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None of the Triad knew much about the other one. The one who wasn’t the Drifter, the one who hadn’t strong-armed her way into their lives, who hadn’t fought her way through the Descendia loop over and over again. The other one was a much more frequent fixture in the Sanctum, certainly; the Drifter was only ever physically there briefly, and that was predominantly to drag herself and Roathe down to the Dark Refractory and into hell. Apart from her visits to see Lyon, and to trade to Marie whatever the other one had dredged up out of the depths of her own mind for the void-lost weapons that Lyon summoned (or what seemed to be an unending pile of junk for golden titles from Roathe), the Drifter was located quite firmly in another time entirely.
The one-who-wasn't, conversely, spent almost too much time in the Sanctum. Outside of the hours she spent submerged in the Dark Refractory under the Lotus's watchful eye, she was almost always the one who accompanied the three on their countermeasures against the Murmur. Clothed in the silent corpses of those who had succumbed to the same blight that coursed through their own veins, she was an unsettling battle companion, if not an unwelcome one. They watched, time after time, as she tore through the Murmur with the grace of a dancer and the sheer power of a tidal wave.
It was almost beautiful, in a way, until she pulled herself out of her frame and flung herself across the room in a flash of void un-light and they remembered that she looked like a child. Because she was a child.
(Roathe, for his part, never forgot what devilry lay beneath the swordsteel, nor the existential threat it posed to him, but the Tenno stoically and perfectly ignored him at all times. Better for them both that way.)
Regardless, she didn’t seem particularly interested in interacting with the three interlopers outside of battling alongside them. She stuck to the Cavia, and to Loid, and to the Lotus, and away from them, and that was fine. Even the Drifter always seemed a little hesitant to talk about her, almost as though she was afraid that looking too directly at the other half of her paradox would shatter one or both of them like a mirror.
Which is why Lyon was so startled to see her sitting on the steps up to the portal to La Cathedrale that day. Actually her, not the corpse-carapace, though it still stood close by, motionlessly off to the side of the staircase. She sits up straight as he emerges from the portal and takes a step down, before standing and turning to him. Her movements are odd, but not in a way he can explain. She bows, deeply.
“May I speak to you?” It sounds rehearsed in a way that Lyon is all too personally familiar with, and he frowns slightly. Her face doesn’t change, but her posture tightens almost imperceptibly. “Privately.”
“About what?” Lyon can’t help but feel a certain amount of dread. He doesn’t know this girl, not like he knows her counterpart, and there are few things he dislikes less than talking to unfamiliar people for unknown reasons.
“I need to make a confession.” Her eyes are focused somewhere just to the left of his head as she says this incomprehensible statement. “I… she told me that was something that you did, in your religion.”
“The Drifter told you this?” His frown deepens. “You are not an adherent of the Luminaries. Confession to me would mean nothing.”
“Please.” Her voice wavers, just slightly, as her eyes flick to his eyepatch and then back away.
The Drifter must have known perfectly well that he would not deny this request, even if he didn’t like it. No priest could, not by the laws of the faith, even in this accursed time. He trusts his miracle must have had a good reason for this. “Fine. Lead the way.”
The girl nods and turns to walk towards the open area past the two massive Vessels. Lyon hesitates, briefly, before speaking again.
“Is it wise to do this so close to the Indifference’s eyes?”
“It's nothing that he doesn't already know,” she says without turning back to face him.
The view where she stops is as impressive as it is filled with dread. Wind howls through the infinite chasm. Dust drifts in like snow through an open doorway. She kneels, wordlessly, in a practiced motion, and simply stares out into the distance for a long moment.
This is the first time he's really looked at the child, constantly hidden or in motion as she is, and he doesn't know how to feel about it. She looks so, so much like his miracle. They wear their hair in the same elaborate style, their faces separated only by the stretch of time and the delicate metal implants surrounding the horrible void-scarring around the girl's right eye. Scarring that, in a way, mimics his own. She looks to be about the same age as he was when he half-succeeded in taking his own sight, and about as stable as he was then.
When she speaks again, it is as abrupt as a gunshot. “I knew, as soon as I saw the three of you, what frames you were. I know Wisp. I knew Uriel. And I can never, ever forget Harrow.” She stops just as suddenly as she started, hands balling into fists, still staring out into the darkness.
“I'm the one who killed him.”
“What?”
“I had to kill him. Rell. He had lost himself, and it was horrible, and it was my fault and that's why he's dead. I forced her to tell me what your connection was, and I'm sorry, and please don't blame her but I had to—” The words are falling out of her mouth in a torrent and Lyon only barely understands what it is that she's actually saying. “—I had to know and I didn't want to kill him but I had to, because it was the only way to let him rest and, and…”
She finally trails off, and Lyon tries to process what she's said. He knew, obviously, that Rell and his Harrow were gone. He'd known it the second he entered this time, with a certainty that allowed for no argument. One moment they had always been there, and the next they were gone forever. But it had never truly occurred to him that that had to have happened. A specific moment where someone had to end it. That that someone would be her.
She continues without waiting for him to respond. “...we were monsters to him, the other Tenno. Even the ones who didn't drive him away ourselves. I didn't stop them from doing it because I was afraid, so afraid, that they would turn on me too. That stepping in the way of a target would only get me shot along with him, and I couldn't do it, and so he was alone, and then he was abandoned by Margulis, and all this time he was holding the line against my own fuckup. The Man in the Wall wanted me and couldn't get me and Rell was, was…”
Lyon feels calmer than he should, he thinks. There's a certain degree of practice that kicks in, a level of detachment that he's forced himself to learn over the years. "When did this happen?"
"Two years ago. We had received a distress signal from one of our allied syndicates, and it turned out that one of the other syndicates was being driven insane by the disappearance of their… religious leader? Prophet? I don't know what to call him. They don't talk about him much anymore, even though they still follow his teachings. But it was Rell. And he had finally snapped." She squeezes her eyes shut. "I didn't even remember him yet. It had only been a few weeks since I had regained any memories of the Zariman at all."
He understands exactly why the Drifter had told her to talk to him. He understands. He wishes he didn't.
Lyon quietly settles into an imitation of her kneeling position beside her. He remains silent for a moment, and then several, and then sighs. "It is not your fault." Her face twists into something between confusion and irritation, but he continues. "I know you don't believe me, and you don't have to. But you are not at fault for his death, nor for his life. He knew what he was doing, what ramifications his choices would have, and that it would eventually end."
"But I haven't even been able to keep up my end of the bargain! The entire system is on the precipice of being torn apart and I can't even do anything to stop it because the thing that wants to eat us all wants to gets its hands on me because of the deal I made. A deal I don't even fully remember the terms of!"
"And what other choice did you have? You were trapped in the void, with everyone who should have taken care of you warped into filicidal husks. You had to take the only option you were given, or all of the Tenno would have died then and there on the Zariman." His voice is even. "When was the last time that you have been able to truly make your own choices? Can you even remember? Or have you simply been taking actions as they are laid out for you by others, for good or ill?"
She turns to look at him and for an instant he remembers just why he fears the Tenno: her eyes are empty, hollow, ancient, even as her jaw tightens in an unmistakable effort not to cry. "But…"
"It is not your fault that you were called on to kill when that never should have been your responsibility." His voice is filled with certainty to the point of finality.
She starts to cry. Ugly, full body sobbing, as though whatever intangible bindings had kept her from expressing her feelings had been slashed through.
Lyon cannot offer her the same comfort that was offered to him long ago, but after only a moment of hesitation he puts his hand gently on her shoulder and pulls her into his side. It is an awkward motion, with none of the instinctive care or softness that Marie would have been able to give, but she doesn't seem to notice as she leans into the hug. He doesn't know how long they end up kneeling there, listening to the sounds of distant wind and voidtongue and grinding stone. He only notices that she's stopped crying when she sits up and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
"I'm sorry. This was completely uncalled for." Her voice is still hoarse from crying, but she pretends it isn't. She's returned to her formal, clipped manner of speech, as though she had simply had a momentary lapse of control. She winces slightly as she stands, briefly unsteady before she catches herself. "I should go."
"Allow me to walk you back." Lyon gets to his feet with a grunt and an audible popping sound from his knees.
"I'm capable of taking care of myself," she says, bristling.
"I do not doubt that. It is for my own peace of mind," he replies, flatly. (Internally, he vows to apologize to Marie for his behavior, now that he has such a stark example of what he must have been like to deal with when he was younger.)
Their walk back into the main area is silent, with only the sounds of dust crunching underfoot and the heartbeat of the Vessel to break it up. Loid watches their return with thinly veiled concern in his eyes, hurrying to fuss over the girl.
She shakes her head, stalling his approach. "I'm fine, Loid."
"You don't look fine, Ayatan," he fires back. Ayatan. It hadn't even occurred to Lyon to ask her name, he realizes, but she hadn't actually asked his either. Maybe she assumed that he already knew. His reflexive calculation of an appropriate penance was put aside for the moment as Loid turned to him, frowning. "And you look worse. What were you two doing out there?"
"We were merely having a discussion about a mutual acquaintance of ours. Nothing of note." Lyon doesn't wait for Ayatan to reply. "It really is fine."
Loid makes a derisive noise before stalking back to his desk, and Lyon knows that he'll be facing a polite, butler-y interrogation about this later. From the look on Ayatan's face, she expects the same for herself. She turns to her warframe, still standing motionless by the stairs, and prepares to transfer back in before Lyon speaks again, haltingly.
"If you… have need of my services again, I will always be willing to listen." He is quiet as he says it, as though he is afraid of being heard either by Loid or by himself. "I cannot offer much, but I can do that. I know we are not well acquainted, but we are… similar, in ways, and I do not wish for you to suffer alone."
She looks at him for a long moment, expressionlessly, before giving him a sharp nod of acknowledgement and returning to her frame. The swordsteel bows to him again (and he realizes, now, what seemed wrong with her movements: she moves like she expects to be taller and stronger than her true body is) before walking towards the stairs leading to the Necralisk above.
It wasn't just impulse that made him compare himself to her. The Drifter, his miracle, had always reminded him a bit of Marie: hopeful, insistent, caring even at the cost of herself, no matter who or what for. The other one, Ayatan, was instead everything he saw from himself. Broken, shattered, sharp edges and teeth and guilt. Someone much older and stranger than him, yet still a child. Ayatan was fear roiling beneath a solid crystalline facade. Not in the same ways as him, certainly, but the echoes were still there, and he wouldn't wish being like him on anyone.
He could only offer to listen. It wasn't enough, it couldn't be enough. But it would have to suffice.