kinda crack-pot jaffa factory 2 headcanon here:
so! (postflux) lalna, after watching xephos' health (mental and physical) continue to decay, commits what he basically considers to be the ultimate sin - delete massive swaths of Xeph's memory the next time he's cloned, using the executive control of his respawning he'd rested from the board for 'security concerns - can't have the chief scientist so vulnerable. let him think that yoglabs had been a thing he'd run for a while before passing along the torch. let him be free of it all.
lalna is rotting with guilt but its been years since he's seen xephos have fun, goofing off with him and brry and its just. xephos was going to die, forever, and lalna has fixed it and it should be ok? to save him?
meanwhile, because lingering magic from 1000s of respawns xeph should have had but controlled himself rather than trust in an unknowable force, plus the taint of divinity he picked up during the red matter incident, xephos has been halfway to godhood for a while. it's only been his clone-based respawns stopping him from dying and being reborn in a body more suited for that kind of power.
- and then he doesn't respawn quite right, and the godhood dwelling quiescent in his soul is freed. The Storyteller is born and gosh, Lalna was so sweet to try to keep him safe and happy! He'll have to remember to take time out of his busy schedule to have loads of fun with his dear friend <3
Xephos is lighter now, Lalna notices. He’s cheerful, excitable, in a way he hasn’t been in a long, long time.
“Lalna! Did you see what Harry made? It’s brilliant!” Xephos eyes are alight with excitement as he tugs at Lalna’s sleeve. The blonde man giggles and allows him to be tugged away towards whatever Xephos is babbling about. Lalna’s not exactly paying attention, and has found himself more focused on the delightful fullness of Xephos’ cheeks; the slight baby fat that’s finally returned to his face after years of malnutrition. Lalna smiles.
He still feels guilty, sometimes. About what he’s done. About how he meticulously poured over Xephos’ memory files to weed out every instance of YogLabs past a certain point.
But, when Xephos smiles like that. When he laughs and shows an actual interest in things, that guilt feels further and further away.
Lalna helps him design the holodeck, in fact. He has no idea where Xephos collects the materials, Xephos just sort of shrugs and says he found them lying around. Lalna can’t sense him lying, so he lets it be.
In all honesty, Lalna was hesitant at first to build a holodeck. They’re reminiscent of the ones at YogLabs, and he worries that it could somehow unravel the facade he’s been able to build. But, those memories are completely gone now, he reassures himself. It wasn’t a matter of amnesia, it was a matter of completely removing and deleting. Those memories couldn’t be triggered back into place.
And Xephos always used to love to make puzzles for his friends in the past, so Lalna takes it as a good sign and encourages it. Even if the games are fuzzy to his mind when he plays them, he stills feels like he’s having fun.
And that’s all that matters, right?
