The silence is stifling in the ceaseless abyss they hang suspended in, smothering them in its suffocating embrace. Pneuma has tried to find a way out, sifting through black and grey and murky brown for an exit, pressing and tapping and hammering on her lifeless core crystal hoping desperately for even the tiniest of reactions, but all she finds is more emptiness, and all the abuse earns is no change in the crystal's dull grey shade.
"I don't know why you're bothering," her companion had drawled. "We're stuck here now. For all eternity."
The most Pneuma had graced him with was a sharp glare before returning to her task with equal vigour.
Malos, for his part, had barely moved since she'd awoken beside him with the taste of fire on her tongue, the smell of ash on her skin and the vivid sensation of being torn apart from within searing her memories. He'd twisted, at some point since she last looked his way, to lie with his arms behind his head as if reclining on a bed. She'd say he was facing upwards, if she had the faintest idea which way was up.
She shifts her own body to face him. "Are you going to help at all, or do you plan on floating there forever?"
He somehow manages a shrug while maintaining his relaxed pose. "It's not like I have anyone to get back to."
Pneuma considers turning her back to him, continuing to fight her way to an escape, but the futility of her attempts seems to suddenly slap her in the face. Instead she slumps into a sitting position with a huff - although it is rather hard to sit while hovering in mid-air. "Right, let's have a heart-to-heart."
That startles a laugh out of Malos. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Heart-to-heart. Right here, right now. Let's make up for all the sibling bonding we probably should have done at some point these past five hundred years."
"You are joking."
Pneuma crosses her arms and bores a hole in the side of his head with the intensity of her stare. "Nope. Come on, ask me something you've always wanted to ask. Go for it."
He lets his head tilt slightly askew, locking eyes with here. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. What else are we gonna do while we wait?" Pneuma says.
"Sit in beautiful, blissful silence, with only the gentle sound of our faint breaths to lull us to sleep?"
"No. Ask me something."
Malos sighs deeply, as if regretting all the life choices that led to him being trapped in the endless chasm of death with his archenemy. After a quiet moment that seems to stretch, lasting far longer than it has any right to, he mutters, "I guess you never answered my question."
Pneuma can feel her face light up with glee. "Aww, you're co-operating!"
"It's not like there's anything better to do in here!" Malos snaps. "Anyway, now it's your turn. Answer the damn question."
She thinks he might be blushing a little. Pneuma is surprised at how good it feels to one-up Malos in such a stupid, simple way. Perhaps her earlier label of 'siblings' wasn't too far off the mark - she'd read something about siblings having that kind of combative relationship (and not her and Malos' typical definition of 'combative') in one of the many books she'd devoured while travelling with Rex. "You've asked me a lot of questions over the years; you'll have to be more specific."
"How was it, being alive?"
Pneuma jolts at the words, because oh, she didn't just imagine that, okay.
How was life? It was a loaded question, one that required more than a simple it was good, or pretty sucky, one Pneuma wasn't entirely sure she could fully respond to. She had lived two lives: Addam and Rex, Mythra and Pyra, Aegis and anonymous person. How did she even begin to condense all of her thoughts and feelings?
She supposes she has a long time to get it all out. They're not going anywhere, after all.
She takes a deep breath, sorting through her thoughts to dig out the most satisfying, honest response she can manage, and begins to speak.
"My first life - as just Mythra, bonded to Addam, in Torna with my first group of friends - it was hard. It felt like all anyone ever said to me was an insult of some kind: Mythra, you're such a simpleton, you're so unrefined, Mythra, you're a terrible person, Mythra." She chokes on a bitter laugh. "I can't deny the truth of their words - I was rather crude back then. But Addam-" she smiles- "Addam was good to me. Honest about my shortcomings, but he helped me start to grow past them.
"It truly was difficult, though, being born into a world ruled by war, where my only purpose in life was to stop it. A life with such heavy responsibility is not an easy one - thanks for that, by the way, you really made things easier for me." She shoots Malos a glare, and he responds with a shrug and a wry grin, as if apologising placatingly.
Shaking her head with a long-suffering sigh, she returns to her story. "My inexperience, the pressure, my poor attitude - it all added up. I did some terrible things in my grief and rage. You-" she chokes on the words, vision blurring at the edges- "you killed someone very dear to me, when you fired on Auresco. I won't ever forgive you for that, but I can't entirely blame you for my following loss of control. My reaction was extreme, unnecessary. I should have- should have kept my cool, taken you out in a way that minimised casualties, like Addam tried to teach me. You killed someone dear to me, and in response I killed someone dear to him.
"Did you know that Pyra was made to be everything Mythra wasn't?" Pneuma asks suddenly.
"I could see that," Malos says. "Although I couldn't say I knew it was intentionally done."
Nodding, Pneuma confirms, "It was. Every insult I received during that first life - rude, narrow-minded, terrible at cooking, I could go on a while, it was a long list - I remembered them as I stared out at the destruction I had caused, and I created a persona to counter them all.
"I left that life with a lot of regrets," she says, with an air of finality. "A lot of guilt, and pain."
Malos crosses his arms, leaning his weight back as if to appraise her. "What about the second?"
Pneuma cannot remember Malos ever listening this well before. He always had to say his piece, but now he is listening carefully, attention solely on her (not that there's anything else to focus on in this abyss they're trapped in). It's strange. "The second was also hard, fighting so desperately just so that I could die. Along the way, though, I found a reason to live. Many reasons, in fact." She cannot restrain a laugh as she adds, "So much so that now I've got my wish, I really don't want it anymore."
"Cruel irony," Malos notes.
"Life sucks," Pneuma concurs, "but that makes the good bits so worth it. My second life was hard, but I formed true bonds in that time, bonds I never want to let go of. I found Rex in that life.
"To answer your question, being alive was equal parts awful and incredible, agonising and rewarding, and I want to keep living so damn much it hurts."
Malos has remained mostly silent as Pneuma spoke, listening respectfully as she spilled her mind while offering only the occasional interjection. Once she finishes he unfurls himself from his reclined position, spinning to face her. "Very poetic."
"It wasn't supposed to be," Pneuma replies, folding one hand over the other. "But there's your answer."
They watch each other, picking up the slightest motions and shifts in position. Pneuma has never seen Malos so at ease - he was always coiled like a stray, malnourished cat, ready to fight back at all times, never relaxing no matter how calm he pretended to be. Seeing him now, talking so openly with him… it's enlightening, and surreal.
"Jin told me something once," Pneuma says abruptly into the silence, "the night before I destroyed Torna."
The admission of guilt still hurts, the words a brutal reminder of the horrors she'd wrought.
Malos hums noncommittally. "Oh?"
Pneuma nods. "He said my true affinity lay in the future." After a moment's pause, she adds, "He was right."
Her companion in the abyss doesn't reply, so she continues, "I loved Addam dearly, but he wasn't my true Driver. Rex is. I think-" she hesitates, rolling a thumb over the back of her knuckles- "I think the same is true for you."
That grabs Malos' interest, and he lifts his head with curiosity dancing in his eyes. "Really, now? How'd you figure that one?"
"Amalthus was a dick," Pneuma states, and Malos barks a shocked laugh at her bluntness. "Addam and Rex were very much not. At first you were stuck with Amalthus; back in Torna you had no-one but yourself."
"Are you saying I had no friends?" Malos asks incredulously.
"Am I wrong?" Pneuma counters.
Malos splays his hands. "I guess not. Proceed."
She smiles - a genuine smile in reaction to Malos, she must be going mad - and says, "Your true affinity, your equivalent of my Rex, is Jin, and the rest of Torna are to you what the rest of my friends are to me."
Malos frowns. "Jin wasn't my Driver."
"Doesn't matter," Pneuma dismisses. "It's the same principle. He humanised you, dragged you out of the crippling depression and self-hatred you'd thrust yourself into, gave you a reason to want to live."
For a moment Malos says nothing, tension thickening between them and spreading as if the butter on the blade of a knife. Finally, he says, "And Rex did that for you."
He doesn't debate the accuracy of her words. Pneuma understands - he's chosen not to bother arguing when they both know she already sees the truth.
Pneuma nods. "We really are similar, aren't we?"
His hand curls over his cracked, colourless core crystal - an action Pneuma has performed herself countless times in the past, one she recognises intimately. "Too similar," he agrees, a resentful smile warping his features.
The hand clenches into a fist, trembling visibly. "I cared for them," he says, surprising Pneuma into silence. "Mikhail, Akhos, Patroka." A pause. "Jin. I didn't like to admit it, but I truly cared."
"I think they cared for you, too," Pneuma says softly, "if it helps."
"It doesn't," Malos laughs harshly. "It really doesn't. They're all dead now. You- you have friends you want to return to, a life you want to live. My first life - the freewheeling, chaotic, destructive force, feared throughout Alrest for my power and rage, feared and hated even by my own Driver - it was fun. My second, with Jin and the others, plotting to take down that same man and ruin the world that had ruined us - that life was painful, and hard, and damn did it hurt at times, but, despite all of that…"
His eyes rise to meet hers, and Pneuma can see the centuries of torment that are expressed within. "I loved that life. I loved Mikhail and Akhos and Patroka. I loved Jin. They made that life worthwhile.
"I also loved fucking with Amalthus," he adds after a second, a grin spreading on his face. "Can't deny how fun that was."
"I can't blame you," Pneuma says with another genuine smile. "Like I said, he was a dick."
His temporarily-jovial mood turns sombre once more. "But they're gone now. They'll be forgotten soon, lost to time. They're gone, and I have nothing. And you..."
"And I have everything," Pneuma finishes for him.
"Everything I want," Malos agrees grimly.
They sit in silence, facing each other with the weight of five hundred years of bad memories and disagreement and uncertainty warping the air between them. Pneuma watches Malos, seeing him in a new light as he rubs two fingers over the gaping crack in his core crystal (over the damage she helped to inflict) and, all of a sudden, she wants more than anything to put things right between them.
"For what it's worth," Pneuma says after an age, acting on that impulse, "I'm sorry. For everything. For fighting so hard to take away the only things keeping you going. For never seeing how much pain you were in. For ever trusting Amalthus. You deserved a better Driver."
Malos grimaces. "We both deserved better." After a moment, he continues, "I'm- I'm sorry too. For our fights, for my destruction, for your friend in Auresco. Hell, for Torna. I'm sorry."
Silence stretches out once more, reverberating in the emptiness of the void they're floating in, before Pneuma jumps out of her cross-legged pose and reaches out a hand. "New start?"
"We're dead," Malos points out, voice bland with disbelief.
"Better late than never?" Pneuma waves the hand in front of his face.
Grumbling, he takes it. "Fine, whatever. You're insufferable, you know that?"
Pneuma tilts her head and grins down at him. "I try."
Malos opens his mouth to retort, but the words die before they can be formed when, out of nowhere, Pneuma's core crystal flares a bright, brilliant green.
"Oh," she says eloquently. "Oh!"
Malos swallows, then tries again. "Would you look at that," he drawls. "Congrats, sis. Looks like you're going back to your friends."
She jerks her gaze back up from the crystal to Malos, and his own decidedly-not-purple crystal. "But, you-"
"Don't worry about me," he says, dismissing her distress with a careless wave of his hand. "If you can come back from death, I'd wager I will too eventually, as much as I'd rather not."
Pneuma tries to protest, but he cuts her off again. "Look, Pneuma, go. Enjoy your life. And-" he drops his gaze briefly- "thanks. For the company, and the talk. It- damn, I can't believe I'm saying this, but - it helped."
The green light is constantly expanding, and Pneuma can barely see Malos through its glow. "Thank you, too," she returns, blinking through the blinding light. "This helped me as well."
"Tell the brats I said hi," Malos says through a soft laugh.
Pneuma lets her eyes fall closed, and Pyra and Mythra wake up.