yes, i hope so

The art, the art, oh boy oh boy the art, and of course the artist <3.

Time felt glued together, nebulous, sticky, even as they all fell apart. Was that the stickiness of the blood? Ether wasn't sticky, especially not that of ice. They were so transient. Veracious ice and wind, gushing rushing gusting on.

I didn't say the rusting. Rust is bloody.

Jin's blade would never rust. It didn't hardly catch the flicks of sinew, now, as it bored in and out. Lora wasn't as expediently accurate as he. Never had been, even as she'd progressed so much from...how old had she been, thirteen?

The first time she held it. The last time. He wished it would rust. He wished it would decay. Die away. Like she had.

Liquid regret, burgund. Oh, like her chosen whips of fire, yes, it burned. It burned with its constance, with its remain. A stain on your sword only you can see. A stain on your Core Crystal everyone for the rest of history will see, will recoil from, will fear.

You are not, were not the first, but you will not be the last. You will be the last Jin. Will you be the last Blade who experienced true happiness with his Driver? Will you be the last true scion of the golden country? Was it truly everything, in Lora's eyes?

Lora's eyes. He didn't forget about Haze, no, he could never. Quite literally, he could never. But in his haste to remember, remember, remember, keep what you've stolen and keep marching on, he dispatched of the threat, just as he'd always done, and when he next looked, Haze was gone. Like a breeze, yes, like a breeze.

Mikhail was never breezy. And if there was a word for Milton...yes, that was it. Smile sunny, breezy, grassy, brassy (bloody), glassy. Glassy-eyed death. You cannot escape it, Jin. No matter how intensely you think you've just done the very thing, you know you cannot.

Glass is very still. Very serene. Milton hadn't looked half that way in his dusty coughing, coiling repose. Of course, it wouldn't have been right for him to be so. The hair fluffed on his head, the ears perking towards no audible sound, he was nothing like a chilled carcass.

Children shouldn't die at all, but...no. There's no right way out of that. And whether Mythra had known it or not...she had to have known. She wasn't stupid. Simpleton. No. She wasn't stupid.

They were all their own brand of genius, and then idiocy shared, pooled between them. Their idiot prince. Led by stupidity, one couldn't help but fail. One couldn't hope to do anything but fail. Get back here, why don't you? Answer for yourself! You, Addam, Master Origo, Lord of Aletta, you with all your titles and tossery. Why couldn't you fix this?

Do you feel sorry, at last? Truly sorry? I'm not sorry for what I said to her. I'm...you saw Malos. I am opposed to the wreaking blank that he sought to engender. Fully and wholly set, my entire being courses then and now against him. My expression may be unknowable, but I would never let him be the one to take it away. Mythra was ready to take what you gave her, and you gave her nothing purchasable.

Stealing, and thieving, and if a heart is a human's Core then what have you done, to follow Malos and set something free? To set a Titan free? Curious appendages hung in that same suspended time at his waist. The Paragon of Torna now kills so swiftly and terrifyingly, just as his mother had done one thousand colossified years ago. Perhaps Malos was right, is right. Perhaps this is the truth of the world.

I'm interrupting you, aren't I, Jin? Or are you interrupting yourself? Because isn't that so funny, your classical pacifist serenity. You cannot have that. As a Blade, it is not yours to claim. You're stupid for wanting it. You're stupid for wanting anything, now, because the deed is done and you're as good as dead. Well, maybe as bad as dead. Worse.

Serenity is impossible now, because your firmament in Lora is gone. She is inside you, with horrifying immediacy. You cannot lean on her anymore. But Hugo had looked serene. He was always so upright without ever leaning. Leant on gentle Aegaeon and braced up brightest Brighid, but for eighteen, maybe twenty years, the emperor does not slouch. The emperor will not ever slouch. Not again.

Yet Addam was the potter, the builder of the base, and Hugo was the tinkerer, the plier of the panache. That's backwards, opposite. Earth and Electric are opposite. Your compassion, nonexistent, towards the only one who couldn't handle the thought of not having it. Lay down your weapon, now. You don't deserve it. You couldn't handle it.

Oh, she could handle it. She could take it, Mythra the flashiest-flightiest Aegis could take and take on anything. But she built shields, she walled you out, and it was not our job to crash our ways and means in. Responsibility creates the fabric of a history woven by every participant in their own kind.

If I could, I would reach out to you now, Addam, perhaps with a clenched, wrenched fist but I would reach out all the same-- But I think maybe you want to be forgotten. For not taking up your responsibility, that comeuppance is fine. If, in fact, being remembered is a blessing, and not a curse.

All these things...things to remember someone by. Facts and fictions together if not alike, and of course we can't forget the playwright, the one who will doubtless find his own way to tell our story. For one single sick second, Jin wanted to find Minoth and gut him whole to make sure he never told it. My memory is mine, do you hear me? I killed her and now it is mine.

You're not a thief, not in the way that Amalthus was to get back at the literal banded bandits who wronged him, and every last stretch of imagination and belief dis-distended to get to their kind, but you...I don't trust you, anymore. Because you didn't even trust you.

Trust is implicit, for Driver and Blade. One in body and soul. How sick that is to think about, now. For Jin, Lora was the be-all and the end-all. Yes, he could not and certainly now cannot pretend otherwise.

The be-all. Every waking moment devoted to her, her protection and her warmth and her life.

The end-all. You should have died with her, Jin. You should have let time keep on coursing. Sometimes, a memory...is enough. Let the leaking leaves fall.

(The world...the world would remember Jin. The world would remember a Jin who didn't know if he wanted to remember Lora.)

"Was it worth it, Jin?" Azurda's rumble was steadied, but the usual immense gravitas he gave to the anti-appositive, the name that should have been just a name but had blossomed and bloomed and spiraled and conspired and wretched and collapsed into something so much more, was five hundred times more painful.

He left the space for hope, perhaps his own. He had, a Titan himself, and Amalthus, the killer of Titans, hadn't. Where was the space, anymore? It didn't find itself pinned airy and light in his chest. Oh, oh, it couldn't. She was there but she was so definitely not there.

"Yes," Jin said. Maybe he lied. "I hope so."

What always thrills me about art like Mel's is that the artists can so perfectly capture the actual exact design of the characters, every familiar curve and stud of armor, while still being beautifully, individually stylized (the art style here in particular is so gorgeous too ough). And so, one wonders...have I done that, in my writing? Yes, I hope so! >:3