Chapter Text
“Jade!”
Drifter's voice rang out over the small group holding vigil by Eden's coffin.
On cue, the Operator shimmered with void light. He thrust his small hand out to Jade. “They need you to find Eden. I’ll send Umbra as back-up, just in case.”
Jade handed Orion's carrier to the Lotus. She grabbed the Operator's hand - the Drifter's hand - and followed him into the spiral.
Jade knelt on a plinth in a strange cave.
Sorren knelt on an identical plinth to her right. Umbra, on her left. A fourth warframe completed the set: a man impaled by at least a dozen daggers. Drifter finished his tea cup, collected another cup from the oldest Dax she'd ever seen, and went to wash up.
The old man advised, “There is a time to push yourself, Drifter. And then there is time for a second cup of tea.”
Drifter nodded to her. “If she's ready, so am I, Teshin. It's just one more defense.”
Jade asked, “Where is Eden?”
Sorren answered, “We couldn't find her without you.”
She sang down her transference link with Eden. A soft note came back, drifting through the swirling portal that swallowed the opening of the cave. A soft note sang in a young girl's voice, dimmed by distance and the dream.
Jade rushed to gather her weapons: her bow Evensong, her throwing knives Cantare, and her own warscythe Harmony. Sorren and Umbra followed her lead.
Drifter said, “Uh, do you mind if I check your mods?”
”I suppose it couldn't hurt to get a second pair of eyes on the Operator's suggested build.”
Drifter’s transference was quick and professional. He snorted. “Dunno why I worried. The Operator believes there's no kill like overkill.” Then he headed over to the daggered warframe. “Hey, Kullervo,” he said to the void-lit helmet that tipped back in acknowledgment. “You'll be glad to know I helped finish what you started.” He vanished in a void sparkle. Kullervo stood and armed himself.
Amused by Drifter’s assessment, Jade signed to Sorren, “Let's not tell the Operator he helped me, okay? He’ll be insufferable.”
“Why not?” He asked, running his eyes over the strong pinions of her wings. “If he's the reason I never have to watch you get shot out of the sky again, then I owe him.”
Sometimes, she thought, the proof that love conquered hate was not in the dramatic gestures. Sometimes, it was a slow reclamation of poisoned ground. Invisible progress, until the seeds took root and sent up green shoots, unfurled their leaves in the light and covered the barren ground with life. “On second thought, you're right. We should. After all, he's going to be Eden's big brother.”
Sorren accepted the news with a raspy sigh.
She watched his darting eyelights as he processed the rest of it. He could parse the convoluted tree of their big happy blended family just as well as she could.
“If Eden becomes my step-daughter…”
“Yes,” she encouraged.
“...and the Acolytes your step-children…and the Operator…”
“Yes…”
Umbra nudged Teshin Dax. The old man had a magnificent straight face marred by the twinkle in his eyes.
“Jade…” Sorren made a helpless little gesture. “They hate each other.”
Getting her big happy family was either going to be a disaster or amazing. “At least our life won't be boring?”
Armed and ready, they leapt through the swirling portal into the Undercroft.
Jade landed under a darkened, hellish sky. A tyrannical visage she did not recognize loomed in the sky above them. It did not matter who it was. She'd spat at the feet of tyrants. She'd screamed defiance in their face even though her voice was razors and steel.
Their battlefield was an amphitheater that channeled the dueling voices of a masked man and woman. Jade read the subtext easily enough. He had loved her, once, then turned against her. She, in turn, sought revenge. Above them, the tyrant laughed.
Between them, on a grassy lawn, lay Eden's Golden Cradle.
Sorren caught her hand. Together they leaped down across the lawn. He spread his crinkled fingerpainting over the Cradle. She fit her hand over her green handprint and sang.
The ghost within the dream sang back. The girl woke up to a familiar voice. “Mom?”
Jade hesitated for only a moment. Through transference, there could be no mistaken identity. That title was given freely because Eden knew she loved her. “My dear daughter.”
“Mom, you never finished telling me about Lankity Hopkin.”
“Eden, you fell asleep before I could finish it.”
“Eden?” the girl asked. Curiosity prickled across their transference link. Wonder burst like a bite of sweet ripe fruit as she remembered. “Oh. Yes. Yes, that was my name!”
Paper crinkled under Jade’s fist. She unclenched her fingers. Gently smoothed the paper again, then folded it up and handed it back to Sorren.
“Is she okay?” He asked.
“She will be,” Jade answered. Her fury over everything that had been taken from them was better spent against the tyrant's legions billowing out of the Void. Kullervo and Umbra already clashed with their vanguard.
She told Eden, “I will finish the story when we are all safe.”
Eden gulped. Though she steeled herself, she trembled. “You've been called out to fight?”
“Just one last battle, little one.” Then she took to the sky. Unlike Eden, she was a warrior before she was made into a warframe. The old Jade could not have stood against armies; she rose again as an avenging angel. A being of light and cloud and feathers, surrounded by countless eyes, voice raised in hymns of judgment, and hands filled with the jade fire she bore in her belly.
The Corrupted armies were not afraid of her bright visage, but that was only because they were mindless slaves.
Sorren vanished. The Shadow reappeared in the midst of a squad of metal Dax, cut down one with Hate, and reaped them all like a swathe of wheat before his scythe.
Kullervo summoned a rain of daggers from the Void itself, then flashed across the battlefield to gut a hulking Centurion like he held a particular grudge against them.
Umbra howled, drowning out the tyrant's driving will and freezing squads of enemies in their tracks. He danced through them. Dax fell under his nikana, freed by death from their spiral.
Jade darted above the fray. Wellsprings of healing ensured that her allies took no harm. Her chimes rang out Deathbringer. Evensong's bolts were all the deadlier for it. Her Ophanim Eyes saw every enemy that moved below and slowed them for her endless judgments.
In the midst of raining down fire, a memory swept over her. No sweet burst of ripe fruit, this. Memories of Ballas tainted all he touched, not unlike the time she toasted Sorren with a gulp of fine wine and only then spotted the bug drowning in her cup.
Ancient book in hand, Ballas made a hmmph of satisfaction as he found the verse he wanted. “Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,“‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
Chained down on the lab table awaiting the Helminth infusion, Jade seethed with resentment. He thought he could make her warframe bear up his unjust laws that made love a crime?
She tested the chains again. No luck. The worst of it was that Ballas was right. He could.
Then she felt something flutter in her lower abdomen. A tiny pop in her belly. A tiny kick from a tiny baby who was never going to be born if this bastard had anything to say about it.
She promised, again. We will live, little one. We will live.
As Ballas skimmed down the page, he snorted. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
“Ha!” He barked, and turned to her with a contemptuous leer. “I’ve read enough.”
In the Undercroft, Jade began to chime with laughter. Wild laughter. Vicious laughter. Victorious laughter.
Eden did not know what to do with the violence of Glory of High raining down burning sulphur on her foes, much less her new mother's fierce joy. “Is everything alright?”
Jade laughed, triumphant.
Ballas’ hubris had been the downfall of all his cruelest plans.
In taunting her, he gave her the key to birth Orion. In taunting Sorren, he gave him the sustaining hope that his family lived. To taunt them, he gave them Eden. In his arrogance, he gave her and Sorren the warframe strength and void-infused abilities to protect their children and each other against everyone who tried to exploit them.
She even suspected that if she looked deeper still, she would find Ballas’ hubris at the root of why Kullervo and Drifter made a deadly pair, why Umbra and Ordis and Ordan loved the Operator so, and so much more.
She sang triumphant defiance at the tyrant's armies, and sang to Eden those sweet words, “It’s okay. Ballas is dead. It's over. We’re free.”
Through hundreds of battles, Sorren had not faltered. He had done the Low Guardians proud. Teshin Dax bade him farewell with a Dax proverb, “One pebble at a time, you will lift entire mountains.” He added, “Congratulations are in order.”
He didn't deserve congratulations. He had only done his duty.
As the Undercroft faded around the triumphant group, the Drifter waved them through the spiral ahead of him. “I don't know how long it's been since we left the real world. That'll take you back to the Operator.”
Sorren led the way.
The spiral faded into the vast Reservoir. The beating heart of the Tenno. Their secret nest in the heart of Lua. He stood on a rock promontory next to a single Golden Cradle who's opened lid still bore the creases where, in at least one version of reality that no longer existed, it'd been crushed by a falling rock.
The Operator stood beside it. A little girl wrapped her arms around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder.
Eden popped up, looking rather like a startled rabbit.
She was so young, Sorren thought. Not the youngest Tenno, but next to the Operator, she was a true child.
“I trust him,” the Operator said to Eden. “He’s with Jade.”
Automatically, Sorren made room for Jade.
The moment Jade stepped through the portal, Eden’s face broke into a giant beaming smile. The moment they locked gazes, she exclaimed, “Mom!” She stumbled free from the Operator, weak and unsteady on her feet. Not that it mattered because Jade swept her up in her arms and lifted her high.
If Sorren held any doubt that they were mother and daughter by mutual adoption, it melted away. Then he saw the Operator watching him, and even the boy’s warm smile wasn’t enough to quell his doubts.
The Operator shimmered. He nodded to Sorren. “Thank you.”
Then he vanished in a void sparkle. Drifter stood in his place, and he broke out into the exact same smile.
The doors at the far end of the promontory swung open. The Lotus hurried in, pushing a stroller.
Sorren abruptly realized that between Drifter and the Lotus, he was practically boxed into the celebration. This reunion wasn't for him. He was the man who'd only saved Eden because he murdered her. He didn't deserve happy smiles or thanks or credit.
He turned away. Before he left, he scooped Orion out of his stroller and nuzzled him goodbye.
The Lotus asked, “You're not leaving?”
His hands were full of Orion. Orion's hands started patting the green paint on his face.
Eden broke away from Jade. She asked, “Is that my baby brother?”
The Lotus slid the stroller behind herself, so he couldn't just plop the baby back in and bullet jump away.
Jade beckoned him to bring Orion over.
Drifter, that treacherous bastard, went shoulder to shoulder with the Lotus to block his escape. Drifter, that best of friends, pointed him right back the way he came.
Sorren carried Orion over to Eden. He bent low, and she still went up on tiptoes to see. He spoke aloud (because he doubted she knew much Dax sign) rasping and harsh, “Orion.”
“He’s cute.” She said doubtfully. She looked up at him. “Dad?”
One word should not seize his heart and wring it out like a washrag.
He stammered, the words tearing at lungs and throat like knives. “Maybe. Someday. If Jade will have me. If you’ll forgive me.”
Eden’s wide eyes were innocent.
He felt the first faint tickle of transference. He acquiesced. Let Eden judge who he really was.
Her thoughts drifted in tandem with his. She was not quite as innocent as he expected. No Tenno who survived the Zariman and the Orokin was. She’d seen enough horror to know that he was horrible even though she shied away from the details. She was still unstained enough to know that he wore the blood of Tenno like her. He’d rewritten the past, but traces of his bloodshed and bad habits remained written on his conscience.
She asked only a simple question: “Do you want me?”
He pulled out his fingerpainting with shaking hands. Spread the crinkled paper between them. His hand. Orion’s tiny ones. Jade’s hand.
“Is there room for me in your family?”
Forgiveness could not be that easy.
It was. Transference left no room for doubt.
He took her small hand and put it on the empty spot on the paper. “Yes.”
“Yes,” again, when she flung her arms around him and called him, “Dad.”
“Yes,” again, when Jade embraced the three of them and folded them in her wings and asked, “You'll take care of us, always, won't you?”
“Yes!” Again, and always.
