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It takes its first breath, rending out of flesh, a concept half-realized clawing from the head of its source. It spills across the floor, covered in its creator's blood, which rapidly cools into a vivid, noble shade of blue. Every breath comes ragged and painful as it takes in oxygen, its surroundings coming into vision as it sits up. Its own head pulses with almost-blinding pain, and its chest—
—is empty.
The newly-forged fragment claws at its chest, trying to find the beat missing within its bones, snarling at its creator when it eyes the pulse at his throat. Its creator breathes heavily, too, hues of vibrant magenta spilling from his skin in a trail toward his new creation.
"Finally, we can talk," he says once he catches his breath. It doesn't listen to the actual words, replying only with a low, guttural growl that rattles like something emitted from a vibrating metal box. All of the lurid fuchsia blood tells it that its new prey has a specific beating in his chest. A beating it, unfairly, lacks.
Bodies should have hearts. Its instinct is cold logic: it will die without a heart, and it does not deserve to die while its creator lives.
"You are my Mind, the logical part of me," he continues, apparently ignoring its threat display. How irritating. How can a man with admittedly no logic consider himself above his own Mind?
Now gifted with a name the same haphazard way its creator gifted it with ill-advised life, the Mind rises to its feet, discovering that its posture is rigid. With the way its creator slouches into himself, like he's ashamed or afraid to face the world (how cowardly), the straight-backed pose gives it a small handful of centimeters of apparent height advantage.
The Mind takes its first steps toward its origin, who has not stopped talking. Someone without a Mind should have far fewer words to say, it thinks. It is a logician, a strategist, a cold and cruel machine. It needs a heart. Not his heart. Its heart, the heart that belongs to it and it alone.
He does go very silent when the Mind is within a few paces of him, eyes wide and glazed enough that it catches its first glimpse at itself. It looks like him, almost exactly, but its snarl reveals innumerable bladelike teeth that it knows its creator lacks. Its hands are clawed, too, cruel and curled in fury. Every step closer forces him a step father back, until he's practically let it pin him against the wall.
"I know you're confused," he stammers, trying to sidle away from it. "I know this doesn't make sense—"
"It is not yours," the Mind spits, its first words. Its voice is deeper than his, popping and crackling and vibrating in its chest, somehow synthetic. "It should belong to me."
"What the fuck—?!"
He probably regrets giving it those sharp claws (an intentional choice or an accident? it can wonder about this later) as they plunge into his chest, the unnatural strength of something that does not know its strength should have limits carving right through bone and flesh both. His words turn to intermittent noises of indistinct pain as its fingers splay around frantically fluttering muscle, the bird held in the cage of his body.
Birds should fly free, no matter how fearful their flight.
The organ comes out more cleanly than it would have expected, knowing as it does—albeit theoretically—about the human circulatory system. The further the heart is from its place of origin, the more its own color starts to shine through. The last blue tones of their joint creator's magenta leach out with it, the blood spurting from the wound resolving to a perfectly human red as the organ takes on a tone of unmistakable purple. The Mind only regards this as an in-between state, something between that of itself and its creator.
Even with the same force and passion, the heart refuses to embed in its chest, continuing to pump in its hand, holding everything it lacks. It growls, sinking into a low crouch, trying to squeeze what it was missing into the cavernous hole of its chest and failing at every attempt. The beating only grows more frantic with every try, the movements of a small and frightened creature needing to escape from a predator. And then it twitches and begins to change.
The right and left ventricles arch outward, growing protective layers of scales that extend into soft down feathers, the wings of the bird fully realizing. They flap free of the Mind's hand, sending it backwards in surprise. The heart uses these appendages to stay hovering above the ground as it stretches and reshapes, muscle growing bone beneath and skin atop. The inferior vena cava splits into the semblance of legs, the branches of the pulmonary artery developing fine fringes at either end as hands form as though shaped delicately from clay.
It is not very long before a second replica of the original rests on the floor, disoriented, violet eyes staring through the darkness enclosing the trio. All that was fuchsia has turned to red on their creator, wary eyes included as he recovers his breathing, watching his twin creations with a newly wary cautiousness. The Mind reads agitation in his bearing, a frustration boiling just below the surface, and shifts to protect the fragile new creature borne of his heart.
Even without being in its chest, this Heart still belongs to it.
You cannot harm this without harming me first.
All three nigh-identical semblances soaks in blood of their own particular hues, but the guarding position the Mind has taken over the Heart mingles their blood into a deep indigo. It bares its teeth again, a threat display. One soft hand, with blunted nails, wraps around its own. Fingers slot through fingers, identical yet so different at the same time. The skin-to-skin contact tingles, slightly, a reciprocal buzz. The Mind can feel the pulse running through the Heart like an electrical current, luxuriating in the heartbeat it cannot share.
"M-my Mind and my Heart," he stammers, voice as red and strained as his eyes, as his bearing. "What— what does that leave me?"