angel face

---

He sees Pyra first. Dim, in his dingy, dusty, junk-encrusted office, but she lights up bright. Of course. Obviously. There hadn't even been time for rumours; Vandham had marched right in at just about the regular time he'd give his grave, jocular gossip, and he'd brought the Aegis with him.

The Aegis...a title Malos had stolen that wholly fits. If you consider the meaning of the thunderstorm, and not that of the shield.

I rush, moving violently.

Volatile. Flashing.

Powerful. Destructive.

Ringing down from the gods and the heavens.

Terribly loud.

Cole takes one look at Pyra and knows that she, of all Blades, is not loud.

She'd been quiet five hundred years ago, of course. But so had Addam. Also quite a loud soul, generally. Loud enough to annoy even Minoth, after Mythra. Not that he had ever been quite so internally serene. Even now, he felt rocked about.

Grief transforms. Grief and love make you do strange things. Oh, strange things.

The strangest thing of all, of course, right here and right now and very much not five hundred years ago, is that Pyra has just, apparently, sat still and polite in the Mymoma Theatre and watched an angelic facsimile of her other self batten down the hatches of humanity without so much as a flicker, which is something that very much did not happen. Ever.

Aside from her catatonic dissassociative grief, Cole's not sure he's ever seen Mythra be...quiet.

First there was her arguing. Usually not borne of any real anger, instead placed in a continuum of "I know I'm right!" bluster that lasted because it hadn't anywhere to go; where could you go, when you knew you were right and then were told you were wrong?

Arguing. Yes, Mythra surely was argumentative.

And Pyra is not that.

Then there was her fighting. This was the anger in truth, the rebelliousness and the wretched torture of coming of an age (one year, and then plus some). Mythra fought with Addam, Brighid, Jin, and occasionally Lora and Minoth as well. Very rarely did she fight with Haze or Hugo.

Fighting. Yes, Mythra surely was bellicose.

And Pyra is not that.

Beyond interpersonal contention, Mythra found all sorts of other ways to make noise. Lip pops, heel taps, hair shakes, impromptu squats, strikes of her magnificent, overmassive sword against her boots, rhythmic fingers upon her Core Crystal...it never ended. Always something buzzing, beeping, burning.

Fidgeting. Yes, Mythra surely was impossible to ignore.

And Pyra is...well, maybe not that. Or maybe so.

Not that Cole's perspective is anything to go off of, considering that he is in this moment hyperfixated on his strange mutant grief (no one should live five hundred years, but here they are, here they are, here they are).

All Blades glow in the dark, to a certain extent. Mythra had shone.

Daughter of the Sun. Why should the exponent of ten million degrees be polite, and quiet, and still?

His mental past tense arrests him. She's not dead, his mind proclaims from front of house to back and left of stage to right, you know that, but does he? He doesn't, actually. He has no reason to believe that Mythra isn't dead, and Pyra just an evolution of the Core. If Addam had known any different, he hadn't told his old friend.

Still. If Mythra were dead, Pyra would look...well, a hell of a lot more haunted.

Grieving for Vandham only sets Cole another rung down, and not all that gently.

Her sweet face. Vandham's hadn't ever been one you could call so sweet, but Iona's is, and all his kids from the generations upon generations before her had been just the same.

He'd given them a reason to smile. Taken away the reasons they had to frown and feel pain, as much as he could.

Mythra. So quiet. If I could just...for you...

It's not his job. One supposes it's Pyra's job. Certainly, Rex's. Maybe even Nia. Azurda, if you're looking up experiential qualifications.

But not Cole. Not Cole with his baby-faced blue-haired granddaughter whose pre-adolescent hand clamps onto the wristsleeve of his cloak with no care toward precision in its roughness. Not like she would have had.

Pyra looks distressed. She's got every right to be. What that must have ripped out of her, to do that...

Cole doesn't really believe in the Architect's power to do much of anything, anymore. But he prays, head bowed, organbells issuing in his mind; please, somebody, have mercy.

Please let her be loud. Please. Please let her scream, if it'll begin to try to fix this.

Turns out, Mythra in 4058 is very loud. Actually, maybe more loud than she'd been in 3564. Or maybe that's his aged hearing talking, back to front and vice versa, louder relative to his world, now.

She's hurt. Like a hurt animal, really. She's bucking and shying. Her mane's tossing everywhere. She's stamping, braying.

He can't remember if Mythra would have let Minoth say such a thing, or if she wouldn't. And thus, would she let Cole?

He braces himself for what feels inevitable, coming next: And YOU ! You, you...charlatan!

(Nine letters, but she slashes it, a thick and unapologetic stroke, like four.)

"So now I'm awake, everybody's happy, except me, as usual - not that they were actually ever very happy with me BEFORE - and you've been telling everyone I'm some angel! Well that's just great - wonderful, really! People don't even remember me for what I actually did. They remember me for what they wish I was like, as usual. As freaking usual. Nothing's changed!"

Balled fists fly to the sky, then collapse, meteoric. You just had to push yourself.

Obviously, things have changed. Obviously, her body wears red with a chin-chop, half the time. Obviously, her Driver's shorter than her, now. Younger by more than just actual time of years.

The line of the gravestone divides them, as the rest of the party, but knowing Mythra - knowing this Mythra by dint of difference - it's equally obvious that Cole's going to have to be the one to step across it.

Before, which means before the hunch and the children and the cough and the playhouse, he'd been able to reassert and recorrect his points just by an implication of stance. He never croaked. Never even had to. He'd had the edge, and Mythra had relented right on time, giving her feedback and making him grin.

Now, what does he have? How would he cast himself, underneath that gleaming moon?

Nervous like he's never been, Cole cracks his knuckles. Cheap trick, but he'll do it.

Mythra flinches. Earthside angel, indeed.

"Would it help you if I said I'm not sorry?"

Now she scoffs. "I don't want your help, or your so--" ...slowing... "Wait, what?"

His inner dirty old man prescribes an easy line (which he doesn't say): "Come on, angel face, don't be angry."

Except, do be angry. Because that's my girl.

"If I put a stipulation in the manuscript for the part of the angry Aegis, it'd be like...like portraying you with pimples on your face."

"I want the truth," Mythra grinds through perfect teeth.

"History lives forever," Cole says with a sad smile. "I'm making it. And you've got your whole life ahead of you, still. You and her..." he gestures in a halo, "you're like that, to me."

Not quite beatific, but something radiates, there.