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Nitzan hurtled through the Derelict, Valkyr's steady agility launching him past twisting vines and grasping Infested with ease. He was stolen away and raised in a tower like this. Viciously, vindictively, he liked the opulence better this way: choked out, defiled, made an ugly nesting place for awful creatures. Like it always was, but this time honest about it.
He remembered when the tower cracked when he was a child. More of a child. Years ago, before his dream. Workers arrived with heavy pots of molten gold and poured them into the crack. They carved beautiful designs when the gold was cooled enough to almost solidify. Nitzan thought it was beautiful. Brutal, of course, because the workers always left with burned hands and arms, and he could feel the living flesh of the tower in agony, but it was in the nature of the Orokin to wrench beauty out of their brutality and over time Nitzan had dulled himself to it. It was that or be a victim of their brutality himself.
There was someone, before, who would be horrified; the child they kidnapped, a helpless victim of the Golden Skymen.
Nitzan was no longer helpless, and no longer a victim.
That brought him back to the present. He wasn't, and neither was Valkyr. They were survivors, resolute and brutal.
Even the Orokin made beauty from brutality. Who said he couldn't?
Now; Nitzan didn't shield his thoughts from Valkyr, and she didn't pry. Transference laid them bare to each other. With time, the openness softened from a raw channel of grief, loneliness, and rage to narrow focus and-- when the world wasn’t red around them-- serenity, indisputably entwined but with their own tracks of thought. He liked to zone out and she liked to run. It worked out. Valkyr didn’t normally take much interest in his musings on the long runs to extraction, but this one couldn't hurt to make her see.
He sent out the feeling, the intention, as little more than a question. He received fierce, eager acceptance swelling in his chest like a flame. She wanted this; to have her scars and injuries immortalized, not as ugly marks but as testaments to her bravery. To her freedom.
Once they returned to the Orbiter Nitzan dropped onto the seating that faced the viewing window, planned, and slept.
It took a month in which he took Valkyr to the Plains and ran bounties, stretched his legs as she followed after him, met up with friends in the Relays and allowed the plan to coalesce. He trusted himself. He trusted Valkyr.
This had to work.
*
He ventured into the Void. He braved the Derelicts. He begged Ostrons for discarded bits of the Unum, set aside like sloughed fish scales. He pried the golden gilding from the walls and melted it in the foundry. He burned his palms on it, practiced endlessly until his hands were steady and the gold flowed at his command just as easily as he channeled the Void.
Valkyr paced, occasionally checking in on him or kneeling at the window to stare into space. She was excited. Nitzan could feel it, palpable in the air even without the bond that Transference forged between them. He wanted to apologize that it took so long, but he would rather do a good job, and he was certain she agreed.
*
The day finally came. Ordis was quiet, though doubtlessly watching with pride as Nitzan prepared the basin, the pipette, the myriad little tools that the foundry fabricated for him. He rolled out a mat made of tough polymer, heating pads to keep the gold molten, the catalyzer to make it as tough as-- tougher than-- any Ferrite alloy. Valkyr sat cross-legged on the Armory, watching him.
In the time it took to learn how to handle the gold, he'd taken to working shirtless. The pale purple glow of the Helminth scars framing his chest reflected back on the polymer mat. That was his own gilding, he supposed, a way to fix something broken.
Valkyr wasn't broken. She was brave, elegant, efficient, and yes, scarred , but she wasn't broken. Nitzan wouldn't ever think of her like that.
He carried her pain. Shared it, lessened it, understood it. Pain was not and would never be a beautiful thing.
She carried his pain. She knew his pride, too, waking up from what Helminth had done for him; the half-moon scars having long since healed. Badges of honor. Marks of change. Glorious, and lovely; he wanted her to feel that way too.
“Are you ready?” He didn't have to say it; he wanted to. She nodded, rising gracefully and pacing the short distance to him, touching his temple with a feather-light claw. She brushed her claw over his smile, then laid down on the mat.
He picked up the brushes, the pipes and funnels, and got to work.
*
It took hours. Nitzan knew the agony of molten gold on his bare skin, and while Valkyr was far tougher and hardier than him he knew it had to hurt.
She held still for him, mindful of the painstaking work. He had bruises on his knees and exhaustion pulled at him by the time they were finished. He set the tools aside and sighed, weary, rubbing at his face. Valkyr made a questioning sound from the mat. Nitzan grunted back and leaned, put his back against the foundry, reaching up to grab two items from the top. They were bangles he'd made, designed for her helm-- it had two protrusions he thought made her look an awful lot like a cat, even moreso than her tail did. She took them from him and examined them critically; they took the form of golden caps, rings on the end to which were attached triangles on tiny golden chains. They would swing when she ran, almost but not quite matching the tassels on her favorite syndana.
Evidently approving, she slid them on and her internal systems did the work of attaching them.
It was then he reached out with the Transference bond, questing, questioning.
The Transference bond strengthened. As he reached out, it reached back, twining around his consciousness and drawing him in. He stayed there, halfway in Valkyr and halfway in his own kneeling body. The trembling joy he felt was not only hers. His heart pulsed, throat closing up. He felt as she ran her hands down her arms, down the thin lines of gold. Over her chest, former scars now filled immaculately, and her sides, her wrists, the holes punched for clamps filled in and giving way to filigree.
He gave in to the urge to complete the Transference, body settling back and his senses waking up in Valkyr's. Her own emotions thrummed in tandem, beneath the surface.
He felt this way waking up from Helminth's table. Unsteady, and new, shaky on his feet.
But euphoric.
But whole .