Something Happened on the Way to Heaven
"I'm the same as you," Malos says. He's completely confident in it. Why shouldn't he be?
At the present moment, Malos is a salesman, peddling for a position, a petty day-to-day job. Of course, be assertive. You can't sell your position to an unwilling patron any other way.
He says it to reinforce the brokenness, to make it altogether clear (as crystal ! as crystal) that he is no longer a threat, that he is barely holding himself together - that from the outset, he is not punching down, nor up, nor any way at all.
He is simply existing. So is Jin.
It's a normal enough thing to do, two broken men schlepping it through life and recovery together some unknowable period of time post-war. Normal, that is, if one of you isn't the one who caused the whole mess, and the other isn't close enough to being the sole soul survivor.
"Uh, Jin." Maybe he'd meant it to tick up to a question, but got scared of heights halfway through.
Jin raises an eyebrow beneath his bangs brushed messily down over his crimson Core. "Malos," he stamps back - like a rubber stamp, that is, clean and dry-cut; nothing so arrogant as a quadruped's huffing hoof, much as he and they might both deserve it, one to the other and then again one to one. Do they function, truly? At all?
Cowed, Malos stares at his hands - not knitting them like a child, no, but flexing them against the table, fingerprintless upon the knots, feeling the rivet in each and every knuckle's joint. His eyebrows, instead, knit.
"I never said that-" An omission of the facts is as much a lie as any other vile disservice to the truth. No one cares if you've thought about it already, just spit it goddamn out.
"I'm sorry."
It sounds half-hearted, half-assed, half-cored and full-gored of all purpose. It sounds like Malos isn't sure of himself.
Sure enough. I'm the same as you.
And so, now, Jin tosses his mane. "We'll see about that."
At the present moment, he doesn't go any farther nor further down and in to plans and reasons and ways in which Malos can prove himself upon his statement. He just goes back to thinking, being turned in to himself, and thus Malos does the same. He can't think about himself without also thinking about Jin, though.
It's his guilt. It's all about that, and goddamn it, it's not a fucking pity party to be trying, constantly, to sort that out.
He's intertwined them. He, as the Aegis, is a master at getting what he wants. He just never thought that it would be...
Whatever. Unless he does something really major, this won't ever change. He owes this debt right up to the end. What has occurred bears completely on what has been incurred.
Your actions have consequences. Malos...he knows that now. He thinks.
He shoves the guilt as much as he can until the first time he and Jin actually go seriously raiding, actually exert themselves and fill roles instead of just shoes always walking, walking, walking, going nowhere. He doesn't apologize for Mikhail, doesn't apologize for Lora anew once it becomes a regular thing to see her so enshrined, doesn't...doesn't make it about him.
Because of course Jin is sorry about what happened to Malos. Of course he sees what scum Amalthus has brought creeping over the pond, and sent ripples on to eternity.
Of course Jin has his own sorrow, to give and to take alike. But Jin isn't sorry to, for, Malos. So they are not, exactly, the same.
After that first time, the seizure and the weakness set in something awful. Malos can only watch, after reluctantly working shoulder-to-shoulder with a half-grown Mikhail to dig up a regeneration pod, as Jin's breathing steadies, as he seems almost to approach the sweet, gentle embrace of death.
"I'm sorry," Malos murmurs, as if Jin could ever hear him. Then, louder: "FUCK! I'm sorry." And then he takes himself directly to the other end of the ship to punch something, to use that most hackneyed of anger management release exercises as he will because goddamn it, he is a being that destroys, and if he can do that right, then that sure fucking does say something's following course with the world.
Over the centuries, two or three or four, every deep conversation comes tagged-after by a different flavor of cap-off studded with anti-apologia. I'm sorry this happens to Blades. I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry she did this to you. I'm sorry you did this to yourself.
I'm sorry I did this to you.
It's eloquent, adult, satisfying. It's carrying dialogue, instead of halting it.
It comes faster, once they've retrieved Pyra - except not, you know. Akhos makes some simpering comment about the daring getaway, and Malos quips back, hard as nails, "Well, I'm sorry your little plan didn't work out, huh? Stow the crap and let's get moving."
That doesn't count, of course. But Jin arches familiar brow beneath the mask all the same. Is it...change? Development? Is Malos falling out of the niche he carved for himself?
In Uraya, an awakened failure. On Temperantia, the last dregs of another. Above Morytha, and then after it, half-success is struck through, cleaved aside, yet again. Again, Malos avoids saying it, but his almost plaintive looks tell Jin everything he needs to know.
This devotion...he shouldn't abuse it, but a sick feeling in his chest tells him that it's what Malos wants, ultimately. It's the kind of thing one would think they'd have talked about a dozen - a dozen dozen - times, established full through, but they hadn't.
They'd just had these weak moments of futile exchange. In the World Tree, then, there is one more.
By now, Malos well and truly knows he is nothing without Jin, internally and externally. He is a tool, and on a bad day he likes it. On a good day he just wants to hide.
But the distance that has grown, over these past weeks...the bond has faltered, indeed. Malos hadn't know what he'd had until he'd lost it.
"We said we'd go together." Of course. And I'm not leaving unless you come with me. But, well...apparently, that was then. This is now.
"I'm so sorry to do this to you," Lora had said. Malos had apologized to Rex plenty of times, if sarcastically. Jin had said that affected-effected death was nothing personal to the very same youth.
But what did they have left that wasn't personal, after all these years?
Ah. There, in fact, it was.
Jin wasn't sorry. Jin didn't need to be sorry. Jin had his own status to keep.
They had been going up, up, up. All Malos had done was drag Jin down, down, down.
Maybe that time had been the mistake. Maybe these new memories should be the first to go.
If you're whispering into someone's ear, you've better have a damn good reason why.
Even if it's for the last time. And so, Malos would try.
"I'm sorry," Malos says. He's completely confident in it. Why shouldn't he be?
You can't sell your position to an unwilling partner any other way.