"Tell me about him," Malos says out of nowhere, settling himself beside Mythra on the edge of the small cliff she has perched on.
Mythra jolts out of her reverie at his arrival. "I'm sorry?"
"Your friend in Auresco," he elaborates, fixating his gaze on the distant setting sun, its orange glow bathing him in a warm light. "The one I killed. Tell me about him."
She almost snaps at him, asks how the hell do you know about him? before she remembers how she'd told him, back when they were spilling their souls to each other. Restraining the burst of anger and pain that rises each time she thinks of him, Mythra instead asks, "Why?"
Malos doesn't look at her, staring so intently at the sun that it can't be good for his eyes, regardless of his Aegis-ness. "You know all about my friends, and I know about most of yours. This one guy, though, I'm clueless on. I think Jin mentioned him once or twice," he frowns, "but never in detail."
"What makes you think I want to tell you?" Mythra chokes.
"You don't have to," he replies. "I won't force you. But I'd like to know, if you're willing."
Mythra isn't sure she can, doesn't even know where to start, but Malos' desire to be better makes her want to try. Besides: he deserves to be remembered, and if she's the only one that can then she supposes she has to try.
The silence between them stretches out as she searches for the words, until Malos interrupts with a soft sigh and ducks his head. "That's okay," he says. "Do you want me to-"
"No," she interrupts. "No, I want to tell you about him." At the disbelieving look Malos shoots her she insists, "I do. I just…"
"Don't know where to begin?"
Mythra nods, and Malos grimaces knowingly. "Yeah, I get like that whenever Rex starts bugging me about my dead friends. It doesn't get easier."
She lets her head hang, watching the amber light creep its way along the cliff edge. She twists one hand in the other, squeezes, and softly admits, "I've never talked about him."
"Ah." They sit, stewing in silence once again, before he adds, "Well, it can't get any harder than the first time."
"I should talk about him," Mythra murmurs, and then, as if trying to convince herself, "I should. I want to. Why - why does it have to be so hard?"
"Well, I'd hazard that talking to me about him - me, the reason he's dead - can't be making it any easier for you."
"Oh, thanks, I'd almost forgotten about that." Mythra rolls her eyes, hitting Malos lightly on the arm. He grins back at her, but the faintest traces of guilt dance behind his facade on indifference.
She sighs, and the silence returns full force. It hangs between them like a canvas, thick and heavy and impossible to break through, but Mythra thinks, fuck it, and decides to try regardless.
She owes him that much.
"It hurts to remember him," she admits in a quiet voice, not meeting Malos' searching gaze. "Sometimes I go days, weeks, months not thinking about him, then it'll suddenly hit me mid-battle or in the middle of the night or after hours of trekking that he's gone, and has been for five damn centuries now, and it hurts.
"That doesn't get any easier, either," she directs specifically at Malos. "The grief. You'll be mourning Jin and the others forever."
"Good," Malos says, with surprising resolve. "I don't want to stop mourning them."
Mythra smiles bleakly. "That only worsens the guilt you feel when they inevitably slip your mind."
He lets his head drop, scratching at the rough stone they're perched on in what Mythra thinks is an attempt at self-comfort, although it doesn't seem to be helping. "I'm not sure I can ever stop thinking of them."
She hums her understanding - and she does understand; back when Mythra first sealed herself away and Pyra had full control all that filled her dormant mind was thoughts of Torna and Hugo and Brighid and Aegaeon and Milton. She'd spent five hundred years thinking of them.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. They deserved life, but she'd ripped that away, so her remembrance was all she had to give and it wasn't enough.
"They're always there," Malos continues, his voice taking on a slight shakiness that is foreign to Mythra's ears. "When I close my eyes I see them. When I breathe it's like they're coiled in my gut, weighing me down. When I walk it's like they're walking beside me, but they're not. They're dead. They're dead, and I'm alive when I have no right to be."
Mythra has to resist the urge to laugh, or scoff, or cry - she knows that feeling intimately.
"If I could give my life to restore theirs," he adds quietly, solemnly, painfully, "I would do it in a heartbeat. I never thought I could care about anyone that way, let alone four of the fuckers."
"Hold on to those feelings," Mythra says, because she doesn't know how else to respond to such a crushingly fragile admission. "Keep them close. Remember. It's all we can do."
It wouldn't ever be enough.
They sit, the weight of grief hanging thick in the air between them as they each dedicate a moment to the fallen loved ones of themselves and their partner (and that's what they are, Mythra has long since decided: partners, siblings, fellow victims bound by a relentless fate that sucks them back into suffering each time they think they may have escaped).
"What was his name?" Malos asks suddenly, cutting into their meditation.
She hesitates, initially, but swallows her pain long enough to reply: "...Milton."
Malos recoils, spinning to face her for the first time. "Milton?!"
Mythra, too, jerks around. "Wait, you know him?"
Her response is a shocked look, which morphs into laughter. "Damn," Malos bites out through a laugh, "this kid must've really been something if I've got two people refusing to forgive me for his death."
"...two?"
"Mikhail," Malos explains. "Mikhail accepted me eventually, and was willing to work with me, but made it very clear that he would never forgive Milton's death."
Shit, Mikhail. Mythra had forgotten all about his own friendship with Milton. She feels awful about that; Mikhail may not have known him for as long as Mythra had, but even she, in all her useless-at-understanding-people glory, had been able to see how much the two children grew to care for each other in such a short span of time.
It had been hard not to love Milton, though. Where Mythra was useless at interacting with people, Milton just instinctively got them, able to leap his way from new acquaintance to close friend in a matter of weeks. It was how he got Mikhail to open up to him, after all - by seeing past the child's cold exterior to the worn-down boy that lay beneath, scarred by the world's cruelty and jaded by its abuse.
Malos' laughter fades, replaced by a morbid grin. "Hey, I guess I was more successful in pissing you off than I first realised when I fired on Auresco."
Mythra stares blankly at him. "You think that's funny? Something to be proud of?"
"I'm a little proud," Malos admits, grin still etched wide on his face. When her stare becomes a glare, he quickly adds, "Very tiny bit! I mostly feel bad now."
"I loved that kid!" Mythra hisses at him through clenched teeth, and damn it she has a right to be pissed about this. "I loved him so much! I didn't connect well with others back then - I was not a great person, honestly - but Milton? The other deaths hurt, don't get me wrong - Hugo and Brighid and Aegaeon and all the innocents that fell with Torna broke my heart - but Milton tipped me over the edge. Milton is what pushed me to seal myself away!"
Malos recoils, genuine surprise etched on his face. "Him? Not Torna?"
She waves a hand at him. "Torna was a huge part of it, but seeing Milton, lifeless and-" and ugh, she hadn't wanted to cry, but she has to choke back a sob and force out the words: "Milton made it so much more real."
"He really meant that much to you," Malos states, awed.
"Addam said we were like siblings," Mythra grumbles in reply. "I didn't get what he meant at the time, but… yeah. I loved Milton like a brother."
They trail back into their eternal companion of silence, Mythra fighting back tears and Malos fighting for the words to reply.
It is only after an age that he speaks, the dark of the night washing over him in a sombre embrace and shielding his expression from sight. "I meant what I said, you know." At Mythra's confused glance, he elaborates, "When I apologised for killing him. I meant it."
Mythra bites her lip, mulling over her potential responses, before she responds, quietly, "I know." A deep breath. A sigh. "I know."