The Stranger

Chapter 01: well, we all have a face that we hide away forever
Chapter 02: we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone
Chapter 03: some are satin, some are steel, some are silk and some are leather
Chapter 04: they're the faces of a stranger, but we love to try them on
Chapter 05: don't be afraid to try again

Humanoid Blades have skin, or a close enough approximation. For Minoth, this is quite convenient, because he doesn't trust his thoughts to notebooks, to objects others who may not look so fondly on the occupation might be able to find. With knives, with stones, with fingernails, he scratches indents that, if roughly, chronicle the occurrences most urgent.

Now, being inflicted upon a Blade, these nominal wounds heal over within the hour. So then, it is the imprinting that is the thing. And that's fine. Being a Blade, Minoth has quite the serviceable memory, and actions speak loud enough for those who will hear.

They're not shopping lists, these inscriptions, nor names of monks who will treat him well regardless of his Driver's seeming complete lack of care for his wellbeing and, indeed, happiness, nor even doctrine from the Indoline bible that he finds somewhat tolerable. Whether it's because of self-hatred or commitment to true critical consumption, Minoth does not mark these bits of moral commentary with any distinction, but they are, in total, his views on the world.

He pours his mind into his body, and his body into his mind, and to everyone else who would bother to look he seems to have changed not at all. Not that that's not so many people. But it's enough. He doesn't need new, apathetic, soulless strangers.

Then, suddenly touching something not quite a Blade, the tiny glyphical scars stop healing so quickly. And Minoth, even when he is away from his Driver's borious observation, oh, he writes and writes and writes. It is a form of petty penance, yes, to harm himself by way of something sharp coming into contact with his body repeatedly and without even any promised compromised end, but it is an outlet, and he plugs himself into it.

Up and down his arms, on his shoulders, on the insides of his thighs, in the hollows of his calves, along his ribs and hipbones, under his jaw and upon his forehead before he scrubs it out with his pseudo-bangs. Yes, he ventures into places even he cannot see, without the mirror's cruel scathing aid, and he doesn't care. He's stopped caring, and by that token he has never cared more.

Addam Origo, alone in the middle of the night in some sloughed-off residential wing of Aureus Palace, stares groggily at his forearms and tries to make out the mesmerizing handwriting before it's smudged away by the quickest recover of armor.

An odd way to tell me I've got a secret admirer, he puzzles juvenilely to himself. But, nevertheless, doubting that Zettar is really willing to expend that much effort to get him riled, back to sleep he goes.

In the interim years, they meet off and on. Minoth keeps his profane hobbies to the dark, away from any but the darkest materials.

Addam, as a prince even if a bastard one, appears in many different outfits. Some are finer, for higher audiences, and some are blunter, for harder battles. Minoth, as a Blade even if a bastard one, is always dressed the same. Only his face is ever visible, and for the overwhelming majority of the world a face is all that truly needs to be seen.

A face hides a mind. A face is a façade, even if only definitionally. Addam's face is open, frank, unscarred and unbarred. Minoth's face is old, worn, cloistered up both by owned volition and not. We know what is in Minoth's mind, though vaguely. So what does Addam think?

"You're a writer? Why, that's fascinating."

"I wouldn't call it fascinating. More mundane. Pitiable, if I'm having an off day."

"And are you?"

They're in the Praetorium library. The place is full of books, and Minoth hates it here. He should be, shouldn't he?

"No, I'm not."

Later, on the back of his left hand, he scrawls: "Today was a good day."

He admits the truth. Doesn't explain it, doesn't quantify it, doesn't qualify it. Doesn't rub it off, either. Just lets the morning wash it away.

It's been quite a while since he's written on his skin. Among mercenaries, he never removed his armor, and among the world, he always kept proper notes. Now, sitting around the campfire, gloves off and pen in hand, he indulges in the idle reminiscence once more. Nothing narrative, nothing concrete, merely an abstract musing.

"Will the facsimile ever prove genuine? What masks do we all hide behind?"

Across the campfire, Addam is just about to shrug down the underlayer of his vambrace to attend to a persistent itch around the veins on his wrist. Then he frowns, squints, flicks his eyes back up to where Jin is sitting - any talk of masks goes directly to the Paragon, of course. Next to Jin, still, is Minoth, peering absently at his own hand.

"Minoth."

"At your service, Prince."

"Do you write on your skin instead of in a notebook very often?"

"Why do you--"

Each tries on the postures of the other. Minoth frantically relives every bit of poetry of form both long and short, and realizes that there is no one he would rather have had know all of those things than Addam (if Addam did in fact inspect each snippet to take it down to heart if not to page, but nevertheless).

"All my life. And have you...?"

"For as long as I can remember."

So now Minoth has a reason to write notes. Now there is someone there to hear even that pointless of his psyche. His mortal frame is not enough to carry an epic, not while Addam is alive, so not much of his day-to-day portfolio changes, but sometimes it comes inflected with much more humor than it used to.

We'll forgo herein his maudlin, flopping jokes, because love made him sappy and thus less than snappy, but when one didn't hit...well, the next day he could always toss off another. The captive audience would still be there. Always had been.