Please Don't Ask
Malos used to dream of seeing Jin, used to mark all his endless days by the fact that he would be grounded by the Paragon's quiet, not-quite-gentle presence as real, as mattering, at the close of all blackest night.
Eventually, he realized, that was called love. In common (stupid, weak, pathetic, foolish, basic) parlance, anyway.
That was called devotion, attachment, the groundless state of being hopelessly enamored as concerns one's goals and motives.
He couldn't experience human love. Of that he was quite sure, and very nearly glad of.
But he had...happiness. There was something to it, all in all. There was significance and feeling buried that he was, in fact, sure that no human had ever had.
He was sure. He was convinced. He was convicted. He was guilty of caring. He had attributed value to the state of being with Jin that he could not ever take back again.
Every argument meant nothing, over hundreds and hundreds of painless years; they had tried to kill each other, back in Torna. Each cycle was only an iteration on breaking through understanding. No hatred ever lasted.
And perhaps you can't have love if you don't hate a little, too. There was far too much time for them to go on and on not feeling anything except the stiff, stolid fact of the other.
They did not bend. They did not break. They did not bond, all in all, except that of course they did, and became intertwined, and so wholly fucking stuck.
As their quest wound and folded over on itself, he found himself feeling that - whatever it was - less and less. Every aberration was smaller, and smaller, and smaller...
He did not matter. They were a machine. They pulsed, and they motivated, and they collected children who did not grow and who would never grow and they stagnated and locked up and hung and swung in the gallows.
For two years, give or take (and take, and take, and take) a century, they didn't speak at all. It was a subconscious sort of experiment, a group therapy for discoupled links in a prisoner's ball and chain.
No counsel did they gain. No advice did they attempt. And when they turned around, atrophied atomical muscles creaking in the way that a hinge does when it's not rust that makes it refuse the oil, they observed what had been arranged, flat-consciously, on the others' faces.
"You look...different."
Sharper. Stronger. Bonier. So much more brittle.
"And you look good, too."
Telling a lie requires that one know what the truth is. But...
"I'd almost forgotten. The way we used to be."
"Tch. Was that really any different?"
At the end of it all, Malos simply dreamt of seeing anything but Jin, any blacker, colder fate than the one they had already planned for themselves. He became afraid that Jin would ask how he felt, how he was, and if it even mattered anymore.
It didn't, to be sure...but then again, it never had.