thanks to our bond, no doubt

"So you can bond with anyone?"

"Anyone that suits me. Oh, and so long as it suits them too, of course."

Uraya's colors are bright. Brilliant. They practically taste of technicolor sweets - and Minoth doesn't even have a sweet tooth. Sights like this almost make him think he might, if he got around enough in free will and spirit.

Ah, good food...

This notion he's presented, about the Driver, comes with a little sprig of jaunty pride capped atop. Minoth, the fresh Flesh Eater, hasn't tested his little pet theory, teased out of hypothesis supposition drawn from Amalthus's conditions, but he already knows he's been walking the Titans with a different aura, a different filter over his ether-blue eyes; he's separate from normal Blades now, down to the way his steps take purchase on slate and stone. And maybe there's something to it.

Addam's grinning at him, all college-try pride. "That's quite the revelation! I'm sure he never intended to give you such a boon as that!"

Minoth has to smile, too. "Pretty sure, my prince. We'll see how it goes, though. Don't need to be getting my hopes up for nothing."

But Addam's already gone sky-high.

"Been feeling a lot better, lately."

"Better? You'd been feeling worse, then?"

The decision to confide is one Minoth only makes because he's feeling up, as confessed, and along with that overall bout of good health came a niggling little impulse to espouse good mental health and choices, too; he knows there are ways he'd prefer to act that'd comfort his usual sensibilities, but a responsible, mature person would communicate, and all that.

Obviously Minoth has the ability to communicate. He's a writer. And so, it's his right, to be reclusive.

But Addam's question is an irritating one, nonetheless. He doesn't ask rhetorical ones, like his wife, and he's not a darting, lambasting rhetor, like Minoth, but sometimes he just...doesn't seem to put in the effort to actually think about the question he's asking, which is an uncharitable judgement from Minoth, but he holds it all the same. Come on, Prince, do I really have to spell it out?

He'd given Lora and Jin that hungry, hungry look, firelight painting his eyes and Core in greedy, flickering life. Even despite Jin's naturally slight coloring and constitution, Minoth had never seen a Blade so...secure as the Paragon. Oh, he got a lot shakier, later, but just then...

He'd been quite healthy, hadn't he? And Minoth had felt it, leeched off of it.

Oh, and look at sweet, beautiful, vivacious Haze. Brighid and Aegaeon so strong, so sure.

"All Blades feel better with a good Driver."

Addam smiles, looks brightly Minoth's way. "Is that so? I'm glad to be of some use, then."

So he acknowledges it. Not quite the everlasting promise that Minoth had wanted, even if he hadn't wanted candid conversation, but it's something.

Addam Origo is a very useless man. He always will be. It's part of his endless charm.

Damn it all.

Minoth feels better knowing that he knows.

"Addam, I'm dying."

And what's dying, for a Flesh-Eaten Blade?

Dulled senses, weaker appetite, every day feeling like you're the wrong shape, size and temperature, along with the wrong posture; always sick to your stomach, always your nebulous insides bruising in on themselves, always your mouth full of rotten taste no matter how many times you scour it out; all-over illness, draping a perfect soldier who never got a cold.

There's a long silence. Longer than Addam has ever let linger in a conversation between them; usually, it's Minoth's job to be the one making so pensive.

"Well. That's a good thing, isn't it?"

It isn't hard for Minoth to tell that he'd come up with that reply instantaneously, and hoped beyond hoping that he'd come up with an alternative if he waited. Couldn't ever have waited long enough, though. It's already been years, year, years. The farm in Fonsett is rather...generic-looking. No charm. All time, dusting it over.

Addam's got time, too, if he wants it, which he doesn't. So does Minoth. It's not as if he didn't accept that life is the long walk toward death a fairly long time ago, himself; once turned from Blade to something else, he'd had no choice. But now...now he knows it. Now it's real. Now it's making itself known, making itself real, and the one person who once had a stake, some kind of true, truly sappy personal investment in his wellbeing, in staving off that wallowing march, is saying sayonara - and it's a blessing, don't you know?

Sure, it's a blessing. But it's slow going - a long walk, didn't I say? - and he's human enough to not have to be faulted for wanting to think rationally about it, to ease out Addam's passing and ease in his own old (middle?) age with an effort, of some kind (and some kindness, to boot), instead of just...giving up. Before their time, anyway.

"Thought you'd never give up on me, Addam. Thought maybe you'd even said as much, once."

"We all change, with time. That's why they'd call men like us seasoned, you know. We've seen a lot." The farmer chews his lip, itself too cracked and weathered to bleed. "Too much, maybe."

What did he really think would happen when he came out here? He'd knock on the door, it'd swing right open, they'd say oh, Minoth, what a wonderful surprise, we haven't seen you in ages, please come in? A kiss on the cheek from Flora, a pat on the back from Addam, excited points to the houses in the village where the children, now adults, had scattered?

They hadn't had kids. Hard to manage it when the earth is screaming and tearing asunder beneath your feet. Harder to think about it again later when the reckoning had been, in whatever measure, your fault.

"We could have all the time in the world," Addam had said, in his most "enterprising young man" voice. Could, he said, and not would, for it was still a choice that he had to make, a struggle that he had to bear. Could have it. Maybe. Possibly. Depending.

All the time in the world.

"And filled with tomorrows," Minoth had said back, dark and dry. It was as if a lost puppy had lit upon a solitary black bird with no flock to walk the fields with it. What happens when tomorrow comes? What do you really think you're going to do with all that time?

Minoth did not come to the house that day. Nor did he come the day after.

Thanks to our bond, I know what you're like. I know the animal shape of your silent fears, the rigid bark of the ones you'd spoken aloud.

I know my caricature of you, and until this day I'd feared I'd lost the true outline.

But you're just a man, Addam. I'm not just a man, nor just a Blade. I have extra dimensions.

You're not duty- nor honor-bound to accommodate them. We never really...formalized this - and for all you're a very informal, down-to-earth type of man, I suppose it never quite stuck, for you, did it?

Not just anyone. You. And I thought it suited you pretty fine, to have me around.

Raising his eyes and brushing back a loose lock of his hair that's already losing its lustre, and ignoring the wince it brings in his shoulder socket at the motion moving determinedly down to up, instead of gently from side to side, Minoth studies Addam again. For the last time?

"I want you to have everything you need," Addam says softly, a gulp in his throat too scratchy to be nervous.

And I suppose you need a new Driver, now.