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Chapter Text

“The sun is coming up. Tomorrow is a new day.”

Those were words that Grey would never forget. Those were the last words that Arakris had said to him – his Arakris, the ‘real’ Arakris – before Grey had woken from his life-like, grief-fuelled dreams for the last time.

Suffice to say, he had never expected to hear them coming from the mouth of his resurrected and amnesiac partner, who he had re-seduced into being his lover again. This Arakris had no business saying those words. Even if it had been coincidental, that was too much of a coincidence. And that was not even mentioning the way he had said the affectionate moniker Arakris used to use. For all that this Arakris seemed to ‘remember’ the importance of that pet name, he had never said it the way that Grey’s mortal beloved had once done.  

Starshine. The Guardian Arakris said it with a fairly light tone, almost as if he was still making sure it felt right to use on Grey who he assumed was someone new he had fallen in love with. He had no idea that Grey was the Starshine he had been holding on to all along. But the way that that one word had fallen from the Titan’s lips during the Vex incursion… there had been far too much weight behind that one word.

As if Arakris knew what it meant. Knew what its significance was between them.

Even now, months later, Grey found that he could not let that go.

There was enough going on, he hardly needed his own problems piling up amongst them. Grey laughed sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck – even with no one around to see it. Ghost would have his soul for thinking like that. Thank goodness the Ghost-Guardian link did not stray so far as a mental connection. Grey loved his companion dearly, but that was a little too much, even for him.

As a matter of fact, nothing was currently going wrong for him. His problems honestly seemed quite minimal, compared to the far bigger issues the Vanguard was facing. First of all, the Eliksni quarters was a mess. What little the House of Light had managed to build had been subsequently destroyed in the wake of the Vex incursion. Guardians and Eliksni alike had been roped into the following clean-up. The House of Light was going to be a permanent fixture in the City, after all. It would be terrible hosting to set them up in the dangerous aftermath of a literal warzone. On the bright side, the Factions that had been causing so much trouble for the poor Eliksni refugees had now just about vanished from the City, and with their leadership either dead of MIA, the people who had been messing with the Eliksni would likely slow to a stop. With no support behind them, and a pissed of Saint between them and the Eliksni, what good would further acts of rebellion and hatred do?

That thought did not ease any of the tension, but at the very least it forced the humans to leave the Eliksni alone. It was not quite peace, and it was not perfect by any means, but for now it was something.

In addition to the Eliksni quarters being turned into a warzone – and probably more important, by follow-up severity – Osiris had been reported as missing. Ever since the end of the Endless Night, and the soon-to-be legendary battle in which Mithrax and Saint-14 fought valiantly, side by side, forging a new bond of trust and camaraderie that would herald a new relationship between humanity and Eliksni – all in Saint’s words, mind you – the ex-Warlock Vanguard seemed to have vanished. Grey had heard little else of the matter, choosing to rather help with the rebuilding efforts than the search for the Phoenix of the Dark Ages.

No offense to Osiris, or Saint, who Grey did respect as his elders and superiors in command, but the Warlock personally preferred to stick close to Arakris’ side, especially now.

So Osiris had vanished, and the Eliksni quarters had been trashed. That was the bad news. Savathûn, the infamous Witch Queen, had finally made a move that directly attacked the City from within. That was also bad news.

But there was good news too. The day had finally returned, and bright skies had greeted the City each morning for months since. The presence of daylight had certainly helped ease the tensions some – people had eventually found better things to do than bite and snarl at each other. Then there was the alliance between Saint and Mithrax, of course. That was good news too.

Grey sighed, leaning back on his arms as his legs dangled off the steel beam, staring listlessly out into the distance, eyes only vaguely tracking the movement of the clouds. The sky was still blue, but the air was nippier than before, slowly bleeding into the frosty chill of winter.

That was the big news – the news that the people of the City got to hear. Good and Bad, as everything always was in their lives. Treading a fine line between survival and oblivion, fighting to find the joy in every moment that they could treasure.

And with all the good and bad that was going around, Grey did not want to give too much time to think of his own situation. It was good right now. His relationship with this Arakris – he shook his head, knowing that ‘this Arakris’ was not an appropriate description for the Titan – had only improved in the past four months. They had only gotten closer since surviving the Vex fight, and the battle against Quria.

Hell, the victorious high of saving the entire City had certainly helped. Arakris had gained more confidence in himself as a Guardian, and in turn had gained more confidence when it came to himself and Grey. And as an added bonus, the Vanguard had not noticed anything of Arakris’ massively Guardian-esque display during the final battle to save both the House of Light and the City. It had been amazing to see, but a Light-damned terror to think of when Grey had remembered that they were supposed to be hiding Arakris’ powers. But by the grace of whatever higher being was laughing down at them, nothing bad had come of that.

Grey frowned, now glaring at the clouds as his nose scrunched in dissatisfaction.

Nothing bad, except the following; Grey recalled how Arakris had fought, and by the Light it had been amazing to watch. It truly proved that the Light kept the parts of its Chosen that would make them incredible fighting machines. But more so than that, he could not stop thinking about the way that Arakris had looked at him.

By the Light, only his Arakris had ever looked at him that way. And yet here he was, seeing that very same spark in those very same eyes, where they should not have been at all. The young Guardian was not the mortal Arakris, and yet the man who had fought by Grey’s side on that fateful night…

That was Arakris.

The real one.

Grey immediately shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut as his lips turned down. No. No! There was no such thing as the ‘real Arakris’. This Arakris was as much the real Arakris as the mortal one had once been.

That one was gone. Grey had mourned. He had moved on.

This one was young, new, and looked to Grey for guidance in his terribly confusing life. Grey loved him. Grey had mourned the love he lost, and found a new – not new – love, in the same – no, not the same – man.

How terribly naïve of him to think that his grief had been so easily solvable. But that was not a thought that registered to Grey – all he could think about was what Arakris had said to him.

Arakris had looked at him as if he loved him. As if all the stars in the sky were found in Grey’s eyes. As if he knew what love the word Starshine was supposed to hold. As if he understood the depths and significance of what he had been saying. Those words had been said once before, for their ears alone. The only person who would know them was the first Arakris himself.

“Then sun is coming up, my love. Tomorrow is a new day.” Grey repeated to himself, his voice echoing slightly in the valley of metal and concrete where he sat. “No, Tomorrow will be a new day. Last time he had told me to wake up. The second time he said that he wanted to see it together.” The Warlock frowned. Arakris had said it almost as if he were undoing a past mistake – new determination giving way to a new promise.

But that was impossible, right?

Arakris was gone.

Right? 

Grey leaned himself back on the massive steel beam, laying down until cold metal touched the back of his head. 

He knew that thinking too hard about this was going to cause more problems than it was worth. Everything was nice, with his Titan boyfriend. He could love his partner and not worry so much that he would die on him that easy. This Arakris could never leave him – would never leave him, not with how dependant Grey had made him. All the attention he had given, the guidance and care and protection… no way Arakris would ever think of leaving his side.

He would not lose his beloved again. Even if the Titan was a hollow imitation.

Grey hissed, sucking his teeth as the thought crossed his mind. No, no! Arakris was not a hollow imitation, he was a wonderful and kind individual.

The Warlock rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, pressing hard enough to see small stars on the backs of his eyelids. Ever since the events of the Endless Night, those thoughts had been cropping up more and more. Grey had ruthlessly stomped them all down, refusing to even accept a sprout of hope that his Arakris could ever return.

He had told himself that this Arakris would be enough, and he was damn well going to make good on that promise. He couldn’t lose Arakris again, the thought itself was more than Grey could bear.

If that meant accepting the new version of his lover, for all his differences, then so be it. What did it matter that for a brief moment, Grey had felt as if Arakris had been with him again, entirely and completely?

What did it matter, the random words that had left the Eliksni’s mouth during such a high-stakes moment? What did it matter that the depth of emotion in the Eliksni’s voice had been more in that one moment than it had ever been again over the past four months?

Grey unconsciously scratched at his chest, and subsequently made a face. His necklace – which he had lost during the battle against the Vex – was still missing. He had, at this point, accepted that he was never seeing it again, but that did not make the thought easier to swallow.

It was the last real connection he had to his mortal beloved. This Arakris still had his half of the pendant, but the meaning to it was almost entirely lost to him. He knew it was a promise, but he did not know of what, and who was Grey to tell him?

As much as the Warlock wanted to press, and perhaps speak of who Arakris had once been, if only to see what it might bring out of the other man, Grey knew that he could not. Telling Arakris the truth about his previous life was simply against Grey’s personal code. And what good would it do, to get his hopes up and then have them dashed so utterly and entirely, by the innocent Titan who simply did not know who he was supposed to be?

No! Grey shot upright, clapping his palms against his cheeks. “No! Not supposed to be! Arakris is perfectly fine the way he is! I love him, this him and the him that I lost, but it’s ok! I mourned the man I lost, and I found a way to love him again… that’s good enough right?” He muttered to himself, slipping his thumb between his lips to worry at the nail – an action that he had never done before this point. “I’m doing what he would have wanted. I’ve found something to live for. Just cause I’m still living for him doesn’t mean it doesn’t count. Right?” He mumbled around his digit, staring out at the clouds in the clear blue sky, shivering a little as the crisp air breezed past, sinking through his layered clothing and somehow still bringing a chill to his skin.

The silence that reigned over the City felt fragile, as did the peace that Grey’s life had found in recent days. Outwardly, all things seemed normal. The battle had been fought and won, people had been lost and mourned, but many more had been saved. The City was moving on, clearing up the wreckage to make room for the new, and it was good. It was quiet, finally.

However, the quiet only reigned on the surface. The peace was as fragile as the frost that barely clung to blades of grass as the first rays of sun slowly melted them away. Both within the City and within Grey.

For all that he had not wanted to allow a hope to blossom, it had quite easily taken root in his love for his Arakris. It was a terrible hope, a poisonous hope. The hope that the man he loved was still somehow there, and that he might one day find him again. It was this hope that slowly disregarded the new Arakris, as much as Grey insisted that he loved the Titan as much as he had once loved the Captain.

Too desperate to cling to what joy he could find, Grey had neglected the growing storm that festered beneath the gentle façade of joy. But he continued to neglect it, commanding himself to remain true to his love – although some days Grey himself could not tell if he loved Arakris for who he was, or who’s face he had. It was a bitter consideration that Grey refused to face.

There was too much going on around him, he convinced himself, glancing down at the glowing lights of the City, for a mere Warlock to allow his problems to get in his way. The Eliksni quarters clean-up, which was still ongoing despite it being months down the line. The search for Osiris, although Grey had little to nothing to do with that. The Dawning was nearing, even, and what was a better distraction than a little bit of holiday whimsey?

Nodding to himself, Grey stood, dusting off his long-coat and beginning the climb back up to a proper platform on the wall. The Dawning was coming. He needed to find Arakris a present. No time to sit around thinking about dangerous ‘what ifs’. It was already a miracle enough that Arakris had been chosen as a Guardian. Asking for his lover to still somehow be present within the amnesiac Light bearer was simply too much.

The little bud of hope within Grey’s heart grew just a little, as Arakris’ words during the Vex showdown played on repeat in his mind.

It was quiet, although the peace was a fragile thing, barely hiding the roiling discontent that lay just beneath the surface.

Had Grey been a more poetic man, like the original Arakris had once been, he might have likened the situation to a verse from an ancient Earth poem; “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

As it stood, Grey was not such a poetic spirit, but he was smart. Even though he did not want to address the uneasy quiet, he could not escape the words that passed through his mind as he turned his back on the glowing lights of the City.

It was always calmest before the storm, but for once, the Warlock wanted to believe that life would be so peaceful, if only for a little while.

---------

The Endless Night was over. Hooray. Months down the line Grey – and many other Guardians – were still stuck with the aftermath.

The unearthly excitement that had infested the City for the first few days of sunlight had long since begun to wane, and the momentary reprieve of victory for the Guardians had ended as abruptly as it began. Heroes one moment, janitors the next.

With the receding wave of euphoric victory, the rising tide of responsibilities slapped Grey in the face much sooner than he would have liked. Oh sure, one moment you’re elbow deep in Vex, fighting off an insurgence that risks the livelihood of all who lived in the City, and the next minute you’re also part of the clean-up crew that has to sweep dead robots off the streets.

The consolation to that was that he got to pick where he chose to work, and Grey – naturally – made a beeline for ground zero. If he was going to be on the clean-up duty, he was damn well doing it together with Arakris. Much more fun than working alongside the other whining Guardians. At least they were all in agreement on one thing; cleaning up Vex juices sucked.

It was this exact sentiment that was currently being groused about by every Guardian in sight, each carrying a bucket and a shovel with which to scrape up the dried and contaminated ground where the Vex blood had been spilled.

Most areas had already been melted or scorched by the highly acidic ‘blood’, leaving behind dried patches and off-colour mounds of dirt that needed to be cleared away to prevent the area from becoming entirely unliveable for mortals.

Because of the danger Vex juice posed to mortals, it also meant that the only people on the scene were Guardians. Thankfully, ever since the Night had ended, a not insignificant number of Guardians had eased up towards the Eliksni. Following in the great Saint’s footsteps, they had chosen to accept the olive branch and treat the House of Light as what they truly where in this situation; refugees seeking a new home and safety.

Grey rolled his neck, his shoulders aching a little from the hours of dirt shovelling that he had been doing. In his eagerness to spend more time with Arakris, he had forgotten that Arakris could not help with this part of the clean-up, since he was still pretending to be mortal. This left Grey to wander the streets of the run-down slums together with a number of other Guardians, shovels in hand, ready to manually remove all traces of their mechanical foes.

The chills of winter were setting in faster, these days, as night came along quicker. On the bright side, the City was flooded with warm light, lanterns and giant wreaths of brightly coloured bulbs hung up all around. Even if the nights were becoming longer, the streets were constantly filled with a welcoming light, as the spirit of the Dawning began to kick in.

Grey had already finalized his plans, for the winter celebration. He was going to celebrate with his family – Sinister, Crimson, and Arakris – at the human Titan’s apartment. Unlike Grey, Sinister actually had a knack – and a passion – for interior decorating, and his home was far more welcoming than the Hunter’s or the Warlock’s by far. Although Grey had been the one to approach Sinister about the idea of celebrating together, the Titan had happily taken over responsibility of planning, all too happy that the elusive Warlock was finally spending a winter season on Earth instead of out in space.

Granted, most of the time, they were busy even through the Dawning, celebrating on the go. But now, with more things to do within the City – as far as Grey and his fireteam were concerned – they all curbed their wanderlust for the sake of the rebuilding efforts.

Grey would forever deny that he was just sticking around because he could not so easily spirit Arakris away with him anymore. Not now that the Titan had been taken under Mithrax-Kell’s wing. Not when Grey had been told what significance the man held to the Eliksni Kell. For all that the Warlock would have gladly taken Arakris wherever the Titan wanted to go, as things stood right now, his Eliksni lover was tied to the House of Light for the foreseeable future.

Yellow eyes rolled in their sockets as Grey levelled the ground with a dour glare. Metal scraped against concrete as he attacked another patch of corroded dirt. Stupid Splicer shit, stupid Mithrax! Why the Kell had thought it appropriate to bring up the idea that Arakris might be the prophesied Kell of Kells, Grey could not conceive. A few months ago he had agreed, sure. Even Grey could see the significant value of having the one and only known Eliksni Light Bearer on your team. But now, it was simply too much! Grey had no idea what the Kell was saying to Arakris behind closed doors, but if he was encouraging his people to view Arakris as some mythical saviour, that was simply too much! He was layering all of these expectations on an innocent young Titan who was still learning to understand the world that he was living in, and that was simply wrong!

Huffing, the Warlock stabbed the shovel into the ground with a little too much force, breaking the metal tip through the concrete floor with a sharp crack.

“Hey!” A familiar voice snapped at him, footsteps approaching him in a hurry. “We’re trying to clean up here, can you not add to the list of things we have to do?”

Grey rolled his eyes again, but offered his sister a sarcastic smile. “Remind me again, who made you chief of operations here? Last I checked we were all voluntold to do this.”

Crimson, for her part, only levelled Grey with her unimpressed stare, yellow optics glowing brightly in their casing. The pale sunlight reflected of the sleek black metal of her exo-skeleton, brightening the yellow stripe that ran down the centre of her head and face. Her ‘ears’ – pointed antennae that came out of the side of her head on either side – twitched, the biggest tell of her displeasure at her brother’s tone.

“I’m also volunteering. Someone’s got to make sure you don’t cause more trouble than you should, though.” She replied, swiping the shovel from Grey’s hands and picking up where he had left off. The bucket that rested beside her quickly filled with earth, and the Exo handed the shovel back.

Hefting the bucket, Crimson inclined her head towards Grey’s own, indicating for him to hurry up and get done.

Taking the hint, Grey cleared up the remaining contaminated ground. Picking up his own bucket, he fell into step beside Crimson as she marched back towards the disposal heap – the toxic matter was to be gathered in one place and then disposed of in a place where it could not cause any further harm. Grey was pretty sure that was just fancy talk for ‘we’re dumping it back into the Network somewhere else’. He was alright with that – good riddance to send the mess right back to where it came from. At this point they were just about clearing the remaining vestiges of the battle – the first few months had been the clean-up of corpses and rubble, and now it was just down to properly sterilising the area for regular mortals. The Eliksni quarters proper had long since been cleaned, but the surrounding area was not. This entire operation would not have lasted into winter had the portal not launched Vex all over the City, leaving plenty of carnage to keep the cleaning bots and numerous Guardians busy for months.

Crimson eyed her brother, as he walked beside her. She doubted that Grey was aware of it, but his face twitched into various expressions as he thought, giving away that he was currently over-thinking.

With-holding a sigh at her brother’s busy-body nature, Crimson glanced around for a topic to talk about. An idea lit up in her mind, and she felt the plates at the corner of her mouth shift a little, mimicking a smile.

Although it was still a sore topic for her, Crimson was quite happy that Arakris’ surprising reappearance had brought her brother back to life. Granted, the man was not who he once was, such was the unfortunate nature of being a Guardian, but still. Something of him was back, even if this Arakris was an entirely different person. Despite Crimson’s personal hang-up on the situation, she liked this Arakris too. He lacked some of the charisma that the mortal version had, but the 10-year-old Hunter could hardly hold it against the 6-month-old Titan. Sure they were all adults, mentally, but without memories and experience they had no choice but to rebuild who they had once been. New influences would likely build them into new people. This new Arakris… he would become someone different to who Grey had once loved, but as long as he made the Warlock happy, Crimson was alright with it.

With that thought in mind, the Hunter decided to bring back an ancient experiment – loathe to call it a hobby – of hers. Start a conversation and see how long it takes for Grey to make it about Arakris.

“Winter’s not too harsh this year.” The Exo said, looking up at the sky and the sparse clouds. It was already inching past midday, and the sun was just past its peak in the sky. In a few hours it would be dark again, but thankfully, there was nothing to fear in the coming night. “I’m still glad that I don’t really feel the cold like you do. Can’t imagine digging through acidic dirt that’s also frozen is that great. At least we have the Dawning to look forward to.”

Grey only hummed and nodded, eyes still focused on the space in front of him. At least his frown had softened, his forehead no longer creasing under the force of his expression.

“Have you already thought of presents?” Crimson asked. She was breaking the parameters of her experiment by actively encouraging Grey to think about the Eliksni man, but the Exo already found it strange enough that the Awoken had not responded at all.

“Not really. I already have gifts for all of you – even you, Crimson, despite how little you like extra trinkets.” Was his answer. He turned his eyes up to the sky. “You’re right about the cold, you know. Maybe the seasons know how terrible our summer and autumn was, so winter is being gentle. At the very least the Eliksni won’t have to deal with such harsh conditions while here. Can’t get any worse than Europa.”  He muttered, lips barely moving as he spoke.

At this point, Crimson was openly staring at the Warlock with concerned optics. Back when they had been on Europa together, it had taken all of five words for Grey to start talking about Arakris again! Her brow plate shifted, forming a light frown on her features. On the one hand, it stood to reason that Grey was simply focused on the task at hand – he really seemed to care for the Eliksni refugees, so it would make sense that he was a bit more absorbed with the rebuilding efforts here. On the other hand, Grey was absolutely obsessed with Arakris. Crimson considered this one of the few absolute truths of life, at this point.

For the Awoken man to not be gushing about his lover, Crimson could not help but feel that something was wrong.

“Grey-“ She began, standing still. When he turned to look at her, the Warlock was surprised at the open concern in the Hunter’s inorganic eyes. “Are you alright?”

Grey blinked for a second, as if processing what the Exo said. Then he laughed, ducking his head with a tired grin. “Yeah- yeah, I’m alright, Crim. Just been stuck in one place for too long, that’s all.”

The Hunter nodded, not buying it entirely, but still a little relived at Grey’s explanation. The Warlock was not the type of person who functioned well while being cooped up in one place. As far as Crimson knew, the only enclosed space that Grey felt truly at ease in was his beloved ship, Obsidian Wings. Since the events of the Endless Night, Grey had not left Earth. Between rebuilding for the refugees, and the City itself, the Warlock had found more work to do planet-side than out amongst the stars. Not to mention, Arakris was here, and he could not leave. The Eliksni was now more officially tied to the House of Light, as one of their named – and trusted – Splicers, at this point. Or at least, as far as the Vanguard was concerned. It would simply be too strange to run around with one of the Eliksni Splicers on such buddy-buddy terms. None of this was particularly improved by the fact that the Titan in question would not leave the House of Light.

In the end, Grey was stuck here – mostly of his own volition, but stuck nonetheless.

Turning her own eyes up to the sky, where the stars were still hidden beyond the blue of their atmosphere, Crimson hummed.

“You miss it, don’t you?” The Exo said. “The freedom.”

Grey only made an affirmative noise. “Me too.” Crimson admitted after a moment of silence. “I love the stars as much as you, Grey. Being here is… stifling. But these people need us, and I am happy to help. Not just because I am a Guardian, but because it is the right thing to do. I’m proud of you too, for sticking with it for so long,” The Exo placed a gentle hand against the Warlock’s upper arm, cool metal sapping heat even through the layers of his clothing, “But there’s also nothing wrong with taking breaks every so often.”

Grey shook his head ruefully, before nodding. “You’re right, of course, but… I can’t go far. Arakris- he won’t leave Earth, because of Mithrax and… all that.” He sighed. “And I don’t want to leave his side.”

Crimson just shrugged, before shifting the weight of her bucket so that she carried it with both hands again. “But maybe leaving the City will do you both some good. Not far, just a little trip away from the noise of this place. Might help your relationship if you both finally just get to be yourselves.” The Exo offered.

The Warlock opened his mouth to protest, but was silenced by a sharp look from his sister. She was right, after all. While within the bounds of the City, Grey was an Awoken Warlock and Arakris was an Eliksni Splicer. Both were bound to very separate duties and neither were free to really be themselves. Sure, their relationship over the past four months had constantly improved, but as Grey thought of it, he realised that honestly it was too easily relatable to a close friendship. Although Arakris did love him, and Grey loved Arakris, they found very little room to truly express that here.

Nodding to himself, Grey’s eyes regained a familiar sparkle as a plan began to form in his mind. “That’s… actually a pretty good idea Crim. Thank you.”

The Exo gave a non-committal grunt, and continued walking towards the slowly growing pile of contaminated dirt and concrete. Grey only smiled, and trotted along behind her, carrying his own ridiculously heavy bucket and silently thanking the Light for his Guardian strength.

He could take his little vacation, but at the very least the work here had to be finished first.

Chapter Text

Arakris sighed, blue eyes fixated on the body of his lover as the Guardian moved about, clearing up the mess of the invasion. The Warlock appeared entirely unaware of his stalker, and the Titan was happy to leave it that way. Arakris needed to think.

The Dawning was approaching, and he was having serious questions about what he was going to gift Grey. The entire holiday had been explained to him during a brief conversation with Crow, and Arakris had first felt incredible excitement at the prospect of giving his Grey a present.

But, as the weeks had dragged on, doubts had begun to creep in. The Warlock meant so much to him, and Arakris wanted to show his appreciation, but he wondered if his idea of gifting the engraved ring was perhaps pushing it a bit too far.

They had only been ‘dating’ – an unfamiliar human term that Grey had needed to explain to him – for just over four months, and while Arakris felt that their relationship was going very well, in the back of his mind he had doubts that he simply could not shake.

Yet still, doubts and all, Arakris could not stop the gentle smile that softened his features as he watched his Awoken partner work alongside the other Guardians. While he could not be of any real assistance in the matter – since he was a mortal Eliksni, as far as the Vanguard was concerned – Arakris spent quite a bit of time simply watching the Warlock work from afar, hidden from the eyes of the many Light Bearers milling about in the streets below.

The Eliksni’s large frame leaned against the stone wall that enclosed the roof of one of the nearby buildings. For a human, the surprisingly sturdy wall would have come up to chest height, but for Arakris, it was perfect to rest on, his arms cradling his torso and face as he stared at Grey’s familiar mop of teal-grey hair.

A melancholy sigh left the Titan’s mouth, warm breath curling into white mist as it mingled with the cool air. He raised his eyes, tearing his gaze away from Grey’s distant form and up to the massive heavenly body that floated above the Last City.

“What is the point, in all of this?” Arakris sighed, mostly to himself. The words were weighed with a certain exhaustion, the tone of someone who was simply becoming too burdened, or burnt out, with the life they were living.

“What’s the point of what? Staring at Grey? Or the Guardians cleaning up the Vex mess?” Star’s high-pitched voice asked out of the blue as the little machine popped into existence beside Arakris’ head. Long used to his ghost’s antics, Arakris did even spare a reaction to her sudden appearance. Drifting into his line of sight, Star’s single eye narrowed a little as she studied her Guardian.

Arakris offered the ghost a gentle smile, holding out one of his massive hands for her to nestle in. Readily lowering herself into his touch, the shell of the ghost clicked together, shifting as the little machine made herself comfortable.

“What’s the point in all things, little Star.” Arakris answered, although the cryptic statement did little to enlighten his companion. Star’s optic only tilted in a frown, to which Arakris shook his head with a fond chuckle. “The way I see it, it’s always worth keeping an eye on Grey. Certainly helps that he’s very easy on the eyes.” To that, the ghost only gave a non-committal hum that bordered on a vague sounding ‘gross’. “Besides, I don’t… I don’t know, I just cannot leave him alone – I don’t want to leave him alone. I feel like I always have to be by his side, looking after him. Watching his back, yanno? Specially since we worked so well together in the Endless Night… I just want to keep living up to that. It’s not as if he needs my protection, imagine that, but… I still want to protect him, and keep him safe.”

Star nodded, taking off from her Guardian’s palm to spin around in the air and join in on his Warlock watching.

“Well I guess that makes sense – you look up to him right? He’s a strong, kind Guardian, and you really like him right? Seems reasonable that you’d want to impress him, and keep him safe.” The ghost said, chipper and encouraging.

Arakris smiled, but shook his head slightly. “That’s not all- you are right, of course, but that is not all. I feel like… I feel this urge deep within my heart, this burning need to protect him, to be beside him at all times. It is… scary. We’ve only been together for a few months, and yet sometimes I look at him and my entire brain is on fire with the urge to touch and hold him. I shouldn’t love him as much as I do, but by the stars, I do! I adore him, and I’m terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing and making him think that I am not worthy of him anymore. I’m terrified of how much I care.”

The ghost turned back to her Guardian, concern and pity shining in her single blue eye. “Well, you love him, so isn’t all of that alright? And you know that he cares for you too, very much. What’s there to worry about then?”

One of his hands fished out the broken pendant around his neck, dangling the little metal accessory from it’s surprisingly durable chain. “This. This is what I worry about.” The Titan ignored the flat look his ghost sent that clearly read ‘still?’. “Look, Star, it’s more than just a relic from my past life. Along with the ring, it’s the biggest connection I have to it, and I just know… I just know Grey knows more about this than he’s letting on. Than he may ever let on. I respect that he tells me not to push, but I will never stop looking for answers. Not when my heart is telling me that it has to do with him. I need to know.”

The look of determination that hardened in the Eliksni’s four eyes made Star want to smile. Instead, she swirled her shell around her, bouncing a little in the air. “I think it’s fine, if you want to know more. ‘Sides, Ana Brey knows all about her past and she’s a Guardian too! So it’s only fair, that you, my unique and amazing and incredible Guardian, get to figure it out!” She chirruped.

Arakris flashed his ghost a grateful smile, before it fell from his face. Sagging against the wall, he let his head fall back into his upper hands.

He was quiet for a moment, before releasing a heavy groan. Rubbing his fingers against his faceplates – carefully avoiding his eyes with his sharp claws – Arakris looked balefully up at the Traveller. What a strange thing, with such a coloured past. From what little Arakris had learned from Crow during his two month crash-course to life on the moon, the Traveller was almost akin to a god to the humans who settled beneath it. After all, it had brought forth the Guardians, practically powerful demigods, to protect them.

After hearing the more dreadful history his Eliksni comrades had with the Traveller and it’s actions, Arakris was far more inclined to believe that nothing the Great Machine did was for the good of anyone but itself. Demigods made to protect the last of humanity from the Darkness. What a load of crap.

Mindless puppets built to form a disposable line of defence between it and the one thing it truly feared, more like. Although perhaps disposable was the incorrect word, with Guardians and Ghosts becoming a rarer commodity by the day. There were many once, and there were many still – but as the numbers dropped, they kept on dropping. For every ghost that died, there was no new one to take its place. But the Traveller must have had faith, that the faith of the humans and its personally selected arsenal of champions would drive them to protect it at all costs. And it had, from what Arakris had heard. Tales of the Red War were old news, but not forgotten, and a small handful of the humans who helped out in the Eliksni Quarters were often ready to speak of their own tragic history, perhaps as a way to connect with the tragic history of the refugees. Usually they talked more over a drink or two, but Arakris had never quite found the patience to deal with the four-limbed creatures. Other than Grey, that was. And Crow, and to an extent, the Warlock’s fireteam. But they were all Guardians, and it was different – for all intents and purposes, they were cut of the same cloth.

But the Red War. A truly tragic time, a horrible and bloody campaign that had seared itself into the history of the Last City forever. Hundreds of Guardians, lost to their final death. Hundreds of civilians, lost to their only death. And yet, even as the Traveller lay dormant and weak in the City’s final hour, lightless Guardians found a way to reconnect with the Light and burn Ghaul to the ground.  

Arakris could not help but wonder; was it for the sake of the City, the Traveller, or themselves? Had the Guardians done it for the future of humanity, or simply because they had not wanted to die, lightless, scared, and alone. The same way millions of Eliksni had been snuffed out in the aftermath of the Whirlwind. The Titan supressed the growl that began growing in his throat, relaxing the glare that he had unconsciously levelled at the Great Machine. He had not been there for any of this, but upon learning of it, from the kind Eliksni that treated him as family, Arakris had certainly felt a significant level of disdain for the Traveller.

Why choose humanity, when it had chosen to abandon the Eliksni? And if it had chosen to abandon the Eliksni, why choose an Eliksni to become a Guardian?

Truly, what was the point of it all?

“Why was I ever chosen?” the question was murmured to the wind, but the ghost beside him caught the faint words with ease.

“Because you called out to me, Arakris!” Star was quick to answer. “Your voice – your essence – called out to me across space, and I came as fast as I could to be by your side, because in my core I know that you are meant to be something great! Something spectacular, something wonderful that the world has never seen before!” The ghost ended her speech with an excited twirl, spinning little motes of light around her like stardust as she went.

Brushing off the praise, Arakris stepped back from the wall, claws dragging over the rough concrete surface. “And yet look at me. A Titan who no-one but the Eliksni knows! I have done none of these ‘great things’ you speak of, and must spend all of my time hiding who I am! What greatness is there in that? What is so spectacular about it, what wonder can be found in a life like mine? I am not even free to be who I am – both as Grey’s lover and as a Guardian!” He snapped, anger building as a rush in him, before flushing out again with his last sentence. With that burst of resentment, the Titan realised that it must have been building for a while now. Actually saying the words helped a little though, as it gave form to a nameless feeling of discomfort and discontent.

Star could only stare at her Guardian, suddenly a little disheartened. For a moment, her optic shuttered to black, as her mind fuzzed through a series of staticky words and mismatched memories.

Kell of… Arakris-….Light….bonded- no, bondmate…

 Within a second, however, the strangeness passed. The ghost frowned to herself, suddenly itching to say something – but she did not know what. The words were right there, on the tip of her voice modulator, but for the life of the little machine, she could not figure out what they meant. Had that truly been a memory? The ghost worried for a moment that she might be experiencing a software glitch, but with how advanced her systems were – being a light driven ‘spirit’, technically – she quickly dismissed that notion. Still, the images that had flashed across her visor had seemed too vivid, even in their broken-ness, to be imagination. Ghosts were not exactly well-known for their imaginations. That was not to say that they did not have them, but it was simply different to how humans and most other organic creatures would have such things.

Instead, the ghost settled on her go-to means of comfort. Immense boasting. “Things may be difficult now, Arakris, but remember what good you did standing by Grey’s side. You – and no one else – helped save the City from both the Endless Night and Savathûn’s calculated Vex attack! A double-whammey! Not many Guardians can attest to being so involved in greatness, and especially at such a young age of rebirth.” Star boasted proudly, her shell almost puffing out with delight. “Besides, I’m sure we’ll figure something out for you to use your power eventually, but the way I see it, you’re plenty important as is! You’re one of the Splicers of House of Light, and one of it’s strongest protectors. Well, actually, you are its strongest protector. Pretty sure you could beat Mithrax-Kell in a fistfight- anyway!” Star quickly reigned herself in as she realised that she was rambling. “You’re great friends with more than one Guardian, and all of the Eliksni. I mean, think about how much little Yknar looks up to you! He always says how much he wants to be like you, I can see it in his eyes! And who can blame him? You’re the best!”

To her delight, Arakris actually chuckled at that, his sombre mood lifting some as his posture straightened out. While the stance was a strange thing to see amongst the Eliksni, Star had long since grown accustom to the way her Guardian held himself. Just another thing that made him special, in her opinion.

“While I appreciate the sweet-talking, I doubt my position in House of Light is anything to throw a parade over. I’m just another Eliksni, to Misraaks, even though he knows what I truly am. Perhaps he sees me as a strong asset, which is true, but I hate that I cannot use the skills I was given.” He flexed his fingers in front of him, feeling the current of arc energy running just beneath his dark skin. Then his mouth split open in a teasing smirk, as he leaned closer to his ghost. “But you know, you’re wrong about Yknar wanting to be like me. When he talks to me in my language, he uses our word for the colour grey.” Arakris explained.

Star’s single eye stared blankly at her Guardian, before her shell pulsed around her in disbelief.

“He likes me plenty, but it’s Grey that he’s really obsessed with. Not that he’ll ever tell my Warlock, poor kid’s too embarrassed.” The Titan chuckled, shaking his head. Star laughed too, far louder and shriller, but obviously amused. Arakris suddenly frowned, a flash of mock-concern in his blue eyes. “Maybe I should keep an eye on that kid after all… don’t want him liking Grey too much.”

Star just laughed harder at that. Her Guardian was so ridiculous, it was beyond funny! As if any of the other Eliksni shared his preference for the fleshy humans they now found themselves surrounded by! And what threat did Yknar pose to the clearly adult male, who was a Guardian to boot. The ghost shook her central sphere, rolling her optic at Arakris and his antics.

A few months ago, these flashes of possessiveness towards Grey had fallen into her list of ‘things Arakris does when he acts weird’, but recently he had stopped acting weird as often, and the ghost has simply filed it away as ‘shit Arakris does because he’s absolutely head over heels in love with Grey’.

As Arakris stared off into space, his eyes found their way back to the Traveller again.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get an answer for why I was made, when the Light abandoned my people. But I find myself grateful for this life. Even though I hate being cooped up here, stifling my power and the urge to just let it out. I hate having to hide you, and hide what I am. I hate having to act like Grey’s friend, when out in public, when I just want to hold his hand, or hug him, maybe even kiss him, whenever I want. If I did not have to be in this City, I would leave in a heartbeat if Grey would follow, but Grey loves the House of Light, and so do I… I cannot leave them, for he would not leave.” The Titan let out a deep sigh, his shoulder sagging heavily as he exhaled. “I hate that we are trapped, Star. But I am still grateful. Living again gave me the chance to meet Grey, and Crow, and Sinister and Crimson, and Naksis, Yknar, Misraakskell, and most importantly, you.”

The little ghost fluttered her shell happily at her Guardian’s words, before buzzing over to him to nuzzle her shell against the Eliksni’s thick scarf.

“Great things are going to come for you, my beloved Guardian, I’m sure of it.” The ghost promised vehemently, absolute confidence filling her voice. “But in the meanwhile… I know you say you can’t leave the City, but you know you can still leave the City, right? You’re a Guardian who has to live as a regular Eliksni – pretty sure vacation days are whenever the heck you choose ‘em to be.” Star chirruped, turning her eye to look up at the Eliksni’s face.

Arakris’ mandibles twitched, the only recognition Star got for her words. “If you ask Grey, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to take you on another short trip out into the EDZ, or maybe even somewhere beyond that, if you want.” She continued, trying to prompt her Guardian into a much-needed moment of absolute freedom.

The Titan was still, body entirely rigid, and Star waited patiently, staring up at him without blinking.

Three…Two… One-

“Are you fucking serious?” Arakris snapped, before clapping one of his upper hands over his mouth and cringing at how loud his voice rang out around him. Already planning on asking Grey to take him out of the City for a while, the Eliksni scampered away from the edge of the building and ran off before any of the Guardian’s below could catch sight of him.

He’d figure out the issue of a present later; maybe a nice, burden free date away from the eyes of the Vanguard would even give him some inspiration.

Arakris nodded to himself, then decided to get Star a new shell as thanks for her brilliant idea. He’d have to ask one of his Guardian friends for help with that too. Thankfully he had a few.

-----------

If headaches had been a thing for ghosts, Aaraxsis would have cursed his existence a thousand times over. As it stood, he settled for only cursing it about fifteen times over, before rolling onto his back and staring listlessly at the off-white sky of his wonderful home.

He just had to go and be a hero, didn’t he? He just had to go and help his stupid living knock-off self save the Last City from the Vex, thereby ending the overabundant flow of energy that had filled the City.

Ok so he could not argue that those were not objectively the better solutions here, but still! Saving the City was a good thing and all, but by cutting of the Network that had blanketed over it, he had just about cut off his own get-out-of-jail free card!

Without the overabundance of the Network’s energy, and the deep connection he could form with it as a Splicer, Aaraxsis discovered that he was incapable of properly taking over Arakris’ – no, his own – accursed body!

Just as well he had not revealed his presence to his beloved Starshine – how well that would have gone over, for him to reveal to Grey that he was still there, only for the poor Warlock to have to settle for the half-empty cup that was living Arakris. Terrible, Aaraxsis was certain.

Sure, he had told Grey to let him go, back when the Warlock was dreaming and essentially wasting away again and again, but things were different now! Grey was not in the process of allowing his own grief to consume him, and was in fact constantly within arms reach to boot! Oh how it tortured Aaraxsis, more than any pain he had ever been forced to endure in his lifetime.

The mere fact that he had to deal with his Starshine loving on his living self while he was still stuck in a fucking bubble was becoming more than the Eliksni could bear!

At least during the Endless Night, there had been such an open channel to the Network of Light that any time Arakris tried to employ his Splicer skills, Aaraxsis could easily take over their body. His body. But now, Aaraxsis was essentially trapped. His strongest feelings bled through to the outside, as well as his natural protective nature and skill as a warrior. But more than that? If only he were so fortunate. Only extreme bursts of emotion felt by both him or his counterpart weakened the Light around him enough for Aaraxsis to temporarily assert control, but even those moments were brief – and worse, few and far between. His counterpart was ridiculously mellow!

The man hardly felt extreme emotion, almost as if he was purposefully blocking Aaraxsis away from the world, from his Starshine!

The Eliksni groaned, burying his face in his dominant hands as his lower ones bunched into fists, tugging at the fabric of his scarf – his entire outfit being an exact replica of whatever his counterpart wore – in unholy frustration.

Now he was just being ridiculous! Arakris did not even know he was here! All that stupid Light wielder did was mope about and play with the children, or get too damn close with Grey!

Aaraxsis’ train of thought came to a screeching halt. The Eliksni jolted upright, hands dropping away from his face and scarf. With a pained, befuddled expression, the man tried to piece together the logic of being jealous of what was essentially himself, doing the exact thing he would have wanted, to ensure his Grey’s happiness.

“Pfft, as if.” He scoffed to no one, his voice not even echoing in the empty space. “As if this new Arakris could come even close to making Grey as happy as I could. Sure, he’s a part of me, but he’s not me. I am everything, and he’s just a small piece of that everything. How could he ever measure up?” The Eliksni bared his teeth at nothing.

Tilting his head, Aaraxsis pulled out his pendant, cradling the broken thing in his upper hands. He stroked the faint lettering tenderly, and for a moment wondered where the other half had ended up. Was it still in that dreaded cave somewhere on the Tangled Shore?

“I hope not. I will have to remember to go and find it, if I ever get the chance.” Aaraxsis smiled, but it was a sad, rueful expression. “If only reuniting both halves would be enough to fix our promise. But it won’t,” he sighed, “because I am gone.”

Sad blue eyes took in the detail of his broken pendant, thumb tracing the warped edge of metal where Crimson’s Golden Gun bullet had pierced through and shattered it apart. The wording was burnt off there, lost to the melting heat of solar flame. Arakris knew what was missing, however.

Arakris & Grey, to Stars Beyond. The & was gone, as was the latter half of the wording – the being Grey and Beyond – and if that was not just cruel irony. For their promise – stars above, for Grey’s precious marriage proposal – to have been shattered like that, right down the middle, it almost seemed like divine spite. Breaking them apart and shattering their promise.

The Eliksni shook his head, eyes full of resentful amusement.

Just over six months. That was how long he had been trapped in here. Four months. That was how long he had been within arms reach of Grey, and thoroughly unable to touch him still. And because he could not promise permanence – stars above, Aaraxsis did not know if he even could regain full control – he could not even let his Starshine know the truth.

He could not even give Grey hope.

“I wanted to see the sunrise with him, you know.” Aaraxsis said to no one – as he had done, often, over the past few months. “The first time, I just wanted him to wake up and live again. But the second time I meant what I said – I swore it. I just wanted to see the new day come, standing by his side. And I can’t even… let him know… that.” The Eliksni trailed off, freezing in place.

Oh no.

Had he not used those exact words in the heat of the moment, during the battle against the Vex in the Eliksni Quarters? He had only spoken them to prove his conviction, so that Grey could know that he could trust in Arakris’ oath to break the portal.

It dawned on the horrified spirit then, what his words might have already betrayed.

A pained cry escaped his mouth as Aaraxsis fell back against the floor, head once again buried in his dominant hands.

His rough voice was near guttural as he continued to shout, cursing in every language that he knew words from.

“I fucked up!”

----------

Even the best laid plans were bound to go awry. Crow should have learned this by now. And still, the reminder left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, as he strode away from the meeting hall of tall, crystalline stone.

Everything around here was so beautiful, and it hurt his eyes, if the Hunter was being quite honest. He had spent the better part of his Rebirth in less than savoury places, so the resplendent grandeur of the Awoken structures weighed fairly heavy on his senses. Even when he had helped Grey during the Wrathborn hunts, Crow had done little to no sight-seeing in the Dreaming City.

Sure, then he had been very focused, with a pressing mission that was occupying most of his processing capacity. But even now, with time to spare, Crow found that he wanted to hurry back to his ship much more than stand around and admire the intricate structures of the Awoken ‘homeland’. Even in its rundown and as-good-as abandoned state, the Dreaming City still had an air of absolute ornateness to it. It was as regal as the beautiful people who had inhabited it once – as regal as the Queen who now returned, and the Warlock who Crow called friend.

The Hunter supposed that it did make sense – that a race of unnaturally stunning creatures would find themselves drawn to creating equally stunning structures. It was almost amazing, in fact, how well the crystalline halls of the massive buildings that sat abandoned across the Dreaming City held up when compared to the run down… everything, back on Earth. The human structures had long faded into warped metal and broken stone, although there was a different kind of beauty to be found in the way nature reintegrated with what had once been there.

On the other hand, Crow considered as he looked around, maybe the Dreaming City existed in such a silent, limbo-like state of eternal perfection because it was quite literally trapped in said silent, limbo-like state of eternal perfection. Caught in a moment of absolute beauty and absolute destruction, never to escape the cruel, repetitive cycle to which the last Great Ahamkara had wished it.

Alright, so Crow enjoyed delving into poetic, philosophical concepts, who could blame him? The Guardian wasted no time in thinking it odd to feel a small amount of shame at his behaviour, even though no one was there to witness it. Instead, he continued walking, boots tapping against the reflective stone floor with a dull thump that reverberated off the high walls. He wanted to get to his ship, and leave. To go as far as possible from here and think about what he had just heard – what he had just witnessed.

To not think about any of it at all.

Everything that had just transpired had twisted the Hunter’s guts into an uncomfortable knot that still roiled within him, turning his stomach over and making him feel uneasy. The Awoken Queen, long thought dead – she was back, by some miracle. It meant little to Crow, as he had been Reborn into the world long after she had disappeared from it. And yet, there was a strange, itchy feeling at the back of his skull that he could not shake, every time that woman had looked at him.

Her expression; it had been just like Grey’s, when the Warlock had first laid eyes on the Hunter. Like they had seen a ghost. The greatest difference here was the amount of pain that had flashed through Mara Sov’s eyes, before the emotion was quickly buried beneath cool indifference.

It burned at Crow’s mind; what reason did she have to look at him that way? There had been such raw emotion in her gaze, if only for a fraction of a second. No other person who saw his face had reacted like that – and Crow was used to extreme reactions.

His scale mail armour shimmered as he stepped into the sunlight, and Crow raised a hand to shield his eyes.

Mara Sov was honestly that least of his problems right now.

Ever since the Vex invasion of the Quarters, Osiris had been missing. Not only that, but he had been the hand that guided Lakshmi into making the terrible portal, allowing the Vex to flood into the City, killing the Future War Cult leader and many others.

Crow was torn between relief and deepening horror, at the news that he now had. Osiris had not been the one behind the strike against the City. But as it turned out, Osiris had never been the man Crow thought he knew.

Not even from the moment Crow had saved him. It hurt the Hunter’s heart, and angered him, so he settled on deepening horror. How could he have been so foolish? How could he have been so trusting and so blind? Crow had easily accepted the kindness of any hand that did not reach for him with malicious intent, and had in turn played right into the claws of an even greater evil.

Savathûn, the Witch Queen herself.

Crow wanted to curse.

He had spent hours upon hours scouring the System for any trace of Osiris, only to be brought to a halt when Ikora informed him that the Awoken Queen had returned, and located their missing Phoenix. Any relief that Crow had felt at that news had vanished as soon as he had seen the crystal. The massive crystal that loomed with daunting, evil intent, yet spoke with a gentle and mothering voice.

The massive crystal that apparently contained the trapped essence of the Witch Queen, and the body of Osiris.

The Hunter grit his teeth, punching a fist into the smooth stone wall beside him in frustration. The entire situation was horrible! Poor Osiris, and poor Saint. No one knew if the old Warlock – well, not a Warlock anymore – would survive whatever was going to happen, and Crow knew that the Saint would be terribly worried, only second in importance to the Saint’s unending determination when it came to those he loved.

The selfish part of his heart, the one that still yearned for the affection his ‘mentor’ had once given, also mourned for himself. Poor Crow. He thought he had found peace, and companionship, only for it all to have been a lie – by the greatest of liars – all along.

So what if he had gained Zavala’s trust, so what if he had earned the right to walk alongside the other Guardians in the tower? Osiris had been his confidant, his mentor… and the Hunter would be lying to say that he felt betrayed that it had never been the case.

The Awoken man wondered if the real Osiris would even like him, should they ever meet.

Even more pressing than that, though, was the things that Crow had said to the old man in confidence. Although it had been a few weeks ago by now, the Hunter could still clearly recall his moment of weakness that led to him complaining about Arakris and Grey to the old Scholar.

That had been a little unfair, to so quickly lose his faith in his friends just because they were becoming closer. Justified, Crow thought, but unfair. It irked Crow, that he had accidentally put Grey’s name on Savathûn’s radar. Although the Hunter would have loved to think that a simple Warlock would not be worth the attention, he was smart enough to know that someone like the Witch Queen would not have garnered her particular reputation if she did not consider every pawn on the board.

Worst of all, Crow remembered her comment on Arakris’ ‘peculiar name’. He had brushed it off with a vague lie in the moment, but now the Hunter began to have his doubts. Had Savathûn really bought it? Had she just accepted that Crow was speaking of two perfectly normal Guardians, be it Exo, Awoken, or Human? Or had she easily made the connection between the odd name and the race to which such particular nomenclature?

Crow could only pray to the Light that Savathûn had not. He did not wish to bring the scrutiny of such a being down upon his friend. With that thought in mind, Crow decided to tell Arakris as soon as possible about the situation – perhaps in a private one on one, where he could also beg forgiveness for letting such an important secret slip so easily. Hopefully the weird ‘second personality’ would not jump out and threaten him again.

Nodding to himself, Crow moved to resume walking. Unfortunately, Glint appeared at his side in that moment. “Mara Sov is summoning you, Crow. She didn’t say what for, just that she wished to speak with you alone.” The loyal ghost said, curiosity overwhelmingly evident in his casual tone.

The Hunter turned orange-yellow eyes to his ghost as he processed what Glint had said. “Right now?”

“Mhmm.”

Resolving to head to Earth and tell Arakris about his mistake right after the meeting with the Awoken Queen, Crow turned back into the austere, ornate structure – somehow, even in its simplicity, the halls of the buildings here were still very eye-catching.

But as ever, even the best laid plans had a tendency to go wrong somehow.

By the time Crow found a moment to even remember that he had to talk to Arakris, just over three months had passed.

Chapter Text

Grey was quite happy to see Arakris already waiting for him in the ‘town square’, when the Warlock finally strolled back into the Eliksni Quarters. The sun had just begun to set over the horizon, but the Lights of the City still filled the air around them with light pollution that brightened the clouds that were slowly rolling in across the sky.

The air had chilled by a few more degrees by the time the Guardians had deemed their work finished, and Grey – despite being more impervious to cold than a normal Awoken would be – was thoroughly done with it. Thankfully no parts of him had numbed out from the cold, to which he had his insulated armour to thank, but there was still an undeniable frost that had permeated his body, making the tips of his fingers and the flesh of his nose feel like ice.

Despite this, the sight of Arakris immediately warmed his core, the blood pumping into his already purple cheeks only heating up his face. Although he wanted to run over and leap into the Titan’s arms, Grey restrained himself to a friendly wave and a bright smile. His steps quickened subtly, and Grey’s smile only widened as Arakris returned his greeting with one of his own.

“How was the dead zone?” The Eliksni asked, rough voice catching delightfully on the words as he spoke in the common language of the more human races. Grey chuckled and shrugged, putting on a nonchalant air.

“Not dead anymore, I’d say. We cleared out just about every inch of gross robot fluids, so it should be good for expansion, whenever the funds are available for that.” The Warlock answered. The Eliksni chittered in response, eyes slipping shut as he gave the Warlock a more gentle smile.

“That is good to hear. The children are getting big, I can’t imagine there will be much space left for the rest of us when they have fully grown.” Arakris joked, opening his eyes again to cast his vision over to a group of younger Eliksni. When Grey followed his line of sight, the Warlock could only assume that they were the ‘children’ Arakris spoke of. As far as the Awoken was concerned, those looked like full on adult Eliksni, although two of them certainly towered above the rest.

The young Eliksni were all crouched or hunched around the makeshift planter boxes that had been set up near the unofficial ‘town square’. They were chattering happily amongst themselves, hands sifting through the dirt as they planted bulbs. While the buds would not form in the coming months, by the time spring rolled around again, something would grow of it.

Feeling his spirit lighten a little bit as he watched the children, Grey glanced up at Arakris and noted the tranquil expression on the Eliksni’s features. The other man looked at peace, as he observed the young Eliksni – who Grey honestly could not really call children anymore, not with how freakishly large they appeared, even while crouched. They must have stood at the same height as Grey, if not taller, simply based on how long their limbs appeared to be.

But being the shortest person hanging around was of no concern to Grey, as he continued to sneak glances up at Arakris. His fingers twitched by his side as the Warlock restrained his desire to reach out and slip his hand into one of the Eliksni’s larger ones.

Instead, Grey opted for a friendly elbow to the other man’s lower bicep. “I bet they’re becoming a handful, huh? Yknar got so tall so fast, I can hardly remember the little boy with so much energy that I met on Europa. Now he’s tall, and still has all that energy! Unimaginable!” The Guardian laughed.

It went unnoticed, but Arakris had stopped paying attention as Grey laughed. Instead, his mind had almost locked itself down, a strange sensation of fuzziness overcoming it as Grey’s previous words had filtered through. How had Grey met little Yknar on Europa? If the Warlock had known Yknar since he was smaller – so before Arakris had joined the House of Light – then it had to have been because he knew someone that the houseless Eliksni had trusted back then. No way they would have let a whole Machine child run around with their actual children.

For a split-second, Arakris could swear that someone had explained it to him before – no, not someone, Yknar himself! But as he tried to chase the memory, his mind almost fuzzed entirely to white for a millisecond. Blinking the haze out of his vision, Arakris’ brow flexed slightly in a subtle frown. He was almost certain that Yknar had said something about meeting Grey before, but for the Light of him, the Titan could not remember what the young Eliksni had said.

Small fingers tapping against his chest drew the Titan’s attention back to the material world. His mandibles twitched slightly as Arakris refocused his vision, and then he looked down at the Warlock who was trying to draw is notice. Yellow eyes looked back at him, shining bright in their sockets as soft, pale light swam beneath the surface of the Awoken man’s blue skin.

“Everything alright, Arakris?” Grey asked, nothing but sincere concern in his voice.

Feeling his heart warm at the open display of worry from the Warlock, the Eliksni place a soft hand on Grey’s shoulder and squeezed – although he did it in such a manner that his arm effectively wrapped around Grey’s back, pulling the Warlock into a half-hug. It was too soon for the both of them when Arakris had to reluctantly pull his arm away again.

“All good.” The Eliksni replied. Then he clicked, croaking out a few warbled chirrups as he muttered to himself, as the fingers of his lower hands twitched in unconscious, fidgeting reflex motions. “But I did have something to talk to you about, if that’s alright.”

Grey’s eyes flickered with momentary panic, before he schooled his face and continued to smile up at the much taller Titan. “Of course. What’s up?” He readily asked, making sure to keep his voice casual, although with how forced his smile was, Arakris could easily recognize that tremor of nervousness that hung below the surface of the Warlock’s voice.

Instead of answering, Arakris stood to his full height and looked around. Then he leaned back down so that his face was level with Grey’s and whispered instead. “Not here though, it’s a private matter.” He said, trying for comforting as he rasped soft enough for only Grey to hear.

Those words only succeeded in turning the Warlock’s insides into a swarm of flies, and the starlight beneath Grey’s skin started to flutter and wane as panic began to set in below the surface. It must have shown too vividly in his eyes, despite the Guardian’s best efforts at hiding it, because Arakris quickly waved a hand in front of him and shook his head.

“Nothing bad, Grey, seriously. I just had a question, that’s all.” The Eliksni remedied, offering the Warlock an apologetic smile. Grey just waved the other man off with a strained grin.

“Yeah, no, no worries- just maybe… maybe next time lead with that.” Grey said, the words practically wheezed out of his panic-constricted lungs. Arakris took the note with wide eyes and an incredibly sincere nod.

“Of course! I am sorry, Grey, I did not mean to make you think it was anything bad.”

“Mn, yeah, as I said, no worries.” The Warlock acknowledged. Taking the hint to leave it at that, Arakris placed one of his dominant hands against Grey’s upper back, and began guiding him away from the more crowded town square. Directing the Warlock through the alleys and poorly lit streets of the Eliksni’s new home, the pair walked until they were far enough from people to duck into a secluded corner.

The moment they were properly alone, Grey turned to look at Arakris, tilting his head. The expression on his face was incredibly cute to the Eliksni, who let out a quiet, warbled chirrup, before giving in to his desires and pulling the Warlock into a hug.

Grey knew he made a sound of surprise when he was suddenly pulled into the Titan’s warm, powerful arms, but he would forever deny the indignity of what that sound had been. Any bitterness that welled up in him at his bruised pride, however, was washed away the moment he found himself enclosed in the lean biceps and broad chest of his alien lover.

Burying his face in the large scarf Arakris wore, Grey immediately brought his own arms up to wrap around the other man as best he could. The pair stood like that for a few minutes – Grey nearly disappearing in the Eliksni’s arms – just breathing each other in.

From where his head was pressed against the Eliksni’s chest, Grey could feel a subtle vibration run through the other man, a soft rumbling that he felt more than heard.

“So what is it you wanted to ask?” Grey said, finally breaking the silence that had been filled by the soft rumbling in the back of Arakris’ throat.

Pulling back slightly, but not enough to fully let go of the Warlock, Arakris ducked his head with an unexpected shyness in his expression. Grey leaned his head to the side again, eyes wide an encouraging as he waited for Arakris to speak.

“I… I was wondering if you’d like to take a break. With me. Outside of the City, that is. We can go somewhere together, not too far so that we can easily come back if they need us here, but far enough that we can just be ourselves for a little bit again.” The Eliksni’s words were rushed, Arakris being too nervous to ask something so bold so directly.

Grey, for his part, only stared at the Eliksni with wide eyes. Arakris huffed softly, looking away again. “Only if you would like to. I know you don’t want to leave the Eliksni or City, but…” the Titan inhaled, closing his eyes and craning his head down to touch his forehead to Grey’s, “I’ve missed you. It’s been too long since we could just talk, and cuddle, and maybe… maybe kiss. Or something.”

Grey’s answering chuckle almost rankled all of the Eliksni’s nerves, but before he could draw back in offense, Grey wrapped his arms around Arakris’ neck. The Awoken’s chest shook with laughter. At Arakris’ confused chirrup, Grey pulled back again to smile at him adoringly.

“I think that’s a brilliant idea. I was just gonna ask you the same thing!” The blinding smile that Grey sent his way made the Eliksni’s heart flutter inside of him. “I’d say let’s go now, but it’s dark as the pits out there, so let’s do it first thing tomorrow morning! We can take my ship and head out to the EDZ – I know a few nice spots with lovely views of the ocean!”

While the Warlock continued to rattle of his ideas at an excitable pace, Arakris smiled contently at his armful of soft, delicate lover. How lucky he was, that someone like Grey adored him. Just seeing the other man’s mood brighten lifted Arakris’ spirits. The added bonus that by tomorrow they would be alone, away from the eyes of the Vanguard, was just the honey that sweetened the tea.

---------- 

When it came to emotions, Arakris liked to think that he had a decent handle on his. Around his fellow Eliksni, he showed the face of a calm, caring protector, trying to take on the role that was expected of someone like him. He was the size of a Captain – which meant that he had once held the rank of a Captain too – and was, humbly speaking, probably the strongest Eliksni in the Quarters.

The House of Light treated him like one of their own, and in turn, Arakris tried to act like one of their own. Even though, species aside, he was nothing like the rest of them at all. Well, at least it eased up on the demand for Ether supplies; with an Eliksni of his size not needing to consume the substance at all, it meant more for distribution while not losing the manpower. Stars, if anything they gained power by having him on there side.

But that was just the face that he showed for them. While Arakris drew much inspiration from the way Mithrax carried himself, the younger Eliksni knew full well that it was mostly a front. Kind, caring protector who put the good of others at the top of his priority list?

Laughable.

That was nothing like him at all.

When it came to the Guardians, Arakris treated most of them with the same attitude that a store clerk might address a customer; polite indifference. He acted much the same as any other Eliksni while in the presence of other Light Bearers, with the distinct exception of Grey and his fireteam. Arakris was cordial, friendly even, with Sinister and Crimson. Not only where they Grey’s family, but they were also two thirds of the fireteam that had fought Quria by his side, and protected him while he had shut down the portal.

If only he could remember how exactly he had done that. It was little more than a vague blur in his mind, at this point, from the moment Grey had panicked about overloading the terminal, to the final cry of the last Vex standing.

But all of that aside, Arakris felt that he treated Sinister and Crimson as… good acquaintances. He’d have liked to use the word friends with more conviction, but sometimes he would catch them looking at him with unreadable expressions when they thought he was not paying attention, and it irked him. Not necessarily in a negative way, but just enough to make it awkward to press a more friendly relationship with the other two Guardians.

Still, the polite and quiet man that he showed himself to be around them, that was all bullshit too.

That was hardly what he was actually like either.

When it came to the most important one of all, Arakris wished that he could say he controlled his emotions perfectly. But the Eliksni knew that was not the case; he was a jittery, nervous mess on the inside, and displayed very little of it on the outside. In fact, to contain how nervous he still was around Grey, he displayed very little of anything besides gentle affection.

Arakris knew how he was, deep down. He was not prone to anger, but if so driven he could develop quite the bite. He was sarcastic, commanding, and fierce. That was not to say that the gentle side of his nature was fake – it was very much a part of him, but it was also the only part of him that he willingly put on display.

When it came to Grey, the Warlock was given all of Arakris’ more gentle side. The Eliksni cared deeply for his partner, but a small part of him still could not conceive of why a handsome Awoken male would choose a man of a whole other species as his lover. Not that Arakris was in any way insecure of his physical appearance; he was incredibly handsome, by his species standards, but he was well aware that what was attractive to most Eliksni was not the same for the more squishy human-type races.

Because of this, he was hesitant to reveal more of his less gentle side to the Warlock. The last thing Arakris wanted was to scare Grey away. So loving and affectionate and gentle and puppy-like it was. In no way was the Titan faking any of it either, but it felt unbalanced – especially to himself – as the kinder self that he showed Grey most of the time was not all of who he was.

Not that it mattered. When it came to the Warlock, his new Starshine, Arakris would gladly tamp down on some of his instincts to ensure that the other man felt comfortable in his presence and stayed by him.

All in all, the Eliksni liked to think that he had a pretty decent grasp on his emotions, and what he showed to other people.

That being said, the dark-haired Awoken that was currently grinning up at him with a sheepish look on his face was perhaps the one and only person around whom Arakris allowed himself to… loosen his control just a little.

The flat glare that he levelled Crow with indicated exactly how he felt about the Hunter’s unexpected appearance.

“So, my friend, how have you been?” Crow asked, resting his hands on his hips as if a pissed of Eliksni was not glaring at him with both sets of arms crossed.

Arakris just huffed, snapping his teeth at the Hunter. “Nama, we’re not doing this today Crow. I have places to be.” The Titan said, voice a little more clipped than it usually was when addressing others.

When it came to Crow though, the Hunter was just different. He was Arakris’ first ally, and first friend. They shared the position of outcasts, among both their respective species and resurrected peers. Crow had helped Arakris master his Light, and taught him as much as the Hunter could about the state of society beyond the ‘safety’ of the Moon.

If anyone was used to having Arakris snap at them, it was Crow.

Unfortunately for Arakris, as Crow’s familiarity with his more direct attitude had grown, so had the Hunter’s immunity to it.

Which meant that when the Titan spun on his heel and began marching away without so much as a ‘by your leave’, the Hunter quickly fell into step with him, nearly jogging to match the pace of Arakris’ longer legs – especially since the Eliksni was making no attempt to slow down for him.

“Don’t be like that, aren’t you happy to see your old friend again? It’s been, what, close to four months since I’ve last seen you? How have you been?” The Hunter asked, doubling down on having a conversation. If he managed to warm Arakris up a little and remind him that Crow was a friend, maybe the accidental betrayal of the Hunter would go over a bit easier.

Arakris stopped in his tracks before he reached the outskirts of the Eliksni Quarters – where Crow had come looking for him – and let his head fall back with an irritated groan.

“I’m starting to wonder if being all alone on the Moon was a better outcome than being stuck here and unable to even let Star fly about as she pleases.” The Titan decided to humour the Hunter, if only a little bit. Then he glanced down at the shorter man from over his shoulder. “But I was going to fix that today. I am going to the EDZ with Grey to take a break from the City.”

Crow’s mouth formed into a half-smile at the way that the Titan seemed to light up at the idea of alone time with Grey. The difference between how Arakris treated the pale-haired Awoken man versus his dark-haired Awoken friend was like night and day. Crow was not oblivious to the fact that when around Grey, Arakris was nothing if not the most docile, gentle kind of person. When he did speak, it was with far less of the confidence Crow got to hear in one-on-one conversations.

“You’re heading out to the EDZ? What a coincidence.” The Hunter commented, deciding that the whole ‘Savathûn knows your name’ thing was important enough to crash what was obviously supposed to be a date.

From the dangerous narrowing of glowing blue eyes, Crow guessed that Arakris could tell exactly where he was going with that sentence.  

“Nama. Not on your Light.” Arakris growled, turning fully to tower over the Hunter.

Amongst his own people – the Eliksni – Arakris was fairly average height. He was tall for a civilian, a respectable height for a Captain, and short when compared to a Kell. Around the more human races, however, he was a giant. And Arakris enjoyed every second of it.

Despite the threatening posture of the taller Guardian, Crow only stared up with only the minimal amount of penitence on his face. There was no fear on his expression, although the Hunter was a bit leery of Arakris’ ‘other personality’ – the self-proclaimed original version – making an appearance. His Titan friend did not scare him at all, but that other man did. Crow had no idea what that man would do to him should the Hunter piss him off.

“Aw come on Arakris, it’s been so long since we’ve spent time together.” The Hunter pushed.

Arakris only shook his head, rolling his eyes. “And it has been just as long since I last had time alone with Grey. Why do you want to tag on like a fifth arm?”

“Don’t you mean third wheel?”

The Titan only held up his four arms in response, brow raising one on side as he offered Crow a thoroughly indifferent stare.

Crow shook his head, waving off the Titan’s protests. “None of that’s important. I’m sure Grey won’t mind the extra company – just for a little while.”

“You’re being far too pushy on the matter Crow. Dates are for two people who seek to improve their personal relationship.” Arakris said – the definition he used sounded rehearsed, like an answer he had received from someone else before repeating it to internalise it for himself.

“And fireteams are made up of three. It’s dangerous out there, and I don’t want either of you to be hurt.” The Hunter knew he was arguing too much. It felt like a terrible hill to die on, even for him, but he needed to talk to Arakris alone – and if Grey was there, what better time to tell the Warlock about Savathûn as well? He offered the taller man his most pleading look, hoping that perhaps his strong resemblance to Grey would assist him in breaking the Eliksni’s resolve. It seemed to work, as almost immediately, the Titan turned his face away with an irritated click.

Arakris took in a deep breath, sighing heavily after a moment. “Fine. If you’re going to start begging I’d rather just let you come with. But-“ The Titan added, pointing a clawed finger right at Crow’s face, “Not for long. You can stay for an hour at most.”

With that being the final say on the matter, Arakris turned around and began marching off, heavy cape billowing behind him as he stormed away from the Hunter to find the Awoken man he actually wanted to see.

“But an hour’s so short!” Crow’s voice called out from behind him.

“Fine. Thirty minutes!” Arakris snapped, not looking back to see the wide-eyed expression of incredulity that most likely accompanied the bitter muttering that reached his ears.

-----------

Compared to the first time Arakris had seen Earth, when all of it was bathed in unnerving darkness, the world seemed to have come alive again with the return of the sunlight.

Although the memory of breaking atmosphere and seeing the surface of the planet would always be in his mind, Arakris far preferred the way the sun lit up the bright blue sky and washed the world in colour. The monochromatic purple was long gone, and the Eliksni thoroughly enjoyed the landscapes that were passing below as he leaned over Grey’s pilot seat – he ignored how cramped his body felt, as he was not exactly supposed to be shoved into the small space, but he had wanted to see the view from the cockpit instead of the hull.

The world was a wash of greens and oranges and browns, all blurring together as the ship took them across the open sky. The sun was incredibly bright, burning the Eliksni’s eyes even through the protective shading of the ship’s windows.

“Coming in on the Gulch, we’ll hop off there. Copy, Crow?” Grey asked, guiding his ship into a descent.

The Hunter in question gave his affirmative, and Arakris could see the dark ship of the other Guardian pulling in beside them – it was smaller than Grey’s, with sleeker angles and shinier paint that made the entire thing look like it had been dunked in oil. Contrasted to that was Grey’s dark purple ship, the entire thing a matt colour that looked fairly dull. The Warlock loved his ship too much to part with it though, as it had been with him for a very long time.

Turning the connection off, Grey turned his head slightly to look at the Eliksni crouching behind him.

“Remind me again why we’re bringing Crow?” The Warlock asked, raising an eyebrow.

The Titan had the decency to shrink a little, offering his partner a penitent look.

“It is only for half an hour. I am so sorry Grey, but Crow made a fair argument; he has not seen either of us for a while.”

Grey scoffed and rolled his eyes, looking forward again. “You’re such a softy, Arakris.” He said, although not unkindly. He rotated his head again a little to offer the Titan a sweet smile.

The Eliksni clicked, emitting a curious chirruping sound. “Is that… is that a bad thing?” He asked, upper hands curled over the back of Grey’s pilot seat.

“Hm? No, of course not! I like it.” The Warlock answered. As he spoke, Grey quickly turned his expression away, just in case the lie in his sentence was readable on his expression. It was not that he disliked how sweet Arakris was, but his Arakris had been a bit rougher – a little bit meaner than the Titan.

Arakris, for his part, smiled at the back of Grey’s head. It did not quite reach his eyes, as the Warlock’s words only seemed to confirm to the Eliksni that being too much of himself would probably be off-putting for Grey.

The world tilted as the ship dipped forward, swooping effortlessly into its smooth descent.

A bright red light suddenly flashed on, followed by the sound of an ear-piercing alarm. Arakris jumped, and covered his head to protect his hearing, while Grey snapped to attention, leaning forward in his seat.

All of a sudden, the ship rocked to the side, walls shaking as something big thundered past. The Eliksni tumbled to the side, catching himself on the cramped walls with his lower arms, his head barely avoiding a collision with the low-hanging ceiling.

The light inside the ship flashed red with the alert, and Grey was cursing at his controls as he flipped switches, trying to turn off what Arakris could only assume was the proximity alert telling them that something big had almost wiped them clean out of the sky.

Scrambling back onto his knees, Arakris leaned over Grey’s shoulder to peer out the window. A plume of black smoke carved a clear path through the pale sky, disappearing just over a ridge a couple of yards away from them.

Grey opened the line between himself and Crow again. “Crow! Did you see that?” He yelled – although unnecessary, the adrenaline of nearly being knocked out of the sky was pounding through his veins.

“Yes! It looked like an Eliksni skiff – heavy damages, it seems.” The Hunter responded, his voice also a little bit strained from the near miss. The skiff seemed to have narrowly missed both of their ships, crashing down right between them, with little room for either Guardian to dodge. Thankfully, there had been no damages to either of the smaller ships.

“We’re going in to investigate. Could have been hostiles, but they did just crash, and if they were refugees like our friends in the City…” Grey trailed off with a frown. Thick plumes of smoke continued to billow into the sky, and as the wreckage came into view – having touched down right on the waters edge in the Winding Cove – all three of the Guardians knew right there that the odds of finding any survivors, hostile or otherwise, were as good as none.

“That matters little.” Crow replied. “We should see if there’s anything we can do. We’re trying to make peace with the Eliksni, so it stands to reason that we should do our best to help those in need.”

Grey nodded, silently agreeing with the other man. He knew there was a reason that he liked the Hunter, and the man’s solemn sentence had solidly reminded him. Crow, for all of his tortured internal struggles, cared very deeply for others. His empathy extended beyond the boundaries of race, and it had been a crucial part of the path that led Arakris back to his side.

With that thought still lingering in his mind, Grey nodded at Ghost to transmat him from the ship.

When he rematerialized, the first thing that hit Grey was the smoke. Usually, his helmet was always on when he left his ship, but considering that this was supposed to be a relaxed trip out into a peaceful part of the European Dead Zone, he had left it off.

“Ghost- engage helmet please.” He said, coughing as the black smoke filled his lungs. The heat burned his nostrils, mingled with the sharp tang of burning Ether and metal and flesh. There was a flash of light as Felwinter’s Helm materialised around his head, and Grey sighed in relief as he began to breath in filtered air.

Crow and Arakris stepped up beside him, both observing the burning wreckage with restless agitation.

“I don’t think we can get too close as it is right now.” The Hunter observed.

Grey made a noise of displeasure, his lips pulling down as he thought.

The Eliksni said nothing, before rolling his shoulders and marching straight into the fire.

“Arakris!” Both Awoken men yelled after the Titan, who stepped through the flames without so much as flinching. They watched as four three-fingered hands dug into a gash in the metal, jaws dropping open as the massively strong Titan force the wall to bend. The groaning protests of metal joined the other noises of destruction until a hole large enough to slip through opened up.

The Hunter and Warlock shared an incredulous look, masked faces going back and forth between each other and the hole that their Titan had just disappeared through.

“I guess that’s our cue?” Grey said, letting out a bewildered chuckle.

Crow nodded, pulling his hood up over his helmet and following Arakris into the flaming wreckage.

It was a good thing that Guardian gear was built to be so damn durable. On a daily basis, their clothes had to deal with incredible amounts of damage, both from exterior forces, and the creatures wearing them. Between the attacks of their enemies and their own power, Guardians were the biggest danger to their own clothing. But, because of all this, their armour was made to survive the same kind of high pressure scenarios that Light Bearers could.

Grey followed behind his friends, splitting off so that they could cover as much ground as possible.

“Ghost.” He called on his companion as soon as he was alone in a slightly less burning piece of hall. It was still an absolute mess – the ceiling had nearly entirely caved in, parts of the wall had bent, and the floor had been torn up entirely, now little more than a nest of wires and sharp metal shards. Grey looked around, not feeling hopeful. “Any signs of life in this sector?”

The little machine only buzzed a negative in his ear – without coming out to scan the area, he could already tell that nothing was coming up on the radar. Grey nodded, but continued picking through the less-on-fire parts of the wreckage for a few seconds.

Once the heat became too unbearable for his gloves, and he could feel sweat beading on his skin, the Warlock retreated, hopping out of the wreck and instead quickly checking the perimeter. All that he found were a few mangled corpses – all Eliksni – but nothing else.

Inside the ship, however, Arakris had stumbled upon something.

Crow, who had followed the path Arakris had taken, walked up behind the other man. The Titan seemed to be staring at the floor, at something hidden just behind a few upturned crates. As Crow came up behind him, the Hunter gasped quietly.

On the floor, hidden behind the boxes, was the body of an Eliksni. The path to this room had been sporadically littered with them – all deceased. What was so different about this body, Crow could not tell.

Until he glanced a little closer.

Huddled in the arms of the corpse was a small bundle of fabric – no, not a bundle of fabric, Crow realised as he moved closer.

It was a baby. The child’s face was barely visible, but all four eyes were shut. The child was completely encircled by the adult Eliksni, likely in an attempt to protect it from the impact of the crash. The fire had not breached this room too much yet, but with all the smoke in the air, Crow had little hope for the baby’s survival – it was likely already dead.

Beside him, Arakris shifted, leaning over the boxes and reaching out for the child. Crow almost placed a hand on his arm to stop him, wanting to tell the other man that there was no use – the baby was already gone – when tiny blue eyes suddenly blinked open in the dim light.

Black eyebrows nearly shot into the Hunter’s hairline.

“We have to get it out of here.” Crow said, before pausing. After a second of deliberation, he sucked in a breath and clicked his helmet off. Holding it out to the Eliksni male, he made wide eyes at the child and gestured, indicating to use the helmet on the baby. As soon as he passed it on, the Hunter took off, running out of the wreckage. The louder footfalls of the Titan were right on his tail, thudding against the metal grating of the floor. Thankfully, the flames had concentrated to the aft of the ship, burning away at the fuel and Ether reserves. Most of the bodies had been found towards the prow, the majority of them embedded with shrapnel, a clear indicator of their deaths.

Lungs burning, Crow burst from the hole in the side of the hull, running a few yards off before sucking in a desperate breath of air. While he had never died of asphyxiation before, it also seemed like the kind of death he wanted to avoid.

Arakris also broke free of the wreckage, the tiny bundle in his arms appearing even tinier. Crow’s helmet was an odd fit around its head, and had not been able to seal off properly, but the constant supply of filtered oxygen should have done some good.

Panting, the Hunter jogged over to his companion. Arakris only stared at the baby in his arms, slowly removing Crow’s helmet and holding it out to the other man with one of his unoccupied arms.

“What-“ Crow paused to breathe, “What are we going to do? How is it?”

“She.” Arakris corrected offhandedly. “She’s breathing, and awake, but other than that I cannot tell.” He said, cradling the baby to his chest as he gently massaged her chest through the bundle, trying to encourage her little lungs to keep working.

The baby only gurgled, emitting a high-pitched clicking as two tiny hands reached out from the opening of her wrappings.

Arakris felt his lips twitch at the heart-melting sight. There were a lot of orphaned hatchlings in the Last City. It overburdened the caretakers, although Arakris had never heard any of them complain – the future of their people lay in the tiny bodies that they were protecting, after all. There were so many little ones to care for, and it was heart-breaking to think that the hatchling in his arms would be another one of them.

Glancing back at the flaming wreck, Arakris clenched his jaw. The poor child; she would never know her parents, and would likely grow up one of the many orphans in House of Light. Although they were not loved any less, there was a difference in what love they were given.

“What are you going to do with her?” The Hunter asked, still eyeing the child. She was so incredibly small, compared to the man holding her. It was such an staggering sight to see – that something so small could grow into something even larger than Arakris. The baby had two little hands sticking out from the bundle, reaching for the massive finger that was rubbing gentle circles against her torso through the fabric. Her tiny mouth opened to reveal equally tiny needle-like teeth. Four eyes stared out from the shaded darkness of the bundle, blinking in tandem as they observed the world around her.

“Show her to Grey.” Arakris muttered, now searching the area around the crash for the missing Warlock. Before he could start to panic that Grey had maybe gotten hurt inside of the crash, the familiar long-coat adorned figure of his lover walked into view from around the side of the ship. As soon as he spotted them, Grey ran over.

“I only found bodies. No survivors. Any luck on with you guys?” Grey asked as soon as he came close.

Crow shook his head, as did Arakris. “No survivors, except her.” The Eliksni answered, holding out his upper arms to reveal the little hatchling to the Warlock.

Beneath the mask, Grey’s eyebrows shot up as he sucked in his lower lip. “She’s the only survivor?” He asked, and the Titan just nodded to confirm. Tentatively, the Warlock reached out his arms for the child, inclining his head in question to the Eliksni man.

Arakris gently handed the hatchling over, but remained right in front of Grey, anxious to know what the Warlock had in mind.

Cradling the swaddled child in his left arm, Grey raised his right to call upon his ghost. “Ghost, can you run a scan on a baby with Eliksni physiology? And can you do me a favour and transport one of the Ether canisters down to me.” He added, gesturing the ghost towards the child.

As the machine scanned the baby, the familiar white lattice washing over her small figure, Grey glanced around. “Maybe we should move this somewhere else, I don’t think that the air around here is good for her.”

Ghost concluded his scan and signed the child off with a fairly alright bill of health, all things considered – minor malnutrition, smoke in her lungs, bruising from the crash, but other than that, no further complications. With that out of the way, the trio headed away from the crash, leaving the wreckage to burn itself out. There was nothing more they could do.

A solid distance away, where the air had started to clear, Grey finally removed his helmet and sighed in relief as the crisp chill of winter air brushed against his heated skin. Holding it out in his hand, the helmet shimmered and disappeared, replaced by a black cannister and a small length of rubbery pipe.

“Her mouth looked a little too small to drink it straight from the cannister.” Ghost explained as he reappeared in front of his Guardian. Grey nodded, before looking over at Arakris expectantly. Then he frowned, recalling that this particular Eliksni did not – and had never – consumed Ether. Not since being Reborn.

So instead, Grey handed the child back over to the taller man, fiddling with the container a little until he found a way to slot the pipe in.

He held out the other end of the improvised straw to the child’s mouth, and to the collective relief of the three Guardians, the hatchling latched on and began to feed.

Shoulders untensing, Grey stayed close to Arakris to hold the Ether as the hatchling fed, cradled in the Eliksni’s arms. They stood in the shadow of a fairly steep rock face, surrounded by trees on their other side. The tranquil silence of the shrubbery allowed the trio to relax, winding down from the sudden rush of exploring a burning crash site.

The hatchling fed in silence, and both Arakris and Grey found their attention solely focused on her. Meanwhile, Crow decided to wander a bit further away, now genuinely starting to feel awkward as he watched the couple acting like concerned parents.

As Crow walked off, Arakris began speaking to Grey, his voice kept low.

“She will be well cared for, if we bring her to the House of Light.” He said, although the words did not sound nearly as comforting as he had meant them to. Catching onto that, Grey looked up at the other man, unsettled.

“That’s good news, right? Why do you sound so upset?” He asked, eyebrows knitting a frown across his brow as his eyes shone with concern.

“Family bonds are important to my people. She has lost all of hers, I can only assume. She was not born into any of the groups that now make up House of Light… and while I do not doubt that they would welcome and love her with open arms, I wish that she could grow up with a family of her own.” The Eliksni explained with a disheartened sigh, shoulders slumping even as he clutched the hatchling to his chest a little tighter.

Grey’s mouth moved before he could even process whether the idea was good or absolutely terrible. “We could adopt her.” He said, before realising what had just left his mouth and snapping it shut with an audible clack of teeth on teeth.

The Eliksni was also frozen in shock, four eyes wide as dinner plates and looking like the headlights of a sparrow. The hatchling in his arms gurgled as she let go of the rubbery pipe, chirping softly as she made grabby hands towards Grey.

Smiling gently as he retrieved her from Arakris’ arms, the Warlock offered the Eliksni an apologetic look as he rocked the child. Grey was not exactly familiar with how to handle children – having never really been around them, especially babies – but for some reason his body moved on its own, making sure to support her head and body well, even if her physiology might have made her more durable than a human child. He was not sure, so rather safe than sorry.

“Sorry, that’s probably a little bit too forward, huh? I was just thinking about how we could make sure she grew up with a family of her own, but that’s a bit too much for us isn’t it? Haven’t even been together that long,” The Warlock let out an awkward, sombre laugh. “Just ignore me – pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“Let’s do it.”

Grey almost dropped the child in his surprise. Thankfully, when his body chose to freeze in shock, it locked his arms in place, cradling the hatchling firmly against his chest as little fingers picked at the fur-lined collar of his Luxe overcoat.

“What?” Grey stuttered, not believing his ears.

“I said let’s do it; let’s adopt her.” The Eliksni repeated, stepping into Grey’s space and raising two arms to grasp the Warlock’s biceps.

“But- isn’t it way too soon to even be thinking about kids?” Grey asked, incredulous despite the whole thing being his idea in the first place.

The Eliksni hummed in consideration, then shrugged. “We’re immortal anyway, when is anything ever too soon?”

Grey only laughed, mouth open in disbelief. He almost felt light-headed at the sudden realisation that he was going to raise a child together with Arakris. Oh Light, two Guardians were going to be raising a mortal child.

Teal-grey hair ruffled wildly as Grey shook his head, trying to physically dislodge that depressing thought. Eliksni were an incredibly long-lived race; if everything went well, the child would live to see centuries go by. Not to mention, she seemed barely more than a few months old; it was far too early to even think of such dark endings when her life had barely even begun.

Settling slightly, leaning further into the hold of the Titan, Grey focused his breathing to calm his racing heart. He had no idea on where to begin with raising a child, let alone one of an entirely different species. But he had his friends – both human and Eliksni – and he had no doubt that Naksis would really like the little girl, who was a survivor from the very start. Even deeper down than that comfort, though, Grey felt a sense of… familiarity. As if raising a child would not be all that difficult. A small mote of confidence flickered to life in his heart. Yeah. He could do this. For some unknown reason, he could do this.

“What would we even name her?” The Warlock asked, holding out his finger for small three-fingered appendages to grasp onto. Any – entirely reasonable – reservation he might have felt towards the looming responsibility of raising a child fled for the time being at the sight of small digits doing their best to wrap around his gloved fingers. The metal of his gauntlets was a bit singed, Grey noted, but had cooled down entirely, making it safe enough for small hands to mess with. It was truly an amazing thought that one day, those tiny hands would likely grow to be larger than his own.  

As Grey uttered his question, Arakris felt a strange sensation overcome him. Although the sight of Grey holding his soon-to-be daughter – their soon-to-be daughter – warmed his heart more than he probably should have at four months into their relationship, a strange wave of bitterness welled up within him. But just as soon as it had appeared, the feeling left, replaced instead by warmth, joy, happiness, and most of all: love.

But what to name her? The Eliksni wracked his mind for an idea, but nothing came to him.

He looked back down at Grey, taking in the softness of the man’s handsome features as he gazed at the hatchling – clearly, he had already become attached to her – and a name suddenly popped into his mind, accompanied by a dizzying burst of adoration.

“Idra.”

Yellow eyes flickered up to meet his own as the word left Arakris’ mouth unbidden.

“Idra?” Grey repeated. “What does it mean?”

Arakris only shook his head, himself unsure. He did not know what the name meant, if anything, nor where it had come from. However, as he watched Grey test the name out on the hatchling, he felt that it suited her very much.

A distant part of him felt pride at the name, as if it were honouring something, but for the Light of him Arakris could not put his finger on what it was. But it did not matter to him.

Little Idra chirruped at her newly found fathers, as Grey cooed her name at her over and over again, while Arakris watched, his arms wrapped around them both.

The Hunter that had made himself scarce ages ago dipped back into the shadow of the tree he was hiding behind, suddenly very glad at his foresight to make himself scarce. Even from this distance it felt like he was intruding on a very intimate moment.

Arakris had been right, about being a fifth arm.

Deciding to give the new family a little more privacy, the Hunter made himself useful by performing a brief patrol of the area to at least ensure there would be no dangers to the child. While he had no doubts that the other two Guardians would make short work of any problems, should they come their way, Crow felt it better to act cautiously, and take the initiative on the matter.  

In the wake of their new discovery, however, the Hunter forgot to bring up his reason for intruding in the first place.

Chapter Text

So the ‘little break’ in the European Dead Zone had been what one might refer to as a failure of epic proportions.

Not only had they failed to find the time to be properly alone, but now they were also bringing back a new addition to their relationship dynamic. Arakris could have slapped himself. As much as his heart melted whenever he saw the child, he could not shake the unhappiness of having his entire date with Grey – and chance to stretch his more Guardian specific muscles – essentially waylaid by a Hunter, a ship of dead Eliksni, and a hatchling.

Because of little Idra’s sudden appearance, the outing had to be called short. They needed to bring the child somewhere safe, and being out in the EDZ with two Guardians was simultaneously the safest and most dangerous situation the child could be in. So back to the City they went.

The trip packed up fairly quick, with Arakris crawling into the hold of Grey’s ship with a child in his arms. Crow had reappeared just before their departure. The Hunter inquired about the child’s health, and what they would do with her, all the while pretending that he did not already know – out of courtesy, of course.

Once the quick debrief was over – with Grey purposefully omitting the detail that he was adopting the hatchling – the trio took off, setting a rapid pace to return to the Last City. Arakris tried not to jostle the tiny child that he held in his arms as the ship shook as it ascended above the clouds.

Glancing out the small window, Arakris twitched his mandibles as he watched the clouds pass by. Idra cooed, her little hands reaching out from the loosening cocoon of cloth wrapped around her. The Titan smiled down at her, before lifting the hatchling up and holding her so that she could look out at the clouds too.

“Do you see it, little one?” Arakris asked, petting the child with one of his free hands. Idra chirruped, suddenly paying a lot more attention at the sound of a familiar language. “It is a dark world you were born into, suffering from before a time you will remember. But you are so strong, little one. You survived your first trial, and you ended up alone… I am terrified, of what will come next. If I am being honest. I came into this world much like you – suffering and death is what brought me here. For the longest time my world was dark too. I could not see beyond it. But you… little Idra, you may have lost one family, but I promise you that I will do my best. To make sure that you grow up in a world filled with Light. In a world filled with love. Grey and I… as Guardians, it is our duty to protect – what do we know of raising children?” He let his eyes fall shut, shaking his head in gentle exasperation. When he opened them again, the hatchling was staring up at him, her own little eyes like glowing circles. The pale light of the winter sun shone in through the window, casting off the child’s face and throwing half of it into shadow.

Arakris felt his heart ache at the smile that split the hatchling’s features, as she clicked and babbled and reached out for him. There were no clear words in the soft, high-pitched chirrups, but Arakris would teach her. Both their language and that of Grey’s kind. His heart beat, each thump filling him with a new wave of emotion – joy, pity, fear, worry, hope, determination. Each sensation coiled around his core, compiling until his warring emotions practically flooded his lungs.

“I promise you, little one. I will do everything in my power to fill this world with light for you and Grey. We are your family now, and I will protect you both. I swear it.” The Titan’s vow was whispered, as he raised the hatchling closer to his face to press a soft kiss to her forehead – careful to not scrape her too hard with his teeth as he did so. The gesture was unmistakably human in nature, not something that felt ‘right’ to the Eliksni part of him, but it felt familiar nonetheless.

Idra cooed, her tiny hands slapping softly against the larger Eliksni’s face. Small, blunt claws caught on to the Titan’s facial plating, before scraping dully against the exoskeleton without leaving a mark. Arakris only chuckled, somewhat surprised by the strength of the affection that surged through him at the sight.

As terrifying as the prospect of raising a child was, somehow he felt that it would work out alright in the end. He trusted Grey, and although he doubted either of them had much experience with children – let alone Eliksni hatchlings – they at least knew plenty of people who did. And thankfully, they had a community who would be happy to help take care of the new hatchling, although it was unfortunate that they would probably have to keep the whole ‘we adopted her’ thing a secret for the foreseeable future.

A frown crept onto his brow then. His hands still absently fiddling with the hatchling, rocking her back and forth – much to her crowing delight – Arakris felt another wave of very specific ire rush through him. The feeling was quite familiar, as he felt it whenever he thought about the fact that his relationship with Grey had to be kept secret.

For many reasons, the news that an Eliksni was romantically involved with a Guardian would not go down very well, even amongst those in the House of Light. At least, that was Arakris’ assessment of the situation. His eyes twitched, and his mouth pulled down in one corner at the thought. No, that did not seem entirely right, but on the other hand, no one knew aside from Crow, and Grey’s fireteam. Right?

Static filled his mind for a second, before fading out into an annoying whine that rung in his ear canals before vanishing.

Right. It was important, to keep their relationship a secret. But it was also important to keep an eye out for anyone that might become too interested in Grey.

Arakris sighed, shifting himself so that he could lean back against the hull of the ship again, cradling Idra to his chest. At this point, she was busying herself with her own little fingers, nipping at her tiny claws with equally tiny teeth. This was simply too many secrets to keep – and for what?

The fact that he was a Guardian. The fact that he was in love with an Awoken. The fact that they were adopting a whole living child together. Secrets he had to keep from both the House of Light and the City that harboured them.

Stars above it was almost too much to keep up with!

A soft thud echoed through the metal of the ship as the Eliksni dropped his head back against it.

How had his life gone from the monochromatic monotony of the Moon, to the neon-washed darkness of the Last City, to now finally being free of all of that, only to still find himself trapped in another tiresome cage?

Clicking his mandibles together, the Titan let out a heavy sigh. At least there was the Dawning, a somewhat unfamiliar celebration that he was going to spend with Grey. The excitement of doing something new, breaking up the every-day same-old of having to hide his ghost and his powers, it gave Arakris something to look forward to.

And it would mean more time spent with Grey – even if it was in the company of Crimson and Sinister. Well, perhaps afterwards they could find some time together, just the two of them.

Somewhat settled with that thought in mind, Arakris relaxed himself against the hull. The vibrating of the ship hummed through his back, while the tiny breaths of the hatchling barely registered against his chest.

Things certainly were scary, but by the Light within him, Arakris was going to do his best. For Idra. For Grey.

--------------

“You are bringing in more houseless Eliksni than I thought a Guardian would.” Mithrax commented without turning away from the holoprojector he was busy with. Long fingers tapped away at the control panel beneath it, one hand holding up a small array of light and lines that probably should have meant something to Grey, considering the crash-course in Splicer skills he had been given during the Endless Night.

“You heard about her already?” The Warlock could not help but feel incredulous at the Kell. They had arrived in the quarters all of thirty minutes ago, and they had just finished introducing Idra to Naksis – the latter gladly offering to care for the child when the other two could not. How in the high heavens Mithrax knew about it already, Grey was curious to find out.

“It is not often that a Guardian walks amongst Eliksni with a living hatchling held so gently in their arms.” The Kell replied, before letting out a grunt. “No, perhaps it is more accurate to say that none of my people have seen such a thing till now.”

Grey thinned his lips, glancing up at Arakris a little awkwardly at the reminder that he really was getting too casual with the Eliksni in the quarters. Sure, it was all well and good for him – as he saw the Eliksni as friends, or at least, a handful of them – but at some point someone up top was going to start asking questions that Grey hoped he would never have to answer.

“Times are changing, Mithrax-Kell. Can’t blame a man for wanting to change with them.” The Awoken offered, paired with a half-shrug. At that, Mithrax turned to face the two Guardians, tapping the holoprojector twice as the screen darkened to black.

“From what I recall, you changed well ahead of the times, did you not, Guardian?” He asked, a teasing cadence to his gruff voice that had a blush darkening Grey’s cheeks at the implication. Arakris only glanced down at Grey with concern when the other Guardian choked out an indignant cough.

“Let’s just say I had good reason to and leave it at that? No disrespect meant, Mithrax-Kell.” Grey hastily added, catching himself and his snarky tone too late into the sentence. Yeah, he really was becoming too comfortable around Eliksni. Comfortable enough to forget himself entirely before a whole entire Kell.

Mithrax waved a hand at his apology, accepting it easily. “I would say we are only better for it.” The amused rumble in his throat died down after a moment, before the Kell’s posture changed to a more formal stance. “However, I did summon you here for a reason. I have a… theory, that I would like to test, and I was hoping that you would be willing to help me.”

Teal-grey eyebrows rose in surprise, but Grey readily nodded. “Of course, anything you need.” He glanced up at Arakris, as if to ask if the Eliksni knew anything of it. The Titan only shrugged back, shaking his head – he was as lost as the Warlock, on this matter.

Turning to face the pair fully, Mithrax eyed the Titan for a second, as if waiting for something. When he did not seem to find what he was looking for, the Kell continued, now addressing Grey again. “During the Endless Night, while working to break through the Network of the Vex, I discovered something. You are familiar with my beliefs, that all things are remembered by the Light?”

Grey nodded, although unnecessarily, as the Kell continued to speak, body swaying as he gestured at the empty space before him, weaving thin lines of white energy through the air.

“It is only logical that those who are touched by the Light be stored within it too, do you not agree?” Again, the Warlock nodded, although the transient nature of what the Sacred Splicer was describing to him was certainly not something of his own expertise. Grey was a Warlock, yes, but matters of the Light as a Network as Mithrax described it had never been a topic he knew much – or anything – about. Not until Mithrax himself had opened Grey’s eyes to it.

“It is with this, through the open connections that stemmed from the Network being overlaid with reality itself, and the incredible presence of the Light – both in the Guardians and in my Splicers – that I discovered something… that I think to be both incredible, and impossible. And yet… the impossible proved entirely feasible. But I must test it, before I can share it with confidence.” The Kell continued. Grey was frowning now, understanding what the Eliksni was saying, but not where he was going with the lead-on sentences.

“And how is it that I can help, Mithrax-Kell?” He decided to speak up. Beside him, Arakris twitched, as if suddenly remembering that his own body existed at all. “What is it that you have discovered?”

A strange ache sprung up behind his eyes, as if coiling around his optic nerves. Arakris had never had a headache as random as this one, but he brushed it off for the moment, far more interested in what strange task Misraakskell needed Grey’s help with.

The Kell took two long strides towards the pair of Guardians standing just within the threshold of his private workshop. Towering over Grey, close enough that the purple lights of his helmet washed the Warlock’s blue skin with neon colour, Mithrax could not quite contain his eagerness at the possibility of a discovery as monumental as this.

“I believe that Guardian memories are stored in the Light too. The people who you once were, before your rebirth, they are still tied to you. I believe that, with the help of a Sacred Splicer – and perhaps if the subject in question is also a Splicer – those memories can be brought to the surface. Perhaps even the entire… personality.” The Kell confided.

Grey could feel his heart stop. His vision tunnelled and his pupils shrunk to pinpricks as a cold sweat broke out across his entire body. Throat suddenly dry, blood pounding too loud in his ears, the first coherent thing Grey could think was abject denial.

“That’s impossible.” The words left his mouth before he could control them. Grey stumbled a step back, eyes immediately turning up to Arakris. Shaking his head, Grey could only repeat himself, the words scraping out of his throat as his mind swept away in a tidal wave of supressed emotion. “It’s impossible.”

Guardians, seeking out and learning of their past selves? Unheard of. Sure Ana Brey had done it, but that did not mean it was necessarily a good thing to do. Detachment from their humanity was exactly what made Guardians so good at fighting and killing and dying, over and over again. To remember that you were once just like the people you fought to protect… not every mind was strong enough to recover the burden of true mortality. No, Guardians seeking out their past selves was simply not allowed.

A Guardians original personality returning entirely? That would break the foundations of everything that made them such good killing machines. It would… it could change everything about the way Guardians had been living. And it could bring… no. Grey immediately shut that idea down before he could even dare to hope – there was no coming back! No Guardian ever truly came back from their first death; they were who their Reborn lives made them.

“And why do you say it is impossible, young Warlock? You of all people should understand that what we once believed impossible can still happen.” The Kell replied, turning his gaze towards Arakris. For a second Mithrax paused, wondering if the Titan’s other self would make an appearance – the original Aaraxsis had not shown his ‘face’ since the Night had been brought to an end. However, when the Titan continued to look as puzzled as Grey did horrified, Mithrax continued. “That is why I want to test it with you. There are many variables that surround the restoration of an entire ‘soul’, but to my knowledge the process should not do any harm to the subject.” He said.

Grey shook his head again, more violently this time as he stumbled back a step, wide and aghast eyes still flickering between Arakris and Mithrax. There was no way. It was impossible. It was…

The Warlock’s forehead creased as his eyebrows pinched together. “How do you even know this? How did you even come upon a theory like this in the first place?” Grey found himself asking, instead of vocalising the thousands of protests that were thrumming in the back of his throat.

Mithrax shook his head, still carefully eyeing Arakris’ responses to the conversation. By now, the Titan had stopped moving entirely, his body almost deathly still as if he had seized up. His eyes were no longer focused on the Kell, nor the shorter man beside him, but instead were staring blankly into the middle distance. He considered telling Grey the truth behind his discovery; that the original Aaraxsis had been able to take over the Titan entirely, during the Endless Night. But he remembered the fear that drove Aaraxsis to withhold the truth from Grey, and chose instead to offer a different explanation, as a kindness to one of his own.

“I have always wondered if it were possible to restore a memory that is held in the Light. Imagine the things my people could recover, from the days of prosperity. The memories of those that were once loved by the Great Machine, returned to the children long abandoned by it.” The Kell’s voice took on an almost wistful, melancholic tone, as if the very dream of some form of restoration was both a distant fantasy and too heavy a burden to bear. “Until now, I have never met the opportunity for it; but with you, you Guardians, I can perform real tests! You exist as one entity, and are bathed with the Light; you are already a Splicer, which makes manipulating it so much easier; and you have memories of a time long past. All factors I need to see if this can be done.” He concluded, looming over Grey as his hands gestured – with a lot less of his usual calm control, lost to the excitement of possibility – wildly between them.

This seemed about fair, the Kell thought to himself. He had promised Aaraxsis not to speak of the truth behind recalling memories of Guardians, but if Grey were to think it possible from performing the experiment himself, then he would also understand the implications of it not necessarily being permanent. But who knows, perhaps it could become permanent! It seemed the only fair compromise between what the Kell saw as a chance to do something good and what the younger Eliksni had wanted. The good that this discovery would do, for their people, if Mithrax could only figure out how to return entire minds from the Light…

All those lost… all those who could return again. Just like Guardians, but better in a way.

The things that could be done far transcended the fears and frets of a single Eliksni, even if he were incredibly special.

The most important step right now was acquiring Grey’s full cooperation with this.

The Warlock in question had been backed against the door by now, yellow eyes still wide with disbelief, face a little too pale for his particular shade of blue.

“Think of the good that can be done with what we might discover.” The Kell coaxed, holding his hands out by his sides in as a pacifying gesture, to lower the energy in the room that had leaked from his own hopeful ardour.  

All of that was lost on Grey, who’s ears were still ringing with the Kell’s last words. ‘Think of the good that can be done’. The only thing that Grey could think about was what if. What if everything Mithrax said was true? What if bringing back the memories of a Guardian’s entire previous self was possible? It would mean so much – so much trouble, so much chaos, but also perhaps… so much joy. It would mean that he could come back. It would mean that he had never left all along – that Mithrax’s words of how all things were stored in the Light had been entirely true, that Grey’s stupid hopeful dreams had actually held meaning! That at the end of it all, as two creatures who had been touched by Light, he and his beloved might actually meet again within it!

Such a discovery would break the foundations of the relationship between Guardians and the Traveller, returning the things that the machine found so important to remove. It would… it could bring back an entire soul.

It would bring back his Arakris.

But what would it mean for the people who they were now?

Grey felt his heart suddenly drop as he looked up at the current Arakris – now only able to see the back of the Eliksni, having stumbled back quite a few steps in his daze. The Reborn were not who they once were – they were two different entities entirely! What if restoring the one would mean forever losing the other? What if bringing back who he was would mean the end of Grey? How would it change someone like Sinister, or Crimson?

Would it even be fair?

Did Grey really care? He cared for this Arakris, but this was not the same man who called him Starshine, who he had given that necklace to, so what did it matter when he could truly have his beloved back?

The pieces of irrational, selfish hope slotted into place in Grey’s heart. Blinking to clear his vision, he turned his head back to the Kell who was still waiting for his answer. Opening his mouth, Grey steeled himself for what he was about to say – agreeing to this went against every one of his principles when it came to living as a Guardian, but by the Light within him…

If he could just have a chance to speak with his Arakris again… how could he forgive himself for not taking it? Even if his love never came back permanently… just a moment, just a chance to hear him speak again. Grey would spend his entire life regretting it if he chose not to help Mithrax, if his reward would be a moment with the Eliksni he had lost.

“It’s risky, and not really the done thing amongst Light Bearers. But… I’m willing to help, Mithrax-Kell.” Grey said, straightening out his posture as he tried to shake the conflicting emotions that his decision had whirled to life inside of him.

At the sound of Grey’s voice, at the answer he gave, Arakris’ entire frame seized up before shaking back to life. His shoulders trembled, his arms quivering down to his fingers. With two rapid steps, the Titan placed himself between Grey and Mithrax, obscuring the Warlock behind his larger frame.

“No!” Arakris shouted. “You had no right to do ask this of him Misraaks, you know what he’s been through!”

The atmosphere in the room immediately turned cold – both Warlock and Kell were taken aback by the utter lack of respect that Arakris had displayed, going so far as to snap at his Kell!

Mithrax was the first to recover, posture shifting from his appeasing stance to the unquestionable aura of a leader. “That is not your decision to make, Aaraxsis.” The Kell said, his voice wavering just on the edge of warning.

The Titan shook his head, spreading his arms beside him to further ‘protect’ his partner. “When it comes to Grey, it damn well is! I am not letting you force him to go through all that pain again, not after everything that has happened to my Starshine!” He yelled, voice far too loud and aggressive for a man speaking to his leader. In his own ire, he forgot entirely to switch to his native tongue, continuing his rant in the common language of Earth. “You know how this works, what if I lose him entirely to Idris?”

“Idris? Who the hell is Idris?” Grey’s puzzled question broke the impassioned tirade of the Eliksni Titan. The Warlock, still standing behind the man – now with an expression of pissed-off confusion plastered on his face – had the front row seat to the sight of Arakris’ shoulders once again stiffening up, the man’s head ducking in what Grey recognised very clearly as a very familiar motion of ‘oh shit I fucked up’.

Mithrax now almost entirely forgotten, Grey side-stepped around the Titan, spinning in place to stare up at the other man’s uncovered face. What he saw there almost stopped his heart – he had seen it before. He had not dared to hope.

But he had not been wrong.

“Arakris?” Grey’s voice was barely more than a whisper, so broken and filled with hope and fear and despair, and the crumbling expression of guilt that fell across the Eliksni’s face only solidified the horrible – wonderful, terrible – truth of the moment. “You’re… you’re really here.”

Hands reached out for the Eliksni, tentative, as if they were scared that moving too fast might shatter the illusion, as yellow eyes brimmed with unbidden tears. Despair fought with jubilation as Grey’s insides tore themselves apart in the subsequent storm of emotions.

Arakris was here. Arakris was really here – the one thing he had not hoped to dream of. The absolute impossible.

Yet here it was.

“Grey-“ Arakris croaked out, his own hands raising to meet the Warlock’s subconsciously, before flinching away – guilt weighed too heavy in his heart as he looked down at the open pain, the unfathomable love, written in Grey’s eyes. “Starshine…” He breathed out. “I’m so sorry.”

And he was gone again.

Arakris rocked backwards slightly, shifting his posture to catch himself as a wave of vertigo overcame his senses. Glancing around, his mind quickly supplied him with the memory that he and Grey were standing in Misraakskells workshop, where the Kell had asked them to help him with something. But not amount of brain scratching answered the question of what the Kell had requested. Or the question of why Grey was standing in front of him, staring at him with the most horrible mixture of panic, loss, and betrayal. Looking into the Warlock’s eyes burned at Arakris’ very soul, and immediately, he felt panic rise within him.

Grey had never looked at him like that. What in the living Light had he done to earn such an expression from the gentle, caring Warlock. Grey had never looked at him like he was looking at a stranger – what the actual fuck had he done when he blacked out? The Awoken man’s eyes had worn many emotions while looking at the Eliksni, but the hollow emptiness that filled them now had never been one of them. And it was by far the worst.

“Grey? My love-“ He cringed at the way Grey’s expression continued to sink further into horror as he spoke. “What’s wrong?” The Titan asked, reaching out to rest his hands on the Warlock’s arms, fully intent on soothing whatever hurt Grey must have been feeling.

As soon as he reached for the other man, Grey snapped out of his stupor.

“Don’t touch me!”

Arakris could only stare, eyes wide, at the hand that the Warlock had unceremoniously slapped away – with his Light infused powers too, which left the Eliksni with a sting working its way into his very bones.

The small ache in his hand, however, was nothing compared to the cavernous break that seemed to shatter through his heart. Arakris could not understand – what had he done? He had tried so hard to only show Grey his good parts, where had he gone wrong? It had to have been during the blackout, but Misraaks had never told him of any strange, aberrant behaviour during those times. Stars above he had not even blacked out for months, so the sudden occurrence had already rocked him off balance. But he must have done, or said something, for Grey to look at him that way.

“Grey, please- whatever it is I did, I’m sure I did not mean it… anything I did to hurt you, love, I am sorry. Please, tell me what I did, my Starshine.” He said, reaching out for the Warlock again.

Grey recoiled even further backwards, now actively avoiding the other man’s touch. The starlight beneath his skin ebbed, dying away, and he shook his head violently enough for his meticulously combed hair to fall across his forehead in disarray. “I said don’t touch me! And don’t call me that!” He shrieked, his voice reaching a pitch that was far too shrill for the usually quite collected Warlock that he was supposed to be.

Arakris felt his heart sink at the sight, unable to comprehend anything.

Grey could only hear the blood rushing through his head as his heart palpitated in his chest, his lungs squeezing too tight for him to breathe, his vision swimming behind the tears that filled his eyes.

The Titan reached for him again, not willing to stand by as Grey lost himself to his own panic, but the Warlock continued to withdraw from him – until there was no space left behind him. Grey froze when his back met the solid surface of Mithrax’s chest.

With the sudden change in sensation, and the reminder that there was a third person witnessing this… whatever the fuck this was, Grey reeled his body back in order by force. The Kell had stood slightly taller, and now placed his dominant hands on the Warlock’s shoulders. The older Eliksni, although still set on his previously stated goal, had the decency to feel a level of guilt towards the Warlock. Aaraxsis had been right after all – knowledge, the truth, those things would apparently only bring Grey pain. The Kell should perhaps have trusted that a man who referred to Grey as his bondmate would know what he was talking about. But the mistake had already been made, and for now all Misraaks could do was dissolve the situation before it had a chance to escalate even further.

“I think it is best if you retire for now, Guardian. There is something I wish to discuss with Aaraxsis, if that will be alright.” Grey nodded numbly at the Kell’s request, powerless to do more than that lest he break down and cry right in Mithrax’s personal space. “I do ask that you think on my request. The Light works in strange, paracausal ways, but it is not beyond the scope of our abilities to use it for our own benefit.”

Again, Grey nodded, biting down on his bottom lip as he scurried away from the Kell, casting one last broken look at Arakris before turning away sharply, and leaving. As the door shut behind him, Arakris made a move to follow, only to be halted by his Kell raising a hand.

“Do stay, Aaraxsis. I wish to speak with you. The one who just showed his true face.” Misraaks demanded, indicating for the Titan to come kneel on the carpeted floor at the centre of the room.

Taking his place opposite the younger man, Misraaks took a brief moment to observe the Titan’s behaviour as he waited for the Captain to present himself. Arakris looked positively broken, in that moment, entire body slumped and mandibles worrying at each other in a clear indication of his internalised agony. One of his hands rubbed against his chest, fingers clearly digging for something beneath his scarf, but Misraaks could not see what, before something in the other man shifted.

The grief and misery on his expression barely changed, save for the subtle addition of anger that flitted through cyan blue eyes. Aaraxsis let out a withered sigh, sounding far too old for an Eliksni who had only seen three-hundred years.

“You promised.” The Titan croaked out, staring at his Kell with a hollow expression.

“And you chose to run away.” Misraaks replied, staring down at the younger Eliksni impassively. His expression remained hidden behind his mask, but Aaraxsis cowed at the Kell’s words.

“I had no other choice. I should not have let him know. I am only here now because both Arakris and I feel incredible grief. I cannot stay. But you gave him a hope I specifically wanted to avoid giving him!” Aaraxsis said, rough voice just shy of a cracked wail.

“And yet you chose to intervene now. Why?” The Kell asked, leaning forward in curiosity, his hands rested on his thighs as he observed the younger male. Aaraxsis cast his face down, the corners of his mouth downturned.

“Because I am selfish.” He whispered. “If it suddenly becomes permanent, and the man he once was takes over, what do I do then? I lose my beloved Starshine forever! I do not want to hurt him, but in the same way, I do not want to lose him and hurt.” Aaraxsis confessed, all too willingly now that he had another living creature to share this with.

---------

Despite the fact that the planned ‘alone time’ had been the exact opposite of what he had hoped for, Aaraxsis could not say that he hated the outcome of the trip to the EDZ.

To say that the day had been full of surprises would have been as much of an understatement as saying that he hated being trapped in this featureless white dome. But, unlike his hatred for his off-white prison, Aaraxsis did not hate the outcome of the day.

He had a child. Together with Grey. The thought alone sent butterflies running through his veins, filling his entire body with an elated warmth. Their own little daughter – and an Eliksni child at that! Aaraxsis had never quite dared to dream that Grey would want to have an entire child together with him, although it would be a lie to say that he had not dreamt of it at all. Since the technicalities of their gender and species had obviously thrown the option of biological children off the metaphorical skiff, Aaraxsis had only ever imagined adopting a child in that far-fetched scenario.

He had never figured that their lives would reach a point of such stability. And it certainly had not, not even now, but beggars could not be choosers. In the grand scheme of things, the Universe was fighting an uphill battle for survival anyways. There was likely never going to be a ‘good time’ to settle down in either of their incredibly long existences. And to add to that, the little hatchling that they had taken as their own really had no one else. Aaraxsis did not want the young one to grow up entirely without a family, even if the House of Light would be kind to her all the same.

It had only made his heart swell with pride and love when Grey had been the one to suggest it. How he loved his Starshine, who was truly one of the kindest people he had ever known. That the Guardian had been willing to suggest adopting an Eliksni hatchling at all… to Aaraxsis, it meant the world. Because not only did Grey care about him, Grey truly did care about his kind – even those that had no prior connection to Aaraxsis!

The overwhelming love that filled his chest warmed the Eliksni from his exoskeleton down to his internal bones.

He had a family. He could barely believe it. For all the sins of his past, he had a family. He had a chance to do right by Grey – and by Idris. Hence the name of the little one; Idra. Aaraxsis felt that it was only right, to name her something in honour of the man who’s sacrifice brought Grey into his life.

For all that Idris’ sacrifice was in some dreadful way Aaraxsis’ fault. Alright so perhaps the name also gave Aaraxsis a chance to assuage some of his guilt. Aaraxsis could never apologise for separating that man from his family, for killing his wife, and for taking him away from his child. But he could name the hatchling something that, in a way, tied her more closely to Grey than either of them would ever know.

Idra. It was a lovely name, Aaraxsis believed. It only sprung to mind because he now remembered Grey’s previous designation, but as he drew up more memories about it, he vaguely recalled reading somewhere that the name Idra had meaning.

Fig Tree. A symbol of prosperity – a symbol of good. Idra would be something good, in their lives, and Aaraxsis knew that both he and Grey would give it their all to make the world something good for her. She would not live the same horrors that Idris did in the Dark Ages, nor the same life of wandering depravity and desperation as Aaraxsis. She would not face the dangers of the dark, for her fathers – two Guardians – would face them for her. She would enjoy the light of the world, and grow in it.

This Aaraxsis swore.

As the exhilarating feeling of adoration slowly abated, reality caught up with him again. For all that he could dream – could see – that he held Idra in his arms as she fed, as she wriggled about, as she slept, when he opened his eyes, Aaraxsis’ reality stared back at him with unchanging, unfeeling, unending blankness.

He was not to be Idra’s father.

Arakris was. Arakris was going to raise Idra together with Grey, and Aaraxsis was left with nothing but the faint sensation of it all. Fully aware of the world passing around him, and unable to be a part of it anymore.

Jealousy quickly curdled the joy, poisoning the butterflies until his veins felt like they were clogged with grease.

“Curse the Light. Curse the Dark. If I ever meet Xivu Arath I will rip her eyes out with my bare hands.” He hissed bitterly, his words reaching no one but himself.

The melancholy of his state drowned him. With nothing else to do than wallow in his own emotions, Aaraxsis lost himself to it. There was no indication of time passing, inside of his endless bubble, so he had no concept of how long he found himself lost in thought.

It was the sound of Misraakskell’s voice that drew him from his own mind. Distantly aware of his counterpart’s confusion, Aaraxsis allowed his mind to dissipate into that of Arakris. Slowly becoming more aware of the world around him, but still entirely unable to interact with it, he listened.

And his heart froze at what he heard.

Misraaks could not possibly be serious with what he was offering, could he? After everything that they had discussed, the old bastard was still asking Grey – of all fucking people – to help with his far-fetched fools errand?

Aaraxsis immediately felt a volatile rage break out within him. Arakris’ body froze entirely. The ghost within wasted no time in fighting for control against the one that was supposed to have it.

How dare he. How dare he! Misraaks was going to break Grey’s heart, if not more, and Arakris was simply not able to deal with the Warlock if that were to happen! And… and if Grey did not break down in tears, and chose to agree… what might Aaraxsis lose, were it to succeed?

Fuck, there was not even a question of if it would succeed, he was proof enough that it could. But if it did, if it worked on Grey, would that not mean that Idris would take control?

While Aaraxsis wanted to doubt that the Awoken would remember his face – he was a dime in a dozen Eliksni, although more handsome by far – he simply could not be sure. And if he did? If Idris recognised him and decided to fight on the spot? Aaraxsis could not harm his beloved, but the very thought Grey raising his hands in violence against Aaraxsis made the Eliksni’s chest sting.

And what if it somehow became permanent? What if Misraaks’ experiment worked on Grey where it did not work on Arakris? What if Idris permanently took the place of his Starshine? Aaraxsis figured that Arakris’ presence in Grey’s life was soothing enough to fill the wake of his absence, but if the light of his life were replaced by a man who would certainly hate the very air he breathed…

All of a sudden, his unfeeling afterlife felt far more constricting that it should have, the air that he did not need to breathe clinging in his throat, too cloying within his useless lungs.

He heard Misraaks speak again, too encouraging – the sound of it sent another fit of anger sparking up the Titan’s spine.

“Think of the good that can be done with what we might discover.”

Bullshit!

There was no way – Grey could not accept this! He would never accept this! Grey did not believe in Guardians seeking out their past selves, his Starshine would not betray his own code like that.

“It’s risky, and not really the done thing amongst Light Bearers. But… I’m willing to help, Mithrax-Kell.” Aaraxsis should have known better. After all, this was not just about bringing back Guardians previous memories – no. This was about the infinitesimal chance that it would bring Aaraxsis back to Grey.

Aaraxsis was not going to allow it. It would only hurt Grey even more – if the restoration could become permanent, Aaraxsis would have done so the first chance he got! He could not let Grey go through anymore hurt on his account, not if that pain was easily avoided by Grey just not knowing.

For all that he justified his actions, the Eliksni could not shake the selfish truth of the matter. He did not want Grey to hurt, that was true, but at the core of it was something else.

Aaraxsis did not want to lose Grey. He feared being hated, he feared that Idris returning – even for a moment – would destroy the picture of him within Grey’s heart and mind.

He wanted to be a hero, he wanted to say that it was all to protect Grey. But at the end of the day, Aaraxsis was just a man. Fear found itself within his heart too.

And it was that very fear, that made Grey look at him with an expression he had never seen, and had never wanted to see.

Hope. Love. Only to be replaced by shattered pain and helplessness.

He had put that expression there. Not Arakris. Not Misraaks.

Only him.

Aaraxsis had never felt temperature within his bubble before, but for the first time in a long time, he felt so terribly cold.

---------

“You feared losing him to Idris? Is that supposed to be who he once was? You knew him before he was a Guardian?” Misraaks was now genuinely curious, well beyond the point of the firm scolding he had intended to give the Eliksni Guardian for his incredible disrespect and disregard for the authority of his Kell. As much as Misraaks had a title and a position to uphold, he understood the pitiful state of the young Eliksni’s life – worth so much more, but bound by inescapable chains. Aaraxsis – and Arakris – found himself under a lot of pressure, but he was still just a man. Misraaks was no stranger to the pitfalls of greed, but at least Aaraxsis’ selfishness only seemed to centre around one person, and not something more threatening.

Aaraxsis nodded in response to the Kell’s question, still looking down. His lower hands clasped together in front of his stomach, and he kept his eyes glued to his fingers as they fidgeted with the straps that wrapped around his palms. “Yes. But it was not a long acquaintanceship. Nor was it a good one. It began very quickly and ended very poorly. I did not… I do not wish for him to remember me for the monster I was. I only want him to know me as the man who loves him with all of his heart.”

Misraaks felt his eyes widen in surprise. The implication of Aaraxsis’ words were clear as day, so he left that explanation at that. What was truly surprising to the Kell as the depths of Aaraxsis’ fear, when it came to the Warlock.

Aaraxsis opened his mouth, as if to say more, before his eyes dimmed for a second. When he opened them again, Misraaks found the Titan within them once again.

Unfortunately, talking about his fears had distracted Aaraxsis from the searing pain that he and his counterpart had been sharing, which had subsequently shunted him back into the Light of the Guardian’s body. The familiar disorientation of blacking out made the Titan’s head swim, but he recovered even faster than before.

The incredibly lost expression of vulnerability that he showed the Kell made Misraaks frown in empathy.

“Aaraxsis. How do you feel?” The Kell asked, pushing himself to his feet and gesturing for the younger Eliksni to do the same.

“Terrible. I blacked out twice, after months of being fine… and I hurt Grey. I do not even know how. What do I do now? The way he looked at me… he must hate me. What do I even say to him, when I do not know what I have done wrong?” The Guardian asked, rasping quietly, sounding like a lost hatchling despite standing over eight feet tall.

In the eyes of the Kell, the Titan was still quite small, and Misraaks felt an almost fatherly concern for the other man. With a deep sigh, the older Eliksni placed a comforting hand on Arakris’ shoulder, squeezing once.

“I do not think that he hates you. He was just scared. Sudden changes, these things can scare people. Give him time, and then talk to him. He might be upset now, and is lashing out at you, but I do not think that Grey could ever truly hate you.” The Kell reassured, before letting go of Arakris’ shoulder and walking away, returning to his research station.

The dismissal was fairly abrupt, but Arakris was grateful for it. There was no drawn-out need for a goodbye, and the Titan had a lot to think about. Silently, he took his leave.

Chapter Text

The sound of voices echoed almost endlessly within the crystal-lined structures that were favoured by the Awoken. While the ascendant realm teemed with a noise of its own – chaos, loud, pandemonium winding in on itself and wrapping around the senses – the darker side of the Awoken people’s reality lacked the crisp sharpness of sound travelling in the land of ‘day’.

Unmoving eyes gazed upon the Guardians that stood before her, talking amongst themselves. It was a pity that the elusive Grey was not amongst them. Waiting, watching, she did not feel disappointment at the fact; their paths were bound to cross sooner rather than later. In her time of imprisonment, she had of course considered that the man in question had been present, but even if she might not have recognised him by sight, Crow would certainly have called his name at some point.

Since there had been no mention of that particular Guardian within these halls, Savathûn could only assume that he was not one of the Light Bearers tasked with freeing Osiris from within the crystal.

Techeuns, all robed in their near-religious garb, stood in their silent semicircle, hands all raised before them as they chanted words that melted together to form an almost droning hum that hung in the air of the high-ceiling hall.

The group was almost complete; the conclusion of this ridiculous game of distraction nearly at hand. The Witch Queen could barely wait for the day that she would be free to spread her wings once again, to feel the world from a more comfortable shape than from within that of a massive crystal statue. Although her face carried no expression, her mind rang with an almost honed derision as she watched the Guardians speak with the Awoken Queen.

There were only two Guardians, today. One – a Hunter, most likely Exo, Savathûn assumed from the faint sounds of metal shifting against metal that she could pick up each time they moved – stood front and centre, right beside both monarchs of deception.

Mara Sov, the unfathomable, austere Queen of the Awoken, stood with her arms crossed over her midriff, pale eyes staring right into the hollow divots upon the Witch Queen’s ‘face’. There was a calculating glint in her eyes, but in past few months there had never been a moment where that glint had been absent.

Savathûn thought, to herself, that in another life perhaps she could have liked the Queen. Mara Sov was incredibly intelligent, and had very keen senses for trickery and lies – half truths spoken in honesty, smiles and sincerity that hid the deceit of her every word. Despite not having a parasite that demanded those vices in exchange for life, the Awoken Queen embodied them as much as Savathûn. Or at least, enough to be the one mortal with the keenest sense for the With Queen’s trickery.

Such a shame that she was always a few steps behind – able to catch the trail, but never ahead of the scheme. Despite Mara Sov’s inability to fully comprehend the web of lies that surrounded the Witch Queen, Savathûn long suspected that Mara knew more than she actually let on.

But that was a thread that the Witch Queen had to table for now. With the Queen’s Techeuns nearly assembled, the ritual to break her – and more importantly, Osiris – from the crystal would swiftly commence.

In order for her greater ploy to work, Savathûn needed to ensure that she had time to slip into the shadows once again. And what better way to do that than with the poor, lost lamb of a Light Bearer that Uldren Sov had become.

It was almost pitiful, how confused the poor man was of the world around him, as justifiable as that might have been for one with a face as famous as his. But Savathûn could only feel grateful, that the man’s spirit remained as stubborn and as curious as he had been before death. Headstrong and reckless, just like he had been before. All the easier to manipulate.

The Awoken Hunter stood a few feet off to the side of Mara and the other Guardian. If anything it looked like he was trying to skulk in the shadows. Unfortunately, those clung close to the walls, far away from the centre of the room, and he was left to stand there with his hood pulled up over his head.

His orange-yellow eyes glowed in the shadow cast by his cloak, as he stared up at the Witch Queen. Wondering at the aged Warlock that she had trapped insider her, no doubt. Savathûn allowed herself a benevolent chuckle – an almost affectionate sound – in her mind, as she prepared to move her next pawn.

It was nearly worthy of laughter – the Guardians, the Vanguard, all of it! That they thought themselves to be the ones with the upper hand? Unthinkable, ridiculous. Laughable. They were little more than ants, trying to comprehend something on a scale so grand and so ancient, while they barely could see the trees past the blades of grass. No way to see the spider’s web until they were already bound tightly within its deadly threads.

The Witch Queen let out a low hum, watching with attentive eyes as all attention in the room focused in on her giant crystalline form. Crow’s shoulders stiffened, while the other Guardian had shifted an uncomfortable step back. Mara, ever the ‘fearless leader’, remained where she was, arms still crossed over her midriff and expression as impenetrable as ever.

Mara only observed her, offering no reply, her pale yellow eyes still holding their mask of indifference.

Those eyes were so familiar to Savathûn. That expression, the deep shimmer of one burdened with knowledge that they alone had to carry – with treachery and planning that stretched farther than any trusted associate would ever come to know – was all too similar to what Savathûn recognised in herself. For what it was worth, the Witch Queen liked Mara Sov. It seemed only fitting that the playing field had two Queens; one on the side of the Darkness, and one on the side of the Light.

Savathûn soothed herself with the reminder that soon, the alignment of who fought for whom would shift. Drastically so. She would serve the Deep no more, she would bow to the Witness and its machinations no longer. The Witch Queen, long bound to a life of death and decay and deception, would prove herself to the Machine, and free humanity from the burden of protecting it. In the hands of humanity, the dormant Traveller was constantly in danger; they had lost it to the Cabal, and more recently nearly to the Vex. Only in the hands of someone who understood and wielded true, absolute power, would the Great Machine be safe from what was to come.

What happened to humanity in the aftermath would only fuel her war-mongering sister, which would in turn release a plague of Darkness across the pitiful humans grovelling in the hovel they called a City.

It seemed a fitting penance for what they did to Oryx, her brother. While Savathûn’s ultimate goal was to protect the Traveller, she did not care what happened to humanity – to the Exos and Awoken either. A small part of her allowed itself to find satisfaction in the tidal wave of death that would inevitably crash over them and erase all traces of the Earthlings from history itself.

But first, she had a ceremony to survive. While the Witch Queen was confident in her power – god given, and more than a match for any Guardian – she found herself in a prison of her own making. The circumstances were planned, yes, but not favourable. The fact that there was even a percentage chance that the plan might go wrong said enough.

Savathûn planned to survive extraction from the crystal, yes, but even the Trickster Goddess herself felt a sliver of nervousness. The magic of the Awoken – the magic of Mara Sov and her Techeuns – was unlike the power wielded by Guardians. It was interwoven with the fabric of realities itself, treading a fine line between Light and Dark, much like the people who manipulated it. Even Savathûn, in all her endless wisdom and knowledge, did not quite grasp the full depths of it, much to her chagrin.

This uncertainty meant that there was a chance of failure.

But it was no matter. Even without her, the plan would carry through; her most trusted had already been instructed on what to do. Without their Queen, her Hive would perform their duties regardless. They would weave the web, and call the Traveller to a place of safety, and it would come. It would recognise her people, and they would protect it from the Darkness. Even without the Witch Queen to lead them, Savathûn knew that her loyal kindred would do as told.

And she would ensure that they had the time-frame required to accomplish it.

Distracting the Guardians, and the Awoken Queen, would be the first step of the plan. Osiris had played his part as a means of infiltration, and now again as leverage in a situation where Savathûn found herself incredibly vulnerable. Of course it was well within the scope of her plan that Osiris would play the role of hostage here. Both of them were trapped within the confines of the crystal. If Mara chose to simply destroy Savathûn now, she would be killing Osiris along with the Witch Queen. Perhaps some might have called it a noble sacrifice, but the purple-clad Guardian, Saint-14, had been entirely against losing Osiris for the too-manieth time.

Freeing the human meant freeing the Witch Queen, and that was what Savathûn had determined would be the outcome.

With the collection of Techeuns so nearly complete, the Hive goddess decided that it was time to make her next move. Months of waiting were finally paying off.

 There was no grand scheme at play in her next plot. Comparative to the bigger picture, it was actually fairly simple. She would provide her people with the distraction needed to initiate the Plan, by playing a show of smoke and mirrors with the heart strings of both the Awoken Queen and the Vanguard.

It was only right of her to repay Crow for his generous information, was it not?

“My dear Mara… now that the final preparations are coming to an end, and our inevitable parting draws near, I believe the time has come for me to say my parting words.” The Witch Queen spoke, her voice an imperious, gentle murmur, that carried through the room with the same force of a wave, rippling against the rocks and sand. For the Hive Goddess, delivering the weight of her stare was but a trifle, even while encased in opaque crystal. The oppressiveness of her presence alone, of the smooth tones of her voice, was enough to remind everyone of who exactly they stood before.

Mara Sov, of course, remained impassive to this. Arms still crossed, the Awoken Queen cocked a hip to the side and tilted her head back slightly. “And what would that be, Queen of Lies?”

The Awoken woman was always so good at injecting a certain venom into her voice without losing the pleasantness of neutrality. How Savathûn was going to miss their verbal games of cat and mouse.

“As a gratitude for the great lengths you have gone through for me, I wish to give a gift.” Savathûn said, nothing but saccharine sincerity in her words. She watched as Mara’s lips twitched, the corner of her brow raising just so in an indication of concern. No gift from the Witch Queen came without a price, and no gift from the Witch Queen could come from purely the kindness of her heart.

Savathûn had no heart. It had long been taken, gutted from her like everything else, and swallowed whole by the unending hunger of the Worms, consumed by the greedy maw of the Darkness itself. Replaced with lies and treachery, cunning and deceit. The Witch Queen had spent years operating in the shadows – long after the death of Oryx – before making her move. It thrilled a part of her, to finally be in the light; to finally step forth onto the field and play the game in the open, both an omniscient observer and malleable pawn. Always three steps ahead, but right in the midst of it all, watching everything unfold.

“And what gift does the gracious Witch Queen wish to impart on us?” Mara asked, her voice as level and haughty as ever. Savathûn merely hummed, before directing her attention toward the silent Crow. Even without eyes, or a visible movement of her head, the beings in the room could sense the shift of energy. All eyes turned to the Awoken Hunter, who shrunk back a little before catching himself in the action. Straightening out his shoulders, he only offered the looming statue a questioning look.

Mara spoke in his stead. “What do you have, that you could offer to a Guardian?”

“Knowledge.” The two syllables rang through the room with the undercurrent of a growl; a promise that wanted to come across as kind, but could not shake the leering danger that clung to it.

“I do not seek knowledge.” Crow said. An obvious lie. Savathûn could sense it, burning through the man’s veins like a poison. Countless possibilities must have been opening up in his mind, questions of what the Witch Queen herself might be able to reveal.

“I Know what it is that you seek, little Guardian. And I know what it is that you fear. You fear the truth.” Savathûn responded, power injecting into her words as she spoke. Crow flinched, breaking his eyes away, the corners of his jaw flexing as he worried at his lower lip.

Savathûn was right, after all. Crow wanted nothing more than to understand what he had been. Who he had been. He wanted to understand why his face caused him trouble before his words could; why Spider considered him such a hot commodity, why Guardians considered him a walking curse. But he was afraid to. He heard the whispers, what people said, and the name that kept flitting about him like a shadow he could not shake.

Uldren Sov.

Distantly, Crow remembered what Grey had said to him once. Guardians were not meant to know who they once were. If the Light had willed it, then they would resurrect whole. They were designed to be killers, soldiers; coming back without a connection to their humanity made them the perfect weapons to wield against an ever-approaching enemy. Back then – although it had not been so long ago – Crow had taken Grey’s words for what they were. He had let the matter lie.

But now, things were different. Everything was turning itself on its head, and the world was beginning to encompass so much more than just the goal of living to see the next day. Crow’s life was about more than himself, and Glint. It was about Osiris, Zavala, and the Guardians who chose to trust him for who he was now. It was about Amanda, his friend. It was about Arakris, the one man who understood what it was like for Crow to even exist, and Grey, who had saved his life.

His world had grown exponentially since his rebirth; both in people, size, and consequence. He was involved in much greater things that were at play now, than when he had been a prized pet to the Spider.

Everything was changing. Everything had changed.

If Grey had been right about the Light not wanting Guardians to remember who they were, Ana Brey would have never recovered Rasputin. If Grey had been right, Arakris would have never… remembered. But he did.

And that was proof enough, that seeking out the past was not impossible. And if Savathûn was offering it to him – answers, memories, whatever it would be so long as it answered the mystery of who he was – then Crow found it difficult to summon the strength to refuse. Terrified to know the truth, but unable to turn himself away from it.

Mara had said nothing, through this exchange, merely watching Crow with poorly hidden curiosity. While she knew that nothing the Witch Queen did came without a hefty price, the Awoken Queen could not stop her own selfishness from wriggling awake within her. The sight of Uldren – or Crow, now, as he was apparently called – had stilled her heart in her chest. The Guardians had taken him from her, and although she could not fault them for the sequence of events that led to his death, Mara was still… angry, for it. And now he was back; the dear, kind Uldren that she had known in the Distributary, but not the brother who had been by her side through the rise and fall of the Awoken, the Reef, and the Dreaming City. She knew what Savathûn was offering. She knew that there would be hell to pay for accepting.

But Mara Sov said nothing. She wanted to know how this would play out. She knew what Uldren’s choice would be – he still had the same headstrong personality that had led him into the Black Garden all those years ago. The Awoken woman knew that she should probably stop him, but found herself powerless to do so.

She wanted to know where this would lead.

Crow mulled over the Witch Queen’s offer, before settling on his answer. “If I accept your gift, what will you ask in return?” Mara felt a flicker of pride towards the Hunter for his question. It was good to know that Uldren still had sense in that head of his.

The Witch Queen hummed, a low melody that disclosed how pleased she was with the answer.

“Oh, but little Hunter, I never said that the gift was for you.” Her voice echoed through the room. She could see the Guardian stall at that, clearly not expecting that answer.

Frowning, Crow’s eyes flickered between Mara and the Witch Queen, before settling on the faintly glowing mass of purple and blue crystal that encased Savathûn. “Who then, is this gift for?”

The crystal hummed again, and this time, the sound seemed to shake through to Crow’s very bones.

“Arakris.”

Crow felt his heart sink. Remembering that Savathûn had once masqueraded as Osiris, the Hunter recalled the situation where he had accidentally let slip the Eliksni’s name.

He couldn’t possibly put Arakris even more in danger, could he? After all, Crow had fumbled the last opportunity to even admit that he had accidentally told the Witch Queen about Arakris’ existence, even if it was as vague as he could make it. Should have figured that an ageless being, older than even a Guardian could comprehend, would know enough about the many races that dotted the galaxy to recognise the onomatology of a name.

Out of the corner of his vision, he could see the Awoken Queen perk up slightly at the mention of this new name. From what he had heard – over the months of working alongside the other Awoken in her service, preparing to free Osiris from the crystal cocoon – Mara Sov had her own fair share of experience with Eliksni.

He had also heard rumours about the man who shared his face, but Crow had brushed those aside. Hearing the whispers from those that hated the dead Prince was one thing, but hearing them from those who mourned his loss struck a different chord that he resolutely ignored. For a time there, it had been at Grey’s advice; let sleeping dogs lie, don’t go digging up old ghosts. But as bitter as the truth seemed to be, the closer he got with the people here, Crow wanted more than anything to understand. And yet, no one would tell him. They whispered about him as if he could not hear, but kept him in the dark.

All of that was of little consequence in the moment. The Witch Queen was silent, for a moment, and Crow briefly toyed with the idea of playing dumb. Arakris’ name was just that; another name. No one here – the Techeuns, the Queen, or the other Guardian – had anything else to go by. It was all wagered shots in the dark if they started theorising who the Witch Queen deemed so importance as to bestow a gift upon.

That was, until Savathûn spoke up again.

“Will you bring him to me, Crow? One more favour, for an old friend?” She purred. Old friend. The words struck a chord in the Hunter, but not a good one. A spark of anger flashed through his frame, and his fire-coloured eyes narrowed into a glare.

Old friend. Savathûn had played him, the entire time. The whole time he thought that it was Osiris, showing him kindness and care because a Legendary Guardian saw something worth saving in a wretched Hunter like Crow, it had all been a lie.

Queen of Lies indeed.

Crow shook his head, but his words were caught in his throat. Savathûn hummed again, this time releasing a thrumming tone of displeasure at the Hunter’s answer.

“I so deeply wish to see him, little Hunter. It would be a disservice to deny your friend a gift that would help him. After all, it cannot be easy to live as a Guardian that no one wants alive. I thought you of all people would understand that.” There was a heavy emphasis in the Witch Queen’s words, the air around her becoming almost oppressive, thick to breathe and heavy on the mind. “To live life in the shadow of another, when the man you once were but no longer are is all others see… that is no way to live, now is it?” She crooned.

Crow grit his teeth tighter, hands clenching into fists at his sides. Of course he knew how it felt, to be stuck behind a face that held a history Crow himself had no part in. Arakris was the same. The man he previously was had been an enemy to humanity, but from what Crow knew, also beloved by the same man he found himself with now. Even if Arakris did not consciously know it, it must have been a burden to lead a life of deception. It was different from Crow, in that sense. Crow was unwanted, because of the Prince, but Arakris was wanted because of who he used to be. It was twisted all the same. It had to hurt, all the same.

Sympathy stirred within the Hunter’s chest, warm and fierce, as he thought of his friend. Arakris had been dealt a horrible hand. The ‘real’ him was still inside of the Guardian him, and it almost put Arakris in the horrible position of ‘the reason why Grey and his real lover were no longer together’. Crow almost wanted to suck his teeth at the realisation.

While he did not doubt Grey’s affection for Arakris, it came to the Hunter with daunting certainty that what the Warlock really wanted was the man inside.

Just like Crow, Arakris was doomed to live in a shadow he had not cast. The Hunter could find no words to answer the Witch Queen, and instead turned his head away sharply, shamed into silence.

Mara Sov spoke up instead, drawing the attention back to her. The crisp clarity of her words cut through the oppressive air of the Witch Queen’s, as clear yellow eyes focused on the giant crystal. “You wish to give a gift to a Guardian who was not here? Why?” The white-haired Queen asked, even as her mind already calculated countless possibilities to what Savathûn was intentionally not saying.

Savathûn withdrew her attention from Crow, and the Hunter’s shoulders eased down imperceptibly from the rigid line they had tensed into during the conversation.

“Because he intrigues me.” Savathûn chuckled, the answer flowing from her as if it truly were that simple. She gave pause, eyeing the other Queen carefully as she prepared her next move. “Thousands of years since the Whirlwind and the Light finally finds its way to those poor, miserable Fallen. I am most curious to see why – and I want to help him. The poor thing is lost in a world he cannot understand. I wish to give him a gift. I wish to help him.” She chose her words carefully, measured for the impact that her sentences would have. Each word adding a new cloud to the storm that was about to unfold, each sentence breeding a new, horrifying realisation that would burden the Vanguard’s hands to blind them to the greater matters.

After all, the humans were so full of themselves; they would try to do the obvious, when they heard about all of this. Contain the Eliksni Guardian – Savathûn assumed that to be the truth of his nature, but it was still an educated guess. Based on Crow’s reaction, the Witch Queen gathered that she had hit the mark well enough. They would corner the Guardian, question him, perhaps even treat him like a threat. All good standing that might have been garnered would whither and crumble, between the Eliksni and City, when the normal citizens discovered that the House of Light had harboured a Light Wielding monster since they had arrived.

And best of all, they would try and stop Arakris from ever meeting her. But he would come, of this Savathûn was certain. Just like Crow, this Arakris seemed to live in the shadow of his previous incarnation, if only in the eyes of one person. No lie was built to last forever, the Queen of Lies knew this better than anyone, and soon enough Arakris would realise it too, much like Crow had. And people would try to hide the truth from him, just like they did with Crow.

They would drive Arakris into her arms.

Crow had tensed up entirely again, but could not find his voice anymore as Mara released a soft affirmative hum, cradling her chin between her pointer finger and thumb as she narrowed her eyes at the Witch Queen. Savathûn remained quiet, watching as the gears visibly turned in Mara’s head.

“You wish to speak to this Arakris? Do you know where we can find him then?” The Awoken woman finally asked. Crow’s head shot up, wide eyes glowing bright beneath his hood. His mouth tugged down at the sides, and he almost wanted to shake his head at the woman to get her to stop talking.

Savathûn chuckled, rich and loud. She knew full well that she was not going to be granted her ‘audience’ with Arakris any time soon. But she also knew that he would find his way to her eventually. “Why, he lives with the House of Light, of course.” She purred.

The only visible reaction to the new information came from the other Guardian, who shook their head in slow realisation and creeping horror as they took a step back. A muffled ‘impossible’ slipped from beneath their helmet. Mara showed no outward signs of surprise or concern, lazily inclining her head at the statue.

“Very well. I shall inform the Vanguard and request they bring this Arakris to see you.” The Awoken Queen promised – another obvious lie. Without another word, she turned and strode out of the room, the heels of her boots clicking against the crystalline floor. The other Hunter followed without a word, and one by one the room emptied out until it was only Savathûn and a trembling Crow.

The trembling was only faint, but to the eyes of a god they were easily detected.

“Come now Crow, what is on your mind? You seem troubled.” She asked, her voice nothing short of motherly as she spoke to the Hunter.

Blazing orange eyes snapped up to stare at the almost humanoid formation at the top of the crystal. A fierce glare was plastered on Crow’s face, his lips pulled back in an angry snarl. “Intrigue. Pity. Is that it?” He spat, taking a step forward. “Is that why you chose to help me too? To manipulate another lost soul into doing your twisted bidding? Is that why you lied to me?”

The air around the crystal seemed to quiver for a moment, before the same oppressive feeling collected in the air around it. Despite the threatening aura, Savathûn’s voice remained sweet, gentle even. Too gentle.

“I have been more honest with you than any of your other so-called friends, Crow.” She admonished. Crow’s eye twitched in irritation.

“Is this what you call honesty? Lying to me, to everyone? I thought you were my friend too, but you’re not even him!” The Hunter snapped.

The sound of her voice hardened, losing the soft resonance that it had held up previously. “I helped you, in all of your ventures. I helped you break my sister’s hold on the Shore, I brought you into the City and gave you a home. I offered you guidance as a mentor would.”

“Stop.” Crow hissed.

“If that is what you want.”

“I want the truth. Why did you help me. Why do you want to help him?” The Hunter asked, unable to block the emotion from his own voice.

“The truth is simple. I helped you because I wanted to. I will help him, because I want to. There is no lie in that.” The Witch Queen answered.

It did not seem enough for Crow, as he let out a rough growl, pacing in agitation.

“You put his life in danger, just by exposing him. By feeding those lies, you’re putting him in danger.” He squared his shoulders and looked up, now standing too close to properly see the rounded ‘head’ of the crystal statue.

“The truth hurts.” Came the non-committal response. “You know this better than anyone. You know the truth, and yet you hide from it. You want the truth, and yet others hide it from you. The same way you hide the truth from him. You shrink away from the rumours of the man you used to be.”

That had the Hunter taking a step back, hesitating. “I’m not him. And I’m not hiding anything from Arakris. I’m… protecting him.”

“How can you say that, when even you do not know who he is? How can you say that, when you do not know how he died? At the end of the day you are only protecting yourself from the same cold truth that you try to protect Arakris from.”

Crow’s brow knit together as he glanced to the side. For all that the Witch Queen was good at her cryptic messages, this one felt almost too on the nose. The same truth he protected Arakris from? All that he wanted to do was ensure that Arakris never thought that Grey only cared about the man he used to be.

Bitter truth as it may be, he was protecting Arakris from Grey.

In the silence left by the Hunter, Savathûn pressed on. “If the truth is what you really want, then lay your hand on me.”

“Crow, don’t.” Glint’s warning came just in time, the ghost having watched from the side-lines for all of the confrontation. “It’s not worth the risk of finding out.”

The Hunter hesitated, the fingers of his left hand twitching, rising to meet the crystal before stalling, and falling back to his side. Taking large steps back from the crystal, Crow shook his head. “I will not listen to any more of your lies, Savathûn. I will protect my friend, even from you.”

The Witch Queen merely laughed, watching the Hunter retreat with amusement. “You will bring him to me of your own accord, Crow! The two of you have more in common than you’d like to think; the same truth that you are protecting him from, is the very truth that your Grey is hiding from you. Who you really were, Crow. You’ll never know that you are not him, not until you know who he was.” For once, her words were entirely true. Savathûn had heard all about Uldren’s death, down to the name of the Guardian who had caused it. Of course she had recognised it immediately when the Hunter had mentioned it all those months ago. Learning of that Guardian’s entanglement with the Eliksni Titan was just another gift-wrapped present that fell straight into her lap.

The Hunter merely growled, spinning on his heel and teleporting away. Just as the mist of transmat consumed him, he heard the Witch Queen let out a final laugh.

“I will see you again, Crow.”

The daunting promise rang in his ears long after he left the echoing halls of that chamber.

-----------

“Crimson, I fucked up!” Grey whined, and not for the first time, as he curled up miserably against the stone wall, sniper rifle held up against his legs as the butt rested against the sandy floor.

The Hunter only groaned, mechanical eyes clicking shut before opening them to glare at the Warlock. Timed with a heavy – unnecessary – exhale, Crimson leaned closer to her brother.

“Get the hell up before I forget that friendly fire is bad for our score.” She hissed. The Warlock just rolled his eyes, stretching out his legs on either side of his gun as he just continued to cry in theatrical fashion.

“But Crimson, I really hurt him! And now I don’t know what to do.” He wailed, clutching at the grip and barrel of Izanagi’s Burden as if it were a crutch and not a dangerous weapon. “I really don’t know what to do.” He whispered, and even though Crimson could not see his expression through his helmet, she was forced to pause at the open sincerity and pain in his voice.

Groaning, the Hunter pulled out her ghost and instructed it to call in the surrender. A few yards away, cheers rang out through the air, while Sinister’s loud cursing emanated from the tunnel at the far back corner of the Alter of Flame map. Popping off her helmet and stowing her gun, the Hunter pinched the corner divots of her eye sockets – around the place the bridge of her nose would be if she had bones. Squeezing her eyes shut for one more moment, she let out an aggravated sigh, before turning her full attention to her brother.

“Why did you even agree to come out here, if you were so torn up about this? We just lost a match against that trio of bolts-for-brains Exos, and now I owe Bala five armour mods. If you were just going to sit here and cry about your boyfriend this whole time, why did you agree to join us?” The Hunter asked, dropping herself to the ground beside Grey.

The Warlock shrugged, tugging off his own helmet with a hiss as it unsealed. It did startle Crimson that his eyes were actually wet from tears. “I don’t know, Crim. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I thought maybe this could take my mind off it, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Releasing a long exhale, the Hunter calmed herself entirely and placed a hand on the Awoken man’s shoulder. “It’s alright. Don’t really care about those armour mods anyways. But what happened with Arakris then? Last I saw you two you were happy as could be.”

Grey just plastered a wobbly smile on his face. Despite his theatrics, he was genuinely hurting, and the sight of it made Crimson’s inorganic heart ache. “We were, or at least, I thought I was. I thought I could get over it, and move past it. I thought that he’d be enough, and for a moment there he was… but it’s all a lie, Crim! Everything’s just one big, fucking lie!” He wailed, tears spilling from his yellow eyes – the sclera were reddening, no longer their usual off-white. He must have been crying before already, the Hunter observed.

“Why? Tell me what happened.”

The Warlock took a shaky breath, trying to figure out where to start, until he settled on something. “Remember back during the Endless Night? When we were fighting off the Vex invasion?” At Crimson’s nod, he continued. “Arakris was there – he was fighting with us. The real Arakris.” He added for emphasis, as shit as it might have seemed to term one realer than the other.

Crimson’s blank stare had the Warlock nodding his head empathetically. “I mean it! I’d recognise my Arakris anywhere, and the person who was in control during that fight- that was my Arakris. And ever since then…” He paused, words catching on his tongue. What he was about to admit to was almost bitter, a terrible thought that he fear vocalising for what else it might unleash. “Ever since then he’s not been the same. Or, well, he’s been the same as he’s always been as a Guardian. Grown a little into his familiar personality, sure, but other than that, nothing new. So I thought maybe it was just a once off thing, but I could never shake the hope that my Arakris was still in there, you know? As horrible as that might sound towards the man he is now.” He added with a guilty whisper.

The Hunter withheld any judgement on the matter. This was a complicated situation as is, she was hardly about to call Grey – her beloved brother – a bad person just because he could not entirely control his feelings.

Breathing in through his nose, which had blocked up a bit from the crying, the Warlock tried to continue. “But then Mithrax told me that Guardian memories can come back.”

The blatant directness with which he dropped that particular bomb on Crimson had the Exo’s brow plates clicking upwards. No other expression changed on the Hunter’s face, but by the Traveller she was too stunned to even try to form any other expression. “What… what did you say?” She whispered.

Before Grey could open his mouth to answer, Sinister’s boisterous voice rang out around the corner. “Well, I saw our friends off for now, but what was all that about huh? We could’ve taken them, so what the- oh.” The Titan paused, humour dying on his tongue at the sight of the Warlock. Shooting a concerned glance at Crimson, he hurried over to his friends. “What happened? Is everything alright?” He asked, dropping to his knees and scooting to sit on Grey’s other side.

“No, honestly, nothing’s fucking alright.” The harsh retort surprisingly came from Crimson, this time. Mind still reeling from the unbelievable thing that Grey had just revealed, the Hunter only glared at Sinister. The human could only hold his hands up and mouth an apology. Turning her attention back to Grey, Crimson pressed for him to continue. “Are you serious? Mithrax told you that that was possible?”

Nodding at the disbelief in her tone, Grey tried his best to recount what the Kell had said to him. It all came back fairly logically, but as he spoke, understanding began to dawn in Crimson’s eyes. As soon as Grey got to talking about how Arakris had reacted to hearing that Grey had almost agreed, the Hunter held out a hand for the man to stop.

“So you’re telling me that the very thing you hoped for, is true? Arakris… is still in there?” She asked. Grey sucked in his lips, nodding slowly. Sinister stayed dead silent, listening to the two speak with wide eyes. “Then… what did you do? What is it that you are so worried about?”

“I’ve tried so hard to keep the truth from him, Crimson. Can you imagine how hurt this Arakris would be if he found out that I was his lover before he died too? He’d think that I only love him now because of who he once was.” The Warlock hissed, clenching his hands together and drawing his knees back in to his chest, curling in on himself. Sinister wrapped a comforting arm around the other man’s shoulder, mindful of the shifting plates of his armour.

Crimson gave Grey all of one pitying hum of agreement before pressing on the matter. “But isn’t that the truth? Didn’t this all start again because you loved – still love – the man he once was?” She asked. The Warlock’s shoulders tensed at the bitter truth in her words, before he sagged against Sinister.

“Yeah. You’re completely right. But that doesn’t change that I do love who he is now. I really do. But… now knowing that the other him was there all along… by the Light, what was I supposed to do? I freaked out, and snapped at him, and now he probably thinks that I hate him!” Grey broke down into another series of hiccupping cries. The human Titan only pulled his friend closer against him, trying to offer as much silent comfort as he could.

“You could always just do the simple thing; apologise to him, and tell him the truth. He’s loved you through two lifetimes and two separate sets of memories, Grey. I think he’ll find it in his heart to forgive you, and understand.” The Hunter offered, placing a consoling hand over the man’s knee.

Grey shook his head at that, and Crimson frowned, before understanding suddenly began to glow in her yellow eyes. “But it won’t be enough, will it? Knowing the truth, you’re scared that you can never go back to seeing him the way you did before. Not with an eternal ‘what if’ hanging over the both of you.”

Nodding at his sister’s spot on conclusion, Grey released a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to hurt him. I love him more than anything, and I would give everything to have him back. But I have him with me right now… and it should be enough. And it is. But at the same time, it isn’t.”

Crimson could only huff at that, digging tracks into the sand beneath her as she stretched her legs out. “There’s not much to do about that, I’m afraid. The only thing I can ask is what do you want to do next? What do you want to do, knowing what you know now?”

“I could help Mithrax. I could do the experiments, and possibly bring back my beloved permanently. But there’s a chance that I might lose myself entirely to whoever I was before becoming a Guardian.” He muttered, to which Crimson released a sharp hiss of air, the gears in her jaw whirring as metal clenched against metal.

“Losing you isn’t an option for us Grey, not even for Arakris.” The Hunter reminded him. It hardly needed to be said, though, as all three remembered distinctly that Crimson was prepared to kill anyone for the safety of what she deemed her family. Grey did notice that Crimson was steadfast in ignoring every mention of returning the memories of a Guardian, but he figured that even her processor was not ready to calculate those possibilities.

“The other option is to just confess that you knew him, and pretend that whatever you saw gave you a flashback. Make it seem like you were scared, but still love him, and that the moment has come and gone.” The Hunter offered.

“But that would be lying, Crimson!” Sinister finally piped up, a little put off at the idea of complicating Grey’s relationship with Arakris even further. Lying now would only dig a deeper hole that he did not want to help fill again.

The Exo glared at the Titan. “It would be omitting the truth. Protecting him from what will obviously hurt him. Give him a reason for it, and just let it smooth over. The biggest decision relies on you, Grey; can you love him the same, knowing that your Arakris is still somewhere inside of him?” Crimson asked, imploring eyes staring deep into the Warlock’s tear-blurred vision.

Grey took a long time to answer that question. “I will. I can’t lose him again, I just can’t. So I’ll do whatever it takes, to make sure he stays happy.”

Crimson nodded. “Good. Then go talk to him, instead of crying all over Sinister. And do try to smooth it over quick, it’s almost time for our Dawning Dinner. You don’t have long to figure this all out.”

The Warlock sniffled, before nodding, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his gloves – which were thankfully not covered in the rough sand that lay every across the Alter of Flames arena.

“Alright. I’ll go talk to him.” He decided, standing up and brushing off his long-coat.

“We’ll see you soon then. The both of you, I hope.” Sinister smiled, standing up and pulling the Exo with him as the trio of Guardians all prepared to leave the now silent arena.

Grey said nothing, but nodded stiffly with a tense smile. “Yeah, I hope so.” He muttered, before dissipating in a wash of light.

Chapter Text

Arakris had taken Misraakskell’s council to heart in the end. Trusting that Grey would not hate him forever, and that it was all some misunderstanding, the Titan decided to put his faith in the love that he and the Warlock shared. As strange and shaky as it all was, with the constant secret keeping and strange overarching tension that overlaid their every encounter, Arakris truly did love Grey for all he was. He wanted to believe that everything was going to be alright – losing the Warlock would only make the dim everyday life of his so much worse.

Instead of allowing himself to fret over the blackout, and over what might have happened during, he turned his attention to another important person in his life; his newfound daughter.

If he was being entirely honest with himself, Arakris was scared shitless about the whole situation. Since the moment he took her from Naksis’ more capable hands, his nerves had been frizzling at the edges of his mind. He did not know the first thing about child rearing. Arakris figured that maybe he had known once, before he had died, but certainly not after resurrection. He hardly knew how to keep his relationship with Grey.

What in Riis’ name was he doing?

“Any idea of how this is supposed to work, Idra?” Arakris asked, rocking the hatchling in one of his upper arms as she cooed and chirruped, blinking her little round eyes at him. “Yeah, I thought as much.” Naksis was only a few feet away, occupying the other side of the small communal room where she stayed together with Yknar and a number of other Eliksni. Since it was still the middle of the day, the others were out and about; working on repairs or finding some way of making themselves useful in their small community. The Night may have long been over, but there was still much to do.

Since the issues between the citizens of the City and the Eliksni in the Quarter had finally simmered down to an acceptable level, a tentative peace had sprung up between them. Nothing solid, that was for sure. Even Arakris, with his limited first hand experience with the problems between mankind and his, could sense the unease in the air. Nothing quite as tense as it had been during the Night, but not gone.

The song that had thrummed through the City had dimmed, but not died, still carried on the wind like the whisper of an omen of what was to come. It prickled at Arakris’ skin, discomfort crawling under the plating that covered his body.

Holding the hatchling under her arms, Arakris raised the child in the air, pretending to throw her up only to catch her again, much to Idra’s joyous delight. The little hatchling screeched with happiness, eyes squeezing shut as she flew up and down again. Bringing her close to his face, Arakris noted that the fabric wrapped around her – her nice, woven cocoon – was beginning to suffer more damage over time. The crash and subsequent fire must have gotten to it, and thankfully so. Rather damage the blanket than the baby.

“Naksis,” Arakris clicked, calling his friend over, “Do we have any more wrappings to replace this one?” He asked, holding Idra up for the woman to inspect.

Naksis chittered in the back of her throat, tapping a finger against her lips. “Hmm… I am not sure. I’ll have to check with Namrask if there is any eggcloth left. Most of what we had on Europa was left behind when we fled, but maybe he has something.” She tsked sadly, scratching her cheek.

Arakris thought for a moment, tugging lightly on the cloth that swaddled his daughter. His daughter. Still such a strange concept if he thought about it for too long. Idra only chirruped, trying to catch the Captain-sized Eliksni’s finger with her own hands that were barely large enough to wrap around a single digit.

“Would blankets work?” He asked. He felt pretty out of his depth here, which made him even more grateful to have Naksis as a friend.

“They would work for a while, but it is not the right material for hatchlings to sleep well in. Eggcloth is made from the broken eggs – the natural fabric provides a warm, comfortable insulation for them once they leave their eggs. Similar to still being unhatched, but then with a little hole to see the world.” She cooed at the end, smiling at Idra.

“Do you think we can go speak to this Namrask then? I’d rather make sure Idra is all taken care of before Grey comes back, then he won’t have to worry about her too much.” He said, standing up from the cot that he had been sitting on. The metal and fabric creaked as it was relieved of his weight, and Idra made another squealing sound at the sudden increase in elevation.

Naksis watched her friend in silence, nodding in response to his question when he looked her way. “Of course. We can go see if he has time. Come.” She said, leading the other man out of the small bunk room and onto the streets of the Eliksni Quarters. Glancing around, she noticed a few humans wandering about the place – the presence of non-Eliksni had increased gradually over the months since the Night had come to an end. It was nice, to see the two-armed creatures help her people so willingly, even if the sight of them still evoked a deep-seated fear within her. It was easy to ignore, of course; she trusted in Misraakskell, and she trusted that if anything, Aaraxsis would protect their people.

Glancing up at Arakris, who stood a full size class above her, she squinted her eyes for a moment. Of course she had noticed it from the moment he walked in to check on Idra, but she had to make sure. Seeing it now, Naksis recognised the signs of exhaustion in her friend.

“Aaraxsis.” Naksis began as she led him towards where she knew Namrask usually was, “is everything alright?”

The taller Eliksni perked up at the question, looking down quizzically. “Uhm, yes? Everything is fine.” His answer held no inflection towards the positive or the negative, and it was more than enough to cue her in on the fact that something was, in fact, wrong.

Offering the man an unimpressed stare, the Eliksni woman did not let up until Arakris caved with a swift snap of his teeth. Glancing away petulantly, Arakris grumbled in the human language, before sighing and returning to their own tongue. “Alright, everything is not quite fine. I have upset Grey, and I do not know how or why. And I’m kind of terrified that he will hate me forever, and leave me to raise Idra alone, and that I’ll lose him.” The words tumbled out of his mouth, almost as if it was a relief to share this.

Naksis took a second to admonish herself. In Arakris’ previous life, the male had known that he could come to her about everything. Clearly she had been slacking on that matter with his reincarnation. The Guardian had certainly proven himself to be just the same as the Captain she once knew, even if he lacked all memories that made Aaraxsis himself. Different person or not, he was just as much her friend, and she wanted him to be able to trust that he could come to her when things became difficult.

“You do not only have allies in the Guardians, Aaraxsis.” She murmured, patting a three-fingered hand on one of his primary arms. Arakris just nodded, emitting a strangled gurgling sound. “I am your friend too – should something upset you, feel free to confide in me.” Naksis said, making the offer clear.

Arakris offered her a grateful smile. “Thank you, Naksis. It will all be alright though. I think.”

“What happened?” She asked, now also just plain curious.

Arakris tried his best to relay the events that had happened in Misraakskell’s quarters. When it came to the matter of returning lost minds from the Light, he purposefully circumvented the idea that non-Guardian related things could be restored. There was no real basis for that claim, and he did not want to spread unnecessary hope that might end in heartache. But at the mention of the possibility that a Guardian’s previous self could be pulled back to the forefront, Naksis stumbled to a halt, staring at the Eliksni male with an unreadable emotion in her eyes. Alongside it was a slowly dawning understanding, and Arakris was not sure if that was a good thing or not.

“So you are saying that, if they tried this on you, or Grey, your previous ‘spirit’ might return from the Light and take over your body?” She asked, trying to clarify what in the living Light she had just heard. Shaking her head in disbelief, Naksis resumed walking. “But that is impossible.”

Arakris clicked his teeth together in disagreement. “Not impossible. I think it happened with me. I think it’s been happening with me a lot.” He confessed.

The shorter Eliksni nearly stumbled entirely this time, once again stalling to a dead stop to stare at the larger male with incredulity, shock, and understanding.

“I remember nothing of what happens if – when – the other one takes over. All I know is that the last time it happened was when Misraaks offered this proposal to Grey. I blacked out, and when I came back, Grey was… he looked at me like I was a total stranger. Worse than that, even! Like I had just broken his heart.” Arakris trailed off, chittering in the back of his throat.

Naksis made a noise at that. It did not sound surprised. It sounded… empathetic. Consoling, almost. “I see.” Was all she said, before following it up with “And you think whatever you did in that time hurt him so bad that he might hate you now?”

Arakris was quiet for a moment, before nodding miserably. Naksis clicked her teeth, shaking her head in a resolute ‘no’. “I do not think so. Not at all. He will not hate you for what he saw. He loves you too damn much. If all you said is true, then it will mean a lot of hurt, yes, but he will never hate you.” She said, promising it as if it were a guarantee. “You are both headstrong idiots with good hearts. Bound to drive each other crazy, but you will do whatever it takes to make things right in the end. Cannot be helped. After all, you are both just silly males.” She added, winking at Arakris to carry the joke across. Mood lightening somewhat, Arakris chuckled and smiled back.

Hearing her ‘father’ laugh, Idra immediately tried to join in, producing another series of high-pitched peeps and chirps. Dropping her attention to the little girl, Naksis smiled fondly.

“She is going to grow to be a handful, I just know it.”

Arakris huffed out a laugh, chest clenching at the thought. Idra would grow up one day. It was all so fresh, so new right now – barely the second day in to having a daughter of his own – but one day he would look up and she would probably be as large as Yknar was now. The thought was daunting, and yet somehow it also came with a melancholic delight.

Lifting the little hatchling up to eye level – without slowing a beat as they continued towards Namrask – he nuzzled his forehead gently against her. “You’re going to take right after your dads, aren’t you? Big and strong, just like your papas.” He smiled. He would ensure it. In Idra’s life time, she would never lack for anything if he could prevent it.

Naksis laughed at his side, the sound loud enough to draw the attention of a few people in the street as they passed by. Heads turned towards the duo. Naksis wondered for a moment if the humans thought that they were perhaps a mated pair with a child. The thought made her cringe with disgust – she loved Aaraxsis dearly, but the annoying male was a close friend at best. She would never wish to trade places with Grey and be stuck with his sometimes overbearing affections, no thank you. It was just as well that Naksis and Arakris could speak in their native tongue; it mattered less if the Eliksni heard than if the Guardians could understand. Spying some Eliksni also shooting surreptitious glances their way, Naksis chuckled to herself. There was less projection in their eyes – a decent chunk of the Eliksni in the Quarters knew about the new hatchling with the strangest fathers. They probably knew that this was him; Arakris stood out from a crowd, after all, and not just because he did not wear the same ether-apparatus as the rest of them. He lacked the cannisters on his body, and walked far more upright for no good reason. He did not keep his centre of gravity low, as if he was used to walking in different gravity conditions.

Could also just as easily have been humans rubbing off on him. The man had loved mankind long before he had fallen in love with a man, this much Naksis knew.

The taller Eliksni’s pretty-boy face certainly did not help keep any sort of low-profile whatsoever. By now, anyone who had seen him and Grey together would certainly have remembered what the handsome young ‘Captain’ looked like. Naksis always found it funny to tease the man about it. She used to call it ‘one of his better features’, back when they had been much, much younger.

But that had been a long time ago. Before Grey. Before Yknar, even, and her dearly departed mate.

Shaking the memory from her mind, Naksis focused on the present. What was done was done, and what mattered was right now. Chattering her mandibles together as she let out a rough, bubbling laugh, patted Arakris on the shoulder.

“Idra is clearly taking after Grey, I see. She has you already in love with her too!” The female cackled, enjoying the put-off glared that Arakris shot her way. He wasn’t upset, so she put no meaning to his expression and just enjoyed how he pouted at the truth.

Their conversation drew to an amicable close, and they walked the final few paces in silence, save for the noises of Arakris’ over-active hatchling. By now, she was attempting to wriggle her way out of her eggcloth cocoon, which was already beginning to unravel itself at the edges.

“Namrask.” Arakris said suddenly, as they came to a stop outside what looked like a renovated store-front. Or at least, that is what is appeared to be meant for; what it had once been was a large room with a partially crumbled back wall, and no glass in the large windows on either side of the door.

Naksis nodded. “He should be here.”

“I have not heard his name before, I realise now. Hollow weaver? How did he come to that name?” Arakris asked, staring at the featureless building with little expression. The Eliksni female just shrugged, ushering the other man inside.

“I do not know. He joined a short time after the first refugees from Europa made it here. He weaves. He does better with the human cloth, which is good for trade and our own clothes, but he tries his best with the fabrics of our people. He is especially good at weaving eggcloth.” The woman offered, giving what little knowledge she had on the other man. “He lives here, and sells his goods when we have market with the humans.”

As they entered the building, Arakris found himself pleasantly surprised by the abundance of cloth that was gathered around the place. Spools hung from hooks and threads, while bolts of cloth were stacked by fabric in piles on either side of the room. Near the back, where a few hastily constructed desks were, sat an Eliksni.

Naksis gestured at the hunched figure with her head, encouraging Arakris to go on.

Stepping closer, Arakris called out to the other man. “Namrask? Do you have a moment, I have a request.”

At the sound of his voice, the ambient click and whirr of a loom silenced. When the hunched over Eliksni turned around and stood up, Arakris realised that the figure stood a fair few feet taller than him. The other man looked like he was meant to be a different size-class altogether, but the way he held himself did no favours to what should have been a daunting height.

What struck Arakris the most, however, was how overwhelmingly old the other Eliksni looked. Despite his clear build for it, he did not hold himself like a warrior. Namrask stood like he was just a commoner. Just a weaver.

Clearing his throat, Arakris brought Idra into view better. “I have a hatchling, but her eggcloth is slowly ruining. Do you by any chance have any I can use? I can certainly pay for it, no matter the cost.” He was fairly confident in that one, actually. Even if Grey did not help with providing Ether or glimmer, Arakris was still a Guardian. If push came to shove he could easily get it himself.

The older Eliksni grunted, leaning closer to study Arakris and his hatchling. “Price is not the problem. Raw material is. We simply do not have enough eggshells to make more eggcloth.” Namrask released a ragged sigh. “But I think I still have some left over…” He murmured, shuffling over to one of the piles of fabric near the back of the room. Despite his obvious age, his gait was still steady, and his body still strong – although strong was not quite the right word for it, it summarised it well enough.

It was a reminder to Arakris that Eliksni showed age very differently, and for the first time he actually found himself very grateful that his partner was an undying immortal. Grey would never age, or at least not very fast, just like Arakris. Just like Arakris would have, even if he had been mortal.

In a moment of charmed folly, while waiting for Namrask to return, Arakris entertained the thought of it. A relationship with Grey while he was a mortal. How would that have gone? A Guardian and a normal Eliksni. The idea was meant to be amusing – it sounded like a ridiculous impossibility. Obvious reasons aside, even if they would age at the same pace, one would always carry the burden of watching the other die over and over, while the other would always fear the day that their beloved died once. Despite that, Arakris kind of wanted to believe that under those circumstances, he and Grey could have made it work. But that was just a fantasy, not accounting for the obvious relationship that Arakris had already had in his previous life, and whatever strange connection he shared with Grey at the moment of his death. Considering the ring that he still carried with him, Arakris could only assume that he had been in a relationship with a humanoid of one of the fast-aging races. He doubted it was an Exo, as he had seen Crimson’s hands, and rings would get in the way of the moving parts. A human would have been the saddest option, but it also made little sense; Arakris was not attracted to humans at all. The last option would be that his previous beloved had been Awoken, and would have lived out a decent chunk of Arakris’ life-span, but even Awoken aged with time.

The thought was meant to be an amusing one. All it did was make the space behind his eyes ache.

Abandoning that entire mental exercise, the Eliksni cuddled his daughter to his chest as he waited for Namrask to turn back to them.

“You seem young, to have a hatchling of your own.” The weaver muttered, as he returned to Arakris with a bundle of cloth in hand. It was not much – it was, in fact, very little – but for now it would have to do. Accepting it graciously, taking the fabric in his secondary arms, Arakris only shrugged.

“I’m not all that young, I’m sure.”

Namrask let out a deep chuckle, tired and rasping. “You are a hatchling in my eyes. Barely old enough to wield a weapon, child. You are younger than humanities Golden Age, are you not?” He asked, although it seemed that the Eliksni already knew the answer to his question.

Arakris just nodded. Technically, he was far younger still. Barely past the seven month mark of his Rebirth. If he was going to include his previous life’s age, to count how old his body technically was, he had no idea were to start. When he had asked Naksis if she knew, she had placed him anywhere between three-hundred and four-hundred, but that was because sometimes time passed the mind by in the confines of a spaceship, and the years blurred together after so many. The smaller Eliksni had let that slip once, when the two of them had been talking and setting up cots – mindless busywork that Arakris helped with, if only to keep himself occupied when not learning from Misraaks or spending time with Grey.

“Tell me, hatchling, what is your name?” The man asked. His line of sight shifted up as Naksis moved somewhere in the background, drifting her fingers of the tough, gritty fabric of one particular stack. “And that of your mate?” He ventured.

Arakris could practically feel his soul try to recoil at the implication, catching where Namrask’s eyes were directed. Shaking his head almost violently – much to Idra’s vocal amusement – he immediately launched into a series of protests which were just as hastily parroted by Naksis.

The smaller Eliksni won the battle of politely making it clear how little they thought of each other that way with the final line of; “I have better things to do with my life than waste my time with an empty-shell-brain pretty-boy Captain like him.”

Arakris felt his mouth snap shut in indignation. Naksis had the decency to laugh in his face when he shot her a look of mock hurt.

“My apologies.” Namrask amended when the duo quieted their childish bickering. It only reinforced for him how startlingly young the two Eliksni were. “I meant no offense.” He chuckled, deeply amused. The first few months in the City had been tense, and violently unpleasant for Namrask, but time had eased the wounds just enough to settle into a rhythm that resembled peace. He could weave in solitude and lose his thoughts to the steady beat of the loom, or the silk spinning machine. It allowed for all other things – thoughts and fears – to fall away in the background. Being one so old as to remember the tragedy of the entire Eliksni history from the moment of their Collapse, Namrask felt the weight of the Whirlwind within him at the sight of such young Eliksni, so bright and chipper despite their circumstance.

But the sight also brought a tainted sense of comfort. As if what had once been normal, and long lost on a dead planet that had by now faded from the memory of time itself, was still there. Community. Family. Home.

“Aaraxsis,” the young Eliksni male eventually answered, standing a little taller, “my name is Aaraxsis, and this is Idra. My daughter. Naksis over there is just my friend.”

“Your mate, are they-?” Namrask ventured to ask. He felt a little concern for the hatchling’s well-being, with only one parent, but on the other hand the young Eliksni had the House of Light to help him raise his child. By the looks of it, he also had an experienced friend who was more than willing to be of assistance. But much to his surprise, or relief, the young Eliksni male shook his head rapidly.

“No, my… uhm, my partner, he’s still alive and well. We adopted her- Idra, I mean. She had no one. Now she will have us.” Arakris hastily corrected. It did not escape Namrask that the Eliksni used a different word for mate, opting instead to use the Earth dialect form of it. He brushed it off, though, moving on to the name that had been given.

Aaraxsis. The name swirled through Namrask’s head. He had heard it before, not directly, but whispered by many tongues from within the Quarters. Although he had arrived in the aftermath of the Endless Night, he had heard of it from those who had already settled here before. He had heard of the names of those who tried to help, of the single Eliksni to traverse the Vex Network at the request of Misraaks himself. The connection finally locked in the old Eliksni’s mind.

“You are the special one, aren’t you? Misraakskell’s favourite Captain.” He said, offering little further context. Arakris just furrowed his brow in confusion, plates shifting together as he fails to followed what Namrask was implying.

“I did learn the way of the Sacred Splicer from Misraaks, if that is what you mean.” The younger Eliksni offered. “But other than that, I’m not much. Just trying to make a good life for my family.”

“There is something different about you.” The weaver murmured in a low, rough voice, moving much too close to Arakris, staring down into the younger man’s youth-filled eyes. Although the same colour was reflected back, they lacked the same depth – the same bloodthirst, regret, and subsequential efforts to reform into something free from it all. All Namrask could see was how young Aaraxsis seemed, and how strange it was to burden him with tasks best fit for the Machine Children instead.

Eventually, after a tense silence and staring competition, Namrask pulled away, returning to his machines. “You are the one that runs around with the Machine Children, are you not? A Guardian Warlock, he is your ally, right?” He asked, lifting his hands to sweep across the threads again, automatically beginning the process of weaving silk. He heard a chuckle behind him, but before he could ponder on what was so funny, Aaraxsis offered him an answer.

“You must mean Grey. No, he’s not my ally or anything like that, he’s my par- he’s my friend.” Arakris caught himself just in time, nearly slipping up and revealing the true nature of his relationship with Grey.

Namrask’s hands stilled, resting just over the string and fabric. “Friends?” He echoed, a genuine sound of surprise caught in his voice. “Hm.” He grunted – it was hard to discern if the sound was meant to be upset or some kind of laugh. “The right kind of Splicer can weave two peoples together. Maybe Misraaks was right after all.” He murmured to himself. It was too little to cling to any hope, of course, but the thought that an Eliksni called a – what was that Warlock again, Awoken? – Guardian friend was a sure sign that something was changing. Not enough that Namrask would go out of his way to believe, or have hope, but enough that the weaver found himself curious as to where it would lead.

Arakris waited for a beat. Namrask could not resist asking another question. “Why do you call a Machine Child friend? After the Light abandoned us for them, after all the suffering our people went through chasing down the Once-Great Machine after it left us for death?”

The young Eliksni stilled at that, considering Namrask’s words. The weaver felt that it had been a foolish question, after all, he was old enough to remember what Riis had been like in its time of beauty – and the resulting cascade of incomprehensible nightmares that had been the following millennia. The young Eliksni with his tiny hatchling did not look like he had even seen half of one millennia to begin with.

“Why? Grey is one of the kindest people I know, so of course I consider him a friend. He helped me when I had no one else to turn to, and brought me here, asked Misraaks to take me in. I owe him just about everything, Light Bearer or not.” Arakris said, pausing just short of becoming too passionate in his speech.

Namrask only looked at him, blue eyes glowing in the dim light with an inscrutable glint in them.  

Just as Arakris was about to call it quits, Naksis chirruped out a surprised sounding greeting. Turning his head, the Titan could feel a grin spread across his face, features immediately lighting up.

Speak of the devil.

“Ah, there you are! I was looking all over for you, Arakris. Can we talk please? I need to apologise for my behaviour, and I think explain a few things as well.” Grey said, words leaving him in a rush as he stood awkwardly in the doorway. He smiled pleasantly at Naksis, before turning a more open, hopeful gaze towards Arakris.

The Titan nodded. Turning to offer his thanks to Namrask, he then quickly made his way over to Grey’s side. The weaver merely watched on in silence as the two Eliksni followed the Guardian out of his workshop.

It was a strange sight to see. But a small part of Namrask – a barely existing part, the only inch of him that was not just utterly exhausted – found a glimmer of joy in the sheer casualness of their interactions. The Light had left the Eliksni long ago, and Namrask doubted that Misraaks’ claim that it could return would ever come true.

Looking at the unlikely trio of what the old weaver could describe as friends, Namrask briefly considered that while Misraaks’ hope might never come true, something else might yet blossom in its stead.

Chapter Text

The search for Arakris had not taken nearly long enough, but by the time Grey found him in the workshop he had so kindly been pointed towards, the Warlock felt that he perhaps had a decent narrative to offer the other man. That, and yet another heart-felt apology for being about as pleasant as a kiss with a Thrall.

Walking in, the Warlock barely spared a glance for the absolute unit of an Eliksni that crouched by the machine in the back of the room. Instead, his eyes immediately found Arakris. It did not take very long for them to be back in the street, Naksis glancing between the two of them almost expectantly.

Grey cleared his throat awkwardly. “How’s everything been, Naksis?” He asked, if only for polite-ness sake. Arakris fidgeted with the small bundle of fabric in his secondary hands, while his upper held Idra in their firm grasp.

Naksis clicked, inclining her head. “Everything good.” She chittered in Grey’s tongue. Unlike her son, Naksis struggled with catching on to the language the Earthlings used – throughout her life time, she had heard many different ones, and had no idea which one Aaraxsis had elected to teach her. It was not made easier by the fact that the humans she now found herself surrounded by all communicated in different tongues too, even if most seemed to stick to the one she knew Grey spoke. “Idra is sweetheart, I like take care of hatchling. Other than that, life peaceful. Nice and quiet. Finally quiet.”

The Warlock smiled brightly. “I’m glad to hear that. Things were really building up in the summer, I was worried about what would happen after the Night was over. But it seems to have worked out better than I expected.” He said. It was only partially true – while Grey, and many other Guardians, were still keenly aware of the underlying tensions, the citizens had simply returned to their every-day lives. It was quiet. With the crisp chill of winter now blanketing over the City, the world was at peace. It was probably too good to last, but in the moment, it certainly was good.

“And thanks so much for taking care of Idra. If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask me. I probably won’t be able to be around all the time, so I want to make sure that at the very least I provide whatever you need for her.” The Warlock said, holding his arms out for the hatchling.

Seeming to recognise the blue-skinned man that was reaching for her, Idra chirped and stretched out her little arms too, wriggling in Arakris’ hold until he relinquished her to Grey. Once settled in the Awoken’s arms, the hatchling purred, catching the fabric of the Warlock’s coat in her small fingers.

Grey could feel his heart melt at the sight, as he cuddled his daughter closer. “Good to see you too, baby girl.” He smiled, an overwhelming rush of paternal adoration washing over him.

“Idra knows father face already.” Naksis grinned, reaching out and stroking a finger over the shell of the hatchling’s head, before retracting her hand again. “So happy to see.”

The Warlock nodded, smiling down at the Eliksni child for a moment longer, before looking up again to address Naksis properly. “Thank you for everything, Naksis, honestly. I can’t thank you enough for helping with her. If you ever need anything, really, even for you or Yknar, just let me know.” He said, reasserting his point with sincerity. The Eliksni woman just nodded, clicking her teeth and waving her primary arms in front of her.

“Is alright, is alright. All Naksis want is good, quiet home. Have that. Have friends. Am happy.” She glanced between the two men, a pensive look falling over her face. “But think it time you two talk. Will be seeing you, Grey, Aaraxsis.” She dipped her head, retreating from the conversation.

“Happy Dawning, Naksis!” Grey called out, waving at the woman as she wandered off. He received a short wave back, followed by a chittered response, and then she was gone, disappearing around the corner of a building and out of sight.

Silence crept in, and Grey became keenly aware of the fact that he was now standing alone with Arakris in the middle of a street – it was not busy, per se, but there were a number of people wandering around, busying themselves with repairs of who knows what else. Grey paid them no mind, turning his attention fully to the Eliksni beside him.

“So… I guess we should talk, huh?” Grey said, offering the man an awkward, pained smile. His voice was kept light, trying to brighten the mood a little, and Arakris reciprocated with a soft chirr. The Warlock looked around, thinning his lips. “But not here I guess. Let’s take a walk, shall we? I figure I probably owe you an explanation, as well as an apology.” Without waiting for the Titan to respond, he started walking, heading for the outskirts of the Quarters.

Gravel crunched under his boots, the sound accompanied by heavier footsteps as the Titan rushed to meet the Warlock’s pace. Idra was still in his arms, and Grey held her closer to him, wrapping her up as best he could against the cold. He knew that Eliksni were naturally more resilient to most things than a human or Awoken would be, but he did not want to take unnecessary risks with the hatchling.

As the pair walked side by side, Grey tilted his head towards the fabric that Arakris held. “Is that for her?” He asked.

Arakris nodded. “Eggcloth.” He began explaining as he held out the bundle for Grey. “Made from their broken eggshells. It’s very good at keeping the hatchlings insulated, or at least, that’s what I heard from Naksis.” He added sheepishly. Grey just chuckled, and the Eliksni relished in the crisp sound of the Warlock’s amusement. It eased the doubt that had still managed to manifest in his heart, offering a reassurance that Grey truly was not mad at him. That it had just been a poor circumstance.

Once they were a decent distance outside of the Quarters, the Guardian duo sat down on a broken set of stairs that led to nothing – it must have once been the front stairway of a larger building, but that building was nothing more than rubble and a single broken wall by now. Swaddling Idra in the extra eggcloth, Grey laid his daughter down on his thighs. Pressing his knees together, he made a stable surface of his legs that was just large enough for the hatchling to lie down on as he sat. Bouncing his knees gently, he let Idra cling to his index fingers as her chirping began to quiet down, little blue eyes struggling to stay awake after so much activity today.

Her fathers sat in relaxed silence, both watching the hatchling closely as she fell asleep. As much as it annoyed him, Arakris kept a small distance between himself and Grey, just in case anyone else came along and saw them. Granted, at this point Arakris hardly wanted to argue if someone assumed they were a family, but he figured that Grey might be less happy with him if he accidentally blew their cover.

After Idra had finally fallen asleep, Grey tucked her little hands into the swaddling cloth around her, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to her forehead. The shell felt unbelievably soft against his lips, in the way only something unblemished and undeveloped could be. In comparison, Arakris’ forehead was fairly tough; although it was pleasant to the touch, Grey could feel minor imperfections in the shell when he ran his fingers over it, and it was much tougher. A product of age, most likely, so Grey did not allow himself to worry too much about it. Idra would grow into it all eventually – he would make sure of it.

His breath misted as it left his mouth, swirling in the cold air. Yellow eyes found their way to the sky, admiring the silent presence of the Traveller. Their watchful ‘guardian’, that as so far had only done one thing right by humanity. Grey might have believed that the Traveller was good, that it had their best interests at heart, when he had first come back. But over the years, he had come to face the glaring truth; it really didn’t give a shit.

Throughout the entire debacle that was the Red War, so many voices called out for the Traveller to help, to do something. It remained silent. Left the problem-solving up to its Guardians, until the very end where Ghaul had already begun to burn out from the Light that filled him. The second time it helped, it was more than obvious that the Traveller only acted in its own benefit. The Light that it had shed then – right after the Almighty had been shot from the sky, when the Pyramids had begun their final push for the last light of the Solar System – had driven the Darkness back, sure. But Grey doubted it had been for the people of the City it hung over. Hell, he doubted that Guardians were meant to be anything other than the Traveller’s personal army. It needed protectors, so it brought back undying puppets to fight its wars.

It all still led to the question of why. Why did it choose to return Arakris? What had the Light seen in him that made him worthy, what did the universe have in store that it demanded his death?

Grey was not sure what answer he wanted. That there was some greater destiny waiting for Arakris, or that it was all just dumb fucking luck.

“I’m sorry, if I scared you back there.” The Warlock began. Making sure that he had Arakris’ full attention, he sucked in a breath of cold air. “I didn’t meant to freak out on you like that, and I’m sorry. I guess… it was all kind of overwhelming, what Mithrax told me. The idea that Guardian’s can come back, fully? Unthinkable. I can’t imagine what it would be like, if the man I must have been before would come back. So it scared me, for a moment.”

Arakris nodded along slowly, glowing eyes fixed on the side of the Warlock’s face, flickering between blue lips and yellow eyes. Grey’s cheeks were a little more tinted than usual, purple-blue beginning to favour the purple, flushed from the cold.

The Warlock worried his lower lip for a moment, releasing it again with an audible pop. Grey knew that what he was going to say next was going to be a lie, but he agreed with Crimson. Better to lie about this to give Arakris at least some explanation. If the Eliksni found out the real reason he freaked out, there would be no way to explain that he was not using the Titan as a replacement for the Captain.

Worst of all was that Grey could not even convince himself that it was not the case.

“You know I’m not one for seeking out our previous lives. I don’t believe we as Guardians should do that. We are not who we were before death; that nameless figure, they’re gone. Buried. Forgotten.” He sucked on his teeth, trying to breeze past that particular falsehood. “But apparently it is possible after all. And I saw that, in you.” Grey let out a ragged exhale.

Arakris made no sound, watching quietly, waiting.

“I guess, in lieu of that, I should probably explain why I reacted so strongly to that, huh?” The Warlock released a humourless chuckle. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I did know you before you died.”

The Eliksni could feel his heart thump in his chest, the pounding slowly getting louder and louder against his ribs. This was the closest to the truth he had ever gotten, with Grey’s one confession. This was the most he had heard of who he was in his past life!

For some reason, that thought registered as untrue, but the Titan could not place his finger on why. Brushing it off, he focused on every word that fell from the Warlock’s lips.

“I was one of the Guardians that helped Variks protect the Eliksni refugees. I helped them escape Europa, but a group of them had to come back. That is how I met Naksis, and Yknar.” Grey trailed off, leaving room for Arakris to make his own assumptions.

The Titan chittered, leaning in closer. “How you met me?” He asked. Grey only smiled wryly at him, but offered no verbal confirmation.

“We worked together for a short while, and then through a series of unfortunate events, you ended up on the Tangled Shore around the same time as I was busy with hunting down the High Celebrant.” Grey said, cringing at the memory of that time. It had been, what, almost a year ago by now, the seasons had changed twice since, but it still made his heart ache to recall. Arakris had been there because of him. The eternal ‘what if’ would never go away; what if he had been just a little bit faster? What if he had been able to keep Arakris safe?

At the end of the day, Grey found himself forced to concede that this way, at least Arakris was functionally immortal. And with the possibility of the original Arakris still being around, it made the situation feel more bearable. As cruel as that was towards the kind soul that the Titan was.

Catching himself in a downward spiral, Grey manhandled his mood out of it, forcing himself to focus on what he was trying to explain. He paused for a second, waiting to see if Arakris had any questions for him. The Eliksni merely stared at him, four eyes blinking occasionally – always in a patter, first the primary set, and then the secondary a mere millisecond behind.

“I was there, when you died. You had turned into a Wrathborn, and there was nothing we could do.” The Warlock whispered, casting his eyes to the ground just beyond his feet, where snow was starting to pile up on the stone. Snowflakes had begun to fall – when had the clouds even rolled in? – and the air chilled by the second. Neither Guardian felt much of it, Grey least of all, with the thick layer of insulation his gear provided. Add to that the modifications he had made during the prolonged stint on Europa, learning to use Stasis before being called off to the Moon, and he hardly felt the touch of Earth winter. Shifting Idra so that he could wrap her in the front of his long-coat to keep her warm, he gently stroked his gloved fingers against the fabric protecting the hatchling’s head.

“Seeing you again – the you that I thought was dead and gone, it startled me. I was the first of my fireteam to find you, as a Wrathborn, and the memories that came with seeing that person again – it overwhelmed me. But that is not excuse. I am truly sorry for how I treated you afterwards.” I never wanted to let who you were come in the way of how I treated you for who you are, Grey left unsaid. Arakris seemed to take his apology to heart, a soft rumble emanating from his throat, whisps of steam escaping his mouth as he breathed.

The Warlock’s conscience was blaring in the back of his mind. He was lying. This was all a lie. How could he ask forgiveness for a lie?

Grey’s answer to himself was simple; it was not all a lie. In all honesty, it felt incredibly good to be honest about something, anything at all. Even the circumstances of Arakris’ death.

The Eliksni made a thoughtful sound, like a rolling purr that caught on the back of his tongue. “Why are you telling me all of this? I thought you did not believe in letting a Guardian learn of their past lives?” He asked – the first proper question he had since Grey started his explanation. “Crow told me that it was best that I not ask you about this, if I ever want to find out anything… but you’re telling it to me. The reason I died.”

Grey sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m telling you all of this, because I love you. I’m in love with you. I want a future with you, and I can’t justify building that if I don’t make right my own wrongs.” The words tasted like ash on the Warlock’s tongue, and he felt a little sick as he looked into the Titan’s open, unguarded stare. There was a genuine appreciation there, a reciprocation of affection that Grey hardly felt was right, considering that half of what he had said had been a complete, utter lie.

The pair lapsed into silence; Arakris mulling over this new information, while Grey tried to reign in his guilt.

Finally, the Eliksni broke the silence with a heavy question that had begged to be asked. He did not really wanted to address the matter, but Arakris felt that he would never really move on unless he did.

“If you knew me, did you also know the person who I… did you also know my lover?” He asked, regretting voicing that question as he saw the way Grey flinched. The tense nod was all the answer he needed.

Before the Warlock could say more, another thought occurred to the Titan. “I wouldn’t replace you with them, if this were true, but could you please tell me… are they still alive?”

Grey’s lips pulled into a tight line, and his shoulders trembled slightly. Arakris’ expression dipped – it was not disappointment, not necessarily, but he could not stop the way something akin to hope fizzled out in his heart. He would not abandon Grey or Idra, not even if his other had been alive, but was it really too much to hope that they at least still were?

The other man’s silence told him more than enough. Air rushed past his teeth with a gruff exhale, and Arakris nodded in understanding. “How… how did it happen? Do you know?”

Grey’s expression shuttered, eyes darkening. Looking up at the darkening sky, he blinked away the snowflakes that collected on his lashes. “Have you ever thought about why we are chosen to come back? Why us, over thousands of other souls, spread across centuries of lives lived and lost? Why did the Light find us, choose us?” The Warlock asked in lieu of answering the Titan’s question.

The Eliksni nodded, drawing his lower arms up to rest across his thighs, allowing him to lean forward and see more of Grey’s face instead of just the profile. The change of topic was jarring, but Arakris had the feeling it was important for whatever Grey was about to say next.

So he recited the tenets that he had once heard from the Warlock himself. The memory was faint, but it simmered in his mind, crying out faintly that it was important. “Devotion. Bravery. Sacrifice. Death.” With each word he murmured, Arakris could see the lights beneath Grey’s skin flicker, dimming slightly with each gentle pulse.

The Awoken man lowered his head, eyes sliding shut. Another breath left his mouth, mist curling around his lips before disappearing in the air. “You want to know how exactly you died?” He asked. Arakris’ eyes widened to circles, jaw clenching shut. He bobbed his head once, a stiff, jerky motion.

This was it. They were going down a path that Grey could not take back. He was going to admit to it, because so far down the rabbit hole he could barely keep the words inside anymore.

“I believe the Light chose you, because even in your final moments, consumed and controlled by Xivu Arath’s corrupting power, you never once harmed your beloved. You died, trying to save him. But you were both shot by the same bullet.” The confession was almost too much for Grey to handle, and he felt tears slipping past his eyelids, leaving tracks of heat on his cold skin as they slowly slid their way down.

The Eliksni was silent, face now expressionless as he processed what he had heard. Arakris was not sure how he was supposed to feel. This was it. The answer to his biggest question. Why had he been chosen?

Because he had loved someone. So strongly, that he had given his own life for them. And Grey had known this – the whole time. But the Warlock had said nothing. He had known… and said nothing. Anger swelled in his lungs, but it was met by a stinging in his eyes. For once, it was not the space behind them, but the sockets themselves, as his eyes pricked with tears.

“Why did you not tell me, if you knew all along?” Arakris asked, feeling heat building in his eyes.

Grey bit his lower lip, face a contorted in an expression of pure regret. While Arakris assumed it was from keeping the information secret from him, the truth was more painful for Grey. It hurt him to lie to Arakris, but he reminded himself that it was a necessary evil.

“I didn’t want to hurt you more.” Was the honest truth.

Arakris just nodded, mandibles shifting against one another as he moved his jaw. It hurt now, yes, but he wanted to pretend that he understood. In the six months that they had been together – it had all happened so fast, making it so confusing – there had been so many ups and downs to their relationship. But as Naksis said, they seemed bound to hurt each other in an attempt to do the right thing.

After some silent deliberation, he decided that yes, he could empathise with Grey on the matter. It must have hurt for Grey too, to keep it from him, but what was done was done. There was pain, knowing that the one who the ring was for was no more, but at the same time there was liberation in knowing that his beloved would not be hurt by his actions now.

As much as Arakris would have loved to declare his loyalty to his Starshine, had they still been around now, he doubted that he could give Grey up in exchange for that hypothetical other. No, the Titan decided. It was easier this way. This was a new life, after all, and if Grey thought that his departed lover would be alright with it, the Eliksni would take comfort in that. He would trust in Grey.

After all, why would the Warlock lie about any of this?

“Ah- Ow!” Arakris hissed, clenching his teeth together, dominant hands flying to his head as a nauseating pain ripped through it. Keeling forward, he leaned his elbows on his knees, open-mouthed panting puffing out small white clouds. Memories swam through his mind, but before he could really pay attention to any of them, they fell away.

“Arakris?” The Warlock asked, immediately snapping to attention when the Eliksni barked in pain. “Are you alright?” Shifting his hold on Idra to one arm, he softly placed the other on the Titan’s upper bicep.

Grunting, all eyes squeezing shut in discomfort, Arakris took a second to regain himself. “Yeah,” He groaned, as the aching pain began to subside. “I am alright. Just a headache.”

“Star could probably fix that.” The Warlock offered.

Arakris shook his head – slowly, to avoid calling the headache back. “It is alright. I have had these more often. They go away almost as quick as they start, I will be fine.”

“That just sounds like more reason for concern.” Grey answered, eyebrows pinched together in worry, an uneasy smile on his face. The Eliksni just slipped one of his lower hands over Grey’s, squeezing gently.

“It will be alright.” The Titan reaffirmed. When he looked down at Grey, he allowed the depths of his affection to well in his eyes for the Warlock to see. Yellow sparkled back at him, the smile on Grey’s face softening. “Thank you, for telling me all of that.” He said, injecting the words with as all the sincerity he could muster – he meant it, after all. At least now Arakris had an idea of why he had been chosen. He cupped the Warlock’s cheek with one of his upper hands, smoothing over the soft, human skin, watching as light rippled against the blue backdrop of the Awoken’s flesh.

Grey just nodded, rubbing his cheek against Arakris’ hand. The pair sat like that for a much needed moment, just breathing. No words were exchanged anymore.

By now, Grey could feel the cold of the stone stairs he sat on beginning to seep through his pants.

Taking the Titan’s hand in his free one, Grey twined their fingers together and drew it away from his face, pressing a chaste kiss to the large knuckles of the two-fingered hand.

“Come, I think it’s time we get inside. I don’t want Idra to catch a cold in this weather, and I think it’s about time we get going to Sinister’s. Wouldn’t want to miss your first official Dawning with your family.” Grey grinned, sparkling teeth on display with how wide he spread his mouth. The corner of Arakris’ mouth ticked up, and he pushed himself to his feet, brushing off the rubble dust from his cape and trousers.

Accepting the Eliksni’s help to stand up, Grey hauled himself to his feet, Idra firmly tucked against his chest. Despite the cold, she was fairly warm, nestled snugly between his torso and the thick lining of his long-coat. The additional eggcloth seemed to protect her nicely too, and Grey was warmed at the reminder that Arakris was really trying to make things work with the kid.

In preparation to leave, Ghost appeared between them. “It’s probably best if we just transmat there, Sinister lives a bit further away than I do.” Grey explained. Taking the cue, Arakris held his hand out for Star, who popped into existence in a little burst of light. Offering the Eliksni the destination marker for where they had to go, Grey smiled and stepped back.

“See you in a sec.” He blew a quick kiss at the Eliksni, before vanishing in a pulse of light.

------------

 Grey loved his transmat modifiers. It was always added such a nice flair to the reappearance, or resurrection. And that was one of a Guardian’s most important elements; flair. From equipment and shaders to gear and transmat, that little addition of whimsy really brightened up the lives of Guardians. That was the very reason Eververse had rolled out the fancy transmat modifications in the first place, courtesy of a collaboration with the crafty folks in the Hangar.

Suffice to say, Grey enjoyed the whimsy of it very much. Because it was the Dawning, season of wholesome festivity, he had picked up a special transmat mod. He would have to remind himself to change it out again when the Dawning was over though. Or maybe not. Appearing in a flash of rainbow confetti was definitely a way to make a first impression.

Appearing in the street outside of Sinister’s apartment, Grey did not stray too far, waiting for the Eliksni to arrive. Arakris showed up less than a second later, lacking the same vibrant showmanship of Grey’s entrance. Belatedly Grey noted that he really needed to get Arakris more Guardian related modifiers and items. Weapons might be a bit of a stretch, as most of Grey’s gear had been crafted to meet his own physical specifications, but shaders and mods should be transferable. With that idea marked down on his to do list, Grey smiled up at the Titan and ushered him up the stairs to Sinister’s home.

By the time they made it up the stairs, Idra had woken up again, small chirping sounds emanating from within Grey’s coat. With the sun already well underway to setting, there was no one out on the streets to comment about an Eliksni walking around so far into the ‘human’ part of the City. Everyone else was home, or with loved ones, probably gathered around a table enjoying good food and company.

Sinister’s door swung open halfway through the third knock, and Grey’s cheeks immediately warmed from the heat that wafted out from inside.

“You guys made it!” The human Titan cheered, wide smile on his face. His blond hair was loose, for once, not pinned up in his typical bun, and it made the man look even more human. The typical Titan armour had been replaced by normal pants, and a blue cable knit sweater that was accented with yellow and silver. Sinister ushered the duo into his place, closing the door again behind Arakris.

The Eliksni had to duck to stand in the entrance hall – even further than the usual stooped posture that was common for his people – but found that he could stand normally again as he stepped through to the living room.

Plodding around the two newcomers to return to the kitchen, Sinister clapped them both on the backs in greeting as he passed. “You came in your work clothes? What a shame, come on, take all that armour off! It’s a holiday, for crying out loud!” The Titan ordered, waving a hand at his couch as if to indicate that they could just throw it down there.

“Can you keep it down just a little, Sinn?” Grey asked, standing by as he waited for Arakris to unclip his armour and cape. Because Arakris wore a more Eliksni-styled outfit, the things he had on beneath were fairly standard clothes; he wore a pair of pants that became more tight-fitting the further they went down his legs, and a dark blue shirt that sat snug against his torso, with loose sleeves for the arms. The straps around his hands were also tugged off, dumped on the grown pile of blue and red and grey fabric on Sinister’s couch.

Once he was done – he kept his scarf on – Arakris held his primary arms out to Grey. Handing Idra over, the Warlock made short work of shucking off his long-coat and tugging off his gloves, flexing his hands as heat flooded back into his fingers. Standing there in his fairly civilian-looking pants, and a black turtle-neck shirt with large golden circles patterned on it, Grey hardly looked the picture of a fierce Guardian. Standing there against the backdrop of Sinister’s nicely furnished apartment only increased the gap. The Titan had the nicest apartment out of their fireteam of three, by far.

The heavy footsteps of the human Titan bounced through the apartment as he came stomping back from the kitchen, Crimson in tow. “Aw don’t be such a sourpuss Grey! It’s the Dawning! The best way to celebrate is to be loud!” He laughed. Yellow eyes narrowed in on Idra as the hatchling flinched under the assaultingly loud sound.

“Shush!” Grey hissed, moving closer to Arakris to smooth his hands over the little hatchlings head, soothing her. “You’re upsetting the baby.”

This had the human pausing in his steps. Crimson’s head peaked out from behind him, curious. “The baby? Are you going to try and convince us that you two somehow conceived a child?” Came her deadpan response.

Rolling his eyes with an exaggerated groan, Grey just pointed sharply at the little bundle in Arakris’ arms. As the Exo and human finally really looked at what the Eliksni was holding, their jaws dropped open.

“Holy crap, you really did.” Crimson muttered in shock, already shoving past Sinister to get a better look at the little one. Grey rubbed the back of his neck with a laugh.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We found her in the EDZ, and since she has no one else, we decided to take care of her. Sorry I didn’t let you know before just showing up, but don’t worry about feeding her – I’ve got that covered.” He apologised, shooting the human Titan a somewhat guilty smile.

Sinister only shook his head, crowding in alongside Crimson.

“Oh who cares about any of that! Lessee the baby!” The human squealed. Arakris turned around so that the shorter humanoids could see the hatchling better, but he still held her close to his chest. “What’s their name?” He asked.

“Idra. Arakris named her.” Grey said, a hint of pride in his voice.

Crimson was the first to speak, after the two had had their fill of ‘oo-ing’ and ‘aa-ing’. “You absolute rat bastard, Grey, you didn’t tell us you adopted a whole damn child!” She snapped, rounding on the Warlock and delivering a solid punch to his shoulder. It lacked any damaging force, but it landed well enough to smart.

Arakris’ attention honed in on Grey’s responding sound of pain, his eyes narrowing as he growled. Crimson shot the man a wary look, before glancing back at Grey expectantly.

“It’s alright Arakris, you can relax – this is just how we treat each other. You’ve seen us run a mission, no need to worry. ‘s just how family is.” He grinned. Being around his fireteam had already succeeded in substantially lightening his mood, and the ease with which they were accepting Idra only made him feel better.

At his words, Arakris also relaxed. In the brief moment of silence that followed, Idra chirruped, reaching out her hands for the Warlock.

“Well, seems like she wants her daddy again. I guess my chest is more comfortable to sleep on, isn’t that right my little cutie-pie?” Grey chuckled, taking the hatchling back in his own arms. Arakris just laughed at him, dropping a soft peck against the Warlock’s hair.

“I’m afraid I’d have to agree with her, love.” He joked, pressing another kiss to Grey’s cheeks, which were flushed a deep purple from the warmth of Sinister’s apartment.  

“Alright, stop being gross you two.” Crimson protested, although jokingly. “Can we eat first, before you two start professing your undying love for one another?”

Grey just laughed, Sinister joining in, while Arakris released a soft purr.

As the four Guardians made themselves comfortable around the table – laden with Sinister’s home cooked meals, a rare treat, considering the non-sedentary nature of their lifestyles – Crimson tapped her brother on the shoulder.

“I’m happy to see things have been smoothed over. It all worked out?” She whispered, leaning close enough that her voice could only carry toward him.

Grey nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for your advice. Talking it out worked perfectly. Everything’s good.” He flashed a grin at Arakris, who returned it with one of his own, filled to the brim with sharp, deadly teeth.

As the Guardians settled into a comfortable chatter, with Idra slowly dozing off again against his chest, Grey felt the knot of unease in his stomach begin to unwind. The food smelled good, and the apartment was filled with warmth – both the literal and metaphorical kind. The revelations that Mithrax had unceremoniously dropped in his lap were pushed to the back of his mind. Grey would parse through how he felt about Arakris and the previous Arakris on another day. Tonight he was celebrating the Dawning with his family.

Feeling a genuine warmth creep up in his chest, Grey finally allowed himself to relax. Increment by increment, the Warlock’s nerves eased. No more thinking about his original Arakris. No more worrying about the past. He had Arakris, right here with him. It might not have all been right, but it was all ok.

Everything was going to be ok.

“Ah, Grey, before we eat, I have a present for you!” Sinister piped up, springing up from his chair and disappearing down the hallway towards his bedroom. There was a muffled sound of rummaging, before the human came trotting back down the corridor with a small cardboard box in his hands.

Taking his seat opposite Grey – with Crimson sitting on the Warlock’s right, and Arakris on Grey’s left, opposite her – the Titan smiled proudly as he held out the present. It was well-wrapped – for a man who’s fists could punch through metal, Sinister was surprisingly good at homely crafts – in a shiny plastic of gold and silver. On top of it was even a small bow; a neatly tied length of white ribbon.

“I know we usually do gifts later, but this was pretty important to you Grey, and I only just managed to repair the chain. Barely in time for tonight, even!” Sinister explained. The other three Guardians at the dinner table – all of whom had the same uncanny, glowing stare – watched with unguarded curiosity and fondness.

Grey was very inquisitive about the present. Something important to him? He had very few materialistic possessions that were important to him, and none of them fit in such a tiny box. And something that had to be fixed?

Narrowing his eyes slightly as he tried to figure it out, Sinister had already taken a hold of the top of the box – it appeared to simply slide open, the top slotting over the bottom and wrapped separately.

Something of great importance, that had to be fixed. None of his things were missing, so it had to have been something that he lost.

Any and all peace that had built up in the Warlock fled, leaving behind the same cold dread that had been waiting to latch its teeth into him for the last few months. The metaphorical sword of Damocles, that Grey had so steadfastly ignored, came crashing down.

Something that he had lost.

Eyes widening in barely contained panic, Grey hardly had the chance to reach out or even utter the first syllables of “Sinister, don’t!” before it was too late.

The box opened, and nestled within, on a small bed of folded silk, lay Grey’s half of the pendant. Nothing about it had been changed, from what Grey could tell, except for the chain. It seemed newer than the one he had attached to it, after breaking out of his mourning stupor. Ears ringing, Grey distantly realised that Sinister must have had to replace the chain – it had probably snapped off from his neck during the fight against the Vex.

Even as Sinister continued to smile, and Crimson waited for Grey to reach out and pick up the necklace, Grey could only hear the silence of Arakris like a deafening roar. Blue eyes were transfixed on the broken half of a shattered pendant.

The other half of his own.

Grey could only watch, frozen in terror, as realisation set in. Before anyone at the table could react, one of Arakris’ dominant arms shot out, snatching up the pendant that now hung from a shiny new chain. He held it up in front of him, the small plate spinning slowly as the damning words came into sight.

& Grey, under which sat but a single word; Beyond.

The Warlock could see the moment that it all clicked in Arakris’ mind – the Eliksni did not even need to take out his own broken half to know that the warped metal plate in his hand was part of the same damn pendant.

Arakris & Grey. To Stars Beyond.

For the first time since that fateful day, the pendant sat in the hands of its true owner, both halves together, although not united.

Slowly, too damn slowly, glowing blue eyes turned towards Grey.

As much as he wanted to tear his gaze away, scared witless at what emotion he was going to find there, Grey could not. He sat there, frozen in his seat, every cell in his body fighting through a sudden influx of heat, then cold, then fear, and then guilt. Idra began to fidget softly, sensing the sudden disquiet that came rolling off her father in waves.

 And for the first time since Arakris had returned as a Guardian, the Titan uttered the beloved moniker with the exact right tone – even though he was still entirely himself. As the word fell from his lips, he finally spoke it with recognition. Understanding, of its importance, and the importance of the one he said it to.

As each syllable left his mouth, Grey could see his own web of lies shatter and fall apart. Powerless to stop it. Powerless to even argue, because everything that had led them here had been his making.

Rather than joy, when he heard that dear word finally spoken to him as if it had always been meant for him – as it had – the Warlock felt himself drown in hollowing loss.

There was nothing, in Arakris’ eyes, before emotion began to bleed through – confusion, then betrayal, the inability to comprehend, loss. The Warlock’s blood thundered through his ears, almost deafening him to that one, fateful word.

“Starshine.”