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Chapter Text

It took one look at the figure huddled on the windowsill for Tallulah to understand what Saint had meant by “lost”.

The new Huntress was bareheaded, the evening breeze from the open window stirring her dark hair and a brand-new cloak. She was hunched over a fusion rifle in her lap, loading and unloading it meticulously, sometimes checking the weight of the magazine in her hand before attaching it again. Every piece of her armour was marked proudly with the Vanguard sigil and seemed starkly clean, its colours still bright and fresh.

New Guardians usually came in tree different types. Through the years spent in the Tower Tallulah had learned to recognise them on sight, once even engaging in a weeks-long bingo game with Pahanin about it during a particularly busy season. There were the cocky ones, faux-confident and gloating over ravaging some Fallen encampment on their way to the City, hiding their insecurity behind a nice gun they couldn’t shoot for the love of Light. There were the cute and helpless, Tallulah’s personal favourite, gaping at the Tower’s splendid majesty with wide eyes; they would often grow into overhonourable Titans or starry-eyed Hunters, or join the Praxics and be lost for life. And there were the silent and brooding, curling in on themselves and skittish like a wild fox, already seeming traumatised and old-soul with how their wary eyes scanned the surroundings without uttering a word. One glance at the Huntress and Tallulah knew she had to approach her cautiously not to scare her off like Zavala’s stupid cat.

Maybe Pahanin still had that bingo card.

With what she hoped was a calm and friendly attitude, she walked up to the new Guardian, stopping a step away from the windowsill. The Huntress raised her head, two watery-grey eyes staring back at Tallulah with suspicion that masked the fear underneath.

“Hey!” She leaned against the wall and flashed the girl a smile, “Heard you’re the new Hunter in town.”

“I suppose so,” the Huntress tipped her head slightly, her eyes still scrutinizing Tallulah’s face.

“I’m Tallu. Your boss, technically. But I usually just read boring field reports and buy you guys drinks.” Tallulah gestured at the fusion rifle, “Need a little help with setting that up?”

The new Guardian blinked, looked down at the gun, then at Tallulah and back at the gun. Tallulah could imagine wheels turning in her head, the distrust and embarrassment battling with the need of comfort and guidance in this strange, new place. Eventually, she raised her head and nodded.

“Great!” Tallulah clapped her hands. “Come, I’ll guide you to the main armoury. Fusions are a bit tricky to get a hold of, you could try something easier to start with. I can show you around the Tower later, if you’d like—” She broke off, suddenly self-conscious about whether she wasn’t smothering the girl with her talking.

But the Guardian nodded again and smiled shyly, “It would be lovely.”

She stood up slowly and smoothed out her cloak, still stiff from freshness, with the diligence of a true Hunter. Pride fluttered in Tallulah’s heart at the sight.

“You’ve chosen your name yet, kid?”

“Eris.”

“Sounds cool,” she smiled, “I’m glad to have you on our team, Eris.”

Chapter Text

Night paints the sky over the Osmium Court an umber shade, and the usual evening mist has subsided, allowing the light of eighteen moons to pierce through and flood the harbour with a gentle glow. Lying on the bottom of a moored boat they have climbed to watch the sky, Alloin draws invisible lines between the stars with her claw, mapping out constellations her father taught her. The sea is peaceful; it sways the boat gently, and there is almost no risk of waves suddenly tipping it and dragging them under to their deaths. The almost thrills her because she is young and daring, but she relishes the calmness of the ocean because she loves Menketh and would never put him in peril.

His arm is wrapped around her, sinewy and pale, and his eyes trace the movement of her finger against the canvas of the sky. They are like three glowing stars themselves – pallid blue, full of mysteries and silent as he is, observing the world like a chessboard and mapping the paths of the pieces. Alloin loves each one, and she turns to gaze into them for a long moment before summoning up the courage to speak.

“Tomorrow my father makes sail for Kaharn. And I am going with him.” She watches for any change on his face, but Menketh just nods slowly.

“Maybe when you return, I will have already finished my training.”

Alloin thinks about his thin fingers wrapped around the halberd’s shaft, of cold armouries with tall ceilings and narrow mesh windows. “I will miss you terribly.”

“And I will swing my edge ever so strongly so that it could cut through time and bring me a second closer to you.”

Twinkling stars reflect in his twinkling eyes and Alloin focuses all her senses to remember this image, to etch it in herself and wear like a memorabilium. She thinks of troubled seas and angry skies, of stormjoys and rains and Helium Drinkers raiding their shores every day. What if he is called to fight, his head weighted down by a helmet and the soft, unscaled shoulder blades scratching against heavy pauldrons?

“Every time you miss me,” Menketh says and rubs his cheek against hers, “Look up at the fifth moon and I will look up at it too. And our eyes will meet, reflected by the glow.”

She nuzzles up to his side. “I will bring you shells to embed in your armour.”

“And I will wear them because they will have come from you.”

The boat’s lazy swaying lulls Alloin into a state of lethargy, the curve of Menketh’s protruding ribs a familiar and comforting shape. She thinks about the orange ocean, vicious and merciless, and how it could sink their boat on a whim for no other reason than ill luck. She thinks about the Kaharn Atoll and wonders what if it is nothing like she imagined, what if her father’s stories were but beautiful linen draped over a corpse. Or what if it is better, more glorious than he would tell, what if it is the loveliest place she will ever see—what if she will die with the knowledge that such majesty exists, sprawled on the dark, jagged rocks of her Osmium home?

Menketh stirs beside her, readjusting his arm around her shoulders. One day they will never be parted again, Alloin thinks, when they are old enough to be wed, and he will serve in the palace guard and she will be sailing the seas and bringing home treasures and stories. She will go to the Kaharn Atoll and find out whether it is still magnificent and grand, whether the stars there truly sprinkle from the sky and coat the waves in effervescent, golden shimmer. And then, she thinks solemnly, she will take him there.

Chapter Text

The blizzard was merciless, bitter cold, and it prickled Yviiks’ skin needle-like. It crept in between layers of her clothing, slipped under the collar and pantlegs; her oversized mittens were soaked throughout from digging in the snow and beginning to freeze over. She was crouching in some old Human ruins and burrowing through a pile of metal junk, and the wind swept in through the holes in the walls. Her fingers were frozen stiff.

She was the youngest Dreg on the salvage team; the only task she had been allowed to assign for for an extra ration of ether. On days like these she would often question the decision, but reminding herself of her brother’s starvation was usually enough of an incentive to keep digging. Blizzard didn’t happen every day, she would say to herself, and the Vandal who would oversee their work wasn’t much of a pain either. Sometimes he even turned a blind eye to Yviiks pocketing the less valuable junk she could later flog off on the black market.

The temperature was still dropping and Yviiks wondered idly whether he’d cut the patrol short if it got much worse. She sorted the metal scraps almost mechanically, assessing their value without wasting a second glance. The quicker she worked, the more she would hand over, and the bigger her ration would be. But something caught her attention, suddenly, a shimmer of colour among the grey-blue monochrome, and she carefully stuck her hand in between the half-frozen metal.

What she fished out was bright orange, plastic and oddly-shaped – somewhere between a ball and a figurine, with a bulky head and long flat claws. It didn’t resemble anything she’d usually find on her patrols, cold jagged things with sharp corners and wires sticking out. It looked almost innocent. Like a toy she remembered from her earliest days, little doll made of cloth lying around the nursery. A strange fondness overcame her, and suddenly the cold felt insignificant.

Yviiks knew she couldn’t show up with it at the rally point; it was special. They wouldn’t let her keep it. She glanced around hastily and tucked her trove under her arm, then proceeded to climb down the ruined carcass as quietly as possible. She had been on enough patrols to know the area well, and spotting places others would overlook was sort of her specialty. Hurriedly, before anyone would notice her disappearance, she slipped into one of the many glacier caves and hid the toy on the far end.

It looked so helpless and alone, its happy oranges stark against the snow, and for a moment Yviiks felt bad about leaving it here in the cold and darkness.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered, leaning forward to stroke it gently with her mitten, and ran out to join the rest of the team already trudging to the rally point.

It was only after seven orbits that Yviiks was able to go on patrol again. The storm had been raging so ferociously they all had been tucked in Riis-Reborn, not even the food supply groups eager to brave the elements. But for all it was worth, now was a pleasantly warm morning and the sun had even showed up – a white dot on the sky, blinding-bright like the lightbulb in her sleeping pod, filling Yviiks with contentment she couldn’t quite place.

The instant her team had scattered about the terrain and their warden looked away, she sprinted to her cavern. It was still dark and cold, but seemed slightly pleasanter than before, with the sunbeams refracting in the snow crystals and painting the ground in every colour at once.

She ran to the far end of the cave and almost gasped when she reached the wall. Her trove wasn’t there. Only an impression in the snow where it used to stand, and a set of footprints other than her own. Yviiks knelt on the ground, suddenly feeling so heavy inside.

When could that happen? This had been the first day so much as suitable for going out in several orbits! Guilt and anger were bubbling in her little heart as she stared into the imprint and cursed herself. She should’ve taken it with her; maybe they wouldn’t notice, maybe she would manage to sneak it past under her shawl…

She sat in the cave for a long time, and almost didn’t care about the ether ration slipping between her fingers right now, and the sun didn’t feel any warmer anymore.

When the Technocrat was killed, Riis-Reborn plunged into chaos.

Rumours about Light-children roaming Europa and picking out Kell’s council one by one were barely rumours anymore. Fewer and fewer patrols came back with a full squad. Food supply was dwindling and Captains had to implement strict rationing. Yviiks stopped going out altogether; tucked under a wall in the overcrowded canteen, she would catch scraps of conversations, names exchanged in hushed tones, lists of casualties found and still missing.

But these were not the only rumours.

Reksas, the Vandal she shared her sleeping pod with, told her about Yevik. She had been born in House Wolves before it broke apart and ended up on the Shore with some of her old crew; somehow, they managed to keep in touch even after she’d left for Europa. Yevik spoke Terran, and he passed on some news. There was a new House forming.

As days passed, the situation was only getting worse. Captains growing restless, dragging their crews out for battles they could never win; food running short; Eramis-Kell locking herself up in her obsession. By the time a ragtag group formed in a stockroom deep on the lowest levels, among empty crates and ether tanks, there was nothing keeping Yviiks in Riis-Reborn.

They left at dawn, forcing their way through the storm. Snow and ice needles stung their eyes, and Yviiks wondered whether they would die out here, blinded by the blizzard and shot by Eramis’ snipers, or starved and frozen in place when they’d have no strength to move. Reksas breathed heavily behind her, inhaling what ether was left in her rebreather; it was the only sound she could hear above the howling wind. They climbed arduously, hiding from the Vex and Light-children. Colourful glow was the only indication of their presence, and Yviiks found herself admiring it quietly. It was beautiful and deadly, like most things she had encountered in her short life.

They didn’t notice a vehicle approaching—a Light-Pike, frailer but swifter, encircling their little crew. Reksas shouted in fear and surprise, and Yviiks could only watch the Light-child turn their head in her direction, then raise their weapon.

The metallic noise of a Vex frame collapsing to the ground was barely audible through the storm.

Variks was tall and old, green robes hanging from his haggard frame like a tattered banner. The Light-child brought them to him, reigning over a cluster of sheds and platforms, and he offered them a shelter until the storm would pass. He knew of House Light, he said, he would help them find it.

At this point Yviiks didn’t care. She was tired and hungry, and left the talking to Reksas. She strolled around their temporary refuge, searching a place warm enough to nap and not freeze to death, when a door ajar caught her attention.

The room was dimly-lit, full of crates and Human machines whizzing softly. Chairs and tables, papers cluttered on the floor—her scavenging senses alert, she scrutinized it for anything worth her time. And then she saw it, a flash of orange in the corner to her right. Her trove.

She almost laughed out, running up to it—stopping mid-step. Her ball-figurine was sitting upon a crate, yes, but next to her there was another one, and when Yviiks turned around, she spotted two more, no, three—

“Found Variks’ little friends, yes?”

She jumped, startled. Variks was standing in the doorway, leaning on his staff; it made him look almost harmless, and there was a hint of a smile in his voice.

“Guardians bring those from patrols. Scattered across Europa.” He took one of the toys in his lower hands. “They found new home now, here.”

“I saw one of these,” Yviiks cocked her head, “I hid it, but someone took it, and…” She looked around the room, stopping at each orange belly and each innocent, jovial face. “I think, maybe it ran away because it was lonely.”

“They are no more. You helped it find the way home, yes?” Varik walked up to her and reached out the toy. She took it gently, like a shard of glass, and met his glowing cyan eyes. “You helped them reunite, as they always should have been. As Eliksni will.”

Chapter Text

The moment Ór’s room’s door shuts behind her, Runi materialises, his eye blinking irately.

“Why did you take it?”

Ór moves past him, taking her cloak off and throwing it on the chair. The gun is heavy on her hip—sickly silver-black, Taken ozone almost a palpable taste in the air.

“You heard me, you were there too.” Her back is facing him. She undoes her pigtails and reaches for the hairbrush.

Runi buzzes like an angry wasp, floating in circles across the room. When Ór turns to him with folded arms, he stops and slams his petals shut.

“Who do you think he is?”

 “A broken renegade with trust issues?” Ór’s eyebrows go up. She sounds calm, if somewhat miffed.

“And a two-faced murderer.”

“Most probably.”

Still twitching his shell back and forth furiously, he follows her as she sits on the bed and takes off her necklaces. The silence between them is heavy with the unsaid, and when a jade pendant flickers in the lamplight, he cannot hold it in any longer.

 “You care for him, right?”

She looks up at Runi, then away to the window. “Mhm.”

“…why?”

Ór’s eyes flick back to him, something long dormant since the clash with Zavala sparkling up in them like a warning.

“Because nothing has yet convinced me I shouldn’t!” Her hand closes around the pendant. “The damn Nine deemed him as ‘worthy’, which puts him in the same league as Eris Morn. And while I’d die for quite a few people, I would kill for Eris Morn. Yet everyone acts around him as if he was a pile of rotten fruit.”

Runi spins his petals as Ór places the necklaces in the wall niche serving as a shelf next to her bed. He shifts uncomfortably.

“I didn’t want to tell you this, but…” his optic sweeps the room as if avoiding her gaze. “You know, at first I thought you were just… desperate for a mentor, that’s why you clung to him. But now I’m worried you’re—you’re getting too invested.”

She stares at him intensely and he cannot avoid her eyes anymore. Her face expresses no anger, just mild curiosity.

“Elaborate.”

“Look, I love you. I don’t want to see you hurt... And I know that if he double-crosses you, if it turns out he’s been playing you false all along—I know how it will crush you.” He floats up to her and hovers at arm’s length. “I don’t want him to break your heart.”

She breaks the eye contact and glances to the jade pendant sitting on the shelf in a coil of red cord. The silence between them feels thick.

“I’m not afraid he’ll do that,” she replies eventually, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her head atop them. A strand of hair falls over her face. “I was… for a long time, I had it in the back of my mind. But not anymore.”

“What if?” Runi presses on. She looks so innocent, so vulnerable, with hair undone and no makeup, no heavy armour or a hood hiding her face in shadow. No weapon to defend herself. He wants to scream at the thought of someone turning against her, this defenceless and fragile. She closes her eyes and brushes the strand away.

“A risk worth taking.”

He observes his Guardian slide under the blankets and turning the nightlamp off with a click. It’s so annoying how she just won’t listen, he thinks, how she wagers her heart so lightly. She won’t admit it’s burnt her, no, she never does, she will only speak less and brood more and maybe make a rebellious bad decision to kill the sorrow. Funny how she still sometimes feels opaque to him.

From his spot on the shelf, he is keeping watch as she slips into a dream, effortlessly and gently like a sunbeam finding a way through the curtains. Of one thing he is certain, the day he will cease to protect her will be the day he dies.

Chapter Text

“Cayde would’ve been proud of you.”

The first time her Ghost says it, Ór feels both sorrow and anger swell in her throat like a choking lump. She so very young, days after arriving in the Tower and hiding in the rafters, confused by the world and the Light and herself. But the void is already there, an emptiness of might-haves gaping in her chest as she trembles in fear and yearns for guidance. It is the first time she truly acknowledges the regret, and though she does not have a name for it yet, it bites and stings and gnaws at her bones.

When Aunor says it, her ebony eyes narrowed defiantly, the words are meant to hurt—and oh they do, burning like a slap to the cheek, the sarcasm in them digging deep into Ór’s soul with needle-sharp teeth. She feels so small and dirty suddenly, facing the Praxic in a crumbling barn with a Gambit coin on her neck, fingers curled around the grip of that damn Taken-seething gun. The guilt is acid on her tongue—what would he think of her now, double-crossing the Vanguard in a mad affair with forces she does not understand, acting out like a rebel teenager? Aunor makes sure she knows, that she feels it in her bones. It is not what Ór breaks her jaw over later but the echo of those words makes the punch feel oh so satisfying.

When Drifter says it, it is a mockery, and a wave of anger sweeps over her like hot water. He does not make her angry often; amused, rather, like a child showing off, or thoughtlessly smitten, or disappointed. A smile curling in the corner of her lips. But watching him now, leaning on that metal fence with a smug grin, makes Ór’s cheeks flush red with fury and regret and she feels like a child herself.

When she stands in Zavala’s office—all dirt and sweat and messy hair, and the choking smell of battle still clinging to her clothes—she feels like a pupil at a principal’s desk. He is turned halfway away from her, the lines of worry on his face mirroring the crack on the Traveler behind him, and the chill of stasis lingers in her fingertips, and Eramis is dead. The wide, heavy desk divides them. Zavala regards her above it and something cowers within her, like after a punch to the stomach, as she waits for disappointment to creep into these dim, weary eyes.

But his features soften as he watches her, and his voice comes out unusually tender,

“Cayde would have been proud of you.”

And suddenly the border of the desk between them does not feel so wide and heavy anymore.

Chapter Text

She watches the fire devour well-dried logs under her kettle when Toland appears, dark and fuzzy against the European snow. A brief thought passes through Eris whether it is the Pyramid emitting some distant waves of Ascendancy he would sail upon—but she has long stopped trying to understand his voyages, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. Not nearly as much as the play of light and shadow on his face, illuminating his eyes almost golden, not as the pleasant worry she feels that she has only one teacup on her.

He leaves no footprints in the snow, but his hands are solid and human when he brushes the long hair out of his face almost as a reflex, and Eris marvels at over how much relief this sight fills her with.

When he enters the circle of light around the campfire, his face twists in the most childish-contemptuous scowl.

“The Guardians keep dancing on your workbench.”

Eris’ lips quirk in a held-back smile as she stands up to take the kettle off the fire. She feels Toland watching her, analysing, testing his ground before he says what he truly meant.

“The Moon is lonely without you.” He speaks nonchalantly, but there is a disarming wonder in his eyes when she turns to face him, as if he were baffled by his own words.

Were they starting to build something there, in the shadow of the Keep? Eris thinks about the Sanctuary (a laughable name, truly) and his face over her shoulder, his hair tickling her as he leaned to glance at their work. There were maps and blueprints and weapons forged, heavy words and long silences, and even longer conversations. Constructing a bridge over the Hellmouth, narrow and tall and scary and filling her with doubts when she looked at how far they had yet to go to meet in the middle. But she saw him on the other side and was so eager to get there.

As he looks up to the sky, and snowflakes sprinkle his hair and shoulders like tiny falling stars, she is hit with a dreadful thought that she would rather be on Luna, too. Listening to the howling of space, curling up on blood-soaked rocks and waiting for him to come to lull her with stories, sometimes, as a treat. Hiding from the shadows in the shadows themselves, walking deftly straight into the nightmares to press at the pain until she didn’t feel it anymore. Constant sorrow that was better than constant fear.

She wonders how to tell him, the fear again growing thick and cold in the pit of her stomach like the energy sizzling in her fingertips. That the temptation is a pressing headache against her sinuses, that Ikora doesn’t write her back and she didn’t say goodbye to Asher and the nights feel cold and lonely with no Io over the alien, Pyramid-tainted horizon. That she looks up at the faces lit orange by the fireglow and is paranoid about fireteams dying. That the power she holds in her hands is like a crystal ball she panics about breaking.

It feels like so much time has passed since they felled Oryx, since she grasped at his letters like she gasped for breath, like she now wants to grasp at his hand.

Toland stumbles when she pulls him in in one swift movement, a glint of hesitation in his eyes that fades into softness as Eris presses her head against the leather of his vest. He gives no warmth but he isn’t cold either, and the embrace feels like sinking her tired bones into the bed after a journey. She is weary of holding back confessions.

“I’m afraid of being alone again,” she mutters with her eyes closed, “I’m afraid I will crumple under the weight of this power. I’m afraid the Witch-Queen is watching me and laughing.”

“This world is storms and battles, and fear is the price we pay for daring to brave the elements, ”Toland whispers, no breath tickling her ear. “But you don’t have to be afraid on your own.”

Eris feels the snowflakes landing upon her skin, like cold fingertips. The sensation is unfamiliar and strange; like most things lately, unlike the curtain of Toland’s hair as he looks down at her, and the smell of ozone, and his hand on her back.

“Will you go to the Ziggurat with me?”

“I will go wherever you lead.”

So she leads him to the campfire and pours tea from the kettle, and they sit in silence warming their hands over the cup as an excuse. Later they will go to the Ziggurat—black and obscenely elegant—and leave behind the fireteam she is afraid of losing not just because she’s grown tired of people dying. They will listen to whispers from worlds beyond, to ancient songs of death and ruin, and his eyes will shine in fascination that is both endearing and terrifyingly close to obsession. And she will still mourn Asher and Io, and it will never stop hurting and will always matter—just not as much as the shape of Toland’s hand, familiar, in her own.

Chapter Text

Saint’s laughter dies the moment he sees Osiris’ face.

“The sun didn’t rise today.”

“Did it?” He frowns and glances at the wall clock, “But it’s still— oh. It should be up already, huh.”

Ikora’s office has no windows, just maps and screens and books all the way up to the ceiling. Saint wonders if they are underground. She is leaning on her desk, eyes intent and brows furrowed, and in the synthetic light the lines of worry slashing through her forehead seem even deeper. He catches Osiris passing her a glance—tense, almost remorseful.

“We think…” she is choosing her words carefully, “my Hidden are still studying the matter, but we have reasons to believe the City might have been locked in a Vex simulation.”

Saint’s shoulders tense. Panic tastes metallic on his artificial tongue.

“But how would it—” his fingers curl around the edge of the desk, as if to make sure it is still there. “How can you tell it? Are you a simulation?”

He doesn’t like the rush of heat to his temples, or the nausea swelling in his throat. His eyes sweep the room frantically, as if looking for the seams, some odd detail that will tell him where the mirror ends and real begins.

Could he tell that back in the Forest? He searches his memory, but it’s all blurry and confusing. He remembers faces, pairs of eyes looking down at him, visions of worlds and timelines that felt warm and good and true but dissipated just before he could reach them. What if this is a vision too, one taking too long to fade away—a cardboard City staring back at him every morning through his window.

What if he never left Mercury?

The plasteel tabletop gives in under his fingers, and only then he finally hears Ikora asking if he’s okay.

“I’m…” Saint clears his throat although he doesn’t have to. He feels Osiris watching him, and when he meets his eyes, the amount of sorrow in them shakes him.

They are like nothing the Vex could ever simulate. He would know if this wasn’t real.

He would know.

“Some time ago, I told you about Mithrax, the Forsaken,” Osiris’ dry tone is vividly detached from his expression. “It wasn’t what I had in mind back then, but I’m afraid this crisis is what we will have to unite over.”

“He can help us?”

“I do believe so.”

Ikora’s hand brushes against Saint’s forearm, just the faintest shadow of a touch, but it makes him release the grip on the desk. Maybe because he fails to conceal his expression, or maybe because his voice shook before; but she speaks, softly, “We’re here. And we’ll find a way out.”

There was no warmth like this in the Forest, no light or love or family but the cold, howling wasteland. No eyes he saw there, flickering through mist and code, expressed such genuine concern as Osiris’ do now. Saint uncurls his fingers slowly.

“We will,” he repeats automatically. The lump in his throat is still there, but it chokes him a little less.

There will come a day when he believes this.

Chapter Text

Gossips were faster than NLS drives. How? Ikora didn’t know, but news of the incident during the peace negotiations reached her before Zavala and Crow managed to get back to the City from Nessus. A whisper from Ghost to Ghost, Guardian to Cryptarch, ramen shop owner to mechanic—and soon the whole Tower was buzzing, and the tentacles of rumour were spreading out further into the City street by street. By the time Zavala’s heavy boots hit the Hangar floor, she had already come across at least five different theories on who had ordered the attack.

She met him in his office, bright with afternoon sunlight. He was in his chair, pensive, a glass of awfully cheap alcohol left after Cayde sitting on the tabletop; the comm screens all around him were on but quiet, and the tactical map for the first time didn’t show any enemy movements.

“The news were faster than you,” she perched on the edge of the desk, taking in the blissful silence of the comms.

“So much for keeping it down.”

“You were almost shot dead during peace negotiations! Of course people would be talking.”

Zavala let out a single, half-humorous chuckle, and reached for the glass. His expression was a mix of uncertainty, wonder, exhaustion—but most of all, overwhelming relief.

He started, in a low voice, “If it hadn’t been for Crow…”

Ikora had already heard that part too, rumours of an act of splendid bravery coming from the masked new Hunter. Some argued he had struck back, or maybe took the bullet meant for Zavala, but the general agreement was clear – there had certainly been an occurring of some great danger, and only the young bodyguard’s heroism saved the Commander’s life.

But there was something else in Zavala’s eyes as he looked up at her, something other than giddy surprise of a near-death experience. Almost as if he were afraid to say what he truly meant, but holding the words back caused him physical pain.

“Remember… when I told you about that evening in the gardens?” He finally managed, barely above a whisper. “How I thought—I thought I’d seen Uldren Sov, warning me about the assassin?”

She nodded slowly, something both hot and cold suddenly twisting in her stomach.

“When they restrained Targe—Crow jumped in front of me. He got hit in the face, I think… took a long time to look at me.”

Ikora unclenched her hands she hadn’t realised had turned into fists. Zavala’s eyes were boring into hers; searching, or maybe testing his ground for what he was about to say. Now the mask finally had to come off.

“I knew.”

She watched the gradient of shock to hurt to genuine confusion pass through his face. Finally it settled on gentle, surprised sorrow.

“Osiris told you?” His voice was calm and unexpectedly soft, and Ikora swallowed down the sour guilt.

“I’ve figured out myself. He may think he’s so good at hiding, but I’ve known too long to be tricked.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She looked down at her twitching fingers.

“I didn’t… I knew how it would hurt you. I saw you’d grown fond of him, and I…” She summoned up all the courage she had in her centuries old, war-worn soul to meet Zavala’s eyes. “I know I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

Zavala held her gaze for a moment, then looked away to the window and the Traveler behind it. He was silent for a long while.

“It was always me telling Guardians how the past doesn’t matter,” he whispered eventually, still staring into the distance. “But that night when we talked, and I so much as imagined the possibility of… I— I though I wouldn’t keep myself from breaking the bastard’s neck and then flinging myself off the Tower.”

Ikora watched his profile, gilded by the afternoon light.

“I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know if I could look at him and see a Guardian, not a murderer, if I’d known.” He turned to Ikora and a small, sad smile quirked his lips. “Maybe it was better that way.”

The wave of relief which washed over Ikora was so profound she almost sighed out loud. Failing to keep her hands from trembling, she clasped them together on her lap and shook her head.

“It’s not okay. I should have… It’s not what the Vanguard is about, keeping secrets.” The knot of guilt previously twisted in her stomach moved to her throat now and she choked on it. “It’s not what friendship is about.”

Her eyes prickling, she looked away to gather herself. Zavala said nothing; she could feel his gaze on her, like a sniper’s gunsight. But then something warm covered her clasped palms, and Ikora turned to find him with his hand over hers, smiling.

Maybe it could be mended.

Chapter Text

Ór danced amidst the rubble, jumping between pools of radiolaria and flinging shards of ice like tiny deadly frisbees that clinked when they met with stone. The Vex were like an ocean, sweeping though Botza wave after wave and flooding everything with the sick blue light, and in the centre the portal stood, gaping, distorting the space around it. She hadn’t engaged in this whole Splicer business Mithrax had going on. He’d asked—and it had made her heart flutter just a bit, the sensation of being recognised—but she had enough of her own troubles already, and the Vex terrified her, and the new residents of Botza could really use some help from a Guadian whose reputation didn’t make them go running for the hills just at the sight of her. But now her and five other Guardians had been directed to evacuate the Quarter and she didn’t know any of them, nor she did she how to handle Vex rifts or gates or self-encrypting confluxes. She just shot, round after round after round, eye at the scopes and palms pulsing with Stasis. And Ikora screamed in her comms, and Mithrax screamed too, and Ór prayed through gritted teeth Eido had been smart enough to have made it out of the ruins.

Botza had enraptured her from the very beginning. Ór would look at it and see a flower blooming on a wreckage, a spark of life amidst the decay left by the Pyramids’ precise strike. She had been so worn out by death—after Europa, after the Glykon—and this was something else, something gentle and innocent and safe. It was easier to nurture her own wounds here, those not yet old enough to scar and too old to be bleeding-fresh, though still aching persistently.

And now the Vex were here, and amid the debris and radiolaria she could discern Eliksni bodies, and struggled to shove away the sudden urge to vomit.

There was a perfect sniping spot on one of the platforms, guarded by nothing but two Hobgoblins she disposed of with ease. Then she noticed the Harpy – hidden behind some crates, spikes folded, beeping softly. She raised her sidearm.

“No, wait!” Runi shouted, “Look…”

Ór stopped. The Harpy turned towards her and hovered motionless in one spot, as if passing her a long glance with its single blue eye.

She approached it, and then it began to beep again. Ór could swear the eye followed her as she walked, and it sent a shiver down her spine of both intrigue and uneasiness.

“It is… speaking,” Runi whispered, just above the din of battle. “I can translate it. It’s saying…”

The Pyramids’ strike had been so precise Ór sometimes still marvelled over it – like a surgeon’s scalpel. Or maybe it had just been her first goodbye, the first ruthless finality she had to come to terms with; or maybe she truly did have a talent for seeking mentors in all the wrong places.

Her vision was blurry through the tears as her old-fresh wounds opened again and lay there, gaping, large enough to stick both her hands inside until they were soaking radiolaria and warm with blood.

Chapter Text

The broken frame of the Eschaton Mind is still smouldering when Elisabeth Bray descends the ruined staircase down to the Embrace. She stops, briefly, to examine a Goblin overgrown by moss, flowers budding in its shattered Radiolaria canister; then she continues, stone crumbling under her boots, and stands in the center between the two great arches that once held the Black Heart. Vines creep towards it, already entangling the base. It is as if the battle occured an hour and an age ago, ash still dancing in the air and settling on her shoulders like snowflakes.

She inhales the smell of death. It won’t linger for long, the Gardeners are quick to mend any disruptions, but for this brief, unimportant moment she savours the triumph. It is strange–the newness, the unpredictability, a victory never before achieved and shortly discarded. She has grown used to moving in circles, and this new way forward feels oddly exhilarating.

She takes what she needs from the ruined frames and enjoys one final look at the absence of the Heart. On the way back, she kneels beside the mossy Goblin, rips out the flowers peeking out of its broken core, and crushes them in her hand.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The first time it happens is still during her training. Petra’s mind is drifting on the waves of cosmic melody, feeling for her Queen, reaching out to other Techeuns—when she hears it, a hum almost too gentle to notice. But it is there, and she spends the next long months sharpening her senses to it.

Much later—trapped in her Galliot in the rings of Saturn, amidst the howling burst of energy fired by the Dreadnaught’s weapon, she feels it like a tingle on her skin. She hears it softly in the back of her mind as she watches the Queen’s Ketch vaporise into blue smoke.

She feels it again during the memorial service – when they all stand on a secluded island in the Dreaming City, amidst the raging war, and in her calm, melodic voice Illyn says Yasmin Eld is dead and Pavel Nolg is dead and Kalli and Shuro and Sedia and Uldren are dead and Mara is… She feels it just on the edge of palpability, and her gut twists with anger and grief, and suddenly she hates Illyn for saying it aloud, for speaking out the unthinkable truth Petra has been turning in her head over and over and over.

She feels it aiming the sights of her Supremacy, the sickly glow of a Traveler’s shard encircling Uldren’s head locked in the crosshairs like a halo; she feels it, and shudders, and misses the shot.

She feels it in the Watchtower, woven into the ancient melody of the cold marble walls. Uldren’s eyes are almost clear, almost sane, she can almost see the real him in the disdain he stares back at her with. She can almost hear the gentle hum break through the wire fence of her grief and disillusion and rage.

She pulls the trigger.

Chapter Text

“Caiatl, please.”

The Empress laughed curtly, her eyes set on something far outside the window. The view from her flagship was magnificent. Meetings of the War Council often stretched out long into the night, until darkness shrouded the rust-red trees and silicic spires and outspread the blanket of alien constellations above it all. It could be a source of comfort, or calmness, to look out into the Nessus landscape as the room rumbled with mingled voices of fair and foul advisors, but now the room was almost empty and dark save for a hologram on the table glowing unnerving orange, and Caiatl still had not looked away from the window.

“I know your people crave vengeance, but attacking the Hive in their own realm will only breed disaster,” Zavala continued. “It’s suicidal.”

The half of Caiatl’s face he could see twitched in a mocking grimace; there was no malice in it, just a tiredness that mirrored his own. “Ah, Commander. You don’t say this to screaming children.”

“You don’t hand them guns either.”

The grimace softened into genuine amusement, “You know how politics is.”

Zavala thought about the smouldering Botza and Lakshmi’s corpse still warm in a metal coffin, and supposed he knew.

“They need to believe we haven’t lost just yet,” she continued quietlier.

“You haven’t.”

Caiatl turned away from the window and looked at him, the orange glow like emergency lights illuminating her face.

“You can lie to your people in good faith as I do to mine, but I hoped you had enough dignity not to lie to me.”

“You haven’t lost, Caiatl.”

She pierced him with her gaze and there was a bit of challenge to it, but mostly just annoyed weariness. Throughout these months Zavala had learned to read her eyes, her features, and the anger in them he knew was now primarily directed at herself. He sighed and reached across the table, his fingers brushing the back of Caiatl’s palm.

She looked down, almost surprised, and took his hand in hers. It was small and blue, and meaty-soft, and warm. Suddenly Zavala found it incredibly amusing how they had first met in this room, with blinders shut and the orange holoprojector displaying a pyramid, and how his fists had sizzled with Arc as he calculated the strike if she had ever made a move at his Ghost. Caiatl closed her palm around his and a different kind of electricity tingled on his skin.

“When Ghaul wrecked your City and took your Light,” she started, pensively, looking more through than at him, “How did you find that hope to fight back? When you were mortal, and homeless, and grieving… How did you manage to push forward?”

“I didn’t.”

She blinked, then met his eyes.

“I didn’t. I hid on Titan with scraps of a fleet because I thought there was nothing to fight back for.” He ran a thumb across her large knuckles and watched a softness creep around her eyes, “Don’t make that same mistake.”

Chapter Text

Everything in Toland’s study could kill you in at least fifteen different, equally painful ways—a fact he clearly revels in every time Omar sneaks out to inspect a particularly cluttered shelf or a chest left ajar. He had already died twice, once choked by a vine of potted ivy and other time from touching some artifact that was apparently poisonous, yet that has not seemed to discourage him. From under a curtain of hair Toland’s eyes are following him as he tiptoes away from the table and further into the room, and Eris herself is considering striking a bet whether this evening marks a third notch in the tally.

They are crowded around an old mahogany desk with some old maps on it, her and Toland and Eriana and Vell. An old lamp overhead provides only a circle of light in the otherwise dark room. Sai is asleep on the couch, covered with her own and Eris’ cloaks, and from here Eris can only see a formless bulk of cloth that rises and falls slightly along with her steady breaths. The room has no windows (because of course Toland’s study would have no windows), but by the tiredness in her bones Eris does not have to look at the clock to know it is obscenely late into the night.

They all seem to be losing focus, Eriana’s optics growing dim as she listens to Vell talk strategy and analyse the maps, and flinching from time to time as if her body was waking up from a second-long doze. Toland has lost interest in Omar and turned his attention to some old book, fingers tapping an idle rhythm against his thigh under the table.

“And the passage over here? It didn’t seem very busy.” Vell points to one of the maps; Eriana stirs and moves her elbow out of the way. “You’d think they would rather set guards on the transit routes.”

“We’d be taking the long way round.”

“It’s the safer option, though.”

“The safest option is staying down there for as short as possible.”

Eris does not even bother to look and only nods idly in unspecified agreement. She is watching Toland twist a strand of hair around his index finger—bashfully so, eyes flicking to and away from him as if this was something forbidden and she were a child sneaking behind her mother’s back. Or maybe she is sneaking, really, because heat hits her face when Toland’s spidery hand brushes against hers resting on her lap and thoughtlessly laces their fingers together, and she shoots a panicked glance at Vell and Eriana leaning over the map.

She feels like a middle-schooler with how her cheeks are burning. All the boldness of a dragonslayer, a Mare Imbrium veteran, snuffed out by the petty fear of getting caught on a fling. Toland is still immersed in whatever he is reading, eyes skipping between the lines of text, but in the half-light she could swear the sly bastard is smirking.

Only later, when they are alone in the green darkness of the study, and Eris’ hands are in Toland’s hair and his hold her firmly by the waist, does she say it aloud.

“They’ll all be furious if they find out.”

“They’ll be furious at you,” Toland laughs and nuzzles his face in the crane of her neck. He smells of soulfire and old books, like everything here.

“Ah right, because they already hate you.”

He laughs again, a muffled sound like purring; his breath on her skin is giving her goosebumps. She never knows if he is leaning on her shoulder for comfort or if this is but another step in some elaborate game of his, and combs her fingers through his hair anyways.

This is all an elaborate game, she thinks, hard, when he kisses her. All a mirage of lips against lips and mutual benefit, an exchange of knowledge for arms and a way in. His thumb trails from her ear down to her chin—and she shudders, because his hands are cold, and grasps at the front of his robe. All but a dance. Hot breath tickles her face as he breaks the kiss, and his lazy smile is all teeth.

Chapter Text

It was a very unfair Crucible match, three against five, and Runi even suggested giving it away. But the Titan only cracked her knuckles, and the Warlock unsheathed a burning sword, and the game was on. They even won—barely, by a point or two, but Shaxx still yelled as if they’d beat the other team into the ground. Mórrigan shook some dust off her crimson spikes as the Warlock rose from a pile of broken metal.

“Your Guardian cheated,” Hsa Lai accused her, eye narrowed scoldingly.

“We won,” she tilted on her axis, and the gilded scar across her optic glittered in the sunlight. He huffed. They all went out for beer later, to celebrate the victory, and the Hunter even drank enough to start speaking.

That was the first time. Hsa Lai’s deep blue admonishment and Mórrigan’s red fervency, the edge to Runi’s tone that his round shell lacked. Their Guardians huddled together in camps and at tables, and they watched, vigilant, always a shadowed presence. Sometimes they talked, too.

A fireteam, Eris had said, is whom you are ready to give your life for when you fight side by side. Runi watched Shinon descend in a coat of flame, sword drawn and eyes burning, and Cyle cast a ward of dawn as the building came crashing down as a rain of fire and metal. They had come here only because Ór had asked. No one they despised was in this building, no blazing hatred or binding duty had led them to do this; she had only asked, and they trusted her, and came.

A battle, then. The cold and noise and Hive, roar of cannons and mortars like the Moon itself howling. Shinon kneeled behind a crate hissing at a broken arm, bullets flying close enough she could feel the wind on her face.

“This isn’t working,” she managed.

“Hold still.” Mórrigan emerged, and her shell expanded with Light, “They’re close, but Zavala—”

Something jammed into her and sent her crashing into the wall of the crate. A Knight’s sword came down right in the place she had just hovered in, cutting through the still shimmering cloud of Light.

“You’re suicidal,” Hsa Lai said, his blue shell disheveled. One of the spikes was cracked, and his eye blazed with angry relief.

Shinon raised the half-healed arm and aimed, fired, cried when the recoil shook her body. The Knight collapsed into smoke and bones. Mórrigan looked up, and her scar glittered again when she very gently bumped her shell into Hsa Lai’s.

Chapter Text

“This place stinks,” Aunor said, crossing over the threshold. The Drifter laughed at that—so sincerely and gleefully it almost made her want to punch him.

It did not even stink, not really; just the hollow scent of ozone coming from the bank that was unsettling her. The workshop was halfway decorated for Dawning, with strings of fairly lights and paper decorations bearing symbols she did not recognise already up on most of the walls and railings. Old boxes of even older ornaments cluttered the floor, garlands spilling out of them like some alien, fuzzy worms in vivid colours. She entertained the thought of whether he was doing it all by himself or had this been some elaborate arrangement made with Eva Levante, lingered on it for a moment, then resolved she did not care enough to ponder this.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Drifter had stopped laughing, but the amusement still wrinkled the skin around his eyes.

“I need a favour.”

His baren teeth flashed, “I don’t recognise owing you one.”

“Mm, strange.” Aunor tilted her head, “Word on the wind is you’re about to violate the Reef’s policy on cross-system transit of goods and people.”

Drifter furrowed his brows, all the levity in his expression vanishing, “Where exactly have you caught that wind?”

“This is unimportant, even if you were privy to that knowledge. The customs office, however…”

He snorted in exasperation, “A’ight. What d’you want this time?”

“Watch Trials matches for me.” His eyes narrowed questioningly but Aunor didn’t let him cut in, “You know of all the shit going on there. The day before a Ghost almost got shattered. And while I hate to admit it, you have the… insight I don’t.” She glanced at a Splinter of Darkness glinting on his desk among scraps of junk.

“Should I take notes too?” His mouth twitched.

“You can draw identikit pictures for all I care,” Aunor pressed her lips together, then forced herself to look him straight in the eyes. “You have more experience in how the corruption works and spreads, and the Trials are a hatchery for it now. You could see the first signs I wouldn’t. Act earlier.”

“If you want me to make you a hitlist of Stasis enjoyers to quietly dispose of, then you’re wasting your time.”

“You’ve got pretty limited vision for someone who prides himself in stepping aside the black-and-white binary.”

“All those Guardians you’ve detained lately are not really helping your case.”

Aunor steadied herself against the railing, trying to tame the wave of anger washing over her. It had been his mess from the beginning, one that she, as always, had to clean up. It was unfair. His eyes were perfectly opaque and unreadable as she stared into them for a long moment of tensed silence.

“You think I like that job?” She said finally, the furious grief in her almost spilling out. “I’d very much do anything else than run around the system tracking down mad Guardians, hoping I can get to them in time before Shin Malphur puts a bullet in their Ghosts. If you don’t want these kids ending up dead, help me help them before they start going off on murderous rampages.”

Drifter watched her for a while with narrowed eyes, then shifted his balance and leaned back against the railing.

“Look our for early signs, then?” His eyebrow shot up, “And what you’re gonna do once I spot a… questionable contender?”

Aunor exhaled through her mouth. “You can handle them once they’re stable. You and your merry Stasis college board. Only if you promise they don’t break away and run off killing people.”

She did not expect him to agree. It almost made her jump when he stirred suddenly, flashing a big smile and extending a hand as if they were sealing a business deal.

“Alright! Can do.” He held the hand out for an awkwardly long moment, then pulled back when she made no move to shake it and hooked the thumb in his belt. “And my trade decisions remain mine alone, Reef or no Reef.”

Aunor nodded curtly and moved to exit the room. The smell of ozone was tickling her nostrils, and she did not wish to stay here a second longer than she needed. She cringed at the Drifter yelling a “See ya, sister!” behind her.

“If I had a glimmer for every time I wanted to kill him, I could’ve got you a Tex Mechanica rifle for Dawning,” she huffed into the comms as she turned the corner. On the other side, Eris Morn hummed acknowledgingly.

Surprisingly enough, he did turn out to be quite useful. No more than two days later she would receive a set of coordinates from an anonymous source, and the trail was so clumsily marked it almost felt like hunting those idiots Shadows again. Aunor followed it for a week, and in the Nessusian Cistern she found a half-conscious Guardian, lying in a circle of Cabal bones and already spewing black.

When she returned there was a Tex Mechanica scout rifle waiting for her on her desk, customised slightly for better handling and with a big red bow attached to it.

Chapter Text

It is almost surreally beautiful—the way the snow slowly dances down from the sky onto City rooftops, and from the City thousands of lanterns rise up, up to the sky. The railing is cold against Ór’s bare hands, and Drifter has his in the pockets of his coat, and the night is bright with fire and streetlamps and the Traveler’s pale shape.

“I once read this used to be an old tradition, lighting paper lanterns during a holiday. They were meant to represent unity, released all together as the family would come together for the celebrations.”

Drifter hums, then shifts to rest his elbows on the railing beside her. Both of their hands are red and sore from the cold.

“I wonder what Levante would say about it,” he says with a puff of vapour into the frigid air, “The meaning of that, now.”

Ór watches a distant corner of the Bazaar: two Eliksni, an adult and a child, fumbling with a pale-blue lantern with sigils painted all over it. The Vandal holds his lower arms on his child’s shoulders and lights up the lantern the child is holding with his upper ones.

“Unity is fitting,” she replies softly as the child lets go of the lantern. She follows it with her eyes as it rises up; Drifter catches her gaze and together they look at it for a while, until it is indistinguishable from all the other bright spots in the sky.

“You think this will last?” He cocks an eyebrow at her, “This fairytale of we’re-all-friends-now and Zavala’s tea parties with the Cabal Empress, sounds too much like a hippie’s wet dream.”

Ór smiles under her hood.

“It probably is.”

It’s volatile, she thinks—and so delicate, like lanterns on the wind. One stronger blow and the paper thing goes down in flames. The Eliksni father turns away from the railing and disappears into the night, the child asleep in his arms.

She eyes Drifter’s profile against the glittering sky, distant and tense with some unspoken grief. But then he meets her eyes and leans in; and kisses her, briefly and hastily as if they were stealers slouching over a store shelf. His stubble scratches against her lips as he leans back.

“Now, though,” all the seriousness vanishes from his face as a grin spreads over it, “I’m ready for that Vex Nog you keep in your ship.”

“It’s not—” she starts, then shakes her head. “You know what? Okay. Out of the two of us it’s you who already has an Ascendant rift in your stomach probably.”

He barks a laugh, and his hand lets go of the railing. Together they walk away from the Bazaar, towards her ship docked in the Hangar, towards the warmth.

Chapter Text

And it's my whole heart
Deemed and delivered a crime
I'm on trial
Waiting 'til the beat comes out

"Elisabeth," she hears her grandfather speak through the cracking comms, barely above the din of the engines. The ship is hovering so close she can see his angry face through the windshield. He tries so hard to keep the fury out of his voice, though--the words come out tight, strained like the membrane of a cyst close to bursting. "Elisabeth, I know you're listening. This is genocide, do you understand?"

She doesn't bother answering. The fingers of her perfect body tremble as she fumbles with the circuitry, bare cables sparking with both electricity and Light as she unplugs and rearranges them. The datapad beside her flares angry red, stark against the snow.

"Elisabeth, this process saved you. It could have saved your father. For his sake, for the sake of your sisters, don't do this. Don’t make me stop you."

It almost halts her, the surge of anger in her chest. How dare he, dragging her sisters into it--dragging her father into it, her father whom he had doomed and damaged and failed to save! She furiously slams the datapad, but the red bar of transmission progress is still unfurling, still sending the data that could forestall the destruction of everything she has ever held dear. Still pending.

"Elisabeth, this is your last chance."

By the tone of his voice, she knows she is running out of time. Her hands shake as they dance across the circuit board but it's still not enough, not enough, the transmission still in progress, her weapon still a tangle of sparking wires on the snow. Behind her, the ship begins to hum.

"You've always been my favorite, Elisabeth. Please..."

She looks up defiantly at the mass of iron and armoured glass that would always keep him away from her, no matter the lengths to which she went to shake any human response out of him. There would never be repentance. There would never be closure for her father's shattered frame on the laboratory cot, scattered like a pile of scrap metal. The hum fills her ears to the point of deafening, and a bright spot appears under each engine, growing brighter by the second.

Lethal intervention authorized. Intervening.

Maser discharge complete.

In a flash, just before her systems fail, she sees him--some desperate, overheated circuits furiously trying to keep her machine brain alive with thought. His fitted suit and long limbs and white hair, all sharp and sterile againts the backdrop of the old wooden panels in his study back on Mars. He has noticed her hiding behind a bookcase watching him work, and is now rising from the chair--slowly, as if a predator assessing its prey, looming over her like an ivory tower. And she runs to him, headfirst, closing her eyes as she presses her face against the fabric of his suit. This is the last thing she feels: soft darkness, and his long arms caging her, cold like ice.

Target destroyed.

Chapter Text

Eriana's ship circles the Tower twice before she finally decides on approaching it from the side of the Courtyard. The Hangar is closed—they have to dock here, in full view of everyone, a small crowd already gathering along the railing and looking up towards the sky. Eris can already discern Asher's hunched figure if she squints.

She doesn't even bother wondering how it is that they all know; gossip has its way of slipping through the thickest walls, and somehow even from deep in the Pit some stray gust of wind picked up Eriana's bloodcurling scream as she pushed a blade between Crota's ribs, and carried it to the Tower. And so here they are, godkillers, returning victorious from a place that had claimed thousands. She watches the Tower grow larger in the window just like she had watched it shrink away before.

“The Speaker won't like it.”

 “It would be quite ungrateful on his part, don't you think?” Toland raises his head from the book he is reading, sprawled in his seat like a cat. “We have just eliminated the nearest biggest threat to humanity's survival.”

“And broken an exclusion order punished by exile. And, you know...” Her eyes linger on him for a little too long, to which he answer with a bark of laughter.

“Ah yes, you're ferrying me along.”

He did ponder aloud whether the Speaker would let him into the Tower, back when they were crawling out of the Pit—he pondered many things, weak and dizzy from blood loss, word slurring into an incoherent mumble that faded into song which then faded into silence as he collapsed unconscious into the mud. She and Vell hauled him up the tunnel, almost dragging across the ground, and everything reeked of blood and dirt and sweat and Hive.

But now he is reclined in his seat with a book in hand, just as he would recline on Eriana’s couch or the armchair in his study; limbs unfurled comfortably and hair falling down into his eyes. As if nothing has changed since the day they banged on the door of his crumbling hut asking how to destroy Crota. As the ship lowers, Eris allows her gaze to wander across the faces of her other teammates—all pale and scratched, wounds only just beginning to scar over, eyes filled with both pride and heaviness of having seen things she knows will forever haunt them. Sai is resting her head on Omar's shoulder and looking at nothing in particular; Vell fiddles with the edge of his chainmail mark, flinching when he moves his bandaged hand a little too fiercely. Eriana only looks out through the windshield, towards home.

She’s never wondered what they would be when—if—they came back, how the Hellmouth would weight on them and the bond she tentatively supposed they had formed. If she concentrated enough, she could still smell the blood and mud in Toland’s hair. An ugly burn glistens on the hand he pushed her away from a Wizard with.

But maybe truly nothing has changed. Maybe when they step out of that ship they will be strangers again, and he will flee to his crumbling hut to go on looking for paths to Ascension. He did not hear his Song, after all; maybe he is still hoping to learn it, somewhere, far beyond her reach. Eris did not think anything in the world would scare her after Crota, but as the hum of the engines dies down, she suddenly finds herself shuddering at the thought.

The crowd outside is large and loud, and Sai has tears in her eyes, and Eris stands up like in a trance and stares at the airlock hissing as it depressurises. She wants to go home so badly, to see Asher’s face and Ikora’s easy smile, to curl up in their embrace and forget about dark hallways reeking of death. She wants to stay in this tiny cockpit forever, with the only people who know her nightmares and Toland’s face monochrome against the City’s colours.

Eriana tries to say something; hitches, shakes her head, and pushes the airlock. Light floods in and for a moment everything is blinding-white.

As her feet meet the metal plank, Eris feels Toland’s forearm brush against hers. For the briefest moment their fingers hook, just to curl and retreat when she looks at him—but he returns her glance, and there is a softness in his eyes she would only ever see in those rare times he laid his head in her lap, scared or insomniac or dizzy with wonder. The crowd swallows them and she is being pulled away by dozens of hands, losing sight of him between the cheers and cries and the velvet of Ikora’s robes as she squeezes her in an embrace.

They will find themselves later, on the way to the Speaker’s chambers, or facing the earbashing from the half-proud, half-furious Osiris. Maybe nothing has changed. Maybe they will meet under the archway behind Eriana’s apartment block again, and the sun will gild his scars as he leans in, and she will run her hand along them and smile.

Chapter Text

Savathȗn digs her claws deep into the blister and watches orange mush run down her arm. For a moment the cave is a little brighter, dim yellowish glow lighting the path and casting shadows at the walls, until the membrane starts to grow over again. She waits until it seals completely and rips it open again.

“This place,” she says, eyes turning to the row of blisters gently pulsating below, the only indication of a way forward, “what is it?”

Immaru comes to hover over her shoulder and the light of his optic skids over the rocks like an anxious firefly. “A temple you’ve made for your sister, Xivu Arath the Wrathful. The god of war.”

Savathȗn acknowledges his words with a nod, claws already trailing the phantom handprints marking the wall along the path’s descent. They match her own hands perfectly, and the feeling that arises in her gut when she watches them align is both reassuring and unsettling. What ingenuity to have left a trail for herself to follow, this other Savathȗn she still reflexively thinks about in third person, how clever a map painted over the fabric of this place itself. On these paths Immaru is a guide as much as a companion because he knows some but doesn’t know all, and together they retrace her own steps across this dead land and wake it up to brim with life. She makes her way down, her feet leaving triangular imprints in the dirt.

The chamber below is full of Scorn crowded around a hole of substantial size in the center. Immaru starts spitting some curses in their direction when the first crossbow shot swishes over Savathȗn’s shoulder, splashing Void over the stone, but she just chuckles fondly and gathers Light in her fist. She likes the sensation of Arc coursing under her skin, as if her blood was itself charged and lethal on touch. Lightning blazes and in one second the cave is blindingly bright, and in the next Savathûn stands in a circle of smouldering corpses.

“My brother’s shrine is carved in marble, adorned with flowers and white chitin,” she steps over a pile of something that used to be a Ravager, its censer still afire. “And to my sister I dedicated a muddy hole.”

Immaru flips a 360˚ in the air, trying to shake the soot off his spikes. “Dunno, maybe it matched her vibe? She never really struck me as someone particularly subtle.”

“Did she now,” Savathûn is already examining another trail of handprints, and the Ghost huffs as he catches up to her. “I wonder what she is like, the person I’ve loved for millennia.”

“Blunt. From what I’ve heard.”

“A fitting trait for a god of war.”

“She hates you for turning away from the Deep.”

She considers this for a while, claws leaning against the rock. “A fitting trait for a Hive queen.”

“She will kill you the moment she sees you.”

“She can try.” Savathûn has already somewhat grasped the strange logic her previous self had rejected, the opposite vectors of war and love and the point of tension between them. She knows Xivu Arath the Wrathful had died so that their brother could save them with the claimed strength of her might. This was against the Logic, and yet she had done it gladly, and thus Savathûn deducted her sister loved her family more than she loved the Deep.

Immaru doesn’t look convinced, but if he has anything more to say about the matter, he keeps it to himself. Savathûn extends a hand and he flies up close, nestling himself in the cage-like crook of her pauldron.

“Come, my Light.” She looks down into the hole, a yellowish glow coming out from somewhere deep at the bottom, and spreads out her wings. “There are many paths yet for us to traverse.”

Chapter Text

“—express highly protective behaviour over their hosts. We’re still testing this hypothesis, but it’s probable that upon being released the organisms can move from host to host freely, and provision of the Light-shield does not require further physical merging. I’m becoming increasingly wary of even operating the term ‘host’ here.”

Ubartu-ana did not speak, but his cold, vigilant glare was locked on his Ghost for the entirety of their monologue. Immaru thought this baseless resentment made him weak; it seemed as if he only waited for them to slip up, eyeing them like a ticking time bomb biding its time to go off, diverting his focus to imaginary threats where it would have been needed to manage the very present ones. At least five moths danced under the ceiling, around the crystalline lamp casting soft purplish light onto the white vastness of the throne room.

Savathûn observed their erratic motions for a moment longer, thoughtful.

“What do they feed on in return?” She inquired, extending a hand radiant with Solar Light and watching one moth flutter up to it.

“The don’t appear to be parasitical in nature,” there was some pride, even defiance, in the glance Krill passed Ubartu-ana. “They do need Hive organisms to form, but the symbiosis is short, and upon breaking out they’re perfectly able to sustain on their own. Moreover, pairing with a new host doesn’t seem to bring them any observable benefits. It only benefits the host.”

Fascinating. Ubartu-ana clicked his mandibles with irritation. Immaru considered berating him for it then and there—he was done with his attitude, the mysterious affliction causing enough chaos within the Brood’s ranks as it was and the physician’s needless vitriol not helping it whatsoever—but suddenly Savathûn’s brilliant, surprised laughter chimed through the chamber, and he twirled around just in time to see the fifth moth land on the tip of her forehead, the rest already clinging to her fingers, crown and shoulder pads. A few more were fluttering across the chamber, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, drawn towards her, and she squinted with delight as they landed on the various crests and ridges of her carapace. The refracted light of many shimmering wings covering her, for a moment she looked like a prism.

“It is a remarkable find, Lucent Physician,” she said eventually, but her eyes were fixed on Krill. “Perform the last tests, and tell your patients the good news. I’ll see that it’s spread throughout the army and quells any panicked rumours. Should you require any additional resources, the Apothecary is open to you.”

Ubartu-ana bowed deeply, proudly, and moved to exit the chamber, not sparing his Ghost a glance. Krill rolled his optic, giving a short but reverent twitch of his shell in Savathûn’s direction before dashing after the Wizard to keep up with him in the doorway. Her eyes followed them up until they disappeared around the corridor’s crook.

“Can’t believe that idiot though it was some Light poisoning,” Immaru spat.

“His reservations come from a place of rightful suspicion,” Savathûn raised a claw for one of the insects to land on, and smiled when it made a small chirrup. “Trustfulness makes a poor researcher.”

“Bah! He’s just afraid of us, so he tries to prove his own paranoia.”

“Isn’t all progress rooted in some unfathomable, subconscious fear?” The moths positioned on her crown and shoulder pads glimmered like jewels when she rose from the throne. “Even wiped clean and remade anew, it still alarms him to encounter something so antithetical to what he has been for the longest time. Something that gives and takes nothing in return. ”

“Does it alarm you too?”

Savathûn’s eyes flickered in amusement, “Are you asking whether I think you’re an elaborate trap?”

“Well, yeah.”

One of the eye-like glazed windows, its spectral pupil moving constantly, stilled and shifted when she approached it, the colours fading to reveal the landscape of Mars, storm raging over a valley and an alien shape in its middle.

“My fears run deep, little one,” the ambient chittering of the insects perching on her sounded like a gathering storm on their own, “but it’s not you I’m afraid of.”

Immaru narrowed his optic when a moth fluttered up from its post on Savathûn’s shoulder and circled him, finally landing on the upper left spike of his shell. It weight nothing at all, and gave off comforting warmth, like resting on a stone heated by the summer sun.

“That’s good,” he said, and Savathûn tilted her head inquisitively, “because that’d be really fucking stupid, and I hoped you were clever.”

Her laughter echoed through the chamber, startling some of the moths, causing them to take off and engulf them in a chittering, shimmering cloud.

Chapter Text

Savathûn recoiled as twisted branches shot out from the disciple’s back, his bloodied mouth frozen in a grimace of anguished plea.

Rhulk, on his part, watched in fascination. His eyes followed the agonal thrusts of the lignifying body, and when it finally stopped moving, he stepped forward to examine the black, thorny growths sprouting from its shoulders, skull, and along the spine. Ash sprinkled the ground when he touched one, phantom wood dissipating. 

“Incredible. There’s still resonance within them, but frozen, like the potential energy of movement trapped in amber…” He glanced back at Savathûn, who still stood unmoving, somewhat expectantly, “Wouldn’t you call it—what is it that you say? Elegant?”

“Hardly.” She was already messaging her coven in secret, ordering them to study this phenomenon. “But I would call it a waste of resources.”

“He was a traitor.”

“Even my brother realises the value of traitors.” Savathûn thought about Cra'adug and Mengoor, their dyad-bound spiral of tithe propelling itself and accelerating forever. 

Rhulk’s frills bristled as he straightend himself ever slightly, offended, “Then I’m eagerly waiting for the news about a knife between his shoulder blades.”

A smirk pulled at the corners of her mouth. For such an esteemed warrior, he stuck his fragile ego out for a punch so thoughtlessly he made it almost uncomfortably easy for her. She fancied a mental image of him bawling his eyes out into a worm-shaped pillow, would the Witness ever choose to honour Oryx with an individual audience.

“If that’s all we were here to witness, I’ll be on my way.” She shook off her wings, careful not to touch any of the branches, and fanned them out. Rhulk tilted his head.

“Not staying around to dissect this wonder like an intricate clock, until you understand all its machinations?” He stepped up, half-circled her, “Or does it dismay you, Savathûn?”

She punched him in the gut all too effortlessly and took off before the swing of his glaive could reach her. Rhulk’s deep laughter followed her as she flew away, reverberating through the pyramid’s halls, still echoing faintly even when her feet touched the smooth grey stone of her throne world.

Chapter Text

Under the bridge of Umun-Arath’s ship the conspirators nod curtly and part ways.

Caiatl lingers, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her gilded chestplate with the Imperial sigil emblazoned in the centre and studded with gems. She hasn’t had time to change, coming here straight from manoeuvres, and acidic fury bubbles within her at every drawled-out glance as members of the plot pass her by on their way to the airlock. Even Umun-Arath looks at her for a second too long, but says nothing.

When there are just two of them left, she finally lets her hand curl into a fist and connect with the wall.

“They see him in me, still,” she snarls, rubbing her knuckles.

Ghaul watches her carefully, but his eyes are locked on her unhelmeted face at all times. In the training gear—not much more than a bodysuit and light tunic thrown over it—his sculpted muscles draw her gaze even in the dim light. And so she looks at him and it calms her somewhat, a different kind of franticness sparking up in her chest and obscuring the anger.

“Does their pathetic contempt bother you so?”

Caiatl sighs. It is outright complaining now, childish and petty, but she feels the urge to get it out least she bursts, “It’s just that no matter what I do, I can’t get the stench of him off of me. What more do they want me to prove? After all this, do they still suspect me of some hidden sentiments? What more am I to do?”

The smile that curls on Ghaul’s lips is half-cynical, half-fond.

“It’s the traitors that are most afraid of betrayal, isn’t it?” He moves towards her, raises a hand to brush the side of her face. “They say they want change, but are still enslaved to the old ways and old paradigms. Their gilded armour is glued to their skins tighter than this piece of scrap you hide your true heart behind,” his knuckles rattle against the sigil on her chest.

She leans into the touch, eyes closed. “I still stink of him.”

“Everything does! This whole place,” Ghaul’s arm arches in the air, taking in the room, the ship, the docking bay outside it, “it’s all suffused with his reek, and it won’t fade away unless we burn the whole thing down. Too long have we been afraid to move, until we’ve grown stale and sluggish. It all needs to go, Caiatl, least we suffocate.”

There is not much else in the dark space besides the wall and her and him, but Caiatl is all too aware of the glow of Torobatl lighting up the sky even at night, of her planet round and ripe like a fig, of the vast system behind that veil of dark blue. The mountains and seas and stars they could eat, were her father not a small, weak man cowering behind palace walls and the backs of spies.

“Yes,” she says absently. Is Ghaul but a spy whose back the Consul can hide behind? What would he say—what would Umun-Arath say—if they heard this conversation, a plot within a plot, secrets whispered in the dark?

Ghaul’s fingers trace a line from the corner of her eye down to her jaw and she finds she does not find the thought quite as urgent as perhaps she should.

Chapter Text

Xivu Arath does not feel her sister die. Their connection severs with violent abruptness when Savathûn’s worm is exorcised, and though she has been bracing for it, proxy eyes intently watching the Ritual Spire, the moment it happens still leaves her breathless. There is no prelude to it, no gentleness of gradual fading — she is suddenly empty of her sister, whatever background noise her presence has been in her mind cut silent, and the yawning void it leaves behind feels like missing a step.

But she does not feel her die, and so does not find out until days later, when a diligent Knight brings her the news of a body found huddled on rocks somewhere on Earth. Under the Traveler, he says, the Witch heretical even in death, and does not manage to cough out anything else before Xivu squeezes his windpipe. He is fed to the Thrall endlessly gnawing at the legs of her massive throne and she listens to his screams with eyes closed and hands clutching the hilt of her axe.

She wants to see the corpse—she sends out a projection of herself all blurry and shivering like a weak signal transmission, cloaked in the green fog of her Wrath—but it is gone when she reaches the cliff, and an entirely new pit of grief ruptures open in her gut. 

Her court is silent for days.

Only a few days, though — the Witness summons her with a chorus of whispers and when she ignores them furiously, still choked up on her sorrow, a resonant hand grabs her unceremoniously and dumps her on the floor of its dark palace. She leans on her axe to scramble up, fuming.

“Wh—” She begins, but it interrupts her before her ire gets the chance to fully blaze.

—-Your sister lives.—-

Xivu freezes with her hand clasping the hilt.

“No,” she says slowly. The Witness is turned away from her, a black triangular shape against a sea of blackness, ivory faces billowing and rising up, up to the endless ceiling. “No, she died on Earth under the fifty-third moon, after she’d severed herself from me.”

She regrets the bitterness in those last few words instantly. Never hand anyone the map of your wounds, unless you want a knife to trace the path through your heart; Savathûn taught her that. The black sea eddies as the Witness turns to face her and the cold revulsion in its eyes is so vast it bends the space around them with its gravity.

—-Your sister chose to wager her life on the Sky’s mercy and lost. The lie you’ve fought so hard to erase, the one Oryx died disproving, she is now the epitome of.—-

It keeps staring at her, piercing her with her gaze, and bile rises in Xivu’s throat.

—-How ironic for a god of lies herself.—-

She crashes back into her throne world in a ball of fire, hollering, rocks melting into magma where her burning feet land. Small creatures disperse in horror, fleeing her wrath and the curve of her axe, and Xivu yells until the path behind and in front of her is ablaze, until the whole court whines and cracks like damp wood cast into fire.

HOW COULD YOU DO THIS

Her axe rams into the statue, sending splinters flying. She swings again and howls as the rain of stone falls onto her head, dust clouding the air.

YOU TRAITOROUS WITCH

She moves through the court like a tornado, splitting rocks apart, tearing columns down bare-handed and ramming through walls with her shoulder. The ground melts and she trudges in it, flames climbing up her massive legs, and with every swing of the axe Savathûn’s statue falls, its shatters sinking into liquid asphalt.

I HATE YOU

Her sister’s temple is a spire of glass and metal, shimmering in a far corner of the throne world like a guard-tower. Xivu breaks every window and cracks holes in the walls, and when she finally gets to the top she spares only one glance to the statue’s face as she rips it apart and pushes off into the sea of fire below. It sinks slowly, and by the time the lava covers it whole Xivu is on her knees, claws digging fissures in the moissanite floor.

HOW COULD YOU DO THIS

Chapter Text

Once Taox’s ships leave through the wormhole in desperate pursuit of Auryx’s frigate, there isn’t much left of the Osmium Court. A few fires still hold up, weak flames licking the walls of tall, hollowed-out buildings, but most have already been extinguished by rainfall, leaving behind only billows of smoke, rank and choking in the damp air. Hardly a soul can be seen sneaking through the streets—whoever remained stays tucked under the roof of their still-standing house or is camping in the palace's great hall, trembling shapes huddling close and looking up to the ceiling, as if they could see the moons despite the several layers of stone and metal.

The courtiers are mostly dead or gone, but there is still a small gathering in the ruined throne room, lingering between the tactical map and a column all smouldered and cracked from a blast of strange green fire. They, too, huddle close; the diplomatic distance bridged in the face of death, hands curl around hands and heads lean on trembling shoulders. Royal-blue robes, dirty and in tatters, flutter in the draught whistling through bullet holes peppering the walls.

The rumbling of the approaching wave can be heard from the harbour now.

“Do you think the Monoliths are still standing?” The High Admiral asks, his arm arched around the Minister of Seaware who shakes and sniffles.

The Court Deputy Engineer eyes the tactical map—a burnt piece of parchment, now, granite pawns all tipped and strewn across the floor. “Star-Surgery is first,” she says, “and their engines will combust should water get into them. I haven’t heard any explosions yet.”

“You expect to hear anything over this damned squall?” The Sejm’s Highmost Speaker sneers at her from under a half-tipped pillar. She is still holding her buława, squeezing it like a lifeline against her bandaged chest.

The Second Crown Judge wedges a claw between two halves of a clam he found washed in by the tide, takes a bite, and offers the rest to the Deputy Engineer.

“It’s not that far,” he reminds, leaving it unspoken that the troubled sea could have very well pushed the Star-Surgery hundreds of danas away.

“What difference does it make if we hear it or not?” the Highmost Speaker grumbles, “It’s not like we can do anything about it either way.”

“Well, I myself prefer to know what’s coming my way before it does.”

The Minister of Seaware breaks into another wave of ragged sobs.

“I don’t want to die!” Her voice echoes in the chamber, earning her a number glances from those huddled under other walls, some frightened and some expressing only weary annoyance.

“Hush,” the Second Crown Judge fishes out another clam from the deep pockets of his robe and pushes it into her hands, “have a snack.”

“I don’t want a snack! I w-want to go home!”

“Great Leviathan in the deep, is the last thing I’ll ever hear really gonna be your wailing?” Someone from a distant corner calls. The Minister only starts crying louder.

“If the wind hasn’t picked up, we could approximate the distance,” the High Admiral says over her sobs, “after the explosion, I mean.”

“Suit yourself. It could’ve very well gone off hours ago and we didn’t hear it.” The Highmost Speaker huffs, and reaches to pry the clam from the Minister’s claws without much resistance. “Give me that, if you’re not eating it. I’m hungry.”

Chapter Text

“I will tell you a story,” Scribe Eido began, “about a Vandal who wanted to do everything by herself.”

Hatchlings huddled closer around the heat lamp. Light snow was sprinkling the Last City, bright spots dancing lazily on the backdrop of the night sky, but the radiators and blankets made them feel cosy and warm. From under their hoods and layers of bundled fabric they stared wide-eyed as the white fluff slowly drifted down and covered the Eliksni Quarter, for some of them this being the first snowfall of their lives.

“There was once a Vandal who was very skilled and resourceful. Though she was neither the oldest nor the strongest of her clutch, from a young age she excelled in everything she was taught and showed natural talent in every craft she took up. She learned weaving, metalworking and gunsmithery; cooking and mechanics; hunting and Skiff-piloting. In each of these skills she had no equal among her House, and whenever someone else took to the tasks she could do faster and more efficiently, she saw it as an unnecessary waste of resources. After some time she grew so proficient and so proud that she decided she would be better off without the House-kin who she believed only stalled and hindered her.”

A few hatchlings chirruped in surprise and anticipation. One leaned forward from the cocoon of blankets and stuck out his tongue to catch a snowflake.

“The Vandal, then, left her House and wandered off into the unknown. Although she mourned parting with her siblings, she was sure she would fare better alone—she was the best at everything, after all, from building to tracking to reverse-engineering any tech with so few supplies no one but her could do it. At first she thrived in her solitary lifestyle: she travelled the wilderness and found a cave just next to a forest brook; she planted a garden next to the campsite and hunted game which was abundant in that part of the woods. Out of the parts she'd been given by her House-kin for the journey she assembled a lamp and a radio. She wove new clothes and blankets for herself and painted her own banner.

“But winter came, and every next day was colder than the one before. Snow covered the garden, the brook froze, and game became scarce and difficult to catch. Frigid wind blew snow into the cave, no matter how thickly the Vandal tried to seal the door. Even the blankets and the lamp failed to keep her warm. Wrapped in all her fabrics and still shivering, she was so cold that she only wanted to lie down on the cave's floor and sleep forever.”

The biggest hatchlings exchanged worried glances. They were old enough to remember Europa, and therefore knew that giving in to the cold-induced slumber meant almost certain death.

“Tired, freezing and lonely, the Vandal drifted in and out of sleep. She dreamt about her House; felt the warmth of her siblings' embraces, saw the flicker of orange lamps. She could no longer tell what was and wasn’t real – she was all alone, freezing in silence, it wasn’t possible for the familiar scent of her siblings to have somehow found its way here, the sudden warmth surrounding her must have been just a dream... But when she mustered enough strength to open her eyes, she saw that—yes!—those were really her brothers and sisters, who’d spent weeks looking for her and were now huddling around her to warm her up with their body heat.

“On that day the Vandal finally saw her mistake and understood: there is a cold even the thickest blanket can’t shield you from, and only by keeping together can we survive it.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Your Ghost makes a list of the things he wishes he could say to you.

"Talk to me about what you're thinking."

"Why did you drop me off here with these idiots."

"I want to go home."

"I'm perfectly fine on my own."

"You didn't tell me shit and expected me to dance to your tune?"

"I missed you."

"I don't need you."

"I could ditch all of it and just fly away right in this second if I wanted to."

"I'm an idiot."

"YOU'RE a jerk."

"I'll never be dependent on you."

"I'm still here."

Chapter Text

Maybe the blinding rage that had flooded her initially had been better, M’riax thought—because now that the mission was over and she was back in her tower staring at her empty bedroom, all the fire had fizzled out and what she was left with was only a dull, throbbing ache. It seemed to constrain her movements, pulling all her muscles taut until she could barely bend the joints and conspiring with gravity to press her down to the ground with an impossible weight. Part of it was exhaustion, most likely, but the heaviness in her head was anything but physical.

She collapsed into the hammock, trying to make sense of the maze of thoughts all shouting in her mind. She wasn't even surprised anymore; the initial shock had given way to a hollow feeling that was not quite fear and not quite sorrow, but the cotton-thick, choking sensation of it in her chest and throat was impossible to ignore.

Kor O’oyag had been lying to her.

The crew of toddlers she was working with had been lying to her as well, apparently.

Immaru… she wasn’t sure. Did he know? He’d steered her towards Noornoon, and Noornoon was now apparently working with Guardians—so maybe he was in fact the traitor Kor O’oyag had made him out to be? Was Immaru in on this, or had Noornoon fooled him as well?

But Savathûn had trusted him. That was the reason Immaru kept him around in the first place. Had he been a traitor, then, or an accomplice? Had Savathûn planned to eventually ally with Guardians?

That thought made her stomach sink.

She curled up in the hammock, bunching the fabric of her cloak up in her arms and hugging it. She’d been such a gullible idiot. Ur had been right; they’d grown in Savathûn’s throne world, right in the middle of a court turf war, and to expect anything less than a knife hiding under every pleasant façade was foolishness at best and a death sentence at worst. Whom else would she find turning against her? Shala? Nabenki? She hugged the cloak tighter, tears stinging in her eyes.

The hunger—she had no other name for it yet, she didn’t want to have a name for it, she didn’t want—flared up in her stomach like anger. She thought it would have been easier to be angry, but not like that—not in a way that pulled her taut like a drawn bowstring, narrow-focused and alert and shivering with desire, not the cold frenzy of a clean kill and the pang of yearning she felt every time she slew a Guardian and a tiniest sliver of a thought crossed her mind that murdering their Ghost would finally put them in the ground for good. Fear gripped her tightly, her claws clutching the material so hard they almost pierced it.

She didn’t need a name for it. She knew what it was.

She knew it had nothing to do with the Light.

She welded her eyes shut to keep the tears in. What would happen when Savathûn came back? Because she would know—there was no keeping this from her, she wouldn’t even need to lay eyes on M’riax, and then all of it would be over. The Queen had no love for the Darkness. She had sacrificed everything in order to escape its clutches.

And now M’riax wielded it.

Now she did start crying, her shaking sobs stirring the hammock into a gentle sway. Ei-Hamal made a small noise of concern and landed on her shoulder, her scan beam inspecting the Lightbearer warily—but there was nothing wrong with her, not in that way, and so she only nuzzled against M’riax’s chitin. She had never been skilled with words of comfort, but she would never leave her in such a state.

M’riax sniffed loudly and shifted the bunched-up cloak in her arms, and it was then that she felt the warmth.

Blindly she rummaged her hand in the folds of the material, and her fingers found something small and round and not quite substantial, radiating gentle heat. Her Mote of Light. She fished it out and cupped in her hands, a tiny bright thing like a miniature star humming a melody that resonated with the spark of Arc within her harmoniously. 

The hunger simmered down when she looked at it. The blind, all-consuming desire curled back, replaced by the warm and soft and pervading feeling of safety.

Ur and the rest of them could talk about allying with Guardians against the god of war like it was nothing because they were—what? A week old? To them, the only perspective was Xivu Arath. They hadn’t seen what she’d seen. They hadn’t known the Queen, they hadn’t had their home burned down and friends killed, they hadn’t watched the Traveler—

She sniffed again, and exhaled slowly.

The Light was solace. The Light was life. The Traveler was their only protection against the long night, and M’riax would give nothing short of her own soul to protect it in return. Guardians might have their own foolish ideas of what their god could and could not withstand against, but they had not lived what the Hive had been through. If they wanted to pull the Traveler under the waves of their own destruction along with them, they could try. She would meet them on the battlefield, face to face and blade to skin.

She held the mote close to her chest.

Until she got it back, this had to suffice.

Chapter Text

The Tower is scintillant, so much that Ór has to squint as she walks out onto the Courtyard. Whites and golds blind her with reflected sunlight. Eva Levante is obscured entirely by the mass of Guardians surrounding her, but Ór squeezes through them, and when the tailoress finally notices her, her face lights up.

“My dear!” She extends both hands to Ór–reconsiders–whirs around and produces a pile of neatly folded ceremonial armour seemingly out of thin air and pushes it towards her. Ór doesn’t even manage to cough out a greeting before her arms are full of clothing. “I heard you’ve been to Titan.”

“I… Yes.” Ór fumbles with the mass of fabrics abruptly bestowed upon her. It is beautiful, like everything coming from under Eva’s hand: ashen fabric threaded with bronze, soft but sturdy under her touch. Runi flickers into being over her shoulder to have a look.

With one hand she manages to unfold the cloak; it spills towards the floor, ornaments flickering in the sunlight. The hood is wide, just as she likes it, and it has a double feather attached at the temples.

“My first Solstice cloak had a feather,” she doesn’t know why she says it out loud. Her voice quivers a little.

“Try it on,” Eva encourages. For a half-second Ór fears to look up and see grief in her eyes, but there is only warmth in them, her face shining as if she herself were reflecting the sunlight. “It is a fine attire to conquer the EAZ, I reckon.”

Something cold drops in Ór’s stomach.

“I don’t want to go to the arena this year,” she says. She doesn’t need Xivu Arath’s taunting in her head to think about violence-paths and rituals of war. There is no tangible shift in her perception, but the colours and lights of the Courtyard suddenly seem washed out.

“This is perfectly fine, my dear.” Eva doesn’t look at her with pity, and Ór is grateful for that. “If you’d like, you can help with gathering the leaves for the bonfire Commander Zavala will light up this evening down in the City.

"Wasn’t that Amanda’s job?” She can’t help herself. She is surprised Eva would arrange something like that–it feels cruel.

Now there is sorrow in Eva’s eyes, but it is gentle and dim, like a dying candle.

“He asked himself,” she says, and gives Ór a small smile.

Keeping her emotions in check has been tricky lately. She doesn’t want to cry out here, in full view of everyone.

“I…” She fumbles with the words and with the clothing. Eva just shakes her head, and the hand she places over Ór’s is so warm, making the fight to keep the tears at bay ever the harder.

“Happy Solstice, Guardian.”

Ór should turn around and take her leave right then, but another development as of late is that she has become her own worst enemy.

“How can we celebrate the Light now, without the Traveler?” She blurts out. What is up with her today?

Eva smiles at her again, and makes a motion with her chin at something behind Ór’s back. The Hunter follows her gaze.

“Take a look.” Next to the landing pad, on the way to the Hangar, a Dreg clad in green is talking to a Cabal two and a half times his size. They seem to be communicating mostly through signs rather than in either language, but the Cabal’s rumbling laughter makes it all the way to Eva’s post. “Isn’t this the Light?”

The Ketches and Galliots and Interceptors filling the Traveler’s empty space above the City are all blurry as Eva hugs her tight. Over her shoulder, Ór stares at them for a long time.

Chapter Text

Ei Irulac, Last of Her Coven, keeled over and died quite pathetically. It was unsurprising given her condition (an arc staff piercing her through like a shish kebab), but kind of cringe nonetheless, the dying scream she shrilled hoarse and strangled and her limbs flailing about awkwardly. The staff's owner walked up to her prone body and yanked the weapon free, with their other hand reaching for her Ghost. It twitched frantically as five gore-splattered fingers curled around its core and squeezed hard.

The Guardian then kicked the body, clasped the staff to the harness on their back, and leaped into a nearby mirror, chucking a grenade behind them as an extra safety measure.

A long while passed.

The unstable Arc charge was beginning to fizzle out by the time Šimmumah Ur-Nokru stepped into the chamber, eyeing Irulac's body impassively. A few of her Acolytes scuttled behind her.

She floated up to the Ghost's shatters, sprinkled on the floor right next to the corpse. The Acolytes spread out in a five-meter-radius circle and began drawing the runes.

Three incantations—and one botched rune resulting in Šimmumah briefly experiencing an eyehole hemorrhage—later, Ei Irulac cracked her middle eye open and peered up at the necromancer with a bemused expression. Her Ghost was still shaking off its freshly reassembled shell.

"Do try to be a little gentler next time," it chided, glaring at Šimmumah (though its optic was still recalibration, which ruined the effect a little). "I can feel all my insides jingling."

"Do try to refrain from dying next time," one of the Acolytes barked back.

Irulac drew herself unsteadily to her full height.

"I feared they would break the conduit," she said. The chamber was still strewn with blood and gore, floorboards marred with cracks and soot staining the bullet-ridden walls. Šimmumah only gave the mess around a fleeting glance.

"The experiment was a success, fortuitously." She turned with a flutter of robes and beckoned Irulac to follow with a gesture. The group of Acolytes swarmed around them like ducklings. "The First Ghost has asked about you. I shan’t tell him what a sorry display this was."

Chapter Text

The Traveler rumbled as it lifted itself up from above the Last City.

The old theory, Osiris had learned, taught that since all object in motion emit sound, planets in their orbits should likewise be sinking the universe in constant, never-ceasing noise. It did not take into account the vacuum of space, or any further discoveries about how soundwaves dispersed. Here, though, in the cold afternoon air, they resonated low and constant, a vibration pervading him to the bone. Maybe the real music of the spheres, he thought, was the hollow rumble of a fleeing god.

They were out in the streets, watching the impossible, people around them all too stunned to speak. Osiris stood frozen, eyes wide, and it felt like nothing short of a wrecking ball could even attempt to cause him to move. He'd seen it happen. He'd seen countless timelines where the sky had been empty and the Earth barren, the City reduced to smouldering ruins. He'd done everything to keep that from happening, and it still hadn't been enough. It wasn't enough.

"Osiris," he heard Saint say.

A gentle hand wrapped around his stiff and cold one. He turned to look at his beloved and was met with a soft gaze, still and calming and almost not afraid, if Osiris hadn't known him for centuries. Saint leaned in--and that betrayed him--and the kiss was long and hard and full of fear.

"I love you," he said against his lips.

"No," Osiris put a hand on his chest, pushing him an inch away. "No. This is not a goodbye."

"Osiris..." 

"No."

Saint glanced up, at the empty sky and the faint shade disappearing behind the clouds. Osiris reached up and gently turned his face back towards him.

"I love you," he said. "And I will tell you that tomorrow, and the day after, and for the next forever. I owe you that, and I intend to make sure of it. Even if purely out of spite."

The last words earned him the faintest flicker of Saint's mouthlights.

"You're unstoppable," he muttered, leaning in again, and this time Osiris met him halfway. He sunk into the embrace of strong arms curling around him.

The hum grew quieter and quieter still. He could barely hear it anymore.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The light in Savathûn's throne world is strangely diffused, one of the four suns having already dipped below the horizon and other two inching their way downwards. The fourth is in zenith right above the palace, framing the tip of the Spire like a halo. It should sting her uncovered eyes, Eris thinks, but this place was tailor-made for a Hive and so she figures it is only fair it accommodated the sensitivities of Hive sight.

They are in the gardens, Savathûn and her, strolling among the lush flower patches and neatly-trimmed hedges. The Witch-Queen's form is... strange, light folding on light and edges blurry, so much that Eris finds it difficult to tell its exact size. Wonders of the mind, she thinks dryly. Even resplendent in Light, the High Coven is still the kingdom of deceit.

"I'm glad you don't hide yourself from me anymore," Savathûn says conversationally. She has stopped to admire a particularly scenic brook snaking between grass and marble, its surface azure-clear and shimmering in the sunlight. "Or from yourself, for that matter. It's a nice change."

Eris looks at her with a unamused expression. The Witch kneels down and now they are almost level, their shivering reflections side by side in the water.

"Do you interpret everything in relation to yourself?"

"I like seeing my work," Savathûn croons. "You're beautiful."

Anger flares in Eris, mixed with disgust and something else. For a moment she manages to blink away the shimmering veil of Light, and what she sees underneath is so crudely tangible--crusted skin around the eyes and chitin weathered by age, minute twitches of facial muscles. Flesh and bone and strength no greater than her own. Not an elusive queen of mists; a woman, a Hive, a body that will squirm and bleed if she cuts it. There is still a scar on her throat where Eris slashed it open.

She says, angrily, "You did not make me."

The Witch-Queen gives her a lazy smile.

"I know you find the idea abhorrent, but when you think about it, how different has our dance been from the simplest sword-logic invocation of one's opponent? You created me." Her head tips to the side, eyes narrowed in delight. "In your furious search for means to destroy me, you have kept me closer to your heart than anything else you hold dear. You have changed me forever, and as such, by equality of force, you too have been changed."

"Do you feel so lacking as to need to take credit for what I've done by my own hand?"

Savathûn laughs, of course she does. "Ah, maybe you're right in diagnosing this as a matter of pride. One wishes all the beauty they see were fruit of their own craft."

Beauty, Eris wants to spit, if only because this was the cost I had to pay to destroy you-- but Savathûn's edges blur once again and she is suddenly so close Eris can see the delicate spiderweb of cracks on her chitin.

There is a pressure on her forehead, just next to her middle eye, a lipless mouth brushing again the skin and then murmuring, "But I can still admire the handiwork."

All she can see now is Savathûn's throat, the expanse of calloused, ancient skin and the scar slicing it in half. It is a thick and convex line, like a bank running across a grassy field. It bobs along with every breath.

Physical, Eris thinks, real. Is this what their siblinghood was? Gods to all but each other, intangible concepts with edges defined only by what can be scratched and choked and cut, the only forces in the universe capable of rendering each other real? Invocations hold power, but not as much power as a blade to the gut. Love is war, over and over, the clashing of territories and saying, here I begin, and thus here is where you are not.

She reaches out and traces the scar--first with her fingers and then, madly enough, with her lips. A warning. A gesture that says, I could to this again, and I would do this again, and here is where I define your borders and you must first get through me if you wish to challenge that.

The sharp contortion of the throat against her mouth--whether it is a laugh or a gasp, she is not sure.

Chapter Text

My Ghost, my shadow, my self. You didn’t lead me here. You didn’t say, “I have something to show you,” and trek me across an alien world to see it. You just said, ”let’s go,” and I went with you.

Why? Because the world was new in my reborn eyes, and I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted you to guide me.

When we finally crest the mountain, I see it at last. I see where you brought me, and why.

The Traveler hangs heavy in the sky, low and full.

“We’re here,” you say. I take a breath of cold air.

I have a vision. A brilliant garden. Vitreous strongholds built from osmium and Light. We will rise and meet the Traveler. We will save the Hive the way you said the Traveler saved us, the way it wants us to save it.

“This is where you come from?” I ask you. You peer out from behind me. You’re looking at the Traveler, too. 

“Yes,” you say, nodding. 

“You‘re home,” I say. 

“No,” you say, with all the all the edge of your porcupine-spiked shell. ”You’re my home.”

You drop into my waiting palm, and I hold you to my chest. Here, in the place where the world cradles the Traveler—here, where the Traveler touches the world—I will hold you close to me. 

I see that the Traveler is a Ghost, too. A Ghost to see the Hive reborn.

Chapter Text

After Panoptes is destroyed, after the timeline is saved, Ikora and Osiris stand face to face on the sands of Mercury.

She has played this moment in her head hundreds of times. Curse her wandering mind, perhaps, or her bleeding heart; never once has it done her well to overthink, and there is nothing she has thought about more than the freeze-frame of Osiris on the steps of his jumpship, fifty-seven years, four months and twenty-two days ago.

There were countless fantasies she's had of their reunion. In some, she was angry; in others she was sad and apologetic, and in others yet it was Osiris who would come back cowering and repentant. These last ones were the least believable, Ikora knew. But they still felt more real than the alternative--the unthinkability of Never, the emptiness of his hangar bay and a severed thread with no closure.

The mind is a little like the Infinite Forest, she thinks idly. Making up possibilities. It is so easy to get lost in there.

She braves Osiris' appraising look, notes the twitch of his cheek and the slight pull of his eyebrows. To know one is to see them for what they really are, Pujari said to her once. She could read Osiris' expression faultlessly from all the way across the room.

"You've grown," he says in that gruff, annoying, familiar voice.

Ikora takes a shaky breath and what falls out of her mouth is a clumsy "You're still just as old."

Osiris meets her eyes, and laughs. It is a sharp, loud bark--and then he keeps on laughing, heartily and brightly, and the spell is broken and Ikora thinks--as she starts laughing too, feeling the prickle of tears under her eyelids, she thinks--that this is the one single version of this moment she has never imagined.

Chapter Text

Ikora asks this carefully, like treading on the surface of a frozen pond: "Have you used the Light since the accident?"

Asher looks up from the Ulurant booklet he is transcribing and gives her the most displeased look he can manage. Wrong question. Ikora has never understood the whole eggshell-treading, dancing-around-the-subject way he and Eris communicated; it frustrated her, their apparent allergy to cutting straight to the bloody point. Communication doesn't work like that.

So she cuts.

"Well, have you?" she prods after a moment of silence.

"An astouding example of meddlesomeness," he grunts. "Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity."

"I can't believe you just proved my point."

Ikora gives him a crooked smile. "What are Warlocks if not annoyingly curious, at the core of it?"

Asher scowls, then sighs and puts the booklet down on the side table. It pushes the teacup there precariously close to the edge, the cold tea in it rippling.

"I have not," he says slowly. His entire form has gone stiff, Ikora notes, and the fingers of his Vex hand are twitching slightly. "Not... in any meaningful manner, anyway."

The analytical part of her brain processes this. She has seen Asher's Ghost, red-eyed and silent. As far as she is aware, he is the first known case of a Ghost surviving a Vex infection. No medic or scholar has been able to determine if he could even bring Asher back from the dead anymore, and Ikora knows Asher himself has not tested the theory in practice.

But if he can use the Light...

She holds out both of her hands and forms a small Void soul between them. Its pull is faint, but a few pages of her notes lift slightly and fall back with a ruffle. Asher is leaning forward, brows furrowed, and looking at it intently. His Vex hand is curled into a fist. Ikora lets the Void soul spin between her fingers for a few seconds, and then sends it across the space between them without a warning.

He makes a small noise of surprise, but instinctively catches the orb with his good hand. She braves the scowl he sends her in response.

"Would you be so kind to warn me the next time you throw something at me?"

She grins. "The element of surprise was the key."

"Very funny."

The Void soul spins a few more times and vanishes, leaving a wisp of purple smoke behind. Asher's fingers twitch and curl, as if trying to hold it back from dissipating.

"Well, now throw it back to me," Ikora says.

Asher passes her a glance, then looks back down at his palm. His eyebrows are pulled together in a deep frown. Slowly, he brings his Vex hand up and cups it together with his good one. Ikora realises she is holding her breath, and wills herself to relax.

The air between his fingers swirls and then is sucked into itself as a tiny singularity begins to form. It is miniature and unstable, but it's there, eddying and tugging at the air around it greedily. Asher gasps, and she pretends she didn't hear it.

He carefully outstretches both hands and passes the Void soul over to her like releasing a bird. It arches over the space between the two of them and drops into Ikora's waiting palm, swirling and restless.

They sit in silence, their eyes fixed on the singularity, until it dissipates.

Then Asher coughs.

"Well. I admit this is an unexpected, but... welcome development."

Ikora tries to suppress a smile, but fails entirely. "I'm glad."

He passes her a glance, then looks away quickly and reaches for the booklet left on the side table. She isn't surprised, really. The thread of shared vulnerability between them is a frail and tenuous one, and it is best to spin it with care--on both ends.

"Now however, if you're done throwing things at me," Asher opens the booklet with his Vex hand and searches for his datapad with the other, "I'd like to get back to work."

Incited by his comment--and by some devious, vibrant spark in her--Ikora crumples the nearest page of notes into a ball and tosses it at him. She can't help the snort when it bonks off of Asher's forehead and into his lap.

"Remarkably adult of you," he says flatly, picking the paper ball up with two fingers.

But he throws it back.

Chapter Text

Eris Morn, Queen of the Hive, takes the hand of her betrothed. The light dances prettily on his rings and painted nails, claw-long, orange and green like everything else he is wearing. They would both look ridiculous, really, were it any other setting; but here, with the marble and chitin and the massive rosette window, it strangely fits.

“In body and in spirit, in Sky and in Sword, I pledge myself to you.” Toland grasps her fingers tight. “I vow to honour and worship you, as my god and my queen and my bride.”

His voice is soft, even. The same voice once told her the secrets of the Hellmouth. It’s strange not to be wedded in the way of Guardians, but perhaps that too is fitting for them. Does she even still have a cloak, buried somewhere in the graveyard of her old life? And he has already given her his bond. Was that their true betrothal? In that moment they had been bound closer than they could even now.

They are, instead, wed in the way of the Hive. That is to say: there is a lot of blood and singing involved, and multiple proclamations spoken in verse, symbols and gestures with ancient meanings, and a swordfight at the end, because of course there must be a swordfight at the end. Eris isn’t sure how either of them is going to handle it in a floor-length gown, but she supposes that, if anything, puts them both on equal footing.

Later there will be other words, more important ones, whispered in private between hushed breaths. There will be confessions and vows. There will be admissions of the secret and the foul, of devotion and folly, of heresy and love.

Here and now, Eris Morn, God of Vengeance, says, “Aiat.”

Chapter Text

Toland had a tarantula on the back of his head.

“You have a tarantula on the back of your head,” Eris observed, walking into the study. He didn’t even bother turning around.

“It makes focusing easier.”

“The threat of imminent death?” She reached to gently coax the spider onto her hand.

“We all have our cheap thrills.”

“Cheap, huh.” The tarantula was quite pretty, all things considered. It had thick, striped legs and eyes that shimmered in the light like onyx beads. “Where did you get it?”

“I stole it.”

“Oh?”

“From the store in Peregrine.”

“Mhm.”

“For the next time you complain about why I need so many pockets.”

“For stealing spiders?” Eris helped the tarantula climb onto the nearest bookshelf, where it immediately scuttled away to hide among the clutter. Toland’s bookshelves were filled to the brim with many items, very few of them books.

“I brought you dinner.”

“Me or the spider?”

She rolled her eyes. “You. When did you last eat?”

Toland glanced briefly at his watch. “Last night at ten.”

“Traveler’s mercy.”

She leaned over his shoulder to peer at what he was working on. Unsurprising: some maps of the Hellmouth, a half-translated runic script, something that looked like detailed notes from a worm dissection. Her hand idly stroked his back, brushing his hair away to trace the embroidered pattern on his robe—snakes, black thread on black satin.

“Come on. I'm not scrubbing you off the table if you starve to death and rot away without anyone noticing.”

“You would notice, of course.” Toland sighed, but pushed his chair back and stood up. Eris tugged at his hand and he followed her obediently, out of the stuffy gloom of his study and into the light.

Chapter Text

“You should be more careful.” Ikora wraps the bandage with the diligence of someone disarming a bomb, one loop after the next in even, perfect layers. Eris grunts, but holds her hand still.

“It's just a dislocated finger…”

“Even so.”

“…and I could have done that myself.”

Halfway through tying the loose ends into a neat little knot, Ikora looks up with a raised eyebrow. It’s not untrue, per say. Eris could have done that herself; but it would’ve come out nowhere near as clean and tidy, and she would’ve had to pull the knot tight with her teeth, not to mention it would have taken three times as long as letting Ikora do it. She knows that. She also knows she shouldn’t feel guilty about it, or defensive. Ikora doesn’t mean to make her feel fragile. She doesn’t mean to rub in just how many things Eris can’t do now, or how limited her mortal body is. She is fussing because she cares; overtly, perhaps, but genuinely.

It is a constant effort, reminding herself of this. Forcing down the instinct that makes her want to snap and shut off and run. She doesn’t know if she will ever be free of it. Sometimes—secretly, almost againt herself—she thinks it would be easier to just give in; to burn this bridge before it has a chance to truly crash.

But then Ikora raises Eris’ hand to her mouth and kisses it, each finger and then the dips between them—and the moment shatters. The world is crystal-clear again, just two women in a tent pitched up in the coarse lunar soil, the warmth of breath and the touch of skin on skin. Eris’ hands are a palimpsest of scars, and Ikora can read it well.

“I know you can take care of yourself,” she mutters, lips-to-skin. “I shouldn’t be fussing so much. I’m sorry.”

“You worry.” Eris sighs and lets her eyes fall closed. “It is… appreciated.”

“I wish I—”

“No.” Her fingers sneak under Ikora’s chin to hold it gently. They each have wished fervently over their long lives, and it never brought them anywhere good. If the Hive have taught her one thing, it is that only actions matter.

So Eris leans in, eyes shut and mouth open like she is claiming a prize, and the time of wishing is over.

Chapter Text

She has never believed in ghosts. Not before; not as Nasya, or Nasan, and not even now. The only afterlife is Traveler-given, the only Ghosts — a little spark of Light above your shoulder. Death is a locked door, until it isn't, and no amount of believing could change any of these truths.

She is on Bamberga, sitting on a bench outside the Gensym lab. Her hands are shaking. There wasn’t enough to be recovered from the station to call a memento, much less human remains; all she received was a small box of debris from the impact site. Fine dust. It reminds her of something she cannot place, and carries with it an unspeakable fear.

Fear, yes—nauseating and chest-crushing. She struggles to control her breathing. Grief is crawling out of her like an oozy monster nestled in her core, squeezing its tentacles up her windpipe, pushing at her lungs. And underneath that, another frightening thought: what will she do now? Where will she go?

She remembers Mara's grief, the flash of helpless fury cracking her impassive mask. She knows how it tastes now, this kind of finality.

She is alone, alone in the world.

Just when she thinks she might finally start crying, something brushes against her elbow. It is soft, like a gust of wind, but hearth-warm. The same warmth spreads rapidly throughout her body, quelling the writhing monster within.

She flinches, head twisting to the side, but there’s no one there—just the empty strip of the bench and then some bushes, vibrant greens of a false spring in bloom.

She breathes out shakily and looks down at the little box. The only thing she has left of Namqi, and it may not even be him. But then again, it is all dust in the end—a tangled array of atoms that lie to themselves they are parts of different and distinct shapes, indistinguishable from one another if not for the connections they make. Everything is everything is everything is —

The sensation is there again, a sudden warmth like crawling under a freshly-ironed blanket. Like being in someone's arms.

She finally starts to cry.

Chapter Text

“I hate this place,” Kamâr-Maht said earnestly.

“Yeah, I knew you would,” Peyri said, also earnestly. That earned her a glare. She refused to be intimidated by it, so she knelt down and began wiping the grime off her boots.

The pristine white floor of the Temple of the Navigator was currently marred by splatters of Hive gore and scorch marks left by her Light. She’d figured Kamâr-Maht would’ve appreciated at least *some* fun on this trip, so they'd made a competition of slaughtering every last Hive in the area, and she wasn’t even particularly smug about winning. But now she got to have her fun. Which wasn’t that much about the sightseeing, really, as it was in seeing him squirm. What was the point of a frienemy if you didn’t devote at least a fraction of your free time to obnoxiously ruining each other’s day?

Having wiped the last of the dirt off, she stood up and found the Knight staring intently at the statue in the back of the room. It was big, even by Hive standards, and they both had to tilt their head up to see it whole: Oryx and a worm god, locked in a duel, unfolded jaws and a sword about to be plunged into them. She had to admire the craftsmanship, even if the art wasn’t really her style.

“Travesty,” Kamâr-Maht spat. Aaaand here we go. Honestly, it was hilarious how easy he was to wind up.

“Not gonna say I’m a fan of Savathûn's decor choices, but this is less of an eyesore than some of the other stuff around here.” Peyri gave the statue a thoughtful look, then conceded, “Though rather on the pretentious side.”

“The Witch is staining the memory of this triumph by enshrining it in her liar-temple.”

“Triumph? I thought the dead only deserved scorn.”

“Do you scorn the mistakes you make?” There was a note of condescension in his voice, but she let it slide for now. “Despise, yes, but cherish, also. This is how we learn. Every lesson, beloved and hated. The survivor survives because the dead dies.”

“I don’t understand.”

The Knight huffed, as if to say, of course you don’t understand, you stupid Guardian, but actually refrained from calling her ignorance out. His hand drew a vague shape in the air, encompassing the statue.

“We talked of what we do with corpses, remember? Long ago. Guardians bury them, and Hive eat them.” Yes, she did remember. It had been so early into their friendship (???) she’d still had the capacity to be surprised at his revelations. These days she just sort of took them as they came. “Failure deserves no respect, but it is foolish to forget it. We become the things we devour. We learn from them. Only strength is good, and if you want to be strong, you will study weakness and let it teach you. Not scorn it, not cast it away. Eat your failure, make a new shape from its scraps, reforge it, let it make you stronger.”

“I still don’t understand why you hate this statue, though.”

“Not the statue.” Kamâr-Maht sighed heavily. His exasperation was like the finest music to Peyri’s ears. “Slaying of Akka, Coronation of the King, it is a glorious moment in our history. It made Oryx King, and it made Hive god-killers. He learned and subdued the secrets of the Worms, and so he triumphed over them, and so the became a parasite within the parasite, the vanquisher of his vanquisher. It is ours, this history, ours alone.” Anger seeped into his voice. “And the Witch took it, and put it in her liar-court, and enshrined, as if it was hers, as if she had not betrayed Him and everything He had stood for in that moment, everything He had been and had sought to be.”

“That sounds awfully lot like a skill issue.” Peyri withstood Kamâr-Maht’s glare when he turned towards her with bared teeth. “You speak big words about strength and glory, but if she stole it, it deserved to be stolen. Aiat and so on. There’s a saying we have about a blade with two edges.”

“It is mockery,” he hissed. “She pays respect to the Logic she has shed and the King she has killed. The Secrets of Akka are not hers to revere. She has chosen her path, and it is not the path of Oryx, and she cannot walk through Him anymore. She spits on Him and she spits on the Hive, and she spits on the history that has shaped her.” Kamâr-Maht spat too. “Heresy.”

Peyri looked at him curiously. “That’s remarkable care for sacrosanctity for someone who just said the dead deserved no respect.”

“Death is not sacred. Death is a lesson.” The Knight glared at the statue like it had personally offended his mother. “And the King’s death is our lesson to bear.”

In truth, she had expected Kamâr-Maht to be disgusted by the Temple—she knew how he felt about the Light and about Savathûn, and she knew she disgusted him too, even years down the line—but this outburst was strange to behold. It felt… personal, rather than purely philosophical. That was why she asked, “What did it teach you?”

Kamâr-Maht stared ahead, long and hard. In some metaphysical sense, Peyri could see him turning over several versions of the answer to this question in his head and rejecting each one. She wondered if there would ever come a day she would be privy to at least some of them—if he would explain, if she would understand—of whether this was too much of a closely-guarded thing, a uniquely Hive emotion she was incapable of feeling and he was unable to share. The Hive had strange traumas, deeply-running and as inhuman as everything else about them, but they festered and throbbed just as fiercely.

“Not to grieve,” he finally said.

Peyri wanted to dig so badly, but an unexpected impulse of kindness held her back. That was enough twisting the knife, for the time being. She could (gladly) deal with Kamâr-Maht’s anger or disgust, but sorrow was a different beast, and it felt far too visceral, too intimate for her liking. She absent-mindedly kicked a loose bullet casing and watched it roll across the room all the way up to the feet of the statue.

“Death is the last part of living, and life is learning to die,” Kamâr-Maht recited. He had a deep voice, unwavering; it echoed in the chamber like the tolling of bells. “The song is the same as the singing. The last truth commands me to eat all the light in the sky.

“I will go on forever. I will understand.”