Chapter Text
Ember’s Embrace
Operator/Ember
S.F.W
Sometimes it’s cold in a way I can’t change, no matter how tightly I curl up under the thermal blanket. Those nights I fight just to stay sane and not drift back to those dark, terrible days of before.
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You’d think that after so long in a near coma like state, we’d not need sleep as all and you would be partly right, we don’t need to sleep so much as rest our eyes and bodies after piloting our frames and while it does mimic sleep in some regards when we rest, we are unable to reach a state of true sleep as a human would, we don’t ‘dream’ as a human would, its more reliving the past. We can go great lengths of time without needing to rest but eventually, the strain on our minds and even our bodies will force us to leave our Frames and settle down for a time to regain what energy and strength we have lost, or we could risk tremendous mental strain and becoming trapped in our memories for a time that can lead to health issues.
For that reason, I have a personal rule that I will never go longer then two weeks before resting, just to avoid the chance I would become trapped in memories I would rather leave buried in the past. Sadly, it doesn’t always work.
Sometimes, the missions are just so draining that I have to stop after only two to three days, especially now, now that I am no longer hidden away on Lua. Ordis had made a room for me to use as my own when not in the transference pod and while it was basic and didn’t have much in it to begin with, it has been slowly filled with personal things that make it mine. A small collection of fluffs that will keep growing when I have the funds to spare of them and a bed. I know I’ve said we don’t need to sleep but it is nice to have a space where I can lay down and stretch out comfortably rather than being sat in the chair or confined in a pod while I rest and while some may not agree with the idea of laying down, I say to each their own and enjoy the comfort of a plush mattress under my body as I lay myself upon the firm mattress and relax into the warm confines of the weighted thermal blanket, praying that despite the draining mission I had come home from that the past will stay in the past and I can rest in blissful darkness.
I am not lucky this time.
I feel the familiar chill of those memories, the nights spent curled up amongst other kids, some older some younger but all of us just kids, lost and scared and just trying, trying so hard to survive. The oldest kids, they looked for food and kept the adults, some sick, some mad, others just insane away from us younger ones, I never knew nor did I want to know why the adults were after us, why they wanted to hurt us so much. I never wanted to know why they’d turned on us when we’d only ever done what we could to please them.
I can feel the cold now, even though I know I’m not in that place anymore, I’m somewhere else, I still feel that cold, horrid feeling as I relive the past I tried so hard to escape in my rest, trying to find the warmth of the blanket, the warmth of the mattress and the comforting scents of what is and not what was.
Sometimes it’s cold in a way I can’t change, no matter how tightly I curl up under the thermal blanket. Those nights I fight just to stay sane and not drift back to those dark, terrible days of before.
I won’t escape this memory it seems, the hold they have is deep and the lack of comforts to be found in the present to anchor me here mean I am not able to find and hold onto the here and now as I get dragged in to the then and there.
Then, like a welcome blissful breath of reality, powerful warm arms are around my body, holding me against a warm breasts and chasing the past cold away from my body, replacing it with the warmth and comfort of the present so firmly and so solidly that I know the memories will not come back again, they will stay away and I will be safe in the warm emptiness of my own mind at last.
I know its Ember, she’s in my room holding me in her arms as I rest, protecting me from the memories that haunt me.
Ember was the one I took with me to try and stop the Shadow Stalker’s hunt in the Void for Lua and the she was one who’d carried me from the Reservoir to Ordis when I’d woken from cryo sleep, dizzy, hazed and weak and relaying on memory and training to guide my actions, she was the one who’d snapped the sword the Stalker had plunged into her before he’d tried to choke me, tearing it from her body and leaving herself with a horrid injury that I felt, a fragment of the pain compared t what she had no doubt felt, but it hurt so much it was enough to make me scream.
I remember Lotus had picked me up and I begged her, begged her to tell me how to fix Ember and make sure she was ok. Foolishness some would have said, Frames have no emotion or feeling, but I have never believed that and I was not going to leave he, forgotten and hurt when I knew the injury would have meant she’d never be usable again. Lotus had put me in my transference chair and promised me all would be well when I had rested, I was still under the effect of prolonged cryo stasis, my body was still numb in places, my vision blurred and my senses working overtime to try and cope with all that was new and old all at once.
Lotus stayed with me, helped me remove the hood of my suit when my stomach finally could take no more of the sensory abuse and I had to let myself surrender to the moment.
Ember was there, at the corner of my vision, her helm turned to the side as if she were still in her way watching over me even as Lotus tended me, gentle and motherly as she’d always been as she helped me calm down from it all, she helped me into the hot water pool Ordis had opened up in the chamber to wash away the mess I’d made of myself, she helped me into a clean suit before helping me back into my chair. I answered her questions as best I could, and she promised me it would all be well in time and then I saw it, Ember’s body gave a jerk and then she was standing up the horrid gash from the sword she’d given herself to break the blade stitched itself together, leaving nothing to show there had ever been an injury there at all. She nodded to me as if assuring me she was fine and then walked herself to the Arsenal, Lotus said it was a lingering effect of the transference that had woken a dormant protocol in all Warframe, a code of programming that allowed them to preform a basic set of orders without Tenno piloting them.
I know it’s more than that, Ember would not come to me and hold me like this as I rest if it was a reactivated programming. This is something deeper, something all of my frames have started to show over time since they came into my ship however small the signs it was there in all of them. It’s their own will, a will that has been ignored by others because they don’t want to admit they have used and abused these frames as they have the Tenno.
Its that will that makes my Ember come to me when I’m resting and the past creeps up on me, she cradles me so I rest well and she is there for me when I need a hug, just as Saryn is there to help me face the Infested, Mirage and Loki are there to help me smile and laugh with their mischievous ways, all of my Warframes know when I need them and they do all they can to help me in their own ways.
I know Ember won’t leave me alone now, I can feel her heavier weight next to mine, her arms securely around my body and so I simply snuggle just a little closer to her warmth, resting my head on her shoulder and let myself sink into the blissful warm darkness, safe in the knowledge Ember will hold me safely and stay with me so the cold memories don’t come back.