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Meta about Kirby

Meta is older than he looks, and more perceptive than his young appearance would imply. He’s always known that Sir Kirby, Sir Astra Knight, though never wearing a metal mask, still hid behind a concealment of sorts. Sir Kirby’s smile was practiced, never disappearing. For sure, there were some times when it varied with Sir Kirby’s own emotions, but it never left.

Kirby, young Kirby, smiles like the sun. Meta has never seen such a bright smile in his life— not on any planet he has been sent to, and definitely not on GSA headquarters. There is something pure and intense about it, in a way that Sir Astra Knight Kirby cannot match. Meta wonders if once upon a time, Sir Kirby smiled like this, but knows his answer already.

Meta Knight about Astra Knight and Meta

It’s eerie to see his own face so open, and his own emotions laid bare so easily. Meta Knight sees the glints of little colors decorating his younger self’s eyes and thinks, this is what could have been. Meta Knight did not even know that his eyes changed color until long after he had retreated to Popstar and taken leave from the GSA, when he woke up from a nightmare and found his eyes stained glowing blue and red, so far from his usual calm yellow.

Meta Knight remembers his first centuries being constant training. He remembers growing wings and being sent to the battlefield, he remembers loss after loss, he remembers shame and guilt and sorrow. He remembers the smell of lightning and the intense vertigo and desire to vomit as he stared down at the sword in his hand.

Meta Knight has had many friends, but never a mentor— he was always too prodigious to be taught much. Now he knows that knowledge and training were not what he needed from a teacher.

Kirby, Astra Knight, has broad shoulders and a kind guiding hand. Sir Astra Knight is so much like the Kirby he knows and yet so different, so powerful, so assured and protective. Meta Knight takes one look at Sir Astra Knight’s unmasked blue eyes and knows that Sir Astra Knight has suffered, perhaps not like he himself has, but still. There is a solidarity between them, as mentors; an unspoken promise and an insurmountable gratitude to each other.

“Thank you for saving him,” Meta Knight does not say. “Thank you for letting him grow and smile and experience the joys of the galaxy off of the battlefield.”

Astra Knight about Meta Knight and Kirby

Astra has become adept at reading Meta’s emotions through his eyes. He had to, because Meta so rarely emoted facially, so rarely smiled or frowned. When he sees the older Meta Knight with the mask, something in him breaks at the sight— Meta should never feel the need to keep a mask on perpetually, because Astra has promised himself that as long as he lives and breathes, Meta will not have to fight.

The Meta Knight he meets is quiet and reserved, and that’s nothing new, but Kirby sees in him, instinctually feels in him, the suffering of abrupt loss. Where Kirby has lost too much to time, Meta Knight has lost too much to senseless violence. But the same heart of gold that Astra saw in Meta remains buried somewhere in Meta Knight, and Astra means this. He sees it surfacing in the way Meta Knight’s eyes narrow into something affectionate at Kirby’s childish self.

This is someone that will stay with Kirby, Astra believes.