infix notation
in my analyses, whether casual or serious/formal, i usually maintain that selfishness is an important component of Lora's character - of the entire TTGC cast, as contrasted with the main game cast, but Lora in particular, because she's the gravity well at the centre of it all. if i were my friend Fay i'd probably say it's not just subtext or thematic trimmings but text that laces into the metanarrative commentary: we know Lora's going to die, because all we know her as is a narratively functional piece of dead with a few glints of personality, but we find out she's awesome, so we don't want her to die, but we know she has to, but we still don't want her to. do we exactly want Jin to do what he does? that depends where on the spectrum you fall, from normie to fanon to "jinmalos fans i don't respect" (sorry, yes, it had to be said) but ANYWAY. selfish Lora. she is. i wouldn't say it's until XC3 that we really get into the meat of group selfishness but . well. that's a given. anyway so it's not like i can have Minoth shake her by the shoulders, for a few reasons, but i can use Noah. which is also what my friend Fay would say. thank you
Something in Lora had spoken to Noah from the moment their two parties, though lopsided in number, rounded on each other. He'd made points to speak in reference to her at all their camp stops, and to watch her reactions at every new revelation, though Ouroboros had determined amongst themselves to keep relatively mum until they knew where and when in the old world they'd landed.
Their fighting with elemental weapons, beyond the sharing and the apparent resistance to class changes, fascinated Noah as well. The virtue system (he'd found a shopkeeper to ask about it, belts and defunct power frame shed so as not to seem suspicious) was very pleasant symbolism: justice, truth, bravery, and compassion, all tied and woven to ether that shimmered and burned in invigorating cauterization of each hit and heal.
Which would he be, if his Blade were linked to an actual Blade - a person, one half of all people (or, not quite, but in some sense) in Alrest? Justice called to him, but the associated brewing darkness just as quickly repelled him away. Would he be thrumming ice? Steely wind? A combination of the two? He carried and embodied Truthsinger, after all...
But Lora's Blazing Braid crackled, popped, and sparked with every whip-turn on her armored heels. Maybe it was just the flickering crimson that beckoned to him, or maybe it was the person wielding it.
Whatever the case, he admired Lora's bravery. But hearing her lament the intractable problem, the unsolvable equation, of being literally and datanomically forgotten made him see a different sort of red.
It was her bravery that he thought might model the intensely human discipline they'd need to leave Aionios behind; to patch into Origin and thrust the impetus back into the sky, to swing again from sun to moon and bring a new day.
And here Lora was, saying that if she had the choice, Jin could keep his memories of her forever.
"But you don't have that choice! You live in this world!"
"I-I don't-"
"You know him, Lora. If there were even a split second of time for him to realize a chance to do something that would fulfill your wishes, that would make you happy, even in death, that moment wouldn't be half over before he'd done it."
Lora's face took on an aspect of recalcitrance, and Noah found himself cued to reorient his accusations. He'd said that she lived in this world, but obviously, people like Jin, people like her, would exist anywhere. That was how people were, sadly - and beautifully, too. It was more about...
"The Blade system - from what I understand it. You know he's going to forget. You know that that's how the world works. But you can't leave him to deal with all that on his own. You can't expect people to bear that weight in a world that constantly pushes them down! It's impossible!"
"Are you saying we should change the world?"
"Of course I am! And I know there are problems right now, I know Malos is threatening to change the world for you, into a scrap of ash and rust, because everyone can see that it's flawed. But there is stopping and digging your heels in, and there is moving forward. Since you can't go on with Jin forever...you have to accept that he'll have to let go. All of you. Unless you can change it all, right here, right now. While you still walk alongside him."
"Noah, I don't think you understand."
"Explain it to me, then."
"Jin and I...I came from nothing. Nowhere. I don't have a name, or a colony, or even a group of friends. These people I'm travelling with...they're wonderful, but the emperor of Mor Ardain? The golden prince of Torna? That's just happenstance. They're not truly mine. I stole Haze."
She took a deep breath, rolling that last sentence around in her mouth and almost making to reexamine it, but stopping shy before she lost the thread of their current target.
"Jin and I found each other. We are all each other has in this world, all that will truly last forever. And I'm not telling Jin to do anything but know that. I know he'll make the right choice."
"You don't," Noah said, sadly.
"Well, la-di-da," Lora returned, disdainful and nearing derisive. The set of her crossed arms shifted from self-securing and defensive to somewhat sassy (but still defensive). "You think you know everything, don't you?"
"I do know enough. Because it was me who made the wrong one."
"You? But you're- how old are you?"
He almost replied with a swift "ninth term" or even "eight terms" closer to the mark, but after all, the conventional question was "what term are you?" in colony admonishment. Recalling the norms of the City and rightly betting that they were what held here, in a land where the armor was Agnian but the traditions were all rich and storied, nothing like the dredge of Aionios "proper", Noah answered, "Eighteen. The Noah standing before you is just a young adult, you're right. But the place we came from..."
The analogy couldn't have been easier.
"If Jin told you that one of his past lives was an assassin, cutting down scores of military troops without a second thought, would you blame him?"
Lora swallowed. "N-no, I suppose not. His general disposition would have been about the same" -if a little colder, she realized, before her and probably before Ornelia too- "but Blades can be put in some awful situations. I imagine it would drive them to do all sorts of awful things, especially if they didn't have a choice, depending on their Drivers."
"But you could understand the common thread between the Jin you know and the Jin of that other time," Noah pressed.
"I could." Lora sounded truly weary. It was, unfortunately, a familiar cadence, though much more apologetic than the other.
"In Aionios, soldiers are like Blades, whether they have Blade traits or not. If they fall in battle, eventually they just...start anew. Always fighting. Always completely ignorant of what's gone on before, ahead, and around them."
"So one of your past incarnations was a battlefield terror? I can see why that might weigh heavy on a teenager."
Well...no. N had felled the original City, and his dispatch was swift and sure whenever he fought now, but Noah wouldn't call it quite the same.
"We also only live to be twenty."
The requisite shock-hush took its place.
"And if we get there, we never come back."
"Completely ignorant, you said?" Lora echoed softly. "That's less than Jin gets - less than Haze gets, I should say, since Jin's lucky enough to have a journal."
What did they have in Aionios? Reputations, for blood shed or poured. Not one of them was elevated above the others, except by prowess in killing. Was it better or worse than status furnished upon you, right from the cradle, from the crystal, from the core?
"Do you see what I'm saying, then, Lora?"
"Not quite. You never finished your example."
"Oh." They laughed, uncertain but somehow grounded. "Right. Well...this other me had a partner too. Every time. He loved her so much. They even had a baby together."
Noah stopped to eye Lora. She shook her head. "Jin's basically my dad. And also...I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way, for Blades. Although, since you mentioned Blade traits, I guess it must? But I'm not going to find out." Now she stopped, to correct herself. "We're not going to find out."
That much awkward sub-stumble made Noah laugh again: "Don't worry, I won't ask you anything more invasive. We only just found out about the whole process ourselves, what, a month ago?"
(He said it casually, like he didn't know the exact fortnight-approximate count of days.)
Lora hummed. "I suppose that's not too surprising. I've learned a lot of things in the last month myself that have sort of upended my view of what life is meant to be like." Not just lessons about dining etiquette and military movements, but mores between acquaintances and friends, and favors, and generally a more generous view to things - not surprising, or perhaps full-blown flabbergasting, when you consort with kings. "Since I've been on the run with Jin since I was ten, and before that...well, it wasn't much of a life."
How did fighting for your life in an abusive house (not home, she'd decided to term it) compare to fighting for your life in an eternal conflict with no assailable point? They didn't really have to compare, but amidst Noah's analogy, allegory, whatever it was (maybe she'd ask Minoth, if she ever felt up to it), the itch was there.
"Suppose I'll write you, when I get to be twenty-seven," Noah joked, once again pretending not to be serious. It'd be even nicer to send her an Iris message, maybe have an audio or video call, but, well, that wasn't why they were trying to reconstruct Origin. A spatial intersection was quite enough, thank you very much, without adding in the complication of the temporal axis.
"Right, right!" Her eyes, so tired, peaked up to close completely, but just for a moment. They settled open again into weariness. "...anyway, this 'other self' of yours?"
"He decided he wanted out of the cycle. The force keeping Aionios together, keeping this endless war going, sort of convinced him, and he pulled Mi- M out with him."
There wasn't really any use hiding it, was there? But Noah kept talking, choosing not to acknowledge Lora's fresh calculating looks.
"Even though that's not what she wanted. She was...happy, in a sense. Just to be with him. It wasn't like she was so attached to the supposed 'natural order' of things that kept them living and dying in the cycle, over and over again. But..."
"It must have been devastating," Lora murmured. "Living...basically, forever. With no end in sight?"
"No end," Noah agreed. "That's exactly the size of it. Even though N was from the Kevesi side, becoming Moebius, and presiding over the endless now, the transition was pretty much like what becoming a Flesh Eater would be for Jin - or Minoth, since you already know more or less what that's like."
"Well, not really," Lora said. "He makes cracks about it all the time, but Addam seems to keep him sort of...protected. Not like it's a dirty thing, necessarily, but...uncomfortable, for sure. We just try to support him the best we can."
"He's your family, right?" And she'd called Jin "basically her dad". Even if Flesh Eaters weren't normatively evil, they had in Minoth a star candidate for the part of "Grandpa" Triton. Minus the forgetfulness - so far the cowboy, bounds more voluble and avuncular than Gray, was a steel trap.
Lora nodded. "I...suppose he is."
"What would you think, if Jin had to live forever, without his family, without you, but always remembering?"
Lora didn't even have to stop to think. "I wouldn't want that. So lonely."
"You can't even imagine."
"I just want...I want to help people. I want to leave my mark as having made this world better, while I was here. That's how I want people to remember me."
"But Jin most of all, right?"
"Are you trying to goad me?"
Noah shook his head, glad to feel the ponytail hanging up above his neck, his whole outlook poised and uplifted. "Just trying to understand. I think I'd feel the same as you, if I was in your position. If we can't be with the people we love forever, we at least want them to always be able to feel our love. But just going on, and on, and on...it's the worst way for love to die."
"You're not going to stay here and help me sort out a solution to the Blade system, are you?"
Noah smiled. "Unfortunately not. We've got our own world to save - which depends on-- Sparks."
"What? Did you realize something?"
(It'd been days since the last time a member of the Tornan party jerked their head up to search for the source of a creeping blaze.)
"No. Not really. Well, sort of. It's just... You're probably in our past, since your Dannagh Desert feels like it's somehow more like the 'original' one, if that makes sense?"
It was probably just the annihilation events, and subsequent (consequent...antecedent?!) lack thereof, that made him think so. Did he have any metric at all for determining where they were, past connected to future connected to past? Maybe Mio remembered, some ancillary detail Nia had left slip when she thought she shouldn't have.
He shook his head for the last time. "It doesn't matter - really, it doesn't. A cautionary tale is a cautionary tale no matter when you hear it, so long as that's before the problem you're trying to prevent. And whatever chance led us here...I'm glad I got to meet you, Lora."
Her lips parted, the formation of a thought, before pursing.
"Will you remember me, there, do you think?"
A kind, sad smile. A promise, one to one, and operations performed in proper order, in careful, stolid steps. "I certainly hope so."
(i am of course not trying to force endorsement or even agreement but i do hope you enjoy :) also yayyy my word count goal