Lament of Orpheus

by KnittingSquid

Summary:

The Drifter dies in a tragic moment of carelessness; but they’re never *really* dead, are they?
In their mourning, Flare gets dragged into Duviri, where they’re tasked in putting together the Drifter’s fractured psyche, as their emotions each become a living reflection of their traumatized mind.

Hold in there, rockstar; the moral tale of Duviri brings out the darkest side of even the sweetest emotions.

Chapter 1: No Escape

Notes:

Hey all, we swing dark this time >:3
This is theoretically a sequel to my other fics with the drifter, amir and flare, but if i write any more it may or may not ever come up; I just wanted to have fun with Duviri and putting Flare in so many fucking Situations :™:.
A lot of this was written concurrently with my Flare/Drifter/Amir fic with edits made to adjust for context etc, I’ve been saving posting any of this until I was at least mostly done with that one lmao.

GENERAL WARNING FOR SOME REAL ROUGH EMOTIONAL STUFF ESP. IN THE LATER CHAPTERS, LOOKING AT YOU ENVY AND ANGER; I’m a Silent Hill fan at heart so I’m leaning reeeeeeal hard on the ‘personal hell’ aspect of Duviri. sorry Flare ilu i swear I'm writing cute fluffy smutty stuff adjacent to this to make up for it okay

edit from future squid: haha yeah no this is just canon to my other fics now and it's everyone's problem

It was just an average mission. Go out, kill Scaldra trying to purge a district, then come on home.

The Drifter and their lovers, almost playfully bouncing off of one another on the battlefield, supporting one another..

None of them knew what was coming for them the moment they went out there.. 

Would they have changed anything? 

Said they loved each other more? Touched each other more, held each other closer?

Curled up in bed and let the world go by, not letting each other go?

 

It was just a playful maneuver, one that the Drifter had pulled several times before– transferring protoframes mid fight to be with their other partner. They zipped out of Amir, breaking the transference link, took one void sling towards Flare, arms outstretched to embrace them in a hug on their way in..

 

It turns out the Drifter was only human, after all; for that one brief moment. 

It didn’t take the Indifference, or anything else quite so grand, it just took a single lucky corrosion-laced bullet to the head while vulnerably un-linked, which went right through them and even grazed Flare’s side, sending the Drifter tumbling into a shattered heap in their lap.

 

Flare was stunned in place. Their mind immediately flashed back to seeing one of the Rippers fly across the stage to attempt to protect them from Scaldra gunfire as the Drifter went from a run, to a stumble, to crashing directly into their arms, coating the flamboyant protoframe in their own lover’s insides. They grabbed a hold of each side of the Drifter's face, what was left of it, staring dumbfounded into their eyes whose literal void-tinged spark just flashed out like a broken lightbulb.

 

No. No. No no no no no this couldn’t be happening. 

For all the pain they went through, for all they’d lost, this was supposed to be forever. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t just leave them in an instant.

Flare felt Lizzie’s consciousness melt with their own as they screamed out, setting every Scaldra in earshot to a hellfire blaze. 

“You fucking ASSHOLES! HAVEN’T YOU TAKEN ENOUGH FROM US? ” 

Flare ran their fingers across the Drifter’s cheeks as tears boiled over the corners of their eyes, trying to find any kind of life in their lover even though their grey matter was everywhere. “No.. Not again.. Sol, no, this can’t be happening.. Drifter.. Sugar? Please.. You can’t leave Us, Please!”

 

Amir was at their side before they knew it, coming running as soon as he heard Flare scream, and all his energy just flickered out as he took in the horrific sight of the Drifter’s broken skull. He dropped his gun on the ground and collapsed down with his partners, wrapping his arms around the Drifter’s blood soaked shoulders. He said nothing, he just started sobbing, tears flooding his glasses.

 

It wasn’t hard for the rest of the Hex to find the pair when Amir composed himself just enough to send an SOS; Flare and Lizzie were audible kilometers away.

There wasn’t anything they could do; Lettie felt.. So, so useless, staring at the shattered puzzle that was the Drifter’s face with nothing she could do but declare a time of death.  

She’d seen soldiers go down before, innocent civilians, her own friends and family.. But this felt. So much more.. 

Hollowing.

Like the Drifter up and took all their hearts right along with them.

 

It was December, though.. Theoretically, just a few more days, and.. They’d be back.. Right? Like anyone else who died. None of them ever had before, especially the Drifter, but.. It was the only hope they could hold onto.

 

New Years rolled around; The Drifter’s body had been under a veil in the Backroom as a constant wake for anyone to visit. They didn’t rot, didn’t even stiffen; they were like a limp doll; like one of their frames without their wearer, their wielder, their keeper, their Tenno. Aside from the brutality that had been done to their head; it was like they were just asleep.

Kalymos stayed by their side the whole way, as did Flare, singing dirges with Lizzie to their lifeless shell every moment they woke, until both of their voices went hoarse. 

 

Amir couldn’t bear it. 

Even if it meant leaving Flare all alone at night, and spending nights alone for the first time in years. 

He slept in the back of the arcade like he used to before he fell in love with the Drifter, but the arcade stayed dark the whole two weeks until the 31st; not a machine or neon light turned on. He just focused on his work, and cried whenever he remembered that he couldn’t just go find them, hug them, kiss them.. Their door was always open for him if he was upset like this; it still was, but.. They weren’t there. Not really.

 

Flare did their best to fill the void, to be there for him; holding Amir close as he sobbed, laying kisses to his hair and forehead, but.. There was no comfort they could give, really; The melancholy rockstar was a shell of themself as well, so was Lizzie, who just couldn’t quite stay in tune..

 

It's okay. They can do this. The Hex were strong now.. Even without the Drifter there. They could do it for them, at least. Just.. Go through the motions and you’ll bring them back, like a strange, necromantic ritual..

 

The clock ticked to midnight, and everything just. 

Stopped.  

It didn’t spin back. It didn’t keep going forward. It just. Stopped.  

So did everything else. The clocks, the December/January snow, the fireworks about to go off for New Years, cars, every piece of tech in the damn mall, in the damn city..

Anything alive, even, that wasn’t the protoframes, Helminth or Kalymos just. Stopped in their tracks, like statues; like a movie that just got put on pause.

 

The Hex and the other protoframes were left without the glue that held them together, and now they were just.. Trapped here? 

Midnight on New Years forever, not even a nuke to put them out of their misery? 

How long until they started hearing that tapping on the walls that the Drifter had warned them about.. How long until those strange stone arms started tearing their way through the barrier they had kept for so long?

 

Even Kaya’s theories fell through; all of them relied on the Drifter being there on one end or another as a lodestone for her to follow, and she couldn’t risk getting stuck one way or the other, or worse, in the Void itself..

 

While the others planned for something to try and fix this somehow, going over every fragment of information the Drifter had ever told any of them about the Void, the loop, the Indifference, Entrati, anything, Flare fell into a deep, dark pit in their own mind, gently tracing their fingers over the Drifter’s cold, clammy skin.

Fine. It was finally time.

If She wanted to take them fully, and end their pain, they’d take it. No fear anymore. At least if there was an afterlife, they’d see the Drifter again. The Rippers again.

They gave the Drifter’s corpse one last kiss on the cheek from under the white sheet that covered them, tucked a folded piece of paper addressed to Amir in their hands, and headed up into that infested chamber, laying against the wall of techrot under the Helminth’s mouth among a garden of multicolored lotus flowers in that shallow pool, among every broken frame the Drifter or Operator had ever consigned to her. 

They slowly lost consciousness, Lizzie clutched tightly in a hug at their side..

If they woke, they woke, if they didn’t, good. 

They could feel the Helminth’s tendrils slowly envelop them, holding them warmly, tightly, reminding Flare just for an instant of the way it felt to have the Drifter wrap around their consciousness like a blanket when they were inside of them, that lovely feeling that doomed the Drifter with Flare’s foolish desire for it..

 

And then, just as Flare thought they were finally being subsumed, there was a sudden, overwhelmingly loud sound of a sucking vacuum as the whole world fell away. They felt themself falling; the whole environment around them gone from the comforting warmth of their death to a touchless, ice cold abyss in an instant.

Flare’s eyes snapped open at the change in temperature and they found themself in a vast, open expanse of swirling, sickly light green light and absolute darkness; falling, or being pulled at terminal velocity towards something. They clutched onto Lizzie tightly, who wasn’t saying a word despite the circumstance- in or out of Flare’s head- and braced for impact..

 

In a flash, they woke again, sputtering out a mouthful of sand and dust, on the coast of a floating island out there in.. Oh hells.. This was the Void, wasn’t it. 

 

Wait. 

An island in the Void..

 

Was this Duviri? How. Why?

 

Bewildered, finding themself immediately snapped out of the dark mind space they were in just minutes ago, Flare pulled themself to kneel on that precarious edge and look around, up at a swirling, trippy rainbow aurora sky, then out to the barren land around them.. Strange, swirling natural stone structures, sand and bizarre plants..And some kind of amphitheater, with seating around it, which somehow also looked alien to the environment here.. 

 

“And who are you, stranger?” Said a sad voice, with delicately rolling ‘r’s, bringing Flare’s attention to her, as she had accidentally snuck up on them while they were attempting to comprehend the space around them.

The owner of the voice was a relatively tall woman who looked to be made of metal and ceramic, like the Drifter’s favorite frame other than their own lovers, Kullervo.. Deep blue skin accented with wine red and gently worn gilding, draped in silks that matched. “From your clothing and instrument.. You look to be a performer.. Have you come to play for the king returned? Perhaps my time is finally at its end.." She let out a melancholy but somehow satisfied sigh, like one Flare had as they felt the first of Helminth's techrot tendrils wrap around their body back in 1999. How distant that seemed, now..

"I would be careful if I were you, though.. Bombastine will be jealous. And with his jealousy, pain unending..” She offered the hand of her longer arm for Flare to take, to help them up. “My name is Luscinia.. What is yours, stranger?”

 

Flare stood with Luscinia’s help, suddenly finding themself.. A bit shorter than they had expected; distinctly lacking their permanent high heels. They looked down at themself, finally, and Lizzie at their side..

What. The. Fuck.  

They were. Human again?!

Their body was just as they remembered it before their transformation, pale exposed skin dotted here and there with flakes of silver and gold glitter.. 

They were dressed in a short-cropped draping robe of soft, decadent charcoal and red silk with shining gold and silver accents, colored like their protoframe skin and their stage costume before it, with freshly painted sparkling black fingernails, and sandals whose golden lacings wrapped all the way up to their thighs at the edge of their robe’s gold-embroidered hem. The only remainder of even a memory of their techrot-transformed body other than Lizzie were their metallic finger-picks and a pair of sharp, intricate twisted golden armlets which hugged their shoulders and upper arms, vaguely mirroring their sharp shoulders.

Lizzie was changed, too, though still very herself in comparison. Her necks had bent into a sort of flattened DNA corkscrew spiral, her strings as well, holding each other tight and rendering her into a three-stringed instrument.. Like the Drifter’s Shawzin back home. Once, Flare thought to consign her to this place, and the Drifter wholeheartedly refused.. Sorry, Drifter, but she's here now..

She purred to life once again, starting to find her voice through brand new chords. “ Ooh.. Strange tastes here, aren’t there, Flare? Can You feel it too, Lover? We feel.. Joy.. Oh, it’s been so long..”

“I’m.. I’m Flare. And this is Lizzie..” Flare finally responded to Luscinia, leaning Lizzie’s newly singular neck against their thigh, rubbing their thumb affectionately over the claws that now clasped one another tightly at the tip. ”And no, I’m just..” They looked around. 

This was Duviri. 

The Drifter had said that they were Duviri, and Duviri was them..

Maybe they weren’t just being poetic, after all? Maybe they ended up here somehow, when they fell..

“..Looking for someone we lost.”

 

Luscinia gave a sad, knowing smile. “Aren’t we all, friends.. Aren’t we all.. Come.. Let us get out of the open air, before the Dax spot you. They have been on high alert ever since the king returned.. No matter what color the sky is. I would hate to see you cut down so soon after your arrival.” She said, beckoning Flare to follow her to the cover of her stage.

---

Somewhere else, Duviri’s second, or, perhaps, first and true, king, woke from a hazy dream.. 

 

Thrax sat at their side on the fainting couch they woke on, his body language the gentlest that it had been in literal ages. “Welcome back.. I missed you, friend.” The perpetually young tyrant spoke softly, laying a gilded hand on the arm of his oldest friend.

 

The porcelain face of the blissful Fool smiled back at Thrax, in ignorance of all they had just lost. “I missed you too..” 

What did he miss them for? What did they miss him for?

They’d always been here..

This was their home.. Where else would they be?

Why would they ever leave when they were just so happy here? 

They stretched their arms out, blissfully basking in the warm sunlight that fell over their ceramic skin. “I feel so light.. It’s such a beautiful day, Thrax, we should go for a run! No- a race! I'll get my Kaithe- Have you seen Brimon? I'd bet I can break that record of his today!”

 

Notes:

This chapter is named for the Hades (game) OST track of the same name, because that game is also very duviri to me, looping deaths and snarky bi protags and roguelike elements and all; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oksESAMg7WM

/Slaps Flare’s back/ This bitch (gender neutral) can hold so much survivor’s guilt (actually they distinctly could not, whoops)
I would have included Amir into this more but.. It’s so much funner with the horror of isolation (: they already have lizzie, amir would mean they have a whole support system, can’t have that in basically a horror fic..

Also very pre-emptive note that will not make sense until later: I realize that I’ve put the spirals in the wrong order, this is on purpose; I’ve ordered them roughly by how.. in tune my Drifter is with each emotion i suppose, from least to most. pun slightly intended.

Chapter 2: All that remains of the dream

Whisked away from any prying eyes, Flare began to go over what they knew of Duviri in their head from what the Drifter had told them, and what they had heard from the others. 

It was the Drifter’s first home. It was their prison. It was them. Their favorite storybook as a child, that was clung onto so hard it bloomed and grew around them like a cocoon, saving them from death or worse when they had been abandoned by the Indifference. Where Flare made Lizzie from their own blood, their own grief and rage; the Drifter’s pain and fear, screamed to the Void, made Duviri.

 

“Lost in thought, friend?” Luscinia cut in, standing with her hands delicately draped across one another at her waist, head cocked to one side.

Luscinia. When the Drifter was the most open about Duviri, they always spoke of her. The sorrowful singer whose memory was permanently etched across their cheeks. Surely she knew something of what was going on here– If the Drifter were here, surely they would have gone to see her by now?

“You could say that, yeah.. You said..” The Drifter was the ruler of this place, once, they had sheepishly admitted to Flare. One of them, anyhow, alongside Dominus Thrax. “You said the king returned?”

 

Luscinia nodded. “My sire has been convalescing for some time, now– None have seen their face amongst us, but their presence is unmistakable.. The hermit down below knows more of the nature of things, I think, but.. I haven’t the will to speak of such things with him. Even if not for my gilded cage; I don’t think I could bear hearing why our sire has returned in such a way.. They came crashing down to earth one day, you see– Thrax’s men scooped them up before I could even hold them, like a babe stolen from its mothers arms..” Her voice wavered, reaching out her arms as if motioning to catch something as tears started to stream out from two small holes in her mask, at the corners of her eyes. “Are they who you are searching for? I wondered if any of their beloveds would come searching.. They speak of you every time they appear.. It brings me such pain to know that only they have found such happiness of all of us, but.. It also lifts my heart, even a little, to see them smile so..”

 

The Drifter had come back here many times since Flare had known them– sometimes they left for a few days, even a week’s time, to tend to this place; to keep it as a bulwark against that rap-tap-tapping darkness.. But they had still taken time to be with their old friends, it seemed. 

Flare wanted with every part of their being to cry along with Luscinia, but hearing that they were here, being reminded of their love.. A spark of joy lit in their chest for the first time in weeks, which Lizzie mirrored with mad little flurries of giggles at their side. “They are who I’m looking for, yes.. You said a hermit? Where is he?”

 

“The hermit Teshin resides below.. Sometimes he comes up to speak to Mathila, who saved him long ago, but.. She is gone from this place for a time, and he has been a subtle presence as of late; busy holding the walls up in the Undercroft as best he can in his conspirator’s absence.. Usually our sire is the only one who can breach the gates that lead to his cave; but.. If you are in truth who I think you are, friend, he may just open the gate for you.” She once again reached out for Flare’s hand. “Come, I will lead you to the nearest passage to the Undercroft.. Stay close by me; Flare, the Dax would not dare touch the king’s favorite songbird.”

She was referring to herself, but.. Flare couldn’t help but smile, thinking of the Drifter gazing lovingly at them when they and Lizzie sang together. Could have been the darkest track that Temple and the Rippers had ever wrote and you would think it was a love song, looking at the Drifter’s face..

Luscinia guided them by the arm nearby to an uneven plane of obsidian which began to waver and crack the closer Flare got to it. “Ah– for once, we are lucky.. Stay safe, new friend; I hope we do not meet again, for the better..”

 

Flare nodded. “Thank you.. It was nice to finally meet you, Luscinia.” They pushed through the cracked barrier and found themself in a dark, cool cave.. Their eyes took a moment to adjust from the bright rainbow colors of Joy into the calm, low-lit space; littered with an array of weapons.. And kneeling, lifeless Warframes.

A man approached with a walking stick– old with bright blue eyes and a cracked scar spidering across his face, and a strange blue.. Rabbit thing tucked under one arm. “Hmm.. Terra, there’s a visitor.. So, once again, a savior comes from the other end of the wall to pull the king from the brink..” His booming voice spoke as he judged Flare, looking them and Lizzie at their side thoroughly. “Not a warrior, however.. This will be a difficult one.”

 

Flare scoffed. “I’m not here to help your damn king; I don’t play with tyrants, I’m here–”

Teshin smacked Flare over the head with his staff. Not hard enough to actually injure them, but hard enough to make his point. “You know well who I mean, you rebel idiot.”

“--Fucking. Ow.” Flare glared at Teshin. If this really was the Drifter’s old mentor.. They were grateful that none of his personality seemed to rub off on them. Not too much at least. “Yes, I’m here for the Drifter. Just speak clearly, hells.. You have no clue what day I’ve fucking had, even before this. ”

 

“'Drifter'.. You don’t hear that name around here, these days..” Teshin leaned on his staff, showing his age a bit more as he continued to hide how much he was concerned for whatever had happened to his pupil. “They fell from the heavens much as you did– their mind shattered; scattering into thousands of pieces and sending the spirals into a state of chaotic disorder once more..”

 

Flare’s eyes glazed over a bit, remembering the Drifter’s broken skull, held so carefully in their hands, as they begged for the time traveler to not leave them and Amir alone..

 

“They, more than ever, are found everywhere across Duviri.. But some shards are larger than others, I've seen.. If they could be reminded that they are pieces of a whole; the rest would surely fill in the gaps.. And any small fragments that are unable to be found, replaced with the liquid gold of love.” Teshin waxed poetic, watching Flare’s face as they started to piece together, fittingly, what the old Dax was implying. “Joy is high in the air at the moment.. Even now, it is their most fragile mask; as a beginning test of my theory, find the part of them that has replaced Mathila the Joyful– remind them of what they have lost. That pain you hold in your heart is what will save them. Cry it out, and surely the facade will shatter.”

 

“You speak the truth, old man..” Lizzie chimed in, still sounding just a bit too happy. “Our Lover and Us– We will shred the Demon apart and put Them back together with glue of Their own sweet viscera, We promise you that! We Must, or else We’ll all fall into the pits too, won’t We? No pressure!”

 

Teshin glared, confoundedly, at Lizzie, then up at Flare.

“Don’t worry, she’s not contagious.. Pretty sure anyway.” Flare smirked a bit, lifting up Lizzie and swinging her around their back by her newly gilded techrot-infested strap. Gods, they really were working by fairy tale logic in here, weren’t they.. Well, it was the only lead they had to go on, so.. “Alright.. We’ll bite. Any idea where that.. Piece of them is?”

“Likely bounding through the fields and forests downwind of Thrax’s palace, as they did as a babe. Step forth from the portal and you should find yourself close– Just listen for their laughter; as rare as it is, certainly you will recognize them in some way or another.” Teshin motioned to the portal behind Flare, which began to crack once again. 

Was the Drifter’s joy really that fragile? Even in 1999, surrounded by friends, by lovers, with how wide, and warm, and often they smiled? Was it so hard to come by, even here, a place that had once been made perfectly for them, that Teshin thought their laughter was so rare?

“Be warned.. In isolation, even the most pleasant emotion can become deadly. Especially given the chaotic state we reside in for the moment.. Good luck, musician.”

Chapter 3: Dog Days are Over

Flare squinted as they exited the portal; blinded by the bright morning sun of Joy. They found themself atop a small, grassy cliff overlooking the road between the King’s palace and a nearby farming estate; though the stranger to this world had no context for either.

 

They couldn't help but be entranced for a moment in the sight of it all; rolling, spring green hills, lavender trees whose floral scented leaves drifted through the calm breeze; the sound of unrecognizable birdsong and distant laughter.

Flare thought; how long it had been since they had been in anything close to ‘nature’? Not techrot-encrusted city streets or long roads between venue A and venue B, but nature. It was almost impossible to remember the last time they had. They still weren’t, they reminded themself.. Though this was real, as the Drifter frequently insisted it was, not a fragment of it was anywhere near natural.

From the alien plants, to the almost spine-like stone structures, to the swirling sky and distorted clouds, to a massive statue of Thrax in the sky; hands held aloft.. To.. Was that.. The Zariman? In the far distant sky, surrounded in swirling, mercurial energy.. It looked just like how the Drifter had described; an unfathomably large ship, currently lodged in a tear in the Void itself like a cork..

 

A warm breeze blew past and Lizzie hummed to life on Flare’s back, breaking them from their trance. She spoke as if she was reading from a script; speaking in a tone not quite her own, as if she, the Infestation herself, had been possessed,

 

“When Joy is as fleeting as a breath, it becomes rusted, out of practice; out of tune. None knew that better than the Fool.”

“What is Joy, after all, to One who has it ripped out from Their grasp at every turn? False hope in the breast of the would-be Hero, or Madness, to the dark heart that spurns its sweetness?”

 

Flare furrowed their brow, looking back at her over their shoulder. “You alright, Lizzie? The hell was all that?”

She made a shudder of a sound that reminded Flare a bit of Amir when the Drifter left transference suddenly. “We are Fine, Our Dearest.. We aren’t.. Sure what came over Us.. Be cautious; the brightest light casts the deepest shadow; and shadows here already run deep as the hells..”

 

Flare almost lept down from the cliff before remembering; you’re human again, Flare. 

You’re fragile. 

The Helminth’s healing cannot reach you here, nor could Lettie’s first aid, or the gentle mechanic’s hand of your own sweet goth ‘Doctor Frankenstein’. 

Careful. Despite the fact that they’re a bit less.. Spindly than normal, your ankles can break.

They cautiously clambered down the rocky hill to the emerald road below and looked for any indication of where they were at all. No street signs, no markers, just a long stretch of immaculately polished material.. Might as well follow that laughter?

 

A pair of Duviri’s citizens passed them on the road on their way; not paying any mind to the stranger in their midst. Both were the same evidently Orokin azure; dressed in delicate pink robes similar in cut to the one that Flare had been placed in, and they leaned close into each other; the one held the other’s longer arm with their shorter, leaning head against shoulder as they merrily walked down towards the palace, speaking sweet things just above their breath..

Flare did nothing but watch them as they passed, absentmindedly rubbing a thumb over Lizzie’s strap for any amount of comfort.. Remembering the first time they saw the Drifter and Amir together that first month in the mall; in subtle, jealous awe that they had found love in the hell that was the time-trapped Höllvania. When they were convinced they’d never feel that sort of emotion ever again; it felt bittersweet, watching the Drifter peck Amir on the cheek, hearing them flirt with each other when they thought they were the only ones in earshot..

They shook their head and continued down the path; towards the source of whatever that almost gratingly happy laughter was. They peeked their head over a hill to see a pair of figures running together on the backs of strange, almost skeletal horses. Kaithes; Flare reminded themself, from the tale of one of the Drifter’s more embarrassing death-induced Duviri scars.

 

“You’ll never catch me, Brimon!” The figure at the head of the race cried out through their laughter; it was hard to get a look at them at such speed, but it was clear they were dressed in rich pink silk, with a matching mask.

“We’ll just see about that, Sire! I’ve been about this track nine times just today; where it's clear you haven’t ridden a Kaithe in an age!” The second figure taunted back; though it was clear he was quite behind his rival.

“Whatever do you mean, Brimon?” The figure in pink said, laughing as if what Brimon said was the most absurd thing they’d ever heard. “I ride Kaithes every day; you’re the one that’s gotten slow! Are you getting old? There’s no need to be ashamed; I hear one’s golden years are the happiest!”

 

As Flare watched the pair; Lizzie chimed in again, continuing the passage from before, it seemed;

 

“Neither; it became an addiction. Every source of Joy was to be wrung dry and sucked of all its marrow; and soon, only the purest source could give the Fool what They craved.”

“To the Fool; pain was a lie told by the body, grief a lie told by the mind. Purest joy could only be found in the falsest of truths; as Their eyes aimed only skywards, and Their feet only to the edge.”

 

Before Flare could question her again, the now winner of the Kaithe race halted in their tracks and addressed them; “Hoy, Stranger! Perk up, will you? You cannot dwell on your woes forever; why not try a bit of positivity for a change? It will brighten the day for all to see.. Put on a smile! Call it a royal decree.” They chuckled, leaning a bit over the side of their Kaithe to better get a look at Flare at the bottom of the small cliff they stood atop.

The Fool was in full view now; turquoise and gold skin clothed in a short pink robe, a matching mask with smiling, closed eyes that covered their forehead down to their nose, and a long, carved braid of dark hair down the center of their head adorned with bright pink flowers. In body, they looked almost like any other Duviri citizen, aside from one detail that caught Flare’s attention– Where every other they’d seen so far had that strange, long Orokin right arm; the Fool’s was different. It looked like one of those long forearms had been ripped from another person and placed onto their own; which had a forearm and hand of normal length that hung disturbingly limply, split down the middle to make room for the ‘donor’. 

 

A chill went down Flare’s spine as the warm spring breeze of Joy rolled past again. That story the Drifter told of how they escaped; a meteor fell from the heavens, almost crushing them and delivering the hand of a person named the Lotus, which violently replaced their own, leaving them with a scar that went from between their middle and ring finger all the way down to their elbow..

“...Drifter?”

The Fool frowned, but for a moment, before returning to that cloying smile. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of, stranger. I am your king. No ‘Drifter’. Again. Royal decree; turn that frown upside down! You’re ruining your pretty face, you know! That's how you get wrinkles!” 

 

Ugh. That was a sentiment that Flare hoped they’d never hear again from anyone. ‘You’d be pretty if you smiled more’. Not usually something directed towards them specifically, but a sentiment that put a bitter taste on their tongue nonetheless..

That.. Voice, though.. 

 

The Fool swung themself off of their Kaithe and fell down the small ridge without even an attempt to catch themself, giggling as they slid down the rocky slope. “Oh, I hardly noticed that edge there, silly me! Come, walk with me, stranger!” Without giving Flare space for another word, the Fool grinned widely, grabbed ahold of Flare’s hand and began to run in the opposite direction of where Flare was headed; back towards Thrax’s palace. “Perhaps by being in my company for a time, my bliss will rub off on you!”

 

Their voice was almost unrecognizable through the sickeningly joyful glaze it had been coated in, but with a few more words, Flare was sure of it– 

The Drifter lived and breathed, rendered in teal and gold porcelain. 

Flare stumbled for a bit as they tried to meet the Fool’s pace, still a bit shaky on legs they were now unused to. “Sugar– It’s me! It’s Us! Angel, don’t you recognize me?! It’s Flare! Please, listen to me– you have to come back with me, we don’t know what to do without you..” Tears began to well over the corners of their eyes for the thousandth time since the Drifter died, being blown down their cheeks by the breeze and the speed at which they were being forced to run down that emerald trail.

 

The Fool halted in their tracks, making Flare run right into them with the sudden change in momentum. There was another moment where Flare thought they could see just a flicker of any emotion beyond Joy on the Fool’s face, but that was quickly snuffed away, replaced with that dull, false bliss. “You sound a bit mad, there, friend.. I don’t know who you are; haven't seen you a day in my life! You are a stranger to my kingdom– which, in fact, means you are lucky I’ve turned a kindness towards you.. Ah, here, something that may refocus your mind!” They rushed to the side of the path and plucked a bright pink wildflower, which they tucked behind Flare’s ear, before starting to walk again. 

“Angel, please–” Flare’s grip on Lizzie tightened as they followed after. Could the Drifter really not recognize them, even this fragment of them? Of all of the pieces of them, wouldn’t the one seemingly dedicated only to happiness be the one to recognize one of their lovers immediately?

“Happiness is like a muscle, friend; you have to exercise it or else it’ll just wither away.. I think that may be your issue, if you’re crying so on this beautiful day.. Take joy in the little things; if you must. The flowers, the trees, the breeze–” They spun and opened their arms wide as they continued to move, carelessly ignoring the fact that they were currently dancing toward a bridge over the Void itself, between Primrose Village and Thrax’s Palace. “If that won’t make you happy, stranger, I think you’re a lost cause!”

 

Flare stood stunned, watching them continue on into the distance. Their heart beat loudly in their ears, jumping a bit at every twirl and twist of motion that almost took the Fool straight over the edge..

 

Lizzie spoke again in their ear, sounding a bit more like herself, though Flare still doubted if the words were coming from her or not..

 

“In irony; the Fool sliced away at everything that was not purely Joyful. Anything tainted by Pain, by Woe, was to be cast aside with all the rest.”

“But those bittersweet, lovely things always returned to nip at their heels, screaming: remember– remember what you lost. Remember what can still be gained in the face of it. No hound of hopeful tragedy could get their master’s attention before their heel left the ground over the abyss of madness..”

 

Flare cautiously walked forward, joining the Fool on the bridge, desperately trying not to look down to the swirling, saccharine-hued nothingness below. If the Drifter couldn’t recognize their face, their voice, or even Lizzie.. What might snap them from this? That old man was so gods-damned confident that Flare could do something, achieve something in the face of this; what more did Flare have left, if the Drifter–or this aspect of them, anyway, truly was rejecting even the smallest thought that might cause them pain, as the story Lizzie was telling suggested?

 

Flare’s mind drifted back to Höllvania; early on, they had overheard Kaya and the Drifter speaking at a booth in the Round Table one night about the prospects of her following them through the Void; first touching down in Duviri as a sort of ‘connecting flight’ and then to the distant future that soon became the young protoframe’s second home..

“In case you get lost, or we get separated.. Anything like that, I want to give you a tool to.. Recognize if the me you’re talking to is really.. Well. Me.” The Drifter spoke confidently, sitting across from Kaya and grabbing a french fry from the basket the two of them were sharing. They intentionally wanted to share a meal with her while they talked about this. The Drifter already saw so much of themself, of the Operator, in Kaya at times, so.. Might as well mirror that night on the Zariman, explaining what had happened in the New War in the Operator’s absence to their ‘younger’ self over a shared plate.

“Okay..” Kaya sounded a bit confused, but motioned with one of her hands for the Drifter to continue, following their lead and taking a fry to eat while the time traveler talked.

“In addition; if you do get lost, you can use this to.. Call out to me. Either of me, either.. Me me, or the other me on the end of our little relay will recognize this, and come running when we hear it; like an..’SOS’, specifically between the two of us, that I’m extending to you. It’s a simple little set of call-and-responses; I just need you to repeat after me, and then we can practice the back-and-forth, okay? If you can’t whistle well, you can hum it; it’s the tune that matters, not the instrument, so to speak.” The Drifter explained, then took a deep breath in, and pursed their lips to let out a haunting, three-note whistle.

Kaya responded; a bit off key, but it was good enough to be recognizable.

Again, the Drifter whistled– five notes, lilting through the air across the whole bar. Something about the alien melody sent a chill down Flare’s spine, even just remembering it.

Kaya responded, a bit closer to being in tune this time.

The Drifter smiled proudly at her and continued, this time four descending notes.

Kaya responded, perfectly.

Finally, with a bit of transference, perhaps, between them; the pair of time travelers whistled out another five note bar, perfectly in harmony.

The Drifter gave Kaya a wide grin. “Perfect! Now.. Call.. And I’ll respond.”

 

Back in Duviri, Flare whistled that first three notes, staring at the Fool for any fragment of recognition at all through that blissful ignorance they drowned themself in.

And they responded. Instinctively; the Fool whistled that next line, that haunting five-note melody..

 

The Fool stopped dead in their tracks, spinning on their heels and just barely stopping a step short of the bridge’s edge. A small crack started in their mask, right at the center left of their head.. Right at that point the bullet broke the front of the Drifter’s skull. “...Can you not just leave me alone? ” 

Oh that hurt like a knife to the heart, but Flare could hear them now, in that, truly. “Drifter–”

“Can’t you see I’m happy here?! This is the happiest I’ve ever been and you’d take that from me?” The Fool scowled, sending hairline cracks all throughout their face that had only been sculpted to be joyful, as they continued to inch towards the edge in a blind effort to make distance between themself and Flare. First the heel..

Flare cautiously stepped closer towards them, eyes flicking anxiously between the Fool’s teetering position and their face, as the mask started to crack outwards more and more. “You would be happier with us! Please! And if you’re so dedicated to everything being so fucking happy, what about US? Amir isn’t himself anymore– neither am I, none of us are! There’s a gaping hole where you should be in our hearts and we don’t know what to do!”  The arch of their foot was off, now, the other just barely keeping them steady..

 

“Get AWAY FROM ME, YOU SORROWFUL INGRATE. ” The Fool bellowed, their twisted expression fully breaking the mask from the empty, void-filled pits that were their eyes as their voice echoed and shook the space around them. “You are ruining everything just being here! Just leave me to my bliss! Can’t you just fucking learn to lighten up a little?!”

Oh hells that fucking hurt. This thing, this fragment? Had their voice– were those their thoughts? 

Did the Drifter actually think that, even for a moment, whenever they found Flare crying? Whether it was before they found an understanding with Lizzie, or afterwards, after love had come into their hearts, but Flare’s depression, their grief still grabbed ahold of them for a night?

 

Or was Duviri targeting Flare now, too? Reaching into the darkest pit of their soul to try and trap them here, too?

 

“Please, Angel, just listen to me for a moment! Step towards me, you’re falling!” Flare reached to try and grab a hold of the Fool’s arm as their sandal finally slipped off the side, but the slick, smooth texture of their skin slipped right through their sweating fingers..

The Fool finally looked back to where they were stepping, and their crackling scowl turned to a mad grin as one foot went backwards right over the bridge, soon joined by the other, with no attempt to stop themself at all. If anything, they leaned into the pit on purpose.

As they fell, they started laughing unlike Flare had ever heard from their voice. Not joy. Not bliss. Not loving happiness. Just pure, unadulterated madness, as they screamed,

 

“FINALLY! I’M FREE!”

 

Flare watched in horror, just barely catching themself from falling as the Fool’s silhouette disappeared into the swirling, distorted clouds below.

Through the empty, howling wind and their own pounding heartbeat, Flare heard Lizzie's voice as they saw something giant and serpentine break through the clouds below them where the Fool met their end.

 

“Joy becomes a Dragon when Ignorance takes hold; the Blissful apathy that will devour You whole like a yawning pit, and deliver You directly into the teeth of that Indifferent, Smiling maw.”

 

A twisting, pink-hued Orowyrm raised into the sky, rushing straight past Flare and sending them toppling and sliding backward with the sheer force of the wind that was rushing by. Somewhere between the voice of the Drifter, and a voice that any of Duviri’s citizens would recognize as Mathila’s, the beast laughed madly as it raced through the clouds.

Unable to stabilize themself against the wind, Flare went over the edge as well; as the sky around them shifted from the bright blue and rainbow of Joy, to a sickly green. Not green like the Void, the eerie pale green glow of the Drifter’s eyes, but an almost vomit-like acidic hue in which giant, glaring orange eyes opened wide and glared daggers towards Flare as the musician’s vision went black.

 

---

Under the swirling, jealous, bile green sky of their spiral, the starving Reprobate leaned out of their window in Thrax’s castle. Behind their rich green mask, their eyes trained on a pair of lovers eloping to some corner of the royal grounds below where they thought they were unseen, unheard.

Spinning one of their many intricate rings about their fingers, the Reprobate felt a deep, unending, gnawing, vitriolic hunger welling up in their belly.

They had everything.

They were a king.

All of Duviri would get on their hands and knees to beg for even a moment of their attention, wait on their every need, every desire, so why were they so Void-damned hungry?!

What was missing?

They dripped with gold, they were Thrax’s favorite, everyone loved them, but.. 

 

The lovers below traced fingers over one another, tumbling and giggling in the bushes.. Pushing their golden fingers under each other’s clothes..

Touch.. Sex.. Affection beyond the jealous admiration of the peasant.. True admiration..

The Reprobate ground their thighs together so forcefully that their gold-flaked glazing started cracking and crumbling under the sheer force of their desire.

 

Their face contorted sourly and they reached over, grabbing the empty, hollow trophy that was the severed head of Bombastine from a table beside them and chucking it with force at the pair of lovers, who screamed, stopped their fooling about and stared up at the Reprobate stunned and ashamed before running off, fearful of the beautiful king’s wrath.

 

“We get it, you’re in love! You don’t have to rub it in our royal fucking face!” The Reprobate screamed at them as they went stumbling down the street, then spun about, leaning their arms back on the windowsill. “Ungrateful little leeches.. What is coming of this place anymore..”

Ugh, they needed to get out of here.. Needed.. Something to fill this yawning hole in them.

Wine, fruit, attention..

Someone cute on their arm, maybe, just for the night?

That would distract from this nicely..

Notes:

This chapter was really fun to write in part because Griffin Puatu, the VA for the Owl Drifter/Operator voiced a very similar character in tone to the Fool here, Happy-sided ENA; here's a link to a video of him talking about acting as her; which was a big inspo for this chapter and how I wrote the Fool's dialogue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxxTBE0bqVs

More of this fic will likely be on hold for a bit, I have legitimately been trying to get references for areas on this one; Flare landed in the Chamber of the Muses at the edge in front of Luscinia's stage, and this chapter aligns mostly properly with the area between Thrax's Palace and Primrose Village.

This. means. that because i'm very extra, to write the next chapter i actually have to *catch* an Envy spiral when i have time for a full Duviri run for reference pics/ so i can go location scouting, and i keep getting unlucky with that =w=; c'mere Bombastine I just wanna talk...

So bear with me if the next one takes a bit; I will return to your regularly scheduled fluff/smut/*actual* happy emotional stuff in the meantime. because i have a goddamn problem. (affectionate, i'm loving it in here)

Chapter 4: At the window, who’s there? (Hunger!) Eugh, *Hunger.*

Flare felt the harsh collision of landing before any of their senses came back to them, finding themself once again scattered across the coast of an unfamiliar space. This time not dust and sand, but a harsh, polished surface of some kind of dock almost? The marble and gold structure looked partially broken in places, reaching out into the void to the mainland, as it were, of the rest of Duviri. Casting their eyes up, they were met with that series of accusing green and red eyes that dotted the sky, staring at them from any and every angle, which that snaking, pink dragon wove in and out of, still laughing in mad bliss..

"Fucking hells.. That thing is still out there.." They were still out there, Flare reminded themself.. A piece of the Drifter gone truly mad; was that success or failure at their little 'mission' set by Teshin?

Now Flare started to see Duviri for what it truly was. For every kind, pleasant memory, there was a hell that met it. For every rise, a fall to drag the Drifter back down to earth. Or into the pit.. Sitting there on the edge of that island, Flare began to cry again, thinking of another death that the Drifter suffered being piled on top of the last. And they sounded so happy to die.

To finally be free.. 

Where Joy’s air was light, breezy and full of a cloying whimsy, this spiral clung to Flare’s skin with a deep-seated, truly oppressive humidity. The color was drained out of every angle; anything not colored that bright, toxic green of the sky had been drained gloomy and grey, as if the green was sucking at everything else to empower its own disgustingly hungry hue.

It reminded them, regretfully, of Lizzie, before they grew to understand each other– clawing, clinging hands on every angle of their mind, burrowing in and trying to devour them whole. As Flare shivered at the memory, Lizzie herself began to speak again in that tone that wasn't quite her own;

 

“Envy is like a wound; left untended, it festers, it rots, grows teeth and forgets itself; until it becomes naught but pure, unending hunger.”

“Other than Us, none knew that better than the Reprobate; for what is Envy to the One who hungers for everything? Everything they ever truly desired, ever truly deserved, was to be bottled up and thrown into a deep, dark, pit..”

 

Envy. The Drifter never really felt envious, from Flare’s perspective; they’d never seen them truly jealous. Just so.. So hungry.

For touch, for affection, for attention..

They hung their arms over all their friends, curled in tight to their partners in bed, wore Flare and Amir and even Lizzie out for all they had while having sex whenever they were allowed to. It was kind of cute, Flare thought, though always with a lingering bit of sadness, knowing what and where the Drifter had come from. Being abandoned time, and time, and time again– It didn’t matter how many people did love them every day, that shit stuck. It clung to every edge of them; every slight glance of fear that they might be left alone again, every clinging grasp as Flare or Amir had to leave them alone in bed to go tend to something important..

And now they were to confront just that part of them? What was their hunger, left all alone, as they had been?

 

In the distance, Flare could hear laughter again, and voices, with one rising high above the rest. They couldn’t understand the language being spoken, but the flow and cadence reminded Flare of a stage play..

Flare stood shakily and began to walk through the beautifully tended gardens and polished paths that curled around the fleeting island known only as the Amphitheatre. They pondered- the ‘Fool’ had apparently replaced one of Thrax’s courtiers, so wherever the next one was, certainly they had, too– Shit. Right. Bombastine.

That was a name Flare did remember from the Drifter’s stories of Duviri. And they hated him. You'd think Bombastine was just as bad as Entrati or that 'Ballas' with the level of vitriol that came into their voice speaking of him. They’d put up with him for ages as king to maintain appearances, but they fucking despised him, especially when they gained just enough maturity to recognize the horror that almost everything they thought was beautiful about their dearest Luscinia was caused by the shithead that claimed to love her.

But still, if the Drifter was right, Bombastine was part of them, somehow; and a part that they violently separated themself from.. 

 

Oh hells, if Flare was right on the dot about this.. This really did feel like dealing with Lizzie again, before she understood how horrific her original plans for Flare were.. They felt a sinking, dreadful pit growing in their stomach as they got closer to the stage at the center of the island.

 

The single actor on the stage finally became understandable as they came into better earshot, as they beckoned for Flare as well as a few other of Duviri’s citizens milling about to come in close enough for them to get their claws into and draw them in. 

“Come on, Come on! There’s plenty of us for everyone! ”

The actor was alone in their performance, but not truly alone on their stage, as either clinging onlookers or stagehands surrounded them; placing props into their hands, tracing fingers across their exposed skin whenever they were close enough to the audience to touch, their eyes and ears clinging onto every word and fluid, dance-like motion that the actor was making. 

 

Flare had been in that place before; not quite like that, but they knew what it felt like to look down into those front rows, at the reaching hands of those who had secured a space closest to the band, the adoring eyes and praising cries.. Both the pleasant feeling of praise, and the creepy feeling when there was someone up there that was far too eager to try and reach a hand out and try and touch Temple or one of their bandmates.

 

“Ooh, naughty little things today, aren’t you?” The actor addressed a single member of their audience who just laid a hand on the back of their exposed ankle, kneeling down close to get right in their face. “We said there’s plenty to go around but that’s no reason to grab at your dear sweet Reprobate’s heels, you darling little leech; you might trip us!”

 

Gods, they just had to speak in the royal we, didn’t they.. 

 

The Reprobate’s voice darkened as they confronted the audience member, grabbing onto the front of their robe to keep them from running off. “Might make us break our beautiful face on the pavement! You don’t want that, do you? Certainly not..” After a short pause, the Reprobate gasped dramatically, tightening their grip on the citizen’s robes. ”Ah! We recognize you now, pathetic little whelp! Aren’t you one of dear sweet Luscinia’s shawzin players? Here to bring us down to her level, are you?” They stood suddenly and snapped their fingers. “Guards! Take this one away!”

 

“No! Please, sire, I’m not– I adore you, sire, I just wanted– NO! PLEASE!”

 

Flare watched in horror as a pair of Dax soldiers appeared seemingly out of thin air and grabbed that audience member, dragging them off kicking and screaming to gods only know where. Flare had to remind themself to not interfere, as much as it went against everything they stood for, gripping tightly onto Lizzie’s strap around their shoulder. You’re just as vulnerable as that person is. You have no powers, and no proof that Lizzie could still produce flame, and this was not the time to test that. That soldier, let alone all of his allies, could kill you in an instant, and you have no idea if you’ll come back from that like the Drifter does here..

Flare hadn't realized yet that they already had; hadn't parsed that painless fall into Joy's clouds as the death that it was.

 

The Reprobate casually dusted themself off for a moment while they waited for the screaming to go out of earshot, their face twisted into a disgusted expression.. And then they snapped right back into their role, taking up a gilded goblet of wine in one hand and flowing back into their performance as if nothing had just happened. Now that Flare could understand them, it wasn’t really a play as much as it was them telling story upon story of how great they were, putting down the other four courtiers and Thrax himself. 

Finally getting a good look at them, The Reprobate was beautiful. Beautiful not in the way the Drifter was, when relaxed and feeling so wholly themself, but in the way a palace was.. Or some excessive, strutting asshole or another that dressed not by their own style, but by the most expensive piece on every rack of every store they could get their hands on. Expensive to a fault, every tiny detail of them so rich it could pay the average person's rent for a year, if not more.

Every finger and toe had at least one gleaming, golden ring or gilded swirl through their glazing, their neck was weighed down heavily with gold chains and pendants, their soft, sage green robes had almost every inch embroidered in decadently detailed goldwork and their skin itself had flecks of precious metals mixed in with the swirling, melting greens. All capped off with a rich, money-green mask with smiling eyes– Not like the Fool’s, though. They were open and empty, aside from the pinpricks of familiar void-green glow- just the ghosts of irises and points for pupils- that sent a chill down Flare's spine as the Reprobate stared back across the crowd and right into their own golden eyes.

At that point of recognition, the realization that this was the piece they were looking for, this horrid, cruel thing, Lizzie spoke again; reading off the next lines of whatever script had overcome her,

 

“For all that the Reprobate fills Their gullet with beauty, with wealth, not a single thing will satiate Them, not even if They devour the world itself. The only thing that can fill that void in Their belly is something that They can never name.”

“For why would They? It brings Them only pain, only sorrow, knowing beyond all hope that the Smiling beast beyond all will never allow Them even that; so instead, the Reprobate devoured everything else They could get Their hands on; for even the briefest reprieve to that deep, starving pain.”

 

The Reprobate cleared their throat. “Ah, we see –And hear, good gods that prose is awful, isn’t it, dear ones– we have a newcomer to our stage! Now who might you be? Come in closer so that we can see you, you pretty thing.. No need to be shy!”

The Reprobate grinned, reaching out that long, right arm; still with the clinging remainder of a shorter limb, that in itself also had been decorated thoroughly; wrapped up in gilded ribbon to keep it from flopping about. They made an almost pleading ‘come hither’ with their golden fingers at the beautiful stranger that had just caught their attention. Surely anyone in this kingdom, stranger or no, couldn't resist getting closer to them, especially if asked?

 

Flare hesitantly took a step down into the tiered seating, eyes trained on the Reprobate. Sol, that was them. Teasing fingers drawing them over across the room when the Drifter was feeling a bit frisky, rendered in the appearance of something that in both look and action was so wholly opposite of Flare’s–of Temple’s– way of thinking. “I'm Flare, and this is my partner Lizzie.. Certainly you've heard of us before, 'sire'?" They said with confidence. No recognition in the Reprobate's eyes, just.. Curious hunger, which only made that dreadful pit in Flare's stomach deepen.

The Reprobate craned their head around to get a bit of a better look of Lizzie. “Ah, great. A musician. ” They sounded thoroughly disappointed. “Enough of those around here these days, don't you think, audience? Especially with such an ugly shawzin.”

 

Flare glared intensely at them for saying that. How fucking dare them. Even without the techrot winding through their breast, Flare could feel that fire building up, as Lizzie uncomfortably wriggled against their back at that comment.. She whispered, in her own voice, into Flare’s mind, “Careful, Dearest One.. Keep Yourself in check, even for this moment. All eyes are on Us.. Undressing Us, flaying Us, roasting Us on a spit in Their disgusting little minds.. We hate it here.”

 

“Where did you come upon such a darling outfit, though? The work is top notch.” With Flare refusing to get as close as the envious shard wished they would; The Reprobate began to step off stage. Even dropped out of their performance, it was like the whole world was their stage; their hangers-on still clung to them, and even acted as a footpath for them, lending back and hand and face for their delicate feet to trample upon, making a level path to get close to Flare just so they wouldn't have to take another single step down. “Now that we think of it..” The Reprobate turned over something in their head, circling around Flare and eyeing them up and down intently. That void of their eyes flickered in a familiar way once again.. Not just recognition, but that little sparkling shimmer of when the Drifter was smiling at someone they loved..

“..You know, perhaps we could have use of you after all! Once we are alone on the throne, we will need some new courtiers to replace the fools that cling to Thrax’s heels.. Oh, and you are such a pretty thing.. We’ve decided!” They snapped their fingers and stood up straight with a wide, thoroughly, disturbingly recognizable smile on their face. “Fuck off with the rest of you, this one is ours.” At that, they violently shoved away another one of their clinging hangers-on.

The woman toppled backwards on her feet in shock into a nearby pond, screaming in abject agony as she was immediately torn apart limb from limb and eaten alive by a horde of hungry, gilded eels. At this, the rest of the Reprobate’s clinging audience scattered, running away screaming about the golden maws.. 

 

Fucking hells. 

 

Flare felt sick, stepping backwards as the Reprobate just kept trying to get closer. That hunger in their eyes, it wasn’t the Drifter’s. Flare couldn’t believe that. They refused to believe that.

That hunger was something much more sinister. The greed of some predatory music producer; a devil offering immense sums if you just sold your entire soul, your entire identity, to the brand. 

The hunger of Viktor, looking for something else to twist to his own gains, confusingly envious of something about Temple or their band. It sure didn’t help that the Reprobate the entirety of Duviri around them was twisted to be the same sickly bright green as the billowing clouds of corrosive Efervon that choked the streets of distant Höllvania. 

“I’m not fucking yours.” Ugh, that hurt to say. That wasn't true- it was them. The Drifter. Somehow, this was them, but no, you won’t fucking have me. Not like this. I'm yours forever, so much so that I followed you to this hell, but not like this.

“Oh, you don’t need to be afraid, sweetheart! You’ll be well cared for. The prettiest little songbird that ever did live! You’ll look like us by the time we’re done with you, gold and glitter on every inch of you..” The Reprobate caught up to Flare, forcefully wrapping that long arm of theirs about their shoulder as if the two of them were friends. “It’ll be fine, songbird, just come with us and we’ll fix all.. This.” They gestured to Flare’s face. “Bit of a clashing look with the rest of this finery, all that.. Sharpness.”

“I’m not changing myself for you.” Flare hissed back at them, pulling themself out of the Reprobate’s grasp. On any other day, they would be  glad to put their own appearance at the mercy of the Drifter.. They were always so kind, so caring, they’d memorized their whole routine by this point; the only part they got a bit creative about was the shape of their eyeliner, and even then, The Drifter clearly did their best to use it to highlight every edge and angle of Flare that they adored, not change them to be something that they weren't. “I am myself. I always will be. WE always will be. I thought you were proud of that.”

 

A tiny, hairline crack opened in that perfect mask.

 

“So, the Reprobate fills Themself again, and again, and again; on fruit and gold and the praise of those who only love Them because they want to take Their place. And every time that true hunger rears its ugly head? It goes into a bottle. Bottle after bottle after tensely pressurized bottle, just waiting to burst at the slightest shift, gentlest touch..”

“Until the Reprobate had filled entire cellars of the sour, vinegar wine of that lonely, festering hunger. One cork pops, then another bottle shatters under the pressure– bleeding the rotting fruit of jealousy all across the floor..”

 

“--You know, dear, I think you’d do much better as a solo act. That strange thing on your back seems to only speak of ruin and woe.. Quite the buzz kill..” The Reprobate glared a bit at Lizzie, as they removed the longest necklace from around their neck, wrapping the chain around their wrist.

“Don’t you dare fucking talk about her like that!” Flare backed away further, off the path and a bit into the grass. “I love her. You fucking love her! If you think I’m pretty, surely you must remember that somewhere in there. You’re the one that got us together in the first place..”

The Reprobate cocked their head to the side, as that crack danced farther down their face. “What. You and the talking shawzin? Cursed thing that, ‘she’ must be; are you sure you read all the fine print on whatever deal you made with her? Absolutely certain there’s no fine line where she gets to eat you if you slip up and displease her? We know we would, you’d be such a fun little thing to carouse about as..” Those void-dark eyes coasted up and down Flare's body again, like some kind of predatory animal staring down a piece of meat.

 

Oh they did remember her. Even just a bit.

Or else why would they call back to Flare’s own fears of what might happen when they gave themself over to her? This twisted piece of the Drifter was starting to remember themself and their home in only the worst fucking ways..

“I’m sure. She’d never hurt me, and I’d never hurt her. Not ever. You can't bring doubt into my mind about that; I cast aside all my doubts the moment I took the leap of faith and let her in. You know that."

 

The Reprobate rolled their eyes, spinning about that necklace in one hand. “Sure, sure.. Fine, the cursed bloody shawzin comes with you, then.” They swung the golden chain out and it landed right around Flare’s neck like a lasso, where they started to harshly pull.

 

Flare's eyes widened as that pull almost made them stumble off their feet; they tried to dig their feet in to fight it, but it was difficult not to take even a couple of steps closer to that nightmare in front of them. This wasn’t their first time seeing the Drifter with a leash in their hands, but that was so much more gentle. That was more for Amir’s comfort than control. Flare grabbed a hold of the sharp chain and started trying to pull for control of it. “I’m not your fucking plaything! Let go of me!” The chain dug into their neck the more they fought, starting to cut at their all too human skin as the Reprobate started dragging them off towards the back of the island.

 

The Reprobate pouted towards Flare, continuing their insistent pull at Flare's neck. “Hush, you.. Is that any way to speak to your king, songbird? We saw you, we want you, so you are ours. Simple as! You don’t need to make it complicated. We just want you to sing your pretty little songs for us.. Is that so awful?”

The Drifter had a crush on Flare, and Amir, for that matter, from day one. It was just on the surface, raw judgement on looks and first impressions, but they did, in a sense, fall in love at first sight.. Was this.. Some terribly twisted memory of that? The Drifter putting their teeth into something that they saw they wanted before it could run away?

Lizzie continued her tale,

“Until the entire cellar floods, and it begins to spill out of the doors, up into the palace halls.. Through the vents of that haunted derelict ship in the sky, bubbling up through their very soul and vomiting forth from Their mouth wherever They speak;”

“Why? Why, of every soul in this forsaken universe are They doomed to this gnawing, unending hunger? For all the Reprobate has given of themself, for all they’ve suffered, for all they’ve lost, why?”

 

The Reprobate glared at Lizzie again. “Will you shut your accursed fucking maw, you twisted succubus. Ugh. See? What did we say about that damned thing? Buzz kill. Entire mood is ruined.. Reminds us of Luscinia..”

Usually that was said with a sad sort of nostalgic air, but through Bombastine’s lips, the Drifter’s love for Luscinia, and Lizzie, for that matter, came out as nothing but bile. Another crack opened up, and a shard of their mask fell inwards to the empty void inside..

 

Flare grabbed tighter at the gilded, biting leash around their neck, the metal chain cutting at their palm as they tried to free themself, feet braced as firmly as they could to the slick marble pavement and still trying to back away. “You should listen to her, you know. You always did. Even when I told you not to. You two have always gotten along so fucking well.. I can see why now.” Said with bile in their own voice, now, but there was a sadness to it.. “Hunger knows hunger, it seems.”

 

“And what the fuck would you know of hunger, songbird!?” The Reprobate hissed, both stepping towards Flare and pulling their makeshift leash in to be only inches from Flare’s face. “Do you know what it really feels like? To have any morsel of food you get your hands on stolen from you? Any little pleasure burnt to ash? We fucking deserve this. We deserve you.” Gods, Drifter, you do, but not like this.. “You’re so soft, your skin is so warm..” The Reprobate practically moaned out as they caressed one ceramic hand across Flare’s cheek, and down to the soft silks on their chest. On instinct, Flare thought; it was like they were reaching for where those hot swirls of techrot that they so loved usually were.. “We’d finally be full..” The deep vitriol in their voice started to soften and turn to a deep, desperate sadness, as tears rolled down through the growing cracks in their mask..

 

“You would.. You will.. But not like this, Drifter." Flare started to soften their voice a bit; despite the sickness in their stomach, and the stinging pain of that chain around their neck. Even through all of the greed, that was the most themself that the Reprobate had sounded this whole time.. “Let me go, come with me.. You can have me, but not now.. Drifter; if you can hear me in there, I love you, but not like fucking this.”

 

Those acidic tears started to burn and melt their mask as their face twisted into despair, “WHY NOT?! Why can’t I have this now?! I’m in so much fucking pain every gods-damned moment of my life, can I not have a SINGLE moment where I feel like I’m like everyone fucking ELSE?”

Lizzie cut in, also somehow sounding like she was crying. 

“What crime did they commit?! What god did they slight?! Certainly, the Reprobate must be the worst sinner that ever did live, if the world treated them like this. Perhaps they didn’t deserve anything at all..”

“Or; if the world would make a monster of them, deny them even the simplest pleasures.. They would become the monster it saw in them.”

 

“YOU JEALOUS HARPY, THEY’RE MINE. WILL YOU SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH.”

Lizzie hissed back, “They’re OURS, DEMON. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE BEFORE YOU MAKE A FOOL OF YOURSELF AGAIN.”

What the fuck did the Reprobate hear in that tale that Flare wasn’t. Where the fuck did that come from. The Drifter had love enough in their lonely heart that Flare wondered if their polycule might extend to just about everyone by the time that 1999 had finally served its purpose, but this was something entirely different.. Devoid of all their other emotions, untamed, festering, as Lizzie had said, their Envy was entirely unlike themself..

 

“Don’t you fucking DARE speak to her like that.” Flare’s voice shook with rage, as they finally pulled themself free of the Reprobate’s chain. They had to fight so hard that their right hand started bleeding, as the gold shredded through their skin.. Mirroring the moment the other half of their whole was born into the world. “Fuck you and your hunger and your fucking envy. I want something too– I want my fucking partner back! ALL of them! The Drifter that loves me for me, the one that loves my independence, the one with love enough to share with anyone that came their way! Not this.. Shell of you. Get the fuck away from us.”

 

The Reprobate violently grabbed onto the front of Flare’s robes, as piece after piece of their mask started to crack and crumble. There was nothing inside them except those two staring eyes in the dark.. Not in their head, nor anything else. They were utterly hollow.

“I GIVE YOU YOUR FUCKING VOICE BACK AND THIS IS WHAT I GET IN RETURN? REJECTION? ETERNAL FUCKING LONELINESS? DO I NOT DESERVE LOVE AFTER A LIFE OF FUCKING HELL? EVEN AS I AM? IN SICKNESS AND HEALTH OUR GILDED ARSE.”

 

Lizzie really sounded like she was trying to fight what came out of her next, but the raw energy of the situation was resonating with the darkest parts of her, as well;

“Take everything! RIP IT FROM THE FOUNDATIONS! Tear your claws into every thing and every one who ever shows you a semblance of care or affection and never let them go! After all, Reprobate, YOU DESERVE IT! RIP AND TEAR AND DEVOUR EVERYTHING UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT BUT BONES, THEN EAT THEM AS WELL! IF THEY CALL YOU DEMON, IF WE CALL YOU DEMON, THEN A DEMON THEY SHALL HAVE!”

 

“OH NOW YOU’RE SINGING MY TUNE, YOU TWISTED THING. MAYBE I’LL HAVE YOU INSTEAD–”

 

In a moment of impulsive, deep anger, Flare shoved the Reprobate backwards. All the rage on what was left of the Reprobate's face flickered out in an instant, only to replaced by fear as their heel slipped on the slick grass and into the same pool they had pushed one of their followers into. A golden maw snapped their leg with a sickening crunch the moment it hit the water, like they were waiting this whole time for their next meal. The Reprobate fell backwards and laughed madly, as maw, after maw, after maw ripped them to shreds, filling the once still, beautiful pond with deep red blood that cut through that eternally clinging toxic green. "OF FUCKING COURSE! YOU'RE JUST LIKE ALL THE REST! OF COURSE IT WOULD END THIS WAY!"

 

Flare stumbled back in horror, realizing what they had just done. Oh gods. Flare, you just killed them. And they’d remember that, wouldn’t they. Would they wake up with bite marks across their skin, not made out of clinging love but from the maws that their own partner had just fed them to?

Flare. You just fucking killed them. And they'll remember that forever. 

 

“IT’S NOT FUCKING FAIR!”  What little was left of the Reprobate cried out, shards of their arms desperately reaching out as they were eaten alive from the feet up. “WHY ME? WHY CAN’T I JUST FUCKING HAVE WHAT I DESERVE?”

 

As a maw finally snapped up the Reprobate’s head, shattering what was left of it, the great head of a bright green Orowyrm snapped up out of the water, in one bite devouring the golden maws that devoured them. As it rose up into the sky to join its dancing pink sibling, it flicked it’s tail just so to knock Flare into the blood-clouded water, where everything tried to drag them down– The long, twisting water plants, the current, the maws that were left behind– no. Green wyrmlings, that bit, and snapped and tore as both Flare and Lizzie screamed out their last breaths into the water..

 

And above, just barely visible as Flare’s vision went black once again, the sky lit on fire..

 

---

As the skies turned burning red, on an island newly reappeared from the Void, the Dissenter casually knocked their gilded knuckles against the cage bars of the seventh Kullervo, the regicidal, once collapsed into nothing but rubble, now returned by some means..

The Warframe’s head tilted up, his singular blazing eye gazing with fury towards his visitor. 

Surely it was his captor, come again to mock and prod and torture him again for all he had been accused of, wrongfully or not.. Instead he met with the cloaked face of a figure with a mask made of the same crimson-red ceramic as him, and a gaping, void-twisted hole where their heart should have been. 

 

The Dissenter held up the severed head of the Warden by his topknot to the bars, the all too familiar faced jailer’s eyes rolled back blankly and jaw hung limp. “Your captor is dead at last, my old friend! Come, if they are to make a statement of us both; let’s show them what true fury looks like before our execution, hm?” They snapped their fingers and Kullervo’s cage swung open, allowing the towering frame to step forward, glowering eye focused on his strange visitor. 

After a moment of consideration, Kullervo knelt in front of the Dissenter in fealty, then immediately felt a firm hand on his shoulder; fingers gripping hard enough that it started to crack his armor.

 

“Do not kneel to anyone, friend. Not even I. Where in the hells did your pride go, Kullervo? GET. UP.” The Dissenter's voice was somehow full of both love and fury; appalled to the point of deep, seething anger that their dearest friend Kullervo would even feel the slightest urge to debase himself in such a way in front of them.

After pulling Kullervo to his feet, the Dissenter pulled Vaenn off of their back, still kissed with the blood of the Warden. They themself knelt to Kullervo, holding the blade up for him to take from their hands.

“What say you, Kullervo? One last ride into hell?”

Notes:

Haha.. Yeah, a combo of my Drifter's very (understandably) poor perception of Bombastine layered with their envy made for a... Very nasty fragment of themself o_o;;;

Also Lizzie broke her script intentionally btw, cutting the "(emotion) becomes a dragon when etc etc" part because of that last bit, where she maaaaybe resonated a little too hard with the feelings at play here..

Time for me to chase down Lodun's spiral for more screenshots >:3

edit 5/22/2025: makin my way through with some edits to better suit my newer writing.. fear chapter cometh soon.

Chapter 5: Wildfire

Flare woke with a start, hyperventilating in a shallow pool of water; a far cry from the seemingly bottomless pool that they had been knocked into by the Reprobate’s Orowyrm. The memory of the pain was there- burning lungs filling with water, being torn limb from limb, seeing all the water around them go wine-red with blood- but none of the damage was. Except.. One part. Looking over themself to be certain all their limbs were in place, their eyes went to their right hand, which had been shredded not by their own guitar strings, but by that sharp golden chain. The scars were back, faintly; silvery lines down their palm and the back of their hand as if they had healed years ago.

It was. Impossibly difficult to get over, or even process, the fact that they just died.

Twice, now, they supposed; given that they had awoken the same way after toppling over the side of that bridge.

At least that death wasn’t so fucking painful. 

“Lizzie? You there? Are you alright, baby?” They said faintly, pulling her forward onto their knelt lap to look her over. She, too, was utterly untouched despite the fact that through their bond Flare had felt one of those wyrmlings snap right through her, shattering her twisted necks like bone.

“Mmmh.. Still writhing in that sweet agony, in Our minds.. But yes. We are.. Alive, Dearest One.”

Flare let out a sigh of relief, pushing back some of their now thoroughly soaked hair with their fingers to get it out of their eyes. “Thank Sol.. Where.. Are we now?” Flare finally looked up to see that the pair were kneeling at the bottom of a pit, which had a swirling ramp going up the side of it.

At its base, in the walls, were a series of jail cells; Six held seemingly inert figures, and the last was wide open.

“..Some kind of prison?”

 

They stood and approached the bars of one of the other cells. Inside was a whole different kind of familiar figure. Inert in a corner was Kullervo; one of the Warframes that the Drifter moved with such ease in that they considered him their own flesh.

Flare knew Kullervo well, seeing the Drifter fight in him; his echoing roar was almost a comfort, knowing that rage inside him was in defense of those the Drifter cared about. The Hex and their allies just kind of learned over time how to dodge past the ceramic blades that went soaring out in every direction; or simply to give the Drifter their space when they fell into ‘character’ as it were and went soaring through a battlefield as a hail of swirling knives.

In Kullervo, the Drifter was nothing but bloodlust and that rage, or so it seemed from the outside.

Dragging their gaze away from the empty frame, Flare looked around and up to the sky as they turned to start ascending out of the pit that was Kullervo’s prison, squeezing the water from the soaked edges of their robe.

At first, taking in the colors, Flare almost thought that Duviri was under some kind of sunset, but no. There is no sun in Duviri; the sky was on fire. The clouds were made of ash and smoke, and meteors streaked through the air like a hailstorm, leaving destruction in their wake below.

Like under Envy; the only colors were blazing, bright red and orange and a now ashen grey; all else was burnt out. To Flare; it felt no worse than a dry, hot summer's day.. But to be fair, they had spent years at this point used to literally having a fire in their chest, so what felt pleasant to them may have in reality been a hellish inferno to anyone else.

 

Flare made their way to the top of the ramp and looked out to the horizon- making direct eye contact with a gigantic roaring face made of smoke, ash and fire suspended in the sky as Lizzie began her tale anew,

“Anger, when tended like a garden, can be honed into a weapon deadlier than any blade, any firearm that humanity has produced. Wielded with care; this Anger could level kingdoms with a single, bellowing roar of righteous fury.”

“None other than You, Our Dearest, knew that better than the Dissenter. They lay in wait for the time to come; to hear the Naga drum, to use the flame that is Their heart to light the blaze of the revolution..” 

“Oh, but Silly Us, who are We speaking of? The Dissenter is no revolutionary. Their garden has not been pruned in an age, the weeds grow tall, choking out the delicately grown poison flowers.. All it would take would be one.. Tiny.. Spark.. And it would begin a wildfire like none had ever seen.”

 

Anger. Nudging the more.. Ominous note to Lizzie’s tale there to the back of their mind, for the moment, Flare considered the shape that the Drifter’s anger usually took as they looked around for any sign of anyone, let alone the fragment of the Drifter that had replaced Duviri’s executioner, Lodun.

Lodun.. Drifter hardly ever spoke of him; he was a tool in their tales more than a person or even a character. He was the cause of the end of nearly every loop, nothing more, nothing less. Under the Drifter's favorite black leather choker they held a constant reminder of the royal executioner's wrath, a jagged line about their neck where their head had been chopped from their shoulders time, and time, and time again.

Other than the cause of their death, Flare couldn’t remember a single time that the Drifter ever spoke of Lodun, positively or negatively. No kind memory, no anecdote, no bit of wisdom he passed on..

Their anger, though.. From Flare’s perspective, they were prone to fury very often. Though, that was on the battlefield, almost never back at the mall. Flare, let alone any of the other protoframes, wouldn’t blame any civilian if they thought the empathetic, kind Drifter back home and whatever, whoever piloted their Warframes were two entirely separate people.

They never tortured Scaldra or Techrot, but it was hard to not catch them reveling in the violence, and not in the way that Amir did, as a coping mechanism; The Drifter, especially as Kullervo, seemed to genuinely enjoy their ‘field work’. For all they complained about how much viscera they had to hose off Kullervo back home, it certainly didn't stop them from blazing a path of blood and guts through the streets.

The Drifter enjoyed the violence as Kullervo and.. Themself. Not the Drifter. Flare. Temple. With the Drifter in transference and fully at the wheel, all of Flare’s hesitation fell away, and they and Lizzie truly were a demon afield; blasting out Scaldra eardrums and Techrot speakers, lighting the whole battlefield ablaze until there was nothing left aside from them and whatever members of the Hex had come with them. 

If the Drifter had just made that void sling in.. Those Scaldra that killed them would have been set ablaze all the same, but with joy, instead of that all-encompassing despair that overtook Flare and Lizzie.

The Drifter and that Demon afield were one and the same. Their fury was empathy. Fury for what had happened to the Hex, to Temple and the Rippers, to Höllvania herself as a whole. Any anger for their own situation was there; but was always put on the backburner.. There was nothing they could do to satiate their own rage; any target for it was miserably out of reach, be that Entrati or the Indifference itself..

 

That Anger, through empathy or not– who would it be, isolated from their other emotions that kept it in check?

 

Walking through the winding, sandy halls of Kullervo's Hold, Flare’s attention was taken by the sound of a child’s voice. Two one-armed children cheerfully played nearby, seemingly unaffected even emotionally by the fire raining down from the sky. Flare approached the pair, tucking themself up behind a piece of stonework to hear what they were saying without interrupting. From a distance, the cadence sounded familiar..

They were reciting a poem between the two of them; one that Flare had heard the Drifter read off like a prayer whenever they were doing extensive maintenance on Kullervo;

“Kullervo, Kullervo, burdens he bore,

Many the woes and horrors he saw!

Tyrants and conquerors ravaging the poor,

Kullervo, Kullervo, witness to war.”

 

“Kullervo, Kullervo, far he strayed.

Lips to the steel he blessed and prayed,

Whispered promises that boy made!

Kullervo, Kullervo, friend to the blade.”

 

“Kullervo, Kullervo, stranger to mirth,

Spoke with the ragged who toiled in the earth,

Learned of the truth of the days of his birth,

Kullervo, Kullervo, what was he worth?”

 

“Kullervo, Kullervo, ragged and thin,

Tracked back the path so steeped in sin,

All the way back where it did begin,

Kullervo, Kullervo, sought for his kin.”

 

At the end of that passage, one of the children noticed their visitor, looking straight up at Flare. They were a bit shocked, but more excited than afraid. “Ah! That stranger is here! Stranger, have you heard? A hero came and killed the Warden! Kullervo is free!” The young boy spoke mirthfully, pointing his arm towards a small outlook over Kullervo’s prison. “Go and see!”

 

"A-Alright.. I will." Flare was a bit taken aback by the Duviri child's tone, but obliged, stepping over to the outlook to see that there was a dead body, headless, slumped into a chair overlooking the pit. Despite the fact that the body was as hollow and doll-like as any other Duviri citizen, it bled, streams of blood turning the figure’s robes deep red and soaking the entire floor around it in a puddle of blood that was starting to steam in the heat.

The head was nowhere to be seen, and Flare didn’t recognize anything about the body. But it did send a bit of a chill down their spine for reasons unknown other than the gore itself.

At this sight, Lizzie read out her next passage,

“For what is Anger, to the one so deeply wronged? Left unchecked it would Consume Them, so They save Their blazing rage for special occasions. Against the Tyrant, the Conqueror? No. All They were left to burn of those golden lords were the scraps left behind by the other Demons who marched to the drumbeat.”

“Against the Scholar, the One who had Doomed Them to Their fate at the heart of it all? No. At every turn, he pulls his slippery coat tails away before they are lit ablaze, or worse, another convinces the Dissenter, to their fury, to drop the match. Pleading that the father of all horrors deserves to live. Or that the Dissenter is not the one who deserves to burn him.”

 

Before Flare could consider the meaning of any of that, they found themself knocked backwards by something as broad as a boat oar; landing with their elbows in that pooling blood and met by the sudden appearance of a wide, heavy blade that toppled them over and then pointed right at their throat, which was still worn a bit raw by the Reprobate’s leash.

Suddenly, Flare found themself face-to-face with Kullervo, just as they remembered him with the Drifter inside; crimson-hued plates of ceramic, that blazing, void-flame eye, chest full of an array of knives. But there was no recognition in that glare of his; Flare's heart started to truly pound, realizing that they just might die again here; they knew just how easy it was for Kullervo to slice someone to ribbons.

Gods. Flare, despite their fear in this moment, was reminded even for a moment that in transference, the Drifter felt everything.

How much.. Tendency towards self harm does the Drifter have inside, that they considered that pincushion of knives glaring down at Flare to be their own body?

 

Kullervo growled lowly, wordlessly, towering over Flare as if demanding some kind of question of them, though the warframe’s curse set by their creator kept him from speaking the words.

Behind him, a confident voice rang out, as its owner rode up on a crimson-plated Kaithe. “Stand down, Kullervo– This one isn’t worthy of our ire.”

The voice of the Kaithe’s rider was unmistakable. Where Flare struggled to hear the Drifter in the Fool and the Reprobate; through that deep, smoldering voice, they could hear the Drifter’s cadence perfectly– the same darkly furious tone which was leveled at Flare, once, after they had told the Drifter that they had asked the others about Duviri.

And told them that they wanted to lock Lizzie here..

And that they were confused why the Drifter didn’t want to burn this place to ashes for what it had done to them.

Flare still didn’t quite understand that, especially after seeing it and experiencing it firsthand. For all the love this place had once given.. Was this hell really worth keeping?

It might have saved their life, Flare.. It's probably the only thing that could have. Be thankful for that.

 

Kullervo let out a huff and sheathed his blade onto his back, leveling that glare at Flare for a couple moments longer as he returned to the saddle of his own identical steed.

The other figure approached, dropping down off of their mount to meet Flare. Same as hearing their voice, looking upon the Dissenter was the first time that Flare immediately recognized a fragment of the Drifter.

Their gold and deep orange silken finery had been wrapped up or replaced by those same dusty grey rags that they wore whenever they came to or from Duviri; the silhouette of the Dissenter matched the Drifter's perfectly until they drew back their hood to look Flare in the eye. Pulled back, their hair, unbound from its usual braid, was a raging, deep red fire that sent off sparks from the edges, blowing in the hot wind of their own Spiral.. And the eyes that stared back into Flare’s through their simple, blood-crimson mask were Kullervo’s. Two void-green, blazing flames that glowered down from the otherwise empty holes in their mask.

 

“..Drifter?” Flare’s voice faltered, staring up for the first time in weeks to their lover’s face, whole, but rendered in stone-grey and crimson ceramic.

The fragment scoffed, “Dissenter, thank you very much.” After looking into Flare’s eyes for a few tense moments, there was a spark of recognition that set their own blazing higher. The Dissenter broke their silence again, the haughty air to how they held themself falling away to a sense of impressed awe; “It's you.. I recognize you..”

Did they? Finally? Was this the first spiral in which Flare wouldn’t have to fight to unite this part of them? Or.. Whatever it was that they had done to those now two dancing dragons in the sky..

 

In one swift motion, Dissenter rid themself of the layer of rags entirely; revealing that their chest had been cracked and melted into a void-twisted swirl over the empty void where their heart should have been; the mercurial metal creeping and clinging into the smoldering edges of their short, simple, burnt orange silk robe. 

The slightly melted glazing on their exposed skin looked like it had been overheated time and time again and there were bold, four-pointed golden stars that were fused into place on their shoulders and knees in little clusters.. 

Flare's eyes widened, recognizing not a part of the Drifter but of their own protoframe body.

A sinking feeling came over them at that realization, especially as that hole in the Dissenter’s chest turned from a cold, dark hole into a blazing furnace as they spoke again, “The Imp has a bounty out on your head after what happened to that Fool and Reprobate. Quite the sum for it, at that.” They laughed and clapped their hands. “Good show; bravo to the new drifter! Oh, how Lodun would be furious if he could see us now.” They grinned, and then reached their longer arm down to Flare to pull them up with a surprising amount of delicacy for who–or what they were, before suddenly seeming to become enraged at the sight of their own distinctly Orokin arm.

“Oh for the love of– This wretched fucking thing– ” 

 

Flare pulled themself up by the Warden's seat, slipping a couple of times in the pool of blood at the corpse's feet as they watched The Dissenter grab harshly onto their ‘own’ right arm with their left and pull. The golden limb writhed and fought as if it had its own will as they screamed in rage and pain, their other hand gripping so tightly onto the base of the forearm that the skin cracked, crumbled, and finally gave way. They threw it off the side of the island and panted, their deep exhales stoking flames to lick up from their chest, across their neck and up their jaw, leaving little scorch marks across the ceramic perfectly where the Techrot that made Flare’s usual form crept along their face, the lines of melted grey and red that the Drifter always loved to trace with their fingers.

The Dissenter roared in pain again as they shoved the two sides of their real arm together, the edges of which turned red-hot and melted into each other then overflowed with sharp, void-twisted mercurial metal which swirled up from their knuckles to their elbow, one blade of which waved out on its own, threatening to attack anything that came in reach.

 

Flare.. Never really thought of it this deeply before now, but.. Looking down at their own right hand, which still had a few thin lines where it was usually shredded apart.. And then to the Drifter’s, which had been fractured in half to free them.. They whispered to themself, as the Dissenter gathered their breath, “Gods, Drifter, we really are so much more alike than I ever thought..” 

Or.. Is this how they see you, Flare? Nothing but that fire?

 

"Much better.." The Dissenter ran their newly ‘healed’ fingers through their blazing hair, and offered the hand again for Flare to take. “Come with us, rebel. Kullervo and I could use someone to tell our tale once our fire burns out.”

Flare nodded. Even after that showing.. At least this one seemed willing to speak. For now. They grabbed onto the Dissenter’s hand, holding tight as the fragment of the Drifter helped them up onto the back of their Kaithe. Flare had never rode horseback before. Luckily there was someone at the reins who was very familiar. They instinctively clung to the Dissenter’s back, which the royal traitor notably did not object to, as the strange horse began to walk.

“Cling close, friend, this ride isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.. Might want to take notes for your songs in your head. ” The Dissenter commented over their shoulder as they urged their steed to move faster, then clicked their tongue once the beast had gained momentum, running down the paths around Kullervo’s hold alongside the frame himself.

The kaithe sprouted wings and took flight, which made Flare’s heart drop to their stomach for a moment, as all that was between them and the void of smoke and fire below was the slippery porcelain back of the Dissenter’s steed, and trust that this avatar of anger would not shake them free for clinging so tightly onto the back of their silken robe.

 

“What are you planning to do?” Flare said low to the Dissenter, trying to mask their fear even a bit by keeping their words concise.

The Dissenter laughed. “What you’ve always done. You should know this song well; it’s high time that Imp got knocked down a few pegs.. I think Duviri could use a little revolution, eh?”

Flare’s eyes practically sparkled at that. Despite everything in this situation, the Dissenter remembered them clearly. But.. So did the Reprobate, in that dark, possessive way.. What perspective of Temple did the Dissenter have?

 

Filling the silence of the journey across the void, Lizzie spoke,

“Stoked and extinguished time and time again; the Dissenter’s rage was no longer Their own. Rage for the innocents who couldn’t bear to wield a blade against their own kin. Rage for the doomed souls trapped in that plague year. Rage against every machine that would dare grind the beautiful, the kind, into paste to fuel their own fires.”

The Dissenter smiled back at Flare. Gods, that was their smile. It had been so fucking long since Flare had seen it.. “I like your friend, rebel; she has quite a fire of her own, doesn’t she?”

Oh Dissenter, if only you knew.. Though, maybe you do. Somewhere in there.

The pair of crimson kaithes touched back down on the mainland of Duviri at full speed, jostling Flare heavily, but they stayed on through their grip on the Dissenter who kindly maneuvered themself to try and give Flare a better grip onto the saddle. “Have you never learned to ride a kaithe?” They scoffed. “Figures. You do look a tad bit.. Soft. Hold on tight and watch- Ah! Here come our first contestants now!” They nudged their head to point Flare’s vision towards a group of Dax who were approaching,

 

“HALT! DISSENTER!”

 

“Ha! They know me well; Thrax must have already called for my execution! And of course he doesn’t come for me personally, no, send the clanking, loyal cretins instead.. ” They sounded darkly amused at that.. Unsurprised and slightly disappointed, but amused. They put two of their void-twisted fingers into their mouth and whistled sharply, calling Kullervo and his steed up closer by their side. They pulled a long, swooping nikana off their belt and pointed out to the Dax. “RIP THEM TO PIECES, KULLERVO. TEAR THEIR ARMS AND LEGS OFF AND FEED THEM TO THEIR ALLIES.”

Kullervo nodded and rode off towards them; leaping off and immediately flying into a rage- as Flare expected, the air suddenly became a storm of not just stone and fire but razor-sharp blades, slicing anything in their path.

“REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID TO YOU, KULLERVO. EVERY SLIGHT, EVERY SCORNFUL GLARE SENT YOUR WAY, EVERY STONE THROWN THROUGH YOUR CAGE BARS. MAKE THEM PAY!”

There was the rage that Flare had expected from this aspect of the Drifter. And again there's that odd bit of kinship with them; the Dissenter's screams were ear-piercingly loud, and every exhale came with a burst of flame. It felt exhilarating being at their back; like when they were passenger to their own mind, watching the Drifter rain hellfire on Scaldra and Techrot alike. That same blazing excitement when they were on stage the first time, sticking it to Viktor before everything went wrong..

 

“Every beautiful person sent to Hell became kindling for that fire until it began to blaze out of control; When the common soldier serving their king were served every horror their masters should have in their stead. Their screams become music to the Dissenter’s ears, as they rip and shoot and burn and tear and bite and claw and BURN The loyal Dax, the infinitely cloned armies, those loyal to profit and profit alone–”

 

The Dissenter reached out their blade again, now itself aflame, as the pair of kaithes dashed across the field and through the streets of a village.

“EVERY FUCKING INGRATE ON THIS EARTH IS YOUR ENEMY, KULLERVO. SPARE NONE BUT THE CHILDREN.”

 

What?

In horror, Flare looked over the countryside around them; first towards the screams in the distance as Kullervo rained knives on the innocent and the damned alike and then back to a scream just to their right- as the Dissenter themself cut down an innocent citizen that was simply trying to dodge out of the way of the sudden violence in their own home.

The Dissenter was leaned off the side, scraping their blade across the pavement as they anticipated their next kill- setting off a trail of sparks that set grass, and tree, and road, and home aflame, as Lizzie had predicted; a single spark on the dry earth immediately started blazing out of control, spreading across the whole hillside in seconds.

 

“What the fuck are you doing?! They did nothing to you!” Flare yelled, still clinging to the Dissenter’s side, desperately wanting to get down and away from them, but.. What other choice did they have? Jump off and get trampled?

The Dissenter laughed. “On the contrary, what HASN’T this place done to me? You said it yourself, didn’t you? This place should be ashes. Even if it comes back.. I think it should burn at least once for all it did to me, don’t you?” They looked back, their blazing eyes meeting Flare’s again. “Or have you become a coward?”

 

“I’m no fucking coward, but you’re insane!” Gods, though, Flare did say that once. Is that all that stuck in the Dissenter’s mind? The tiny spark inside the Drifter that despite how hard they fought to keep Duviri’s walls up did want to burn it to the ground? “They aren’t just disposable things for you to let out your anger onto! They’re people, Drifter! You convinced me of that!”

 

God, this piece of them was so much more Drifter than ever but also seemed.. Impenetrable. The other two reacted to reminders like that of their true self, started to crack away and crumble under the weight of the memories, but not the Dissenter. Not even a flinch, not a tiny crack or chip in the mask, nothing seemed to break their hellish conviction.

 

“Oh yes, they are people. And that one–” The Dissenter pulled out a familiar void-twisted pistol and leveled it at another citizen that was cowering in the balcony of their home, firing it directly at their head as they passed by. “-Laughed one time my head went flying off my bloody fucking shoulders into a damn tree! The one before called the Dax on me when I was resting my fucking head for a moment. Every single person here, real or no, infinitely reliving this day or no, has slighted me at least once. I think it’s THEIR time to remember what it feels like to fucking DIE. EVERY DAY. FOREVER.”

Until right then, Flare was under the impression that the Drifter’s memories of every one of their recursive lives here were.. Blurry, the only memories of them being the ones that remained on their skin, so surely this piece of them would have an even harder time remembering that, but no. The Dissenter held all of that, didn’t they. Or the Drifter always remembered, and lied about how much they could feel the blade and arrow in their skin still..

How much did Flare add to that pain, pushing the Reprobate to their death? Failing to catch the Fool before they fell?

 

Again, resonating with the building emotions, Lizzie’s usual tone started to break through,

“-US. OUR SCREAMS ARE MUSIC TO THEM, FLARE. US, AGAIN, INFINITELY, STRETCHING IN EVERY DIRECTION, FORWARD AND BACK AND FORWARD AGAIN. THEY HATE US, LOVER. FOR EVERY LOVE THEY’VE GIVEN US THEY HATE US. EVEN IF JUST A SINGLE, TINY MORSEL, IT IS HATE NONETHELESS.”

“BUT MOST? THEY REVEL IN THE ABSOLUTE TORTURE OF THE ENVY-GREEN CORROSION THAT CHOKES US OUT AND MAKES OUR EVERY LUNG WITHER AND BLEED. THE BITTEREST, BLAZING RAGE FOR THE STAIN OF A MAN THAT TOOK EVERYTHING FROM YOU. REFLECTED BACK ON THE GAS-MASK AND THE GOGGLE OF EVERY ONE OF HIS SOLDIERS. THEY’LL BE BACK, DISSENTER, THEY'LL ALWAYS BE BACK! MAKE THEM SUFFER!"

 

“Drifter, STOP! THINK! WHAT THE HELLS ARE YOU DOING?” Flare screamed, digging their fingers into the Dissenter’s shoulders. “There’s not a single person in Höllvania who I haven’t seen you cry for, every single time they die! You don’t even know their names, and you cry every time Lettie or Arthur read off the death toll for a district after one of Scaldra’s raids! They come back too, every single fucking time, but you still fight for every one of their gods-damned souls to feel peace for a moment. I’ve seen them sling insults at you, too! Glares, fearful looks at your eyes, at your frames, at Kullervo! What makes these people different?!”

 

The Dissenter glared over their shoulder at Flare; about to scream back and likely set Flare on fire with that blazing breath of theirs, but they were stopped suddenly as in that moment of distraction, a Dax warrior on her own kaithe swept the legs of the one that they and Flare were riding, sending both to the ground. 

The Dissenter let out half-breathless chuckles looking up at the blade of the Dax knight leveled at their chest, and looked into the distance to see that the raging Kullervo was being dragged by a pair of huge Dax Malleus who weren’t relenting no matter how many blades he sent into their backs.

“End of the road already? I’m losing my touch.. So are you.” The Dissenter said to Flare, who had landed right at their side, battered and winded by the fall and with another Dax’s blade at their own throat. “No matter.. Fast road to the finale it is. The impatience in these lot, I swear.”

 

The Dissenter and Flare both were shackled and dragged by the Dax, alongside Kullervo, to the plaza before Thrax’s palace at a surprising speed, arriving by some strange teleportation.

 

“Ah, now this feels familiar, doesn't it, rebel? I wonder who gets to do this, given that I stole Lodun’s body?” The Dissenter hissed over towards Flare. By their tone, you'd think they were speculating on what might happen next in some show or movie, not what executioner was about to deliver their sentence.

Flare’s heart beat fast in their chest as they fell into a deep panic, looking at the scene around them. How the fuck are you getting out of this, Flare? You seemingly haven’t made any progress in any way towards saving this piece of them, will you have to find them again? Or is this failure? Gods, though– Tied by their wrists at their back.. Waiting for some tyrant to come execute them.. Is this what the Rippers felt–

Flare’s eyes fell, suddenly, on a line of four bodies nearby; Duviri citizens in color and ‘make’, but with clothing that looked utterly alien here.

 

What. How. Why. 

Just as Flare thought of them and their demise, there they were. Remade anew and already fucking dead, in Duviri’s colors.

 

In a line side by side were the last four souls to be executed on this platform; heads and chests shattered by barrages of arrows.. And Flare recognized every one of their faces, and that dead look in their eyes, as theirs overflowed with tears. The Rippers. Their fucking band. Their friends. Before they could even begin to process the sight, the Dissenter spoke again,

“Oh, look! Flare! The Imp finally will get his own dainty fucking hands dirty for once!”

Flare’s panicked vision snapped to Thrax as he walked down the long staircase from his throne; standing just where Lodun usually would. There he was. The child tyrant that the Drifter fought so, so, fucking hard to keep alive. 

 

“Hello, majesty.” The Dissenter said with a dark grin as Thrax approached them.

“I thought you had finally returned.. That we could be friends again. Instead you light our kingdom on fire?!” Thrax’s own anger began to rise as he looked down at the kneeling form of his old friend. It was utterly unclear how much of this situation he had processed, either. Or even could. Thrax was entirely without the context that would explain any of this- why the Drifter returned, in pieces.

The Dissenter glared up at Thrax, all the amusement falling out of their seething voice. “..You really think I’d ever come back here to do anything other than burn it, Thrax?” 

 

Yes, Drifter, you have. For weeks of time spent away from all you love in 1999, you spend your time in this hell..

 

The Dissenter scoffed at Thrax's silence. “Void, you really are naive.. C’mon. You know you’re not getting through to me, old friend. You wanna hold the axe this time, imp, or are your poor, scrawny little limbs too weak?” The Dissenter taunted, feigning a pout at that last phrase.

Thrax’s unmoving face stared down at the Dissenter for a few moments more.. Flare almost thought that he was about to cry, as a shaky breath inward made it look like the young king was about to start sobbing.. He’s the one that sentenced the Drifter to death so many times. So why. Why cry for them, knowing they'll return in some way, from this? Did Thrax somehow know what really happened to the Drifter?

“..Dissenter. For your crimes upon our kingdom of Duviri,”

The Dissenter leaned to Flare and said, unamused, “Oh, no fun, he’s not even listing them all off for hours like Lodun would-”

“SILENCE. FOR YOUR CRIMES UPON MY KINGDOM, DISSENTER, I SENTENCE YOU AND YOUR ALLIES TO DEATH BY BEHEADING.” Thrax screamed, motioning for the towering Dax guards to approach.

An axe was leveled to Flare’s, the Dissenter’s, and Kullervo’s necks, then raised..

Flare screwed their eyes shut, bracing for whatever the fuck this was going to feel like–

 

The Dissenter whistled sharply and Kullervo wrenched himself from his bonds; making quick work of the guards with his knives, which sliced into but also freed both Flare and the Dissenter, letting their bonds fall loose to the ground.

Flare stumbled quickly to their feet, turning to run away from the hail of blades only to trip over one of the legs of those ghosts, falling face-first and making direct eye contact with the glassy, artificial eyes of the mannequin, for that is all that Flare could call it, of Korbin, his face shattered out with a Dax arrow just like it was when a member of Scaldra shot hit him in that firing line..

 

“GET OFF ME–”

 

Scrambling to pick themself up again, Flare spun back to see that the Dissenter had tackled Thrax to the ground and had their hands tightly wrenched around his neck. The meteors in the sky started to fall closer and closer around the palace plaza as the child king kicked and struggled and flailed for any purchase against his old friend's grip as his purple throat started to crack under the pressure, cutting at the skin that hid beneath with shards of sharp clay and glass.

Through all the panic, Flare still remembered the reason why the Drifter never wanted Thrax dead; Thrax was them. Just as the Operator was, maybe moreso.

Though the comparison was imperfect, Thrax was their directest equivalent to Lizzie, something that clung tightly and possessively to them, made in their protection after the worst thing in their entire life stripped everything from them. And despite his tyranny, despite the pain and suffering Thrax had caused the Drifter, Duviri was kept alive, if anything, for him. The only friend that kept them sane for so long, until they rejected him. 

 

Flare’s tongue was still locked in the fear that had overcome them. God, they were never like this.

Except for that night, in which they could do nothing but watch as their friends were rounded up and killed.. Even with hellfire ready at their fingertips.

C’mon, Flare, do something, anything–

Flare backed up into the body of a dead Dax archer, whose arrows littered the recreated Rippers’ corpses. C’mon, Flare.. Hopefully that muscle memory of yours from being a goddamned Warframe will fucking work for once, here.. 

Flare picked up the archer’s Cinta and a single arrow, drawing the string with just as much ease as their protoframe body could.. And firing directly into the Dissenter’s back.

 

I’m so, so, sorry, Angel. You’ll forgive me when you realize what you almost just fucking did.

Sol, I hope you'll forgive me..

The Dissenter reeled at the sudden jolt of pain, letting Thrax’s throat go and letting him even a moment to scurry away. They spun to glare at Flare, those eyes of theirs blazing so bright it was hard to look into without being blinded. “How FUCKING DARE YOU. I THOUGHT YOU, OF ALL FUCKING PEOPLE WOULD UNDERSTAND ME. I FINALLY ALMOST HAD HIS SCRAWNY NECK SNAPPING UNDER MY FINGERTIPS.”

 

“Yes, and you would have regretted that every day of the rest of your life!” Flare found their voice, lowering the bow in their hands. “Duviri would fall without him! You’d never forgive yourself for that! And I so fucking hate to say it, but tyrant or no, Thrax is your fucking friend! No- Thrax is you! You can’t just throw him away like that!”  Deja vu, much, Flare?

 

The Dissenter flew across the plaza again, tackling Flare to the ground and closing their hands around their throat, as their skin started to glow red hot, leaving two hand-shaped burns around Flare's neck. “YOU THINK I DON’T HATE MYSELF, TOO? I WAS GOING TO GET TO BURN AFTER THIS! IN HOLY VOID-DAMNED METEOR FIRE! THIS WAS JUST ONE LAST RIDE– SNAP THE IMP’S FUCKING NECK AND FINALLY BE DONE WITH IT, THEN I COULD FINALLY. FUCKING. DIE.”

Hells. It was so much worse now that the Dissenter just had Drifter’s fucking face and voice.. Flare struggled to say anything, to breathe, as the Dissenter tightened their grip further and further, eyes overflowing with tears as they stared up at their lover's rage-twisted face.. That metal around their right hand was slicing into them, as well, like a writhing snake lashing at whatever it could reach.

“I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN YOU WERE ALL TALK. ALL BARK NO FUCKING BITE. WHERE’D YOUR FURY GO, FLARE? WHERE’D THAT FUCKING FIRE GO?”

As their vision started to go white, Flare could feel something shift under them; wriggling off their shoulders.. Lizzie? What are you doing–

Flare didn’t see precisely what she did, but the result was clear from the sound she made and the Dissenter's screams; she could still produce flame, screeching out, “LET GO OF OUR FLARE, DEMON! YOU WANT OUR FIRE? WE’LL GIVE YOU FIRE.” 

Suddenly, the pressure came off of Flare’s neck and they gasped for breath, pulling themself to their elbows as their vision came back into focus to see the Dissenter screaming in pain as not just their hair but all of them was lit on an all too familiar bright red fire. 

 

“ANGER IS ALWAYS A DRAGON, LOVER. KEEP IT UNDER LEASH AND CHAIN, OR IT WILL BLAZE SO BRIGHT THAT YOU AND US WILL BURN OUT THE STARS. JUST ASK OUR POOR, SWEET DEMON, THEY KNOW IT WELL.”

 

That fire grew, and grew, until again, an Orowyrm in their colors was birthed forth. Just as it swooped around to return flaming breath to Lizzie and Flare, the sky began to shift from blazing red to a deep, dull purple-grey thunderstorm and Flare felt a pair of hands pull them swiftly to their feet. Flare caught sight of the mystery figure's hands first, as they led Flare at an alarming speed into the safety of a nearby building.

Slightly purple Orokin azure, but instead of fading to gold as many others did, the gilding was isolated to their fingertips, and little dots at the knuckles..

 

---

 

The figure, masked in their own set of dull grey rags, screamed in fear as the Dissenter’s Orowyrm raged past their makeshift hiding place, rambling in a panicked tone as they pulled Flare in deeper, as far away from the flames as they could get them, “Oh no no no no nononono.. This can’t be happening– you. You have to be more careful, this place– It’s. It’s so much more dangerous than it looks. But.. Maybe.. If you’re that brave.. Y-You could help me? C-Can I.. Can I trust you?”

Flare was taken aback, on several levels, but– Those hands..

Those were unmistakably Amir’s hands on this terrified Duviri resident.

They’d recognize them anywhere.. And as the cowering figure kept gazing over both of their shoulders, occasionally their huge, round, terrified golden glass eyes under their hood caught the light at an angle where you could see a bit of a thunderstorm roiling behind them.

The figure jumped as the newly shifted sky sent a lightning strike nearby, lighting up the room in a flash and sending out a booming crash of thunder. They shuddered as they pulled their hood back, a wave of little dancing purple-blue sparks coming from their eyes, wrapping down their chest and to their arms, where they did a very familiar little shake of the hands to cast them away. “Uuuugh.. Centipedes writhing through my veins.. Biting and stinging me whenever I let my guard down..” They let out an exhausted sigh.

The figure was. Bizarre to behold. Every time Flare blinked, a bit of their appearance changed, but those big gleaming amber eyes and golden fingertips stayed.. Occasionally the dark marbling on their face shifted to look like Amir’s scars, the Drifter’s tattoos, Flare's own makeup– Arthur’s scars. Quincy’s. It finally settled for a moment as they spoke again, on those little dancing lightning scars at Amir’s tear lines. “I have to, don't I.. You’re the only one who has gotten in here aside from me.. M-maybe you can get me out! I-I can’t. I can't stay here forever.. I’ll.. I’ll starve– get bitten, catch the swarming rot.. Little.. Beetles, clawing their way through my mind– Ugh, I feel them now just looking at that instrument of yours..” The Imposter shuddered, wrenching their vision away from Lizzie.

 

Well. That was easy? What the hells? But oh. Oh gods. They were a bit of everyone, in some way? But mostly the Drifter themself, and Amir.. 

Hells. Amir. Where are you now, lightning? How afraid are you, left all alone in that mall truly stuck in time?

Notes:

Chapter named for the Periphery song of the same name; here's a very relevant slice of lyrics as well as a link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCuwnHpqHp8

 

"The past is cutting through me and all the imperfections, they show
Heartbeat haunts me
When all the bad times stick and I don’t know what to do with them, I’m burning like wildfire
Take me fucking out of this hole
Heartbeat haunts me
‘Cause all the bad times stayed and I don’t know what I’m doing here"

edit 5/24/2025: more mostly style-based editing in prep to actually work on new content for this fic again. patch notes: found other curse words than 'fucking'. for as much as that is how I talk when i'm mad, maybe we can find some new words, 'drifter' and flare.

Chapter 6: Intermission

In Höllvania, so far away and yet so close in mind; all was just as horrifically still as it was when Flare left it.

It was hard to keep track of time when it wasn’t flowing, not even in the looping manner that it usually did, but if Kaya was right, for the protoframes it had been weeks since everything stopped. Weeks of 00:00 on New Year's Eve/Day.

The Hex and their allies stayed as close as they could to one another; one– in case anything else strange happened to any of them.. And two.. Because they couldn’t lose anyone else. 

 

Not after Flare and Lizzie went missing, not after the Drifter’s body disappeared right along with them.

Amir had gone to the backroom to check on Flare, only to find it cold and empty except for a very lonely Kalymos. There was no sign of where Flare had gone, other than the shroud that had laid over the Drifter which had fallen to the ground, and a carefully folded paper addressed to him in their handwriting where their mutual lover’s body had been laying..

 

Adding all those parts together as well as his knowledge of the darker parts of Flare’s mind, Amir knew what was in that message. That was a suicide note. It had to have been. He couldn’t bear to actually read it, and he refused to let anyone else read it either; he kept it close at all moments, tucked away in one of his pouches, even changed up where he put it in case someone got the bright idea to try and pickpocket it off him.

He had brought it out a few times since, but.. He couldn’t open it. He just couldn’t. That would be admitting what happened, that would let the despair actually sink in. 

Knowing Flare.. Amir figured they had taken the Drifter and gone to Solstice Square to be with their band. He.. Could go check.. It wasn't like they were locked in the mall; but every time he got to the garage he froze in his tracks, or someone stopped him. Thank you, to Aoi, then Eleanor, then Lettie, who did that for him. There was no good answer waiting for him, whether Flare was there or not, and they'd stop him as many times as it took. He didn't need to be alone with those thoughts.

That folded piece of paper still smelled a bit like Flare’s skin.. A bit of that smoke and flowers. It was practically all that was left of them, especially since of course, Lizzie went with them.

 

Ever since time froze, no protoframe felt hungry, nor thirsty. Tired, yes, very much so, but even sleep didn't seem necessary anymore, just a means to pass the time. As much as you could, anyway.

They could move, manipulate objects, but everything else was stopped, even those basic bodily urges.

Drove Kaya practically insane trying to figure out why they could move, why objects could, but nothing else alive could, and nothing that needed power worked. She couldn’t handwave it as ‘weird void shit’ like everyone else could, she knew there had to be some kind of method to the madness. There always was. Right? She refused to entertain the thought that maybe everything was as it was to fuck with them. That thing with that grin, fucking with them. 

Everyone else.. They’d just kind of. Started to get used to the places where the normal citizens that also called the mall their shelter had gotten stopped in place. Stopped bumping into them, expecting the hallway to be empty. So many people, stock still with smiles on their faces about the fireworks- or that deep worry that they usually had, with the slightest flicker of hope glimmering in their eyes, driven by the Hex’s aid.. Hard not to feel like they’d failed that spark somehow.

The Hex still had no idea how to even approach fixing this, if it could be fixed. Any strange situation like this was the Drifter’s realm of influence and they were decidedly absent. 

Kaya would be second; but she had nothing to work with getting out-wise without the Drifter on one end or another, and though theoretically they were still on the future end in some way, if her theories were correct, she couldn’t risk getting lost, or worse. 

Again; the protoframes couldn’t lose anyone else. There were so few of them already, losing another might just break down the last bit of hope they had left and let the Indifference truly win, if it hadn’t already.

She also thought to contact the Operator, she knew that the Drifter had some way of speaking with them from here, but. The tech issue again. Nothing could work without power, and power wasn’t working–

 

Well; there was one way to give any of the tech power for a few moments, but that wouldn’t be enough to speak or even figure out how to contact the Drifter’s reflection, and the method to get that power was incredibly cruel, especially at the moment. Amir’s powers.

 

He’d tried to get one of the arcade games working early on, and it worked. 

As long as his energy flowed, it worked, but that only lasted for a matter of seconds before all the emotions built up in his head bubbled over and overwhelmed him so much he overloaded himself. 

Quincy found him after he collapsed screaming in pain; convulsing with his own lightning on the floor of the arcade which was permanently locked with those bright blue lights on and all the machines stuck on a single frame, aside from the one he had been messing with which had gone dark.

 

“Shit– Amir! The fuck happened?!” Quincy rushed to kneel by his side; just stopping himself from instinctively reaching out to put a hand on his back. Don’t need a repeat of what blew Arthur’s eye out, as tempting as it was to try and comfort him.

“I-Iiiii gotamachineworking!” Amir let out a manic, pained laugh, his muscles all tensed as he was curled into a ball and internally begging for the power that flowed through his veins to just fucking stop already. “Th-then I started thinkingaboutDrifterandFlareandohLuaIcan’t–” Quincy could just make out through all the bright blue that Amir was crying, carrying little lines of sparks down those scars on his cheeks. “I lost– I lost control.” He gasped out, feeling another violent wave of energy pass over him.

Aoi and Eleanor ran over not long after Quincy did; Eleanor helped him calm down with a hug in his mind and then for his body when he finally ran out of charge.. And that’s the moment a fucked up little club started in this space beyond time, mostly between Eleanor, Quincy and Aoi, but eventually extending to the rest of the protoframes once they got clued into what happened. 

 

Any moment you have the energy to, that’s not being used trying to figure out how to get out of this mess? Congratulations, welcome to the ‘Keep Amir Sane’ club. Which was technically the ‘Keep Everyone Sane’ club, but no one wanted to fully admit that.

 

All of the other protoframes struggled to find ways to distract themselves, as well. Most of their usual avenues were locked off from them.

New Years festivities before midnight had emptied out most of what the bar had left for the year..  Can’t exactly drink your way through or out of this with no alcohol in the building. Probably hardly left in Höllvania herself, given the time of year and the circumstances that the city was usually under. For the sake of the protoframes that tended to drink their sorrows away, this fact was probably, honestly, a good thing. Arthur, Velimir and Minerva most of all thought otherwise.

About that thing where everything alive that wasn’t the protoframes or Kalymos was frozen, Lettie couldn’t get used to the fact that her rats were included in that group. They weren't exactly little protoframe rats, after all, or void-influenced like Kalymos was. She still checked on them; out of instinct, out of love. Pet them gently whenever she walked past their enclosure, despite the spiders in her mind calling them some kind of horrific, void-borne taxidermy. 

Despite her doubts on the creature, she did find some comfort in Kalymos’s company, as Entrati’s– No, the Drifter’s, now– intelligent companion made rounds about the mall as her master used to, checking in on everyone.. Could almost see them, still– walking side by side at a leisurely pace so as to not step on her paws.

So, at this point the 'Keep Amir Sane' club was practically a book club, given that no electronics worked, so distracting him with the arcade or movies was right out. They started by working through Amir’s small collection of comics (Amir, how many of those did Drifter find out in Höllvania for you?), then when those ran out, they’d moved on to the Hex’s collective library of other books.. Including Drifter’s.  

The Drifter had a small library of their own, novels that they’d found outside or that they had borrowed from one protoframe or another, and they just decided to let them keep it; whoever lent it could ask for it back if they really wanted to read it again.. 

After all, Drifter’s always there. Always there for anyone to ask for just about anything. They were always supposed to be..

They had lots of sci-fi and fantasy from Amir, a surprising amount of horror given their background, some cheap romance paperbacks from Quincy of all people..

 

Then there was, of course, the book that stood out amongst the rest, appearing terribly out of time in one direction or another. A gilded, well-worn storybook, with an inscription down the spine no one could read..

It caught everyone’s eye, but Arthur was the one that finally got the courage to pull it out and carefully thumb through it, surrounded by everyone else looking over his shoulder at the pages.

Every page of gold-embossed illustrations was decorated in old, lightly faded doodles that were clearly drawn by a child’s hand. Beside every illustration of Thrax there was a little triumphant-faced figure the same height as the boy king, with a little crown drawn over a puff of dark hair..

Everyone cried, seeing that. Their little king, grinning out of the pages at them.

 

---

 

Back in his bunk a bit later, Quincy was overcome with a horror that he was, for the moment, keeping entirely to himself. A dread he wasn't ready to put on anyone else's shoulders, not yet anyway.

He was sitting on his bed in tears, thinking of his not just dead but missing best friend. He’d lost people before. Lost family. Lost good mates. This was far different. When anyone else died, life moved on. You could grieve, remember the dead and move on with your damn life. Life stopped when the Drifter went.

On his lap, he held a photo album he’d filled out ever since the loops began, that he was thumbing through until a deep dread filled his stomach, staring down at a photo of himself and the Drifter.

 

He and Drifter had spoken before about souls. About how the Drifter’s very existence and ‘skillset’ proved that there was something of a person beyond their body.

 What.. Would that mean of an afterlife? What did an afterlife mean to them, who had died so many times already, without being taken to whatever waited beyond death? 

The Drifter was already a ghost– if there was something beyond, was the Drifter and their fucked up, cursed, for there was no other way to put it, life excluded from that?

 

This came to mind because he noted that for all that nothing aged in the loops, not things, not the protoframes, something had changed; ever since that night that Amir had run up to him and the others, sobbing and telling them that Flare and the Drifter’s corpse were gone, every one of his photos had started to fade.

Every photo, that was, that had the Drifter in it. And just them. The photo he was staring at, his arm resting around the Drifter's shoulder, framed a bit oddly because he was aiming the camera at himself and them. Both smiling- but the Drifter looked. Smeared out, almost.

Another, taken relatively early in the first loop; a morbid souvenir he’d taken from the nest he’d died in. There in the corner, staring at the camera, was the Drifter’s Volt Prime. It was creepy enough as is, given that Quincy hadn’t noticed them staring when he took it in the first place.. Creepier now, seeing that Volt had been reduced to a motion blur; like they or Amir had run through mid-snap.

A victory photo from the triumphant second New Years, a group photo of the whole team. The Drifter was clear in it before, grinning wider than Quincy or anyone else had seen them smile until that moment. Now, it looked like the Hex had a damn ghost in the photo with them, melted and distorted.

Same in a photo from a birthday party for Lettie where Arthur had really gone all out on the cake decorating for his best friend, where the Drifter was in the background. Was in the background.

Same for the photos he took from his sniper’s nest in Solstice Square the night of Flare’s first memorial concert for their band. Flare, crying but proud, with an arm around Amir and a vague silhouette of the red and black clothing they'd put on for the occasion.

That blurred affect reminded Quincy of the times his sharpened vision could just barely see the Drifter skulking through in that 'void form' of theirs. The moments in which they were without any body at all, theirs or anyone else's.

Where once he had a photo album of memories, it now looked like Quincy of all people was an avid ghost hunter. Or that he was being haunted..

 

He looked back at that one with just him and them- where Quincy could just barely make out the full shape of the Drifter’s face.. Their smile was never that wide, was it? And was the weird, blurred distortion that covered them.. Moving? Wait. Their eyes weren't looking straight into the lens like that before, nor were they ever that dark-

A voice echoed through his head, Drifter's, but something was wrong; "Hey, Q. What do you see?"

Quincy slammed the book shut and put it back where it belonged, tucked away with a box of photos and film canisters under his bed. His heart was pounding and his body had gone cold, like he really had just come face to face with a ghost, alone in his own makeshift bedroom. 

Drifter. Space Trauma. 

What the fuck happened to you? 

 

---

 

Amir had moved back into the backroom, even with both his partners gone.

If anything, it was a large, cozy space for as many people as possible to pile into; at this point most of the furniture on the upper floor was pulled together to make a more intimate space, almost like a semi-permanent blanket fort. Given that, Amir was rarely alone, thankfully; one protoframe or another or even just Kalymos spending time vaguely attempting to make small talk, or even just being there to keep his brain from wandering into the darkest corners.

When he was alone, though, he went through what the Drifter left behind, what he could, anyway. Thankfully the time traveler was fond of taking their notes ‘analog’, or all of this would be impossible.

At any other time, he was very respectful at any other time of the Drifter’s personal space; don’t look at what’s on their computer, don’t even glance at the notes on their table downstairs unless given permission..

He had to, though. Maybe, maybe, they had some note somewhere, under all their piles of scribbled sketches and equations relating to their frames or weaponry. Maybe, just maybe, they did write something that could help–

 

Amir found something that caught his eye, deep in the back of one of their desk drawers– a beat up notebook. 

He remembered them carrying this one around sometimes in the first loop; taking notes even when in normal conversation. That was when they were doing the most of their work looking into what Entrati left behind, so if there was anything anyone else had missed it would probably be in here, right? 

There wasn’t.. Amir was surprised to find the entire book was just notes on The Hex. All six of them- their favorite things, their least favorite things, theories the Drifter had on how to best interact with them. They were so unused to speaking to people back then that they turned their friends into little puzzles. It was almost sweet, if it wasn't so damn sad, and. Well. A smidge creepy, looking at how detailed their notes were. Would look like a stalker's scribblings if not for the context.

Amir skimmed through, then noticed that a few pages near the back were warped like they’d been water damaged. Flipping straight to them, he only added to that water damage as he began to cry reading over a diary entry that it was very clear the Drifter had never intended anyone else to see, paper warped by the Drifter's own tears, years ago now.

He could hear their voice, reading it out to himself in his head. Hear their cadence, especially as it was early on. Awkward. Cold. Melancholy. A bit numb. 

They had been sent to beat the Indifference when they were so close to losing themself to the apathy that called in that tapping at the walls..

 

“Somewhere deep in the void-twisted remains of the Ten-zero, I'm convinced, is some document with my name on it. The one my parents gave me, or, if I’m lucky, the one I chose. 

If I hunted long enough I could probably find it; maybe in some class record, personnel manifest, or signed on the side of a piece of art I pinned to my classroom wall.. The Orokin had to miss something, right?

But.. It doesn't matter to me anymore. 

I’m not that person. That name, if it exists, isn’t mine to claim. It’s theirs. I’m just the copy, after all, aren’t I? The divergent path. The 'What if'. The reflection.

People have to call me something, though, so.. "Drifter", that's the one that stuck. 

I think it's the most fitting moniker I’ve been called, for the person with no home, no place they belong in the entire universe. A reflection of someone that stepped through the mirror and now can no longer return.. If there is another side to that mirror to begin with. 

 

In a way, if you think hard enough, technically I did pick that name for myself. My former subjects, born of my own mind, gave it to me the moment I stepped down from the throne..

I still miss it, sometimes.. Despite everything it did to me. Duviri.

I miss the breeze through my hair flying on kaithe back across the fields outside Mathila’s farm.. The tiniest bit of fear in her voice when I went into a dive. I was a little shit, what can I say.

I miss laughing at Bombastine’s plays. Especially when it wasn't meant to be funny, and my laughter annoyed him enough that he started to screw up his lines.

I miss Lodun's begrudgingly given lessons and advice; given even when it was so clear he was jealous of me.

I miss listening to Sythel’s wisdom, that no one else would believe. The calm that brought her, sometimes, just to have someone that didn't write her off.

Most of all though, I miss laying my head on Luscinia’s lap or shoulder as I cried, and she cried with me. Singing with her through our sorrow. Our own little version of joy. The two caged birds in harmony.

The days, the years, before I started to grow up- ruling, playing, living alongside Thrax, my brother I never had. My imaginary friend.. 

It feels cruel, to think of him that way. As being imaginary. Or like he's gone; he’s still out there, after all, floating out in that abyss. And I’m the one that left him like that.. Can’t exactly judge him for not being real, either. 

 

There was a thrill to the escapes, too. 

The adrenaline rush, that feeling of hope when I thought I had almost made it, again, and again, and again..

How many times did I almost make it, that I forgot? 

How many times did Teshin die that I rewound, refusing to escape with my mentor dead in the ground?

How many times did Lodun's blade pierce my chest, or rend my head from my shoulders?

I shouldn't miss that. Not in any regard. But I do. Despite it all, it was simpler than all of this.  

Just get out of there, yourself, don't worry about anyone else. 

All I had to worry about was myself..

I mean. That was a lie, Teshin was there too and he means a lot to me, but. Still.

 

Then I got out. I finally got out.

I never have to look to the sky to see the bust of Thrax looking down at me in accusation and disappointment, never have to know that the day would 99.9% of the time end in my own death.. 

Never have to see those rolling hills of grass again.. Feel the wind at my cheek, when all I was was just myself..

Before I knew that my reflection wasn’t me younger. That it was.. Someone else. The real me. The one who has a universe of their own. People that fucking care about them. Real people.

The world I crash landed into was never mine, I knew it from the jump, it was easy enough to figure out as soon as their Cephalon started talking to me.

Ordis kept calling me a name that wasn't my own. "Operator". Insisting that I must have been them, somehow.

Everyone calls me by that name, aside from a very select few. All they see when I walk in the room is their Volt. Them. Never me. The real ‘Tenno’ that belongs there.

I'm that person but I'm not; I'm their future but also their past.. They've grown a bit, since I've known them. Someday they'll look like me, but be a completely different person. Will I finally be me, then? Not just the shadow of that Tenno? Or is that when I disappear?

 

I have to admit, sometimes I kind of hate them, the Operator. Their life was no simpler than mine, they saw horrors by the Orokin's hand I can only imagine, fought that new war as hard as I did, paying a cost far greater than I did, but.. It's hard not to feel.. Resentment.

They got out. 

They got their own trauma, sure, but they slept for centuries while I got a sword in my side every single day. 

They fell and I picked up the pieces, but.. It's hard, going through the Origin system after all of that. It's not my universe. It's not my timeline. I don’t know these people. But I stepped up, I stepped in, no warframe, just a knife and my gun. 

I could have died any day, for real. No reversal, no take backs, no time loop, just died right there, and I did it every fucking day until I got their void-damned Tenno back home.

Hearing "Thank you, Tenno" for the hundredth time after all that still feels like a knife to the fucking ribs. Like all my hard work is being credited to someone who wasn’t there. They fell into the damn void. I saved you. I unveiled you. Would it hurt to make sure you’re talking to the right person?

 

I guess I’m ‘Tenno’ too, but it never feels right, calling myself that. I have the powers now, but it still sounds wrong, it feels.. Stolen. I never met Margulis, I didn't experience what the Orokin did to them, I didn't march to the drums. I didn't sleep the Second Dream with the rest of them.

But still, she saved me; what’s left of her anyway, alongside Lotus and Natah. She's not 'real' either, is she? Just a memory, mimicked by an artificial life trying to hard to carve her own space out when the people in her life tried to define her identity for her..

I owe Lotus a lot, but.. She's the Operator's handler. Mentor. Mother. Not mine.

I've never asked Lotus, I really don't want to, I don’t want to confirm this, but. I do wonder if she only saved me because I’m technically them. Not because there was a Tenno outside her grasp, drifting alone.

I know enough about the one who kept the wall up before I did to know she wouldn’t save one of us just for that..

I'm so sorry, Rell. If only I knew you were in there with me all along, keeping the wolf from my door. I wanted out, too. If only I could have reached out of my kingdom to help bear the weight, we could have held the line together.

 

After all of that hell, I’m still not sure whether to be livid that I got thrown into another paradox, or thankful that I don’t have to be living someone else’s life anymore.

 

Being here.. It feels like I grabbed onto that hand again. It's a blessing and a curse. And I'm in a fucking loop again. 

It's still not.. Home. I try to not think that it feels that way. I know I don't belong here either. This isn't my place to be, not my time to be.

Like Quincy said; it's like I'm crashing on the couch after getting kicked out. I’m just here until they get sick of me freeloading in their part of the timeline.

 

At least I'm the one with the control of the rewind button, but.. Void, if this isn't so much harder.

I won't give up. Not even if those six beg me to give up, give in, let them go. If the bomb goes off again.. Then I do it again. We do it again. 

We do it again, and again, and again until they live.  Even if they see me like I saw Thrax, a tyrant king clinging to a dream, I begin again.  And again. And again, until I get them out of here alive.

Maybe someday they’ll actually get to see 2000, even if the techrot starts progressing and taking their minds. If it does, I'm not leaving them alone. I can't. Especially since they wouldn't be like this if it weren't for me existing. 

 

On top of.. All of that, everyone has so many goddamn questions for me. 

I'm happy to answer but.. Do I be honest, tell the full truth, or let them live just a bit in the dark? Do I simplify, make it sound a bit better, even just to make it understandable? Or do I actually say what I'm thinking?

 

No, Quincy, I don't have a home, I don't have a name. I never have. That all got taken away from me in a single goddamn handshake, the one that made me.

Yes, Amir! There are 'real robots' in the future! But choose your poison; the Corpus cult to profit above all, the cruelty of the Sentients, or the glass prison of the Cephalons?

Yes, Eleanor, I spent hundreds of years in a personal hell dimension of spiraling emotions, of my own creation mind you. (Well, technically Euleria Entrati's, but..) And yes, there's another me. A kid. But not. But they are, no matter how much they hate to be called one. A paradox just like me, but not enough that they could come here instead of me.

No we never beat the 'techrot', it's still living and growing thousands of years later. And no, we still don't know where it fucking came from.

Yes, all religion, culture, history, everything you know and love, got throttled, summarily redacted and replaced by a group of golden bastards who thought themselves god-kings of everything.

It's not exactly.. Hope inspiring. Which is, I guess, my job here.

 

Void, I miss Duviri.

The idyllic countryside, a childhood spent in a storybook.. The predictable simplicity of knowing every day ended with a knife in the back.

You'd be surprised what you get used to.

So here I sit, scribbling notes out in front of an ancient computer, with opera music from a far flung, alternate dimension incarnation of a storybook morality play ringing through the halls of a 'shopping mall' in the year 1999, and I just said I miss the simple days of getting stabbed in the chest every night.

What the fuck am I doing.

I'm going to fuck all this up one day, aren't I.

I hope they don't hate me for that.. I wouldn't blame them, though. Because I will definitely hate myself for that. I already do.”

 

Amir shut the notebook and hugged it to his chest. Sol, he never knew the Drifter felt all that. Even after falling in love with them, there was so much of their own personal brain spiders or goblins or whatever you wanted to call them that they kept just to themself.. Did they ever tell Flare? Or Lizzie? 

Gods, please, Drifter. If you're out there, somehow, some way, please come back.. We don't hate you. We never could. Please come back..

Notes:

Summary: hey how's things going back in the mall- BAD. THEY'RE GOING BAD.

Fun fact; the Drifter's diary entry from the end is a heavily edited version of the first bit of writing I ever did for my Drifter, not long after I first finished the 1999 story quest. I added to it and fixed some things, but it's amazing how close I was to their personality as it exists now from the beginning, IMO. same ol' turbo depression drifter. pats them.
this is also some lead up/setup to uh. how Fear and Sorrow Drifter are doing/feeling rn :) The Existential Dread. The Guilt.

Chapter 7: The Mind Electric

The sudden shift in tone left Flare reeling. Moments before, they had their own lover’s hands around their neck. They still had the bruised sear marks and cuts to prove it. And then just as quickly as that all went to hell, they were saved from dying again by the next part of the Drifter’s broken psyche.

Was this part always there, watching all that unfold from their hiding place?

Did something Flare did, or just the situation itself, make multiple parts of them start to be active at the same time? Or were they all always out and about and they just happened to not see more than the most relevant one? 

Teshin did say that they might start converging on themselves, if Flare started fixing them..

But was this fixing anything? 

Those other pieces aren’t together, they’re spitting fire and poison and void itself at each other– at themself, winding through the sky..

 

Deep breath, Flare. Take this in. 

 

Well. It seems we’re rushing this one, so might as well think this part over immediately. 

That’s definitely not Luscinia, so this must be fear. So.. Sythel. 

Flare hardly recognized the Imposter’s voice, so that must be mostly hers still, though there were bits and pieces where they could hear the anxious cracks of Amir’s voice peeking through, or the low, lightly frying tones of the Drifter’s. 

 

Sythel.. The Drifter spoke of her just about as fondly as they did Luscinia, though evidently the feeling was a lot less mutual. 

Drifter called her one of the wisest people in Duviri; she had an insight into what was really happening like just about no one else did. Through all her bizarre conspiracies and paranoias, she was right. 

Entrati, the ‘Scholar’, was the cause of all of this.  

There was some huge, cosmically powerful terror trying to tap its way through the walls, and Duviri was in grave danger.

The Drifter always wanted to bring her closer, comfort her, even just commiserate in their collective fear, but she was afraid of them, too.. 

 

The Imposter jumped again, sending sparks down their arms, as Lizzie began to speak;

 

“At the end of every day, Fear will keep you safe. Fear of the shadows, of the Smiling One, of Us, of every unknowable thing in the universe that would snap you right up like the sweet morsel you are if you let your guard down, become comfortable. Complacent. Apathetic.”

“None knew this better than the Imposter. Too well, at that; What is Fear, after all, to the one who knows their deepest worries are real? That the unknowable horror is, in fact, known, burrowing into their skull and laying doubts like eggs between every fold of their mind every time they are alone in a room?”

 

The ‘courtier’ shuddered, pulling themself further back into the corner of the room with their eyes trained in horror on Lizzie. “ Why does she know that?!”

Flare put out their hands as if cautiously approaching a scared animal, taking a few steps towards them while also trying not to corner them. “It’s okay.. We’re on your side.. Drifter?” Flare raised an eyebrow. This one seemed, paradoxically, both closer and farther from the core of the Drifter’s personality than the Dissenter was, but maybe they would finally identify with that moniker?

The Imposter shook their head. “N-no, I’m not. I’m not them. I’m. Just an Imposter.” They chuckled nervously– Gods, that was Amir’s laugh.. “I’m.. No one you need to worry about, b-but if. If you could get me out of here, it would be appreciated.. I-I don’t know how else I ever will.”

Unfortunately, there goes ‘Sythel’ being right again. 

“Alright. Imposter then. We’re on your side. I am on your side.” Flare spoke softly, coming in closer and placing a bracing hand on the Imposter’s trembling shoulder, ”You don’t need to be afraid of Lizzie; she might sound scary, but she’s a lot more bark than bite, especially to you.” The irony in that wording directly after what the Dissenter said, and what Lizzie did to them in response, but. They did mean it. They knew Lizzie would never truly mean them serious harm. She loved them. 

 

Hells, Flare had never seen any part of the Drifter this afraid before. They were shaking like a leaf, that lightning in their eyes flicking between Flare, Lizzie and the door to the rest of Duviri, curled into themself like a scared child. 

The Drifter was one of, if not the bravest person Flare had ever known. Usually, them being around made everyone else less afraid, as a bracing presence, a calm, kind word of comfort. If they said that it would all be okay, you believed them.

Even when Flare doubted their plan to make Lizzie and themself whole, there was a tone to the Drifter’s voice that Flare so wanted to believe in, when Drifter had reassured them that Lizzie was nothing to be afraid of.

But it also wasn’t like the Drifter beat back their fear, as they did that jealous hunger. 

Like Lizzie said; they knew their fears were real.  That was worse. 

Flare and Amir both had far, far lost track of the number of times that the Drifter woke up from a horrible nightmare and spooked either of them awake with a scream.. Or the times that one of them woke up in the early hours to the Drifter clinging onto one or both of them and crying, petting their hair and doing a poor job of keeping quiet enough to not wake them. Once, Flare woke to see a ghost in the corner of their little loft bedroom; the Drifter in void form, curled into the fetal position on the floor. They didn't ask about whatever they saw.. Just coaxed their darling angel back into bed, even if they couldn't get to sleep again.

 

Their fear was that lingering, ever-present dread, wasn’t it. Their fear of the Indifference. The Smiling One. And right now, that’s all they were..

 

“I’m going to get you out of here, I promise you that.” No clue how, but. Staying in here wasn’t helping that. Maybe if Flare could get them to Teshin, he’d know what to do? And maybe then, they could confirm or deny their own fears about what they’d done to those three parts of the Drifter that could still be heard chasing each other through the sky.

At the very least, Lizzie confirmed she could still breathe fire when she defended Flare from the Dissenter, so they could protect the Imposter if it came to that.

After all, Kullervo’s still out there, and the last thing he was told was to kill almost indiscriminately. 

“Stay close, Angel. You can trust me.” Flare gave the Imposter the most genuine smile that they could, which did, even for a moment, seem to calm the Imposter's nerves enough for them to make a move.

The Imposter nodded, taking a hold of Flare’s hand as they moved together to leave the building. Every time they shivered or jumped a bit it sent little sparks up Flare’s arm, but they did their level best not to react to that. That was a lot easier as a protoframe, with much thicker skin.. Comforting Amir after one of his nightmares, or those occasional ‘attacks’ his powers caused when he was far over-stressed.. But Flare was determined to stay strong for the Imposter’s sake.

 

That fire in the sky was sunset, after all– in that transition between spirals, Duviri had fallen under a deep, dark night. 

Where once there was life, then hunger, then fire, there was a dull, darkened grey and purple landscape lit by sourceless blue moonlight and the occasional bright flash of lightning coming from those huge, swirling thunderclouds in the distance, and hanging overhead– 

No. No, that wasn’t moonlight.

In the darkened sky, Duviri was lit by the lights of the Zariman, seeming closer than it ever was in the other spirals. That emblem of the Drifter’s first fear, hanging bright like Lua in full bloom and casting an eerie glow across the land.

 

Hairs on the back of Flare’s neck stood on end the moment they stepped over the threshold and started to make their way through the street with the Imposter at their back.

Something felt inherently wrong about the very air around them . Like you aren’t supposed to be here, or like something’s staring at you, even more than when there were literal eyes in the sky glaring down and wanting to be you. 

Like any moment, you could be hit by a bolt of lightning, or turning a corner you’d be snapped up by some beast that had stayed unseen and unheard.

Like every morning Flare had woken up and seen that Lizzie had acted in their stead, every time they tried to get rid of her and woke to her strangling them in a hug, crying about how dare they leave her alone..

 

“S-stay low..” The Imposter whispered, gripping tighter onto Flare’s hand. “Th-the Dax are certainly after me after what the Dissenter did.. I- I never wanted this.. I didn’t do anything! Not on purpose! I didn’t mean to hurt anyone!”

Again it was hard to tell who was speaking there, about what– the Imposter talking about the Dissenter’s attempted regicide, or some echo of Amir, talking about what got him into all of this mess in the first place. What Entrati made him do.

 

“They weren’t fast enough. They weren’t good enough. They did not know them, but even in that first loop, unknown and not yet loved, The Imposter’s dreams were of that night. Again. And Again. And Again.”

“The sweet taste of blood on Our lips and the healer’s screams; the crater where that sharpshooter was. The knights cooking themselves to death on radiation. But most of all? One sight still lingers in their nightmares, they can see it when they close their eyes even while awake– seeing him slumped there, all that energy, all that life just gone forever.“

 

“Why does she keep saying things like that?!” The Imposter recoiled, still gripping onto Flare’s hand but pulling as far as they could away from Lizzie. “Stop doing that! They’ll hear us, and if they hear us we’re dead! Worse than dead!”

Flare sternly looked back at Lizzie and directed their thoughts inwards, towards her– “Easy, Lizzie. It seems like you can’t stop yourself, but can you please try and direct that inside, you’re only scaring them more.”

You’ve seen what happens when they lose control of the emotion they’re an embodiment of.

“It’s going to be okay, I’ve got you. Always.” Flare whispered to the Imposter, holding up that hand that was clinging so tightly onto theirs and laying a kiss across their knuckles. The Imposter seemed a bit shocked at that (like they were about everything, it seemed), but did not object. In fact, they seemed to relax again, even just by a couple degrees. You do recognize me, even if you’re more quiet about it than the last one..

It was eerily quiet. There had been no reset, like a transition between spirals usually were, apparently– bodies still littered the streets. Dax. Citizens.

The Rippers– Don’t look that way, Flare. It’s not helping them or you, or the Drifter, for you to linger on them, how or why they got here. What that meant.. 

..Were they just here now? Forever looping in this tale like all the rest? Would they ever wake, and would that in any way really be them? Or just some echo of whatever you thought of them, Flare? Or even worse, whatever echo of that echo had formed in the Drifter’s head, from your stories? If they ever woke and roamed Duviri on their own, was any part of those four dolls truly them?  If so, can you just leave them there, Flare? 

 

Flare shook that off and continued; ears straining to hear the sound of approaching Dax, or worse, the rampaging warframe that just got left without his keeper. They couldn’t hear any other footsteps as they and the Imposter slowly shuffled through the streets, peeking around corners, but they did hear.. Whispers. Not the kind that they heard from Lizzie in their head, but like stepping through that strange door to the backroom. They’d gotten used to that whispering now, but that was for a moment as you stepped across the threshold; this was. Pervasive, to say the least.

The Imposter seemed to be hearing it, too– As soon as Flare noticed the whispers, they got closer, clinging their other hand onto the back of Flare’s shoulder. Softly whimpering all the way, despite the fact that they were trying so hard to stay quiet.

Could just barely make out a few words among the otherwise truly indecipherable whispers.. An echoing, cruel laughter.. And then familiar voices, speaking words unfamiliar to Flare, terribly familiar to their trembling charge.

 

“Shoot us in the back, Lettie?” 

“Just making sure you are still.. you.”

 

A wave of those dancing sparks carried up Flare’s arm, and across Lizzie’s strings, making her giggle; which only seemed to unsettle the Imposter further.

Rounding another corner, close to escaping the town. The bridge is right there, c'mon, Imposter, we can do this..

 

“See you soon, momma.”

 

The Imposter yelped, their eyes flashing up to a nearby rooftop as they pulled Flare to a stop. They were starting to hyperventilate, as they swore for a moment they saw someone up there. The sparkle of something shiny, looking down at them. A camera? The scope of a rifle? Just a bit of glinting metal? Those mirrored, black eyes, the teeth of that grin? 

Flare tightened their grip on the Imposter’s hand, moving around to try and block their vision of that rooftop. “It’s okay.. Don’t listen to them.” They had no context to the exact phrases, but the voices definitely belonged to their friends back home, and they were clearly setting the Imposter on edge in a dangerous way. “Those voices aren’t real. Mine is. Okay? Let me be your anchor.”

“H-how do I know, though? What’s.. Real and what isn’t?” The Imposter stuttered out, starting to back away a bit. “This place isn’t real, and I’m from it. So I’m not.. I’m.. I’m not real, am I..”

 

Oh gods. Another thing Flare deeply regretted saying. That Duviri and its people weren’t real. Since they were made from a storybook, since they only existed in the Void. The Drifter’s response to that was to show off that they weren’t exactly corporeal, either. Flashing their ghostly, void-born form. 

 

“You are. You are real, Imposter. This place is, too. It’s.. Different, but it is real.”

That somehow seemed to deepen their fear?

Those thunderstorm eyes flicked about through their bright orange lenses in rapid thought, processing that, adding to their dread. “So.. All those things.. All those things I did are real? All those things I did to y–”

 

Lizzie cut them off, “They check, every time They wake from that nightmare, to be sure that our sweet sugar pup still draws breath. They remember, in horror, that We, Us and You, Lover, were out there, alone in the cold until the city became a steaming crater.Then they make their little morning patrol, say hello to everyone, every morning, to make sure everything is still together, put into place in their Perfect. Little. Puzzle.”

 

Another set of whispers cut through the air like a howling wind, 

“ARTHUR! I-I can’t–”

“Just.. Go.”

 

The Imposter let go of Flare’s hand, scurrying and ducking between two planters in the alley into a little fetal ball. “N-No, No no no no no not again, please, not again.. I can’t do this again!” They screamed, hands over their ears to try and block the voices, but they came through all the same. “Don’t make me do it again! I can’t– I can’t take it– I'm so scared.. I can't go back there!”

“Hey, hey! Shhh–” As Flare rushed to their side, they could hear very familiar metal footsteps from down a nearby street. “It’s okay. Stay with me, stay with me, I’m here.” They moved to wrap their arms around the Imposter, but that only made it worse, because now they felt trapped. 

 

The Imposter let out a sharp gasp, seeing Flare’s arms start closing around them. Doing that was like flicking a switch in their head, one that immediately labeled Flare not as their only savior, but as a threat. Memories crept into their head- Falling backwards into a pond of golden maws, staring up into those furious gold eyes- “No, please– Don’t hurt me!” They screamed, slipping out from under Flare and quickly dashing down the street, right in the direction of those footsteps.

For how anxious they were about everything, could they not hear Kullervo approaching?!

Flare drew Lizzie off their back as they followed close behind, “Angel, come back! I’m not going to hurt you!” They say, drawing a weapon that the Imposter saw burn another part of them. That wasn’t helping, either. Neither did the fact that she wouldn’t shut up, either– 

“But.. Somehow, that cursed night is not their deepest fear– Oh no, Dearest. For every fear of Their own, of Their friends, of Yours that They have felt as Their own in Your mind, for every biting horror They’ve seen and felt, that is not the dread that truly defines the Imposter.”

The Imposter was getting faster; they went from a panicked scurry to a full run, and given how they looked, Flare had a sinking feeling they were capable of going faster than they could ever keep up with on human feet. The Imposter didn’t have Amir’s legs, those were Drifter's calves and thighs, but they were also a runner, and how many times had they run through these streets, away from oncoming danger? Hundreds? Thousands?

 

Rounding the corner, Flare watched in horror as the Imposter ran right for Kullervo. What the fuck were they doing–

“GET THEM AWAY FROM ME!” The Imposter yelled at Kullervo, pointing backwards towards Flare, who they looked back at to see them, a protective fury in their eyes and a bit of fire spouting from the end of Lizzie’s hands. To the Imposter, they didn’t see their lover, desperately trying to protect them. They didn’t even see a friend. All of a sudden they saw death approaching, and memory of their guilt. “Oh, Void– KULLERVO, PLEASE! HELP ME! THEY'RE GOING TO KILL ME!”

Kullervo stomped right past the Imposter, as the frightened courtier ran past him and towards the bridge out of the palace grounds; glowering, burning eye focused on Flare, knives bristling as he got closer and closer to them.

Fuck. Fuck. Right. If the Dissenter could command him, they probably could too, shit–

Flare, for all the bravery that they had a moment ago to protect the Imposter from him, immediately flung Lizzie to their back, turned tail and ran as fast as their feet could take them, vaguely attempting to circle around through the streets to chase the Imposter. There was one way off this island, they saw that, so if they could just make it around..

Leaping and climbing across the marble city with their much more meager but not nonexistent human physique- Didn't spend years running and jumping across stages and climbing scaffolding to set up equipment for nothing- they jumped over wall and roof and greenery, managing to loop around such that the Imposter was at the lead of this race, they were in the middle, and Kullervo behind. Still need to get rid of him somehow, but this was a start. “Please! Angel! I’m not trying to kill you, come back! Call him off! We can still get out of here if you just listen to me!”

 

The Imposter just kept running- how was that stranger so close? You’re one of the best runners in Duviri, how are they catching up to you? It was like a nightmare. One of those ones where your legs can never carry you fast enough away from something horrible. One where all your punches ring hollow. “I’M NOT YOUR ANGEL! I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE! STOP FOLLOWING ME! RUN AWAY FROM HERE OR I'LL KILL YOU!” Most of that was denial and lies; didn't need to be a genius, or even mentally calm at the moment to hear that. They were just saying what they thought would let them get out of here untouched.

 

“I was.. Too.. Slow..”

 

Hearing that whisper fly past their ear through the wind kicked what was left of the Imposter’s sanity right over the edge. “OH, VOID- I'LL NEVER GET OUT OF HERE! I’M NOT FAST ENOUGH! I'LL NEVER BE FAST ENOUGH!”

Sparks started to fly from their gilded heels, and their pace quickened to a truly inhuman level. Shit, they can do that– Oh god and it still affects you. Not sure whether to be thankful or not. Both the Imposter and Flare started running at a blazing pace, even in their delicate gilded sandals- over that bridge, off the palace's island and into the lonely, darkened woods and countryside that still smelled like ash and smoke from the wildfire that had raged across them. Flare’s lungs burned, trying to keep up the pace, but Lizzie was entirely unaffected– She must have been speaking straight to Flare’s mind now, given that they could still hear her through the wind?

 

“Tell me, lover– is Our Drifter Real?  The Smiling One was given flesh when the Scholar fell into the abyss. Duviri, when Our Demon did. But, if that is true.. The Imposter, nay, the entirety of Our Demon would not exist if not for the ‘Operator’. And there is no true proof in Their mind that Our sweet Drifter ever had Their own reality. They were born in the Void after all; that great corpse in the sky was already there when Their reality split in two.. What if They are just as hollow as all the rest?”

 

“WHY CAN I STILL HEAR HER IN MY HEAD?! WHO ARE YOU?!”

Oh, Sol. Lizzie- this is only making things worse, please, stop–

 

“What if that’s why They feel so cursed? That They truly can never have a home, for that is the fate of everything born of this place? After all, even the Smiling One seems so lonely. What if They aren’t a savior, what if They are a bomb? A sleeper of Their own right, waiting to strike and They don’t even know it? Just another reaching hand from the walls? Blending in, making friends and lovers, ripening the sweetest prey for Their true master before dropping everything They love down his grinning maw of jagged fangs?”

 

A knife went sailing past Flare’s head, just barely nicking their ear and cheekbone. Fuck, since when was Kullervo this fast– oh fuck, right, he can teleport–

 

“They do not have anything that is truly Theirs and Theirs alone. Their face, Their voice, Their personality.. They do not even remember Their own name. And when they arrived in that plague year, They bit a piece off of everyone who got close.”

 

Behind Flare, a roaring hail of knives, stomping towards them between staggered, swiping jumps. Ahead, The Imposter, who was clearly losing control of themself.

Lizzie, we almost had this one, they were right in our grasp, can you really not stop?  What has this place done to you, that you won't or can't even listen to your Flare?

“ Aoi gave them their music.. Their style taught by Quincy, their pretty painted face from Eleanor. They had never been a leader before, so They followed Arthur like a little duckling. They were a mechanic before They were a medic, so They took notes from Lettie. We taught Them how to play Us.. And do They stand like that, tap Their fingers to their thigh like that, because They are used to being in Amir’s skin? Or because They are nothing but an Imposter? They wonder, even now– If you strip back every piece that was once someone else, is there anything left? Or just a hollow shell, pretending to be human?”

 

The sparks of lightning flying from the Imposter turned to whole bolts, crackling across the ground, as they began to glow, as the Dissenter did before them, through the flames that engulfed them. “Please! Just leave me! You don’t have to do this!”

Flare winced, almost tripping and stumbling at speed, as a jolt of energy hit them in the side. Sturdier than you look, Varleon. Even now.. “I do! I’m going to get you out of here, just stop!” Another one of Kullervo's knives flew past their head– was he missing, or trying to scare them? Would be amazing if he wasn’t trying to hit them, but those knives always hit their mark.. ”Drifter, please! Call him off! Stop this! You’re going to be okay!”

The Imposter started laughing in mad despair. A bit of Amir’s nervous laughter. A bit of the Drifter’s dark chuckle, when they had said something terribly depressing about themself. Echoes of the rest, in their wake. “There’s no way out of here! There never has been! I’m going to die here– Worse, I’m not going to die here! And I'm going to drag you down with me!"

Gods, it was hard to speak with their lungs burning like this– “Yes there is! There's always a way out!” Is there? Starting to not believe that themself at this point, eyes flicking even for a moment to the dragons biting at each other’s tails, circling over the nightmare unfolding below. “You’ve gotten out before, we can do it again! Together! I don’t care how long it takes, how many times I have to find you- I’m not leaving without you, Drifter!”

 

The Imposter started to truly lose themself, becoming a silhouette of purple-blue energy that had started to lose speed, as it began to stretch outwards. “YOU’LL BE TRAPPED HERE WITH ME, FOR ETERNITY! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!”

“YES! A THOUSAND TIMES OVER, YES!” Flare caught up just as the Imposter transformed. No, no I’m not losing you again– They reached out, grabbing a hold of a piece of their plating and bracing their heels onto a swooping bit of gilded metal as the great grey and gold Orowyrm took off into the thunderstorm, chasing after the Dissenter’s tail. “I'll love you forever, Drifter! I'd do anything to stay by your side! I mean it! Please, believe me–” 

 

Flare’s thought got cut off as Kullervo jumped onto the Orowyrm himself, and with him, a hail of blades flew from his chest and pinned Flare to the Imposter- through their hands, their legs, everywhere. They cried out in pain, clinging on tightly as they looked back to see Kullervo making leap after leap, closer and closer–

 

“I KNEW IT! I KNEW I’D BRING YOU DOWN WITH ME! I TOLD YOU TO RUN, FLARE! WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN?!”

 

Flare gasped for breath, stuck in shock– They were as much of a pincushion as Kullervo was, and both of their hands were pinned into the Imposter’s body. They couldn’t let go and let themself fall into the thunderclouds below even if they wanted to. Through the wind and their pounding heartbeat, they could hear Lizzie cap off her tale as Kullervo leaped up from one section away, bringing Vaenn down towards her body and the center of Flare’s chest–

 

“Fear became a dragon in Their heart, first. Now it follows at Their heels wherever They go, no matter how fast They run. Weighs on Their shoulders, lies on Their chest when They sleep. But that fear is Their Heartbeat, lover. What else do They have but that dread? But.. If they slip, if they fail, if They disappoint everyone They promised to save– What becomes of You, Dearest One? Of every one of their charges, in that looping plague year, or here in their childhood home? WE KNOW WELL NOW, DON’T WE, DEMON?”

 

The last thing Flare truly heard before the light went out of their eyes again was a sickening crunch of that greatsword going through Lizzie, and then themself, as Kullervo’s knives flew back to him and let them fall into the lightning below..

 

---

 

On the edge of Duviri, staring into the Void, the sorrowful Improviser held tight to a shawzin in their grasp, dangling their delicate azure legs over the edge into nothingness. Just a slip and it would all be over.. No, they’d end up right back here again. 

There is no escape.. No hope, no closure of death.. Just this. This day. This spiral. Forever. As it was before, as it always should have been..

Void. You’re so useless, so powerless, that you can’t even kill yourself, Improviser..

They watched as the sky turned from darkness and thunder to the deep blue rain and frigid fog of their own spiral. This was always theirs, Luscinia or no, Drifter or no. None other understood them so well. 

 

Behind them, they heard a heavy thunk into the sand as Kullervo made a crash landing not far from where Flare had first arrived. Plating broken by the impact, heaving breaths through his broken helmet like he was sobbing.

Without Vaenn, or his knives. The vengeful spirit was free.. But defanged, declawed, wings clipped..

 

“Kullervo?!” The Improviser pulled themself up, running across the dust and sand to help Kullervo to his feet. “Oh, my dear friend.. Where have you been? What happened to you?! I missed you so..” They wrapped their cold blue arms around him, hugging the warframe as tightly as they could. “I looked for you.. But you weren’t in your cell. I was so afraid I’d lost you forever..”

 

Tears began to overflow from their mask, as memories seeped through the cracks and shattered through into a torrent, flooding their mind with horrors unabating. 

Falling off the side, laughing, convinced that they finally found their end.. Being pushed by those warm hands that were always their comfort into a pit of gnashing teeth.. Squeezing their own hands around that same beautiful person’s neck. Calling Kullervo on them, then bucking their corpse into a lightning storm..

They even almost remembered how they got here, in the first place. That stupid, stupid fucking mistake. The feeling of everything that made up them shattering into a million pieces. 

 

The ceramic of their lips gently clinked against that of Kullervo’s cracked helmet as they laid a kiss to his forehead, which had started to shatter like their own head had.. They sighed, letting the frame go and sitting back at the edge of their stage again, where Kullervo followed, kneeling down in fealty to the Improviser in the sand.

Fealty, or begging for forgiveness, for what he just did by the Imposter’s fearful command? 

The Improviser clung tightly to their shawzin again, looking out over the shore of Duviri. “Again, and again, I lose myself.. And devastation follows.”

Notes:

Heyyyyy sorry this one took so long i got distracted, also been cookin' this one off and on.
My Drifter is. Normal. and Fine. Buddy you're not another hollow void creature, you're just severely traumatized and neurodivergent.

Chapter 8: Sorrow, you are my light; everything my heart desires

The cold of the Sorrow spiral was all Flare felt, as they woke; an ice that cut straight down to their bones and left them shivering. It had been so, so long since they were ever truly cold. Even the frigid winters of Höllvania were tolerable with fire running through their veins. Fire, or fever, depending on how you looked at it..

Once again, they were laying face down in a dune of soft sand and dust; if it wasn’t for the temperature, they almost could have sworn that they had started all over again. Everything ached– they groaned as they pulled themself onto their knees, futiley clinging to themself for warmth, but their thin, decorative clothing was not made for this climate in the least bit.. Looking down at their body; jagged, triangular scars marked any bit of exposed skin, and likely underneath as well. The Drifter had three just like them on their own body, one on a thigh, one on an arm, and one in their ribs.. Not from death, but an accident from before Flare knew them in which they had lost control while piloting Kullervo and stabbed themself with his blades..

Three times now, Flare, you’ve died– Almost four. Five, if you truly did kill yourself to get here. It.. Started to feel a bit numb, in a way that unsettled them. Like they expected it at this point.. One more, right? One more and then we go home? Somehow, we get to go home?

Their eyes started to overflow with tears, remembering what the Imposter had said– could they really not believe that Flare would do anything for them, at this point? Were you the one that drove them to be so damn afraid? Or was that Lizzie’s.. Narration? Revelations?

Gods, those hadn’t truly settled into Flare’s head until this moment, they were panicking too hard trying to catch the Imposter to react to what Lizzie was saying. Did that really weigh on them at every moment? The thought that they were a trap? Like a carnivorous flower, luring in prey with a sweet scent? Had they ever told anyone else about that? Amir? Maybe Eleanor? Their other self? ..Probably not, if Flare knew anything about their Drifter at this point.

 

Flare looked up to the sky, to a gigantic face among the clouds, which were slowly shifting from an ice cold rainstorm, to sleet, to softly falling snow. That face was familiar, but not the Drifter’s, for once. Luscinia’s face, monumental in size, her tears like waterfalls, suspended in fog and twisting, mercurial shapes. And among them, those four dragons, circling like vultures over the Chamber of the Muses.

Their eyes descended to the landscape around them– Yes. This is that same place.. The same rib-like rock formations. The same sand and dust.. She would be close.. If.. This wasn’t her spiral.

Gods, Drifter replaced Luscinia, didn’t they? Please don’t beat yourself up for that, angel.. You don’t have any control over what happened here. That much is very obvious.

 

Lizzie was not on their back, but resting in the sand nearby; she hummed back to life, letting out a distorted bit of feedback before speaking up to Flare; “Lover.. Can You hear that sweet music?”

“Lizzie-” Flare quickly pulled her up out of the dust, brushing her off as they looked her over for any lasting damage. “Are you alright?” She was fine, and she probably enjoyed the feeling of having a blade carve through her somehow, but they still gave her a once over.. Letting out a sigh of relief when they saw she was all together, nothing out of place– From this form of hers, anyway. Flare looped her strap back around their shoulder and held her close– for all of the cold, she was still so warm.. It brought to mind the number of times in winter that Flare had to gently peel their partners off of them to get up from bed; especially the always frigid Drifter.

 

“We are so close, Flare.. All converges on this moment, do not dare give in now, or the Smiling One will swallow all of Us whole–” Lizzie groaned with a sour chord, as she lost control of her words again;

“To the One at the heart of it all, Sorrow is Their everything. Their guiding light and the pit They see it from. Their fire and the water which quenches it. The cold winter and the blanket They hide under. Their Muse. Their Life. They have never been without it. You know This well, Lover. You and They sing the same song, in the dark of night.”

Though, they sing it so much more often.. Despite all the love you could give them, Flare, they never felt complete, like Lizzie makes you feel. Somehow, all the love in the world that three partners could give, and at their darkest moment they still feel so empty..

“They cry when They are happy .. Glittering starlit tears of true joy,”

Flare continued, in control of themself, but still in unison with Lizzie’s thoughts, “They cry when they’re starving– when they’ve been alone all day..”  

“When They’re furious. The crying terror that haunts the nightmares of all of those who would stand in Their way.”

Flare clung closer to Lizzie, closing their eyes as the pair continued their little duet, “When they’re so, so fucking afraid.. Hearing that tapping on the walls of their own mind.”

“But most of all, They cry.. Just to cry. A sourceless, unknowable chill comes over Them, and nothing can console Them until the rivers that flood down Their soft face finally run dry.”

Mirroring that thought, tears flowed across Flare’s cheeks, thinking of every time they’d found Drifter sobbing and either refusing to say why, or not knowing why they were crying, truly. They never pried too deeply. The Drifter didn’t for them, either. The both of them just gave themselves over to each other as a shoulder to cry on until whatever depression or dread ran through them finally ran its course.

 

“Of every emotion, of every fragment of that beautiful, broken mind, The Improviser is the true king. For them, Sorrow reigns supreme over all. It is the only drug They will ever partake in– the bittersweet wine that They drown themself in; when everyone else has been cut off for the night, They still drink deeply of it, with no end.”

Flare remembered nights where that wasn’t a metaphor– packing up for the night and watching the Drifter speak in hushed, melancholy tones with Velimir, or them sitting completely alone at the darkened bar; those eyes of theirs watching Flare through glittering tears as they waited for them to head home. 

Again.. It didn’t have to be sadness that drove those tears. 

They’ve cried at how beautiful Flare was, they’ve cried when they were stressed after a long day, they’ve cried at the pure anticipation of waiting for Flare’s set to be over before they were allowed to hold them.. That last one was cute until they met the Reprobate, and saw just how deeply that hunger ran..

“Yet, somehow, that sorrow has never truly turned Their heart to ice.. If anything, it keeps Them warm, if only for others. Their sorrow is a constant drive for Them to fight all that causes it. They cry at the injustice of it all– Of all those who have died under the boot of a tyrant, of all those who can never see their own loved ones again. And then it fuels the fire in them, like their tears turn from water to oil, filling them up until they become a blazing cocktail of misery and rage. They cry for the people who can cry no longer, making blood flow as readily as their own tears.. A compassionate, vengeful Demon, ripping its way across the battlefield until there’s nothing left but Them and Their sorrows.”

 

Flare’s depression usually made them want to curl up in a hole and never come out. Somehow, Drifter’s was the reverse– when they were really bad off? They didn’t take a single day to rest. Not a moment. Not through exhaustion, not through wounds, not through anything. And it took a hell of a lot to convince them to stop.. 

The first time they saw Drifter self-destruct like that, Amir sadly told Flare that behavior was very much not a recent development– If anything, it was strange when they stopped doing that, at first. Hearing him tell it, Flare truly had never seen Drifter at their worst. Not until now.

 

“And so, when They see a dark path with Their name emblazoned upon it, They see it until the bitter end.. When disaster looms, when all seems lost, that’s where you find Them; staring back into the abyss with determination. Every time thinking; ‘One last ride. One last howl into the Void.. And then I’ll be free.’”

There’s that phrase again. For all the ways the Drifter’s parts were disparate, most were in agreement– They wanted out. 

Though, except for the Imposter, not the kind of freedom Flare hoped they wanted. 

The Fool screaming in Joy at their own demise, and the Dissenter screaming that their planned demise had been cut short. The Reprobate stood out.. The Reprobate just wanted. If they wanted an end, or an out, they sure never voiced it. 

Not that Flare was going along with their little song and dance. So perhaps they did, if Flare had let themself be dragged by that leash.. Not regretting that, though, not for a moment.

 

Lizzie fell silent again, and Flare was left with the softly blowing wind through their hair, and music. Yes, Lizzie, they do hear music. It lifted their heart even for a moment; hearing the sound of a shawzin over the breeze, plucking out a familiar tune.. And then a voice. 

Not a hint of anything or anyone else’s, that was the Drifter’s singing voice, pure and clear, singing a tune from Duviri that Flare had heard them singing idly many times, though.. 

Those aren’t the lyrics.. Not that Flare knew the meaning to most of the correct ones.

 

Flare’s tears almost slowed to a stop. Almost. But their tears were happy, now. For all the horror they were likely about to face looking that core of the Drifter’s being in the eye, it was so nice to finally hear their voice.. 

Remembering how self-conscious the Drifter could be about their own music, the number of times they’d gotten too nervous to play or sing in front of their rockstar, Flare savored the sound as best they could. They walked at a leisurely pace, a soft smile crossing their face as they listened to the familiar, chaotically flowing tune of one song.. And lyrics familiar to another. They’d been heavily re-written, but.. Were those the lyrics that Flare and Lizzie wrote, right after they came together as one?

On Luscinia’s stage, the Improviser sang out to a silent audience of the dead, eyes focused on their beloved courtier's face in the sky;

 

“Whisperer! O, Whisperer, I cannot escape your voice!/

Your curse upon me, silver tipped hands pull me straight to the grave!/

Your icy kiss burns through my veins; And none know my name!/

 

O, Sol.. O, Lua../

Do I lay in ash? In silence? Or will I rise?/

Wake, or lay in sleep?/

O, my star, O, my heart../

Love me.. Leave me.. Set me free../

 

Yearning wings carry me, eternally/

To your embrace, my love, carving your fates to mine/

In one breath, I rise- The next, I fall, am I in heaven?/

Or have I fallen to hell.. O, my loves,/

One breath, we rise- The next, we fall/

 

On silver halo, and serpent's grin; we end as we began!/”

 

The Improviser fell silent, plucking absentmindedly at random strings in thought.. They let out a deep sigh and sat down at the edge of their stage again, laying their head on the silent, resting Kullervo’s shoulder for comfort. “It’s still not perfect.. And more than a bit.. Derivative.” They said, deeply disappointed despite how beautiful their performance was. They reached into their robes, pulling out and unfolding a piece of out-of-time notebook paper, well worn with fire-blackened edges. 

“Flare and Lizzie would hate that I changed their lyrics.. But Luscinia would certainly scold me if I changed her song..” Their shoulders shook as they began to sob, carefully holding the paper to their face and taking a deep, trembling breath in to take in its scent. 

“I can still smell the smoke that lingers on their skin, Kullervo! It’ll be the last time I ever smell that, I’m certain..” They folded the paper up delicately, tucking it back into the folds of their robe to protect the red and black ink from the tears rolling down their face. “I know they’ll never forgive me for what I’ve done, and I don’t blame them.. It’s just you and me again, friend, at the end. Whether that end be eternity in this place once again.. Or our end when this place crumbles from underneath us. I don’t.. I don’t know if I can bear the weight on my shoulders anymore, Kullervo..”

 

“You don’t have to bear it alone, you know..” Flare spoke, stepping through the sand up to the side of the stage, “There will always be someone there willing to take the burden; all you need to do is reach out, and one of us will come running.” They gave the Improviser a soft smile. Gods, Flare, you must be practically unrecognizable at this point. They’ve never seen your body like this, any styling your hair and makeup had got lost spirals ago.. We’re all very ‘come as you are’ right now, aren’t we, Drifter?

 

The Improviser was so beautiful. 

Flare could see both Luscinia and the Drifter themself clearly in them; beautiful wine-red robes, azure skin with little flecks of Lua silver that stood out amongst their worn, gilded edges.. They were a bit less gilded than Luscinia, their hands the same ceramic but with golden finger-picks, like Flare’s own, and another set the Drifter had made for themself so they could practice playing like Flare did, outside of their body. Given who they were, Luscinia’s circlet– delicately framing a oilslick-dark glazed rendering of their braids– looked more like a crown.

 

Finally; no mask covered them. The Drifter’s own face, fully, was finally laid bare in pale blue porcelain, with swirling, shimmering raven-black glaze painted across their cheeks. Their eyes were as hollow as all the others, and like the Reprobate; all that was left was that glow, like seeing the Drifter in the dark. Smoldering, pale green starbursts against pure darkness.

Of course this piece was.. Just them, of all of them. Like Lizzie said, of all of their emotions, Sorrow was the one that always reigned supreme. 

 

The Improviser jumped up as soon as they recognized Flare; clinging tightly onto that beautiful green, white and gold Courtier’s shawzin like Flare had to Lizzie as they submitted themself to the Helminth. They slowly backed away a few steps, glaring back at Flare through wells of silver-flecked, glittering tears. “Ghosts, come to mock me again.. At least have the decency to sit quiet in the crowd with the rest!” They motioned to their audience, which immediately drew Flare’s eyes to them–

 

There was actual seating for the stage, now. That wasn’t there before, when they met Luscinia.. 

In an array of various chairs– Some Duviri, some that matched the odd maybe Zariman aesthetic of the broken down furniture nearby, some distinctly from 1999– were a group of.. Mannequins. Or corpses.  

Their heads limply laid forward or back as if they were dolls, laid haphazardly down by a child, and among them were the Rippers, again. Still with ghostly Cinta arrows buried into their shattered chests and heads, sitting side by side.. Then an empty seat, for Flare, for Temple, and then Amir.. The rest of the Hex, all the protoframes for that matter, all their features rendered in Duviri’s colors. 

The only other empty seat in the house as it were was one right between a pair of lifeless Duviri citizens that Flare couldn’t recognize from the first glance.

 

A bald, masculine figure; dressed in a crisp dark navy blue uniform far alien to Duviri, and a feminine figure in the same garb with long, tied up dark hair the same raven black of the Drifter’s undyed roots. The woman had her hand on top of the man’s, on the empty seat between them, leaned over to lay her head on his shoulder, with his head leaned against hers.. And void-twisted, blasted holes in their chests, that scattered shards of their skin into the sand in front of them.

It took Flare a moment, but they had seen them before, just never in person . On that picture frame at the Drifter’s desk, with the broken glass.. Smiles wide, a baby in the woman’s arms.

Their parents. 

The first people they’d ever killed.. Sleeping side by side with the rest of the people they loved– Even the Rippers, who they never met.

 

Flare spun back, voice full of worry, “Drifter–”

 

The Improviser flinched as if that word brought them pain. “Don’t call me that! Don’t you dare call me that.. I’m not them, I can never be.. Not anymore.. Not after what I’ve done.” Tears streamed down the Improviser’s face, through the subtle grooves that their dark tattoos were painted through. Literally made for sorrow.. “I’m just the Improviser. After all, that’s all I’ve ever been– no plan. There’s never time.. I make do with what I have and it’s never enough.. I’m never enough..”

“You are.” Flare stepped up on the stage, laying their hands on the Improviser’s shoulders. “You’re still my Angel.. You always will be. No matter what.” They reached up and laid a palm on the Improviser’s cheek, futiley attempting to wipe away their tears with a thumb. “And we’re not ghosts, we’re here to bring you out.. Here to save you from this place.” Not that they had that intention, when they laid themself into the Helminth’s grasp, but they certainly weren’t going to tell the Drifter that. Especially not this part.

Oh void, it is them.. Warm skin, those golden eyes.. How.. The Improviser shook their head, but didn’t draw their head back from the touch. Their skin was even more icy cold than the air, with little icicles starting to form at the edge of their jaw where the tears rolled off of them. “No.. No, I’m a monster. I always have been. Don’t you dare think for a second that I don’t know what the other parts of me did to you.. I can still feel my hand slipping from your grasp– you looked so afraid.. Then the disgust in your eyes as you pushed me into the water.. You and Lizzie screaming when I pushed you back..”

Oh, gods.. Were they reforming now, despite the dragons swirling overhead? Or did this part remember the rest because they were truly the core of the Drifter’s entire being, that everything else revolved around?

“My hands around your throat..” The Improviser whispered, disgusted with themself. They delicately reached up, so, so carefully, like they’d break Flare with a touch, putting their cold clay fingertips to the burn marks on Flare’s neck– Not the beautiful swirled techrot burns they were so used to, the shape of their own hands closing in on Flare’s windpipe.. “Void– Calling Kullervo on you..” They looked back to the sleeping warframe, still sitting like a loyal dog where they had been sitting.

 

“That’s not your fault.. None of it was.” Flare said, keeping that hand on the Improviser’s cheek. They leaned in, laying a kiss to their forehead that threatened to freeze Flare’s lips to their skin. “That wasn’t you.”

 

“Who the hell else was it, then?! Because as I see it, I.. I..” The Improviser backed up, pulling free of Flare and letting their shawzin fall to the stage as they covered their face with their hands. The memories were back. 

Leaving Amir, the rush of the sling over, Flare’s smiling face, and then nothing. Pain. The last, useless fires of neurons. 

They broke down laughing. It wasn’t that mad laughter that overcame some of the others, it was the Drifter’s dark laugh of despair, when they felt like everything was going wrong. “I’m convinced now; anything I touch is doomed! I’m thrown into an abyss, I find a home in it, and then it is ripped from my hands. Time and time and time again. You would have been so much better off if I never escaped my kingdom in the first place.. Or if I never existed at all. ”

 

Flare’s eyebrows knit together, feeling their heart drop hearing all of that from the Drifter’s voice. Gods. They had a feeling that the Drifter felt like this, that this part of them would think of themself like that, but hearing it through their own words was too much.. “I would never be here without you, Drifter–” Bad phrasing, Flare–

“Exactly! You wouldn’t be this if not– Not.. Not this..” The Improviser finally took in Flare’s body. They’d never seen Flare like this. Their clothes were so different than what they no doubt usually wore, but the Drifter– The Improviser had never seen Flare’s fully human form outside of blurry, grainy photos.. “Gods, you’re beautiful, Flare..” Not even realizing it was their own projection of Flare’s beauty that made them this way– At the very least, how they imagined that their rockstar would be dressed, here. Soft black silk and so much gold..  

“I took your own body from you just by existing.. You would all be yourselves, still.. Because I existed, the Scholar turned you all into monsters so that I could have tools! I didn’t even need you, I arrived in a warframe, so what was the fucking point?! To trap more people into the maw of that damned ouroboros of a year with me?! I could have handled it alone! I’ve done it before! Here! For centuries! I’m the only one that can truly bear something like this! I could have been alone forever and all of you could have lived your lives, forgetting me every year, if you even knew me.. You could have been with.. With them..” Through tearful eyes, the Improviser looked to the Duviri-borne copies of the Rippers, leaned into each others broken forms.

 

What.. Lua that was all so much to take in. Did the Drifter really mean that? “You.. You would have preferred it if I was dead? That we’d never met, that Lizzie was never born? I would have died, if I’d never taken that serum. I was infected, I would have died to the techrot, or to Scaldra! You’d prefer if.. Let’s be very honest; you’d prefer if all of us were dead?” Not even to mention the fact that they were more themself than they’d ever been, as a protoframe. You know that, Drifter. You were so happy for me to figure that out..

The Improviser violently shook their head. No. That’s not what they meant. Not even close. Gods, did Flare really think they could ever feel that way about them and the others?! “No. Never. But you would have, and you will. I know it. I can feel it. One day, all of you will finally realize I’m no better than Thrax; clinging tightly to you, forcing you to live for my whims when I could have easily bore the loop on my own.. All the love will fade away from you and you’ll hate me. You’ll finally see the demon that I am and you’ll leave me to become the monster that I’ve always been. You’ll realize I’m not your companion, certainly no savior, I’m your jailor. Holding you still until that grinning maw opens and eats all of us. I was born here. I belong here. Let me fall here, or you will fall with me. No further warnings. ”

 

Oh, hells, that wasn’t just an anxiety born of Sythel’s mind fusing with theirs.. And too late, Drifter, I already did.. “Drifter, you’re not a monster–”

 

“Don’t you dare tell me I’m not! By making this place real, every horror in it lives! Every slight Bombastine ever put upon Luscinia came into being, and then I dared to love her. Made her sing for me, made her cry for me, for what?! I’ve doomed her to a life of eternal sorrow for what, a child’s idle pleasure? The illusion of a shoulder to cry on?” They looked down at their own hands. Her hands. Luscinia, are you finally gone? Why doesn’t that feel good? You always wanted to be free of this spiral, can I still not just let you go?

The Improviser looked back up at Flare, yelling in absolute despair, “And you’re no different! You’re nothing but another songbird I keep living for my own amusement! You should have died with them, but instead Entrati changed you forever, for me, and then because I saw even a flicker of myself in those beautiful golden eyes, I manipulated you into being one with something so terrifying no matter how much you begged me not to! Then I dared to fucking fall in love with you, trap you in my birdcage forever..”

 

No. No, Flare won’t hear any of this anymore. Flare grabbed a hold of both sides of the Improviser’s face, glaring at them intensely through their own tears. “Angel. You don’t have me trapped. You didn’t manipulate me. I wanted this, I wanted Lizzie, you just guided my way, you helped me see what I was blind to! I’m more me than I’ve ever been and that’s because of you! I fell in love with you! With Amir!”

“Gods, Amir.. How horrible am I that I haven’t even thought of him..” That was a lie, he was in their thoughts every moment, they just pushed it back; they felt so fucking awful about leaving him the way they did.. And then Flare followed them?! Oh, Void was there a way for them to leave? Only the Drifter had ever left here and that took so fucking long, and the aid of what was practically a miracle. “You were never supposed to follow me here.. Thank everything he didn’t come with you, because you’re trapped now, if you weren’t before! I’m so, so sorry, Flare.. My star..” The Improviser wrapped their cold arms around Flare, holding them tight and dragging them to the floor as they collapsed onto their knees. “I’ve dragged you down into this spiral with me. I’ve put you through a hell only I was ever meant to see! I would tip myself over the edge for that alone if it would even fucking do anything. How cursed am I, that I can’t even die right?!” The tears that flowed from the Improviser’s eyes started to immediately turn into faintly glowing snow..

 

Oh gods, that echo in their voice. Oh no, not again.. “You didn’t trap me, Angel, I put myself here–”

 

“Oh Void, that’s how you got here.. But.. How?” The Improviser’s gradually brightening, glowing irises flickered back and forth as they put that together, and then saw something horrific. ”Oh, oh Void, is that how you got here?!” Something, somehow, put that image in their head. Of what their view would have been from that table, as if their dead, glassy eyes could look up the stairs and see the Helminth’s room, feel that paper tucked into their cold hands. “You.. You..” They couldn’t say what came to their mind, and the alternate was no better, but it was the words that could come out, “You subsumed yourself?!”

Flare hoped they’d never know that, somehow, but now it flowed right into their mind alongside everything else that brought them this much despair.. Any intelligent method of approach to this Flare had planned started to break down, confronting the fact that the Drifter knew what they did to themself, that by some miracle brought them here. “It’s.. It’s okay, I’m here.. I’m still here, Drifter. We’re still here, and we can get out. I promise you that..” They laid another kiss to the Improviser’s head, hugging their freezing form to their chest. “We can go home! Please, sugar, don’t give in to this.. We all miss you so, so much.. Me, Lizzie, Amir, everyone..”

 

The Improviser pushed Flare back, refusing to harm them as their whole body started to glow blue. Their voice rang out across their now desolate kingdom as they began to lose themself again, “I’ll just be back! I always am! I can never live, I can never die! I’m the only one that can bear any of this! It’s me, it has to be me!” 

 

As the Improviser’s blue Orowyrm cracked through the top of the stage as it grew outward and began to rise into the air, Flare pulled themself to their feet quickly, adjusting Lizzie to make sure she wouldn’t fall and then leaping to grab onto the Improviser’s form by their head. They wrapped their hands tightly around their gilded detailing; determined to never let go no matter how much they were writhing and trying to knock them away back to the safety of the ground. Not letting go. Not this time, not for anything. 

 

"FINE! AT LAST, MISERY WILL HAVE COMPANY!" The Improviser sobbed, dragging Flare with them up into the sky, quickly speeding towards the tail of the Imposter, who began to scream for the Dissenter to fly faster, who screamed for the Reprobate to flee or burn, who screamed for the Fool to get out of their way–

“Sorrow is the dragon that devours itself, bones and all– all other demons pale at its approach; joy falls to lethargy, envy to hunger, anger to self-pity, fear to self-doubt.”

Flare clung on as all five sped towards Thrax’s palace together– And then one by one, ate each other.

The Reprobate swallowed the Fool, then was devoured by the Dissenter, who was torn apart by the Imposter, and finally, the Improviser swallowed them all, swelling to an impossible size, even for an Orowyrm.

”All that remains is entropy– the death of all life, all love, everything. And grinning, riding on a pale horse in its wake? Apathy. Indifference.”

 

Flare braced for impact as the Drifter plowed straight through a wall, knocking them and Lizzie both to the ground off of their head. They quickly collected themself and looked up at the face of the Drifter’s Orowyrm, plated in that familiar blue-green that followed them everywhere. The color they painted their frames, the color of their clothes, their hair.. And all the gilding started to turn silver and warp out into sharp, void-twisted spikes. 

Luscinia’s face disappeared from the clouds above, as the sky of Duviri disappeared entirely and revealed the Void itself– creeping into view; massive pillars of crumbling stone, and grimacing echoes of that grinning face..

 

Lizzie spoke again, purely in her own voice, for once, the tale finally at its end–

“In the distance, can you see her? The Mother, The Mentor, The Mimic? She brought Them to Us, and Them out of this pit.. She cannot reach here, but can She see Us?” Her voice wavered, finally revealing just how much despair she was in, at the state of Her Demon. “We Cannot fail Them. We have one last chance, Lover– Who wins? Our Demon, or the Smiling One? We’ve seen all of Them– How well do We know Them, Flare?”

Flare let out a fearful laugh, eyes still trained on the Orowyrm that was slowly circling them, destroying more and more of the plaza they had landed in. “By now? Better than anyone, I’d hope..”

They are united. At last. And they are the monster that they so insisted they were, at their heart.. We’ve left the script, now. The book ran out of pages.. It truly is time to improvise, isn’t it, Drifter?

Notes:

Sorry for not giving you the gay little jump off the Orowyrm's back, Flare, Drifter has way more practice with that.
Also sorry for so many other things, but, y'know.

chapter title is from Sorrow, by IAMX; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZlkIb6yTZ4 thank you to Mistheart101 for the song rec <3

Next time: time for Flare to figure out how to fight an Orowyrm uh. peacefully? We've gone from hades game to undertale somehow.

Also, i'm not good enough at singing to *record* myself doing this but I did time the improviser's song to the Duviri Paradox, you can sing it to that- I tried to group the lyrics by line as they appear on Luscinia's wiki page here, for the acapella version she sings on any spiral than her own; https://wiki.warframe.com/w/Luscinia/Quotes#Duviri_Paradox_Acapella
And the lyrics are a heavily modified version of Flare's song from the end of their KIM convos, the originals can be seen in chp. 15 of Persistent as a Dying Star, or by going to Flare's rank 6 convo in the Kimulacrum and entering in the answers for Lua/Stranger/None.

Chapter 9: Intermission II: The King's Court

A gunshot rang out in Höllvania, and suddenly something terribly familiar fell into Duviri. 

Right to their favorite place in the Chamber of the Muses, the Drifter fell from heaven, right into Luscinia’s arms. Shattered, lifeless, all the light in their eyes gone.

All of Duviri could feel it, hear it, as the spirals they lived their looping lives through fell into disarray. 

 

Like their lover’s voice in that street so far away, Luscinia’s voice rang out across the entirety of Duviri as she sobbed into the Drifter's blood-soaked shoulder. “Drifter?! My king! Please, wake up– you can’t be the first of us to go! Not before me, not before anyone else.. Please–”

Thrax himself on kaithe-back arrived as swiftly as he could, flanked by a company of his kingsguard. “Take them! Get them to the palace at once!”

Luscinia clung to the Drifter’s limp, cold hand as a Dax wrenched them from her grasp. “No.. Please.. Please, sire, you can’t take them from me.. Please..” 

Another Dax wrenched her back from the Drifter forcefully, holding her arms behind her back while Thrax left with her Drifter, her child, laying limp over the back of Thrax’s steed..

 

Once they arrived back at the palace, the Drifter was laid up in their own bed. Surrounded in the finery of their old life. Gifts given to them over the years by Duviri’s citizens and Thrax himself, a crude but still somehow beautiful child-sized wooden sword from the days they and Thrax used to play-fight, and the Drifter was stripped of their rags, placed in Duviri silks..

Thrax sobbed behind his mask, looking over them. This isn’t right. Killing you resets all this, now. You are as much a king of this place as I am, even through your rebellion. So why are you still dead. 

 

The courtiers– all but Luscinia– were called to the palace immediately. The four of them stood silent, each regarding the Drifter’s corpse in their own twisted lights, waiting for Thrax to speak.

Mathila did her best to keep a smile on her face, but.. They’re.. They’re going to get up, right? Any moment now, they’ll spring up and scare the living daylights out of all of you. It’s just another one of those pranks they used to play, right? We’ll all laugh or yell at them and then everything goes back to normal. Like it always does. So what’s that creeping dread, Mathila? Why do the corners of your lips keep faltering, shaking? Why does keeping a grin in and of itself fill you with so much fear?

Bombastine was furious. Gone for so long, and yet even their corpse makes everything halt around them to shower them in attention. What’s the use for finery and silk to the dead? It’s not.. It’s not fair. What could bring down that unstoppable thorn in his side like this in a way that took everything down with them? They hate you. You hate them. So why are you crying, Bombastine? You should be happy, you’re the only preening peacock left in the entire kingdom!

Lodun.. It’s like his fire went out. In a moment like this he’d usually disregard any order, take the opportunity to wrench power for himself, but.. For once, he was giving that imp a moment to cry. Hell, he was crying with him, a few tears which immediately turned to steam, hidden away before they even escaped the eyes of his mask. Drifter was his protegé, once. It was that fire in their heart that wanted to break free of Thrax’s cycle that gave Lodun some semblance of hope that he might one day finally be king as he deserved.. But now even that unstoppable flame, that grinned in the face of their executions, had been snuffed out..

Sythel would have run if not for being stunned in place in fear. Oh Void. If they’re gone, there’s nothing but that old Dax holding the Undercroft together. And if that falls, the angels come. The biting insects and grinning faces and hands and eyes and– Please, Drifter, get up, you terrifying thing. Sythel would feel joy for once in her life to hear those whispers in her mind again when she looks at you. To look through the dark and see two gleaming flames looking back. You’re the most horrifying thing here and that’s why you’re her protector.. 

 

Thrax stood up from where he knelt by the Drifter’s bedside and spun to face his court. He was so small off of his throne, and his sniffles and sobs and shaking hands only made that more clear. “Well?! None of you have any clue of what we do about this!? What use are you?!” He yelled, eyes scanning back and forth across the semicircle of courtiers surrounding him.

Bombastine was the first to speak, “..Why haven’t you asked Luscinia that. She knew them closest, certainly their favorite songbird would know their deepest secrets better than any of us.”

“She’s useless.” Thrax said through his own tears. She was present in the room whether he wanted her to be or not. “All she’s doing is wallowing in her sorrow as usual. We’re not exactly going to sing them back.. Back..” He took a shaky, panicking breath. “Back alive.”

“The Scholar kept such a close eye on them.. I’d bet he knows what’s happened here.” Sythel growled.

“Yes and he and his landing is gone, Sythel, or I’d be scouring his library myself, right now! So quiet your coward's tongue about that bastard that abandoned us!” Thrax screamed, terrifying the already trembling courtier into scrambling and hiding in the nearest corner.

“.. Sire,” Lodun said, begrudgingly. Don’t push Thrax now. “They aren’t coming back. Whatever fate befell them returned their body to their kingdom. Throw a lavish funeral for them all you’d like, but they aren’t waking up. We need to plan for what happens next, anything else is a waste of our time!” He anxiously looked out the window towards the sky– constantly shifting, never settling– occasionally blinking out to the full, vast voidlight visible only from the Undercroft.

 

“NO! I’M GETTING THEM BACK! YOU WILL BRING THEM BACK TO ME! THAT’S AN ORDER! I.. I..” Thrax collapsed onto his knees again, all of his kingly demeanor fallen off to reveal the child that he was. “I can’t.. I can’t go on without them.. Even if they leave again..”

 

Mathila was silent, but something started shifting about her. In the few moments no one was looking at her, her body had become a bit more androgynous, and all the plating of her face started to follow, her hair all shifting and forming into one long braid..

And then she disappeared. 

“Wh– Mathila?!” Lodun exclaimed in shock, looking towards where she just was, standing beside him.

 

The sky stabilized out into the swirling, rainbow sky of Joy, and in their childhood bed, the king of Duviri, reformed into the bright pinks of the spiral’s keeper, took a sharp, deep breath in, as if they had forgotten to breathe..

 

They wandered out to go have a run like they always did, and all was well– then they tumbled over the edge.

 

One of Luscinia’s shawzin players, stricken with grief at the loss of Luscinia’s dearest king, snuck up on Bombastine and beheaded him. His gold-flecked blood seeped into their very glazing, and before they knew it they had transformed into that deep, dark hunger that flowed out of his hollow center.. And to their horror, they were rendered in his greens and golds.. Good void, you’re beautiful aren’t you? So beautiful that all should kneel before you.. You could finally have everything..

 

Lodun, in some mad, desperate attempt to control himself, drove his own hand through his chest plating and ripped out his heart. There. No emotion but rage will ever govern him again– And then nothing did, as he heard the Drifter’s rebellious laughter escape his own mouth, as they set forth to reshape his whole body to the image of a revolutionary from beyond the void.

 

Sythel hid in the palace district amongst all this, and started to feel herself slip into deepest despair. This is the end. The tapping comes any moment. Look, you’re already changing– Oh gods, what happened to your legs?! Your eyes- Wait. What gods?! Why did you think that?! Why is your head filled with the memory of burning flesh and burst eyeballs, of an explosion large enough to level Duviri itself, of the impenetrable reality that you aren’t real?! Oh Void, Sythel, you’re not yourself anymore! Have you ever been?!

 

Luscinia was left alone on her stage. She kept a hold of herself longer than any of the others, long enough to see that beautiful musician come from nowhere and ask where her dearest king had gone, but.. As all the others fell, she couldn’t hold it back anymore. It was just all too much, hearing their voice roaring and laughing through the sky.. All hope was lost from her heart. Clasping tightly to the shawzin that she had taught the Drifter to play, she tipped herself over the side into the void.. And woke with their face, their voice, on her stage again, as if her own attempt at escape was nothing but an intrusive thought..

 

After the Dissenter tried to strangle him, Thrax huddled up under his own bed in the palace in fear and despair. There was nothing left anymore. Everything was burnt, dead, and whispering.. What good are you of a king? You’re not though, are you. They shoved that in your face. You’re just a toy on a shelf. Through his ceramic mask, Thrax looked up from his hiding place to see that doll of himself, sitting on a shelf.. That doll of himself, or.. Just. Himself?

Still shaking, though now with sadness more than fear, Thrax pulled himself out and reached up to grab the doll, holding it against his own chest in a hug. Closest thing he’ll ever get to Drifter hugging him anymore. Closest thing in.. Void, how long has it been..

He felt something shift, and looked out to see an Orowyrm larger than he’d ever seen flying towards his arena. Luscinia must have finally fallen, but what in the Void was that.. He set himself down on the Drifter’s bed and ran through the empty halls of his palace to fetch his kaithe from the royal stable. No one to order. No one for him to demand answers from on what was happening.. Just you, Thrax, as fast as your legs can take you. This is how they felt, wasn’t it.. 

Notes:

Actively chewing on the Orowyrm fight, I got the idea for this chapter while working on the shape of that one..
I'm determined to finish this by Isleweaver's release.
Apparently that also includes torturing Thrax further.

Chapter 10: The Ouroboros / Kintsugi

Notes:

for your consideration as we FINALLY roll into the end here, the three songs I listened to on loop for this chapter's writing process:

North Star by IAMX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLmC2hSRwKM
Phantom Bride by Deftones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43PThawHUUE
and 0=2 by Messa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6aT11gfD7s

Flare took the few precious moments they had before that great, beautiful beast circling them made a move to consider their position here. They’re not exactly prepared to fight a dragon, even if Lizzie can operate as she usually does, so..

Talk it out? With that? 

 

Their mind finally went back to what Teshin said. Piece them together, then fill in the gaps, as he said, with the ‘liquid gold of love’..

You old bastard, you knew something like this would happen, didn’t you.

That’s it, isn’t it?

They’re not together, as much as they might look like it. All you did was slowly, painfully, sweep up the broken vase that is their mind with a dustpan. That’s not putting it back together, now, is it? You have to actually sit down and piece the thing together, glue it up, fill in any of the gaps where a piece was just too small.. Then it’s whole again. Not the same as it was, but still whole. 

 

Look closely, Flare– That Orowyrm might look perfect, but whenever it shifts, you can see the cracks spidering out across all of its plating, shifting and cutting into the flesh underneath..

As together as their pieces are, Drifter’s still broken. As painful as that felt to admit.

 

If Drifter was in your place, Flare, as much as you despise this coping method of theirs, they’d be setting themself to fix this immediately. 

If you were the one that got shot, there they’d be, humming one of your songs to you as you were laid out on their table, delicately piecing your skull together like a jigsaw puzzle with bits of Lizzie’s techrot for glue, then teaching themself brain surgery on the fly somehow.

What would they do, if they were looking up at you as some great dragon of apathy and despair..

 

Lizzie’s narration had to mean something. Some might have been influenced by the Drifter’s own anxieties, but..

 

“What is Joy, after all, to One who has it ripped out from Their grasp at every turn?” 

“What is Envy, to the One who hungers for everything?”

“What is Anger, to the One so deeply wronged?”

“What is Fear, after all, to the One who knows their deepest worries are real?”

And then one left unspoken.. But.. Implied. What is Sorrow, to the One who knows naught but it?

 

One unified answer. Nothing. Not alone. Every emotion on their own self-destructed in some way or another, with your ‘help’ or not, Flare. 

When they got you and Lizzie together, they were insistent that you could not by any means get rid of her. That you’d hate yourself forever if you did. They’ve felt that, haven’t they? Losing some critical part of themself, when they got stuck here and all their emotions started to numb out.

Joy probably went first. Then they shut their Envy out in the cold until it festered. So on and so forth.

 

Oh how Flare wished they could use transference right now. Push their way in and wrap their arms around all the shattered pieces, like how Drifter did that morning they transferred in and hugged them, reassuring them that Lizzie was nothing to be afraid of..

You can’t though, Flare. No matter how much you will yourself to be, even here in this place of pure imagination, you’re not a Tenno– you’re not even a protoframe right now. All you have is your voice, just like old times. 

 

Why haven’t they done anything to you.. They’re just circling, two big golden orbs for eyes staring you down..

“Drifter–” Bad start.

Flare immediately ducked behind a piece of rubble as the Orowyrm reared up and bellowed out a gout of pale green flame in their direction. Okay. They still hate being called that. Duly noted.. “Just listen to me! Please! You still love me, right?”

 

Ear-piercingly loud, the Drifter’s own echoing voice responded, “YES! AND I’D RATHER LIVE WITH THE GUILT OF KILLING YOU THAN LET YOU SUFFER HERE WITH ME!”

 

Oh, shit.. Flare swallowed hard in fear, hoping desperately that the Drifter didn't actually mean that. “I don’t have to suffer, though, neither do you! We can still go home, Angel!”

 

“There is no home left– There never has been! If I’m not pushed out, then I make a mistake as foolhardy as I did and I ruin everything! No one will look at me the same again! I HAVE NO HOME, I DESERVE NO HOME! IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY!”

 

Flare carefully stood out from behind the rubble, hands up in surrender. They can circle around anyway, it was only so much cover.. They gazed up at the Orowyrm, placing their hand on their heart, “There is a home for you to go back to! With me, with us! Everyone has been fighting so fucking hard to get you back to us!” Don’t mention the part where time literally stopped when the clock hit midnight, Flare, that’ll only make them feel worse.. “They miss you, no one judges you for what happened, there’s still a place for you there! Please, trust me..”

“Our Flare speaks the truth!” Lizzie cried out from Flare’s back, her voice wavering as if she was about to cry.

Oh, thank Sol, she’s helping. C’mon, Angel, you know she can’t lie..

“Dragon, We would not have come this far, suffered as We have by every sharp edge of You, if there was truly no hope left in Our hearts!”

 

“Don’t try and fool me– I know how you and Flare got here! I drove you to that! Of all of this, I can’t forgive myself for that!”

 

“DEMON!” Lizzie hissed, “Do You really think We would have allowed dearest Flare to succumb to Their sadness like that if We knew that was Their end, even if They’d be with All that We are? After You showed Us how beautiful a flame They are as Themself? Though this space is far beyond Our reach, We knew We would end up here!”

Flare wondered if she had.. Even if she hadn’t realized that until this moment. Her own cognition about her omnipresence was always a bit unclear, to Flare at least. But she at least seemed to know what the right path was.. Most of the time.

 

“Flare– Flare still ..” The Drifter’s voice wavered, and another could be heard joining them– Luscinia?

From the eyeholes in the head of that great serpent, waterfalls of tears began to flow, threatening to flood the trench which it had ground into the earth beneath it. 

“Flare still killed themself because of me! How can I ever go on, knowing that if I slip, I take them with me?!”

 

Flare began to cry with them. They aren’t.. Wrong, but, “I-I’m still here though, Angel.. I couldn’t.. You know my head, love..” They gave a shaky smile. Drifter did. Even with Lizzie by their side, Drifter knew how deep their depression could reach sometimes.. ”I.. It was a moment of weakness, I was alone and I couldn’t bear to think of a world without you.. But please, please don’t make that true. The moment I landed here I knew there was a chance, that’s all I’ve been clinging onto.. Don’t prove the misery in my head right, please, Angel..”

 

If Lizzie was right, and their apathy is all that was left.. There’s sorrow back on board. The king above all, but– it’s wrong to simplify Drifter just to their misery, isn’t it? It’s cruel to them. That ignores all else that they are. There’s the biggest piece pulled from the pile of shards.. What fits together with it? What supports that?

They’ve lost their drive. To quote the Dissenter; Drifter, where’s your fire? But no, don’t go directly into anger, that’s a bad direction to push this, what else could drive them forward– Gods, Lizzie, we have to wake them up–

 

Flare took a deep breath in, beating back their tears for a moment to allow themself to speak, “You must be so hungry, in there all alone with your thoughts. I do know what that feels like. Hunger for people to adore me, as me. The true me. “ They said, beating the side of their fist into their chest. That spot where the techrot crept out and showed itself first. “Then hunger for my life before it all, when I was infected with the techrot and convinced that my dream had been taken from under my feet! It wasn’t fair!” 

 

“It’s.. It’s not fair..” There he is. There’s Bombastine’s voice creeping in.. Oh, how strange it is to feel hope, hearing that bitter tonality.

 

Flare continued, “Then I was alone; quarantined in a city where my entire life fell apart in a moment when my band was taken from me–”

Lizzie chimed in with them, sounding ashamed of herself, “And Our hunger was born.. Gnawing, clawing, taking everything We could.. So hungry We almost ate Ourselves, devoured sweet Flare whole..”

“- You satiated that. Without you, there’s a deep, dark pit that can never be full again..”

 

The Orowyrm writhed in pain and roared as Flare could just barely see Bombastine’s beloved gilding filling in some of the cracks in its armor. 

For once, yes, gild yourself from head to toe, darling. Want. Want for something, want for everything. I know from the story that Luscinia and Bombastine hate each other, but there was love there, once, no matter how toxic or fleeting. If he has any love left for her, he can hold her up for a few moments..

 

“Void, I’m so hungry that I’m hollow, I ate myself, there’s nothing left in here.. I can’t fill that space anymore.. No matter how much I want to.”

 

Flare nodded. We can tell, sweetheart.. “That’s alright, Angel.. We’ll give you time. You can rest, you can heal, and then you can. Do you.. Do you remember how all this started, still?” Flare’s eyes focused up to the Orowyrm’s forehead– Oh gods. There it is. A big, gaping bullet hole, projected to the proportions of an Orowyrm’s skull, from which everything else shatters out from. Two edges of it are glued together by a flowing line of that gilding.. “I miss you in my head.. Even that cold void that you are is enough to bring me comfort. I never did get to feel you within me.. Feel your arms wrapped around me, holding me together, as you do. And that hunger will be unending unless you follow me home, Drifter.”

 

Hearing their name again, the Orowyrm reared back in preparation to breathe some new horror at Flare again. Cold, toxic fumes billowed out of the hollows in its helmet– Oh gods if that’s a gas, where will there be to hide from it–

 

Flare ran to duck behind that piece of rubble again for any sense of cover as another wave of dragon’s breath came at them, but– Even without getting fully behind that bit of stone, nothing hit them. Hearing the sound of deep, labored breathing, they opened their eyes to see what guarded them.. Since when did he get here– He must have grabbed onto the Drifter as they flew off, and Flare didn’t notice in their panic to do the same.. 

Kullervo was there, standing with his arms wide guarding Flare with his own body.. Shaking, all of his plating shattered and broken as his master’s was, ground under the Orowyrm’s body until he was able to push himself free and leap out to guard Flare. Blood poured from between some of the cracks– the one reminder that he, twisted by Duviri or no, was just as much flesh and blood as any other Warframe was.

Fuck, is he on our side, Lizzie?

Kullervo drew in a trembling, painful breath and screamed as loudly as he could, calling a rain of knives down on his own beloved master as they swooped their head down to try and snap at him, causing them to reel back in pain.

He couldn’t speak to get his own words out, every feeling he had buried beneath what was done to him. Warframes cannot speak. They can only roar like beasts. But there was so much he wanted to say. Ask for forgiveness from his master, from their lover, tell his king how much they meant to him.. Without words, actions were all he had, and those were faltering, too. He was barely on his feet.. But he wouldn’t let them hurt that musician that they loved. Not again. He knew that guilt, it would be too much for even them to bear.

 

Flare stood up, placing a hesitant hand on the back of one of Kullervo’s trembling shoulders. “Call that off! Don’t hurt them, Kullervo, they’re just afraid..” 

Kullervo steadied his breathing a bit, and the knives stopped. The Orowyrm was staring at him, now, silent in disbelief, cowering back up onto the outer rim of the arena.

 

Sorrow begets the hunger of their envy, begets the fear they’ll never be full again–

Flare projected their voice out to the cowering wyrm, spinning to keep their intense glare on it as it continued to try and break eye contact. I’m sorry, Angel, but you need to be afraid. “That’s what you are, aren’t you?! Good! Be afraid, my love! That’s alright, there is so much to be afraid of! You don’t have to bear your fear alone; it isn’t too much for us, it doesn’t make you a burden!”

 

Sythel’s trembling voice began to peek out and join the others, “I’M JUST GOING TO FAIL AGAIN! SOMEDAY, I WILL FAIL, AND ALL OF YOU WILL FALL WITH ME! WHY TRY AND STOP IT ANYMORE?! WHY PRETEND I’M ANYTHING BUT A BALL AND CHAIN AROUND YOUR FEET, DRAGGING YOU TO THE DEPTHS WITH ME?”

 

“Dragon, if that is what You fear, it is already true!”

Sol, Lizzie, are we really going to tell them? That. That would make them terribly afraid..

Flare took a bracing breath, continuing to keep a hand on Kullervo’s plating. If not for stability, then for comfort. Despite what he’d done to them, they did still love him, if only because Drifter did, and because Flare also saw him as the Drifter's own body, in a way.. “We– we all held out until New Years.. We thought you’d just. Wake up..” Flare’s voice shook, thinking of sitting there in the backroom, eyes fearfully passing between the clock and the Drifter’s body. They weren’t part of the team that goes to fix the reactor, so, they posted themself up to make sure that Drifter wouldn’t wake up alone.. And then they never did. “Angel, the clocks stopped.”

 

“What?” The Orowyrm reeled back, and Flare could start to see gold creep in through another set of cracks. Glue Envy to Sorrow, then Fear to Sorrow’s other edge.. Sythel creeps out from her corner and clings onto Luscinia, crying in horror to her shoulder..

 

Flare let themself crack a bit, showing the panic in their voice as they thought of what might be happening back in 1999, “Without you, they didn’t spin back! Everything’s just.. Stopped in place, like you pressed pause on reality! If you don’t come back.. I don’t know what will happen, none of us do!”

 

“Then.. I’ve already failed.. Oh, Void.. What’s the point, then?! WHAT’S THE POINT IN ANYTHING ANYMORE?! EVERYTHING HURTS AND THERE’S NO GETTING OUT! NO MATTER WHERE I RUN, EVERYTHING HURTS!” 

 

Kullervo let out a shuddering breath, as the sheer force of the Orowyrm’s voice shook his plating. Bits and pieces were falling off of him, clattering to the ground around him.. His knees began to buckle underneath him, but he remained firm, digging his heels in to try and regain stability.

Flare reached out and wrapped an arm under one of his to help keep him stable. C’mon, you can hang in there, too.. If anything, this is a hell of a symbolic gesture, holding Kullervo up.. “Because there’s still something out there to fight for! If everything is lost, Angel, then how are we standing here now?! How did something in you guide me here?! Why, when I fell into the void did Duviri take hold of me, if you truly lost all hope of escape? I’m sorry–” Was that sorry to Kullervo, to Drifter, or to themself? Flare screamed, ”DRIFTER! WHERE THE HELL DID YOUR FIRE GO?!”

 

The Orowyrm growled, and Flare could hear a deeply furious, masculine tone join the others– That must be Lodun?

 

“The Drifter I know, that I love, was a blazing flame as bright as mine! How hard did you fight, just to make sure we lived to see past New Years at all? How hard have you fought, to have the chance to put your boot into Entrati’s smug face?! Or into the Indifference’s itself?! If you give up now, you’ll never get to feel that! Yes! Everything fucking hurts!” Flare could still feel the golden maws’ bite, the Dissenter’s hands around their throat, Kullervo’s knives– the techrot creeping through their heart and up through their whole body. “Use that pain! Feel it! Doesn’t it just make you so fucking angry, that all you’ve known is pain? “ Flare, the Dissenter looked like you.. ”Remember that fire you feel in my chest when we’re together! Remember what it felt like to be me, to feel that fury I feel every time I go out and set Scaldra ablaze!”

 

Another gold line filled in as the Orowyrm writhed and turned its head skywards to fill the air with that familiar deep red flame.

Envy to focus the target of their sorrow, then fill them with fear of losing the little they had left. Then set that on fire with rage.. Lodun, pushing his firm, strong hands against the backs of the three courtiers most likely to cower in inaction and self-pity to move forward. Do something. 

 

Through the roaring flames, Flare swore they could hear another scream– not theirs, not Lizzie’s, not Kullervo’s. An echoing, young voice, in absolute terror..

 

Thrax’s favorite kaithe came crashing to earth in front of Kullervo and Flare, bouncing the young king off the pavement as it dissipated into a swirl of void energy out from underneath him. How.. How long had he been up there, circling?

The deep azure ceramic of his mask was cracked in the impact and he scurried backwards, all illusion of tyrannical bluster gone, as the Orowyrm focused onto the tiny, cowering king.

 

Flare leveled their glare at him, as Thrax looked panicked over his shoulder up at them and Kullervo. Why the fuck are you here, you’re only going to break them apart again to try and keep them here, aren’t you–

“My friend.. Please..”

Please?

“Don’t hurt me..” Thrax kept backing away until he hit Kullervo’s legs, which only sent the injured king into more of a panic. Oh Void, that beast is free.. This is the end..

 

Flare let out a growl of frustration. Gods damn it, he’s still part of them– Flare reached out and grabbed Thrax by the shoulders, dragging him to his feet and pulling him behind them and Kullervo for safety. “What the fuck are you doing here–” They hissed back at him, as he cowered behind them like a child hiding behind their mother’s skirt.

“I just.. I just wanted to see them again..” Thrax mumbled, clinging tightly to the dark silks of Flare’s costume. Through the cracks in his mask, they could almost see the face of the boy underneath, two big wet eyes staring out of the darkness.. “I just wanted to have my friend back.. But.. Void, that’s just hurting them, isn’t it..”

 

“Since when did you ever care about HURTING ME?!” The Orowyrm screamed, Drifter’s voice raising above all of the others, loud enough that it made Flare’s ears ring. “YOU CUT ME DOWN EVERY DAY FOR CENTURIES, SINCE WHEN DO YOU FUCKING CARE ABOUT ME?”

“ALWAYS!” Thrax screamed back, through tears. “I.. I just.. I just wanted to protect you.. But you just kept running.. The world beyond the wall hurt you so terribly that you burnt down our kingdom! I was right, Drifter! Please! Calm yourself and come back to me! We can set Duviri right– you can even keep this musician here with you! I don’t care! Please, just come back to me!”

 

That’s what Flare was afraid he’d say. No matter how much he does care for them, he can’t defy the character he is..

 

“Sorry, imp, but there’s something You can’t bring Them..” Lizzie said, surprisingly softly. “The one thing They could never find on these shores. Or else, why was their Joy so fragile here, Flare?”

 

The Fool practically shattered just witnessing you, Flare.. But out there– they smile all the time. Laugh all the time. Even in the darkest moments.. Gods. Flare never wanted Amir to experience what they’d experienced here, but if only he was here; certainly he could make that dragon laugh.. 

Love. They could never find love here. Real or no, everyone follows a script to some degree or another.. Those who hate them will always hate them. Those who love them will always love them. And in that, those feelings are hollow, as horrible as that feels to call the love that someone like Luscinia clearly has for the Drifter..

 

Out there, though, ‘beyond the wall’, in the other loop.. Everyone has grown to love them. 

What would the mall be without them and Quincy playfully jabbing at one another? 

Or hearing them and Eleanor laughing at some conversation just between them? 

Seeing them and Aoi dancing to some new music she dug up? 

Trading puns with Velimir.. And even though they both deny it.. That flicker of motherly affection in Minerva’s eye whenever the Drifter does something that reminds her of the good that existed in Neci..

Playing that card game with Kaya in one of the back booths.. 

Drifter helping Arthur cook a meal, singing folk songs from two ends of time..

And though the two often butt heads, who else would truly urge Lettie to rest, to find time for herself for once, but them?

 

And most of all.. It was the Drifter’s joy at having found love with Amir that drew Flare to them, initially, beyond the want for help.. It was hard to keep their eyes off of those two. Them speeding past each other and stealing a kiss, hearing Amir call out for them with one of his long list of saccharine pet names, watching them at a distance playing one of his games together in the arcade, overhearing the whole Hex enthusiastically playing F&F with Amir at the head, more confident than he ever sounded. 

Oh, back then, how Flare craved to be looked at, the way Amir looked at Drifter, or the way they looked at him.. Little did Flare know at the time that they did, both of them, when they weren’t looking, caught up in dread over their situation with Lizzie..

Flare couldn’t think of a happier day of their life, now, than the evening those two adorable people confessed their love to them and Lizzie.. 

 

“Drifter!” Flare called out, stepping out in front of Kullervo and spreading out their arms wide. No fear anymore. C’mon. You’ve got this, Varleon.. Just one left. So, they looped back around to the beginning of this whole conversation and repeated themself, “Do you still love me?!”

 

The arena fell completely silent, as the Orowyrm stared down at Flare, molten gold seeping through all the cracks.. Except for one line that refused to wick in the liquid..

 

“Because I still love you! No matter what! Remember me! Remember Amir! Don’t you ever want to hear him laugh again?! Is that not worth it, even if everything crumbles to dust, even if you do fail? Is that not worth fighting for anymore?!” Flare screamed, their golden eyes locked onto the Orowyrm’s. They were doing their damndest to stay strong, to keep their voice steady, but they were crying, and their hands were trembling, held out wide to invite the Drifter to truly kill them if they were so determined to. “We will love you no matter what. Even if you die again and I need to come back here, do all this shit again! I will come back every fucking time! Amir would, too, I’m sure of it! DO YOU FUCKING LOVE ME?”

 

“I– Always. I’ll..” Multicolored tears like oil slicks flowed freely from the Orowyrm’s eyes, flooding the arena until the only dry land was the dais that Flare, Kullervo and Thrax stood upon. “I’ll always love you, Flare.. And I.. I miss Amir so much.. I can.. I can barely remember his voice..”

 

“He’s waiting for you, Drifter, I haven’t heard him laugh since you fell! Remember him– remember how happy you are with him, with me! Please!” Flare stepped forward as they spoke, inching closer and closer to the Orowyrm without a hint of hesitation. “I miss your soft touch, your beautiful voice, that smell of cool ozone that follows you. I miss seeing your eyes staring back at me in the dark, like two bright stars in the midnight sky, I miss the taste of your skin when we kiss.. Our home feels so lonely without you that Amir’s been sleeping behind the arcade again, in that tiny, dark room!” 

 

The Orowyrm remained silent, drawing back as they continued to cry. Difference in anatomy or no, Flare could almost see the Drifter in it, drawing themself back into a corner while overwhelmed with emotions. 

C’mon, Angel.. Where’s Mathila.. Where's your joy.. It's still in there somewhere.. You just need to cling onto it for a moment.

 

“..Thrax..”

He stepped hesitantly out from behind Kullervo, presenting himself right beside Flare, taking a hold of the hem of their robe again for comfort. “..Drifter?”

“I’m so sorry.. I.. I can’t ever come back here. Not how you want me to, not for good.. But.. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still love you. You were my friend, my brother, for so many years, even before this.. I.. I never told you, not even when we were children together, but I imagined you beside me on the Zariman, when I was afraid, when I was alone, when my parents were busy.. When no one else would play with me. I’d curl up with your story, I’d jump around my room and pretend I was sparring with you.. But I’m not that person anymore.”

Thrax trembled with.. Every emotion at once. He’d been here before– Their words were much more harsh back then, when they first tried to break free, but the sentiment was the same.

 

Mathila’s voice finally joined the rest. A soft hand on Lodun and Luscinia’s shoulders, softening the bite of his rage, the sting of the tears in her eyes.. “I remember, now.. I remember listening to you sing to me, Flare, just.. Bits and pieces, laid out on that table. I was so cold.. And then I was here. I heard you crying, Thrax, and what was left of me thought; I can’t bear to hear him like that. So I took Mathila– sucked up all the Joy we had left so we could go play again, like we used to.. Try and pretend like everything beyond Duviri was all a dream! But.. I couldn’t.. I can’t.. Every time I felt happy, I could hear something in the back of my mind telling me everything that I lost. Then you appeared, Flare, and I couldn’t deny it anymore. I’ve.. I’ve got somewhere I need to be." 

 

Thrax’s voice, uncharacteristically soft, mumbled up to them, as he began to back away. “..I’ll miss you.”

“I will too.. Don’t worry.. I’ll make it home safe. My star will guide me back."

My star.. Happy tears started pouring down Flare's cheeks. That's them.. That's our Drifter, Lizzie.. Flare could hear her purring on their back, for the first time since the Joy spiral.

The Orowyrm lowered its head onto the stage, slowly to not be threatening, and Flare reached up a hand to gently run their fingertips against its cool, smooth plating. The final lines filled in, and Drifter was made whole again. "I’m not abandoning you, I'll be back someday soon to make sure all has been made right, but.. I need to go home..”

 

The voidlit sky filled with soft clouds and the light of a beautiful, golden sunset; blocking the grinning faces and impenetrable darkness out with beauty beyond compare, as all of the tension fell out to a gentle calm.

Aside from one final act of chaos. Wouldn't be the Drifter without it.

The Orowyrm’s jaw cracked as a trembling, weak Drifter shoved it upwards to break free from their own monstrous stomach, dressed in beautiful Duviri silk of their own, the same that Thrax was ready to lay them to rest in, still with their wedding rings around their neck safe on a chain. They reached out a shaking hand, and just as Flare and Kullervo both rushed forward to take it, to wrap the Drifter in a tearful embrace, the Orowyrm snapped all four of them; Drifter, Flare, Lizzie and Kullervo up into its throat and flew off, disappearing into the clouds and away from Duviri’s shores.

 

Thrax was left alone, kneeling and in tears in the broken arena.. Except- He wasn't alone. The courtiers had all been left behind when the dragon left, pulling themselves and each other up off the broken pavement as they fell in around their king, wrapping arms around each others shoulders in joyful tears. 

"Mathila! You're alive!" Sythel draped her arms around the taller woman's shoulders, smiling, "I was so afraid we'd lost you forever.."

Mathila wrapped her other arm around Bombastine, "Glad to be here! I've worked up quite the appetite with all that flying- We should hold a feast!"

"Agreed, wholeheartedly, I could not put it better if I tried.." Bombastine, maskless but still grinning ear to ear, wiped tears from his eyes as he leaned into Luscinia's shoulder. "And a celebration calls for music!" 

Luscinia nodded, quietly reaching out to hold Lodun's hand. "I think I have some new accompaniment around here somewhere.. I.. I hope they'll take to it well, here.." She said, looking out to four new void-borne souls that were in and amongst the crowd of confused citizenry and Dax that had started to fall into the arena.

Lodun sniffled, attempting very poorly to disguise the fact that he was crying, "Ugh. This is going to be so much shit that we have to clean up and discuss, what in the hells was any of that.. I suppose we could take.. A moment to celebrate victory, though. A toast to the Drifter. And that.. Rebel of a spouse of theirs."

Luscinia's eyebrows raised in shock. "Spouse?! Truly?! Void, how have they not told me?! No wonder I loved them the moment I saw them.."

As all of Duviri came back to life again, those six held each other like a family for once.

They’d start snapping and fighting each other eventually, but even just for a moment, it was like a cast party after the end of the play. All five of them, crying and laughing, just happy to be alive, and see each other alive. Even Lodun. Even Bombastine.  Thrax would be inconsolable for some time, but they could raise him up. Boost his ego back up until he was a little tyrant again as he should be. Fill all those cracks of his in with gold.

There was still a wolf knocking at their door, more clear than ever, but.. All was calm again. Even just for this moment.

Notes:

author found dead in own chapter notes sobbing like a baby

I GOT THERE
I only *probably* dehydrated myself with how much i cried writing this chapter.
2 chapters remain!! the return to 1999 and then a fluff epilogue because good god this needs a fluff epilogue.
SEE I SAID THERE'D BE A HAPPY END don't worry about the orowyrm bit that's fine

Chapter 11: Rebirth

In Höllvania, everything suddenly turned on at once; like the entire world had just recovered from a power blackout.

Every small sound of the mall came rushing into motion; all the advertisements and beeps of the arcade, civilians strolling through chatting with one another, the sound of new years fireworks, cheering as the countdown came to a close..

After a moment of collective surprise in all of the corners they were spread to at the moment, every member of the Hex came rushing to the center of the mall in front of the stage, eyes and voices full of panic and a final glimmer of hope. They broke into a chorus of hurried questions–

 

Kaya and Amir arrived first, colliding with one another.

“What did you do?!” Kaya exclaimed, both excited and terrified, grabbing Amir and shaking him by the shoulders.

“I-I dunno! I've got no fuggin' clue, I didn’t do anything, I thought you did something!” Amir stammered, looking around the room and to the clocks, which had just stopped, changed briefly to a glitchy, void-tongue message, and then started spinning backwards. “B-but I think it’s fixed?! Which– Which would mean..” He couldn’t voice that hope, hands shaking. If Drifter was alive again, somewhere, were they going to come back to Flare being gone, or would they come back, too? 

 

Next came Arthur, Quincy and Aoi,

“Did anyone see anything strange? Hear anything strange? Anything?” Arthur yelled out, skana at the ready, prepared for whatever was about to show itself. A false bit of hope from the Indifference to catch them off-guard, before the worst came?

“Nothing here!” Aoi replied, rushing in and placing a bracing hand on Amir’s shoulder alongside Kaya. She could see the panic setting into his exhausted eyes– exhaustion. Is he actually feeling tired for once? He had been wired for.. Weeks, if they were right, hardly able to stay still even if he wanted to. If he stayed still too long the sparks came back.. 

“Nothing except every civvie in the building cheering at once and the damn fireworks, I couldn't hear anything above all that!" Quincy yelled down as he jumped from the top balcony. Wait– As the others fell in to try and figure out what the hell was going on, Quincy reached into his coat and pulled out a photo he’d kept on him for over a week now– that one that looked back at him. In his mind, if that got worse it was a sign that things were about to truly go to hell, but.. There they are. Tears welled up in Quincy’s eyes, looking down to the photo to see the Drifter was back beside him in the image. Same soft, warm smile he remembered.. No swirling black eyes and too many teeth, just them..

Lettie pulled in Eleanor– Eleanor had been lethargic for weeks and steadily getting worse; cut off from the techrot hive and with all of the horrors of the void creeping into her head. “Eleanor’s awake! She’s alright!” Lettie said excitedly, carefully dragging Eleanor up to Aoi’s side, where she and Lettie both kept an arm around the exhausted psychic to keep her steady.

“Something’s coming..” Eleanor’s voice, quiet but insistent, rang out in all of their heads, as Minerva and Velimir joined from in the bar.

Velimir skidded to a stop by the other protoframes, taking in their expressions to see if anyone knew what was going on, “Holy crap, I think everything’s back?! Hey- Anyone else hear that rumbling sound?” 

 

Arthur raised an eyebrow at Velimir, “No, what rumbling sound–”

 

Oh, that rumbling sound.

Just as the clocks hit 00:00 on January 1st, a loud noise resounded outwards through the mall, shaking the floor and almost sending several of the thoroughly jumpy and physically and mentally weakened protoframes to their knees.

 

“What the hell–” Amir stabilized himself on Aoi and Kaya a bit, looking around with everyone else for the source of that. Since when did an earthquake hit at the other end of midnight?! Oh, it’s not an earthquake.  Amir's eyes went wide, looking up past the stage, as he figured out the source of their possible brand new hellish problem.

 

The source, it turns out, was that techrot-encrusted wall up behind the stage; it squirmed and writhed and the Helminth’s mouth groaned as something was trying to push its way through. The protoframes all took several steps back, bracing themselves and each other for some kind of attack, and then that great techrot maw opened wide as she could, spewing forth a wave of blood and viscera across the floor as a gods-damned Orowyrm from the Drifter’s storybook pushed its way free, breaking the tvs above the stage and coming crashing down into the center of the semicircle of protoframes who stood watching all this unfold in various states of horror.

 

As the Orowyrm’s head bounced off of the flooring, three familiar humanoid figures tumbled out, sliding across the bloody floor. 

Kullervo of all things, beaten and broken but still alive, taking huge, heaving breaths as he was laid flat out onto the floor, and following him..

Flare. Returned to their protoframe form, though the rest of the Hex was unaware of their transformation in the first place, with Lizzie strapped safely to their back, and cradled in their arms, just barely conscious but unmistakably alive, was the Drifter. Dressed in some strange, ancient fantasy costume but.. Warm. Breathing. 

 

Amir reacted first, unsurprisingly. “Flare?! Lizzie?! Drifter?! Holy shit–” He immediately fell to his knees beside the two of them, pulling Flare into a hug, including Lizzie into his tight embrace as best he could. “How did– What–” He completely lost his words, clinging onto his spouse tightly as they processed where they were and just started crying, not caring how much techrot and Orowyrm blood was coating him as he nuzzled his face into Flare’s shoulder. The most heavenly mirror he could think of of the incident that started all this, crying over the Drifter and leaning heavily into Flare for comfort.

 

Flare was more than a bit stunned, leaning themself into Amir’s touch and wiping some of the blood out of their eyes to take in their surroundings. It worked. You’re home. But.. “I.. What.. How long was I gone?” 

It was impossible to keep time in Duviri, but.. Not more than a week, right? Why was everyone staring at them like they’d been gone forever? ..Aside from.. If Amir had read their note..

 

As soon as Flare said anything, the joy of the situation set in, and everyone else joined Amir; not caring for a moment how much blood they were about to have to clean off themselves as they began crying and making one huge group hug on the floor of the mall.

“I. It’s been hard to tell given the freeze but. If.” Amir took a long sniffle inwards, trying to speak between ugly-crying happy sobs. “If Kaya’s calculations were right.. You. You’ve been gone over a month, Flare.. I-I couldn’t find you.. And Drifter’s body just disappeared , I thought you left with them and..” Died somewhere by their own hand, Amir thought, but couldn’t say. They’re back. We talk about that later, but for now, they’re back and that’s all that matters.

He kissed Flare on the cheek and rested his head back on their shoulder, all the tension of a month’s worth of dread finally releasing. “Sol and Lua in heaven, never do that again! I love you all so much, I missed you..” His speech fell into a stream of incomprehensible loving murmurs, laying more kisses on Flare’s cheeks, Lizzie’s little claws that were reaching out for him as she wrapped her arms around Flare's shoulders, then the Drifter’s hair and forehead.. Reconstructed as if nothing had ever happened, like all of this was just an awful nightmare..

 

“Mmh..” The Drifter finally made a small stirring sound as their eyes fluttered open and they stared up at their partners, covered in blood and crying.. In the lobby of the mall? “Amir.. Flare.. E-everyone?” They mumbled as they shakily pulled themself up, resting their back against both of their protoframe partners for support. ”Why.. Why are you all crying? What happened.. Ugh, my head.. Why.. Why can’t I remember..” They genuinely looked confused, squinting as an intense headache started to settle in. Mentally, they had just been on a street somewhere in Höllvania in the afternoon, about to transfer into Flare.. Flickers of their trip to Duviri started seeping in, but for now, they seemed to be mostly unaware of what had happened.

 

As they took in the scene around them with bleary eyes, all of their friends and loved ones took in the visual of a fresh new scar on their forehead; a bullet scar that appeared to be long-healed, with five lines, like cracks in ceramic, spidering out across their forehead and down across their left eye socket and cheekbone.

A forever reminder of just how fragile their peace here really was, if they weren’t careful. But also a reminder of the depth of despair that Drifter could come back from. 

 

Flare hugged them and Amir tightly, their own steady streams of tears washing away some of the blood coating their cheeks as they laid a warm, firm kiss onto that fresh new scar. “Don’t you worry about that right now, Angel.. Welcome back. We missed you so, so much.. All of Us.”

Lizzie giggled, hearing the emphasis to that last word. “Oh, Flare, the songs We will write about Our victory..”

Flare chuckled. "You keep note of all those ideas, I do not have it in me to write anything down right now.. But yes. The songs we'll sing of all we saw in there.."

 

Ignoring the confusion in their minds about what had happened to bring this nightmare to a close, just about everyone took turns in showing their appreciation at the Drifter and Flare’s return.

Velimir excitedly ruffled Flare’s hair while Minerva and Kaya laughed at the side at the rockstar’s surprised, playfully frustrated reaction, despite the fact that their hair wasn't styled for once; and Quincy and Aoi managed to drag Drifter away out of Amir and Flare’s arms for a moment to take their own turn to hug them and coat their cheeks and forehead in kisses, while Eleanor gently pushed her way into the Drifter’s mind, leaning her tired head on Lettie’s shoulder.

"Hello, darling.. Mind if I take a little look around?"

The Drifter replied, glancing over at Eleanor while reveling in all of the attention they were getting, "Go ahead?"

The two of them maintained quiet eye contact, as Eleanor confirmed yes. That’s them. That's our Drifter. Not any doppelganger set forth by the Indifference.. And oh, the horrors they’ve seen. She could see it all, shattered into a thousand little pieces but gradually putting themself back together inside, all on their own. They’ll remember soon.. That’s going to hurt them, deeply, when all the memories come back, but.. It means they’re alright. Eleanor just gave the Drifter a soft smile, reaching out to pull their hand over to hold on her lap for a few moments, running her thumb over the back of it. 

 

Arthur, as usual, looked to the practical response, though he himself was also openly weeping happy tears. “Oh, thank Sol.. Alright. Everyone, give Drifter and Flare some space, they’ve been through. A lot. I want explanations later, and we should throw a hell of a party for whatever you two pulled to get back here, but.. Go get some rest. Let’s all go get some rest.. And, uh. Clean all this off the floor." Where the hell are we going to put an entire dead dragon- not the problem right now, Arthur. "Not that I'm complaining, mind..” He reached out and gave a firm pat to Drifter’s shoulder as he stood up, “We are so glad to have you back, Drifter. Seconding your wife there; please never do that again. I think I might just lose what color I have left in my hair.” He said with a chuckle, breathless as if he had just run a damn marathon. 

 

Drifter was still a bit dazed, but they’d started to piece together what happened.. Drifter.. Did you die? “I’ll do my best?” They gave Arthur an awkward smile, laying back into Flare and Amir’s arms again and letting their eyes wander around, finally noticing that Kullervo was collapsed nearby. How did he get out here, Drifter?! You didn't bring him with you.. “Oh shit.. Kullervo?! What the fuck happened to him–" They leaned forward to get a better look, though it was hard to tell the extent of the damage at this distance, they could see his musculature in some places.. "Can.. Oh Void, that's going to be a lot of repair work.." With a deep worry in their eyes, they looked around to their friends for help, "Can someone help get him up to the backroom? Helminth can help stabilize him and then I can fix his plating..”

"Of course," Quincy nodded, wiping tears off on the side of his arm. “No problem, D, don't worry your pretty head. I’ll get him up there for you. Worry about yourself first, yeah?” He walked over and carefully lifted Kullervo up, mostly careful not to cut his fingers on any of the warframe’s sharp ceramic edges where parts of his layers underneath were exposed.

Quincy looked him over as he dragged him up to the backroom, leaving a trail of bloody bootprints all the way up the stairs. Sol, Kullervo, somehow you came out of there looking the worst for wear of all of them.. Drifter will fix you up shinier than ever as soon as they have the energy. Quincy was absolutely sure of that. The way he’s breathing, though.. Quincy had never seen a warframe react like that aside from if the Drifter themself was in there and in pain..

 

Flare let out a very exhausted laugh. Just as they suspected. Minutes after coming back from the dead and there they go trying to fix things again. They shakily pulled themself up onto their heels– Going to need to get used to those again– and helped Drifter to their feet with Amir’s help. “Quincy's right- put yourself first for once, Angel. Please. C’mon, let’s go home..” 

Noting that the Drifter was still uneasy on their feet, Amir scooped them up into his arms. He didn’t quite know what happened yet, but.. Some things were easy to piece together, given the silks that the Drifter was dressed in, and the entire Orowyrm that would need to somehow be cleaned up out of the mall. “I can be the knight who carries our king home,” Amir said as dramatically as he could muster with an unsteady grin, leaning in to kiss the Drifter’s cheek. Deflecting with humor as usual. About halfway to the backroom, he started crying again, clasping tighter onto his spouse like they’d disappear again if he didn’t. “I missed you three so much..”

Flare, who had been a few steps ahead of Amir for once, lagged back a bit to wrap their arm around Amir’s shoulder and lay a kiss to the side of his forehead. “We missed you too, lightning.. It’s okay now. We’re all home.. And We’re not going to leave you ever again, I promise. C'mon, just a bit further and we can get all cleaned up and get some sleep.." Gods, Flare, if Amir was right, you haven't slept in a month.. Sure felt like it, too.

Notes:

One final chapter for some much needed cuddling and non-duviri flavored emotional processing. THEY'RE HOME!
Good gods I'm sorry to the hex for making you clean up that much techrot, blood and orowyrm guts. Drifter and Flare both can't help but make a dramatic entrance.

For more about poor Kullervo there, keep an eye on my other fic "Kullervo, Kullervo, Friend to the Blade", where I'm going to go into more about our weirdly independent new buddy.

Also, as a bonus: its a bit roughly sketched out, but I did an overlay of their new scar on a portrait I painted recently of Drifter :)

Chapter 12: Epilogue - Don't Look Back

As soon as they crossed the threshold into the backroom and Amir carefully set the Drifter back onto their own feet, one last familiar face dashed towards her master, just about knocking them over onto the concrete floor as she got up on her hind legs to lick their face. Kalymos, purring up a storm.

“Kalymos! I missed you too– gods, you’re acting more like a kubrow than a kavat, calm down, girl!” The Drifter laughed, gently trying to push her off of them so she wouldn’t make them lose their footing. They gave her a good scratch to the head and behind her ears, while they took in the space. Their workshop was practically untouched, but even from down here they could tell some things had been moved around upstairs..

 

Amir chuckled. “She’s um.. Been helping keep me company. E-everyone has, really.. Relatedly, sorry about the upstairs, didn’t exactly know you were coming back or I woulda cleaned up.” He said relatively quietly, also reaching over to pet Kalymos. 

“That’s fine, sugar.. Don’t be sorry for anything.” Flare smiled warmly at Amir, taking a firm hold of one of his trembling hands. “Lets go shower before any of this starts drying to us,” They said, looking down at the amount of blood they were tracking in, “And then we can deal with shifting some stuff back around. Okay?”

Amir nodded quietly, taking his gear off as he followed his two.. Newly reborn, in a sense, spouses upstairs.

 

They got cleaned up in relative silence, Amir and Flare helping Drifter out as they seemed to be feeling quite weak, still. 

Seeing them slip a bit every time they moved on the slick tiling freaked out Amir especially, sending new anxieties through his head about them just keeling over dead again out of nowhere, but he reassured himself, they’re just tired. They haven’t said anything since they got stripped down and into the water, but from the haunted look they keep giving Flare, they’ve been through a lot, even if apparently their perception of the time lost was much, much shorter.

Once out of the shower, Flare stepped in to take in what Amir and the others had done to the loft, while Amir went looking for the Drifter’s favorite sleeping clothes. 

 

The couches and their cushions had been arranged into a blanket fort, with a couple of mattresses from the beds in the furniture store downstairs pulled up to cushion against the hard floor, and Amir had collected every floof that the Drifter had spread across the backroom largely for decoration in there amongst a pile of thoroughly tousled blankets, left from where they were the moment Amir heard everything come back into motion. 

Kalymos was already in there waiting for all of them, probably since Drifter had left for a shower. She was purring away, curled up around the Drifter’s floof of Tagfer, thoroughly pleased with herself and deep asleep.

 

“Oh, this isn’t that bad, darling.. If anything, we can take advantage of this for the night.” Flare chuckled, reaching over to turn some of the lights off. They had been frozen on, Flare reminded themself.

Poor Amir– Poor everyone, probably, hadn’t slept in true darkness of any kind in weeks..

“I’m seriously rethinking our stance on being fine with no bed up here, because sweet hells, we all need to be in a pile together right now..” Flare spoke shockingly casually given the situation, laying Lizzie down on the makeshift bed where she immediately scurried into the layers of blankets and ditching their heavy swordsteel coat on Drifter’s desk chair. They turned back to face their very tired partners, who were working together to get Drifter into some comfortable pajamas, given how weak and exhausted they were. “..You moved back up here, Amir?”

 

He nodded. “After you.. After you both left, I moved back..” Amir said softly, keeping his eyes on the Drifter as they carefully hung their necklace of wedding bands on a bit of the Entrati detailing around their mirror, “I wasn’t alone, at least, after um.. A small. Incident..” He shook off a couple of anxious sparks, thinking of it, “No one wanted to leave me alone, so that’s when the uh, sleepover setup up here happened.”

“..You on one side, me on the other, Drifter between us? I’m gonna kiss the hell out of you, lightning, but agreed that they need to get spoiled right now?” Flare said, dramatically flopping into bed and patting the free space next to them, smiling up at Amir and Drifter. At least get off your feet, you two..

 

In quiet agreement, Amir fell in alongside Flare, giving a little smile to Lizzie who immediately wrapped herself around his shoulders, providing a very comforting weight and warmth to his anxious nerves. Both him and Flare looked up expectantly and a bit confused at Drifter, who was just standing there awkwardly as if they needed some kind of permission to join.

They were the most exhausted of the lot of them, clearly, so.. Why were they not laying down, when it was clear where they belonged?

 

For the first time since they had gotten in the shower, Drifter spoke, very quietly and with their eyes focused on their hands. “That’s um.. That’s alright, I can sleep over on uh, one of the lounges in the balcony. You two deserve the time to yourselves..”

Flare frowned. Oh no.. They said they didn’t remember anything back when you arrived, and then they were so quiet in the shower. They’re remembering, aren’t they. All of that. Even parts you didn’t see, and the internal thoughts of those various pieces of them.. “Drifter. Please.. C’mere, sweetheart, it’s alright.” They reached a hand up to help guide Drifter down with them, “All that’s behind us. You’re back and that’s what matters.” They glanced to Amir’s own gently haunted look, tears starting to well up in those pretty grey eyes of his, “We’re back, and that’s what matters.”

“I-” Drifter bit the inside of their lip, also looking to Amir. Void, how is he going to look at you after you say this.. “I don’t know how you can want that, Flare, knowing I.. Knowing I killed you.” They started crying immediately, saying that. Streams of tears, and a choked back sob.

 

Yep, that’s the part Flare was worried would come back clearly. Flare kicked themself a bit for starting to think of them like this especially without the Drifter's express permission, but hello again, Improviser. Wondered if you’d be back first..

 

Drifter quietly counted on the fingers of their hand that was always split in Duviri. First by accident, when they were so excited to be free, then on purpose in revenge after they pushed y– you can look at them the same after that, but that was understandable with the terror you were, two attempts on their life when you were nothing but rage, then another successful attempt when you were so afraid you forgot who they were.. Never, ever when you were nothing but your sorrow, but when you were nothing you truly were poised to eat them.. “Three times, with.. A few other close misses, where I tried to end you..”

Amir’s eyes went wide, stunned in silence as he glanced between Flare and Drifter. Holy shit.. He’d expected they’d been through hell, but.. Drifter killed them? Amir quickly scanned over Flare’s bare chest, for any sign of similar scarring to the Drifter’s, but found none, just their usual smoldering, melted techrot.

Flare gestured to the same observation, “And I’m fine, Angel. Don’t make me do that song and dance from back in the arena again.” They said firmly, reaching up and taking Drifter’s hand, carefully dragging them down to kneel between their partners on the bed. “I love you, no matter what.”

Drifter kept crying, keeping a tight grip on Flare’s hand as they looked over with such a deep amount of shame in their eyes to Amir. “I don’t know if Amir can anymore, though..”

Amir shook his head– Not in a no gesture, shaking off the surprise a bit. “I– I’m shocked, definitely, but of course I love you, babe.. I.. I’m not gonna ask you to tell me any of that you don’t want to, but.. I trust Flare that you didn’t mean whatever happened in there.. Right?” He gave a shaky smile, trying to reassure them.

Drifter nodded, unable to speak through deep, painful sobs as they let themself collapse in between Flare and Amir, curling up into Amir’s chest while Flare wrapped themself around their back. “Thank you..” They kissed Amir softly on the lips, then reached their head back to lay a kiss on Flare’s jaw. 

 

“Our Demon was a terrible sight to behold,” Lizzie purred, reaching out to run a claw along her Demon’s cheek,

Lizzie. Not helping–

“But We can confirm.. They were not quite Themself. Not.. Fully. We know You would never truly mean Us harm, pretty Dragon of Ours.”

Drifter let out a very tired, dark little laugh. “Ah, and now Dragon joins my list of names..”

 

Amir’s eyes flitted about in thought for a moment, tracing back through memories of the Drifter talking about dragons in Duviri. “Wwwait– velvet owl. Was that dragon out there in the lobby you came in on- well, in, you?!” 

“Uh.” Drifter glanced back awkwardly at Flare for a moment. “Kind of? ..Yeah. Yeah it was.”

“..Okay I would like to hear some things about what happened in there.” Amir chuckled, gently ruffling Drifter’s hair as he hugged them in closer. “You know I can’t resist hearing about the time one of my S/Os turned into a goddamn dragon.”

 

“Heh, wait for a bit and We just might have a song for you about that.” Flare kissed the Drifter’s shoulder, before making eye contact with Amir over their still softly crying Tenno partner’s shoulder. “...Hey, lightning?”

Amir perked up a bit, gently resting his chin on the Drifter’s head. “Yeah?”

“..Did you..” Flare took a deep breath in before finishing their sentence, their face gone somber again, “Did you read my note?”

Oh.. “Ah.. N-no, I couldn’t..” Amir hugged Drifter a bit closer, like he was clinging onto a floof, really, “I couldn’t bring myself to open it..”

Flare let out a relieved sigh. “Good. Where is it?”

 

“Um–” Amir very gently peeled off the Drifter for a moment to reach over into one of his discarded pouches, pulling out the piece of folded paper and gingerly handing it to Flare.

 

Flare took the note in their hand, considering something for a moment before, to Amir’s shock, turning their face to the ceiling, holding it a few inches in front of their face and blowing out a little spark of deep red flame which immediately incinerated the paper into a little puff of smoke and ash. “There was a lot in there I regret writing, in hindsight. But that’s not relevant anymore. I’m back.. And I’m so, so sorry for leaving you the way I did, I..” They reached over and laid a kiss on Amir’s lips, as they started crying just about as much as the Drifter was.

“I wish I could say that I knew..” A moment’s glance to Lizzie, ”What I did would end me up in Duviri, to bring our Angel back, but I truly didn’t.. All you need to know of what I said in there is..” 

They took a shaky breath in, trying to steady themself as they tightly gripped onto one of Drifter’s hands, and one of Amir’s, “That I love you both very, very much. More than I can ever express, and.. I’m supposed to be good with words, gods– And that I was sorry for leaving you alone, but there was just.. No hope left in me. That I.. That I’d be everywhere, if my plan went right, in with the whole hive.. With Liz.”

Amir put two and two together through his own tears, “You.. You.. Gave yourself to Helly?” Lua, that’s how they disappeared so fast, they hadn’t gone anywhere. They just walked right into there and..

Flare nodded, reaching the hand they had been holding Amir’s with to gently refocus his gaze, as he looked over towards that infested chamber. “Don’t see her any differently for that, either. I know it’s easier said than done, but.. Both her and Liz sent me to where I actually was needed, I suppose.” They said with an awkward little smile, as Amir reached his hand up to place over theirs on his cheek. 

Amir nodded, giving Flare’s hand a kiss and then slumping back into bed with them, returning to hugging onto Drifter like a floof with Lizzie purring around his shoulders. One of the times he was especially thankful for her– Flare could technically hug both Drifter and him, with her help.

 

“I’m really sorry, too.. For.. All of this.” The Drifter mumbled, finally starting to feel their eyes get a bit heavy as Flare pulled a few blankets up over the lot of them. Hardly needed them with Flare and Lizzie providing so much warmth, but the weight was very nice with how much this whole experience made them feel so much more ghostly than usual. “It was my stupid mistake that got us into all th–”

Amir cut them off with a kiss, which was backed up by Flare laying a line of soft, warm pecks to the back of their neck. “It’s alright.. Like you said, it was a mistake.” He took a firm grasp on their cheek, smiling softly as Drifter leaned in to gently bump their foreheads together. “We just need to be.. So, so much more careful, holy shit..” He chuckled nervously, eyeing that new scar on Drifter's forehead. Never realized just how human they were, unconnected to any warframe or protoframe..

“Agreed. No more mid-battle transfers. Certainly not like that, and not frivolously.” If not for safety’s sake, then for the sake of Flare’s sanity, given that Drifter landed in their lap.. “But don’t blame yourself, sweetheart. For anything. Not here, not in Duviri. I won’t accept that. And you know how stubborn I am about you, now.” Flare chuckled, wrapping their arms tighter around Drifter.

 

Drifter was silent for a few moments, turning the events from Duviri over in their head again.

Push away all the guilt and shame, and.. Void. All that was left was Flare. Persistently chasing them down, begging them to follow them, to trust them. No matter what a part of them threw Flare’s way.. Even though they were human, in that moment.

“..We never even shared 'proper' vows, but you are.. Very dedicated to the ‘through sickness and health’ part, huh.” They said, joking but in awe, as they gently turned over to reverse the situation, with Amir now nuzzled happily into their back as they rested their head on Flare’s bare chest. 

 

Flare smiled proudly. First at themself, and second at Drifter for, intentionally or not, reversing one of the nastier comments the Reprobate had thrown their way as that hungry shard broke down. “You are very right about that, Angel.. Now you’ll really believe me when I say I’d walk through hell for you.” They chuckled, softly kissing Drifter’s hair. “Hmm.. I might just have to sing of us as Orpheus and Eurydice. I don’t mind the masculine comparison for a moment if you wouldn’t mind the feminine.”

Drifter flushed a bit, smiling softly back up at Flare. “I wouldn’t mind.. Comparison’s not perfect though, I think you did look back, or else I wouldn’t be here, ironically.”

Flare shrugged. “I don’t think I have.. Like I said, sweetheart. The fact that we’re both here and alive? Cling to that, not anything we went through to get back here.. Don’t look back, angel. We’re back, time is back,” As much as it ever is in 1999.. “And most importantly, we have our Amir back.” They kissed Amir’s forehead, receiving a soft little sleepy smile in return, as Amir was about half asleep at this point, finally giving in to relieved, but immense exhaustion.

 

“And that’s all that matters..” Drifter repeated Flare’s sentiment, wrapping their arms tightly around their shoulders. “I love you both so, so fucking much.. Thank you for believing in me.”

“Forever and always, Angel.”

Lizzie giggled, “We would, and have, gone beyond the stars for You, Demon.. The epic tale We can sing about that will beat back the darkness even better than that silly little storybook, We are sure of it.”

Drifter smiled at that, the first genuine, big, downright goofy smile that they’d had on their face since all of this began. “Just.. Hopefully that story won’t need to become its own manifestation out there.. I think I’ve had enough of there being more than one of me running around for a lifetime.”

Notes:

Hey all! Thanks for reading, as always! See, told you to put the pitchforks down, all's fine now-- well, until the 'Neci Rusalka kicks Thrax off his throne' thing in a week but that's. fine. We'll deal with that when it comes.

As a bonus, have my Duviri spotify playlist, I did my best to organize the backing music I had to each chapter up at the top: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4b0vOhlSpydi5roi4j52FN

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 6 of Drifter Boros's romance nonsense
• Part 15 of Drifter Boros's Chaotic Thread of Eternalism