Archive of Our Own

The Hex had been told and prepped for what was about to happen, but even then, it was an entirely different thing to witness with their own eyes. A problem in that strange place called Duviri called the Drifter back; the problem arose with Duviri's own loop that necessitate her heading back. But the loop in 1999 was fragile, still under watch by the Indifference. Any vulnerability would be ripe for exploitation, even as its lidless eye gazed upon Duviri. To that end, the Drifter had proposed her other half would act as an anchor point for the loop — to keep it maintained until she got back.

One moment the Drifter was standing among friends, and then the next saw a child standing among them: their friend writ small. The Operator blinked languidly, head already moving to examine each of the Hex, but Amir beat her to the punch. In a electric flash and a blur of movement had Amir zip right next to the Operator.

"Man oh man, you are so small!" Zap! Now he was on the right side. "Like I know you're like a different version of her but —" Zap! Back to the left. "But it's so much easier to think of you as the past version of the Drifter."

There was an intake of breath, and a calm exhale. "But I'm not. I'm here to help while she fixes whatever went wrong with Duviri."

Quincy, rolling a bullet under and over his knuckles in a concise and perfect loop, whistled low. "You're a proper soldier, yeah? Got enough of that with soldier boy here." (At that, Arthur scowled.) "But you're operating on Drifter's credit here and those checks clear. But you fuck up, blame's not gonna fall on her. It's gonna be you."

The Operator nodded, gray eyes resuming their wandering over the Hex. For whatever reason, they settled on Arthur. Walking around the cafeteria table, she stood at his side.

"Let us get started."

"Just like that?" he asked, faintly bemused.

"I am proficient in warfare. Whatever warframe you have seen the Drifter use, I can use." A pause. "If a bit better."

Lettie snorted. "Modest, aren't you?"

Arthur took stock of the Operator before relinquishing a tight nod. The two of them walked off to Arthur's office, presumably to get a more hands-on lay of the land. Quincy shook his head with an amused grin before stalking off. Amir hopped up and down in place before vanishing in a crack of lightning. Lettie huffed out, "I hate treating kids. That little niña better not get hurt." and then left.

And then there was only two, Aoi and Eleanor.

With a mental whisper, Eleanor said to Aoi, "Lettie just can't stand anymore dead kids, because inevitably you have to quickly move on if you're to save the next person."

"Kinda obvious," Aoi replied, a little testy.

Eleanor licked her lips and then spoke aloud with a slight rasp, "I'm sorry. Seeing that kid has really thrown me off. There's so much... war inside her. It's almost overwhelming... but at the heart of it... I talked to your girlfriend about this. A child is a child, no matter what, but it's just so hard to see that child."

Aoi almost didn't want to ask, but she wanted to know the Drifter's life — even if it was a reflection of what could have been. Though curiosity played a big part of it, Aoi saw a bit of Arthur in the Operator. She had loved Arthur and still trusted him with her life. He, likewise, would kill for her and even give up his life for her. And despite all of this, they would not be able to live their lives together.

She met Eleanor's eyes, already knowing that her internal deliberation had been heard. Aoi just wanted to make sure it was clear that she wanted to know for the right reasons.

"There are moments in that kid's life where she acts so much like an adult that it hurts, because she tries so hard to bury everything else."

"And what can I do to help? I don't want the Drifter to come back to find that I made everything worse between the two of them."

"Honestly, Aoi, the best thing you can do for them is to be yourself."

Aoi didn't know what to expect from the Operator while on mission. It really shouldn't have mattered because she wrapped herself up in those exotic and alien frames much like the Drifter. It very much helped in not seeing the Operator as a kid in a warzone, but the Hex had the unspoken expectation that it would very much be business as usual.

They were so wrong that they might as well have been uneducated cavemen groping around in the dark.

The Drifter fought like any one of them — if a little unrefined — with movements and reactions that had been hammered in through repetition. The only real difference between the Drifter and the Hex was that she fought with a deeper reservoir of power and stamina.

The Operator was a warrior god in the middle of a bloodied epic, packing as much death as they could in every verse. It wasn't mere statistics of the dead that accumulated mission after mission, but facts of her acts that seemed utterly unreal. It belonged more in the hushed and fearful whispers around a campfire. If the Operator was a song, then what they saw was only part of a larger musical. They couldn't see how deep it went, but they knew it was enough to drown in.

When the Operator sped through the streets, it was on foot even though their feet didn't touch the ground for more than a few seconds at a time. They shot through the air: a human bullet among bullets. It wasn't like she was completely untouchable, but the bullets she deflected with her blade were politely redirected as natural as rain falling from the sky.

To call her merciless would be implying a level of ruthlessness and malice that simply wasn't there. A Scaldra soldier, in the face of such beautiful brutality, lost their wits. He dropped his gun and raised his hands into the air, and the Operator's blade stopped inches from his neck. No words were exchanged. The Operator merely glanced back at Eleanor, who nodded her confirmation that it was genuine. Not like the stench of piss-soaked pants already said as such. The Operator then politely shoved him out of the way of gunfire and went back to killing without missing a step.

To call her a machine was an insult not just to the Operator, but to the rest of the Hex. Not only the Operator was efficient, but elegant as well. If it weren't for the death of living beings, Aoi would almost call it beautiful. War was always messy, and yet the people in command always tried to pretty it up. These "Orokin" came pretty damn close.

To call this Tenno graceful would be validating to that disgusting notion that war —and all the ceaseless fighting— was an end rather than the means.

Aoi raced behind the Operator on their Atomicycles, as the Hex sped back to the mall. She spared a glanced at Arthur, who almost mirrored the pace and stance the Operator had. It was in that moment Aoi recognized a similarity between the two, but with one crucial difference: the Operator was an Arthur at peace with herself. Arthur was someone who would keep going till they collapsed and then some, struggling with demons all the way. If the Operator had any demons, they lurked deep below the perfect stillness of a lake's surface. Even if it broke through the surface tension, the ripples would quickly still.

The Drifter was a far cry from all of that, but she could see echoes of the Operator within her, and vice versa. Aoi suddenly felt a dread pulsate in the fleshy mass that was probably her heart. If she let her imagination run rampant, she could almost hear the squish-squish of a bio-mechanical heart. The Drifter was and wasn't the Operator, but that could change.

She didn't want to see another person she loved become someone she could only trust and not love. Her relationship with Arthur was a quiet tragedy of two people that liked each other but couldn't live together. Would she one day wake up to find the Drifter solely dedicated to the grind of survival — of the mission — Aoi would think of herself as poison. Everything she knew about Duviri suggested otherwise, but fear was an irrational creature.

The Hex parked their bikes in the garage, and started to head back inside. The Operator was the first one out and was the first one back in. Aoi lingered by the bikes, indecision tingling at her fingertips. Arthur stopped by the doorway, looking back at Aoi. History took up the thirty feet between them. Once it seemed insurmountable, distance gaining distance. Today, Arthur took a few steps toward her. What had once been a mountain was now a chain-link fence.

The Drifter wasn't just good for her alone.

"Aoi," Arthur called out. He hesitated but powered through. "You should talk to someone. I know something is bothering you."

He didn't offer himself, partly of self-loathing and partly out of the lack of ability. The heartache was just mild heartburn; the sadness a drizzle rather than a downpour.

"I can manage." At least till the Drifter gets back.

"Aoi, don't be like me."

"There's plenty good about you."

A ghost of a smile. "You know what I mean."

Aoi's excuse of wanting to work on the Atomicycles died on her lips. She took the first step, and then the next. One after another until Aoi could slug Arthur lightly on the shoulder as she passed. He chuckled and followed behind her.

"Gonna make some homemade pizza for dinner. Try to bring the kid along."

Aoi snorted. If Arthur was a bit more like this during their relationship, they might have lasted, but it was nice to know one of her best friends was doing better. Their bond couldn't be what it was once was, but it was being reforged anew. The sound of the arcade blasted in electronic greeting as she entered the mall. Rounding the corner into the opening of the arcade, she found Amir focused on one game which was a little odd; the guy was fast enough to play several games at once. It was rare to see him focused on a single one for any period of time.

"Man, can you believe that the kid already set the high score on my favorite game?"

"Really?" Aoi's eyebrows rose in disbelief.

Aoi slammed his hands against the side of the machine as the game over screen flashed. Then the high scores were listed:

OPERATOR

AMIR

DRIFTER

"It has to be sibling rivalry," he stage-whispered to her, "And she just couldn't stop at beating her sister, she had to beat me too."

"Aren't they the same person?"

"Exactly! If I ever get cloned or get a Drifter me, we'd bro-code it."

"I like the way you think."

Amir smiled, tapping the side of his glasses. "Now if you'll excuse me, I got a high score to beat."

Aoi found herself wandering toward Quincy, who was busy setting up more posters of Entrati. With a wave of her hand, she had metal clips snap onto the posters, and then attached those to the stands. Quincy rolled his shoulders and rested his back against the wall. "And what do I owe ya for that?"

"Oh please Quincy, that's a freebie."

He rolled his eyes. "Looking for the kid, yeah? Bruv's up in the Drifter's room." Quincy flicked up his cap. "We square now."

Aoi grinned, knowing he would have told her regardless, and replied, "Thanks Quincy. We're square."

He hoped over the railing and picked up his gun. The sound of gunfire followed her to the second floor on her way to the backroom. Lettie was shaking her head at the bags of pet food piled up near the escalator. Lettie swore under her breath before saying, "The kid has no sense of moderation. She just dumped all this pet food on me. My rats can't possibly eat all of this!"

"What a problem to have."

"Over-eating can be harder to treat than under-eating sometimes," she muttered darkly. A sigh. "But yes. What a problem to have: people that care enough to go overboard."

The backroom carried Void-touched air. Misty blue-ish mist emanated from the pod set into the wall, golden hive-like panels topping off the aesthetic. She was more than familiar with it. After all it was basically her home now too.

The first thing she saw was a young girl carrying a large box full of plushies. The moment they locked eyes the girl jumped and dropped the box. The startled moment quickly gave way to an embarrassed flush on her dark face. She crossed her arms and looked away, hiding her eyes but showing off her grayish scars. "What do you want?"

All the growing discrepancies with how the Operator conducted herself on mission and everything else had fallen apart with the sight of a kid being a kid. She had been so much of an adult that it nearly smothered everything else, and the moments when she wasn't were private, intimate... and she just walked in on that. Any sort of amusement on Aoi's part would be immensely inappropriate.

Her relationship with the Drifter didn't transfer anything to the Operator.

"Can we talk?" Aoi asked.

The Operator huffed, pulling up her scarf to cover the bottom half of her face. “Fine.”

They settled on the couch upstairs; Aoi was on one end and the Operator on the other.

"You know the Drifter and I are —"

"I know."

"Oh, that's good." Aoi tapped her palms against her knees. "That's good."

"Don't feel like you have to include me in anything."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because the Hex are the Drifter's family. I don't want to intrude on that."

"It's not like you're gonna steal us away from the Drifter."

"Still. She should have people of her own."

"And do you have that?"

"I am a Tenno among Tenno."

That should have been enough, yet it faltered in the face of the surety that the Operator displayed beforehand. It was a shot in the dark, but Aoi always saw more than most gave her credit for.

"But... it doesn't seem like it's enough." Aoi chewed the inside of her cheek before she took the plunge. "Does... this have anything have to do with that deal you made?"

The Operator hissed between her teeth, before a placid face covered it up.

"I won't push if you don't want me to." Aoi settled her hands together in her lap. The metal inlay ran from the back of her hands and sprouted from her fingertips into dull claws. Blocky bracers crested from her forearms and it was... agonizing growing them. She held onto her sense of touch despite the skin giving so much away to sturdy metal.

Intimate touches were something that couldn't be doled out so carelessly anymore. Rather than using them to bridge the gap, the gap had to be bridged first. She couldn't offer any sort of human affection here. Still the silence was staggering in its length, and demanded to be broken.

"Mara," she tried, using the Drifter's real name.

"Don't call me that." The Operator took a shuddering breath. "I haven't been Mara for a long time."

At first it seemed like the wrong thing to have said, but it was actually more like pulling out a splinter: unpleasant but ultimately necessary. The Operator fidgeted with her own hands, human and vulnerable.

"I made the deal. I'm responsible for all the other Tenno."

"And you feel responsible for them."

A tight nod. "Yeah but like I said, I haven't been Mara for a long time. Can you believe that I forgot about the deal I made? I forgot a lot of things, and in that absence, I changed. All the wars and fighting and parent murder... I hold some measure of responsibility. I can't be the Mara that was on the Zariman."

"It still seems like you're taking all the blame."

"Only to an appropriate extent. It's good that the Drifter can still be Mara after everything that happened. But I can't. I changed too much for that."

Aoi shook her head. "I know that it makes sense, but it seems like you're using it as an excuse. You don't have to be alone."

"I choose who I want to be, and in a way, I have already chosen not to be alone."

"At the cost of excluding yourself."

"Does it matter? I'm only here for a bit. And the Drifter's your family."

"Is the Drifter not your family too?"

"I guess, in a way, she could be my sister." A brief sideways glance. "She doesn't get to be called my big sister. Our ages are moot at this point."

"Regardless, through the transitive property, you're family too."

"What? You want me to be your sister-in-law or something?"

Aoi hacked out a laughing, embarrassed cough. "You really think—"

"The Drifter loves fiercely and freely. If she had the chance to, she would —as you people say— put a ring on it."

Aoi felt a heat come to her cheeks. "Would you be the flower girl or best woman?"

"Sorry, it's gonna be the latter; all my flowers go into the foundry."

She smiled at the Operator. "This is nice. Makes me hope that the loop will one day be a spiral and we'll reach its end." The Operator nodded at that. "I think you should have people to talk to, to eat shitty pizza with, and to hug."

There was no vocal response from the kid, but when Aoi left to get some pizza, she followed.

The Operator chewed on the cheese slathered on bread, grease saturating around her lips. Arthur was in the back arguing with Quincy about toppings, but it was the sort of debate that had no stakes — that spoke of familiarity between the two. Only friends, begrudging or otherwise, could talk to each other like that. Lettie was serving food to the few civvies in the food court. She was only mildly less annoyed than when she was treating the wounded: which meant she was in a good mood. Amir and Eleanor were engaged in a deep, telepathic conversation because speed of thought was faster than speed of sound. He was gesticulating wildly as Eleanor watched on with a fond smile.

Aoi sat across from the Operator to some On-Lyne that was playing in the mall. The Operator was quietly tapping along as she ate. She'd say that in another life, they'd get together, but that other life already happened.

And that was the key thing here: progress had already been made. The Operator didn't come to a people in need of someone steady and dependable; they already had that with the Drifter. When she wasn't feeling like an intruder, there was a deep-seated envy and wasn't that a novel feeling. After years of guilt and turmoil, there was envy. It was an emotion so easily turned into something ugly: possessive... indifferent to the feelings of others.

Aoi looked back at her and gave her a genuine smile. It was not a smile a lover gave to their significant other; it was the sort of fond smile you gave to a kid, like a niece or cousin. But it was genuine, and wasn't that enough? The Hex couldn't be to the Operator what they were for the Drifter.

So what?

That shouldn't mean wholesale exclusion. Perhaps, out there in the vast and unknowable existence, were a group of people that could be like the Hex for her: friends who would live with her.

She always kept her heart open for others, but not herself.

Perhaps it was time to change that.

"This is nice," she admitted quietly.

"It is, isn't it? If we ever get the chance to do this again, we should do it with the Drifter. Maybe you two could show us some future delicacies. "

A hesitant smile, shaped by both hope and yearning. "I'd like that."

"Here's hoping."