[wherein Excalibur Umbra and his Tenno consider what they've lost and, maybe, what they've gained.]
Since he has been pulled from the maelstrom of howling rage by a child's hands, now, now he is fully able to comprehend the world around him - and the Tenno, who has made a place for him.
Perhaps he doesn’t think of her as a daughter just yet – won’t ever – because even the thought is enough to send sharp teeth sinking deep into his core, that he had been a father once, that his son had been proud to be just that.
That, when he did the unthinkable, Isaah had cried.
There are no words for him to articulate the grief that just now is settling into something less potent. Ballas had seen to that, and anyway, it’s somehow harder to think of them now. He can only pace, and howl, and try to put it into perspective in his mind -- and, with all that spent, kneel, shaking, to meditate.
His Tenno is still young, but growing older (barely younger than he was), and he can sense that there had been some great tragedy to have befallen her before they met. She is not sullen – her smiles come easily and she laughs with feeling – but the shadows fall on her face with such gravity that he can see them crushing her at certain angles. All Tenno have suffered, this he knows – but she has had a fresh hurt. Recent, and deep, and precise.
She approaches him tiredly, offers him a small grin.
“One of those days, huh?” she says. He can only nod, because that is one way to put it.
She does not speak to him as Isaah had. Does not address him as Father with every other phrase. Does not bow her head when she comes up to him. She looks on him almost as an equal, and it makes him wonder how different her upbringing had been than the one he had given his boy.
She is quiet, for only a few seconds. When she settles beside him, her posture is less rough than it had been weeks past. He waits; he can sense the soft hesitation before she speaks.
“My mom was a philologist,” Shinoda says quietly. “My first mom, I mean. Dad was a theoretical physicist. I don’t know who they wanted me to end up like, but I’m not sure I’m doing much of either these days.”
It’s not the point she’s trying to make, and Umbra continues to wait. She has learned to read his patience in the lines of his posture, the relaxed set of his hands. It encourages her, he thinks.
“Margulis was the third,” she adds. “To be there for me. To die. At least, with her, I wasn’t there to see it happen. Learned about it, later. Have you ever heard of the Jade Light?”
The two words are ugly beside each other, and she spits them as if she wants them out of her mouth before their poison sets in. Umbra nods again, because the Orokin, while his esteemed masters, were not merciful.
“She was thinking of us. I think my first parents were thinking of me, too. They didn’t deserve it.
“I don’t know how I feel about the Lotus, now. She was like a mother to us, too. And it’s not like she’s dead, but it feels like it. And I don’t know what I could have done differently.”
His Tenno heaves a sigh, troubled and shaky. She turns to look Umbra in the face, golden eyes earnest.
“I’m really, really happy that I met you, Umbra. It’s funny, but it’s almost like this time – this one time that I lost something important – you were there to help it hurt less. I don’t know if I can ever call you a father, because I have a horrible track record with parents. I’m afraid that if I start thinking about it, then something bad is going to happen to you, too.”
His shoulders rise questioningly, head tilted. He can understand on a base level. Still, though –
“Silly?”
Yes.
A laugh. “Yeah, I guess it sounds like it. But it helps me get through the day, so I think that that’s alright.”
There is something about the way she says it – accepting of that fact, but with the slightest, softest dolefulness – and it twists at something within him. Umbra hesitates, fists immobile on his legs, before he finally wills them free. His hand settles between her shoulder blades, the whole of him uncertain of what, exactly, he should do with this child.
Isaah favored words of affirmation. She is not Isaah, and he has had his words torn away. Discomfort prickles at his spine for a moment, the worry that he doesn’t have it in him, to help this child who so helped him –
But Shinoda’s face goes slack with a visceral relief, and she laughs, a watery thing. She twists around at his gesture, emboldened, and pulls him into a full embrace. And suddenly, in the moment, the scars do not ache quite so much.
