In his eyes I see you, Alexander

He hadn't even taken notice of Rex, when he'd first come in. Vandham's massive figure was enough to obscure any bit players, after all, but that's a tired excuse, in the end. Seeing Pyra, then, brought shock fresh and real like Cole had never thought he'd experience again, until the apocryphal shock of dying, and he'd given affected tones that would play overture to whatever prissy prince had taken her up this time.

But it hadn't been any such an airheaded fellow. No, Rex was about as down-to-earth as they come. A little bit like Addam, the wishful farmer, and even more like his son, who'd been born in a farmhouse and deigned to stay there all his life - maybe was honorable, maybe was cowardly, but it was the path taken, nonetheless.

Alexander. Alexander the Great, Minoth had called him all too fondly, and Xander, everyone else had called him for short. Defender of men, winner of hearts, favorite of his mother even though they'd never had another child. Grand things, for a homebound boy. There are grand things within us all.

"I am!" said Rex. And so you're a winner too, Cole thought. If either of those jackass golden boys had been present at the asking of the same question, they would have knocked their knees together, the father more than the son, and hoped the uncomfortable situation would evaporate. Well, maybe that was more Lora's thing, but overall neither of them shared Flora's straightforwardness.

Not that he said as much. Whatever maturity Xander had had, by the end of it, mid-adolescence did him no real favors. So Cole lets his flabbergastedness at the fragile age of it all show, and no one seems to care. He offers his bland advice about scaling the World Tree distractedly, reviewing old memories in his mind and frantically preparing for something, anything, worthwhile to say to Pyra.

Eventually, all he comes up with is: "Reminds me of a certain someone." Yes, sure, Pyra gets it, Pyra doesn't really, really have any reason not to get it, but if you could put aside your bereavement for two seconds, grandpa? Because he was talking about Addam. Pyra never knew Xander. As far as history's concerned, no one does; Minoth had had the grace and forethought to leave a true civilian out of the war stories.

In this day and age, a salvager isn't a civilian. Everyone who participates in trade is also partaking in the suffering of those elsewhere on the food chain - altercations like Iona had had earlier happen every day. And if Blades are never ever civilians, then Minoth wouldn't have had a chance at it, but Cole has.

Cole, in all his aged anti-wisdom, has less of a stake in his adulthood than Rex does, by this point. And yet, Rex doesn't seem like he's all too worried about growing up. He's happy just as he is, taking the challenges of each new day as they stack the odds, bit by bit, into their crucial, precious stairway to heaven.

Xander was untouched, untainted, by society's expectations. So is Rex. And god, maybe that's just what they all need.

The last thing they say to one another, and it's more or less the first of any real weight, is the exchange of promises about Vandham's play. Honoring another man's memory. That sort of thing was always up Addam's alley, much as he might have hated the idea of it for himself. Cole doesn't even have to hope that Rex will outlive him, and he won't have to write the boy's memorial. He knows it. Oh, Rex is a winner, indeed.

But when Rex comes back later, much later, it's with all the air of a loser. Curing an old man's bony aches and achy bones isn't much of a prize, after all, when your main goal is to stop a couple of nutjobs from suicide bombing the entire goddamn world on a long-held whim. And yet, it's something, anyway. Rex cares. Xander would have. Addam would have. Yes, we'll keep on at the similarities. Some of them are...good memories.

"Hey, Cole, can I ask you something?"

Cole, still rubbing a slightly less gray hand over the uncomfortably warm place in the center of his chest, nods slowly. "Sure. You've done me a huge favor, I at least owe you that much."

Rex shrugs, passes a sheepish hand over the back of his hair. Like Addam, are you? And so that's what it's about.

"When we were in Tantal, just after Torna had taken Pyra, I..." Oh? He hadn't known about this. He hadn't seen much of the pack of jokers since they'd taken Iona, and Pyra by that device. Very single-minded, then. Everything about the Aegis. Not about each other, not about the other Blades...just about her.

Why is it that no one can think straight to their senses when that power's around? Good, bad, or otherwise, everyone goes loopy eventually. And that's...that's what they hate about the world, isn't it. All three of them - four, if you count Jin, and maybe you should.

Neither Mythra nor Pyra is standing there behind Rex - or, no, they'd be standing to one side, not behind. Mythra hadn't even stood behind Addam. Heh. She wouldn't have taken it, that way. But either way, Rex's gulping confession is his own.

"I wanted to give up," he blurts out, non-exclamatory. "I thought that everything that had happened to them was my fault, and that if I just left, they wouldn't keep getting hurt. The way I let them do, over and over and over again."

He looks like he's about to give an unwieldy, nigh-unwanted shake of his head, but instead the motion is small, rueful. "Nia punched me in the face."

Cole quirks an eyebrow. "Did she, now? Heh. I should have done that."

"You what?"

Consider that for a moment. Should he go into all the gory details that Rex is clearly edging towards, all the fights he'd had with Addam on the trail and off of it, all the stupid-sticky wickets of their relationship, all the undone indignities he'd borne witness to?

Oh. "Not your face," he half-clarifies, trying to seem cool about the awkward implication. Maybe he fails, maybe he doesn't. It's not important. Hardly anything he ever does or did is important, anymore. "But anyway. That doesn't seem like a question, to me. More of a confession - and that's fine, much as I'd like to distance myself and these old robes from the big man up there in Indol, but if you were wanting to say something else...?"

Something else. Could be that Brighid, dear, dear tempered Brighid, slapped him, and Poppi, dear, dear gentle Poppi, almost cracked his jaw in two - and then his heart, into the bargain. That she said they looked up to him, and, well...Cole knows that nobody ever would have looked up to Addam if he'd told the facts straight.

Without Rex, we not know which way to go. Without Addam, Mythra wouldn't have either. But was where she ended up really better? For five hundred years?

Christ, old man, why'd you do it?

But Rex doesn't know that he did it, not really, not fully, not truly, so he soldiers on with the apparently more pressing issue.

"Oh, well...no, you're right. It's not really a question. I was gonna ask you what you think Addam would have done - because you knew him, right? - and if he would have tried to run out like I did. But I don't have to ask. I know he wouldn't have. Because he was the great hero, and I'm just a little kid." His fists clench and curl, in the new gloves - always with the new gloves, that's what screwed Addam up too, taking over at Aletta - and he bows his head.

The Aegis. Bested by a little kid. Driven by a little kid - physically and mentally. Or is it the other way around? Was it? You're not so young, Rex. And Addam wasn't so old.

Cole sighs. "Don't sell yourself short, Rex - short though you may be." The least of the myriad differences between them, he has to say it, and it gets a chuckle out of the boy - no, young man. That's the thing about it. In his salvager suit, he'd looked practically as wide-eyed and green-horned as Iona. No bearing on how seriously he deserved to be taken, but it was the impression as cast. Now, in this pneumatic armor, there's a maturity that's been tugged out from within.

Imagine if he had given up. Imagine if he really was the second Addam. "It should have been a question, after all. Because Addam would have walked right out of there, wouldn't have waited for any of us to give counsel, whether verbal or carnal." No, Minoth, master of words, wouldn't have been able to do a thing to change his mind. Hard-headed, under all that softness.

Xander would have, too. He hated hurting people even more than his father did, because he wasn't raised around any of the ruthlessness. He hung onto Minoth's every word, it was true, but Minoth wouldn't have had the heart to take up this paternal responsibility, before or after Addam had gone. Good men, all, but lacking something. Something very, very important.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? And that was where Addam had sent Pyra, after all. To Morytha, not any twisted-up notion about Alrest proper at large. When he sunk the ship, it was with good intentions, and maybe Mythra had wanted to disappear, because she did, because she had had an alternative to turn to, but there was no telling how many new dreams and goals Pyra had had, then, just without the same willful determination to ask for them, to actuate them.

Now, why did those girls want to go to Elysium? To die, in fact. And even if Rex was going to let them on with it, he was at least going to be there with them. You can't really kill yourself unless you're alone, truly alone. Sure, Minoth knew that much. So maybe Rex is hoping that will change their minds, having a caravan of support and, if you wanna be corny and cop-out copacetic, reasons to live. Nothing wrong with that.

Addam's eyes were a paler gold. Xander's, too, though his hair had matched the grayish-brown brownish-gray. If we're being maudlin, probably Rex has Lora's eyes, more like. And she had intentions that were swayed far more inward than she or anyone else would ever like to admit, but she'd be borderline intolerable the way she'd always, always, always offer, moreover insist, to go with you. It'd take a hell of a lot more to tell her to leave off, especially since it was harder to even be that gruff with her in the first place.

Nobody had told Rex to leave. Aside from that ugly scene in Olethro, Pyra and Mythra had never once shrugged off Rex's help - to Cole's knowledge, anyway, and for all he knows he's never really known that much - and all his doubts had sprung from inside. Had been shouted at him by Jin and Malos and every other craven adult, maybe, but he hadn't met half the resistance Addam had.

Mythra, during their time in Torna, had never said that she wished Addam hadn't awoken her. No, she hadn't even felt comfortable enough to say that. Now, five hundred years will loosen a great many inhibitions, but you still need someone around to listen.

Oh, there it is. Just when the Aegis has finally, truly given up on trying to satisfy everyone around her, and instead is looking only inward - she deserves to, after all this time - Rex's resolve has started to crumble. Obviously, he's not completely fallen apart, because he's here with them now, and he's asking the important questions instead of just packing up and assuming their answers before he's even arrived at the fount, but it's troubling, isn't it?

Rex is stood there in his gleaming, pristine armor, and he scuffs the toes of his boots at the ground. God, he's so young. But not one wit of Cole's initial impression has changed.

"Rex, look at me." He looks. His lips and eyes wobble, and his fists shake again, but he looks. "I believe in you. From the moment I first saw you, I believed in you. Honestly, it's more than I can say for Addam. Now, I know comparing you to those who have come before you can sometimes do more harm than it does good, but trust me. You have all the groundwork laid. It's not so far, to the top. Stand on the shoulders of Titans, and I know you can do it."

They hadn't shaken hands, last time. Cole had been too reserved and Rex too timid, for all his courage, to make it such an adult thing. Now, Cole stands, and they swear on that pact of belief, and then Rex surges in and hugs the old man, just for good measure.

Yes, Xander would have done that. I don't think any of us can blame him for thinking so.