easy now, sit you down
Not everyone is happy with the aftermath of the war. That's litotes, convenient sketching loop of the categorical overlap diagram, but we'll allow it.
We'll also allow for Minoth to be caught without his usual disguise, with a poncho instead of a cloak and nothing slotted over his Core Crystal itself, because he'd left Leftheria without any fanfare at all, and hadn't cared much for (had almost made sure to sabotage) his appearance.
"A Blade? Where's your Driver?" The Urayan man who asks it has an air quite gamely, almost jovial. He might like to meet this Driver, and ask him what's in today with his travails and those of the world.
He might. But Minoth knows he doesn't. And he can't, anyway. It's a dangerous question, a question of and about quasi-absent quasi-present danger, a looping-lurching leer towards something very, very bad.
Minoth has met those sorts of questions before, hasn't he? Minoth has known dangerous men. Minoth has known the dangerous answer to the dangerous question.
He could say that his Driver is in the Praetorium sitting upon a throne of lies. The men would laugh, would say ain't that the truth, the way they've got us all lock-tied, all like the scum of the earth. Maybe they'd believe him if he said it was a trick of the light, an experiment in solidarity and in cosplay, and he'd show them that it comes off but then he'd have too much trouble putting it back on, and these fine gentlemen wouldn't want to trouble a friend, now would they?
Isn't that the mask he always puts on? The one of being personal, approachable, normal? Fuck it all.
So Minoth answers bluntly, cuts back in something of the same tone. "I don't have one."
"Ah." The smirk sets in the way that gelatin sets. Liquid smoothness, chopped up into grisly cubes. "See, I heard about Blades what don't have Drivers. Matter of fact, it was a Blade running around without 'is Driver what caused all the trouble in this goddamned world. Now, you wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Now, again, the leer flashes grim. Sick, disgusting, gleeful enjoyment, the kind that isn't even known to its perpetrators, at justice come about in an alleyway. We'll get him sorted. It's the only chance we've got, no matter who he is. You see, it doesn't matter who he is. No, not at all.
Minoth doesn't say, now, that he does in fact have a Driver, and that his name is Addam Origo, because in some ways Addam is just as exactly much to blame as Amalthus is. These guys he's met, goony though they are, don't look all that tough. He could probably take them.
He could probably take them, that is, if two factors were altered. The first would be him actually having that Driver to hand for support, because saying that he can use his full strength anywhere is really a bit of a lie, and always has been. The second would be him even caring.
Because they're right, of course. A Blade without a Driver is a cursed thing. Malos was one, Jin is one, Mythra practically was for that briefest time between her last moment of control and her last moment of control, and Minoth has been for well over a decade now.
It's unnatural. It's unsightly. It's unseemly. It just isn't done.
"No," Minoth says shortly, but not too shortly. "I wouldn't. There anything else I can do for you gentlemen?" He doesn't speak his sarcasm on that last word, again on the two counts that one, he knows it's not smart, and two, he doesn't know if it's even right. Correct, rather. Speak not of morality here.
"Sure," the surly challenge comes, with a crooked grin to match and to boot. "You can check your answer, and then give it to us again, but straight this time. I think you're lying."
Five or six monsters to one Blade is never much of a challenge; Minoth can handle anything, and he usually does, always having the advantage of range and at least a little bit of agility. They could be Eks, Volff, Feris, or Piranhax, it's all the same. Drop by drop is the pot filled, Aegaeon would say. I'll make sure to clean up, Minoth would say, or any of all manner of other bombastic brouhaha that isn't exactly intergalactically far above his actual confidence, but also...isn't not?
Minoth is a confident person, before the world. His doubts are not about what he can do, but what he is - and then again, what he can do with (perhaps more about) what he is. He's exceedingly clever, surprisingly caring, and the both again redoubled with regard to his patience. Monsters? No problem. Townspeople? Ask not what your country, which isn't even really your country at all, can do for you.
Overly intolerant and uncaring Driver? Overly tolerant and loving Driver? Spare me the both. Let me go it alone. Yes, that was where his patience ran out - when it came to the underbaking of his identity, and the investment of that crucial truth in another.
So we arrive back to the monstrous townspeople. Against those with a hook in to his broadest insecurity and a hell of a lot more viscious teamwork than quadrupedal carnivores could ever supply, Minoth is nothing. And they know it.
Before he can get a single hand to his holsters, the leader has stepped in and yanked away the poncho, and his Core falls bare with a violent gleam. His fists clench, a futile attempt at tensing up his muscles under the sleeves as a pair of the others move to hold him back. They're practically salivating; they regard this Blade like a piece of raw meat, like a free humanoid punching bag because it's not cannibalism if he's not you.
Can you blame them? They want to feel something and it's been so long since there's been anything to care about and they just goddamn want to know what it's like to win. And you know what they say. A win's a win's a win. You can't blame them, Minoth. You can't even try.
"So." Minoth would mark it a miracle of diction, the way the syllable is spun in scintillating staccato, if he weren't otherwise occupied and also wholly disdainful of the man who'd given it, just purely from an artistic point of view. "You're one of those fuck-ups from Indol, huh? I heard about those, too."
He can take this, easy. If nothing else, he can always just pick up and reset the blame. Not my fault it went wrong. Hasn't been a successful experiment yet. Stannif's a crock, a crook, a quack. Not my fault. And anyone else in my position would have done the same.
"Heard they were using gutter rats, and slave bitches, and all the dregs of the world."
Minoth has an iron handle on gossip because, when he's not writing, he lives by it. Place to place, person to person, he walks in the avenues and channels upstanding folks aren't meant to go. That's half nature, and half nurture, but by now the exact composition doesn't matter, so much. Point is, Minoth should know exactly how this man (what on Alrest is his name, and what would it even change if I knew it?) knows what he professes to know.
It's...it spins everything in quite a different light. If the traveling eleven, say twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen to count by Aletta's stock, aren't the only ones who know about this, then why hasn't anyone done anything about it? Is Minoth profane, or is he just pathetic, by dint of his very existence?
The man answers that particular query: "Musta been something rotten wrong with you too, if your Driver dumped you like that." Rotten do his captors smell, and they shove - more slam - his back against the scrabbled stucco of the nearest building, crushing the apparatus on his back in the process.
The other two unoccupied goons roll their shoulders and pick at old scars. If their group were a touch more sophisticated, a touch more twisted, they might make something of that. Something hypocritical about stagnant injury, and why it comes down. But, they're not, and so they don't. The ringleader simply grunts, slews a curse, and swings his boot up to meet the center of the bottom portion of Minoth's bodysuit.
There's no steel toeing, no particular point, and Minoth doesn't have anything important to speak of down there (no Blades do, which avoids some of the more awkward conversation about gender and presentation but certainly not all), but what is it? It's a blow to his manhood all the same. It's the introduction to a phase of attack wherein the Urayans treat Minoth nothing like a man and everything like a monster.
To win a fistfight is not the same as to win a field battle. To incapacitate is not the same as to maim. They grasp at his jaw, spit in his eyes, scratch over his ears, and then disregard the lot to hold him down and kick him in the head. It would be different, less animalistic, if there were only the one of them, or if the heavies were that only, and not bouncers into the mix. But they all participate.
Hands go to knives on hips, considering whether to prise the Crystal from his chest wholesale and kill him that way. Other hands and accompanying eyes feint caution, hesitance, fear. "Boss, you're not gonna..." And he shakes his head, and he isn't, but that doesn't quite put it into enough perspective; he gives a jerk of his head and tastes the power in tugging on the banners feebly clinging to Minoth's back instead.
I sound quite detached from it all, don't I? We haven't been in Minoth's head for a little while, now. What is he thinking, as they rain blows upon his shins, abdomen, crotch, shoulders? He's thinking that he deserves it, that the leader - Rastro? - was right and indeed right sharp to deduce such a thing.
He bleeds ether from the lines on his stomach, blood from the corners of his mouth, tears from the whites of his eyes. Any other Blade wouldn't have fallen like this. Any other Blade would be impenetrable. Any other Blade would have a Driver. So it's your fault. My fault. Your fault.
Eventually, he stops choking on air and goes deadweight. A few more punches, a few more kicks, and they leave him, Rastro with the poncho flung about his shoulders as he motions for the rest to scatter to as many different pubs as possible. Who'll catch him? Everyone knows that they go together. It's just the question of whether they were going together tonight.
Two nights prior, back in Leftheria, Addam had sat at the dinner table (same article of furniture as for lunch and breakfast, and for everything else) and been ever-so-slightly morose as he picked at his plate of greens and gromrice.
"Everything alright, love?" Flora had asked him, turning away from bidding Alexander and Evelyn eat the vegetables too, and not just the fluffy part. And Addam had replied, "It's Minoth I'm worried about."
Her lips pursed, but only, again, slightly. "Oh? I'm surprised. He's always been very good at taking care of himself."
"Yes, but..."
"But you're afraid he doesn't feel like doing that, right about now."
Addam sighed. "You're not surprised at all - and neither am I. Before the...the war, I'd always been worried about his wellbeing, and wanting him to come stay somewhere it was safer for him. Then everything changed, and I sort of...forgot."
"People forget about people sometimes, Addam," Flora gently reminded him. "I don't think it means you love him any less."
"I took him for granted when he was here, though. I assumed we'd always be enough for him. But who am I to say that I was the end of the line, for him? He's still got an awfully long way to go."
"I should think he has plenty of time to spend some with us, then."
As the food cooled further, the air inside the house grew staler. It wasn't so much that there was someone missing as that there was something missing. Likely, something that someone brought.
"Evie, if you had five Beat Shrimp, fried just the way you like them, and Xander wanted half of one, would you share?"
Evie wrinkled her nose. "What would I get?"
"You would get to know that your brother loves you very much."
Now a smirk. "Nuh-uh. Xander doesn't like fish."
"And if they were Sweet Feris Dumplings?"
At this, Xander perked up, but did his best to keep his obvious anticipation out of and away from his sister's eyes. She responded, unaided: "As many as he wants!"
Sighing, Flora turned back to her husband. "It's a different logic, isn't it? But she's still right, in the end."
"She usually is," Addam concluded with a tired smile. "I miss when he...when he would call them his special nicknames. Even if it was just for my benefit..."
"Go, Addam. I'll trust your hunch, this time."
And so, early the next morning, Addam jogged out to the farthest bay, hailed for Nuncle, and set off for Uraya himself.
The following two days are calm. Addam and Azurda make idle conversation about crops and children and old Titans gone by the wayside; they talk of nothing much that matters, specifically, in the world, or perhaps of the only things that do matter. And isn't that how all small talk goes?
Arrived to Uraya's main trade port off of Fonsa Myma through a hole in the hull of the great whale, Addam finds himself surprisingly well-rested. Perhaps he'll see Minoth at the playhouse, or the pub, and they'll laugh and be glad to see each other, and then Addam will ask quietly but meaningfully if Minoth would like to come back and see Flora and the children again, and Minoth will respond quietly but tellingly that, in fact, he would.
Perhaps. But perhaps also, it's dark and it's rainy and the streets run with dingy sluice of soot. Perhaps there is a gang of men lingering together after drink has phased away the framework of prudent separation. Perhaps they eye Addam up, and ask him what he wants, and perhaps Addam thinks that they don't look entirely unfriendly, and then...
"I'm looking for a man- no, a Blade named Minoth. Have you seen him?"
He's smiling wide, nothing like an imperious or a disgraced bastard prince, but the longer he finds himself studied by the welcoming party, the less certain he feels.
"I might," says one of them, not Rastro but maybe his right-hand. "Who are you, to him? Or to us, rather?"
"I'm his Driver," says Addam, of a sudden uncharacteristically brusquely. He doesn't linger in the open front street himself long enough to catch, and certainly not to process, the looks of consternation that cross the group's motley array of faces. If he had, he might have realized something crucial, but it would only have advanced his concern towards a quicker, sterner step, after all.
He finds Minoth around the corner, in a deeper alley, just as directed. That's fine enough, and plenty of a relief. But where he had expected a vertical cowboy, one languid only in chosen posture of stance as he leant on a conveniently rain-clean stone wall, he receives only one rather horizontal, ragged and flushed dead asleep (dead) in the dirty, dirty gutter.
"Minoth!"
Minoth doesn't answer. He doesn't answer to any continued calls of his name either, nor any combination of frenzied shaking and squeezing that Addam can ply. Eventually, all the prince can do is lug the deadweight Blade up by his underarms and haul him, boots dragging pathetically like they've never done, back out of Fonsa Myma, to the port where Azurda is waiting.
Nuncle is never, has never been, fond of having humans (or Blades, it's of course all the same to him at his scale) tread upon his wings, but once he sees Addam dragging an unconscious tagalong out to his resting place, he immediately extends the stony appendage to lay flatter down in an aisle between the gromrice paddies. Addam lays Minoth down upon it, scrambles forward and up onto the great dragon's back himself, and pulls the Flesh Eater the rest of the way up into the isolated grass.
"I didn't expect to become a hospital airlift," Azurda rumbles. Addam winces, and doesn't correct him towards the possibility that it's more of a funerary type of transport. He only nods, whispers a thank-you, and steels himself for the whir of flight.
Then they're up, but Minoth still isn't. Addam arranges his own legs to be as flat as possible against Azurda's back without flexing his knees down into an uncomfortable position and collects Minoth alongside him so that his head is in Addam's lap and he's bent gently at the waist to keep in the general proper passengerial direction.
What does one even do in a situation like this? Literally, he could be dead, because a Blade who can't return to their Core Crystal will likely die in this corporeal form and fashion. His Core isn't cracked, only dulled and clearly not in its prime original state. Cautiously, Addam reaches out a hand to stroke over it and dust off the wear, and it's at this point that Minoth stutters awake.
The sensible opener would be something like "Are you in pain?" or "Do you need anything?" but Addam instead queries gently, "Have you been unconscious for long?" It's true, that is something one can gauge, sometimes, but it's quite clear that Minoth's been put in quite a state, and questions of that sort are already well past any shred of usefulness.
Minoth murmurs something unintelligible in response, and moves a weak hand to grasp at Addam's wrist. As he does it, his eyes droop shut once more, and he gives the first of many winces to match Addam's current count of one.
"It's alright," Addam says, and knows it's not. "Just rest, if that's what you need. I'm here." He doesn't say that he'll be here, ongoing, because...well. It would be Minoth that would disappear, at any rate, but if he goes on to any sort of further place, then that's his upward passage of life sorted. Addam will be the one left behind.
As the minutes drag on past that flicker of life, the brief seconds count less and less for hope and more and more for despair. Addam starts to think that he dreamed it, that the head of hair he continually runs his fingers through, more nervous than he's been about absolutely anything in the past five years, is a graveyard of follicles providing ground cover for a cemetery of the mind, the heart, the soul.
It's an odd sort of reasoning our fair little prince does. If Minoth feels him caressing his Core, then he'll wake. Or, if he doesn't wake, but feels it all the same, then surely it's a good sensation. It's Addam, so...surely. Right? And if he doesn't feel any of it, not upon his chest or his crown, then it's Addam who will be comforted just by the connection of touch.
But what if he not just doesn't, but can't? What if all the precious moments drifted by without consciousness have only sapped the juice from his proverbial battery? What if this, after all the weeks, months, years of confident soldier on is where Minoth's experiment finally fails itself out?
"Nuncle..."
"It's quite the predicament, isn't it? I'm not sure how to advise you, Addam."
That's what really nails it. The gravity of the situation is visible to another besides him; Addam is not just, not merely, catastrophizing in his own head. He wasn't even doing so back at the dinner table.
The fall of Torna was an obvious thing. There was no thought to be had about it - for him, at least - until the whole thing had been over and done with. More or less, Addam hadn't come to to the facts until the very moment that Mythra had become incapable of outward functioning, and they had effectively swapped places - an awkward turn of phrase, isn't it? But it's only true.
Addam, then once again appointed to control, had been left with a different body under his hands. The damage had been done; that much was quite clear. The new body, the solid red thing, was not dead. Its breath had a different cadence to Mythra's usual, but the Blade that was Pyra had been very much alive before the initiation of her new centuries-long sleep sequence.
And Minoth...Minoth. Addam knows more intimately than anything the way the Flesh Eater breathes. The way his chest rises and falls, the way it's less up and down and more in and out, the way he wouldn't do it if he could manage not to. So much of him is in his head, but then again so much of him is in his heart, and he doesn't have one of those, but his chest is a treasure anyway.
Over and over, over and over and over and over, Addam passes his palm over the crystal. Wake up, wake up, wake up. I know you're in there, you have to be in there, all of you is in there, everything that matters is in there, nothing that matters is in there, you can't be in there so why don't you wake up and come out here with me?
He cards his fingers through the hair, just as limp and ragged, too, and just then holds all of Minoth in his hands just the same. His head bows, his back bends, he cries, he cries, he cries.
For it to have ended this way, for this to have been Minoth's sole escape from a life where he'd surely have had to labor long on his own, all his friends and family dead and gone...Addam feels sick. Your hunch, Flora had said. And it had turned out to this?
He raises his head, gulps in the antiseptic air above the Cloud Sea. At least...at least his burial will be noble. At least they will have seen him, and known. After all, petty comforts are all one such as Addam Origo deserves. Even Minoth - especially Minoth - would have agreed with that.
Azurda alights as smoothly as possible, which is to say that he ducks down into the clouds first, and moors up at Fonsett like a ship coming into port. He clears his great stony throat; Addam jumps, looks again and decides somehow in an instant that he won't write Minoth off (out!) to the graveyard just yet, and sets about gathering limbs for transport.
All Blades have a certain excess weight that humans don't, unless they are of a particular particularly weightless constitution, which Minoth is not. Minoth is then, again, doubly static and indulged of weight, for he is half-human to boot. Addam slings the jacket's arms up around his shoulders, but they flop uselessly. Minoth's is a repose that cannot be contained.
"Darling, I'm not strong enough to carry you," Addam gets out brokenly. Maybe he had been back in Fonsa Myma, but now he is very cold, and very tired, and very broken-hearted. As the words fall off his lips, they fossilize into damning stone. You're not strong enough. Not for Mythra, and not for Minoth. You failed him. And Addam, independent of our narrational omniscience, doesn't even know how true that self-flagellating sentiment rings.
If Azurda had or had had friends, siblings, brethren, then it's possible that his wing-beating arrival wouldn't cause any measure of a stir. We live atop Titans, so why shouldn't we fly aboard them, younger and brighter and more sprightly than those summarily domesticated into transport? In some ways, their fair Nuncle is closer to being a Blade than he is a Titan, if Blades could live for eight hundred years and be well more than eight times their usual size.
He hasn't the company, however, of either bonded human or kindred titanic folk, so in due time the door to the first house in the village creaks open and Flora emerges, casting a patient glance at the children playing in the front-side yard. Her expression is at first satisfied, even pleased, as she sees that it is in fact Azurda, and Addam with him, and then...then it falls.
She's about to call out, but clamps her mouth shut instead and runs as quickly as she can to where the Titan has docked. Azurda bows his head, gives some gesture half of gravity and half of affection, and Flora lets herself be distracted for a spare moment to lay small, cool hands and brown-banged forehead on the crook of his chin.
Addam watches her, so terrified he bites half through his lip. If even Flora is this worried from just a single glimpse at the situation, no matter how well she can case it...then things are indeed very, very bad.
Eventually, her hands move to join Addam's in catching below Minoth's shoulders again, and together they slide him down to be supported between them back down the path and into the house. Evie, setting down her blocks, makes to inspect the happenings, but Xander with expression matching his father's pulls her back until the adults have well disappeared inside, and they can creep noiselessly in to shut the door after.
Sound from the bedroom is hushed, frantic.
"Did you get into a fight?"
"Flora!" Addam's face is all anguished agony. "You think that I would do this to him?"
No, in truth. The more likely scenario, despite the Flesh Eater's overall waning-waxing weakness, is that any such disagreement would end up with the prince laid up, because...well, no. No, it doesn't bear thinking about. And maybe that's what she meant, maybe it isn't, but it doesn't much matter, in the end.
So instead Flora just takes Addam's hand and squeezes, hard. There's still no sign of breath nor life emanating from the body laid in as relaxed a posture as they could facilitate from without on the bed. Unsettling, it is, to just...to just watch.
Before they can decide what to do next, a call comes: "Mama?"
Evie shuffles in unbidden, Xander lurking around the corner and quite obviously displeased with his sister's chosen course of action. The twins don't often quibble about who's older by a matter of minutes, but in this moment it's plain that the older would like nothing more than to be able to assert his rarely-observed birthright of dominance over the younger.
"What's going on?"
Addam, ready for any distraction or possible solution no matter the form it comes in, reaches an arm back to pull Evie in to his side. "Do you remember Minoth?" They'd never quite achieved "Uncle Minoth" for any sustained period of time when the twins had been old enough to do anything about it, however unfortunately.
Evie nods. "I think so." Thus far, Xander is better with facial recall than she is, which is usually why she's all the more curious to find out what's going on and who's angry at who this time. Without waiting for further clarification, she leans over and taps stubby fingers on the exposed, semi-dormant Core Crystal.
"Oh, no, baby, don't do that," is what Flora's about to say, but then she stops herself, because it's very nearly worth a go, isn't it?
"How come it's all dull?" Evie queries, trademark scrunch of nose in fine position. "I thought they were supposed to be shiny."
"Well, his is...special. It's because it's not shiny that he was able to come here to stay with us. Do you see?"
That he was and is able, Addam thinks, but not necessarily that he wants to. Or maybe that's the only reason.
"Is he happy? I wouldn't be very happy if mine wasn't shiny."
"I...I hope so, darling."
As Addam says it, Flora leans down and presses a kiss to the crystal in question, and then the room flushes black.
Oh, the something is back, brought quite definitely by the someone.
"Minoth?" Addam ventures timidly, voice faint so as to stave down the hopefulness bursting from therein.
The Flesh Eater doesn't answer, busy as he is gasping for oxygen that he, by most rights, shouldn't quite need, so Flora guides Evie - curiosity not quite sated, but what choice does she have, in the end - back towards Xander, and they scuttle obediently off to bed, likely more excited to exchange theories than to actually get any sleeping done, because Xander isn't that much of a goody-two-shoes at any rate, ever.
"You're back in Leftheria now," Flora informs the dead space and whatever souls might lurk within it. "Back home. Can you tell us what happened? Do you need anything?"
Slowly, the gravitational haze fades, revealing Minoth supine on the bed furiously massaging his forehead in a desperate attempt to regain coherence. After a few more moments, he pulls himself up to some semblance of an upright sitting position. Is this any sort of a natural progression? Maybe it's not, but Addam and Flora sit with him.
"I saw some...unsavory gentlemen out in the town circle," Addam starts. His fingers knit ungracefully in his lap. Whatever it is that actually happened should be obvious enough. Starting with euphemism surely won't be all that much of a setback. Right?
"I guess that's a fair assessment. I'd just call 'em slugs."
"So you met them?" And you remember?
"Oh, sure, we had a real party."
The tit for tat is all too easy for the two of them. Addam can keep inching with overly polite descriptions, and Minoth can keep batting back with ruder but no more elucidatory corrections. They could keep going forever.
So Flora steps in: "This isn't helping anyone - now I see why you two have such a hard time getting anything done together. Please, can you just explain why you fell unconscious for hours on end?"
Minoth studies Flora for a long minute. Testiness is brewing behind his eyes. He doesn't want to say, perhaps even just for the principle of it.
"Please." It's not actually a supplication. It's more of a last-ditch command. Minoth considers the woman sitting just to one side of him for another generous while. Why should he? Why shouldn't he? What the fuck is going on here?
Minoth swallows, cracks his knuckles, pulls back his ears via the muscles in his temples. Then, in between still-heaving breaths, he explains. Or doesn't, really, but the verb will serve.
"Political unrest, you might call it. Five, maybe six guys? They were looking for a Blade without a Driver to blame. I was it. Nothing major."
Nothing major, he says, as his original scar that blistered across and around his left eye socket is now barely visible, even with the aperture automatically closed for fear of shooting retinal pain, underneath the navy-mauve grimmor of a nasty bruise.
"I thought you'd have a little more sense than that," Flora admonishes, snappish in her frenzied worry. "There's no way to prove whether a Blade has a Driver or not, why were you afraid of them not believing you?"
No way to prove it? Flora's no dumb bunny, never has been anything close, but she seems to forget that Minoth is the only - bar the apocryphal all-powerful Jin, the only - Flesh Eater known to exist. Other than that, she's right, and the ruffians had been speaking more metaphorically than anything else; they didn't know whether or not Malos had actually forcibly broken his bond to Amalthus when he'd started his world tour, and indeed no one did.
So, none and nevertheless, it doesn't matter. The important answer yet remains. "Because I'd have been a liar, Flora."
Addam cuts in. "I'm confused." Of course you are. "You thought they wouldn't believe you if you said you didn't have a Driver? But that's exactly what they wanted - not that you would have said that anyway, because it would have led to...Architect, Minoth, just what do you mean?"
"I know what he means," says Flora, tone simultaneously sharpening and softening. Minoth looks at her, crest of crystal still rising and falling, and hates the truth in her eyes. Hates it, hates it, hates it, because she's no dumb bunny and there is no snaking around her. Not now, not then, not ever.
"Why didn't you tell them?"
"I told you," Minoth protests, lame as can be despite his overall persistent penchant (and a resoundingly successful one, too) never to sound nor seem so.
"You didn't tell me anything but a lie. You're lying to yourself, you know that?"
Tell it to us again, and straight this time. You know you're lying.
"But..." But Flora isn't about to do anything like what happened last time. That much is so painfully obvious.
"But nothing." No, they never, never would. Nothing of the sort.
She kisses his cheeks, his nose, his eyes.
"You are ours," she breathes, and he shudders into her as much as over her.
"Don't you know how real you are? How- oh, how wonderfully real?"
"Flora-"
"That's my name, lovie. Don't you know your own?"
Minoth leans back, falls away, lets his face cast over stone. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Oh...well, you're right, I'm sorry, I'm being awfully maudlin, but-- But I don't see what else there is to do. Something's got to get you to realize that you're only hurting yourself, and us, if you force yourself away."
Sparing a glance at Addam, Minoth finds himself observing a rare kind of rawness that the prince had never shown him before. It's, yes, something like hurt, maybe something like disappointment, but nothing like indignance or affront or anything except...worry.
"Who said I'm hurting myself?"
The stone sets for a moment longer. Whispers can be heard from the other room, but Minoth shuts them out as earnestly as he can. Oh, how he hates hearing anything not meant for his ears directly.
Then, Addam: "I did. Because I feel it too. And not because of anything about Driver and Blade - though there's that too, if you'd accede to it - but because...because..." he brings shaking, worn fingers to his undereyes "gah, I don't know. I can't explain it in words - I'm not good at that, not like you. Not with anything that truly matters."
As if I've ever said anything that matters in the least, Minoth thinks, but doesn't speak it, doesn't let the deprecation pass over and through his lips.
Addam turns to his wife. "Flora, do you...can you explain it? Do you know what I mean?"
She's pursing her lips, making all the motions of kicking her heels against the foot of the bed but for the fact that she's not faced that way so as to be able to perform the act itself. "I can try."
They share a glance, all three - do you want me to? will you listen?
"This is going to sound stupid, but bear with me."
Oh? Minoth raises a single languid eyebrow as smoothly as he can. "Go on."
"We're fairly private people, all round, right? Maybe that's because we have no choice now, and we didn't really have any before either, but nevertheless. I'm not an immodest woman."
Minoth nods; his heart-but-not pangs, for that is so much of what he loves about her.
"I trust you absolutely - implicitly, explicitly, both and all. To me, it's not strange that you might see me, well, without any clothes on."
Huh. So that's the strange part. Well, stupid, she'd said, but somehow, fucking somehow, Minoth finds it impossible to ever see Flora Evelyn Hentisane-Origo like that. Addam is...a slightly different story, but still quite similar at heart. They're...yep. His. Great.
"Makes you sound pretty immodest right there, with or without context."
Flora laughs, a short, bitter thing. Minoth hates the sound of it.
"That's the trick, isn't it? What I mean is that you're always wearing your armor - it covers every part of you except your face, and your scar does more to close you up than open you to us. And your hair hangs in your face, and your eyebrows go so far out over your eyes set so far back, and you're just in there, where we can't reach you."
Whatever it is he wants to say, all that comes out is a weak grunting noise, and the rustle of the sheets as he flops a useless hand from down to up, watching the ether lines flicker in the half-dark half-light.
"Here's the important question. Do you want to be reached?"
Seen, reached, touched. What's stopping him from getting up and getting out right the fuck now?
Nothing, that's what, and maybe that's half or three-quarters of the limit of one to two to three to five to nine to eleven to infinity of the problem.
"Minoth, what is a Driver, to you?"
No one's ever asked him, but it's not like he doesn't know. Not at all.
"You got half a century for me to tell you?" The sardonic question is easy, deflective.
Flora smiles faintly, at last. "Yes."
Oh.
Yes.
But he doesn't even half want to try to start to explain it now, and, well, Flora doesn't seem to mind that. She continues, to and toward her point.
"That's why it's stupid. It's a human solution to a non-human problem, because I know you were made to be in armor, to fight and to be all so guarded-up as you always are. But it sends a signal to us, one I think you can quite easily understand."
Addam's hand wriggles its way across the bed to find Flora's, and their fingers wrap together in a quiet, desperate way.
"It's like I said to Addam before he left to find you. You're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but...but you don't. Oh, Minoth, why don't you?"
Why doesn't he? He's stopped breathing quite so heavily, long ago by now, but he still doesn't feel like he has room to know. It's a pattern that needs must be perpetuated. He used to say it more kindly, back in...back in Torna. Life is a promise that you keep, not just a duty that you uphold. You keep it with yourself, with the world, with your loved ones, and it is, after it all, much more honorable to do the damn thing than to cut out on it.
But it's damned, damned easy to cut out on it. Minoth doesn't usually like to pin himself as somebody who skips out the first door that opens, but when it comes to his own self-worth, if the dump heap is closer than the toolshed, he'll go where he goes, just to get and keep himself out of the way. It doesn't matter.
And, so, having Addam and Flora here, practically pleading with him to keep that precious promise, it could far too quickly tip upon the balance in the other direction, that because they want him he should consider himself wanted, valued and thus valuable. And that's not it, but it is something. It's...the honor injected into a personal choice when you know that its reflections are far more powerful than they ever would be if you just let yourself go it alone.
Yes, there is sometimes something to be said for interdependence. They would do it for him. They have done it for him. They'll keep doing it, even as long as he keeps showing a complete lack of regard for himself, until the day when he shouts just a little too loud, turns just a little too hard, and shuts them out forever.
Minoth shudders again. Architect above, that prospect is scary.
"I don't know."
The soundspace of the room breaks again, with no whispers held beyond the surface tension. Addam and Flora don't look at each other, all awonder, no, because that would be far too cliché, but they do consider Minoth's admission for quite a while.
Never before has he admitted to not knowing the answers about his own self. When it comes to matters of the world, of politics and what evils persist in swimming about inside Amalthus's brain, he abandons omniscience just like that. It's a virtue to know when to say that you don't know, one that Minoth has always been very ready to adopt - he couldn't get by without it, most likely.
But this?
"And would you like us to help you figure it out? Change the fact of it, maybe?"
It's a choice, it's a choice, it's the only choice and thus it's not even a choice. "I would."
Addam clears his throat, pats nervously at the space in between his knee and Minoth's own. "Mythra always used to say that...that Driver and Blade are one in body and soul. Now, I know that can't strictly apply to you, and I know I said that wasn't all of it, but I suppose that's the gist of it, all round."
Sighing, Minoth stands and walks to the dresser, stares himself in the mirror mounted atop and inspects his new scars. "Is that really it? I...I guess it has to be. You said I'm so good with words, but I can't even describe how important the two of you are to me. And it's exactly because of that that I don't want to burden you with..." he turns back around, looks away. "With everything that I am."
"Oh, but Minoth, don't you see?" Flora bounces up from the bed to join him, and for a moment she seems twenty-three again. "We love you just as much - exactly just as much, not even any more."
Minoth eyes her. It's maudlin, again. As if he's ever shied away from excess emotion, when it's only him who's watching. Architect, what a performance he's committed himself to putting on.
"Do you mind if I touch you? I should have asked, before, but-"
"Flora. I'm yours, remember?" The poetry of it all is much, much more satisfying than it should be.
"Minoth." Addam's tone is warning as he moves to stand behind his wife. "I don't think she meant it in quite that way, and it's very nearly dangerous if you think she did. We don't own you, it's nothing of the sort. That would circle us back around to Amalthus again. I want that even less than you do."
No, of course that wasn't and isn't it. That's my name, she'd said, don't you know your own? Minoth well knows how to stitch together context and implicit meaning. Trouble is...
He sighs again, makes the motion of a curse even if he doesn't actually know what collection of letters it is he's silently spitting. "It's too much thinking, Prince. I just want it to make sense. Just like every other Blade on and in this damn zoo gets to have. It's so simple for them. I want that."
Flora runs a soothing hand over the one spare place on his arm she can actually reach, between this and that protruding piece of armor. Whether it's too much thinking or just too much talking, the point still stews.
"Are you tired?"
"Yes. God, yes, Flora, I'm tired."
"Then let's sleep. Let's get you into bed, and let's all sleep. As long as you're safe, that's all that matters."
Let's. Let us. So Minoth lets Addam take his hand, hold it in affirmation, lets them sit him down between them and make idle conversation about old memories and what to have for dinner tomorrow as they all take turns undressing each other and stripping back the apprehensions.
The gauntlets go, and the arm guards; Minoth unbuckles the plates of Addam's vambraces as the other man unlinks the clasps on Flora's necklace and bracelet. What asymmetrical impressions do you array over yourself, to keep others from coming in?
They all shuck off their shoes, taste the atmosphere of being unprepared to run away and not quite caring one way or the other (or, perhaps, cherishing that they don't have to be so ready).
Flora's dress comes unbuttoned at the same time as Minoth's jacket, and he gazes at her for only a moment before laying it over her bare shoulders and running his bare thumb over her cheek. Probably, Addam considers some half-baked comment about who it looks best on, and who looks best with or without it, but ultimately shoves it and hugs Minoth to him.
Before long, they're all approximately matched, undershorts worn across the board but scars in the place of a brassiere for two of them.
"This is silly, isn't it?" Flora allows, once they've turned out the lamp and are well and truly trying to see only by the light of each other's eyes. Well, Addam isn't really trying to see; he's just lying next to Minoth and trying to catch onto his own much-needed rest.
"It's alright," Minoth allows back. "I understand what you meant, more or less."
Nodding, she settles in next to him, just about exactly opposite to Addam, chest leaning to chest, and both of their hands gradually make their way over his pectorals to meet at his Core.
"How does that feel, after it all?" If the room is meant to be flooded in dark ether as a result of the touch again, they can't quite tell. No defibrillatory effects this time, it seems.
"Feels good. Matches everything else more. What you said about all the armor made sense."
His sentences are shorter, less formal - even for him. A good sign, Flora figures. "I'm glad."
"And what do you think?" He mumbles it drunkenly, half to the pillow and half to the open air.
"Oh, I don't know. You've always been an elegiac sort of fellow, right? I wish you all the best."
"What, are you throwing me out?"
"I hope not. I like you far too much for that."
Some silent minutes pass.
"Are you awake, Addam?" asks Minoth, offbeat sincerity shining through for once.
Still, this one doesn't mumble at all, just makes a distracted humming noise.
"I'll take that as a no."
Humming turns to mumbling. "It's the middle of the night, I thought he'd half died, and you two are still having your tête-à-tête. I'm asleep."
Oh, touchy, touchy. It isn't even, but if their prince insists, of course they'll go along with it. "If you miss us that much you can just say so."
"You said let's sleep, didn't you?"
Flora smiles. "So I did. Good night, Addam."
"Thank you."
To complete the circle, Minoth gives their closer: "You're very welcome. And...thank you too."
They wake in half-light to the sound of miniature footsteps padding across the rug - Evie, of course, gauging the general appearance of the clock face to determine the earliest allowable time of entrance. Flora is the only one conscious enough to answer any incoming questions, but she's certainly not about to complain of that duty.
"Is he okay?"
Is he? Flora sweeps a careful glance over Addam and Minoth both, the former with his arms wrapped around the latter's neck and chest and his nose buried somewhere between his jaw and his shoulders. But for the bruises, they both look more comfortable, safe, and at peace than they've ever been. And do they even have the right? The war did horrendous things to the entire world, made it grow up in grotesquest rapid and involuntary fashion, but still, here, there are pockets of happiness.
And shouldn't that be cherished?
"Until further notice, yes."
"What's that mean?" Xander pokes in, lips and brows screwed up confusion.
"It means he's okay until he notices he's not, silly," Evie elbows him back.
By and by, Minoth takes enough note of the rustling to crack open a wry ether-blue eye and give the appearance of hand propped in palm, mischievously listening. "I take it you two didn't come in here to discuss vernacular?"
There were worse things they could learn from him, but also probably quite a many better. He'd never hung around close enough for them to get comfortable asking him questions about the ways of the world; Evie's bluntness now is more or less only her youthful impertinence talking.
"Are you okay?"
"Until I realize I'm not."
"See! I told you!"
"He could be lying."
"I never lie."
And at last, Addam sees fit to be visibly awake, the last of the bunch. "Oh? So tell me you love me with your Blade's honor on."
"And that, my dear Evie, is what we call extortion."
Evie screws up her nose something fierce. "Why? Don't you love him?"
Why, indeed? Minoth brings a hand out from wherever it'd gotten stuck to grasp Flora's. "She's just like you, you know that?"
"Of course I do," she replies primly. "And you're obsessed."
Making what she will of that final pronouncement, Evie wastes no more time scrambling up under the covers in between Addam and Minoth, and Xander mirrors her on the other side. Perhaps the way he'd felt the prior evening, Minoth would have all but squirmed, but here and now? It's...it's peace, is what it is.
"Don't I get a good morning, anyway?" Anyway. Anyway, he wraps his arms tight around their backs, and doesn't so much mind the fact that he might never be so alone again. They wouldn't let him, after all.
Xander laughs, sounding so much like his father it quite definitely hurts. "Good morning, Uncle Minoth," he parrots back.
That...well, he isn't quite sure how he feels about the sound of that. "Let's make it a good one, huh? What do you say, Alexander the Great?"
"Hey, where's my special name?" Evie borderline shouts, starting up to stare Minoth directly in the originally-scarred eye. "He didn't even wake you up!"
At this, Minoth grins full out. "Oh, was that you? I'd expect nothing less from our beloved Evelyn the Wise."
Suddenly, she looks like she bit down on a lemon. "Not as good," she mutters, but stops complaining when she feels her father's hand join her uncle's where it's wrapped around her shoulder.
"You'll get used to it," says Minoth evenly.
"We all will," agrees Flora.
"I'm looking forward to it," Addam concludes, not sure quite what he's even talking about but well convinced of the fact that they'll get through it together.
Not everyone is satisfied with the war. Not even these five. But it forced much too much stagnation, for Blades and Drivers alike. At long last, they've got to move on.