Valkyr's story
Masks.
I sit on the floor of the dojo, my legs crossed lotus-style, my arms at my side, palms outward. I try to find calm, try to measure my breathing. The cool blue-grey walls of the Tenno-built sanctuary are meant to create a soothing environment. But it does not help me.
I am not alone in my meditation. Behind stands another of my kind.
Oberon. Warframe of justice, and harmony. His powers are derived from spiritual purity, righteous fury, and a desire to heal others. He is old. Much older then I. The aesthetics of his frame are inspired by two ancient roles from a forgotten age of earth. He is Paladin, resolute arbiter of justice, and he is Druid mystical healer in communion with the earth where our Orokin creators hailed from. His helmet, the visage of an antlered warrior-god, has been set aside so that he may look at me, eye-to-eye, but I do not return his gaze.
Though I can never admit so out loud, I am too ashamed to bear my face before him. My helmet remains on. It does not help to hide my disfigurement. Instead it proclaims it. My frame was once a perfect thing, like his. A sleek-lined second-skin, shaped in tribute to leonid grace and ferocity. Of Tigress was I thought-born. The great felines of olden earth were my inspiration, a conception of design before any material ever came to be shaped as a vessel for my body. Black and blood-orange, were my colours. Martial, wild, proud.
That was before. Before the Corpus found me. Now my frame is choked by scattered chunks of of white plastids. Blue wires and tubes permeate my once symmetrical glory in a chaotic testament to the unyielding curiosity of the monster named Alad V. He found my cryo-pod before the Lotus could. He used me as the basis for his vile Zanuka project. Flayed my skins open. Tore me apart and put me back together, infesting my once-perfect frame with his chips and circuitry. Technology unsuited and blasphemous to the perfect techno-organic nature of our warframes.
I am no longer whole. I have none of my true powers left to me. Now I can only channel my despair and fury into violence. The only aspect of my old whole self that remains is a crude imitation. Claws of unstable energy emerge from the shackle-vambraces that cage my forearms. A part of my frame now. A part of me. Without our frames, we cannot long survive. That is the price that our Sojourn into Void took from us. Within our frames, we can live for a practical eternity. But who would want to live forever when your body has become a mangled mockery of its former glory?
I do not. The others can see it. They know my recklessness in battle is a cover for my own self-destructive despair. I wish to die. But not before I tear apart the ones who did this to me. Not before Alad V is finally slain.
"What's the first thing that you can remember?" He asks me.
"Coldness."
"And then?"
"Fear."
"Fear of what?"
"Being abandoned. The monster who held me made me know that I was alone. He told me I was the last. I almost believed him."
"You are not alone. We are here with you. The Tenno will be united again."
Not all of us. I think to myself. And some of us will never be what we once were.
"The Cephalons have analyzed your neural output. They have judged you to be sound enough to rejoin us in battle. We need all the warriors we can gather if we are to return sanity to this solar system."
"How are the broken and the mad to do so?" I ask bitterly.
"I know your ordeal has left you less then whole." He tells me. "I know how much you are troubled inside."
"You do not know. You cannot know what it is to be less then you once were!" I rage at him, flexing my hands into balled fists, seething with fury at his condescension. "I was shattered! I am diminished! I can never be my old self again."
"Yet you may still make peace with your new self." He says solemnly.
His words are meant to be kind. They fill me with hatred.
"Could you make peace with this? With this?!" I shriek.
I reach for the seams where the nape of my frame skin-suit meets the helm. The bio-synthetic skin responds to my mental command and disengages with a sudden hiss. I wrench the helmet off and stare, snarling at my would-be counsellor. He can see me. My scars. My disfigurement.
"I can never be whole again. All that I was has been taken from me."
"Not all."
"What?"
"I said not all. You have your skills. You have your memories."
"They mean nothing in this form. They have no value. I feel the rage simmering. There is a demon in me now, a berserk spirit that wants to slay and kill until all is dead before me. He put that in me. He changed my frame to aid that madness. It feeds my hate now. Violence is in my very soul."
"Violence is in all of us." Oberon tells me, calmly. "Why do you think we bear these second skins? For what purpose do you think we wear these warframes? We were made for war."
"But you can abate that drive. You can find calm in the moments between conflict. I cannot! Even now it boils inside of me. Waiting to be unleashed."
"Then do so."
Crimson claws of unstable energy erupt from the shackled emitters at my wrists. My self-control completely blinded by rage, I let loose a scream and rake my claws across the walls, venting my fury on the inanimate obstacle.
"I have been asked to give this to you."
"What?"
"The others recovered this in an Orokin site on Phobos." He tells me. "It was once yours."
He holds out an item, covered in silken cloth. It appears to be a helmet.
"Rhino was most insistent that this be given to you. I was told that he and Trinity held off an entire battalion of Hellions to ensure its recovery was successful."
I think back to my rescue from the Zanuka labs on Themisto. When the other Tenno released me I was at my lowest point. Enraged, blinded by fury. Dangerous as a feral beast. I harmed them. It took Rhino's strength and Trinity's healing to restrain and calm me enough that I no longer saw the other Tenno as foes. But I never thought, never allowed myself to think, that they still saw me as one of them.
I take the offered item, and slowly slide the cloth away from it. It is a helmet. My fingers tremble as I lift it to the level of my eyes and stare. Oblong. Symmetrical. Perfect. No hint of the intrusions that afflict me. Two long points branch away from the skull, vaguely resembling the ears of an ancient felinid. It is beautiful.
"But why? Why would you all go so far for...me?"
"We need all the Tenno to stand united if we are ever to save this galaxy, Valkyr. And no matter what has been done to you, we all know what you really are. Consider this as a token of that trust."
I bow my head, and find that I am weeping. I would never have expected this.
"Perhaps with this you can regain a little of what was lost. And if it does not calm the storm in your heart, it may at least help you focus it." Oberon advises me. He stands to leave, and I do not stop him.
"Thank you." I say. I wish I could express more, but words fail to explain the marvel I feel.
My mask is gone.
In my hands I hold my face.