S.W.A.G.: Support We All Gain

"And that's another thing! I showed up in front of him and I'm supposed to be this all-powerful scion of the Architect, right? And all that skeevy-ass blue twink has to say is like. Stuff about ogling my boobs. Ugh. God. What a creep."

Then Mythra stopped herself for a moment and looked over at Minoth, who was studying her with an incredibly distracted look on his face. "Oh, sorry," she said lamely. "I didn't mean to insult your Driver."

Right? Because that was basically what she'd been doing. And she had meant to insult him, but she hadn't meant to insult him by way of, like, assuming Minoth's sympathy about it.

Minoth blinked once, twice, three times, and his eyes were still slightly glassy as he removed one hand from where it was propped underneath his chin and waved it broadly. "No, no, that's...quite alright."

"You're sure?"

Minoth laughed.

"No," and it was the conversational expletive, not quite the binary (it would only be made so by such an attributive intrusion here), "but get a load of this - when we worked with the refugees, he never actually asked me to go down and help them, but he'd point to the women and make sure I saw how their hair was shorter than mine. Stuff about how I'd probably be a good caretaker, or at least a good pull for wandering eyes."

...right.

Mythra sat.

She'd been sitting, but that anecdote so seemingly nonchalantly delivered sort of set her down with a greater weight than she'd had just previously.

The Aegis processed everything in the same kind, with the same matter-of-fact-ness and bruqsue braggadocic bravado, without taking normal human cues for shock or trepidation. It just wasn't how they worked. Only certain things, which came learned over days or weeks of repetitions, earned chafing disbelief and a stuttered "W-what did you just say?"

But here and now, in the face of Minoth's strange past predicament, the Aegis sat.

Sat, thought, and sat some more.

From everything she'd heard from Jin about abusive Drivers he'd seen, and everything Addam had ever tried to teach her about respect and the way he aimed to work with her, that seemed like...an absolutely massive red flag.

She wanted to ask, "Are you sure you're okay with that? Are you sure that's just a joke?" Confirm manually, in the least intrusive but likely most efficient way - by that method, moreover - possible.

But something in her rang with the confluence that he was most definitely not okay with it, or at least hadn't been at some not-so-faraway point in the past, and that it yet had to be a joke, because he couldn't think about it, couldn't live with it, any other way.

So she sifted through Addam's annals of an annum of advice, not to say admonishments, one more time, and then, without saying a word, she shifted closer in to Minoth's side and hugged him. Didn't say anything, just sat close.

By and by, Minoth reciprocated. He felt the grip of his own arms over Mythra's back, and it was painfully tight.

Addam and Minoth made eye contact again, and if the Flesh Eater's mildly amused, if again distracted, look before had said, "Can we keep her?", now it was tender but determined, and averred, "I'm not letting go of her, ever."