The first thing he knows is hatred.

It comes in a flood of anger and pain, crashing over him like a tidal wave of agony, and he nearly collapses under its weight. He forces his head upwards, determined to appear strong, and his gaze locks with the man he knows is his Driver, the man whose hatred is coursing through his body, the man he knows, without a doubt, has caused this.

"So," he chokes out through the dizzying rush, scrabbling to control the situation. "You're my Driver."

"I am indeed," his Driver responds, looking a little shell-shocked. He supposes that comes with awakening an Aegis. "My name is Amalthus."

The hatred burns, the anger rises, the despair thickens, and in that moment he wants nothing more than to unleash it.

"Great," he says, and he honestly couldn't care less. "Where do we start?"

"Do you have a name?" Amalthus eventually asks a few weeks into their acquaintanceship.

He wants to nod, sure that the answer is yes, but when he reaches for it he's met with nothing. "Doesn't seem like it," he spits instead, frustration churning in the pit of his stomach.

Amalthus declines to name him - a fact which doesn't escape his notice - and neither mention it again.

It isn't until much later that he is finally gifted a name: Malos, the Aegis, Destruction Incarnate.

"Seems random," he tells his Driver one day, carefully prodding for details on the name.

His efforts bear fruit. "It essentially translates to 'bad'," Amalthus explains, resolutely looking anywhere but at his Blade. "Not the most innovative, but it's certainly fitting."

Something in him wants to argue; has Amalthus forgotten that it's his anger that has corrupted him, his anger that bleeds through every atrocity he commits, his anger that fuels his own rage and cause the destruction Amalthus so detests.

What blatant hypocrisy.

He bites down the instinctive sharp response and leaves. He really does want to retort - perhaps the last vestiges of good in him, the last remnants of his uncaring father's supposed kindness, wants to pretend otherwise - but when he sits down and thinks, pushing past his own biases and beliefs and seeing only the truth, he realises that Amalthus, for all his sanctimony, is right.

He is suffering, destruction, death.

He is bad.

He is Malos.

He might as well own it.

His name is spoken with the malice of its meaning.

Always, unfailingly, until them.

Jin is first. Even after many long battles and harsh words between them, Jin is the first to look at him and speak the name "Malos" with warmth.

Akhos, Patroka, and even Mikhail, whose entire village he's pretty sure he destroyed, follow suit.

He's surprised at how good it makes him feel.

But then, as quickly as they crashed into his life, they are gone, and the kids are all that remains, with their weak hopes and promises of change.

There is no change. Not for him. Not after all he has done.

He is Malos, and there is no-one left to tell him otherwise.

No-one left that matters.