Sick of Losing Soulmates
First impressions mean a lot. For Blades, they're...well, not quite everything, because their wake-from-sleep routine is somewhat prebaked, but the first thing a Driver says to a Blade? Pretty deterministic.
To Jin, Lora hadn't said anything, merely pointed and blinked and cowered (and rightfully so) while Jin made his own first-struck promise: "I'll protect you, always."
Always. Because she had needed it. Of a sudden, this sword was not made to cut down. The flat became Jin's spawning plane.
Amalthus, himself cowering with justification debatable, had said, "What are you?" And then Malos had spent his whole life trying to figure that out. Just peachy. What a perfect way for the Master Blade to divide his time.
The thing was, Amalthus definitely thought he deserved Malos's power. He by no means was hesitant to latch and try, if he could not claim the beginning, then at the very least he would rise into his preordained role as given to him, bestowed upon his lilywhite head, by the Architect, to proclaim the beginning of the end.
He just...took a while getting there. Lora, perfect human that she was, never had any such doubts.
She was right, of course, not to treat Jin's potential seizure as an inevitability that was dictated by positive moral compass. She was right to insist that Jin was hers, and no property of the Tornan royal family and military, as might be inferred quite plainly from their fears and Addam's blubbering rhetoric painted in answer.
They're not so much about changing fate, on this side of the rift, as striking out against it. A cruel god is not determining their futures ongoing; he has already done it and apparently does not care about the aftereffects.
So maybe they really are all just following a script.
Malos had known exactly what to say to Mythra. "Hello, partner," and all. Her countenance didn't surprise him, and his didn't really surprise her. Not...so much. For the moment, he seemed to be ignoring all the others. Then came his estimatory pronouncement of Addam, and those crucial words...
"You don't understand the consequences. And you don't understand what humans are."
The diligent student knew his facts and figures. Bastard prince this, eyes of obvious heritage that, and a whole lot of certainty, over all.
A whole lot of certainty, for the one who had begun life on the train of one of the absolute most open-ended of questions.
He thinks they're all so sad, and so stupid, and so pathetic, to have sided with humans. To have let themselves be owned by those frivolous creatures.
But isn't Jin glad to be? Isn't it his only sole-soul purpose to be? Who can he protect, if not a human?
He cannot possibly protect a Blade like Malos.
Or isn't he strong enough for that?
As Lora dies, all of Jin's presuppositions come undone. He cannot bear to see her go, he'd never thought he would have to in a state like this, but he also never thought he'd be able to...
Well, no. Of course he had. Of course he did. It's just that...
That heart in her chest is not his. It never had been. It never would be. It is out of time and out of sync with his goals.
Yes, he must forge his own, now.
Blades' lots are the ones that are sad, and stupid, and pathetic, not the individuals themselves. That the humans should live in normality and peace, while we should be tethered to them, subservient, always prepared to die? It's sickening. Jin wishes, for once, that his stomach lining even had the capability to boil acrid bile, in order that he might make manifest his disgust.
Malos had not been like that. His ridiculousness had had another flavor. Jin had laughed at him long and long before he'd laughed for him, and eventually with him.
Sad, stupid, pathetic.
And mine.
All mine.
Blades don't possess. Blades are possessions. Trinkets, right? Right. For once, again for fucking once, Jin wants to own something.
So he does. Malos is his. His to enrapture, his to explore, his to fuck up the world with. He'd like, perhaps, not to call it control, but if it's control? So be it. Lora did just the same, even if she'd never have realized. Even if she'd never have said so.
Jin is diseased, pervaded by and with a righteous sickness that he'd contaged even before meeting Malos and receiving the aftercrash preimage of the Aegis's own supersacrificial waves.
"You're mine," he whispers, volatile in the musky Ardainian darkness.
If Malos is taken aback, he doesn't show it. "Sure, Jin. I'm here to do what you ask. I realize that now."
And this? Oh, this is very satisfying, for Jin, in that same sick way. Because the way Malos says it, it sounds like he's saying that was always what he meant to do, right from the very start.
For the Paragon, for the very singular one? Of all the things to be predetermined, a birthright of god's son hand-delivered through strife and sin isn't so bad.
Yes, that in itself is a pat enough ending, but what, indeed, happens after that?
It's not that they never fight. No, far from it. They both have far too much pent-up aggression.
Malos is strong, but Jin is fast. With nodachi scraped over every empty follicle of the philtrum, he pushes the Aegis down, pins him to the floor.
"You are mine," he says again. Malos's chest rises and falls with enough magnitude that Jin's clogs lay flat to the floor just the same. A fitting throne, inlaid with gold filigree and false promises.
Sad, stupid, pathetic.
"You are supporting me. Not the other way around."
If he's to fall in with Malos's same old ideals, it'll be by his own choice. His own volition. His own, his own, his own.
And Malos, who should be whimpering or grimacing or at the very least frowning, just grins.
"Whatever you say, Jin. Keep dreaming."
Keep dreaming. Dream of changing what was handed down to you, and then throwing it by the wayside like you should have been all the same. When you run the Architect through with this same sword, and then his son just for good measure, maybe you'll wake, and maybe it'll all come true.
He won't tolerate anyone else pushing Malos around like this, of course. Many's the soldier who'll die by his blade before they can get to the source of the Aegis's malice, gut to the core of his walk and his way.
So this is the Aegis...Malos. What is he?
I will protect him always. For he is mine.