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“S’all right, lovely.” Zanka tiredly croaks. “Enjin knows—”
You sweep him up in your arms and direct your Eyes upon the Dax.
He’s barely in your sights enough to do more than tan when Ripper blocks him from your gaze with darts ready and pointed, and 3R has a vector-overdrive pad primed and ready to slam you into the wall.
His presence does nothing but fill you with rage. It blinds you to your fellow frame’s reactions, moving not against the threat but to protect him from your wrath. It fails do more than enrage you even more.
Traitors! You project with the force of swinging your staff at an Anarch’s skull.
Ripper hisses at you. 3R stands stock-still.
The infuriating Dax otherwise doesn’t react aside from a slight raise of his hands, while Zanka waves his hands out.
“Woah! Woah! He’s fine, Aibō, chill, it’s okay!”
It’s not fine. They’ll take him away from you. You won’t be able to protect him. He’ll be assigned to another frame and forced to fight as you’re melted down by your own smiting light.
A familiar voice flounders. No, no! It’s okay!
What if they don’t just take him away? What if they execute him, too, for not coming forth about your actions?
Hey, it’s— listen to me—
Your wings unfurl further as deathbringer stirs within your gut.
“Please stop!” Rudo nearly shouts as he slips out of 3R, his Vauban’s hand still tight around his ability.
Riyo too slips out of her Oraxia, but Ripper’s darts remain pointed. “Chill, girl. The war’s over. Has been for like, ages now.”
The Golden One’s are long dead. 3R projects cooly. Enjin is the last Dax of his faction. There is no one to report us to. We are safe. Let the boy help you.
…
Zanka’s hand is cool where it’s pressed to your neck. He always did have poor circulation.
...
That time is long gone. How silly of you. How foolish. You just made quite the spectacle.
Despite your lack of eyes, you look down at Zanka. He’s holding onto you, eyes worried and shining with the light of transference, and you allow him to wash over you.
…
You allow your Eyes to fade.
You don’t apologize. You refuse. Not to a Dax.
Thankfully, nobody expects you to. Rudo returns to slouching near the door, Riyo moves to drape over Ripper’s shoulders, and the Dax, much to your continued disdain of his presence, approaches you.
No, not you; Zanka. You bristle, but you can’t deny what Zanka wants. And Zanka reaches out for the man, and he reaches back, and you can do nothing but stir in your own contempt and allow the man to hold your tenno’s hands.
Forcing yourself to look away, you turn your faceplate to the other two frames in the room as you allow your wings to cover what was once your face once more.
Explain, you all but growl.
It’s Riyo who answers. “Banshee got speared through by a void angel. Tore Zanzan straight from her chassis.” She barrels on, ignoring Zanka’s muttered ‘don’t call me that,’ “And then it grabbed him and almost killed him. Rudo blasted it away, but it was… bad.”
Rudo shifts uncomfortably like he wants to speak up. He doesn’t get the chance as Riyo continues on, lighting up as she dangles backwards from her frame’s shoulders, the poor Oraxia quickly shooting her hands up to catch the girl’s ankles, dropping her darts in the process. “Then Enjin here swept in! Healed him up almost as good as Eishia and her Trinity could’ve! It was pretty cool, Aibō.”
You do your best not to bristle.
You should have been there, not the Banshee. You wouldn’t have let Zanka get hurt. Would’ve ripped it’s spears from your chassis and cremated it with your Eyes.
You would have been able to heal him.
Turning to the Dax, he lazily blinks at you and says one word like that explains it all. “Vazarin.”
Ah shit. Yeah. You forgot he studied vazarin.
You motion for Riyo to continue, and she clears her throat and obliges. “But see, we didn’t… know he was there? So his Banshee kinda. Kept going. Y’know?”
“Dear void, you are not helping.” Zanka hisses.
Rudo nods his head like he’s trying to make it fall off. “You’re gonna get her in trouble!” He all but whines.
Riyo shrugs at Zanka as Ripper slouches with a silent sigh. “Wasn’t trying to. She asked, I’m answering.”
Metal creeks as you clench your gauntlet not wrapped around Zanka’s shoulders. Banshee is lucky she is not here, for you would tear her frame apart and feed it to the helminth one scrap of mutated flesh at a time.
Where?
Zanka finally, finally releases the Dax and slouches into your hold. You hurry to secure him and hug him further to your chest. “I sent ‘er away. Knew you’d wanna scrap her.”
It would be entirely deserved.
He sighs. “No, it wouldn’t.”
Oh. You projected that.
“Yes, you did.”
Oops.
“’M fine, Aibō,” Zanka says as he somehow slouches even further into you, “I’m jus’… tired.”
You run your hand through his hair, careful not to snag any on your metal, and Zanka melts in to you as he always does, finally going near-boneless in his exhaustion.
Rest now, young one.
I’m fourteen, he sleepily replies to you and you alone, and also like, at least a hundred. Maybe fifty.
Your heart aches for him. For all of these children. You hold him tighter as you recline in his bed, gently unfurling your wings from under him to wrap them around him, pulling him further into your embrace and closer to your healing light.
The Dax continues to watch you both from where he’s leaning against the bedside table, golden eyes tracing your fingers where they gently tug knots out of your boy’s hair. His presence is barely acceptable, given as to how he’s the reason Zanka survived, you suppose.
It would be hypocritical of you to say, but you hate Dax.
You don’t know why it’s hypocritical, but you know it is. It must be. You know Warframes were made from people, but you don’t know who you were. With how you feel when you look at the blond man, you don’t think you want to know.
Your tenno insists the man, Enjin, is different, and you suppose that must be true; here he is, watching them, seeing for himself how you are not just a mindless Jade frame to be puppeted. Watches as Ripper patiently allows herself to be used as a jungle gym. Watches 3R coax Rudo out from the corner for a snack. (And a minuscule but well protected flower, pulled from one of the frame’s many pockets, handed to the youngest boy with a loving pat to his hair,
You don’t want to know, because you physically can not know. Such records are rarely kept. Wanting to know would only bring you anguish. But you do know that the original Jade frame, your progenitor, was a Dax before she was punished.
She is why you look the way you do now, in a sense, not that you remember anything to compare it to. She is why you have no eyes and yet too many eyes, why you are covered in feathers, why your pregnant belly is stuck as such but will never give life in the way the woman had originally intended, however futile her efforts.
(That is, if you were a person. If you’re not just an amalgam of technology and infestation and meat harvested from the corpses of your enemies.)
It’s unfair, but you think you hate her.
The Dax pulls out a cigarette and reaches for his pocket. Lacking eyes, she flares her wings once more and summons her Eyes to stare him down. Riyo freezes and Rudo lunges at 3R to merge into his form. Ripper takes a sharp step forward without Riyo’s guidance but 3R, ever the patient young man, merely tilts his head at you in consideration. Unlike before, he doesn’t ready one of his machinations.
But the man. Oh, the man. He meets your gaze, unblinking, and you can’t help but feel a smidgen of reluctant respect start to bubble up underneath your resentment of his kind. Maybe it’s Zanka’s influence.
Not that it’s needed. Unlike before, he doesn’t burn. Under your gaze, the sunburn you had given him earlier heals up, good as new, not even a peeling of dead skin.
Riyo unfreezes with a chuckle as Ripper throws her hands up in exasperation. 3R rights his head as Rudo sighs and turns away with an aggrieved mutter of ‘bipolar robot bio-weapons.’ Despite these words, he’s quick to fling himself past 3R and join you and Zanka on the bed. You open your wings for him, and he snuggles in close.
He taps Zanka’s face until the other boy’s eyes crack open, and presents the flower closely. Zanka blinks slowly before reaching up to take the delicate thing between his fingers, expression blank but eyes softening.
“Wait me too!” Riyo nearly shouts, ignoring Zanka’s half-asleep complains and Rudo’s cries for the flower’s well-being as she dives down atop them both. You’re barely able to enclose your wings around all three, but you manage.
The song of resilience begins to sound from your core. It encases the children, and their frames, and much to your muffled embarrassment, the Dax your children have seemingly adopted despite your efforts against it.
“Huh.” Enjin says intelligently. (Note the sarcasm.)
The cigarette stays in his mouth to act as a chew toy, but remains unlit as he leans back, empty handed.
“I hear you loud and clear, Miss.” He says to you with a nod. A pause, followed by a smirk that has you bracing. “I always knew you didn’t like me. The kid always told me I was just imagining it, that glare of yours, but man, haha! Yeah, exactly like that!”