if you have bonds, nobody will forget you

[rhodochrosite]

i've been thinking about how unbearably sad it is that ai out of all the ignis ended up being the last one surviving because he truly is the one least suited to carrying the burden of losing his kin / being alone / remembering everything about cyberse world and its legacy. like if i had to rank the ignis by how well i think they'd deal with being the last i would say:

1. aqua (emotionally mature and well-adjusted, would grieve and then gracefully shoulder the weight of survival alone)
2. flame (indomitable soul dream! his will is unbreakable, he is always looking forward and not backward, trauma is something he can process and bravely overcome)

3. windy (allegedly easygoing pre-lightning reprogramming so i imagine he would deal okay)

4. earth (used to being a loner, but the loss of aqua in particular would really hit him hard)

5. lightning (actively trying to kill off everyone else, but i think once everyone was gone and he came down from his power trip he'd realise actually it REALLY SUCKS to be the only one left)

.
.
.
[5000 pages later]
6. ai (deals with it so badly he orchestrates a plan for the mass destruction of humanity just so he can get yusaku to kill him)

since creation, ai has always been a slacker. as the dark ignis his unique trait is instinct, and back in cyberse world he was pretty much ruled by his instincts - he did whatever he wanted, he lived in the moment, he shirked his responsibilities, he was the first ignis to develop a true personality apart from the logical bounds of artificial intelligence. and most importantly he has never been alone. first he had the other ignis and the cyberse monsters they created for their world, then he had yusaku, but he never stopped trying to get back to his home. i don't think ai ever really grasped the breadth of what it means to be something that is close to immortal, because all the ignis have the same functional immortality and why would he ever have to turn his mind to something as unthinkable as the complete extinction of the ignis? the cyberse world days should have gone on forever, except that they didn't.

ai is a being of the present. he doesn't naturally think about the future, and the grief of carrying the past destroys him. i think he's a really sad example of the everpresent memory=love theme underlying vrains because it is so against ai's nature to look backwards, but memory is all he has left of the other ignis so he has no choice but to take up the responsibilities he spent his whole life avoiding. and he is... REALLY freaked out about the prospect of doing that forever. the moment when he realises that he can't save the other ignis and he's about to lose them for real:

AI: But if I can't save you, there's no point--

FLAME: Deal with it!

AI: What do you mean, deal with it?! Deal with it forever?

FLAME: Ai, we have close to eternal life. That's why we've forgotten that those who have life will lose it someday. That moment just happens to be now.

and the conversation with yusaku after yusaku rejects ai's offer to fuse into a single permanent being who will never have to be alone again:

YUSAKU: Ai, living has no solutions. When we're in pain, we search for a solution to feel better. A concise, absolute solution. But if there's a solution, it's that there are no solutions. There are no absolutes in this world. Even if we think there is, it'll only make us feel better for a moment.

AI: If nothing is absolute, then what's left?

YUSAKU: Bonds. Between people, between things. That's all there is. They also change with time. A huge trigger can cause a huge change. Bonds may be severed, but new bonds can also be formed. So living is a series of bonds. That's what life is!

AI: I have to do that forever?

YUSAKU: Yeah.

AI: That's a lot of work. And you can't do that unless you're strong.

are really telling. both times ai protests having to live on with his grief without an end. living is painful and difficult and so much effort!! ai wants the easy way out, but there is no easy way out. all you can do is just get through this one day and then tomorrow you do it all over again. and you keep going forward. yusaku's shounen speech about bonds is one of my favourite vrains quotes because he also used to be alone; he knows what it's like to be consumed by the past and unable to even conceive of the future. but then yusaku met ai, and he met ryoken and takeru and aoi and everyone else. it's impossible to live in isolation because living is about bonds with others. ai doesn't want to be alone but he doesn't want to reach out and risk the pain of future losses now that he too knows how it feels to lose everything. and the last thing he has left is yusaku so he decides he'll erase himself before he has to lose yusaku, too. and the whole time he's experiencing all this crushing grief he's acting like his usual careless playful cheerful self... absolutely godawful coping mechanism (also the whole like genocidal and suicidal intentions part). i guess it's just so so sad to me that ai wanted so badly for humans and AIs to coexist together, he wanted both yusaku's companionship and the ignis' companionship, but in the end he got none of it.

this particular tragedy of ai's is reflected in miniature in baby AI roboppi, whose rapid development of sentience gifted to him by ai ended up overloading and killing him. ryoken says that roboppi's heart couldn't keep up with his mind: he just wasn't able to process the tumult of emotions necessitated by Being Alive and spun off the rails. as an aside this also adds another dimension to ai's grief--not even the companion ai created was able to stay with him and in fact ai's good intentions led directly to his death. but i think that ai's heart also couldn't keep up with his mind. ai is much older than roboppi ofc, but he never developed enough emotional maturity to match his free will and humanity, and circumstances out of his control forcing him to level up in it so quickly ended up destroying him too T___T

anyway... gonna close this with a poem lol. testimony: 1968 - rita dove

Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken?
No more princes for the poor. Loss whittling you thin.
Grief is the constant now, hope the last word spoken.

In a dance of two elegies, which circles the drain? A token
year with its daisies and carbines is where we begin.
Who comforts you now? That the wheel has broken

is Mechanics 101; to keep dreaming when the joke’s on
you? Well, crazier legends have been written.
Grief is the constant now; hope, the last word spoken

on a motel balcony, shouted in a hotel kitchen. No kin
can make this journey for you. The route’s locked in.
Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken

the bodies of its makers? Beyond the smoke and
ashes, what you hear rising is nothing but the wind.
Who comforts you? Now that the wheel has broken,

grief is the constant. Hope: the last word spoken.