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Viper looks up as the door to her laboratory swings open unannounced, and knows all at once that this isn’t going to be a friendly visit. For Lily Tenebrae, Oracle of Valorant Protocol, slips in over the threshold with a sickly sweet smile, and Viper purses her lips in return. Bad enough that Omen had ultimately decided to follow through with the Jakarta Mission, despite the quiet reservations that she’d voiced. Yet now, in the time that Viper had planned to spend distracting herself with her work (and preparing, she knows, for the inevitability of Omen’s rage), she has been interrupted by the one person that she hadn’t wished to see—the one woman in the entirety of Valorant Protocol who has always known too much.
“Lily,” Viper greets simply. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
Lily flashes her teeth in reply, another smile that feels underlined with fang—and replies: “I know you’re probably busy... but I was hoping to steal a moment of your time.”
Viper does not sense malice from her—if she had, then one of them would likely already be dead. Yet Lily’s demeanor is one of someone who knows something she shouldn’t; the prowl of a cat who’s excited by the prospect of playing with her prey. (Viper would know—for it’s a demeanor she herself dons quite often. But it’s different, she realizes: being on the receiving end. Especially from someone typically so reserved as Lily.) As it stands, Viper has never had to deal with a seer in confrontation before, and while she herself has worked with Lily to determine the full extent of her powers—there’s still much that remains a mystery to them both. Viper holds so much information that Lily might know (likely knows, shouldn’t know—) but the uncertainties of what or what not is what’s always sat heavy in Viper’s gut. There are, after all, so many things that the other woman might condemn her for.
“Speak plainly, then,” Viper replies, and Lily’s expression softens. She can tell Viper is on edge, and while she’d been excited to play—she doesn’t mean to threaten. Viper wills her nerves to calm.
“I’ve never seen you like this, you know,” Lily says then. “Nervous, scared.” She pauses, and Viper doesn’t refute her. She isn’t, after all, entirely wrong. “You didn’t want Omen to go on this mission, did you? You were afraid of the things he might learn—and unknowing, of course: of what he might do upon learning them.” Lily pauses again, and begins to pace around the front of Viper’s lab, her hand trailing the edge of the tables. Viper bites back her knee-jerk words—to tell Lily to be careful, for there are poisons not just a few inches away—yet she knows that Lily can see that, and she knows that Lily will be perfectly fine. Viper stays silent. “But what I find interesting,” Lily eventually continues, “is that despite the reservations you surely had... you let him go, anyway.”
Lily stops, staring deep into a misting vial that Viper had let sit to rest, then flicks her eyes up to meet Viper’s gaze. “Why?” she asks, and Viper breathes out slow.
“It is not my place to keep him from his past,” Viper replies, simply. Her words are crafted. Measured. Not unlike what she might say to Omen himself, and Lily huffs a laugh.
“Even if it were for the best of Valorant Protocol, to do so?” Lily asks, and Viper’s blood burns from the question. How dare she?
“Omen is loyal to Valorant Protocol,” Viper snaps back, “we both know that—” and Lily looks pleased by her response. Viper snaps her mouth back shut, then looks away. Of Omen’s loyalty, Viper is wholly confident; yet Lily’s words still put a poker stick to the seed of worry that sits in Viper’s gut, and she does not enjoy the feeling.
“What’s the problem, then?” Lily asks, and Viper watches as she picks up the vial she’s been staring at and tilts it in the light. She keeps her fingers well away from the mist (as she should), and slides her eyes back to Viper.
This time however, Viper doesn’t reply—she learned her lesson the first time. And either way, she already knows the answer to Lily’s question, and she’s certain that Lily does too. As it stands: Viper cares for Omen, and does not wish to lose his friendship, his confidence, his trust. Yet in that same breath Viper wonders if she’s been worthy of holding it in the first place, having hidden such an important detail of Omen’s past from everyone, for all this time. She doesn't hold his assassination attempt against him, yet the guilt of having torn his entire life from his fingertips (figuratively, and literally—) in only a moment... it weighs on her more each day.
“You knew he was bound to find out eventually,” Lily states plainly, once it’s clear that Viper will not answer her previous question. She replaces the vial, and steps closer to the table that Viper is working at. “And for what it’s worth—I understand. It’s a tough position that you were put in.”
Viper nods, appreciative just as much as she is incensed. Lily continues to stand before her until Viper finally asks the question that she’d been burning to ask since the moment Lily stepped in:
“What happened—when your old Omen found out?” Viper’s voice is quiet, and she keeps her eyes trained on Lily. “Assuming, of course, that our circumstances were the same?”
And Viper watches as Lily stops in front of her table, then smiles. “He never did find out, actually,” Lily replies, and the look in her eyes goes far away. “He never got the chance.”
Viper nods once, the movement slow.
“But I’m sure you needn’t worry,” Lily finally says, and it feels like this—the cat having finally caught the mouse—is truly what Lily had come in to say. “Because you’re right: Omen is loyal to Valorant Protocol. Both in my old universe, and in this one. He wouldn’t betray you, angry as he might be. Of that I’d put down my life. So trust his ability to get through this... and in yours, to help him.”
It isn’t until Lily has walked all the way back to the door that Viper speaks again. “Thank you,” she says, and though her words are soft, Lily’s smile confirms that she’d heard them.