old man dies! the note he left was signed--

Cole's battle hackles went up as soon as he heard the telltale pounding boots that signified the entrance of one oversized not-too-jolly mercenary, but his eyes went wide with relief only after he'd actually overseen entrance to the big fellow, and his much smaller escorted passenger.

"Iona! Oh, thank the Architect you're safe."

Her smile was shaky, but Vandham's grin was true, even as Roc, swift in the night, made no swooping overtures. With a grim hand, Cole reached for Iona's shoulder and brought her close. Despite the bright spot, things were still tense.

"You do a damn good job takin' care of these kids, you know that?" Vandham admonished with huge brow furrowed and enormous arms crossed. "I just wish you'd do a better job takin' care of yourself."

Of himself? It wasn't him who'd gotten kidnapped. And of course he had a good idea as any about what exact emotional bait Malos and Akhos had used, but...oh, to hell with it. "Yes, well. I could say the same to you, love."

"Oh, so it's 'friend' when we're out in front o' people, but 'love' when it's just you and me? I gotta love that," the big man barked out half-humorlessly.

Oh, this. How he, they, had missed...this. But there wasn't time. Cole, who'd always had too much time, more than he ever could have figured out what to do with, ridiculous hobbies or not, never quite had enough when it mattered. Maybe that was just a part of being human, and sharing life with those who were of the very race.

"I'm serious, you know. There may never be another soul on this earth besides Jin and Malos who will live as long as I have, but even if I'm old, you're no spring chicken yourself." Something around seventy-odd, but still just as hardy? Urayans were as Urayans did, and Architect bless them for it. "You'll be careful, won't you?"

"Cole...gah." Tutting with his chin as much as with his tongue, Vandham drew a weary hand across the scar decorating the base of his forehead. The speeches they gave each other they'd each heard more than plenty of before. "Sure, sure. I'm protectin' those kids, is what I'm doin'. Ain't nothin' more important than that - that's everybody's war, and you know it best."

"Heh. You may be right, there."

"O' course I am! You gotta believe in me, mate."

Mate, and not darling, or some whatever such. Did he care? Age is what's supposed to make you soft, and bring you closer to your partners. There was something off in the atmosphere, and with a grimace felt from his ears to his throat, Cole decided he'd rather not think about it.

"You know, it's confidence what's got Rex there gone so far."

"Confidence Addam didn't have, much as everybody thought he did," Cole mused softly. Ever since the boy had first entered the playhouse, the Aegis at his side, the playwright himself had been puzzling at the parallels and contrasts, but to have someone else recognize it, or rather to bring it before him to recognize aloud in the moment...it stung. Rather not think about it, indeed.

Vandham, meanwhile, made to be unbothered, or at the very least seem so. "So you've told me. Look, Cole, I gotta run, they're countin' on me. Remember, take care o' yourself, alright?" And isn't that just the bitterest goodbye?

"Sure, sure..." Like Driver, like Blade. But this time it was the Driver who left, and not the Blade. The times are a-changing, as they say. Roc walked out with their Driver. And so the winds of war blow on, too.

"I don't like the sound of it, Iona."

Alternately observant and gullible though she could be, at the present point she was merely preoccupied by the activity of fiddling with some fraying strings on his cloak. "Sound of what, Grandpa?"

"The sound of someone I trust making out like he's got it all figured out. In all my years, I've never seen it come true once." Not Amalthus, not Addam, not even Malos, or Jin. Oh, no, certainly not those two. Not like this.

Now, whether or not Vandham did actually have it as straight-figured as he'd said - that is to say, whether or not he'd planned his grand ether-bending stunt as a backup - was his business, and it'll remain so on into eternity, unless our old man of the time river Klaus will have taken an interest in this new busted tactic among his broken system and asked him about it, but neither outcome will have been hardy, determined truth enough in itself to serve contrary evidence to Cole's unlucky streak.

"Big man...big personality, big life. Got a hell of a task ahead of me." To a certain extent, it even felt as if his usual wry narration wouldn't cut it. How does one capture...all of what someone like that was? Come to think of it, how does one even find an actor for such a part?

He leaned back in his chair, almost daring to tip up onto the back legs...but not quite. Not anymore. "Say, Iona, what was your favorite thing about our big man, there?" Again with the almost, he'd almost stifled his question so as to substitute the present tense for the past, but it wouldn't do her any good to be gaslit about the whole affair, unsure of whether he was well and truly gone just like she undoubtedly would be when Roc next came around.

"Well...he made me feel...safe. Not that you don't do that, Grandpa, but-- Oh, why did the bad men have to come and hurt him?"

The way a child would say it, but wasn't it true? If you sorted out the nihilism from the nihilists, that's what it was, in the end. Vandham hadn't done himself in, not quite.

Iona turned big golden eyes up at her grandfather, and indeed, he melted. "He's a hero, isn't he? Won't he be?"

A hero. A helmsman, a savior, a panacea in boisterous broad-shouldered corporeal form, with hair of nonsensical shape and color to boot.

"So I'll write the same about you as I wrote about Addam, huh? Maybe it'll be a little more true, this time."

He'd muttered it to himself, well under his old and croaking breath, but Iona caught abstract notional wind regardless.

"Grandpa, are you really going to write a play about Mister Vandham?"

Cole sighed. Was it even a question? Rex had made it into a barter, like writing plays was such an exertion for him, and it was, to be sure, but...oh, writing had always been his way. Always, always, always.

"Of course I am, Iona. It's what I do for the people I love."