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mythandlaur · 2 years

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Prompt number: 1 - "I chose you" Fandom: Warframe Rating: Teen Warnings/Tags: Discussion of brainwashing/brain upload Characters: Kepler (OC), Cephalon Ordis / Ordan Karris, other OCs mentioned (belonging to @apprenticenerd & @buraidragon) WC: 1,307 Additional Notes: Requires some knowledge of the cephalon fragments, set between Apostasy Prologue and TNW. Dear god I'm actually going to try and do this.

prompts here

"...How long have you known?"

It's...odd, hearing that voice coming from the orbiter speakers. It's not exactly the same as it had been in the recordings--it was still covered in layers of artificial filters, making it buzz a bit around the edges like a bad comm signal. But he isn't faking his usual voice anymore.

That's all 'Ordis' was, really. Fake. She's sure of it.

"Couple months," Kepler mumbles from her pile of blankets on the floor of her personal quarters. Her kavat sits on her feet, its head swiveling back and forth as if keeping watch over her. It's appreciated, if not necessary. "Jhia found one of the...log things. I realized I had more. We asked Glace and they told us the rest."

"I see," Ordis--Ordan--says. It's impossible to tell how he feels about it from his voice alone. "It...makes sense. Tell them I am not upset. You deserve to know."

Kepler buries her face deeper into her blankets, hoping he can't see her grimace from his angle. Ordis had told her once there was only one camera in the personal quarters, right above the door, just so he could know where she was if he needed.

Maybe she shouldn't have said anything. Ordis had been glitching badly, leading up to a slight shift in his tone he'd tried to downplay as nothing, just requiring a system reset. Kepler had blurted it out before she could think, I know what happened. I know who you are. The knowledge had been digging at her since Glace had told her about it. Though the initial anger and frustration she'd felt had faded, there was still something left, heavy and sick at the pit of her stomach.

Maybe that's why she couldn't leave the matter alone.

"...I remember now. Glace spoke of my past with me." A quiet, rumbling laugh from the deep stranger's voice. "More than spoke, in fact. Did you know New Loka found a fossil with a very...specific skeletal feature on Earth? They tried to display it. Glace stole it from them. Buried it on the Plains of Eidolon."

It's strange how she can still notice Ordis' usual tone in the voice somewhere. The way it rambles on, the ups and downs of the pitch. It's not inconceivable that it's the same voice, and that just makes her feel worse.

He lets out a sound like a sigh, a rush of static. "It is...shameful that I have hidden this from you, but it was for your own safety. I am a broken, mangled thing, and to dream of being someone better, someone worthy of redemption...it seems much kinder for all of us. But I know you must have questions."

"Just one."

Kepler's throat feels dry. She's never been one to not say exactly what she means at all times, even to her own detriment, but this question, this thing that's nearly crushed her under its weight, growing bigger and bigger the more she thinks about it...it feels impossible to get the words out.

So she does it like she does everything else, quick and blunt and loud.

"Do you hate us."

The long pause that follows threatens to make Kepler crumble. She faces that feeling defiantly, sitting up in her blanket nest and glaring at where she thinks the camera is, face stern.

But he still doesn't answer. Her mask threatens to wither away. She knew it. She knew it. Glace had said otherwise, and Jhia had shown some doubt, but she'd told them, the L--Natah--she had shown she hated them, hadn't she, why wouldn't he despise them when he had so much more reason to--

"Of course not."

Somehow, the softly-spoken answer just makes Kepler's face twist as anger burns up her throat.

"No!" She hits the ground with balled fists, startling the kavat. "I don't want you to tell me what they told you to say! I--I want you to tell me the truth!"

(Why is her voice cracking? Why is there a lump in her throat? Her heart threatens to pound out of her chest, and tendrils of green Void smoke curl from her fingers).

He doesn't respond immediately. The silence is suffocating. Kepler has to fill it. "You--you've been forced to babysit us Void freaks for how long because you got fucking brainwashed into caring about us and you don't want to say it but I can take it just say it! Just tell me how much you--"

"Operator."

It's firm, cutting off Kepler mid-rant and demanding silence without sounding angry. It suddenly doesn't seem so strange to think he'd been a leader of his people at one point.

"I am not the Lotus. There is no way for us to know why she left. But Ordis, at least, will not abandon you."

Kepler suddenly feels very small. "But what about you?"

She bears the silence this time. When he speaks, his voice is softer than she could've imagined it being, even as Ordis.

"...It is true that, in the beginning, my love for you was manufactured, a law of code and light binding my very soul. But even as these chains fall away, I still see you are not Orokin. You are not the ones who did this to me. You are their victims as much as the Beast was. When Lua fell, I felt only joy, even if it would have been scandal to speak of it. When you were gone, and I found the pieces of that mirror, and I saw this monstrous ghost staring back at me...I chose to cast it off for your sake. I chose this life. I chose to be Ordis. I chose you."

The smoke that had been filling the air around Kepler dissipates, cutting a thread of tension, snuffing the fuse of the powder keg in her chest. All the fight goes out of her at once.

"Even if Ordis is merely a dream," he continues, "I know that his care for you three is true to my own. You did not deserve any of this."

Kepler lies back down in her blanket pile. She hides her face for a different reason this time.

"Neither did you."

"...It was for the best." She notices he doesn't actually acknowledge what she'd said. "Just as it's for the best that I hide again, pretend again. Even if you know the truth, I..." His voice turns strained. "I cannot trust myself to fulfill my duties adequately like this, and it would be cruel to expect you to trust me."

Kepler doesn't respond. Maybe she should say she trusts him, but...she isn't sure she does, really. She trusts that he's telling the truth, but in the end, Ordan is a stranger.

It takes some weight off her shoulders to know not every guardian figure she has secretly hates her, though.

"...Go ahead." She knows his audio sensors are sharp enough for him to hear her even when she's mumbling into her blankets. "And...thanks."

He doesn't say anything else, and Kepler assumes he's gone. She's seen him do this before even if she hadn't known what it actually was for; a maintenance cycle to restore an uncorrupted backup taking a couple of hours. The next morning, he'll be confused, and she'll tell him what missions she'd done yesterday so he can log them again, and they'll both act like nothing happened.

She's shut her eyes, resigning herself to stewing in her own thoughts, when he speaks again, the volume on the speaker much lower.

"I...am proud. Of you three. Tell Jhia that, too."

Kepler opens her eyes, only to see him dimming the lights in her personal quarters. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. It's a stupid reaction. She's stupid.

But still.

"I will."

#warframe #fictober22 #cephalon ordis #ordan karris #my writing #c:kepler #others may be really short in comparison i just went off #really wanted to do something platonic with this prompt to counter how it'd probably usually be read #v:teeth eyes and burning hair #may change that one later

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