Unholy Trifecta

memes but like not really memes. when your not-dad [genesis-installed guardian] is a dickhead

Confession time-- Sorry, venting hours, in the Praetorium. Between a Blade, afforded no clergical rank, and a man who hadn't taken one because he was, in his own consideration and possibly also that same Blade's, too pragmatic for the mess.

Baltrich was smart. Minoth liked smart. It was a fine thing to rail against and not have responses come back canned and pseudo-enabling. Other people - other non-Indoline people - might suggest far more impotent and unrealistic (on the sides of blame and shame both) solutions to the problem of a Driver. Not Baltrich.

Any office that echoed less than the sanctuary within the sanctum would do.

"I don't think he realizes- no, I don't think it's possible for him to realize that I don't care. Like, I don't think he's capable."

Baltrich nodded. "Fair enough. That's not his responsibility. Rather, it's his prerogative to perceive you as he wishes."

Sound logic. It's true for all people, all fora and media of interactions, all epochs and locales. Minoth, an author, will become dead, and Minoth, an individual, casts a likeness of himself into the world in order (yes, expressly) to become, to Amalthus, functionally dead. It's disgusting, but it's not strictly wrong. He can't...argue with it. No. It's not wrong. It can't be.

It sure as hell feels it, though. "I don't think you're getting it, Baltrich. Look, every time he talks to me - every time! every! single! time! - it's the same old wine. First of all, I didn't ask. Second of all, I don't care. I never care - and that's my prerogative, just like it's his prerogative not to care about me, right? And...I don't know. He's blue. Blue!"

"Minoth," Baltrich began evenly, "I'm blue."

"Yeah, yeah," Minoth waved off the perfectly legitimate criticism, "but he embodies it. It's in everything he does. Imperious, is the word, and ignominious, and self-important, and mother-fucking full of himself."

"Odd choice of intensifying expletive."

"Shove it. I don't even want to get into that - that's the last thing I care about."

Back Minoth drifted until the chair met the bottom of him with an unceremonious cloth-flavored thud. Baltrich looked thoughtful.

"Mmm. Quite the unholy trifecta of unsavory behaviors. Architect forbid the world not be consistently, nay constantly, suited to your exact tastes, Minoth."

"That's the thing!" Minoth shouted, starting up without realizing it and leaning across the desk with one hand splayed below his chest for a balancing prop. "Nothing ever goes my way, and everything always goes his! And..." He retreated, and sat back down once more. "And none of it fucking matters because he's right, of course he is. But still."

"Want to fold him like laundry." Baltrich folded his hands neatly in response.

"Want to squash him like clay." Here he drew them up palm over fist, and clenched his fingers in.

"Want to grate him like cheese." Finally, the Magister separated his hands, keeping fists loose, and rubbed his knuckles together in mime before opening them out in a deadpan ta-da gesture.

Uh-huh. "Very funny. At least you actually are funny, though. He's...ugh."

An irritatingly persistent voice in his head began to nag: "It's really your fault, you know. You're the one creating the negative association. You don't have to be so angry."

Why irritating? For one, it was a loose end that couldn't be tied up. For two, the voice itself was Baltrich's.

Now, Minoth got on with Baltrich - well enough, or even better than. It'd be a new day when he ever said anything like loving his comrade, but the monk turning magister also wasn't anything like out-and-out repugnant. The same, of course, neither of them could say for Amalthus. Never had been able to. If he'd been nice once, they hadn't known him then.

This thought, alongside the nagging, Minoth returned to, some years later.

A recollection, once reflected in more youthful, naïve examination:

"Do you see them, Minoth? How they are scrabbling for the merest dregs of meaning in life, thwarting each other for negligible gain? I sometimes wonder if they are even worth saving..."

To himself, Minoth thought, I hope he explodes, and violently, and soon. To his Driver, however, he just gave a vague "Huh. Is that so?"

Amalthus would have exhaled his irritation, if he ever seemed to breathe at all.

"Minoth, why do you continually oppose me like this? Truly, I cannot understand it. You are deaf to the sins of this world."

And oh, now he just had to say it. Maybe this would even make the man explode directly - was that homicide? Libel? Slander?

Whatever it was or is. Worth it. By the Judician-Morythan father, son, and holy spirit, none of which or all of which seemed to imbibe him now.

A confession, really.

"Amalthus, you are the worst person I have ever met."

Minoth's ratio text is sampled from here