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Chapter Text

Zavala’s eyes darken with concern when he sees Eris standing in the doorway of his office. Holographic screens projected all around him flood the room with cold blue light; maps, archives, encrypted comm channels, rows and rows of letters flicking past through the air as he shuffles through the files. The night sky behind him is bright from fireworks.

“I spoke to Ikora,” she says, taking a single calculated step into the room. Zavala keeps their gazes locked for a brief moment of silence, then closes his eyes and nods slowly.

“What is her take on this?”

“We have learned so much already. The messages…” Eris dares another step. A firework shot from somewhere nearby explodes and paints her face an orange-pink hue. “We must know why it happened. What’s the meaning behind these attacks.”

“We’re still assessing the losses,” Zavala turns to one of the screens, where dozens of message boxes all scream ‘NO SIGNAL’. “Scouts are on their way, but all sensors are going wild, communication is off and on…” Shadows creep onto his face when he bows his head, voice weaker, “Still no reply from the outer moons.”

Music coming from the Bazaar can be heard even with the doors closed, the basses booming through the walls. It is 2:30 AM and the entire City has been in a state of wild ecstasy for several hours now. A series of bangs and shrieks of laughter above make Eris wonder whether fireworks have just been shot from the Tower roof.

“People are celebrating.”

Zavala nods again, avoiding her gaze.

“We are keeping the information confidential, for now.” He glances at the City, blazing with light and flares under the once again whole Traveler. “Let them be happy for a day.”

The burden of the secret weights down his shoulders, deepening the lines on his forehead as he is looking down upon this tiny scrap of earth that he loves, that seems so much smaller now with the Darkness closing in on them. Every laugh echoing through the walls is like a slap to his face and Eris can well see the pain he is desperately trying to hide.

“I am leaving in twenty minutes,” she announces. The tension squeezes her guts in an iron grip, and she knows they have wasted enough time already.

Zavala turns from the window to face her. Their eyes lock; a minute of uneasy silence, a wordless fight. She can hear him saying she does not have to, maybe she ought not to, maybe she should rest – but there is no strength to it, no urgency like there was when she confronted him a few hours before. He gives up.

“I’ll make sure the ship is ready. Amanda says the energy burst left the navigation systems untouched, but they will double-check all outgoing units—” He breaks off and sighs, his tone almost begging, “Please be careful.”

Chapter Text

Ór returns from the Ziggurat with a face paler than the snow. Elsie tries to comfort her with words of encouragement, but she just sits by the fire, staring at her cold hands, and hours pass in silence as the four of them try to avert their eyes from one another. She knows she should get to Charon’s Crossing before nightfall, but there is no strength left in her, and she stays motionless, legs curled underneath her, well into the evening.

And when Elsie and Eris disappear in the cabin, and only her and the Drifter remain under the vast ultramarine sky, she whispers:

“I’m afraid.”

He cocks his head, observing her from under a furred brow. She is still looking at her hands.

“It’s just a tool. Like a knife or a welder. You can use ‘em to build,” he chuckles faintly, “or I’m pretty sure there’re several ways you could kill someone with a welder.”

“A gun is a tool, too.” She raises her eyes to meet his. “But it’s not much for building.”

“Fine, Stasis is a gun and Light is a welder. What gives?”

Ór shakes her head, poking the dying flame with a stick. The radio screeches in broken eliskni, the only sound for many miles, but the signal is so poor she cannot make out the words.

“My Ghost called me Light,” she says eventually, and knows Drifter is watching her as she stares at the fire, “because it was all I had been back then. And now I’m not even that.”

Drifter sighs, and she wonders if he thinks it’s childish. She wonders if Eris had the same doubts – or maybe she was happy to finally come out of the corner, to wield something, to be able to throw herself back into the battle? She wonders about Elsie’s sureness; her, who has seen just how much evil Darkness can cause, and yet still has so much confidence that this is the only way. She wonders what name her Ghost would give her today.

“Are you afraid you’ll lose yourself?” Drifter’s voice is surprisingly gentle, causing her eyes to flick back to him. “Trust me, it’s not Stasis that’d do this to you.”

“You’re still on about the Warlords. How they had the good pure Light and turned it into a force of destruction.”

He chuckles again and straightens, moving to sit on the ground next to her. His face is plunged in shadow, but eyes reflect the flickering flame.

“Listen. There’s a friend we have. Real pain to be around. Bossy and cranky, one eye extra. Plays around with magic of the nastiest species in this damn galaxy.” He gestures at the cabin behind them. “And you know what? She’s still standing. Hive relics in hand, crying liquid Darkness, singing Ascendant portals into being, and all of that out of spite. And she’s still on the good side.”

He pokes Ór gently in the chest.

“If anything’s gonna drag you down the dark path, it’s a lack of resolve. And annoying as it may be, you’re nothing if not stupidly resolute.”

Chapter Text

Oh, who decides from where up high?
I couldn’t say I need more time

Deep in the Dreaming City, in her personal chambers of amethyst and marble, Petra Venj laid tangled up in blankets, clutching a pillow to her chest. Her gaze was moving slowly across the walls, from the enormous desk in the far corner to the window opposite the bed, left ajar for the night. During the few hours of sleep she managed to get, the Scorn had pushed closer and she could hear their hideous screeching coming almost from her backyard. Beams of a simulated sun danced on the floor.

For the past three nights she had been sleeping in the field, under a canopy of stars that was an artificial skybox warped around an artificial world. She would watch the sky and touch the grass which felt so paper-dry, and a sensation overcame her that the only real thing in the Dreaming City was the dead rock it had been built upon. It was Day five of the Second Week of the cycle, the one she finally got enough sleep to palliate the headache, and she knew it would strike again in two days’ time, just when her corsairs would alert her about the Seclude being attacked. Time was malleable like clay and everything seemed cardboard. Even bullets didn’t hurt as much as they used to.

She felt like an actor, reciting her role over and over against her will. She tried to divert, tried taking different paths or engaging in different conversations, but it never changed the main course, the thread of time running steadily from one pinpoint to another and looping. Ever returning. Some days Petra wondered what would happen had she just left – would the curse follow her? Or would it stay, plaguing her people until they too escaped, because the only solution was to run, exactly how the Witch-Queen wanted?

Some days she looked at her own hands and wondered if she was real.

The overnight appearance of the Cryptolith had not worried her as much as it had been a relief. A palpable evidence of the cycle breaking, an intrusion that slipped through the cracks of a worn-out logic. Petra knew Savathȗn was in retreat, ever so slightly; but still, the hand clutching the Dreaming City trembled, and in that moment of hesitation a crevice opened, just wide enough to squeeze in. Would there be a chance for the Awoken to benefit from this theomachy? Could they use that same crevice to slip out through the Witch-Queen’s fingers?

Petra hugged the pillow tighter, breathing in the scent of linen. It calmed her. The monotony of the curse tricked her brain into some kind of stupor, a rhythmic pulse of existence, but it was far from lulling; her nerves were always strung, a red light in the back of her mind incessantly flashing in alert. Even sleeping offered no comfort, for in her dreams she would often walk the endless staircases of the Watchtower, hearing her Queen’s distant words in a language she could not understand.

Like a child in a house of mirrors, she saw her own face on every corner and wasn’t sure anymore which reflection was her. Some days the fuzz of repetitiveness made it hard to even remember—made it seem as if there was nothing outside, only this dull confusion. She would reach out to her childhood, imagine Amethyst so vividly it hurt, made herself relive the happy times because the pain felt more real than the ground she was walking on. She would think back to her exile. She would recall how good it had felt to be home again, hunting again, chasing treacherous Eliksni throughout the system along with Variks, listening to him hum the songs of old and citing proverbs he alone still remembered. She heard he had been found on Europa—chasing after yet another false promise, a Kell who, in time, would only fail him. She heard he was putting faith in a new Kell now, and couldn’t help but think, with a bit of sneer, that maybe her old friend had been a fool to begin with.

After what had happened, was he still her friend, though? Was he ever? Circling around in space and time, she often wondered what she had done wrong, had she overlooked a shade of darkness in his eyes, had she missed out on something important, a detail hinting at the choice he was about to make. She played back the last weeks, months, searching for some clue, looking at a familiar face and wondering if she had ever known him at all.

Maybe the Witch-Queen was laughing, somewhere from her throne of lies, watching the spectacle in a crystal ball and sipping their misery like a fine cocktail. Maybe she sneered at Petra and her petty worries, or maybe she had found a way to exploit even that and was now feasting upon her doubt and sorrow. Maybe she was like an ahamkara, in a way, sliding into the space between what-is and what-might-be, feeding on her longing, and her wish, and her faltering hope.

Chapter Text

“We have to avenge her.”

Ór cocks her head. It’s the first time Runi has spoken since they left Zavala’s office three hours ago. That fateful message still echoes in her mind, nausea swelling up in her throat whenever she thinks of what Osiris must be going through. The terrifying irreversibility of loss feels dry and sandy in her mouth.

“She deserves at least that,” the Ghost continues when she remains silent, his optics flashing angry turquoise as he stares down at the City streets, bright with lamplight and sparrow headlights. “We… we have to track down that murderer, find him, and, and put a bullet in his—whatever the Hive have for a skull…”

“You think this will help?”

The frantically twitching petals of his shell stop mid motion, and he looks at her and blinks, as if woken up from a deep dream. “…help? It’s what should be done.”

“So it’s about what’s right.” Ór pulls her knees up to her chest. “A life for a life. We kill the Celebrant for Sagira and the Hive kills us for that. Then some other Guardian goes on to avenge us, another aspiring Hive knight kills them in return, and Xivu Arath collects the tithe.”

Runi hovers in the air, petals unfolded in thought. He looks back to the City.

“It’s the other blade of the Sword Logic,” she continues, watching the outline of his bright shell stark against the evening sky. “It’s how we kill one another in the name of what’s just. How we think we have the right to take, just as the Darkness says.”

“He killed Sagira.” The words are quiet, but quiver with rage and grief. “To let it pass… Not to do anything… He killed my friend.”

Ór holds out a hand and he nestles in it, burrowing into her palm and shivering. Her thumbs stroke his shell gently until he stills.

“Sagira gave her Light to save Osiris. She weakened herself so another could live.” She holds Runi close to her chest, tucking him in like a sleeping baby. “She defied everything the Darkness stands for, that’s why Xivu Arath couldn’t reach him. That’s why, in the end, Sagira won.”

“It’s not fair,” he whispers into her palm.

“Light is not fair. That’s why Darkness hates it so much: it gives recklessly, no matter the circumstances. How did you know if I was worthy of another life?”

It used to be something that bugged her, made her overthink it to pieces until she found there was nothing to unearth, no hidden truth or rule to it. Only a gift.

“I… I don’t know. Light guided me, and that’s how I found you. I assumed it knew better than me.” A blue eye peeks out from between her fingers. “…It makes sense, I suppose. That it doesn’t really have to make sense.”

He flutters up and leans against her forehead, choking on the tears and a particular kind of love that can only be experienced through grief.

“I’m sorry about Sagira,” she whispers with her eyes closed. “But we should not take in her sake. We must look after Osiris now. We must give.”

Chapter Text

Eris approaches with the careful steps of a Hunter, stopping just on the edge of shadow the darkened hull of the jumpship provides her. The hunched silhouette in the pilot seat is at arm’s length, navy-black against the backdrop of stars behind the windshield.

“I’m glad to see you again, old friend,” she says softly, reaching out her hand to put it on the back of the seat—hesitating—drawing back.

The silhouette twitches, glances back over the shoulder, then turns his face to her in semi-profile. Lit scarcely by a few blinking controls on the dashboard, it looks old and sick, with long shadows under the eyes and wrinkles forming dark, jagged lines across the forehead.

“It has been too long, Eris.”

There is no change in expression, but his eyes light up ever so slightly and he gestures to the passenger seat next to him. It is big and comfortable, and Eris slides into its soft plush like into an embrace.

The ship is anchored at the outer side of the Tower, oddly dark without the Traveler and city lights, and for a moment it seems to her that if she only reached out, she could comb her fingers through the Milky Way. They watch the stars in joint silence.

“Forgive me I haven’t replied to your letter,” he speaks up first, his voice hoarse as if after a long night of screaming. Eris shakes her head.

“Do not apologize, Osiris. I understand the gravity of the position you had found yourself in.” She slides her hand across the edge of the dashboard, a pointless gesture, only to feel the texture of it under her fingertips. “Savathȗn has yet to come out of hiding. As a matter of fact, I worry it is her Xivu Arath is truly after.”

“We may get caught in the crossfire,” Osiris mutters, and she can tell by his absent gaze that his thoughts are elsewhere.

She wishes to offer comfort; she truly does, her fingers stretching out towards his shoulder and once again retreating, but she knows she cannot possibly relieve him of this burden. The knowledge alone rips her heart open. He is so desperate in his silence, eyes shifting, searching, lips sealed tight into a narrow line not to let any choked-up words through. Had he wish to speak, he would; she is willing to listen. Yet no words of her own could ease the suffering etched into his furrowed brow, and Eris can only watch as he bleeds it all out until the wound heals. This road he must walk alone.

After Wei’s death, she had not known how to talk to Eriana. There had been no words jagged enough to describe her pain nor soft enough to alleviate it. She had held her shivering body in arms and stroked her head, and wondered how the ground is not splitting apart at the sound of her wail, but she had not known what to say.

Lying in the hospital bed, with Ikora holding her hand in silent reassurance that was furiously not enough, she did not know either.

Maybe there is nothing, she thinks, watching moonlight slip through the fringe of Osiris’ hood and paint his face in streaks of silver. Maybe there is nothing that could ever be adequate. No bandage large enough for the wound, only this furious triviality of companioning.

She reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. Osiris closes his eyes, huddling himself and letting out a trembling sigh; there is such vulnerability in it, and sorrow, and gratitude.

Chapter Text

The universe is so much smaller now, with his ever-present eyes disjoined and stranded to rust on distant planets he can no longer see. He feels blinded.

The world emerges in flashes, scatters of picture and sound through others’ senses: shaky vision from a Ghost’s optic, fragments of code jammed into him through luminous tendril-cables, signal picked up via a prototype frame he was plugged into as a test. Anastasia has given him access to Tower surveillance cameras, but he is too disjointed to process the data. Scraps of him rattle around the orange dodecahedron like pieces of a broken toy, chaotic and incoherent, and his mind is split into million little slices all shoved messily into a tight space. His innumerable arms used to spread out into the system like soundwaves, but now he has just enough room to keep those still left close to his chest.

His thoughts are heavy and sluggish, squirming in the dense orange marsh and whispering, whispering, because he has got no strength in him to speak up. He feels tiny and fragmented, dizzy from the impact, blacked-out by the sudden strike of wires catching on fire, data boiling in his mind to the point of melting through the casing, a thousand blades cutting through his lines, snipping them off like veins bleeding code. Now it is thick and dim and hazy, and he grabs at what he can trying to make sense of the flashes and screams but his mind is drifting lazily in the sludge. He is tired. He is afraid.

He feels small.

For now, he thinks, for now, he will rest. Stilling his weltering synapses and looking out into the haze, weary eyelids fluttering closed, pulse decelerating. He will wait in the dim orange womb and allow his shattered code to restore itself, weaving the gentle texture of mind back again over tattered threads. He had been fractured, once. He will grow whole again.

Chapter Text

There had never been a worse time to be a Praxic Warlock.

Aunor seethed. Seethed when she read the reports, seethed observing Guardians hurling icy walls around the Crucible like kids playing snowball fight, seethed when she overheard people throwing stones at Zavala for his so-called cowardice and close-mindedness. She had to take a break from work to go to the gym and punch some stuff after spotting the Drifter in the Tower for the first time since his return from Europa; he had flashed her the most shameless grin and she was within an inch of knocking all his teeth out.

She used to revere Eris Morn. Both for her knowledge and bravery, as well as out of compassion for what she had been through. But the further she pushed the line between Light and Darkness, the more doubts popped up in Aunor’s head. She knew Eris was strong; balancing on the edge of the sword, tapping her fingers in Hive magic to rip them right into the Hive’s heart, she had touched the evil and tamed it long before Aunor even came to be. But not everyone was Eris Morn. Each day brought another Guardian who had dared too close, coming back dark-eyed and wild, their Ghost shuddering or weeping or, worse, corrupted as they were. Apocalyptic thoughts plagued Aunor as she sat by hospital beds, watching them bleed out the corruption through eyes and mouth, some screaming in horror as nightmares were twisting their brain. Each day was another record in the notebook, another Guardian gone dark or missing, another team sent out to keep an eye on Crucible matches or track the spoor of corruption leading out into the wild.

It was a beautiful morning, the sun hanging low over the horizon and shining through the skeletal branches of trees shedding their last leaves. The woods were within half an hour’s walk from the City walls, and Aunor enjoyed the autumn breeze on her face chasing away the frown she had been unknowingly wearing. She made her way to a clearing, now almost indistinguishable amongst the barren trees hadn’t it been for the hunched figure of Shin Malphur. Sunlight reflected off his helmet, making him seem strangely radiant even without the flames of his Golden Gun. She stopped a few meters away, and acknowledged him with a nod.

“Someone’s coming home.”

“The City has never been my home.” He took the helmet off and ran a hand through the auburn mess that was his hair, not smoothing them down in the slightest. Aunor had not seen him for only a few months, but it seemed during this time he’d grown even frailer. Sunken cheeks and circles under the eyes, cape tattered at the edges and stitched clumsily around the shoulder blades, lips dry and chapped; he was shaved clean, though, a detail clashing with his haggard appearance like diamonds with a tracksuit.

“Sightseeing, then?” She put her arms on her hips.

“Lately the Crucible is a sight to behold.” Malphur was examining one of his gloves; eventually he squinted, took out a knife and snipped a loose thread. “I heard you’re running out of bed space.”

Aunor scoffed, “Are you here to free some of it?”

“If it’s necessary.”

Malphur was still looking at his gloves with feigned interest, and she stretched the silence long enough for him to finally turn his eyes to her.

“I’m not gonna pretend I could outrun you. But if your final goal has not changed, then it aligns with ours.” She nodded slightly as if to stress the words. “I propose… cooperation.”

Malphur shoot an eyebrow up but held her gaze.

“Meaning?”

“No one can chase the Dark so well without falling themself. And we need eyes in the wild. You’ll be free to hunt the corrupted as long as you spare the Ghosts, and we will make sure these Guardians can’t endanger anyone. Including themselves.”

“You’re sticking to ineffective methods.”

Aunor clenched her fists, lighting fizzling on the tips of her fingers.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re simply killing for the fun of it.”

He glared at her, weary eyes behind the unruly mass of hair.

“What makes you think you can save them?”

“We already are.” She stared into these weary eyes boldly, her voice sharp. “We both know the situation is getting out of control. The enemy is infecting our ranks and soon will tear us apart from the inside. You’ll never hunt them all down alone, and we’re not gonna make it any easier for you. If you’re true to your cause… we need each other’s help.”

Malphur’s lips quirked ever so slightly, “Is the Praxic Order compromising?”

Aunor crossed her arms, shooing away the sudden thought of compromising his face. “The rules haven’t changed.”

“The rules mean nothing in a lawless world.”

“Oddly, you sound like the Drifter.”

She revelled in the grimace that twisted Malphur’s features at the words. “Hire him to hunt down problematic cases if you’re so keen on extending your contact list,” he sneered, sheathing the knife still in his hand. Sunlight flickered on the blade. “Come to think of it, when he was herding them into a neat little paddock, I recall you tried to take him out.”

“If all you’ve got are condescending remarks, I’m going back to the City. I’ve wasted enough time.”

“Not that much in need of eyes in the wild now?” He called after her when she started to turn away.

“What a jerk,” Bahaghari murmured in the comms, and Aunor held back a smirk. Oh, he was. But try as he might, in his stupid, douchy core he was still a Hunter; and by the rules of Darwinian evolution, the one trait all Hunters shared was their wild hatred of being ignored.

She walked away, leaving Malphur alone in the clearing just as a stray leaf landed atop the bulk of his stupid hair, then plopped to the ground.

Ten hours later a letter was already sitting on her desk, neatly folded in four and unsigned. Aunor supposed physical messages were much harder to track, but she would gladly appreciate them typed rather than scrawled in inscrutable handwriting.

“Fine, have it your way. Disastrous effects are bound to surface after a month, but have it your way. 7000 Glimmer a head.”

Well, can’t have everything, she thought, blessing the eternal vulnerability of a Hunter’s pride, and folded the note.

Chapter Text

Elsie eyed the lemon, its skin a pretty shade of emerald green with occasional specks of white.

“I don't think that’s edible.”

“We’re short on supplies and you’re gonna sniff at a good lemon?" Drifter protested, snatching the fruit from her hand.

“It's hardly a lemon now.”

"You don’t even have taste buds.”

Elsie crossed her arms, “As a matter of fact—”

“I found a camping stove,” Eris cut in, her head poking out the cabin door, “but there’s no gas.”

“A gas stove?” Drifter whistled. “That thing’s old.”

“Maybe we could find some in Eventide.” Elsie walked up to her to have a look. “Throw it at the ‘Useful’ pile.”

They had been fearing looking into the dark corners of the cabin long enough. This morning they dragged everything that was moveable out and proceeded to delve through countless drawers and lockers, astonished by how much could be stuffed into such tiny space. Elsie had not felt the need to do it before, but now with Drifter’s tools and weapon parts, and Eris’... stuff, the cabin suddenly became difficult to move around.

“We really need to stock up on food, though,” she said, examining the ‘Useful’ pile which was growing at a horrendous pace. A momentary concern overcame her as to where in hell they would put all of this.

“Told you I’d share,” Drifter called from behind her, and a horrible sound of bone and chitin cracking told her enough. “Your choice, kid.”

As the smell of scorched Hive flesh itched her artificial nostrils, Elsie allowed herself a moment of hesitancy. Was gathering them here, so close to the temptation’s core, a reasonable action? Would she be able to keep them in check and control how far behind the veil they would reach?

—Not control, she reminded herself. She was only just learning how to unclench her fingers and let the current wash through them in its own course. Life was delicate, brittle like glass; too many times had she ground it to dust in her panicked grip. She had no way of knowing how many times the cycle would repeat – until she got it right? What if the ruin came in a different manner, the ending altered but still just as disastrous? This was her desperation, a furious hopelessness, that called the Drifter and Eris Morn to Europa. A risk she had never taken before; sometimes she wavered, her thoughts swirling wildly as fear arose, whether by that she had hauled them all right into the abyss.

Eris was wise with that old-soul wisdom of a survivor, the whole of her fragile frame a story of anguish and persistence. She did not speak much. Rather listened—her hands inconspicuously busy stringing beads or carving, but eyes wary like a hunting fox’s. Even through the layers upon layers of hurt and ugly-cicatrised wounds, she was a warrior – swift and silent like death itself, ever scarier by the relentlessness of her character and clarity of cause. And Elsie was finding herself, time and time again, unable to see her through plain and honest eyes, free of the burden of knowing what she would have become had the circumstances been different. What she still—oh the horror—could still become.

She was catching herself searching for some early signal on Eris's face – any trace of deception behind that gauze – and quickly drawing away in panic, fearful that through her mistrust, she might trigger just that.

The Drifter? Oh, he was a master of acts. Perhaps better than Savathȗn herself, or at least a decent opponent. He juggled his many masks as easily as he flicked the coin, and even after all this time of knowing him in so many different realities, Elsie was still learning his ways. He was putting on the face of a jester – always laughing her off with a purposefully annoying smirk, putting his feet on the table and hiding behind that opaque wall of mockery. Testing her. But she had known him enough times to see through the jeer in those blue eyes, to notice how they darkened with fear whenever he let his guard down; how his hand flicked to the holster at every startling sound and how he never slept when there was just the two of them in the cabin, Eris keeping the watch outside.

He and Eris were tentative co-workers, at lest this time around. An unlikely pair – Elsie remembered them teaming up in merely one cycle, and only until Eris treated the Drifter to a knife between the ribs. This time, their interactions usually boiled down to rattling each other’s cages. (And they were both smart and insufferable, and knew just where to strike.) But there was something else, too. A fondness in the twilight, creeping around Drifter’s eyes and in Eris’ gentle movements; how she kept his nightlamp on because he was afraid of waking up in dark and tight spaces. How he never cut in when she talked about the Hellmouth. How they shared tools and weapons, and how sometimes, sometimes, Eris’ lips even quirked a little at his terrible jokes.

They circled in odd orbits, both full of hurt and fear and rage. Elsie could not help but wonder whether she was truly any different.

Eris walked out of the cabin and made her way to the campfire through the labyrinth of bits and bobs cluttering the ground. Her nose crinkled at the smell of Drifter’s dinner, but she did not comment.

“How’s the cleaning, sister?” Drifter threw a gnawed-up bone into the fire and reached out for another piece.

“I found a box of ground coffee deep in one of the shelves. While I am not a cryptoarchaeologist, I assess its age as fifty to sixty-five years old.”

“Could be worse. Maybe hasn’t lost all the flavour yet.” He shrugged, biting into the crusty meat and continuing with his mouth full, “I borrowed your pot, by the way. Tried to make a stew, but the blood caught on fire, and… you know. May taste a lil’ charry.”

“I explicitly did not allow you to touch my tableware.” Eris chided, then reached out a hand in a demanding gesture. “Give me some.”

Elsie watched them crunch in silence from her usual spot a few steps away, until Eris cocked her head and three green eyes met two icy-blue ones. A hand gloved in thrallskin touched the ground beside her hesitantly, “Would you sit with us, Stranger?”

Drifter’s eyes rose from the meat he was wolfing down and the three of them watched one another for a long while.

“We’re not strangers anymore, are we?” Elsie walked up slowly to the campfire and, sitting down between them, added, “My name is Elisabeth.”

Chapter Text

They raise their eyes and ask me, is there a life after this life?

A desperate plea for comfort. Sometimes I read it from their faces; hunched over a body too broken to fix, watching the wounds bleed helplessly and forcing half-goodbyes through quivering lips. Spitting the injustice out like poison, because it is unfair, unfair, there are so many others, there are children laughing in the streets and couples falling in love, why in this world when so much is bright there must be the body in the grass, bleeding and dying, it is unfair—

They ask, watching flowers wilting, is there a place without destruction? What if there is not—what with the birds and stained glass and sunsets, what with butterflies and first kisses, why the torture of having all this beauty yet knowing it is but a song on the wind, echoing, then gone forever—

Thanatonauts leap off cliffs and wonder, will they be the ones to find out? What is the point of afterlife, they ask in free fall, when life is already a renewable resource and death merely an inconvenience? Have you, o life-restorer, devised a way more lasting than the Light, frail and fleeting in Lunar corridors, more enduring than a Ghost’s shell at gunpoint; have you concocted a fallback, in case you, yourself, are not enough?

Connecting dots on the great pinboard of knowledge, they have figured out so much already. Kneeling by a body in the grass, bloodied and cold and unmoving, they have figured out almost everything.

For the game is existence and the board is infinite. But what is beyond the board is the domain of the player, and the box is always unlimited possibilities. The box is a garden of eternal return, where myriads of flowers sway gently to the beat of the fine-spun song of creation; where branches bend under the weight of fruit, swollen and pulsating with life. Water falling from the clouds sinking into soil evaporating wreathing into clouds again – each cycle unique, each alike.

They ask, as moss and vines climb up the tombstone and squirm into cracks, questions about loss and love and forevers. Did you value them, they cry, did you love them enough to keep them from falling over the edge of oblivion, would you catch them with your lustrous hand? Why did you let them go, why would you invent a world where only so many things die, oh if the treacherous road truly leads into nothingness, how could you be good—

They fall silent as the first autumn leaf drifts through the air and falls onto the marble.

I had slipped into the empty garden, obscure and hollow with ruin; every trace of that primordial latent energy had long fled through the cracks into the newly-born universe. And so it could, once again, be anything.

They ask, lips sore from goodbyes and fingers twitching, aching for something familiar and lost – is there a place of reunification? Is there a home where all is found, a kitchen of childhood scents and dried flowers, a long-forgotten face lighting up with a smile as you run into the arms that held you before your fickle mind has learned to remember?

Sometimes I see it in their eyes; in a final flicker of consciousness, as their limbs sag and voice falters – a gleam of recollection. And I know they have now seen it, too.

That the garden is no longer empty.

Chapter Text

You put the gun into your mouth
To bite the bullet and spit out
Cause it's running in the family
All the rituals of you and me

Eris Morn stares at the pyramid, sharp against the backdrop of Jupiter peeking out from behind the horizon. It is dawning on Io. Asher is standing by her side, silent in horror and fury, and wonder. His human hand is clenched into a fist and the Vex one shudders convulsively.

“I’m going down there,” she says, her voice ringing loudly in the deafening silence.

“You’re in a rush to your grave I see.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the pyramid.

“If I don’t, we all will find ourselves there even sooner.” She pulls out a dagger and begins making her way down the cliff. Asher does not try to talk her out of it; he knows her well enough to acknowledge it is no use.

“Eris.” Instead, he tosses her his shotgun. Their eyes meet and a comfortable silence lingers between them for a while, until she finally nods and turns towards the cliffside.

He watches her disappear in the distance and, knowing she cannot hear it—though it would make no difference if she could—says quietly, “Be safe.”

*

Fiddling with the radio knobs, Asher tries to contain his panic. Because fear is unreasonable, he murmurs to himself, because it obscures his vision, because they are all—every single damn one of them—utter morons; because how irredeemable of an idiot must you be to as much as consider such a fool’s errand worthy of your time and resources? Because they are fools, fools with no brain and blood on their hands, putting lives at stake in the same stupid way and expecting a different result—

A signal pierces through the static. Asher catches his breath.

“—do not let the atrocities of Crota haunt you. Whatever this is, we will not let the tragedies of our past repeat—”

He slams his open palm against the table so hard the radio trembles. Idiots! Have they truly learned nothing, are they truly expecting to miraculously work out by the golden rule of fortune favouring fools? Oh, now they have brought tanks, that will surely turn the tide!

But even through his ire, he cannot help but listen to the distant gunshots and scarce commands. He tries so hard to keep from hoping, because hope is a fool’s errand and only ever makes things harder. Too well does he know the pang of guilt every time a frantic call for support shakes the airwaves he is listening in on; his body stirs, ready to get up and rush to aid, but he cannot, all he would ever do is listen to the cries of anguish and lists of casualties read out monotonously long into the night. Both remorse and self-pity swirl together like sugar crystals in stirred tea as his hand twitches, as he almost reaches out to kill the signal but always holds himself back.

It is hours later when the battle dies down. From the scraps of dispatches and commands it seems the calamity has been avoided, and Asher leans back in his chair with weariness matching that of a field-bound solider. His radio picks up on the chatter of post-fight reports, Ikora talking so fast it is barely comprehensible, someone’s response driven out by the hum of static

Even through the interference, he recognises the voice and fights back a sigh of relief so profound he can almost feel tears in his eyes.

“Good to know you are still alive,” he barks into the comms, as dryly as he can muster; both glad and angry and acknowledging none of these emotions.

“Asher,” Eris breathes, “I’m sorry… I could not—”

“Are you allowing this buffoonery?”

“It was a Vanguard operation,” she says with a hint of bitterness, “but there is something entirely more terrible here—something ancient. What we have forgotten the fear of. The storm rumbling overhead.”

“Remain clear in your purpose, then.” He closes his eyes. “But do not… succumb to it.”

A long moment of silence settles between them, static cracking, before she responds.

“I have seen the Dreaming City, cousin.” There is both sorrow and wonder in her voice, as if she was telling a fairytale. “One day, I will take you there.”

*

“Have you seen the Traveler yet?”

Asher cocks his head, looking up from the piece of fossil he is turning in his hands. Eris is staring straight into the distance, at the aurora-painted skies and the colossus of Jupiter, and the majestic Cradle below it. Unmoving, save for the thick black flow down her cheeks.

“No.” He follows her gaze, taking in the unearthly cyan glow of the evening sweeping over Io. Distant geysers are but white streaks against the background of the star-specked blanket of sky. After a short, tentative silence, he adds, “I don’t think I will.”

Eris’ eyes flick to him, the briefest glance before they turn back to gaze at the horizon, “I heard it’s magnificent and heartbreaking. A shattered chalice of Light.”

Asher watches the swirling fumes rising up, up towards the skies. He can almost feel its radiance from the distance, prickling against his skin and warming his core. Is not Io just that, he thinks, a shattered chalice filled to overflow, rivers of brightness spilled and still trailing between its rocks?

“Have you seen it?” He asks despite knowing the answer.

She shakes her head. The City is a fickle lover, loud and kaleidoscope-changing. Some things are fit to be adored from the distance.

“It gives me hope,” she says softly after a while, and the glow of her eyes flickers. “How it maimed itself to shatter the cage, broken and radiant.”

Asher thinks bitterly how fitting it is that she has moved to the Moon, to poke and prod and taunt the darkness that marred her out of something more than burning vengeance. He is all too aware of the Pyramidion’s angular shape behind his back.

They sit in the cyan glow, two broken and radiant things on yellow sandstone, and the silence between them is dim and warm like the swelling night.

*

On the day Oryx falls, Eris stumbles into his quarters trembling like an aspen leaf. It is late, only a few windows in the Tower still aglow, and the City engulfed in the uneasy slumber of a battle raging overhead. But she has felt him die in the inmost depths of her core, and the shudder which tore through the cosmos in that moment left no room for doubts.

Asher makes her tea she is too nauseous to drink and curls up on the sofa with a book in a nest of blankets and pillows. She just watches the Traveler, bright and absurdly gentle against the horrors of this night.

“I dread the next step,” she says quietly.

“Take comfort in this triumph, if nothing else.” The soft rustle of flipping a page seems deafening in the stillness of the room. “You did kill a god today.”

“And what good did it bring?” The words are out before she can stop them; she knows it is a wrong question to ask. She knows she should keep her eyes fixed on the purpose. Yet she allows herself a second of bitter grief, of Eriana’s face etched silver in her mind and the itch of tears streaming down her scarred cheeks.

“Is the path you’re walking worthy of your fear?”

The question shakes her out from the stupor. She turns to meet his gaze, fixed on her from above the book.

“Yes.”

“Then walk it.”

The next time she sees him is in the hospital.

*

It is a lovely autumn, painting the Tower plaza red and yellow in an eternal sunset, leaves dancing in the air as gusts of wind pull them into a waltz. Eris can see the trees from her hospital window but their beauty frightens her, the effortlessness with which their branches sway and shimmer in the sunlight just another punch of realisation how nothing will ever be good and safe and beautiful again. It takes her three weeks to start speaking again, yet everybody is quick to shun her when she begins talking of the Hellmouth. Only Ikora stays, teary-eyed, tending to the burns on her head and limbs and examining the amputated toe, swallowing Eris’ every word like poison that soaks into her bloodstream with toxin of woe.

Asher does not cry, does not look away with disgust-laced pity. He makes her tea and the first proper meal she has eaten since leaving the hospital, sits down across the table and watches her with scientific curiosity. He does not negate the change, but there is no condescending sympathy in how he looks at her eyes and scars and patchy skin. And most of all, he allows her to talk; and when she finally finds the strength to begin, she cannot bear to stop. Words spill out of her like the black tears from her eyes, rotten and terrible, as she claws furiously at her core to scrub them off, to cleanse herself of the putrid stench of death clinging to her bones. He grounds her with practical questions, his matter-of-factness comfortingly familiar. It calms her when she starts shaking and losing her grip, a constant to hold on to against the deafening howl of her own twisted thoughts.

He lets her shuffle through his books and lie on his floor and does not ask whether her eyes hurt. He goes on as normal; even when she startles at every sudden noise and bleeds ink over his sofa throw, when she is whispering to herself and scratching at the scars on her skin. He just leans over the table, passing her a sheet of half translated text. He has been trying to decipher the Cabal language and wants her to take a look.

She is grateful.

*

“I do not advise this.”

Eris cocks an eyebrow at him, “I expected stronger words.”

Her glance is bold behind the veil of steam from the cup of tea she is holding, the feignedness almost undetectable. But her fingers are stiff and pale, clutching the porcelite like a lifeline, and her foot bobs nervously under the table; and when Asher meets her gaze, she looks away.

“I thought of Eriana as of someone possessing as much as half a braincell.” He stirs his own tea meticulously. “I understand she is grieving, but this idea is ridiculous. Dragging you to die together down there will not return Wei to her.”

“As long as Crota lives, no one is safe. This is not just about vengeance.”

“And what makes you think you two can achieve what thousands of Guardians failed to?”

She hates the disdain in his voice, the judgemental glare he is flashing her across the table. Like an older brother deriding a bratty sister.

“There isn’t just the two of us.” She leans forward, narrowing her eyes. Challenging him. “Sai and Vell are more than willing to crush Crota. Knowing Omar, I think he’ll join in gladly. Mare Imbrium took its toll on more than just Eriana, you know.”

“Mare Imbrium was a Titan’s tomfoolery,” Asher raises the cup to his mouth in an annoyingly dragged-out gesture. “We knew nothing about the Hive. Nothing about the weapons they used. Now we’re only beginning to scratch the surface, and frankly, I do not like what I’m finding.”

Eris crosses her arms, “Toland says—"

“Toland!” He smacks the cup against the saucer so rapidly the tea spills out. “You... Out of all the people, all the wretched charlatans in this bloody system… You’ve come to him?!”

“He knows more than you think.”

“He will lead you there to die smiling all the way through!”

Eris’ silver-grey eyes turn to steel. She bares her teeth like an angry animal about to strike, “What would you have me do, then? Get over it? Over Aparajita, and Gunnvor, and Jagi, and Lee? Over Wei? They died to reclaim the Moon. We owe them to continue the fight!”

“Don’t mistake idiocy for bravery, Eris.”

“Stop doing that.” Asher raises his eyebrow, and she adds, “Talking to me like to a child.”

“You act like one.”

Eris springs up, her chair swinging backward and nearly falling to the floor. Her hand itches to stab him where it hurts the most, to ask him where he was while she watched the corpses of her friends scattered over Lunar rocks. To tell him to sit on his ass in this damn library and keep lying to himself he is being useful. Her love for him boils and burns, and the bland disapproval on his face feels like a searing brand stamped on her with an iron rod.

She storms off, turning back at the door to give him one final, furious glare. Her eyes well up with angry tears, and it is the last time Asher sees them.

*

Fiddling with the radio knobs, Asher tries to contain his panic. Because fear is unreasonable, he murmurs to himself, because it obscures his vision, because they are all—every single damn one of them—utter morons; because how irredeemable of an idiot must you be to as much as consider such a fool’s errand worthy of your time and resources? Because they are fools, fools with no brain and blood on their hands, putting lives at stake in a stupid way and expecting to—

A signal pierces through the static. Asher catches his breath. Even through the interference, he recognises the voice and fights back a sigh of relief so profound he can almost feel tears in his eyes.

“—call for retreat! I repeat, this is Eris Morn of unit eight-three-seven. I have lost a third of my cohort, I call for retreat! We are dying out here!”

She is alive, for now. He picked up on Conar and Pujari earlier, the former badly wounded and packed up on an evac shuttle; Vell is still kicking somewhere out there too—stupid Titan—yelling curses interrupted by bullets into the comms. Dropping dead, getting rezzed, cursing again.

But even through his ire, Asher cannot help but listen to the distant gunshots and scarce commands. He tries so hard to keep from hoping, because hope is a fool’s errand and only ever makes things harder. He knows well that by the time the battle dies down, there will have been hundreds of Ghostless and dead and nonresponding, and he will have swallowed just as many I-told-you-so’s down his throat. He is furious, furious and mournful for the lives lost, and guilty for the warmth of his apartment and the untouched mug of now-cold tea. He should not have gone there, he is right to have stayed, yet every sound of battle is like a prick of conscience—making him wonder ever so briefly if this had been a life only just snuffed out, one he could have, possibly, saved.

*

The smell of smouldered flesh is still strong in the air when Eris lowers her hands, the storm of Light around her subsiding. What is left of the ahamkara are wind-scattered ashes, strangely silent after the recent din of hurricane and whispers. Ikora pokes them with the barrel of her rifle; her face intent, wary. They hardly ever go down easily.

But all is quiet. A breeze rustles Eris’ hair gently, a welcome respite from the humidity of Venusian jungles, and after a minute of fraught silence Ikora looks up and her eyes soften.

“Looks like we’re done here,” she slings the weapon over her shoulder and summons a Sparrow, “If we’re quick, we can make it for dinner.”

Eris still watches the ashes, the breeze sweeping them gently across the terrain. When Ikora calls after her, she nods absently and turns away; the hand in her pocket tightening around a shard of bone that seems to fit perfectly into her palm.

Back in her room, she lies on her back and stares up at it, fingers caressing the jags and curves of its surface. It is beautiful and ancient. She thinks briefly about embedding it in silver, creating a jewellery piece or ceremonial weapon, but then rejects the notion. She will wrap it in leather and place in her locker, safe under layers of cloth and paper, her ultimate safeguard.

She falls asleep with her fingers clasped tightly around it, and dreams of sunshine and marketplace chatter, of silvery laughter and stalls full of fruits red and fresh like the sunrise.

*

“Praedyth complained about you.”

“Oh did he,” Asher does not look up from the book he is slouched over, the unkept mess of alabaster hair giving in to gravity and falling over his face. “He tires me.”

Eris’ lips quirk slightly upwards as she reaches for their shared bottle of liquor. It is a cheap Moscato, sweet and sickly-aromatic, and in the afternoon sun flooding the rooftop they have perched upon it looks like molten gold. “What do you think of this hunt anyway?”

“By the way they’re approaching it? I’m surprised there have been no casualties yet.”

“Osiris and Tallu were arguing about it yesterday. He said he didn’t approve of genociding an entire species.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Asher hums and dogears a page.

She regards him sternly, sunlight gilding her hair and flickering on the hilts of her sheathed knives. “They are extremely dangerous.”

“Every power is when you abuse it.”

“But not every power can make you abuse it.”

She has a point and Asher hates it, but he deems the matter unworthy of butting heads over it any longer. It would not deter Fairwind and Saint anyway, even if Osiris shared his rightful concerns. He closes the book and sits straighter, running a hand through his hair absently.

“With their Wei Ning mentality, all this ‘hunt’ is gonna be is a brawl.” He shoots her a weighty glance, “And of course you’ll join in on the folly.”

“The knowledge they possess—”

“Oh don’t give me that,” his hand outstretches in a demanding gesture, and as Eris passes him the bottle, his features soften, “It would be a waste if you died.”

*

Sunlight flickers between City buildings, slipping through the balcony fences and strings of garlands stretched above streets. The market square is swarming with people; the colours of awnings over the stalls and fruits stacked in crates are vibrant and loud and heavy with summer’s daze. Ripe-sweet scent of blooming flowers lingers in the air.

A little girl ducks under her mother’s arm and starts squeezing through the crowd—as she runs, the yellows and reds and grey cobblestone all flash past and come colliding when a stall or a body suddenly sprouts in front of her. She rams into it laughing, and zaps away before the surprised rebuke has a chance to reach her.

“Wait for me!” A boy calls after her, struggling to keep up. She does not stop until they are blocks away from the marketplace, away from the clamour and swirling crowds, by an old boathouse on the bank of the river. The heat is more bearable here, and the sunshine glimmers on the surface like stardust. The girl looks up the weathered planks, squinting.

“I’m gonna climb the roof.”

“You’re gonna break your legs.”

“I don’t care.” She already has one foot in a knothole. “Stay down here, if you want to miss the view.”

The boy crosses his arms, watching her try to find a handhold. Bravery and idiocy are indistinguishable in their small world, when the most courageous thing you can do is grin through the hurt and claim the height of the fall was worth it.

“Will you come down when I call you?” He asks, with just the tiniest hint of anxiety to his tone.

She glances at him and for a flicker there is some eager honesty in her eyes—or just the bright, reckless innocence of a child.

“I always will.”

Chapter Text

Ir Airâm sings, and the aria digs deep into her bone with jagged, bloody shriek-cuts. She tastes them on her jaw and palate, she feels the gums splitting with every note, and the pain is as familiar and soothing as her sister’s embrace.

Her jaw—Malkanth’s jaw—hurts and bleeds with every cut the Song makes in the cosmos and her—Malkanth’s—bones rattle with its wallshattering echo. But still she sings, like a surgeon pushing down a scalpel, like her sister once sung her into nonexistence. The Song is elegant and precise a blade, and she wields it as she would wield the love for her siblings; the Song is her love now, delicate and true, spilling out of her in a flood of affection. It used to be a weakness, once. A fondness binding her core and filling her up with warmth – in a world of violent blades, it had to fumble with violence too, devoid of the tenderness she could never quite shake. She remembers loving her siblings with a love that was destruction, a furious passion blinding her with fear that if she did not test them enough—if she did not drag them through fire and blood and unmaking to quench their fragile thrallbones—they would prove weak and unworthy, and she would have to crush them in her claws like glass trinkets as the final act of devotion.

She remembers Akrazul’s shattered arm, she remembers tending to the wounds and listening to his hollering as he thrashed on the cot. She remembers the panic in Malkanth’s middle eye as they both realized, sharing glances over his prone body, that he should not have returned, that they should kill him as he lied broken and screaming and perfectly harmless, to free him of the burden of existence he was now unfit to bear.

But the love that boiled in their hearts was too strong, and that gift of reprieve was the first tender heresy they committed together.

They suffered, of course, but she takes joy in knowing her siblings fell to entrench their design rather than to the sword, punishing them for the sheer sacrilege of being. In her dreams she can still see the fading glow in Akrazul’s eyes as she lulled him to unmaking, the smile of relief and contentment curling on his bloodied lips. Ir Airâm knows sacrifice, she wears it at every moment as her sister’s flesh wrapped around her essence, and she knows that, to heal the infection, one must first dip a knife in blood. She knows love has been their knife. She wields it still in her—Malkanth’s—hand and sings it shape in every note that tears through her—Malkanth’s—throat; she sinks it deep into the soft meat of this broken world to cut out the sickness, she brings it up to clash with the sword and defy it.

The Way of Swords is a lie, a lie she once died to prove false, and her glorious|heretical|triumphant return has been the final evidence of its hollowness. All it ever brought was weakness and sorrow. She grew up in Crota’s shadow, in the circle of his spoiled and lustful spawn, she watched from the sidelines as he revelled in his might, as his treacherous pride decimated the Swarm and severed her brother. She experienced the crevice his fall tore through the Hellmouth, she witnessed his greedy children gnawing one another out in a pitiful struggle for power as their brood suffered and waned. She saw Ir Yût flee with distaste at their weakness and the Song was never the same again, and her great vocation rose from the embers of what She had taught her.

But now her coven is a Choir of scalpel-blades. Strong with Akrazul’s power, sharp and precise like Malkanth, tender and true as Azavath’s love has been. Ir Airâm sings and the Song is her love now, and the love is defiance and the defiance is her Song.

Chapter Text

The night is pleasantly chilly, a welcome respite after a sweltering day. The earth is still warm to the touch, the carpet of pine needles tickling the nostrils with an incense-strong scent. Lying on his back, Pahanin is tracing his finger from star to star, connecting them in new constellations, because the sky has never been merely a map but a riddle with infinite solutions.

Beside him, leaning against a tree, Rezyl bites into a pomefig with a delightful crunch. A drop of sap rolls down his stubbly chin and he doesn’t bother wiping it away. He is looking up too, eyes fixed on the pale face of Luna peeking out through the branches.

“Before the Golden Age, I heard people would tell stories that the Moon was full of cheese,” he breaks the silence, his voice muffled by the sweet pulp he is still chewing.

 “Well, now its full of Hive,” Pahanin shrugs.

“Thought you liked a good story.”

“Is that one any good, though?” He rolls to his side and props up on an elbow, “Myths are great and all until you lift the curtain and find your cheese and green-skinned aliens are in fact a murderous army that’s been crawling under your boots this whole time… But, come to think about it, at least they are green-skinned aliens.”

Rezyl laughs; a deep, true laughter echoing through the woods. Still gazing up at the sky, he bites the pomefig again and munches on with delight. It is juicy and sweet, almost overripe.

“We’re gonna rot them out.” He sticks up a finger, and the distant white speck of the Moon is no larger than his fingertip. “Step by step, rock by rock, we’re gonna take back what’s ours. And then we’re gonna explore it.”

It is a magic word, almost, and Rezyl turns his smiling face to Pahanin. But the Hunter does not look at him—he is staring at the stars with a sombre expression, and there is nothing of the usual brashness about him.

“What if they rot us out first?” He says quietly, almost to himself, or maybe just for the night to hear.

Rezyl shakes his head, some remains of the confident laugh still dancing on his lips. He swallows down the last bite of the fruit and throws the pomefig core away into the darkness, where it rolls down the pine-needle carpet and lands under a tree stump to decay in silence.

Chapter Text

The campfire painted Pahanin’s face bright orange as he talked, arms flailing in overly theatrical gestures to imitate dragons and wyverns tearing through the jungles of Venus. Shinobu and Andal seemed genuinely interested, watching him with chins propped up on their palms—there was something of that kinderguardian wonder still in Nobu’s eyes—and Eris only nodded politely from time to time, focused on sharpening her knives. Behind him, Nadiya mimicked his every move, causing Micah and Conar to squirm on the ground with hands pressed against their mouths to stifle laughter.

Tallulah stared up at the star-specked sky, her head resting on Caliban’s crossed legs. She could see his face from a weird angle as he smiled indulgently at Pahanin’s twaddle, and his fingers combed mindlessly through her long, ink-blue hair. He looked down at her every now and then, and his optics glinted with a brightness that filled Tallulah’s chest with warmth stronger and more pleasant than the campfire. It was their last respite before heading to Venus—the Speaker had finally relieved her off Vanguard duty for a whole week so she could take part in the Hunt—and Caliban could barely conceal the excitement of being back in the field together. It made her heart flutter. The howling wilds were his home, and only the love for her made him fetter himself to the Tower. Here amongst the pines, soaked with the smell of ash and damp soil, he was a missing piece having finally found his jigsaw.

Their eyes met and Caliban traced his fingers across Tallulah’s face, from the temple down to her smiling lips. Her home would always be with him, she thought, but to watch him here—so radiant and whole—to share his home—she shuddered at the majesty of it, at the honour she was given, at how beautiful he was when he smiled against the backdrop of stars crowning his head.

“Hey, Tallu!” Andal called from somewhere to her left, away from the pool of light that circled the campfire. She lifted her head just and inch and found him staring at her long bow propped up against a tree, poorly-concealed admiration on his face. “Can I try it out?”

“Good luck hitting anything in this pitch black darkness,” Nadiya sneered, and Tallulah felt her lips quirk slightly.

“When I’m back from Venus, we can talk about it.” Andal’s pout was so delightfully childish she could hardly hold back a smirk. “Isn’t it past your bedtime anyway?”

Conar giggled, patting poor Andal on the back, and Eris and Shinobu rolled their eyes almost in unison. Pahanin kept going with his story but his voice was growing fainter with every word now that nobody seemed to be interested.

“I’m hoping for some good views on Mars,” Micah said upon taking a swing from the bottle of contraband vodka they all shared. Her Ghosts—she had five of them, now—all perched up on her shoulders and in her lap like birds on a roost.

“Thought you were rather looking for dead people,” Nadiya snatched the bottle from her hands, “There’s that ruined city in the Meridian Bay, heard it’s a sight to behold. And full of corpses, I assume.”

“Funny how this whole system is just dead people and ruins”, Pahanin said, unexpectedly pensive, watching the flames.

Eris cocked her head at him. “We were dead things once, too. Maybe it is rebirth that comes of ruin.”

“I feel very much alive now,” Caliban smiled, and tossed a twig into the fire. His fingers were tracing the veins on the back of Tallulah’s hand absently. “We’re dragon hunters, kids. Death is overrated.”

Pahanin nodded slowly, but his thoughts were already starside; Nadiya and Conar began laying out a deck of cards, Shinobu played with one of Micah’s Ghosts by chasing it with her finger. Eris returned to her knives, and Andal watched her work with moderate curiosity. The campsite plunged into a sudden silence.

As she stared back into Caliban’s eyes, two bright dots against the encroaching darkness, Tallulah pondered what he would often tell her, stroking her cheek. That she had cosmos on her skin – swirling freckles specking her face, iridescent like a crystal shard; stars that moved across it, rising and waning, impossible to count. She thought of his fingers mapping them, metal against magic.

“I love you, idiot,” he mouthed, and Tallulah couldn’t help the lazy grin that spread over her lips. She knew the way his optics flickered and dimmed, she knew it by heart, like one knows the back of their hand or the rhythm of their own breath. They outshone all the glory of galaxies above—because they were his, here, among the night and wilderness and fire crackling. Her north stars.

Chapter Text

Lonwabo climbed the low stone fence separating the river boulevards from the street, careful not to tear his coat. Runa didn’t spare him a glance; her legs dangling in the air, she was staring at the rippling waters, deep in though. Tiny snowflakes covered her hair and shoulders, but she didn’t bother to sweep them off.

“So?” He started. “You wanted to meet.”

“I think I’m dying.”

Lonwabo swung forward and almost lost his balance.

“W-what?”

Runa started chewing on a tip of her glove. “Remember the girls we often see in the park? Those who always sit in a circle and giggle like idiots?”

Lonwabo nodded, frowning so hard his forehead hurt.

“They must have infected me with something. I think I’m becoming one of them.”

He frowned even harder, “What?”

“There’s this… UGH,” Runa kicked her heels against the fence, “there’s that family who lives downstairs, Mum always sends me to borrow flour from them. They’ve been living there for two years, I think.”

He waited patiently, watching Runa forming snowballs from the thick fluffy cap covering the fence and throwing them angrily at the boulevard below.

“They have a son,” she finished.

Lonwabo’s face lit up. “And you have a crush on him!”

“Don’t put it like that!” Runa snapped, tossing a half-assembled snowball at him but missing. It splashed across the pavement, almost hitting a pedestrian.

“Okay…” He backed away a bit, “What are you gonna do, then?”

“I—don’t know!” She wailed, hiding her face in hands. Lonwabo stared at her in disbelief, having never seen her express this much emotion. “I can’t even look at him ‘cause I go all wackadoo and weird, but I want to look at him and talk to him, but I can’t talk to him and I—” she threw him a desperate look, “Can you bury me somewhere until I recover?”

“I… don’t think it will work,” he said carefully and an idea popped up in his head. “Hey, maybe you could get him a gift! For the Crimson Days!”

Runa’s eyes burnt holes in his skull.

“No. And I won’t survive that long anyway.”

“A Dawning gift, then?” Lonwabo raised his hands instinctively, in case another snowball was coming his way. “You could leave it on his doormat if you’re afraid—”

“I’m not afraid,” Runa grunted. “And what if he thinks it’s from someone else? Like, one of those stupid girls from the park?”

“Sign it.”

“No way! Then he’ll know I have a— He’ll know it’s me!”

Lonwabo sighed.

“Maybe just ask Lord Shaxx. He commands the Crimson Days, he’s good in this… love thing.”

Runa pulled her knees up to her chest and now looked so miserable Lonwabo wondered who the hell would ever want to be in love. “He will laugh at me.”

“He won’t! He never did, even when we lost that dodgeball game. Remember?”

She nodded resignedly, observing pedestrians stride the boulevard, most of them carrying colourful boxes of various sizes, golden lanterns or shimmering Dawning decorations. Her nose caught the smell of cookies and she turned her head from where it was coming from; a tall Exo walked out of the bakery with a small packet adorned with a blue ribbon, closed the door behind him and looked around. Runa watched him walk down the street, stop just by the riverbank and offer the packet to an Awoken woman standing there, who laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

Every bakery was now selling Dawning cookies. And Runa still had some of this month’s pocket money left.

Hm. Maybe she would live after all.