another chance hello, another goodbye

It's raining again in Mor Ardain, when he sees her.

She's walking quickly, steps as loud as any can be upon the cobbles of Alba Cavanich when the damp is shrouding everything in a mute muffle that hollows out all significance.

Still, despite the speed of her gait, her grace is infinite in comparison to that which had come out in drips and craggles amongst the mince of which she used to partake. No longer is she vertical; now horizontal, now purposeful, now less likely to use that knife she carries, at a moment's glance.

If Jin liked, he'd compare the Brighid of now agin the Brighid of then as one compares stones uncut, diamonds in the rough, et cetera, et cetera. Jewelry, and refinement, and the fact that one good stone is worth a thousand trinkets when it came time for the royal vestments to be encrusted.

But Jin doesn't like thinking about Blades as trinkets. Jin doesn't like thinking about the fact that this same face, eyes lidded and disapproving of the shower, once belonged to a different...what?

Different Driver? That much is obvious, but that sort of comparison was exactly, again, what he didn't want.

This face belonged to another mind, another heart, another soul, except that Blades who weren't him didn't have hearts, and a mind considered as a steel trap for facts and figures and fortitude of acuity doesn't differ from awakening to awakening.

A soul...?

What a splendid soul she was.

For all her glorious and continuous displays of wretchedly ironic unrefinement (coarse...pah), the Brighid of 3564 and the handful of years not numbering a decade marching prior had been quite the splendid individual to behold, in whose presence to exist. Her every motion had given new information that not another...well, soul, could have imparted. She was unique then, as she is now with total respect to herself, all of her selves that had ever been.

What was he, to her? What would he say, if she saw him?

She didn't know what it was to speak to the Paragon, face to face. She couldn't. He'd seen her die.

Fairly likely, she knew that he yet walked - he'd made it important military intelligence by this point. If her journals had been recovered properly by the Special Inquisitor of Torna's fall, then she might have some academic idea of his façade, his sensibilities, the things that had made him smile and the things that had made him stormiest of all.

A clink sounded on stone, illuminated by a stray strike of lightning from out in the desert. Convenient, that.

It was a vial from among those hooked on a loop of brass at her hip.

Did she fill these personally? Had she this time, but hadn't before? Did they appear in this form along with the rest of her regalia? Were they only bioluminescent materiel designed to help lead the way in dark, damp caverns such as the city's night nearly made to simulate? Had they been then, but weren't now? Were they carefully-crafted perfumes carrying traces of ethereal familiarity from comrades long gone?

Jin exited the shadow in which he'd stood cloaked and stooped to pick up the vial. The sharper scent of the rain here in the open made violent assault upon his senses; he didn't dislike it, but it inspired the same dispassion as everything else that lived outside the Marsanes, this century. In another eighty years, maybe he'd come around to thinking about creature comforts again, but not now.

"Thank you."

It was the same voice. She had nothing to thank him for. In fact, she had far more reason to strike him with the same arrogance ("Is toying with other people's misplaced belongings a treasured hobby of yours?") she might have, long ago.

"Don't mention it."

He could see an edge of curiosity poking through her veneer of hurry and honor - she'd been eager to get out of the rain, and it was peculiar that she walked here alone at all - but she heeded his words.

"You'd do well to get out of this weather."

The rain persists for many hours after that, with no regard to the infinite, endless strangers who met in it. No greeting, no parting. No salutations, and only a trace solution of care for health and wealth.

Such a vial couldn't bottle a soul.