Challenge no 8: "How can you confess without doing so?"
Kardia once asked Dégel: "What are the most important things to you?"
The cold man only smiled then. With a firm voice, as if he had practiced this since forever, he had answered: "My rationality, my loyalty, and my Cloth."
After all, it was easy to understand, for the polyhistor in him had demanded that it be so. Rationality, because he was one to use his head rather than his heart. It was also a fact that he was one to value virtues, and, for a Saint such as he was, what better virtue could there be besides loyalty to their Goddess? Loyalty, because he would die without so much as a frown should their Goddess wish so. And it should be self-explanatory that for a Gold Saint, his Cloth was his life, for that was what he was, a mere wearer of the Cloth that controlled his so-called destiny. Aquarius Cloth, because he was the Aquarius Saint.
Kardia smiled bitterly. Even though he should have known, he had hoped that his name had been the next one on the list, but since Dégel himself never really said anything about it, well, Kardia was not one to force anyone. They had left it at that.
Then one day, on a random mission that had gone so terribly wrong, yet there was no reason for it to, because even Dégel did not predict what was to cross them next. There should not have been the bunch of spirits there protecting the knife they were supposed to retrieve for the Pope, but there was. And so they fought, on and on and on, but Kardia's favourite needles were of no use, nor was Dégel's cold cosmos, for the material could not have touched the immaterial. And then, Kardia's heart had decided that it had done its work for the day, and thus deserved a break from him. It went round and round and round, and then it went black.
When he recovered, all he could see was Dégel's Cloth in front of him, its barrier warding off unwanted intrusions. Hours later, or perhaps minutes later, which could have been another lifetime, Dégel had returned and collapsed on his lap with enough wounds to last this and the next life.
The next day, when they had been back at Sanctuary, Kardia had said: "You are an imbecile. Why threw away your Cloth to protect me when it could have protected you?"
"It's my Cloth, I can wear it, I can throw it away."
"You are stupid. And you even put me before the mission. It might have been treason, you know."
"I know."
"You admit that you have been foolish then?"
"Because being foolish is being irrational."
And it clicked. Sometimes, you confess by not doing so. They had left it at that.