous than the sight of the journal itself. Obviously Cole would know it on sight.

Obviously. Except, all he did was cough.

"Doing my spring cleaning a little early, Nia?"

Azurda eyed her sympathetically.

"W-what, this? No, thing is, I almost tripped on it, see, looking at all the lovely shelves, here, and, well, then I wasn't sure where it went, and-"

"The dust, Nia?"

Ah. She sheepishly lowered the notebook.

"I'm sure I'm not attached to whatever that is," Cole nodded at the artifact he'd just watched Nia get in such a tizzy over. "You can have it, if you like." He winked. "No need to tell me why."

Nia felt her face heat up so quick she might as well have planted it in Brighid's boobs. "The bloody nerve of you!" Snapping the offending item in punctuation, a weapon: "Yyyou...dirty old man!"

"Well," she could hear Azurda's faint reaction fluttering behind her.

Cole frowned. A proper frown, the ridges of each brow almost touching. No pleas, no insistence that "it was only a wink, kid" so she shouldn't get so upset. His hands stayed locked behind his back.

"Well."

Well, well, well. Nia propped knuckles on hips, sticking to her guns.

"I suppose you're either going to have to explain your scandal, or hand it over here."

The problem with that presented dilemma was that while Nia sort of did want Cole to face up to his own lewdness, and have to read out for himself what he'd just implicated to her, she wasn't sure she'd like whatever winks came pursuant to that. Well, no. She was sure she wouldn't.

"I don't much appreciate," she began, rolling the pr- without making it a purr, "you insinuating that I have any interest in squirreling away your dirty thoughts of five hundred years ago for my own individual, private amusement."

Cole blinked. "My what?"

Too right, your what.

"This is your own personal porno, you freak!"

Truly, not that it was the porn itself that made him a freak, it was the way he dared talk to a young thing like herself, and oh, Nia was riled, propa riled, near enough to bash. To bash him over the head with it! So she did. Throw the book at him, sure.

Cole made a show of licking the corner of his thumb fingertip to flick ajar the first page and identify the volume by its opening contents.

"3561, huh? So that would have been..."

Catching onto a thought, he riffled past the first third of the pages until he came to within just a couple of the one that had left Nia so utterly reeling. She watched his lips move, though she didn't really want to, as he scanned down the page - until he got to something of addam and peered back up at her, tongue visibly feeling at some molar or other.

A glance thrown behind her let her know that Azurda still hadn't left. Despite their illuminating and educational exchange, Nia wasn't sure she was glad he'd been lingering in the other room when she made her grand and illicit discovery, after all.

But back to Cole. His right eyebrow was inching up farther than Nia figured it could go, anymore.

"You thought this was an abstract account of my sexual affairs with Addam?" He gestured to the book, which defied its usual lecherous limpness and instead held stiff to attention in this important matter.

"Abstract, my arse. All too literal," muttered Nia.

"Ah." Cole clicked his tongue, nodded up-and-back-to-down. "A literal account of feeling resonance with my chosen Driver in the core and Core of my being. I see."

"You what?!"

Cole proffered the notebook. Nia took it.

Something of Addam, inside me, as great as life and greater. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, piercing me to my core.

Oh.

Oh.

"So...the rest of this journal isn't filled with epic, lusty encounters with the prince of your dreams?"

Nia tried not to make it sound disappointed. She wasn't disappointed, on a literal level, but...y'know. Sorta funny, wasn't it?

Luckily, when Cole's eyes rolled, it was back into his head, and not at her.

"Architect, no. If you want that, you'll have to buy your own copy of Addam's Love and War, and I may be a rich old bag of bones, but I won't be bankrolling that."

---

originally (actually the same day i started my first job out of college. yipes) belmont said "hmmmm. nia finds minoths recountings of more intimate moments w addam that minoth has hidden" and i did a little groundwork but not much (had many kinetic visions of my own about it though) but then as i was preparing to change jobs for the first time zeke reminded me about. fucking. that. so there's that