*elton john voice* don't discard me
"Why were you- no, that's-- How was it? A little more shrill, right? 'Why were you more worried about a sword than me, Shulk?!'"
There was mirth in Fiora's eyes, of course. Sword, machine, whichever, they all understood the irony by now.
"I still feel bad about it," Shulk said, scratching his chin. "Even though it turns out the sword was all the more worried about me!"
(If Alvis had argument with this statement, it wasn't voiced.)
"I'm sure most everyone in the colony would have been just as happy if I'd just tossed it into the bay to let the Piranhaxes have their way with it. Or off the Bionis entirely, if I could have managed it. For all the good it had done them, and Dunban..."
It certainly wasn't worth worrying over now, and Shulk knew that. Didn't make anybody feel any better to walk through the same routine of regrets and apologies and recognitions.
The conversation would move on, after a beat, as usual. A little quicker to the tempo each time, as it were.
Noah, however, sitting nearby, colored slightly. His memories of Aionios consisted of a massively different regard for human (it seemed the more general term, beyond Homs) life and several dazzlingly interlaced revelations about the ongoing value of the past's intentions.
No one had ever confronted him about his particular method of physical disposal of his Blade nor its briliant sheath, both bound with a greater significance to the state of the world than Lanz's shield or Eunie's gun - greater even than those intricate Agnian artifacts the other three had summoned and wielded.
Not that he'd expected anyone would! Preparing for the total dispatch of Aionios as a world and as a lifetime (many of those, in fact) had him eager to shed the instrument of violence and leave his arms free for Mio, Sena and Taion.
Based on what Noah knew of the world of the Endless Sea, if Shulk really had punted the Monado far, far away from him, the generation to follow would never have been born. Or, perhaps they would have, owing to some small measure of fate and predestination remaining, but...well, all would have been different.
He wouldn't be sitting here in the Garden of the Great Intersection, Mio dozing on his shoulder because when she wanted to go for a run, she went, and Sena oftentimes went with her, throwing proper form and pacing to the wind.
Kevesi and Agnian (as it was still useful to call them) people mingled freely here as everywhere, finding friendships that suited them and adjusting customs that didn't. Many of those who'd bonded in Aionios were still tight together in the "real world" - as it were.
Had his life even mattered? Did it, now, with no impending doom to battle?
That is to say, of course it mattered. Of course Noah was acutely cognizant of his terribly central role in Aionios's machinations, alongside Mio. Of course they enjoyed now countless a practice session, Noah teaching Mio every technique Crys had bequeathed to him and uncovering some new tricks of his own in the process.
Of course there was a point to it all, and yet...
"Pione Stone for your thoughts?"
"I'm sure they're not worth that much," Noah replied with a breathy laugh, feeling himself relax (unfortunately) visibly when he'd connected the tiniest upward inflection in the question to the red hair that accompanied it.
"That's for me to judge," smiled Pyra. "My trade offer, your goods."
How even to voice such a train of rumination? By this point the original seed was easier transplanted.
"You heard what Shulk and Fiora were talking about, right?"
"Snatches. Mythra thinks it's silly, but it makes me smile to know that Fiora and I get along so well, since we worked together in Aionios."
Get along so well...right, because it seemed like practically all of the adults in their extended family were...familiar, in some way or another.
"Even though it wasn't really you." Noah didn't even bother with upward inflection on his own leading question. He was reassuring himself with it, and he wouldn't refuse additional reassurance from one of Alrest's warmest as a bonus.
"Well..."
Pyra had been sitting as soon as Noah accepted her offer of conversation, but now she began to smooth out the sides of her tunic, crossing her ankles and settling this way, that way, this way.
"I think our Core Crystal was there in the flesh, just like Shulk and Rex. Er- well, you know what I mean."
"Sure," nodded Noah, not.
"But Lucky Seven was forged using Origin Metal containing data from Fiora's soul - the same way a Core Crystal is a representation of a Blade's soul you can hold in your hand, right?"
Again, Noah never had, but he'd felt Mio's Core and rationalized that if you could write thoughts on brain tissue, surely the same could go for these beautiful, even otherworldly crystals.
(Well, but they weren't otherworldly. In a lot of ways, they were Alrest itself.)
"So Fiora wasn't there, necessarily, and Mythra and I were basically fast asleep."
"But it's a nice thought, isn't it?" Noah rejoined. How he'd always been almost effortlessly conversant with those much older than him was a quandary that always nagged at him, never quite feeling like a full-blown blessing. And of course, did Aionios have anything to do with that?
"A very nice thought," Pyra agreed. "Sometimes it's hard to understand dreams when they don't exist physically. Sometimes it's hard to understand the physical world without a desire behind it. And sometimes even with both parts of it...you just need the human touch."
Noah, never having met Mythra or Pyra until the day after the Great Intersection, thought this described and excused his decision to cast Truthsinger into the water rather perfectly.
And yet.
If he could go back and fish it out of the water (or better yet, place it in the vault in Melia's room as gingerly as possible), would he? Would it matter?
"So you weren't conscious, at all."
"I think we received some memories. A Core Crystal is a data processing unit at heart - ha, heart! Alvis might have transmitted some to us after the fact, though. It's hard to say for sure."
Oh. Of course Alvis knew. There were very, very few things Alvis didn't know.
No way out but through.
"Did he tell you what happened to Lucky Seven in the end, then?"
Pyra blinked, pursed her lips. "No, I just assumed it reintegrated with the rest of Origin once the Intersection - the first one, I mean - was successfully executed."
Noah said nothing.
"Noah?"
Noah bit his lip.
"Did something happen?"
"Well, it doesn't matter, right? Since Aionios never really happened. You know, Origin Metal can't rust, and all."
But he wasn't making eye contact, still, and Pyra had to smile.
"If it helps, Noah-" she took his free hand, while Mio continued to snooze unawares "-my sword spent five hundred years at the bottom of the Cloud Sea. I don't think I rusted."
"No," crowed Fiora, who'd been edging closer to the exchange as soon as she'd seen Alvis start paying attention, "you don't look a day over thirty-five!"
Pyra accepted the gleeful side hug and lingering cheek from her friend with cheered grace, but her mind was darting back to many a past conversation with Mythra. All these things we regret - all these things our minds can't help but hold, because it would be a horrible forgetfulness simply to dispose of them.
"It happened," she whispered. Noah nodded.
"It mattered," she whispered. Noah swallowed, and nodded.
"But you know what? It's not the end of the world."