No Son Of Mine
It's the universal problem, for and with Blades. They imprint onto the first Driver who seems amenable, from both sides, and then they're on with it. No turning back, no escaping your purpose, your destiny. Always, you'll be yoked by those same core values, and it'll take a hell of an indomitable future influence to ever change your course.
Your every facet is dictated not by that first Driver themself, but instead by what will best serve them. In strictest example: Amalthus was thin, saplinglike, tall and perhaps almost statuesque, but not in any way that inspired any sort of animal fear. So instead, he created Malos of the undercrudge of his heart, born to be a living weapon from the crest of his tomohawked hair to the curve of his armored ass.
(What? Well, Malos would believe it, anyway. Only the ultimate weapon would be so assetted. It couldn't exist any other way.)
Don't all fathers try to live out their sons' lives for them, and constrict their room for deviation from the noblest, manliest path?
Don't even the absent ones have the starkest impacts?
Amalthus very quickly sets Malos to his own devices. The beast is happy with its prey, with its quest, with its goal. There's no confusion about whether the actions he takes are of his own volition; he doesn't care, he is a child, he is mindless and he exists only in the center of his mind's own eye's own storm.
Coeia's sinking is a great success. Boys playing at war love a big explosion, after all.
Then, in Torna...he almost gets it. Almost turns the leaf. Because Jin and Minoth both are somehow still open to change, to nuances in their purpose, and because Mythra has more father figures than she knows what to do with. Even though they're misguiding her, they're still guiding her. They're still trying, over- and ever-present. Maybe.
(See, he couldn't have picked a worse group of people to try to achieve a singular goal if he'd tried. And that's the trouble with families.)
Probably, more what she wants, even needs, is a mother. Someone who nurtures, someone who loves away pain rather than dictating that it simply should not be there.
Malos, however? He needs the drill sergeant. He needs the platoon leader, the man for whom he can be a good little soldier. He needs someone, anyway, less fucking soft-soaped than Amalthus.
But that man never comes. No one else lingers in the proverbial Elysium house when he's been banished to the bottom of the sea, and then she follows soon after. Father doesn't intervene, not once. And would Malos have answered if he'd called?
It's the fear of having to meet his maker that keeps him teeter-tottered in those years after he surfaces. Humanity keeps plenty of sharp implements about, testaments to their carelessness and self-cruelty. He could stab himself clean through on any one of them, finish the job right then and there.
But what if that takes him up at the same time as it takes him out? What if he has to ring the bell at his father's house and ask to be let into heaven, or alternately - alternatively - down to hell? What if Klaus slams the door in his face, the same way he should have done to Amalthus, if he'd had any balls?
(Heh. Maybe that's why the Blades themselves don't have any.)
That's the thing. Malos is going to die eventually. Whether death means leaving civilization or being the only one left running in it, sooner or later he and his father will be the only remaining extant beings. The humans will kill themselves off, die themselves out, one day, sooner or later.
(Pyra, Mythra, Pneuma, the coward, will still be hiding.)
He wants to be there. He needs to be there. He will never grasp the fullest extent of his knowledge if he doesn't go.
So he goes. So he latches onto Jin, no longer fit to be anyone's father, and he goes. On he goes. Molding himself to someone else's directive is such a blessing he knows that it could never once have been ordained by the Architect. No, his father didn't plan for this.
His father didn't have the fucking empathy to think of anything close to it. This much understanding, this much devotion, this much total trust and openness between two people?
Of course. Fathers don't know about that. Not when it comes to their sons.
(And that all fell through anyway. Jin had devoted himself - too much of himself - too wholly to Lora. Unfortunate though it may be, he never quite got around to figuring out what to make of Malos.)
And, then, there he is. The opportunity is laid before him, the climax and convergence of his chosen purpose - nay, his only purpose. Destroying everything means deleting the root of the tree too. Those binary always grow down from the top.
"It's been a while...Father." His voice shakes throughout the bitter salutation, not just on the final word; one doesn't call forever a simple while.
"Logos," Klaus says in response, like he's pondering something, like he thinks he's alone, and his old age has made him start seeing things closer up than just through a conveniently closable window.
Like all of a sudden he's considering more in his overstuffed easy chair than all the grand success he's created for the elite of the world, all the dissatisfaction of the countless employees who hate him but only because they're too stupid to understand his vision, all the sacrifice he's made in the name of his own bygone father.
"Is that my real name?" Malos starts marching. "What's it mean?" He already knows it doesn't mean anything, already knows he doesn't want it, even though he doesn't exactly want the one he does have anyway.
What fucking use is a name? Orders don't need an address to go with them. Not when you're standing right there as an audience.
Klaus keeps talking, deflecting, referring to the ego of others as if he wasn't and isn't the very one.
How many years? I forget. Of course you forget, the limit to and on eternity.
To speak of limits...Malos's first and only assault doesn't stick. My child, Klaus calls him, and isn't it so easy to infantilize when you think you've already done all your own apologizing?
Do as you wish. But it's not as I wish. It's as Jin wants, and Amalthus before him, and you even before him. You want me to do this. But you won't even let me have the satisfaction of knowing the truth.
We learn to hate through conflict. We learn to love through wrongs.
We learn to be by example. Malos...didn't really have one.