#also kelth's hair is growing out out of cryostasis. oops. kid's gonna need to find a dye supplier

[riftwalker-limbro]

scarred - part 4

masterpost

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It only took Kali an hour to finish up what it had been doing and rush to Ordis’ Orbiter. The new warframe was still sitting in the lounge, still scrolling through the datapad, though now noticeably more on edge. He didn’t seem entirely comfortable with this, but when they had asked, he hadn’t wanted to back down, so.

Kelth had had a talk with Kali over comms before letting it onto the Orbiter. Just to be sure it knew to be careful. They hadn’t told it about how the coat, which the new warframe now wore constantly when out of his room, wasn’t actually a part of his chassis - if he wanted to share how bad the scars under it actually were, that would be up to him.

The introductions had gone smooth, but the conversation had- Kelth wanted to say it had derailed, but it wasn’t even getting started. Kelth was acting as sign-to-speech interpreter for Kali, while the other wrote his sentences on the datapad. Even with this language barrier in place, the exchange was still extremely uncomfortable. Why was everything to do with trying to socialise this warframe so damn awkward?

Kali’s friendly questions kept getting the most cryptic answers possible. Kelth had thought he had been vague on purpose with his weird questions before, but they were now grateful that he clearly hadn’t used his full talents on them yet. They couldn’t make one whit of sense of what he was trying to say, and clearly, neither could Kali. It was starting to look more and more concerned as time went on, and so was Kelth - this wasn’t anywhere close to the normal they’d managed to establish for this warframe.

Eventually, he handed the pad to them directly. “Can I talk to Kali in private?”

“Oh,” Kelth said. Had they been the impeding factor? Oops. “Well, sure- here? Or in your own room?”

Briefly, he glanced up at the ceiling - ah. 

“Ordis,” Kelth spoke up, “you can turn your mic and camera in here off temporarily, right?”

“That is correct,” he replied, hologram flickering to life as he joined the conversation. “Shall I do so now?”

Kelth looked back down at the new warframe. He nodded.

“Alright,” Ordis said pleasantly. “Do let Ordis know when the confidential discussions are over.”

With a click, his presence and hologram were gone from the room. On the datapad in their hands, they could see a notification from him come in on the chat application - a reminder. 

“Alright, well,” they started, handing the warframe back his datapad, “I’ll just be in my room, then. Not many other places on his ship to go, heh. Sufford’s in his, too - you know where to find us?”

His head was turned down, towards the datapad in his hands, but he did nod. Oh, Kelth severely regretted not trying out how far they could get with him with transference before they’d brought up Kali, because at least then they might’ve stood a better chance of figuring out what the hell was up.

Kelth looked towards Kali briefly. It looked back up at them, visibly tense. “Be careful,” they signed quickly, giving it a glare. It signed its agreement.

“Alright, well, see you later,” Kelth said, before hastily making their exit.

—

After the initial stilted conversation that Kelth had witnessed, the two still talked for surprisingly long - almost half an hour. They knew it was safe to come back out of their room when Ordis shot them a text about it - it was slightly concerning that it hadn’t been the warframe, but apparently Kali was still in the lounge, so out Kelth went, ready to grill it.

It was still sitting on the couch, looking down at where it was twiddling its thumbs. At the sound of Kelth’s cane, it looked up and signed a greeting.

“What happened?” they asked sternly, not too happy about the other warframe evidently having fled back to his room again.

“Nothing, we just talked,” Kali signed quickly. At their raised eyebrow, it added: “Really. I’m glad we could talk, and I think it was necessary, but it wasn’t pleasant for him.”

Kelth sighed deeply. “Yeah, that sounds familiar. It’s been… difficult. Anyway, I think it’s time that you go back to your ship, because with his track record so far, he’s not coming back out of his room for at least another half day, now.”

Kali winced, but signed “fair enough,” before standing up and stretching out. Kelth just stood and watched, thoughts swirling like clouds before a storm.

“Hey,” it signed, catching their wandering attention again. “Thanks again for letting us help. If there’s anything else we can do-”

“I’ll let you know,” Kelth said, a weak smile breaking through. “Thank you for everything, really.”

Kali’s tail swished from side to side once, and it gave a thumbs up, before turning around and walking out of the lounge, presumably back towards its Liset.

Kelth sighed. What a day - and they hadn’t even had lunch yet.

—

Wanting to do something useful with the remainder of the day, Kelth and Sufford went on another series of drive runs. Ordis had been keeping track of which serial numbers they had collected and which ones they were still missing, and so far, it was looking like they had about half. Kelth refused to get discouraged.

Head full of numbers, they almost didn’t notice the new warframe sitting in the lounge as they trudged through it, on their way to a well-deserved nap. Once they did, they did a quick double-take - he wasn’t ignoring them like usual, but looking straight at them, datapad on the seat to his side, hands folded in his lap.

“Hm?” Kelth hummed, curious but unable to come up with more words in their current state.

He simply gestured to the spot on the couch next to him, picking up the pad to free the space. 

Well, alright - Kelth limped over, leaning heavily on their cane, dropping themselves into the couch as well. He handed them the datapad, on which something was already typed out. They glanced up at him, surprised, only to find him looking the other way, twiddling his thumbs. They snorted and focused back down on the pad, forcing the words - word, singular - to make sense before their tired eyes. They weren’t familiar with it, but tried to pronounce it anyway.

“Vinc- Vinculum?”

The warframe looked back at them, nodded.

“What’s that?” they asked, still confused.

Meekly, he raised a finger, pointing it at his own chest. Kelth stared, blinked - “oh! You picked a name?”

He turned his head forwards again, but nodded. They grinned wide. “Oh, nice, thanks for letting me know, it sounds cool! Did you just pick something that sounded good, or-”

Vinculum took the datapad again, and Kelth cut themself off to watch, curious. Instead of typing, he opened a drawing application. He drew the symbol for a square root in black with his finger, switching to red to draw the horizontal line at the top, making it extra long, and filling the space underneath with some random symbols. He pointed at the line, looking back to Kelth, as if to see if they’d get it.

“It’s a maths symbol?” they asked, not following entirely. He tilted his head this way and that, as if to say not quite, and drew an arrow pointing towards the red horizontal line.

“Oh! I hadn’t realised that part of it had a name,” they said. “You know a lot of maths, then?”

Air whistled out of Vinculum’s intakes - was that a laugh? He nodded at them, then turned back to the pad to doodle out several more equations and symbols, all with a horizontal red line through them somewhere - in the middle of a fraction, above the name of a line segment, on top of a long decimal number - Kelth wasn’t sure what it was doing there, but okay, clearly Vinculum knew his stuff, and it was nice to see him pick a name from something he seemed to enjoy.

“Nice,” Kelth smiled, leaning back into the couch. “I’m happy for you. Oh, we could call you Vince for short!”

At that, Vinculum recoiled a little. Oops. Kelth winced. “Not a fan of nicknames, or is that just a bad one? I know it’s also short for-”

He was typing again, so Kelth stopped and leaned over to read, sitting back again quickly when they noticed he was typing and rapidly erasing words, as if he wasn’t sure how to word something. Eventually, they were handed the datapad again.

“It’s fine, I’m just not used to the name yet, I think. Vince sounds good.”

“Vince it is,” Kelth said, grinning wide, before they were interrupted by a huge yawn, reminding them of the reason they’d been coming through the lounge in the first place. When they could open their eyes again, Vince had typed out a new message, and was holding the datapad in front of them.

“Well, sorry I took so long picking a name that you’re falling asleep where you’re sitting.”

Involuntarily, Kelth snorted and collapsed into a fit of laughter, partially because they found it genuinely funny, but also just because they were happy that he’d gotten comfortable enough to start making jokes. “I see you’ve found your sense of humour,” they said, when they could breathe again. Vince somehow managed to look smug even without a face. “I really do need a nap, though, and unless there’s anything else you wanted to talk about, I’ll be going to get it before I actually fall asleep here.”

Vince shook his head, and then, after a second’s pause, raised one hand and delivered a shaky version of the sign for “good night”.

Kelth’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and they let out an entirely undignified ‘aww’, sincerely touched. Vince promptly dropped the sign and turned away, acting like he was about to stand up. Kelth started laughing again, so he did actually stand up from the couch and started marching towards the hallway. It felt different from the times where he’d stormed off because he was upset, though, which was confirmed when he stopped right before the hallway to glance back at them. Dry humour and a sense for the dramatic, they could work with that.

“Thanks,” Kelth said, still smiling wide. “And thanks again for letting me know your name, too! It’s a very nice one!”

Vince hesitated for another second, before signing an equally shaky “thanks” and immediately vanishing into the hallway without waiting to see if Kelth had seen it.

Kelth didn’t know what had triggered this change in him, if it had been the conversation with Kali or just the passage of time, but they were very glad he seemed to finally be getting more comfortable.

Maybe in a few days, they could start trying out how he did with transference - while in the somatic link, his signal felt a little shaky, a little dimmer next to Sufford’s steady and strong one, and they were curious what that would mean for actively being linked with him. They’d seen some of the stealthier warframes in action in the field, and maybe he was one of those - he certainly had the physical build for that kind of style. Or maybe he would be a trickster-type, not likely to show his cards as easily as Sufford did, walking into a room with swords and guns strapped to him - that would certainly fit his personality more, also.

Oh, useless daydreams about stuff they’d hopefully find out about in some days anyways. They blew the tips of hair that had fallen into their eyes out of their face, and stood back up - time to get that much-delayed nap.