Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nyght was at their foundry, singing & working on some weapons, when they suddenly heard a small rapping at their portal door. They leaned back to have a look at the computer screens on their security system & smiled lightly when they noticed Kaya standing there, arms folded, waiting to see if they were home.

They walked over to the threshold & waved at the obols gently to disrupt & dephase them, revealing Kaya, looking lightly surprised as she dropped her arms nervously to her side & stood up straight.

“H-Heeeey Drifter. Didn’t know if you were home..”

“Kaya! It’s nice to see you, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Nyght remarked slyly & moved out of the walk path, motioning widely to invite Kaya in.

Kaya wiggled her shoulders and cracked her neck a little, cautiously tip toeing through the void portal, setting off a light chime, making her nervously stop half way through. Nyght reached out with their arm and put it around her gently, tugging her inwards, escorting her the rest of the way through into the room proper.

“Best not to stop once you’re half way committed to something..” Nyght softly remarked with an oddly knowing smile that made Kaya blush lightly as she nodded fervently.

“Ya, ya! I know. Duh.” She retorted with a tiny indignant snort of a laugh.

Kaya slowly settled into the space, walking around, taking in all the foreign tech in the room with a quiet enthusiasm. She hadn’t been in Nyghts backroom before, and there were so many new noises & devices that it made her curiosity spiral & temporarily distract her. Nyght smiled quietly asked,

“Sooo…?” They questioned as they leaned against a pillar, folding their arms to quietly watch her poke some of their electronics.

“OH.” Kaya cleared her throat & turned to face Nyght, leaning against the large table of their main room, both hands down on it as she hopped up to sit on it. “..So, Amir said you got a bunch of rare Jinymon cards from the packs I gave you?..I wanted to come have a look!” She replied casually, as she swung her feet, keeping her eye on the foundry in the corner, the arm of which was swiveling back and forth rhythmically as it worked on replicating something.

“Uh huh..” Nyght nodded & pushed themselves off the pillar, “..Be riiiight back.” and turned, quickly jogging up their back stairs.

Kaya watched them and as soon as they were out of sight, she silently hopped down off the table, like a kavat about to cause some mischief, & swiftly tip-toed over to the foundry, finding the interface panel. She quickly swiped through the menus & clicked a few buttons, seemingly looking for something in a hurried manner, finally letting a huff slip from her lips as she turned around to go back to the table, abruptly bumping into something solid she couldn’t see. A feeling of cold swept through her as her stomach sank; she forgot they could become invisible.

Nyght dropped their void shift right in front of her with a swirl of purple & cyan sparkles, menacingly close to her person, and she straightened up, steeling her gaze at Nyght.

“Find what you were looking for..?” Nyght remarked quietly, but curiously, not in a malicious manner. It sounded more like a mom who knew their kid was doing something they weren’t supposed to, but had a suspicion they were going to do it anyway.

“Pfft, no. Your foundry organization is a fuckin mess.” She stated confidently, and boldly, walking around Nyght with a few large steps. “Whatever, you caught me red handed. I don’t care, I’m not a kid. Yesh.”

“I never said you were.” Nyght turned to follow her and watched as she strode through the room, flopping down into one of the Entrati chairs next to the large table.

“You didn’t have to. Your tone did.” She remarked gruffly, folding her arms & looking away from Nyght.

“Well.. you haven’t left yet, soooo I haven’t insulted you enough for you to want to leave..? Why don’t we look at my Jinymon cards & you tell me why you’re really here.” Nyght retorted & moved to sit next to her at the table, Kaya turning her head the other direction to avoid eye contact with Nyght. Without turning back to them she quietly, but firmly mumbled,

“Lemme see the shiny Frogobogo Amir said you got.”

Nyght smiled and put the cards onto the table, making Kaya turn her head back slightly, watching them lay the cards out one by one on the table out of the corner of her eyes, until they came to the holo-foil Frogobogo. They gently pushed it ever so slightly closer to Kaya, who slowly unfurled her arms & leaned forward to look at it.

“Fuck that’s..” She grit her teeth and took a deep breath, groaning lightly, “That’s SO cool.. and I hate that I think it’s so cool.”

“I think it’s cool too. I love the way the holo foil looks on his eyes, it’s freaky.” Nyght softly added, and finally met her eyes, smiling at her. She dropped her guard the rest of the way as she leaned over and moved side to side a little, watching the holo foil shift colors over the Jinymon cards eyes. “So..I guess now that you’ve seen it.. you’re going to head out..?”

Kaya looked at Nyght, who sat with an earnest smile on their face, hands on their knees as they leaned over the cards on the table. Kaya’s lips furled into a frown and she leaned back against the chair, groaning.

“Ok ok, whatever... I wanted to ask you about some time-travel mechanics.”

“..Then why were you snooping around my foundry?” Nyght asked curiously, collecting up the cards back into their deck, placing it on the table. Kaya scowled at them & looked away with a dismissive shrug. Nyght took a sharp breath in & picked up their card deck, tapping it on the table thoughtfully, “Let’s play.”

At this Kaya looked back to them, her head falling back on the chair as she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the shift in conversation.

“Oh please. That may work on Amir, but I’m smarter than that golden retriever of a guy. You insult my intelligence, once again, just like EVERYONE else.”

“Ok.” Nyght said calmly, getting up from their chair, causing Kaya to sit up cautiously & watch as they slowly walked back towards the stairs that led up to the lounge. “..Let me know when you figure out how to get around the continuity of continuous probability distribution. I’m curious how you solve that.”

Kaya sat quietly stunned, grabbing the back of the chair with white knuckles, watching astonished as Nyght started up the stairs without another word.

“W-wait...what??”

“~You insult my intelligence, once again, by thinking I don’t know what problem you’re running into..” Nyght called down calmly, opening a drawer in their lounge in a loud exaggeratedly slow manner.

Kaya scrambled out of the chair, and hastily used a portal to instantly arrive to the top of the stairs in the blink of an eyes, catching Nyght in the midst of putting their deck away in the card drawer of their desk.

“HOLD UP...FINE, y-you’ve got my attention.” She gruffly spat, walking across the lounge to Nyght, who smirked and pulled the deck back out, sitting down at the small Duviri table in the lounge as they spoke up,

“I think better when I do multiple things at once.. it acts like a river my mind can follow. Grab your deck, c’mon. I know you have it.”

Kaya shifted in place, eyeing around the room quietly, as if to make sure there were no witnesses to her nerd-dom, & quickly reached down into a cleverly hidden pocket on the side of her baggy pants. She sat down at the table & started to shuffle the cards carefully, Nyght starting to shuffle their own deck, starting to talk again,

“So.. you managed to separate out the threads of linear time mathematically, but you’re having trouble zeroing in on the one with the correctly oriented thousands of variables.”

They both put their decks down, and Nyght made a motion to offer their deck to Kaya to cut, but Kaya simply tapped the top of it, silently indicating she didn’t care to cut it. Nyght nodded with a smirk and reached over, taking a small amount of cards off the top of her deck, and placed them down on the table next to it, taking the larger pile & putting it on top of them, cutting the deck in a quarter fashion.

“There’s.. just too many.” Kaya muttered as both Nyght & her shook hands & played rock paper scissors to decide who would go first.

Nyght won the quick game, and they both drew seven cards, looking through their hands for basic Jinymon to start with. Nyght carefully placed down their shiny Frogobogo and made a pass motion with their hand, Kaya placing down her Plumbert as she continued her thought,

“Pass... Looking for fluctuations that correspond to events, you, other people, and places that line up perfectly is a lot to sift through. I can DO IT.. it’s just taking a long time & I keep hitting snags. I know we technically have forever.. but..”

Nyght picked up a card from their deck & placed down a different one that had a red elemental looking fire symbol on it & turned it to the right, stating their intentions with it. They attached an armor card to their Frogobogo by placing the armor card just behind the creature card, then turned the critter sideways & pushed it forward a little, indicating an attack,

“..So, what does this have to do with sneaking around in my foundry?”

Kaya made a hand motion, indicating she didn’t want to block, as Nyght quickly whipped around, looking at their desk behind them, hastily grabbing two D20’s off of it, and placed one in front of Kaya, watching her tick it down by two, placing the other in front of themselves.

“I was looking to see if you had the blueprint for something..” Kaya furled her brows thoughtfully, as Nyght interjected with a ‘pass’. Kaya drew a new card from her deck and sized up her hand while she started to talk again, “..Amir had mentioned something about you using a ‘Loc-pin’ to mark locations during missions. I thought.. if maybe I could make a few quick & see how those broadcast their positions..”

She placed down a blue card with a water looking element symbol & turned it, then pulled out a berry card from her hand, placing it behind her Plumbert card to ‘feed’ the Jinymon. She turned the creature sideways, indicating an attack, Nyght putting up their hands before ticking their D20 down by three.

“Ahh.. you were going to try & use the logic you learn from testing those & apply it to the algorithms you have already, so you could triangulate timelines more efficiently. They could filter out some of the unimportant variables & do some of the pattern matching for you.”

“Pass.. Yea.. basically? I guess? That’s a gross over simplification.”

“Oh, I know it is.. but sometimes.. looking at the bigger picture, and not analyzing something at a microscopic level constantly, can help you back up and see something you didn’t even know was there.” Nyght straightened out their cards, and drew a new card from their deck, placing down another fire elemental looking card. They turned one of the elemental cards sideways & placed down a new creature card next to the Frogobogo, a Charphant. “A long as Charphant is on the board, my fire Jinymon gain herd; They get plus one to attack & defense when they attack for every other creature on my play field.”

“Heh.. they get stronger by working together.” Kaya slyly remarked with a smirk, resting her elbow on the table & placing her chin in her hand.

“Mmmhm.” Nyght remarked & turned their Frogobogo sideways in attack again. “..I can make you some loc-pins? Asking for help.. doesn’t diminish the fact that you did the work of realizing & implementing the solution.”

Kaya pulled a card out of her hand & showed it to them, a trap card that could be activated when the player had no element or no creatures were available to defend. Nyght nodded and took the armor off their Jinymon, placing it into their discard pile, Kaya ticking her health down only by two again instead of three. Nyght whispered pass, and Kaya did the same as Nyght before, straightening out her cards, drawing a new one from her deck, placing down an element card, and tilting it to give Plumbert another berry.

“Then why does it feel like it does. Pass”

Nyght straightened out their cards, drew one from their deck & looked over the battlefield. Kaya had left herself a defender this time by not attacking, and had one available element open, possibly to activate another trap.

“..Cause you’re used to being the smartest one in the room. And believe me, between the two of us, you still are... However, that means you’re also used to doing everything on your own cause usually no one else was able to speak, or do things, even close to your level, or your high standards. When someone who is on the same level as you offers help, it can feel disingenuous, or even suspicious.” Nyght placed down a green element card that had a leaf symbol on it & turned it, placing down a card on the field that looked like a wall of thorny vines.

“Sol… Amir was right. You really are annoyingly insightful.”

Nyght snorted a little and leaned back in their chair, looking through their cards, seeing if there was anything else they wanted to do, taking another glance at the field before making a dismissive hand motion.

“Pass. Also, that’s hilarious. He said that word for word, didn’t he? I can hear it.” Nyght smiled to themselves knowingly, starting to plot how they would get sweet revenge on Amir when he got home later.

“...maybe. How do you even know so much about this crap? I thought you were stuck in a place with facsimiles of people that were just basically dolls as your only company?” Kaya drew a new card, placing down another water element card, this time turning two of them to give Plumebert two berries. She tilted the last water element card she had on the playing field & discarded the Plumebert card, placing a Grapther in it’s place, then placed down a crop card, placing the four berry cards on it.

“..I was a gifted teenager once too.” Nyght whispered in a deadly serious tone.

This caused Kaya to look up from her cards as Nyght sat forward, placing their cards face down on the table, both hands on top of them. Kaya’s heart jumped to her throat, and she swallowed hard, trying to push down the feeling of being perceived at such a deep level, hearing Nyght quietly speak up,

“Why don’t I go down & get those loc-pins started? Then we can finish our game?”

Kaya let out a laugh & Nyght looked at her, confused for a moment, their head tilting to one side a bit, just like Amirs did when he was trying to figure something out, or confirm that he heard something correctly.

“What?? No way!! You just want an out cause I’m winning & you don’t wanna explain to your boyfriend that I whooped your butt at a game.”

Nyght let out a raucous laugh & picked their hand of cards up off the table, leaning back with a grin, shrugging their shoulders.

“Ok, so.. what are you going to do? I’ve got a vine wall- you want to scratch up that cute ‘lil Gapther you just summoned?”

“..Nyght. It has flying. It’s a bird.”

“..well fuck.”

Chapter Text

Nyght stood in the middle of the street in Gara, her long sword dematerializing with a flick of her hand in a blinding swirl of glass shimmering with purple and cyan void energy. Nyght turned around, Gara’s glass armor refracting the light from the late autumn sun around their form, silhouetting the Warframe as they stared at Amir, who sat on the concrete behind them.

“Ok.. if you want to keep coming on missions with me.. we’re gonna have to work on some stuff.” Nyght explained, out of breath as Gara reached a hand down to Amir.

“Yeaa yeaa…” He moaned, reaching his hand up, only to find Nyght pulling Gara’s slightly out of his reach, just as he was about to take it,

“I’m serious Amir. You’re strong & brave, but you let your inner demons get the best of you sometimes. To both our detriments.” Nyght raised Gara’s other hand and pointed behind them at the building that was now slowly collapsing in a rubble pile, stone and wood creaking & cracking as dust settled.

“Wow babe, thatsabitmean, yesh.” He rightfully complained as he gently whacked their outstretched hand away with a huff, getting up & dusting himself off. He straightened up to observe the damage Gara had left in her wake, gritting his teeth as his eyes gazed across the street that acted as their battle field.

At least 40 Scaldra soldiers laid before them, scattered on the ground with various degrees of physical injury, their armor and skin shredded by Garas glass. Blood had pooled around several of them, some even missing arms or legs, but absolutely none of them moving. He wondered to himself if Valkyr was actually the most dangerous Warframe Nyght had after all, & contemplated if maybe he should actually be more terrified of Gara.

“I-I’m sorry.” Nyght quietly pipped up over the transference signal, causing him to turn around and look at them, watching as they transferred out of Gara. They didn’t make a move towards him & just stood there in front of her as she fell to her knees on the ground behind them. “..I get into a different head space when I’m fighting. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.”

“Yea, apparently.. that head space doesn’t include taking into consideration that you just murdered people. Like, a LOT of people too.” He retorted honestly, motioning to the Scaldra soldiers scattered around behind him.

Nyght stared him down with furled brows, and after a long moment of silence between them, their face softened and they opened their mouth, closing it suddenly. Letting their shoulders drop & opening their mouth once more, they replied quietly,

“..You’re right.”

Amir stood up straight, watching them cautiously, recognizing that tone as their serious voice. They stepped forward to square up with him, their eyebrows furrowing again, looking like they were trying to hold back from letting loose on him. They took a deep breath in & let it out partially, speaking clearly, but firmly,

“Stopping to think about that..? That’s how people I care about get killed. I don’t have the space to second guess myself in combat-” Nyght let out the rest of their breath, turning away from him as their shoulders tensed, transferring back into Gara, as if to hide away from him, “Hesitation is my greatest enemy. War won’t give me the time to think about the families of everyone I’m fighting.. it won’t give me back something it’s taken, and it will never.. ever.. say sorry.”

Amir breathed heavily at the weight of the words they had just laid into him with. He inhaled thoughtfully, placing his daggers back into their sheathes on his back, looking to the Scaldra once more, and then back to Gara.“..But.. this isn’t war though? These are probably all just.. people, suckered into a sol-forsaken cult.”

Remarking somberly, Nyghts voice came across Garas signal, somewhat cracked & disjointed,

“That’s how war starts.” and suddenly continued on at an increasingly pace, “The Corpus? Money loving, power grabbing people, who followed a capitalist ‘prophet’ who got his ass merc’d & turned into a god-like martyr. The Grineer? Cloned slave race who bow to twin Queens who controlled, for lack of a better term, a magic liquid. Hell, even the Tenno themselves..” They raised their arms into the air with a defeated shrug. “It’s war to me… I see it for what it is.. and I just want you to be prepared, because I know you’re a good fighter. I’ve seen it, & I want to depend on my partner to have my back.”

Amir swallowed hard and nodded, feeling a fire kindling in his chest at their words, understanding at his core that they were right, and that he DID want to be someone they could depend on to fight.

“Ok. I get it. I just… have some work to do. I'll try.” He explained, the invasive memories from his past trying to creep to the surface of his mind. He breathed in and took Garas hand into his, holding it tightly.

Touching hands now, he could feel their transference energy & how scared and vulnerable they felt confronting him with this. It wasn’t anger, it was fear, that was driving their thoughts to hopefully motivate him to work on himself. There was an underlying feeling of pride intertwined with it though, hearing him say that he would try for them.

“I’m gonna help.. and I’m sure Aoi would if you asked her.. and Eleanor too, of course. You don't have to do it alone. Never.” Nyght remarked, intertwining Garas fingers with his as they started walking back towards Nyghts atomicycle.

“..I’ll.. talk to Aoi about some training tomorrow. And.. maybe I’ll talk to Eleanor tonight about.. someotherstuff.”

“Listen. You have to WANT to talk to her though, ok? It won’t help if you’re just doing it cause I want you to.” Nyght squeezed his hand, then released it as they hopped onto their cycle, starting the engine.

“You’re annoyingly right.. as usual.” He smirked at them, and they blew him a kiss, as they spun the cycle around, starting down the street as he ran beside them, heading back to the garage together.