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The trek up the World Tree with Jin has been eerily silent. It makes Malos’ stomach twist, but he does his best to ignore it. He’s mostly successful until Jin’s footsteps slow and halt. His stomach lurches and panic enters his body for a sliver of a second before regaining his cool.
“What’s up, Jin?”
Jin is silent for a moment before turning from Malos. “So this is where it ends…”
“Huh? You say something?” Malos lets his voice show only a fraction of the ocean of concern hiding inside him.
Jin shakes his head almost imperceptibly before saying, “No,” which makes Malos’ heart race.
And then the muscle freezes when Jin says: “I’ll stay here. You go fulfill our goal.”
Humans sometimes have this idea that core crystals are representations of the heart. Malos had an opinion on that philosophy, but this moment served as proof to his belief. It was absolute bullshit. The core crystal is just a power source. If core crystals were representations of the heart, why wasn’t his cracked?
It’s one of Jin’s talents, apparently.
‘Our goal?’ Malos wants to scream. ‘Who’s ‘our’? This is your goal, this is Amalthus’ goal, this is what the person I love wants, this is what the person I hate wants. I’m not with you now because we share the same goal.’
“What’re you saying? We promised we’d go together.” Malos tries to keep his voice level and monotone. “Didn’t we?”
“We did once…”
And Malos sees it. He didn’t need to be the Aegis to know what Jin was thinking of at that moment. He’s seeing Lora’s carcass encased in ice, the last moment she touched his face, when he tore her chest open to rip out her heart and to place it in his own. But Jin is also seeing Rex, that reckless, brave driver who could’ve been Lora’s reincarnation. Jin hasn’t had hope in hundreds of years, but Rex has given him some.
Malos sees his own images. Jin on the muddy ground below him, a brown cloak hood up and his hair brushed over his forehead to disguise his red core crystal. The first time in five hundred years that Malos got to say his name, and the first time he said, “I’m the same as you…”
Malos had thought that moment had given Jin hope. Now he thinks he was wrong.
“Are you sure?” Malos asks, despite knowing the answer.
“I am.”
Malos feels like he knows Jin better than he knows himself sometimes. He knows that Jin’s hoping to die here. And he knows he has two different choices.
He could accept Jin’s answer.
He walks up to Jin and wraps him in a hug. Malos keeps his distance, and nods. This is a mission, he has a duty to fulfill.
And Malos does well. He keeps it together until that motley crew walks up to him. He didn’t intend to talk this much, but once he starts talking, the words pour out.
“Honestly, who even gives a damn? They can become whatever they want. But that man… He’d lost everything. He no longer wanted anything. He didn’t even want to live anymore. And despite that, his life was the one thing he hadn’t lost. Because he couldn’t!”
And Malos’ voice cracks under the weight of his grief and loneliness. Knowing that everyone he loved and trusted is gone: Mikail, Patroka, Akhos, Jin. There is nothing left for him. And it’s their fault. It's her fault.
Malos channels all his anger to the group in front of him. Her one selfish request to not be forgotten, to rewrite the law of the universe, crushed Jin. She knew exactly what she asked of Jin, and he still did it, because he loved her.
“Words can be a curse. That curse was what kept him tied down here.”
The thought of you forgetting me… It’s like a heart being split in two.
He laughs, because he can’t cry. “A wretched tale, isn’t it? This whole world is a wretched place!”
His vocal cords tighten and tear and he keeps talking because he can’t stop, and an ocean of repressed emotions crashes through him and it turns into fuel. They start fighting and Malos’ feels alive and open and raw.
The next thing he knows, Rex is wondering what this world would’ve been like if he had been the one to awaken Malos.
He laughs, because he can’t cry. “Kids say the damnedest things… There was only one driver for me.”
Those kids are picturing Amalthus, but Amalthus was never actually his driver. Malos had given up on becoming Amalthus’ blade a long time ago.
But if Jin had ever wanted to resonate with another blade…
Malos is brought back to the present. Jin is about to walk away. And he should let him. But he could instead…
Malos roughly shoves their bodies together and kisses Jin. He tries to say so many things that he hasn’t said in hundreds of years. He lets himself feel the emotions he was trying to ignore for hundreds of years. He begs and pleads and cries out for something only Jin can give him. His kiss says:
I chose to be your second in command because I love you, I want you to be my driver, I’m not designed to live my life alone and neither are you. I want to protect you. I want to fight for you. I want to encourage and amplify your existing strength. Watching you hurt yourself physically, watching you refuse to bond with another blade (with me) hurts me more than any wound I’ve ever experienced. Having the woman who ruined your life present always in that room makes me nauseous, but I don’t do anything about it, because you put her here. You’re everything I want. You make me feel things no one else does. You are the only one I want to satisfy, and the only one who I’m drawn to. You light a fire in me, and I never touch you because I know you’ll only be thinking about her.
Malos feels his cheeks getting damp, and his eyes go wide when he realizes that those are his tears. He says those thoughts out loud and then he gets on his knees (which isn’t hard when it's for Jin, he’s imagined it for literally centuries).
His fantasy- his prediction of what happens if he makes that choice stops there. He has no idea how Jin would respond. Jin has never resonated with another blade for a reason. Malos knows he’s deep in it: Jin doesn’t want to be happy, he doesn’t want anything that isn’t with Lora.
Logically, Jin would lower his eyes away from Malos, and say some bullshit about forgetting and remembering and divine punishments before walking away. Jin dies sacrificing himself for Rex, the only driver to give him hope, and destroying Amalthus.
…But maybe… just maybe… Jin’s eyes would light up, he would smile, a little bittersweet and crooked, but he would hug Malos back. Their bodies would touch and Malos would breathe in home. Jin would drop the nodachi that once belonged to him as Lora’s blade, the one they shared. Malos would allow Jin, his new driver, to summon his Monado. Of course, it wouldn’t look like his, Jin’s version of his weapon would have more finesse and elegance. But regardless, they would finally resonate. They would wait for Rex to come back from the Architect, and after they received their answer, Jin would feel like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. They would bury Lora. They would kiss and see the next dawn and spend their free time dismantling the Praetorium to free blades. Maybe one day, they wouldn’t fight. Jin would return to that state of peace and bliss he once existed in. They would find some place deep under the cloud sea and lay in each other's arms for the next millennia, in and out of sleep until time set the earth ablaze. But before then, in the next moments and for years, Jin’s eyes would sparkle, he would truly smile and laugh, and that would make Malos’ five hundred years of suffering worth it.
…Even though Malos doesn’t know it yet, his real name is Logos. He is divine judgment, cosmic communication, universal logic and rationality. That cannot change, that is his nature, that is his destiny.
…His decision is made.
He hugs Jin close, but not too close. He turns his back, eyes narrowing, mentally regressing into a feral animal. He cannot be reasoned with, will not be reasoned with. Jin asked one thing of him, and he doesn’t give a fuck what the consequences are. Malos will complete the mission. Not because he loves Jin with every shard of his core, but because that’s everything he’s been working for since he was woken up by a cruel man who neglected and rejected him.
Malos would never be enough for Jin. He would never be able to match Lora. This is how it's supposed to be, he tells himself.
He is a wretched being, far from saving.
He will not be saved.
Because Jin couldn’t.