Sanctum Melancholica | Warframe Roathe x Drifter One-Shot
Author’s Note: I am not coming out of hiatus at this time, but I was recently inspired by Warframe’s Old Peace expansion and wanted to share the results with this community. This one-shot embellishes upon a KIM exchange between Roathe and the Drifter, who is referred to with she/her pronouns within the text. I hope you enjoy!
After a surreptitious glance around the Sanctum Anatomica to ensure that no prying eyes were watching, Vice Regent Grand Carnus Admiral Roathe seated himself before the Pom-2 computer. Now was as good a time as any to make his request — the zealots were occupied with their respective religious pursuits, and the butler was nowhere to be seen. It would be a grave inconvenience if they uncovered what Roathe planned to do, so he had taken great care to ensure a lack of interruptions as he typed out a note of greeting to the Drifter.
Usurper, I have a difficult request to put before you, he wrote. One that brings me no pleasure to bring to you.
That much was true, ironic as it might seem for Roathe to claim any of his assertions as truer than another. The Drifter might not believe him, he knew that, especially after he had recorded that voice message boastfully espousing his talent for deception. He struggled to comprehend what had led him to share those sentiments with her — or, indeed, to record any of the other dozen-plus voice messages he had sent in recent days.
No.
That was a lie. As he had done so many times before, Roathe had once again turned that all-too-familiar weapon — the lie — upon himself.
He comprehended his reasons with crystal clarity, however foolish they may have been. He had told the Drifter of the Old War, his observations of Ballas and Margulis, his liaisons with Nitokh — all these tales and more, in response to her sheer willingness to listen. Yes, the priest and the nun listened, too, but far too often their interest had been tinged with judgment, or sanctimonious pity, or a sense of begrudging obligation to that madman Albrecht Entrati.
Conversing with the Drifter was… different. The Drifter paid close attention, asking clarifying questions when she didn’t understand some finer point of Orokin law or culture as it had existed at the height of the Empire. She did not always blindly agree with Roathe — indeed, sometimes she even challenged his opinions with a perspective borne of her own difficult past — but he found himself somehow appreciative of her forthrightness. Both in his own time and here, few souls dared to disagree with the devil.
Roathe regretted that he would lose his memories of those talks if the Drifter did as he asked and “reset” their acquaintanceship to its beginning. Then again, he supposed it would be no different to all the other memories he could not currently recall, locked up as they were in the bowels of the Dark Refractory. Cast these, too, upon the proverbial pile of bodies, another casualty of the interminable war for his mind.
Shoving those musings from the forefront of his thoughts, Roathe returned now to the message at hand. He had given the Drifter no especial reason to grant any request of his, yet Roathe suspected that she would give the matter due consideration merely because he was the one who raised it.
I know at the very least you are desirous of me, and I would hope there is a place in your heart that has warmed to me… he added to his earlier message before sending it on its way. Now, he needed only to bide his time.
But not for long — barely a minute had passed before a notification appeared that the Drifter was typing. Roathe watched the cursor blinking on the Pom-2 screen, his tail absentmindedly flicking in rhythm as he awaited the reply. Would his gambit pay off, his flirtatious words softening her willpower and overcoming her objections? Would she put up a fight, nobly insisting that Roathe owed it to himself to recover all his remaining memories, however accursed they might be?
At that very moment, a message from the Drifter arrived:
I care deeply about you Roathe. Legitimately, I do. I’m not sure if I should be, but… I think I’m falling in love with you.
The Admiral’s mind blanked. For a brief instant, the floor seemed to disappear beneath his feet and Roathe felt weightless, as he had the first time he and his Dax troops airdropped onto Perita so long ago.
His first instinct was to deny it — to tell the poor Drifter she must be mistaken, that she may not have realized it yet, but desire and love were two very different things. A cacophony of rebuttals crowded his thoughts, confounding his sensibilities and making his fingers clumsy on the keyboard.
I— he began, but accidentally clicked “Send” before he could complete his thought. Blasted contraption! A surge of adrenaline-fueled rage coursed through him, his fists clenching as he fought through a momentary urge to dash the computer against a nearby wall.
Roathe took a deep breath to steady himself. Rationally, he could not in good faith dismiss the Drifter’s words as mere confusion borne of ignorance or immaturity. She was naïve to many ways of the world, yes, but she was no child. Furthermore, she lacked the effortless guile so common among the Orokin — and while the Drifter undoubtedly kept her share of secrets, he had never known her to lie.
My dear Usurper… he tried again. I am taken aback, I do not know what to say. Those are words I have never…
They were words he had never heard before in all his years, words he had never anticipated hearing from the lips of another. And why should he, how could he, after the countless schemes he had plotted and traps he had laid over the course of his lifetime? The sick amusements, the macabre Yuvan Ceremonies, the corpse-strewn fields of blood on the Tau System’s far shores forlorn?
Yes, Roathe had long since concluded that he was unlovable. He had taken lovers, of course, extracted pleasure and inflicted pain just as Nitokh and others like her had done with him in kind. But an evening’s distraction could only mask, not cure, the insidious truth that lay beneath — that Roathe’s many sins had rendered him undeserving of love from another. That he was fundamentally irredeemable.
There was much the Drifter didn’t know about him — but, for Void’s sake, there were some things Roathe did not remember about himself. Some terrible things, judging by the bone-chilling dread that struck his heart every time she and the zealots confronted him within the Dark Refractory. Yet, despite possessing only an incomplete impression of Vice Regent Grand Carnus Admiral Roathe, an affection for him had taken root in the Drifter’s heart. And now it had blossomed from affection into love, fragile and sacred as a Xenoflora in bloom. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Suddenly all that I came here to say, all that I came here to beg you for falls away like sand through my fingers, Roathe wrote. Trite and unimportant.
To think that he had nearly asked her to wipe his memories clean! If the Drifter turned back the clock now, Roathe supposed her feelings would remain unchanged… but the cost to him would be incalculable, he knew that now.
Something horrible awaits me, Usurper, Roathe continued. Some terrible realization on the crest of that hill. I can feel it gathering like storm clouds in my mind. I can see its sickly yellow glow upon the horizon.
Memories that I know I do not wish to recall. Corpses of the dead I desperately wish to remain buried in my mind. I had come here to beg you to use your powers to wipe my mind of all this…
His vision blurred, the cursor distorting and losing its form amid a sea of black and white pixels. He suddenly realized that his cheeks were damp.
To clear away all my recollection of our conversations, he typed, and put us back at the beginning before it was too late. Now, I am laughing at the foolishness of it all.
Roathe did laugh then, chuckling to himself as he ran the back of a palm over his moistened eyes. When was the last time he had laughed… or the last time he had wept? As he idly considered the question, his gaze swept furtively over the Sanctum Anatomica, scanning for the presence of any incriminating witnesses. The Cavia were present, of course, but otherwise Roathe appeared to be mercifully alone.
And trying to hide my tears from the prying eyes of those around me in the Sanctum… the Devil of Tau admitted.
The Drifter’s response manifested onscreen immediately: Oh, Roathe…
But it does not matter now, he replied, returning to the matter of the request he had nearly made. Because if you took away my memories of our conversations together, I would… I would lose this, as well.
The Orokin were creatures of memory at heart — Continuity rituals may have altered their faces and aestheticians’ blades may have augmented their bodies, but their memories always remained unchanged. Memories were sacred, and to lose sight of their importance would be to lose a piece of Roathe’s very soul.
I do not know what waits for me, he wrote. Perhaps you will despise me when it is revealed to us. Perhaps I will despise myself.
Yet I would rather greet oblivion itself with the knowledge that love could possibly have been mine, than spend one more day without it.
“HEYO!” a sudden cry startled Roathe out of his reverie. He tensed for a moment, then realized it was only Bird 3 — who, seeing that he had gotten the devil’s attention, now erupted with a fresh volley of his somehow endearing nonsense.
“I’m coming, you impatient thing!” the Admiral said. His words were sharp, but a playful tone belied his unlikely camaraderie with the avian Cavia. Roathe swiftly typed a few final words to the Drifter:
Come what may, no matter how I may fight you… thank you, Usurper. Thank you.
With that message sent, Roathe put the Pom-2 computer to sleep and stood up from the butler’s cluttered desk. The magnitude of what lay ahead still weighed mightily upon his heart, but somehow the burden seemed a little lighter now — or perhaps a little more worth carrying.
Just as he had told the Drifter, Roathe knew not where his path would lead from here. The uncertainty still disturbed him greatly, but thoughts of looping backwards in time had been utterly banished from his mind. There was nothing for Roathe in the past, not anymore… and the future would remain unwritten until he reached it.
He could only move forward — and he would do so knowing that there was hope for him, after all. To the Drifter, at least, Roathe wasn’t too far gone to be redeemed. [AO3]
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