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Well. That had been a very full day, Nia thought.
They’d gone to save Mythra and Pyra from Malos and Jin, ended up falling to their doom from the Cliffs of Morytha, woken up in the Land of Morytha at the base of the World Tree, climbed the World Tree from within (which was a complete technological marvel unlike anything they’d expected to see inside what was supposed to be a tree ), fought Jin, fought Amalthus —who turned out to have been a blade eater that stole half of Fan La Norne’s core—made it to Elysium to find it empty and deserted, found the Architect, discovered that the world they know was actually thousands of years older than they’d known and had experienced the apocalypse before the Architect created the cloud sea, blades and titans, went on to kill Malos, and then finally had been transferred to another world (presumably the Architect’s final act) with the remaining titans and the rest of humanity.
Very busy.
The next few days were spent sorting out a lot of affairs. All the titans had washed up on an unknown land, the Praetorium was a lie, and there was a lot to be worked out.
Rex (having killed both Amalthus and Malos) had a lot of business to sort out between Mor Ardain, Tantal, and Uraya. Zeke and Mòrag had offered to handle the brunt of it (they had kind of put and end to the tension between Mor Ardain and Uraya, what with being teleported to an entirely new world and ending the need for land and all) but Rex did still have some debriefing to do with the respective country leaders. Nia and Tora’s presences were essentially mandatory for the same reasons.
And when they could finally catch a break, Zeke pushed that they take it as soon as possible. They’d decided to go to Fonsett Village to get away from all the noise, to see Rex’s family, and to just enjoy the peace and quiet of the small town.
And so here they were, sitting by the fireplace in a small inn, taking the desperately needed opportunity to unwind.
“Alright, goodnight you lot,” Nia said after she’d had enough fun. “Wake me up if Rex finally stops being a blockhead.”
“Hey!” Rex shouted. “Whaddya mean, blockhead?”
Nia only softly chuckled to herself before heading to her room and tucking herself into bed. It was strange being alone for once, but it was nice. She could still hear the animated discussion and laughter from her room, but for the most part the quiet was nice.
Though, not fifteen minutes later, Mythra’s loud laughter pierced the walls.
She didn’t even have the opportunity to get up for herself to check what was going on when the door to her room burst open, Mythra standing in the doorway. Her face was bright red and her cheeks looked like they could barely contain their laughter.
“What.” Roused from her attempted sleep, Nia might have come off a little more aggressive than intended, but she couldn’t find it in her to care too much.
But Mythra took it in stride. “Zeke just told me about what happened in the Spirit Crucible,” she said, fighting her giggles.
“Oh my titan, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Nia said, her own giggles bubbling to the surface. “I told you to wake me up if Rex stopped being a blockhead, not to remind me!!”
“I can hear you!” Rex shouted from the other room. “I still don’t understand why you’re being so mean to me about that! It was ju—”
Rex was silenced by Mythra closing the door. “Ignore him. He’s had a rough night.”
“Tell me about it.”
Nia adjusted herself into a sitting position as Mythra sat next to her. The two looked at each other in silence, but it was barely a moment before they burst into a fit of giggles. Mythra nearly fell backwards onto the bed, and Nia nearly fell forwards off the bed, which only made them laugh harder.
“Ohhh,” Nia sighed as she finally calmed down. “He is such a moron sometimes, I swear.”
“You’re so right,” Mythra replied. “How did you not kill him right then and there?”
“Well, it was a pretty heated battle. I’d just, yknow, revealed my big secret—”
“That you’re…” Mythra gestured aimlessly, “or—”
“A flesh eater, not… that one. Still waiting for the right time,” Nia answered.
“You never have to, you know.” Mythra rested a hand gently on Nia’s shoulder. “I’ll take that secret to the grave if you want me to.”
Nia shook her head. “I want to tell them eventually. I mean, we’ve all been through so much. Rex has saved my life countless times, and so have the rest of them. I think they deserve to know that I…”
“… was a boy?”
Nia nodded. “It feels weird to hear it out loud, but yeah. Um… thank you, by the way,” she said. “For keeping that quiet all this time. Both things.”
“Of course. I’d hate myself if I just decided to drop that all out of some petty nonsense. Hell, I’m sure everyone else would hate me,” Mythra said with a morbid chuckle. “But I’d like to think I’m an okay person after all these years.”
“Definitely too good for Rex. So’s Pyra.”
“Oh, riiiiight. You were in here for that,” Mythra said.
“What did I miss?” Nia’s concern was rising every tick of the clock Mythra paused. Did someone die? Did Pyra finally confess? What happened?!
“Rex is fifteen,” Mythra finally said.
Wait, that’s the big climactic reveal? “I know,” Nia said flatly, waiting for something else.
“You… you know?!” Mythra shouted. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?!”
“I thought you knew!!” Nia shouted back, even more laughter rising in her chest. “It was on the contract docs when we were looking for people on that mission, way back when we found you. I thought he told you.”
“No, he didn’t!” Mythra burst out laughing. “All this time and you knew?!”
“What does this have to do with anyth— OH! Titan, how’d I never realize?”
“YEAH!!”
“Hell, and Pyra—”
“She asked him on a date, finally, and he accepted,” Mythra confirmed, “though for a second I thought he was gonna assume it was a friendship thing.”
“I told you, he’s a blockhead,” Nia jested.
“I know, I know. But then Zeke asks how old he is, and he just says, oh, I’m fifteen. I thought you guys knew.” Mythra puts on her deepest and worst Rex impression, sending Nia into hysterics. “And- and then, Pyra’s shocked. Everyone’s shocked, really. Even Mòrag and Brighid stopped staring longingly into each other’s eyes long enough to be surprised.”
“Oh, are they finally getting married?”
Mythra looked at Nia flatly. “They’re… they’re not?”
Nia raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure you’re joking, but honestly, I can’t tell with you. You didn’t realize Rex was pining until we got to Tantal.”
“Hey! Shut up!” Mythra lightly slugged Nia in the shoulder. “Anyways, before anyone could say anything, I just straight up vetoed their date.”
“Seriously? Wow, you’re mean. That might be the only date Rex ever gets to go on and you just stole it from under him.” Nia gives Mythra a devilish look, and Mythra starts laughing harder.
“What was I supposed to do, let my hundreds-of-years old sister date a child?!” Mythra retaliates. “I mean, that’s messed up honestly.”
“What’s messed up is blocking the poor boy from the only date he’ll ever have,” Nia fires back. She lets a beat pass. “Though, you said Pyra was an alternate personality. Does she share all your memories?”
“Sort of?” Mythra answered. “Only after she was… ‘born’ I guess? And even then, she was sealed away by Addam almost immediately, so we were both asleep that whole time. We were in that dream place—”
“The dream of Elysium?” Nia interjects. “Rex mentioned it.”
“Yeah, that,” Mythra confirms. “But it was a dream , so it didn’t feel like 500 years. More like… two.”
Nia started to giggle, but she couldn’t contain it before it broke into a full-blown cackle. Mythra just stared at her in disbelief as she tried desperately to regain her composure. “What?! What’s so funny?!”
“It- it’s just—” she began to cough, choking on the air as she tried to breathe, before finally regaining control. “It’s just Pyra is probably, really, only about as old as Rex. I dunno, blade ages are weird. And also, we’ve all been through a LOT, so I don’t think it would matter much if there were a few years. They’re as good for each other as bread and butter, Mythra.”
Mythra was silent for a moment. Her eyes defocused as she pondered Nia’s point, and then suddenly widened. “Holy shit, you’re right. We were only really woken up for the war, and then spent five hundred years asleep— shit!”
“There it is,” Nia teased. She patted Mythra on the back in a gesture of mock kindness. “It’s okay, you’ll recover.”
“I mean, it’s weird, right? For her to be into him, I mean. We’re both really old, even if we spent most of that time asleep. And when we were awakened, it couldn't have been the first time.”
Nia rubbed her chin in thought a moment, before giving a shrug. “I dunno. That’s for you or Pyra to decide.”
“Ughhh…” Mythra’s head fell in her hands. Nia rubbed her back—genuine comfort, this time—gently. “Why is this so confusing?”
“Hey, you’ll survive. Besides, once you get over all that, you’ve gotta deal with which one of you gets Rex.” Nia put on a shit-eating grin as Mythra just stared blankly at her.
“Nia.”
“Mhm?” The lilt to Nia’s voice did not match the seriousness to Mythra’s, but she kept it anyway.
“I’m not into him.”
And then the lilt died as Nia’s eyes widened and she simply said, “Oh. I… thought you were.” She rubbed the back of her head. “My bad!”
Mythra just stared at her for a moment, and Nia was worried she was in for a serious rant, when the Aegis just burst out laughing again, doubling over and once again nearly falling off the bed. “You- you should have seen your face! You looked so worried!”
“Well yeah!” Nia said defensively. “I thought you were mad!”
“No! Titan, no!” Mythra answered as she calmed down. “But seriously, do you actually think I’m into him?”
“I mean… I thought you and Pyra shared emotions?”
And only a second after Mythra had regained her composure had she lost it again (though only chuckling lightly this time). “Wow, I can’t believe you thought I was into him this whole time!”
“Mythra!! I was into him!! Don’t be mean!! He’s very… be-into-able!! Even though he's 15 and I'm way older, but the Spirit Crucible had been intense and I forgot because he acts so much older and—" Nia realized she was rambling, so she cut herself off and screamed, "Shut up!!” and began to lightly attack Mythra with her pillow, sending Mythra across the room to grab another pillow from the closet and pitting them both in an all out pillow war. Feathers flew everywhere as they both swung back and forth, battering the other with harmless fluff and reckless abandon.
And eventually, they both fell to the floor, chests heaving as the intense match came to an end. The only sound in the room was at first their breathing, before Mythra began to laugh her lungs out. Nia quickly followed suit, keeling over from her sat-up position and falling into Mythra’s shoulder.
“Wow, how was I ever into him? He’s such a dumbass,” Nia breathed. “A nice, sweet, honest and so so caring dumbass… okay, maybe that’s why I was into him. I mean, he’s why I came out about being a blade. Before that, the only person who knew was you.”
Mythra had gone silent. Nia’s ears perked up slightly as something caught their attention, something low, a racing thrum, something like—
Oh. That was… Mythra’s heart.
Did blades have hearts? Like, physical hearts. It could be considered that their core crystals were their hearts, but did they have the actual organ like humans did? Whether the question had been answered or not in the numerous studies done on blades—both ethical and unethical—Nia just had the question answered for herself because Mythra’s heart was racing.
“H-hey, Mythra, are you—” Nia sat up and turned to look directly at Mythra, but she was caught off-guard to see a red hue over her friend’s cheeks. Mythra had been a pale blade, but this blush was dark, even for her.
She looked pretty.
Nia hadn’t ever really thought about it before. Not at length, anyway. There’d been times when she had noted, consciously or not, how beautiful Mythra was; her skin was pristine, her hair was luscious and soft, her eyes were like honey. The sheen of her core crystal as she unleashed her fury in battle, either directly or through Rex, always managed to catch her eye. Even the times they’d both walked away, blistered and bruised and battered by whatever foe they decided to take on, Mythra always managed to remain beautiful. Hot-headed, determined, but also caring, gentle, and beautiful.
… okay, so… maybe Nia doesn’t just like Rex.
That’s a revelation.
(It made sense, thinking about it. Nia trusted Mythra with her secret almost immediately. Poppi was also there, but Nia was pretty sure she wasn’t even paying attention, so the only person who knew for a really long time was Mythra. And after that, Mythra would continually check in on Nia, see how she was doing, how her core was, the works. She was kind about it, kept it hush, and took her on “missions” to give Nia the chance to be a blade and keep her ether flowing. She’d tried to take Nia out for more “girly” activities as well, but they were both so not girly that they gave up after the first few tries.
But it was clear, every time, how much Mythra cared. How much she wanted to make sure Nia was doing okay. She never asked questions about how any of it happened, never wanted to know more than Nia was willing to tell, and Nia over time let her story come forth. She trusted Mythra more and more, and was trusted in turn. They spent sleepless nights on the inn roofs, just talking about the people they’d known, loved, and outlived. In a world that neither of them felt at home in, a world that battered and scarred them both, they were there for each other to pick up the pieces in the aftermath.
She didn’t know when, but Nia realized that she’d fallen for Mythra a long time ago.)
“Um,” Mythra forced out. “Sorry. Just… don’t worry about it.” She turned away from Nia—she’d been staring, she hadn’t realized—and shoved her face into a thoroughly beaten and battered pillow.
Nia gently rested a hand on her shoulder. Feelings or not, she still cared about Mythra, and as a healer, she had a bit of a tendency to put other peoples’ needs before her own. “Hey, are you okay?”
Mythra didn’t respond. She flinched ever so slightly at Nia’s touch, but that was the only response she offered. Nia moved around to face Mythra’s front, gently holding her hands. Her heart was racing—similarly to Mythra’s, though quite possibly for a different reason—but she pushed her feelings down and tried to focus. Her face was most likely flushed to Rhadamanthus and back, but she couldn’t think about that right now.
her hands are so soft…
Not right now.
“Hey, just try to breathe, okay? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“...m fmn,” Mythra mumbled into the pillow.
“Mythra, if you want to talk, I’ll listen,” Nia says. She hears Mythra scoff lightly. “Look, I love pillows as much as the next gal, but I don’t want you to hide in ‘em unless you need to. What’s on your mind?”
A moment passed that became two, three. Nia gently grabbed the pillow, slowly pulling it away, but Mythra gripped it tighter.
A beat. The blonde lifted her head ever so slightly. “I… I think I have… feelings for you. The… the same kind Pyra has for Rex.” But before Nia could get a word in, Mythra pulled away from the pillow completely and the words fell past her lips like sand in an hourglass. “B-but I don’t know if it’s okay! I mean, like, the world did kind of just end! We had to kill Malos, AND Amalthus, and I watched Jin die—”
“Mythra.”
“And I mean, I’ve hurt so many people, Nia, what if I hurt you?”
“ Mythra,” Nia gently placed a hand on Mythra’s shoulder, but Mythra simply brushed it off instinctively.
“And- and what if it’s just how busy things are? What if it’s just everything that’s happened, and when things settle down, I’ll go back to how I felt before? I’ve never had to choose for myself! And when I did—”
Mythra was cut off by the sudden press of lips to her own. Nia’s palms cupped her cheeks gently, but it’s only for a second before Nia pulls back away.
The Aegis’s eyes were still wide as Nia gave her distance. “Um.”
And then Nia’s eyes widened as well as the realization hit her. Her hands moved on their own, covering her face as she spoke, “Shit! Mythra, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t even thinking! I just thought I needed to stop you from spiraling, but you weren’t listening to me, and when I tried to shake you out of it you just brushed me off, and I’m so sorry I should have asked—”
Warmth pervaded over her lips in an instant and she went silent. Her mind shorted, leaving instinct to take over for the brief connection, and she leaned in. She pushed back against Mythra, not away, letting her body and muscle memory move on its own. The feeling—the soft press of lips, the anxious movement of hands, the subtle race of her heart, the hitch of her breath—it all felt familiar to her, something from a life long past. But it was also different from the memory; her hands weren’t the same as they were the first time, her hair was longer, her form had changed. The Nia before, whoever that may have been, and the Nia now, were not the same.
And so, she felt quietly in the recesses of her mind, this feeling of peace, of tranquility, of affection, was truly hers. It wasn’t the ghost of a face she’d never know, the insistent memory of a self she’d left behind. It was hers, only hers. Not the Nia before’s. It didn’t belong to that person, whoever he may have been, but to the person she was now.
Her heart steadied again as she separated from Mythra. Her eyes fluttered open to see Mythra’s doing the same. And then Mythra smirked. “Sorry, I guess it was my turn to chill you out.”
The feeling of peace and tranquility vacated her mind as she was left completely flustered. Her hands instinctively moved to cover her face once more, overwhelmed not by anxiety but by shyness and embarrassment.
“Mythraaaaa…” she whined into her palms. She peeked through her fingers to see Mythra, her cheeks tinted crimson like Pyra’s hair once more. Mythra’s eyes wouldn’t meet Nia’s.
“Wow, that was… that was really forward of me, huh,” Mythra said sheepishly. “…so what now?”
Nia pondered for a moment before answering. “I guess… I don’t know? I mean, nobody can predict the future, but I’m willing to try being… whatever it is. If you want.”
Mythra bit her thumb. “Yeah. I think that would be okay.”
She smiled, laughed, and all Nia could think was fuck she’s pretty.
“So, uh…” Mythra pressed the tips of her fingers together anxiously, “can… can I keep kissing you? Because I really like kissing you.”
Nia felt the tips of her ears go hot, and she smiled. She moved closer to Mythra, practically sitting on her lap, and she whispered, “I would like that.”