Blood of Eden (Running Again)

I caught sight of my reflection
I caught it in the window
I saw the darkness in my heart
I saw the signs of my undoing
They had been there from the start
And the darkness still has work to do

At my request, you take me in
In that tenderness, I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting
A moment of bliss

These are just a couple apropos selections from the lyrics of this beautifully haunting piece.

"Did you plan it this way, Jin?"

Malos's voice had an odd way of not echoing, of remaining focused, even in the steel-paneled walls of Megrez. The floors were named. Why were they named? What benefit did that serve? Surely not beauty (and of that, not aesthetics, because those didn't fucking matter). Humans always had to have a benefit to everything. A benefit to themselves, through everything.

"I-- No, I never-"

"You know, you're closer to being my Driver than he ever was."

What was the point in saying the name, to spit it out one last time? They both knew it. They couldn't but know it. There had never been anything else. And that was why they were here...

"Oh, Malos. Did you think I don't know that?"

Maybe he shouldn't have known it. That was their goal, wasn't it? To get rid of Drivers, even the very concept of them, by tossing the world a baby out with the Architect's musty bathwater.

"You- but then-- But why?"

"It's the only way."

The Blades, then really not Blades, two of the most powerful the world had ever seen, a mutual aid society. A symbiosis, between the eleven, then nine, then seven, then five, then four, then two, then one and one. It's the only way. You can't get through it alone.

"We said we'd go together."

"We did."

Words didn't matter. Deeds only. What you want is nothing compared to what you will.

"And so we end as we began."

"We began with me taking your hand."

Jin's beauty, to Malos, was indeed not one of aesthetics. He was a fragile, broken man. Is there beauty in terror? Of course there is. You have to find beauty in whatever it is you're forced to know.

"Huh. So we did. Wishful thinking, I guess."

If there was one thing Malos didn't regret about that damned system, it was being able to feel the death of his Driver. Not the first, but the last.

You've absolutely seen this piece before; it's linked in the summary. I just wanted to adjust it to a more refined word count and reinforce the fittingness of the lyrics.