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chamberofnectar · 5 years

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Wounded, but not yet broken

Summary

No more Orokin. No more Somatic Cradle. No more forced self-sacrifices.

But scars always take so long to heal, especially if they’re dug so deep.

[Tags update over time, rating will remain the same. A strained Father and Son relationship due to financial and emotional stress]

Mature | Graphic Depiction of violence

[ Story Link ] Chapter 14 of (?) continue beneath the read more!

The ride to Mars is painfully silent.

Gloves ball against the sleeves of his new jacket as he shuffles, an intermittent unease that wanders through his thoughts and waifs across through the sympathetic transference; Warren resigns himself half aware of his surroundings as each embittering attempt to converse is met by his dejected mumble beneath the scarf cloth. Leaning upon his knees, holding himself small, Warren merely rides out the hitches in the liset’s decent as it rocks in the timid gusts. Golden claws pry the craft into a settled yawn as sand puffs around the landing gear, machinery finding their placements as the engines ease down into idle silence.

As the loki goes through the off-boarding protocols Warren remains huddled, sight adrift as he holds himself firmly in place. Remaining slouched as the loki steps back to check the gear stuffed into the rafters and stow-away hatches, bantering amongst himself as the tenno’s hands curl.

‘Another practice session…’ Warren mulls, briefly looking back as the warframe pulls down a bundle of targets, a snarling grunt as he tugs it to land with a heavy thump.

Exhaustion taints Warren’s cognition, senses muddied as he barely retains any attention to the motions behind the seat as he leans into it, head cast back with a choking sigh as he fumbles to keep himself together. Fingers knead into the sleeves; biting his lip against the fierce strain of overbearing tears that threaten to brim his sight. To not dwell on it; ignore it, Warren shivers, holding himself still as his fingers pry against the jacket. They falter down beneath the flaps to pull himself into a tighter bundle, looking over anything that suits his need for redirected attention. The ceiling, the floor, the individual metallic grooves in the console before him as laces of energy lingers in the breath of the idle engine. He burrows himself in the scarf, sight hanging lull as he traces out the intricate little details and flaws.

Teetering under the threat of another breakdown.

“Everything’s set up, kid,” the loki whispers as he eases down into a kneel, resting an arm on the chair as he looks over to the teenager. T’viska’s eyespots register a split hesitation, mouth pressing a line as he watches the tenno flicker his sight over for a moment, then looks away. Despondent. A persistent, aching silence carries between; and the warframe releases a steady exhale. “Whenever you feel ready… I’ll be outside, alright?” And a clawed palm pats Warren’s shoulder.

It’s with a heave and a sigh that the warframe departs, his steps light as they move from the liset’s ramp down into the blowing martian sand. Piece by piece he reassesses the target posts, the cloth tatters of a few of the dummies that sit in snug haphazard bundles. Needlework keeps them tight in the easing gusts, shadowed by the cargo wreckage strewn out across the landscape. Double checking, triple checking, T’viska keeps himself occupied.

And, steadily, Warren pulls himself to his feet.

Confounded in the clash of hesitation, anxieties, a backlog of emotional baggage that he shoves into the deep recesses of his mind as he faces the sand. Gloved fingers scratch against the traces of tears as he pulls himself to walk, to do something aside from sitting alone in the darkness as he steps out into the shadow of the carrier. Questions scratch in the back of his thoughts that are shoved aside; still shaking, hands fumbling as he tries to find some measurement of self-control as he walks over to the loki’s side.

His features; cracking.

“I’m here,” he mumbles; and hitched by the trembling in his breath, the threatening sniff as he shuns himself away from the warframe’s sight. Wanting to think of elsewhere, not on the turmoil saturating inside his head.

And when the loki kneels down before him, hands holding his arms gently, he adverts his sight – not want to be seen like this, his breathing hitches. A fumble of inner criticism cascades – and he shoves off the golden claws from his sleeves. “Which weapon,” he forces a swallow, looking over between the curls of hair.

“Warren –” T’viska strains, hands turning into fists, watching and standing as the tenno storms over to where weapons have been laid out. Busted lato, reassembled braton, and the ceramic daggers; the ammo sits sparse – the allotment for off-contract use. It takes a moment, a hesitation, and he grabs the teenager’s arm.

“Let go of me!” Warren snaps, his voice trembling, tears creasing his sight.

Useless. Worthless. Scratches in the teenager’s mind.

“Warren,” the loki snarls, “calm down, there’s –”

It’s too late; as his emotions fissure.

“I am fucking calm!” he yells, trembling as his fists press at his sides, ebbing with void energy. “I’m- just wasting my time, aren’t I? I can’t find anything on those fucking plants; not even scant theories that aren’t locked behind some Corpus bullshit!” Cyan energy flickers through his palms; can’t fight back, never fight back. Tearing up. “There’s –“ he chokes, “there’s nothing for me, isn’t there? After the war, the sentients, the Orokin, there’s nothing… nothing,” his voice quivers, hands pressing against his face, across the remnants of his facial damage.

Gloved fingers curl, trembling, teeth gnash aggressive.

A fucking failure.

And T’viska just stands there, a hand barely held out as the turmoil casts through his own mind.

Doubting his own thoughts as they contort in form with the teeanger’s lashing somatic signal; anger, fear, uncertainty and a lingering embittered hatred. He doesn’t move – he can’t move as the tenno’s breathing shutters, choking, crying as he holds his fists at his side. “Don’t… just fucking stand there,” he mumbles, a fist swiping away the pouring tears. “Fucking, say something,” he snarls – halfhearted and stained with the crumbs of loathing. Of doing nothing before, the things out of his control that he’s lost without – why? Why can’t he fucking function?

“Jacob,” T’viska fumes, neural processes overloading with the anxious bleeding that ensnares him in place. “Warren,” he tries again, choking to try and find his wording. “You’re not at fault for what they’ve done to you,” he tries to reach over – but it’s shoved away through his own nerves – cast off with the frantic shake of a downcast head. Not having it; not taking the lies that are so thought.

“I fucking know that, dad!” the teenager cries; shaking, trembling. His breathing hitches, “but I – I don’t fucking know what to do, and just –“ he falters, fingers prying through his hair. “I’m – I’m useless,” he sobs, “I can’t find anything, do anything to help…” he chokes, “please…” he stutters, a hiccup, “I’m a burden, aren’t I…? You can’t do anything with me around…” his voice creaks, crumpling down to his knees.

T’viska’s hesitant to force himself forward, a snarl breaking across his face as his eyespot remain in aggressive slits. Tumbling through the thunderous waves that crests his thoughts, the overwhelm of the somatic control – but its hinge of encouragement is short lived as he kneels at the tenno’s side. A sentimental reaching out that retracts as an elbow pushes away half-hearted.

And golden claws rest around the teen’s back, a gentle pat with a sigh.

“No, Warren, you aren’t,” the warframe hushes, leaning into the crestfallen sobs. Easing the teenager to lean against him with a sigh. “It’s… not easy to get over that shit,” his lip curls, “it’s going to take time… to not feel bad about just existing.” He eases the teen’s head over, whispering, “we’ll get you through this – alright?”

“Okay,” Warren sniffs, angrily brushing away the tears. “I’m…” he swallows, “just so tired of this shit… being afraid of everything.”

“I know, kid,” the warframe adjusts, sitting on his legs as he rubs the teen’s arm. “But it’ll get better, okay? Don’t worry about dad, just focus on yourself. Alright?”

There’s a swallow of tears, a huffed nod as the tenno fumbles to pull himself together, his sleeve pressing against his face. “I know but…” he halts, pulling himself away to bury his forehead against his knees. “I can’t do anything…” he shakes.

Silence stings inside the loki’s thoughts, uncertain of what else to say as the teenager sits there – the warframe’s arm still hitched over in a sentiment of comfort, that he’s still there. T’viska looks over the target markers, the posts he set up in hopes of deluding the resentment that course through the somatic current. “You might not be able to right now,” he sits up, pulling his hand away as he moves to stand. “But you have focus, kid, I’m sure you can crack whatever the connection is between them – the plants and the chairs.”

Hesitant about bringing up the neural override. Where outside the seat the tenno made him immobile.

“That arboriform, back on the orbiter, how’s it doing?” T’viska moves over to Warren’s other side, sitting down.

“It’s… doing okay, I guess,” Warren hiccups, his sleeves stained with tears. “The reservoir waters… haven’t done any harm to it so far. And it’s still reacting.”

“Good,” T’viska sighs, leaning against his knees with crossed arms. “It’s a good place to start… working off of experience.” He looks over, letting a sigh slip from him, “you can only glean so much from documents… it’s really hands-on experience that gives insight. I could study codes for decades and not complete a single assignment.”

“Yeah…” Warren swallows, wiping away tearing remnants.

“Whatever you feel like doing… just tell me, alright? Be it looking at a derelict or running on a mission, I might not be able to do them all,” T’viska adjusts himself, legs crossing against the sands. “But I’ll try to fit in those occasional trips when I can,” he sighs, “Suuir could use some help around the ship… you could probably poke around and see how the ship’s guts function too.”

Warren nods, still shielding his face. The briefest of a smile marred with the remnant cries.

Golden claws pat his shoulder, easing him over to a hug. “We can go back, if you want.”

Again, Warren nods; exhausted.

Exhaustion that directs him back to the bed once he’s aboard, cradling himself amongst the body heat comfort left by the kavats – whom leap back on after him one by one. Their bodies crest around his cocooned form, Crenshaw cradling against his fists before Warren throws a sheet over her. Rhubarb skips and hops around them before she cuddles herself against his back, where each motion coaxes out a stubborn whine.

From the other end of the cushioned bench the loki watches them find peace, listening until the teenager’s breathing falls calm. Finally finding sleep.

On the other side of the door, T’viska sighs, “how long was he awake, Suuir?”

’38 hours,’ not too long, ‘he took a brief nap before continuing through the archives. Without it, 74,’ the tetrahedron flickers at the edge of the loki’s vision.

He snarls.

Should’ve paid more attention… but he’s always off on some mission, and Suuir isn’t a suitable guardian for an anxiety riddled teenager. Claws press his forehead, mediating on it as he leans up against the wall.

“Suuir,” the loki growls, head falling back as his arms cross. “Let him work on the systems, poke around a bit.”

‘Are you certain that’s a good idea? To let him poke around.’

“You don’t have a choice in the matter, cephalon,” the loki hisses through his teeth, “what I am asking is for you to give guidance. Letting him figure out on his own won’t exactly be suitable to keep things running, no would it?” Silence, a stalemate as the cephalon’s polygonal representation fizzles at the edge of the loki’s sight before blipping out.

T’viska heaves a sigh, pushing himself off the wall with a roll of his shoulders, “Suuir,” he breathes, “can you send me the stuff he was looking at?” Gold claws squeeze against his biceps as he walks up the ramp to the upper hall. The cephalon never answers, merely transferring the records over the neural signal from one to the other. Thousands muddy his internal listing, vision decorated with relevant keywords and earmarked for the potential of arboriform consensus, ones that linger with the base possibility of vital information.

Sitting himself before the navigation console, the loki stretches his shoulders. His spine. Each of his joints one by one as he begins to pick through the files new and old.

And begins discarding them.

As he eases down into long hold stretches, T’viska picks through for the more relevant files; the ones that are more than a mention amongst the expounds of an unrelated excursion, more than a brief glace of subjective hints, ones that aren’t a list of faulty information or construes and turns into nonsensible garbage. In, and out he breathes, flipping through them; compare and contrast, if there’s connections not yet made between the scraps.

Pulling himself back with a steady exhale, the warframe switches to his other side, peering through the files, picking them apart and separating out the relevant from the oversized bulk, stowing them away into their own filings before he culls the rest. Only to set them free once the irrelevant are sent away, repeating the process, dwindling from thousands into hundreds.

And he begins another set of long held stretches.

Exhaling.

Golden claws allow the datapad to slip from his grasp.

It lands with a softened pat before sliding down on the ottoman sat in front of the cushioned bench as a minor tone plays overhead – a finger pushing it over, to where device doesn’t hang off the edge as he takes a glace to where the tenno and kavats lie asleep. At peace. Looking back to the datapad, T’viska taps it to remain open on the cultivated research – down from a few thousands to less than 500.

“Suuir, when he wakes up tell him I parsed through it, narrowed it down,” he exhales, his sight caught on the jarred arboriform sat in front of the camera-fed vista.

‘Affirmative,’ the cephalon doesn’t bother to make his polygon known, saturated by contract correspondence.

Setting the jar in the middle of the ottoman, T’viska reads through the mission details sent to him by Suuir; duration assignment, a transport of sensitive material on a corpus vessel. A small frown creases his features, turning himself back to the steps that lead into the upper landing, hand gesturing the lights to dim as he departs.

“You’ll let him poke around while I’m gone,” T’viska doesn’t ask, wandering himself over to the workbench, picking through his small arsenal.

‘I will,’ the cephalon waves him off, detailing the vessel that will carry the cargo once it reaches the port.

“Good,” the warframe’s maw flinches, counting over his remaining spira blades – the half sat off to the side and embedded into the scratched wooden finishing. “Make sure he eats too,” he snarls, testing his forearm wraps, securing his belt band around his gut and the one that slouches over the skirt. “I’m relying on you, Suuir.”

‘I’m aware of that,’ the tetrahedron flickers at the edge of his vision, depositing the schematics.

The warframe fiddles with his gear as his cognition pieces through the cargo ship’s layout, plucking a capture device out of a bin. A mess of noise made of clicks taps and snaps as he doubles and triple checks himself, leaning up against the workbench, his sight breaking through the schematics to glace over at the partial spira blade sunk deep. He exhales, mouth pressing flat.

“Worried…?” the cephalon cuts through.

“What gave you the hint,” the loki chuffs, tucking the capture device away at his side. “How long is the window?”

‘A few minutes, I’ll signal when the gyro-locks are in place. Information says it’s a touch-and-go.’

T’viska grunts; and pushes himself from the workbench.

Tired eyes clench as he rouses from the depths of sleep, pulling himself into a tightly wound ball against the persistence warmth – yet also hampered by the kavats that pin him beneath the blankets, shoving against one with a grumble. Worming around, twisting himself and throwing off a sheet, a hand reaches up against his temple, index and thumb prying beneath his curly hair as his eyes try to find focus in the darkness, somatic sight abuzz and groggy. Hand over fist, he pulls himself out of the entombed blankets, twisting himself into a sit where his back rests against the wall. The corner of the room.

Looking out into the dimly lit room, his eyes fall shut once more – heavy as he listens to the soft tunes still playing through the residential quarter. It lulls through his tired mind, head tapping back against the wall as he reclines.

A moment of silence; extended as he leans himself forward, head resting in his hands.

An exhale.

When he finally looks up Warren catches sight of trained blue eyes that stare back, ones connected to a fan tail that flickers and smacks down against the bed. As he moves, it quivers, large ears perked forward. He sighs, reaching out with one hand, “oh Rhu,” the adarza kavat plurps as he scratches beneath her chin, leaning up into his palm as the tufted ears drift back, eyes falling closed.

One hand becomes two as the kavat stretches out, pulling herself up onto his lap for additional attention. Petting over her tufted cheeks, cradling them for a moment; Warren smiles, stroking over the short mane of fur that stands from her head to between her shoulders. Rhubarb cradles herself against him, on his lap as he reclines back against the wall with a sigh, his somatic sight hanging lull as he browses the room.

His sight hinges on the datapad left out on the ottoman sitting out of his reach, the jar that sits beside it that glows from the seemingly healthy arboriform within.

Warren’s smile begins to fade, sinking down beneath the sheets as he slumps, hands plying through the kavat’s fur.

Still has to get up… stuck beneath exhaustion physical and mental.

Lifting the kavat’s front legs, he sets Rhubarb off to the side. Peeling off the sheets, freeing his legs of the blanket imprisonment, he crawls to the other end of the cot where he lets himself rest; head in hand, an arm crossed over his gut, he barely snarls, head spinning. Pressure tenses in the back of his eyes, rubbing against them as mild pain splinters across his back.

Gunfire.

A hand messes through auburn furls as he strains to find his senses, eyes bolting from the datapad, the jar, the dismissive camera view that gives the false pretenses of a window into space. Fingers press at his temple, rubbing, pulling back and through his hair with a sigh. The same shit. As he takes a moment to find his grounding, Warren plucks the datapad from the ottoman, his eyes hanging over the open lines of text that fills the hologram display. ‘You’re awake,’ Suuir’s text holds at the side of the device, turning with the orientation.

“Mhhh,” the tenno mumbles as he leans on his legs, letting the device dangle between his fingers before letting it tap on his opposing wrist. “On a mission,” he mumbles, looking up to the glass display, and then back to the datapad with furrowed brows.

‘T’viska culled the records,’ he reads, the cepahlon’s tetrahedron nowhere to be seen. ‘Most of them were just fluff, he said.’

“Oh, did he,” his tired sight moves from it to the arboriform.

It glows in the low light, the base sat firm as it fills the lower quarter of the jar.

Easing in another inhale, he looks back to where Rhubarb had replanted herself in the corner he once resided, over to where Crenshaw still sits nestled on her end beneath the thrown over covers. Exhaustion still aches in the back of his mind, thumb rubbing against the datapad as he pulls it up onto his thigh. “Suuir, what type of mission is dad on.”

‘Sensitive research retrieval, duration assignment.’

“How long is he gonna be gone,” his somatic sight flickers over the datapad, index finger scrolling through the incredibly shortened list of references he can turn to.

‘Uncertain, as he needs to still find the target and their docket.’

What remains of his mouth presses flat, reaching over to where he left his jacket and the small transponder. He fumbles through the pockets for a moment before his memory kicks in – last left it in his coat jacket, the one laid out on the platform on the higher landing. He gives in.

Crawling himself back beneath the blankets with a stern grunt.

“Suuir,” he whispers as he throws the blanket back over himself, curling back against Rhubarb who keeps her place, “did dad ask you anything while I was asleep.”

‘That you’re to help out with repairs – given you may have interest in them.’

“Since the ship’s got the same plants, yeah,” he sighs, throwing the blanket over his head. “Whenever… I can, I want to do that, I’ve been thinking on it…” his words fall mute, eyes squinting, flipping through the documents. Nearly full records from corpus experiments, technical details pulled from a ship’s manifest, things he glossed over in the throes of anxious research or ones buried beneath a cipher. Once overwhelming.

He’s glad, gracious, even.

Despite the pilfering that digs at his heart.

“I… want to look over them on this thing, is it alright, Suuir?”

A set of lights blink at the top edge of the datapad, a signal retrieval.

“Thanks.”

And Warren falls quiet, scrolling through the documents and the raw datapoints that lists from the somatic cradle – a blunder of information that at first seems overwhelmed in the vast calculations, but soon he just eases into noncommitted browsing of information that tells him nothing, scrolling over the repetitive string of 44697669796f6e69

#VueWritten #Warframe #fanfiction #Tenno #Loki #Trauma #Operative Warren #T'viska #familial relationship #chapter #wip #cw nervous breakdown

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natehoodreviews · 5 years

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Roma ★★★★½

[The following was written for the monthly newsletter for the First Presbyterian Church of Del Ray.]

To watch Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is to be gently lowered into the warm bath of the director’s memories. Happy memories of growing up in the middle class neighborhood of Colonia Roma in the 1970s, back when the wealthy Europeans who’d built lavish French-style mansions had fled to better neighborhoods, abandoning their spacious houses for well-to-do Mestizo families and their servants. Sad memories of watching his parents’ marriage crumble, helpless to do anything as their family fell further and further apart. Scary memories of earthquakes, social unrest, and US-backed death squads. Safe memories of his Mixtec maid waking him in the mornings, walking him from school in the afternoons, tucking him into bed at night. He’s taken these memories, the good and the bad, and shaped them like a potter into a work of unforgettable beauty.

Though the film features a kaleidoscopic array of POVs, it follows, more often than not, the day-to-day life of Cleo (first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio), the live-in maid of biochemist Sofia (Marina de Tavira), doctor Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), and their four children. For the first hour the film lulls us into the routine of her day-to-day life, cooking and cleaning the house, caring for the children, waiting on Sofia and Antonio. On her off days she travels into the bustling center of Mexico City with her friend, fellow maid Adela (Nancy García), and their two boyfriends. After one of these outings she discovers her boyfriend, martial artist Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), has gotten her pregnant. When she tells him, he runs out on her, leaving her to face motherhood alone. At home, her mistress Sofia is having her own romantic issues—she knows Antonio is cheating on her and has a mental breakdown when his “business trip” to Quebec stretches from a few days to six months.

As the two women try to figure out their futures without their absent partners, Caurón treats us to a number of devastating set-pieces: a country outing to the house of a wealthy American family on New Year’s Eve turns tragic when a nearby forest catches fire and the drunken revelers struggle to put it out; a trip to buy a crib for Cleo’s child gets interrupted by the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre where CIA-trained shock troops nicknamed “Los Halcones” opened fire on pro-democracy protestors; a sojourn to the beach almost becomes deadly when two of Sofia’s children get swept out to sea by an unexpected current. Through it all Caurón, who served as his own cinematographer, keeps his camera steady and level, preferring long, uninterrupted shots where the camera moves almost exclusively via horizontal tracking to the left or right. The result is a feeling of audience omnipresence, making us feel both outside yet intimately familiar with the goings-on in the characters’ lives as they drift in and out of the spacious frames like worker ants in a nest.

Though written as a love letter to Caurón’s real-life nanny growing up—one of Sofia’s children, an introverted blond-haired boy, is even strongly suggested to be a director surrogate—the central dynamic of the film isn’t the one between Cleo and the children. Surprisingly, it’s not even that of Cleo and her unborn child. Instead, it could be seen as the relationship between Cleo and Sofia, two women cruelly tossed aside by their men with no financial support. At first there’s the worry that class differences will keep the two women apart; indeed, in one scene Sofia heartlessly blames Cleo for failing to keep one of her children from eavesdropping on a telephone call where she confesses the details of Antonio’s affair. But time and again the two women come through for each other, giving the other the love and support the world otherwise refuses them. It culminates one of the most soul-shattering group hugs in cinema history, where the whole family embraces a weeping Cleo while Sofia assures her again and again that they all love her. Watching this scene of two women normally kept apart by racial and economic circumstances, it’s impossible not to remember the Apostle Paul’s insistence in the Epistle to the Galatians that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” For all its transcendent loveliness and power, it is perhaps this illustration of Christ-like love that makes Roma more than just a great film—it makes it an essential one.

#Roma #2018 #★★★★½ #Film Reviews #Alfonso Cuarón #Yalitza Aparicio #Mexican Cinema

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