open (your) heart (for) surgery
The inspiration for this short look at an offscreen moment came from this piece by the fantastic Enni.
"Did you remember something?"
Lora asked it so sweetly, so unassumingly, so...so naturally. Because she didn't care about the distinctions between Drivers and Blades, so of course she wouldn't think to stop herself before implying that Jin even could remember actions that his former self had taken. And it wasn't unfeeling, necessarily, but the nonsense, only not quite, that he ended up coming back with shuffled around the milieu such that it might just have been as good as.
"I am who I am. I do not change."
Cut a mighty contradiction against what he had found in that journal, didn't it? Or...well. Let's examine.
If I were a praying man, I'd pray that this journal finds its way to you. Trusting that it will, I will use these last words to pass down...a means of carving the bond between myself and my partner into this flesh. This is how it is done...
Whether Ornelia had been a romantic partner or simply a combatant one, one might assume that the old Jin had found it prudent to make the term universal, and rather neutral in some ways (rather not, in others). He knew, apparently, that he would not have the courage nor perhaps even the desire to make this consecration upon Ornelia's version of himself, because if he had done it...well, he would have done it. The journal would have taken no future journeys.
No future journeys. Tch. A nice idea, for Blades who are not Jin. A nice idea, when your Driver is not, is nowhere near, as perfect as Lora.
Good going, past Jin. Nice job playing with fire, behind the cape of all your furious ice.
And it isn't as if future Jin - no, present Jin, right? It isn't as if he isn't grateful for the knowledge, exactly. He inhales and exhales truth with every shallowest breath. He wants to know. He needs to know. All Blades do, for their own righteous reasons, but the pinpoint of knowing, of seeing, pierces directly through to the mounting place behind his Core.
So he knew. So he knows. So he swears he'll never need to, even after Minoth, seemingly the harbinger of all things if you stop and think long enough, shows up and speaks the immortal phrase.
Flesh Eaters. But you do not consume. But the flesh does not pass in through your mouth.
As if that's the only way to eat.
No, Ornelia's Jin had not been lying. It is a carving, a rending, an ablation by way of knife's own edge.
Slick, slick, slick. Blood stains, even the most stainless of steely blades. Blood is everywhere, it is nowhere, it is gone and somehow it pervades, the sickly copper smell so much like the meaty aroma Lora always loves-loved...
Yes, the knife. Not a chef's knife, nor even a pocketknife or switchblade. The knife of breastbone arcing sternum, and suddenly Jin couldn't breathe.
Couldn't. Can't. Now. Then. Here. There. His head spins, and another half-decade of memories fall out the back like vile vomit.
Someone clean it up. Someone clean up the mess you made. Cut, cut, cut. The knife, the knife, the knife. In you go, out you come, commit to it and murder her along with you in your own cold blood.
Jin's nodachi was not long enough for that. So, he instructed, use your hand. Use your fingertips, your nails ripe with muddied, bloodied soil, and plunge into the place where you do not have a heart, a place for one to go, to fit, to grow.
What is in there? Interconnected wires, bland fleshless material always circulating ether ether ether through every last square inch?
The Architect had not inserted hearts as another ventricle through or about which to conduct blood. He had left them aside entirely. And so, the symbolism proves itself out.
Lora screams, half foolish and all anguish, and Jin, for the slightest moment, forgets which one he is. When was that - the cannon fire? the fistful's ire? The fall to cobbled stone atop the Soaring Rostrum?
He's lost time. No, he's lost track of time. He is, he was, he wasn't and he will never be.
Because there is no time. There was no time. There, before him, Lora is bleeding out.
She always was. Humans were made to die, and Blades were not made to live but rather to survive.
Start praying, Jin. Start believing in God. He'll never, ever, ever have the tiniest shred of mercy left spared to cast on your soul if you don't do it now.
Do it now. Do it, do it, do it. Do the dirty deed.
!Do it, Jin
Have I started yet? Did I...why have I stopped?
You can't stop. That's why you did this. Why you're doing this. That's...that's--
Inexhaustible, Jin. You cannot stop. Do you see why? It's just here, you're already...
...forgetting...
Concentrate. Deep breath in to steady. Deep breath out to relax. Just like you taught Lora. Just like you taught Haze.
For a moment, he sees Haze's ghost as he scrabbles for the ribbon ties on Lora's smock. The same clothes, the same face, the same love, but here and now they were separated.
Haze would never know. There was no chance. She would never, never, NEVER know.
Never. Not ever. That's the definition. That's the way it works. Don't you know?
?Don't you know
And it wasn't as if Jin wanted her to. It wasn't as if he could ever hold his head up straight after all...this, that he had done.
What had he done?
Underneath the smock, the simple compression garment, (shot) full of holes because it was the only one she'd ever owned, the only one she'd ever had enough money and self-possession to buy, strains against the heaving of Lora's breaths.
Why worry? She'll be done soon enough. Jin, apparently, will make sure of that.
Why worry about anything?
Why?
?Why
?Won't you tell me why
I don't know.
!I don't know
Oh, Lora...
...Oh, Jin
Of a sudden, Jin feels not just dizzy and nauseous but numb, unfeeling, uncaring, bitter, laced with malignant malice.
Or, no. That's not right. Because those are feelings, and Jin doesn't have those.
Jin is a Blade. Jin is a blade. Jin is the knife that tears away the dark gray close-knit fabric and slices beneath Lora's left-right breast for his prize lain underneath.
If you like, it's erogenous. It very certainly is not erotic.
Jin doesn't care. Jin didn't care, which is why he told his future self how to do this pathetic thing.
Atrocity. Abomination. Profanement, desecration and consecration in the anti-sacred grove.
He'd hardly even heard Lora's scream rip out anew through the trees. Hardly even felt the bond rip itself out of his own forehead - there, you see, not his chest.
Between Blade and Driver, a bond is drawn. It is what makes them partners.
It lingers, stagnant, shimmering gold in the air.
Won't catch it? Or don't you care to, before it floats away?
So Jin has another cut to make. So Jin is not done dying yet.
Into his own chest, buttons unscrewed and plates tossed asunder, Jin strays a little more symmetrical and a little more asymmetrical all at once. In the same way as he cannot bear in the least to look, he cannot tear his eyes away. Very possibly, the nerves that would control such a movement had already died - been cut, been disconnected.
The sound of the gash is animal, screeching, unholy and something seemingly from elsewhere than simply just this world.
Only the Paragon would scream so loud. Only the Paragon would feel himself so free.
Only so free. You're only ever so free.
?Won't you always stay with me, Jin
?Won't you always protect me
Underneath, whatever it was resembling skin but not quite feeling like it - and who had ever touched him? no one, in fact - Jin finds muscle after muscle, bone after bone, tendon and cartilage and all the material that makes up humanity, yes, but no heart, nothing dividing up the anatomy inside.
With that same cruel hand, he scoops a gruesome handful of it out. It disappears as it hits the air; of course, no one can ever know if that's due to anything more rigorous than the fact that he's already been dying for...
For most of an hour already, it feels like. For a lifetime, maybe. For something uncountable. Satisfying, isn't it?
Satisfying. The cells are greedy, down to every last elementary particle, practically foaming at their protozoic vacuoles because they feel that the Driver is out there, and the Blade is in here, and of course, haven't you heard?
!See, I knew you could do it
They are one, they are one, they are one.
The chanting doesn't stop when Jin feeds to his flesh the heart that has come of Lora's. Limp on the ground, blood pools from every orifice on her body, and from some other locations as well, probably.
?Always
They are one. Jin freezes up.
They are one. He is warm, from his very core.
They are one. In the final split second before his chest consumes itself shut, Jin sees the unrighteous chasm rendered shapeful, bones bending into a more hearty semblance of ribs.
The first beat comes; it roars in Jin's ears, and if he hadn't already been knelt on the ground, he would have fallen over.
The second sounds like his name, again in his ears but now also in his brain, in the place right behind his Core.
The third beats the pattern into senseless regularity, as the heart learns that Jin is frantic, and that its rate should climb up, up, up.
Down, down, down. Bury her. Bury yourself. Bury all your friends. Bury what it had meant to be alive. We are drawing new seeds and germination over top, and we are so surely not dancing anymore.
A pretty price to pay, for your memories. Some house you built. Some future you've connected yourself in to.
Gort is gone, he thought - had thought. At least...at least we, I, you, she will live. It may not be fair, when all of Torna is gone, but at least...
At least nothing. At least he is dirty, for the moment, before the transformation takes him and cleanses all but his innermost fibre.
(Silver-white hair ever-pristine, he will always still be paragon.)
Take it, take it, take it. You wanted it, didn't you? So why won't you accept it?
Of course he can't. Of course he never will be able to.
After all that time, somehow it was him, and only him, who finally put Lora, the absolute most effervescent of humanity's free-flitting swallows, into an undying cage.
Poetry. Indeed, enough sophistry.
Did you remember something?
Do you even want to, anymore?
Me being the resident Minoth writer, by quantity if not by quality, I should have a very many opinions on how the Flesh Eater process happens/happened, and in Minoth's case I don't think there was a full heart involved, but here...we can definitely choose to believe that the scar was not just for artistic effect. Also, to note: I didn't want to go trawling the archive for all the other pieces that discuss this scene in greater, if not gorier, detail, but I'm sure their depictions were swimming in my subconscious as I wrote.