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I’ll leave the house to you for the time being.
When you are ready not to be alone any longer, call me. Please.
I love you.
—
Osiris sent the message and once again reflected on how glad he was to have chosen a mask as part of his everyday outfit. Not that he was worried about Ikora seeing his concern - he trusted her as he did few others - but because one never knew when some other Guardian would drop in on her unannounced and he didn’t–he couldn’t–explaining the situation would take a degree of separation from the situation he didn’t currently possess.
“The Vanguard should issue an alert to all Exos in the vicinity of Nessus,” he managed to say with a steady voice. “If this Conductor has the power to influence their minds in particular, extreme caution is warranted.”
“I agree,” Ikora said smoothly, bringing up a tablet to tap in commands. “Saint only broke free of the yoke with outside influence.” She lifted her eyes to his, anger smoldering under the surface in a way only those who knew her moods well would be able to see. “When we mentioned your name.”
Osiris inhaled sharply. Why should that hurt more? And yet it did, a needle made of glass to pierce his wretched heart again. He clenched a fist and told himself sternly that this was no time to indulge in self-pity. “He always was more stubborn than one would think. It would work in his favor when throwing off external command.” And against his own best interests if the Conductor wormed their way into his head with any degree of thoroughness. Osiris could see how Saint would latch on to the idea of not strictly belonging here due to the logic of the argument, and he knew it was going to be an uphill battle to dislodge it.
He began to say something to Ikora and then shook his head. “Will you excuse me for a time?”
She smiled warmly at him, the anger in her eyes tempered by compassion. For all that Osiris thought of Ikora first and foremost as his former student, Saint was nearly as dear to her. “Of course. We will get through to him, Osiris. You’re welcome to stay here until he’s ready.”
He nodded and, with a tiny internal voice that still sounded too much like Sagira hissing a reminder, said “Thank you.”
He returned to his ship and set a course for Earth’s orbit while he thought. This wasn’t an argument that could be won by logic alone; he’d need both logic and emotion in his arsenal before Saint would listen. He composed two quick messages and sent them off, then settled down to wait for a reply. Surely the recipient of the first would have more free time to–
With a ping he received the affirmative reply and set his course for Europa.
—
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” came a warm voice from below. Saint-14, startled, looked down from his perch up on the platform over the dreamscape of the Speaker’s chambers. It was and wasn’t like the old Tower here. The shape of it, yes, that slotted perfectly into his memory, but instead of a blasted ruin of the Red War haunted by the Father he couldn’t be there to save it was growing with flowers and under the shade of a massive tree. He could hear the chirps and rustles of a dozen kinds of animals, many unfamiliar to him and probably extinct since the Collapse or maybe even from other worlds entirely, but he could also pick out the cooing of his pigeons.
He never saw any, though, except for half-formed visions of pure Light.
“Micah!” he called down, not having to put false cheer into his tone for once. “Come, sit, I have brought bottle of vodka and Misraaks will judge me if I drink it all alone.” She laughed and started up the curving stair, and it took a moment for Saint to realize what looked off about her appearance. “But where are your little ones? I do not remember the last time I saw you without three or four Ghosts?”
Has anyone spoken to you of a child with blinding dreams? A Guardian who Ghosts follow? No surprise that he should think of his Father’s words here.
Micah-10 reached the platform and grasped Saint’s hand in a sincere greeting and took a seat, her voice amused. “Some are recovering after all the battles. Most are out there.” She gestured to the open vista of the Pale Heart - this room had an excellent view of the surreal and beautiful landscape. “Little by little they help to remove the corruption. As they heal the Traveler, they become stronger themselves. Maybe soon some of them will start looking for their Guardians again. Maybe some of them will not.”
Saint made a noise of understanding. “It gives them another purpose–a, an anchor. Yes?” Micah tilted her head, not because she didn’t understand but because she was waiting for him to complete his thought. A dozen different explanations and theories from everyone from his Father to other Ghosts to one very stubborn Warlock swam through his mind and he frowned, chasing the thread. “Because they are, hmm. Not parts of it, that means they are not themselves.” He snapped. “Avatars! Yes?”
“Avatars, incarnations, that is not a bad metaphor,” she agreed. “A bucket of water drawn from a deep well may go through many forms, but in the end the rain sinks back into the earth and refills from where it was drawn.” She poured herself a drink from Saint’s bottle. “And who knows? The Traveler has changed. Perhaps it will make more Ghosts so it can be with us as we finally look out to see what the light of another star looks like when it fills our eyes.”
Saint looked away, feeling the bite of guilt at that. His own dream, kept private for so long between himself and Osiris, a moment of selfishness when his people needed him but at the same time a dream born of the hope that someday there would come a time when there was no need for a Wall, when the Last City was no longer the Last and humanity could stand on its own. It was a dream that was finally, astonishingly, a tangible possibility and not a foolish fancy.
A dream he didn’t feel he had a part in now.
Micah sat with him in silence. It was a gift she had, and no doubt one of the reasons so many of the shy Ghosts called her a Den Mother: a gentle kindness that treated everyone with respect. Finally he let out a bitter laugh. “It is so obvious to you?”
“Saint-14,” she said with just the slightest touch of exasperation that reminded him sharply of his beloved Osiris, “you did not come to the heart of the Traveler in the tribute it made to your Father because you feel you are on the right path.”
He buried his face in his hands and groaned, but in truth he felt relieved that she had brought it up. The problem with people knowing you was that they knew you, after all. At least here it was only Micah and a few others to see him, and not everyone in the whole Tower.
He quickly explained the gist of what had happened on Nessus. “And now–now I hear this voice in my head, saying I am a lie. That I have been deceiving everyone around me, that I have been hurtful to Osiris!” His voice dropped, miserable. “That the timeline would be better if I were not in it. And!” He could see her winding up for a rebuttal, which he had to cut off. “Her logic is not wrong, Micah. I am not from this timeline. Saint-14 is dead.”
a shrine built by the Vex, the only Lightbearer they respected enough to entomb, lavender ribbons fluttering against the wind forever and a shotgun on his chest
“Oh, Saint,” and he didn’t want to hear the compassion in her voice, he didn’t, but somehow the words hurt less when he was surrounded by the Light and the birdsong and maybe just a bit the vodka he’d had (bless the Braytech researcher who’d insisted Exos should be able to experience intoxication). And yet Micah was still talking.
“When has the Traveler ever cared for logic?”
—
Saint,
I don’t know if you’re ready to read this. I don’t know that I’m ready to write it, but you taught me that to have a good but imperfect creation is better than none at all in the pursuit of a perfection that may never be reached.
Elizabeth Bray has known more timelines than anyone else I’m aware of, discounting of necessity the Vex. She has lived through more lives than any human memory can safely bear, and because of it there are imperfections in her recall. She has known a time when Oryx was victorious, a time when Panoptes flattened all it saw into a perfect line, a Ghaul drunk on the Light and feasting over Caiatl’s broken ship. She has seen each of the Vanguard rise and fall and turn and fail. She has seen her own sister dead by her hand more times than she cares to count.
In many of these timelines, I am alone. I am her mentor in Stasis. I am a vulture keeping endless vigil over the Infinite Forest. I am surrounded by lackeys who take my word as gospel. I am a Disciple of the Witness and a puppet of Savathun and an instrument of Nezarec.
She has seen us together. We rise and fall as the last beacons of hope crushed. We stand back-to-back as Zavala and Ikora and Cayde make a final stand against our tyranny. We sacrifice ourselves to deal a blow to the Witch Queen, but Eris laughs in the shadows over Savathun’s body. We are a beautiful song, a candle flame snuffed out by a multitude of hands.
Dead ends, all of them. Futures that we will never see.
I did not tell her that I had seen some of them already.
When I stood in my foolishness and faced Xivu Arath in her own game, a thousand futures opened up before me. I saw how each of these might come to pass, and a hundred hundred more. So many ways my life could have gone! Each thread running through the labyrinth and reaching a different end, and yet before me there was a pattern.
The only future in which I was happy was the one where I stayed with you.
We are not Vex and we do not travel the Corridors of Time. I tried once, and I paid a dear price and still I failed to retrieve you; it is the source of my greatest sorrow, and yet because of it the Guardian was able to go in my stead and offer you that choice. It makes me angrier than I can express that you have begun to doubt that choice. No; that doubt was forced upon you.
When you first emerged from the Infinite Forest, you asked to feel my Light. For all their many abilities, the Vex still cannot simulate the Light, and I was more than happy to hold my spark against yours. I have seen you grieve its loss, though you try to hide it from me. You need not; you cannot possibly make me regret it more than I already do.
Yet through its loss I have found the peace I lacked. Because of you.
I do not care if there is an iota of difference between the timeline you were born into and the one you find yourself in now. It is no mythical Saint that called my voice when I was lost in Savathun’s trickery. Yours is the voice that called me out and helped me to find myself again. Your hand held mine when few believed I could wake. It was your friendship with someone who you had been raised to hate and strike against that allowed Misraaks to distill the Darkness that cleared my mind. It was you who stood by me when I unraveled another source of Darkness and used it to reach our enemy. It is you I want to be with for the rest of this, my final life.
All this is to say: I do not give a damn about anyone else's perfect timeline. I am in mine now, because of you.
I love you, Saint.
And I will continue to say it until your heart is unbound by these thorns that encase it, because if there is one truth I believe, it is that Saint-14 is more stubborn than any enemy can imagine.
After all, you outlasted the Vex. What is one Conductor, compared to that?
When you are ready, I am here.
Yours, in time,
Osiris