A/N: I don't really know what this is but I had to get it out of my system. Sort of a smutty one-shot. Enjoy (or don't, I guess, lol).
And the beat goes on, drone drone like a metronome
Day in and day out I know how the story gonna go
Typical, typical, tongue tied and weak willed
Stuck on the sedative, evidently to sleep well
But I haven't slept in days, I haven't dreamt in nights
I've been busy building theories I just can't wait to try
See, I think the beat's made to drown out the sound of the boom boom
While they shoot our last hope down.
-Pop Culture, Icon for Hire
She is living on borrowed time.
That much, at least, she knows for sure.
Everything she does, every breath she takes, is in payment for the blood in her veins and the beating heart in her chest. If there was a heaven or a hell in that space beyond life, she doesn't recall, though sometimes she thinks that maybe that's where she really is:
Hell.
Whatever, or wherever it is, it's a broken time with broken people on a planet she barely recognizes. In The City she sometimes tells stories to children, about what it was like before, when people didn't fear every shadow and how they would look up at the stars and think they were alone in the Universe. The children always laugh, and it's the only thing that ever makes her want to cry. She eventually stops going into The City altogether; it's not for her kind anyway.
Sometimes it's easier merely to pretend it isn't real. A bad dream that never ends.
There is, despite it all, some comradery and a sense of fulfillment. She makes friends and allies, stretching herself across the Solar System in ways the people of her time could never have imagined. Together, their ragtag group of the undead fight for what little is left of their species, and it makes a family of them all –albeit a dysfunctional, violent one.
But she never allows herself to forget the truth:
She is dispensable, replaceable, nameless, and faceless.
She is a Guardian, and she is already dead.
Once she was a young woman with a home and a family.
A fighter, a diplomat, and a politician in a time when the Darkness was new and fresh and humanity had no idea what awaited them in the recesses of space. The details of her death are hazy, indistinct, like a reflection in muddy water, and there is very little trace of them in the old records that remain.
There had been an ambush, a plan gone wrong, her fault, her fault… always her fault. It didn't matter. Her life was forfeit, her choices no longer her own.
Her Ghost did manage to find one picture of her, taken during one of her campaign runs for an office that barley made a difference. It makes her cringe to look at it, and she asks the Ghost to erase it from the database, permanently. It doesn't argue. Maybe, in its way, it understands.
Whoever she was before is dead and gone.
Now she is only Sil.
There is no record of what became of her family; her husband, her daughter, her parents… all lost to the decay of time. She carries their names like a benediction, like a holy relic, a bloody piece of herself she can pull away and examine in the bowels of Darkness, alone and desperate.
They all carry those pieces of themselves. She can see it in their eyes.
Ray had had children, she knows it without asking, can see it on his face when they don't make it in time to an outpost –there are a few, outside The City. Their bodies don't look like much, charred and featureless, but they are smaller than the others and it's the sort of knowledge you feel in your gut, a fact that your mind isn't quite able to will away. It happens enough that she's already stopped thinking of her daughter and she wonders if that makes her a monster.
The Voice of the Traveler tells her she is full of Light, but sometimes she thinks she is cast too far in the shadow of the Traveler to see it.
She pulls Strike out of the shelter by the back of his cloak, snapping and protesting, but she ignores him, and Ray doesn't returned to the ship for several hours. When he does, his armor is covered in mud and dirt and leaves, and Strike, for once, knows better than to comment.
They don't talk about it. They all have memories they don't share, identities that they keep locked away. Besides, there are always more Fallen and Vex to kill and there are always more bodies when they don't make it in time.
She never can quite figure out Strike.
He might as well have been born in The City for all that his rebirth seems to have affected him. Most of them, the other Guardians -there are always at least fifty or so in residence- discuss a time before, sharing the fragments of their sporadic lives like the pieces of a puzzle to be fit together and analyzed. It is their way of trying to and make sense of a world that makes none at all.
But not Strike. He never shares, never speaks of his time before, and she is the only one who never asks, the only one who doesn't care.
Or so she tells herself.
Strike is, undoubtedly, an asshole.
He gets on her every last nerve in a way no one else can, digging dexterous fingers beneath every crevice of her armor and pinching, hard. He is sarcastic and irreverent and takes nothing seriously, and he looks at her in a way that no one else does. Like he's trying to see under her skin and through her eyes into whatever remains of her soul.
She hates him, silently, but undoubtedly.
But they share a rebirthday –a little Guardian humor- and so they enter their little quasi-training camp together. She punches him on the first day and it goes about as smoothly from then on. He's a natural with a gun and she takes to Warlock training with an ease that frightens both she and her instructors equally.
Warlocks balance carefully between Light and Dark, and her feet always hang a little further over the precipice than her teachers would prefer. But it makes her dangerous and it makes her effective, so they turn a wary eye.
Killing had been hard in her first life.
It is her only joy in her second.
They assign Ray to oversee her and Strike shortly after they graduate –not with caps and gowns but with guns and armor- because they are considered the wildcards of the group, no matter how talented, and Ray is one of the oldest Guardians in residence. He'd been reborn five years prior, which said a lot about their survival chances.
Not that it matters.
The Titan Order is rigid and unassuming, reminding her of fairy tales about Knights in Shinning Armor that would save damsels in distress. Ray fits that bill almost perfectly, but it conceals a rage just beneath the surface. He is terrifying in battle; a weapon born of loss and vengeance. Even Strike is afraid of him, not that he would ever admit it.
When he gives an order, they follow, and before she knows it, her life takes on a strange sort of routine. Saving what remains of their species a little at a time as she digs up the secrets of a past that is all at once her future.
They make a formidable force.
Their faces are plastered on screens and holograms across The City –the poster children for the Guardians. She silently hates it. It reminds her of the fake faces and pretty smiles that would stare at her from the tabloids in her own time. She recognizes the tactics behind it though; give the people something to hope for, some reassurance that things are getting better even when they aren't.
Together, they trace their way across planets she'd once only seen from a telescope or in beautiful pictures on the internet. The Hive had arrived before humanity could launch anything substantial, though she is happy to know that shortly after her death the Traveler had arrived and saved their race from utter annihilation. At least for a little while.
Sometimes she is sad she had not been alive to witness the expansion and growth and other times she is terribly, terribly bitter. All she's ever witnessed of the universe is destruction.
Sometimes she hears the words 'thousands of years ago' and feels like she might faint from a sudden vertigo, like the hand of God is reaching down and touching her or some bullshit.
Fortunately, emotions are easy to hide behind an automatic rifle and a burst Void energy that tears through alien flesh as easily as a knife through butter. It's easy to forget anything behind the sights of her gun and the pulse of the power at her fingertips as she trails after Ray on mission after mission and quest after quest. Little by little the ghosts of her past disappear beneath the bodies of the Hive and Cabal until she can't recall her daughter's face or her husband's name.
It doesn't bother her, not really.
It makes everything easier.
Wielding Darkness and electricity in equal measure she relies on Strike to cover her as they painstakingly loosen the grip of utter doom a little at a time. They work well together, despite it all.
It's a close call on Mars, however, and she takes a bullet to her thigh during an exchange with a well armored force of Cabal. Nothing she can't deal with, of course, but it slows her down and the sand sure as fuck doesn't help.
She really, really hates Mars. With its ruins of skyscrapers turned to tombs and seas of endless, dry heat. She much preferred Venus, even with all the Vex.
"Looking sloppy today, Sil." Strike's voice is sarcastic and biting in her ear. There's a storm rolling in, looming like a deadly snake on the horizon, poised to strike, and they've taken cover behind a rock formation.
Ray is scouting ahead, there's a stronghold just beyond the rise, but she thinks he'll call it and they'll have to bunk down in a cave somewhere. Hopefully one that isn't full of Cabal or Hive; sand storms are nothing to laugh at, even for a Guardian.
"Go fuck yourself," she growls, not in the mood as she hunkers away from an unforgiving sun, pain pulsing up her leg. Her ears ring in warning, but she ignores it.
I know my limits, she tells herself.
Strike snorts, leaning casually, cockily against the rocks across from her, his tattered cloak fluttering in a hot breeze like one limp wing. "Maybe someone should fuck you, maybe you'd stop acting like such a bitch all-"
He doesn't get to finish his sentence.
She's got him in a force-grip tinged with the Void and all she sees is blood. She's not thinking of anything at all, her mind as empty as the spaces between the stars. Whatever had sparked her to lash out dissolves immediately like the red sand beneath their feet, lost like the ashes of the people who had once called this forsaken desert home.
She's like a gun that's misfired, an emotionless weapon that can only kill. There are whispers in the Darkness and they reach out to her with open arms.
Ray returns just in time to put her down.
When she comes to she's onboard their ship headed for The City and Ray is sitting on the edge of her cot, looking serious.
"I've just spoken to Commander Zavala and you've been deactivated from service until further notice."
She swallows against a painfully dry throat that still tastes of sand and death, too stubborn to ask for water.
Or maybe, a dark voice inside her whispers, you know you don't deserve it, this second life. Your fault, your fault. The Traveler made a mistake, and now they know it, now everyone knows it.
"What does that mean?" she croaks.
Ray gives her water anyway, of course. It tastes like acid and it burns her throat, but she drinks three full glasses, hating herself a little more with each one.
"I'm not sure, we'll find out when we get there."
Ray isn't one to mince words, even after two years together he rarely chit-chats, and he makes to leave.
"Strike… is he-" she blurts out, surprising herself. She didn't think she'd care.
Ray pauses and the look he gives her is impossible to read. "He'll live. Though it was a close thing."
The words hang there like a physical creature after he leaves and she curls in on herself, wishing the Darkness had claimed her after all.
Their arrival is anticlimactic.
She'd wondered if she would be taken into the Tower in chains, an Angel fallen for all to look at and shame, but she is all but ignored for the two days following their return. She doesn't see Strike and she is too much of a coward to ask, imposing a sort of house arrest on herself, locking herself in her barracks room and staring at the walls.
She expects the Vanguard to come for her eventually, but it's Strike who finally knocks at her door.
He looks different out of his gear.
She's seen him dressed down a handful of times but never really paid much attention, perhaps subconsciously trying to distance herself from anything that would humanize him… or her. They lost a Guardian almost every week, sometimes every day, and it is better not to get too attached or too familiar, epically with the members of your Fireteam.
One never knew when the call of duty would override any feelings of affection or friendship.
Strike isn't handsome, precisely –not like Ray who is sturdy and chiseled- but he's got a hint of charm and grace that catches the eye and makes it linger. He looks about forty with dark hair and a suntanned face –though there's a parlor there that hints at some recent illness or bout of inactivity. Guilt gnaws, but she barely recognizes it for what it is, it's been so long. His eyes are the color of steel and lightening and they unnerve her as she realizes that she is also without armor, all but naked in the fall of his gaze.
Unconsciously, she wraps her arms around herself.
He smirks a little, like he gets it, and steps toward her. She's never given up ground to anyone, not since her rebirth, and possibly not before, but she's frightened of him –this man that refuses to just be a vague figure in her shadow of a life- and she takes a step back.
He follows her further into the room, the automatic doors hissing shut behind him, and he seems to take up all the space so that she isn't sure if she's breathing. Isn't sure if there's enough room between them for her chest to expand or her heart to beat.
"My name is Ryan, Ryan Sanders, and I was once a history teacher at a University on Earth, fifty years or so before the Traveler went silent."
The words feel like hands on her skin, pressing, pulling, and biting.
"Why are you telling me this," she demands, stung.
"Because you never ask," he tells her and his voice is sincere for perhaps the first time since they'd met.
He's afraid too, she realizes, and it makes her skin hot. Makes her palms itch and her thighs clench.
"Why are you here, Strike? For an apology?" she snaps.
He deserves one, of course, but that barley matters. Those kids they found and Ray buried deserved to live, her daughter deserved a mother, and she deserved to stay dead.
Strike isn't smiling, instead he's looking at her in that way she hates, like he can see each and every one of her fucked up thoughts. God, she hates him. She hates him so fucking much.
"I'm here because I want to know if you're going to stop feeling sorry for yourself or fucking grow up and start dealing with shit."
She's stunned for a moment before anger bursts like a shiny balloon. Anger: now that she can handle.
"You're always picking and poking, making shitty comments when you should just learn to shut your goddman mouth. I was teaching you a lesson that apparently no one else ever has," she shouts and they're almost nose to nose.
His eyes are flashing like a Stormcaller's song. A song she never could quite get the hang of, too far buried in darkness.
"I pick and poke because otherwise you walk around like you're still fucking dead," he snarls, and there's something there, something fundamental that maybe she'd seen all along but had decided to ignore.
She looks at him for a moment longer, energy crackling through her, then smashes her mouth against his. As far as kisses go, it's pretty bad, but she's a few thousand years out of practice. Strike –Ryan- doesn't seem to mind, however.
He growls something, she doesn't know what through the rush of blood in her ears, and she's pressed against a wall with his body flush against hers. His tongue invades, hot and wet and real, and coils with hers, and it's like her body had fallen asleep and is now experiencing that sensation of pins-and-needles. There's a spark, a match struck in the Darkness, and she feels like she's drowning in flames.
It's rough and dirty and tinged with anger and violence just like the rest of their lives, but as he presses his cock inside her, her bare-ass cold against the wall of her room, there's a moment where she can remember who she was in that time before, and it's enough to keep her alive.
There is never a formal hearing, much to her surprise, and after a few weeks of feeling like she might really lose her shit, she's cleared for active duty.
Ray doesn't say anything, but he does smile as she boards their ship, and she's embarrassed by how much the small gesture means to her. Disappointing Ray is something she never wants to do again.
Things have shifted subtly, however.
It's not as though she and Strike are best friends or anything, most days she still fantasizes about punching him in the face –almost as much as she imagines his mouth on her cunt and his dick inside her- but there's a new beat they're dancing to now. They prod and snap, but there are lines drawn and rules set, and maybe she smiles a little more than she used to. Thank God for helmets, at least.
They fuck like teenagers whenever they get a few minutes alone. It would be embarrassing if it weren't so amazing.
There aren't any sappy words or empty promises, they know better than that at least, but there are a few surprisingly tender moments. Like when he kisses the scars along her side, left by Thrall claws a week after they'd graduated and she'd gotten cocky, or how he seems to like running his fingers through her hair while he pumps in and out of her. She tries to tell herself that it's just sex, just a means to reassure themselves that they are, in fact, still alive (or undead), but she finds herself slipping.
What had begun as angry coupling in deserted ruins or musty caves, becomes nights spent in his or her room back at the Tower, or on their ship –quiet nights where she can actually sleep and her dreams are hazy and indistinct. They start sharing a room and Ray doesn't say anything, at least not to her, but part of her thinks he talks to Strike, and she tries not to feel like a teenager whose parents found a condom in her room.
Then they enter the Black Garden and she remembers why she kept her distance.
It's her fault.
It's all her fault.
She should have been paying more attention.
It usually falls to her to track and deal with any reinforcements, her skills better equipped to handle them, and she lets herself be distracted. Just a few heartbeats turned in the wrong direction and a Vex slip past her left flank. He doesn't go down, not right away, but she can see the blood as it drips down his side and she's too far away, there's too many of them, for her to reach him.
They finish it, they destroy the Heart of the Vex, and it doesn't matter because she finds his body beneath a hunk of smoldering metal, and he's just as lifeless. His Ghost hovers and veers frantically above him, beeping anxiously and she's on her knees and rolling him over and her body is outside of her control.
She fumbles for the med kit at her hip, hands numb and limbs awkward. They get hurt quite a lot, a stray bullet or a hard hit, things that need to be treated but are always manageable. Even as she opens the kit, which is basically full of medical miracles that would have stunned the world in her time, she knows it's too late.
Ray is there and he takes the kit from her limp fingers and begins to detach armor and cloth, methodical and contained. There's a hole in Strike's – Ryan's- side and she thinks she might be sick. She thinks she might be crying.
"My fault, it's my fault, I should have been watching. I should have helped-" she realizes she's speaking aloud and bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.
"He's alive," Ray's voice says in her ear as he sprays a mist of chemicals over the wound and the skin begins to stitch together. "For now."
They can't do much more so far from their ship, not in a place where the atmosphere is so unstable, and she feels at a loss. This is why it was a mistake to get involved, it fogs her mind, it clouds everything-
But it has kept you both alive, it has kept you in the Light.
"I'll bring the stretcher back, you stay with him," Ray says and dashes off without a backward glance. There was a tremor in his voice, though, and he sprints faster than she's ever seen him. Maybe shes not the only one whose grown too attached.
The silence of the Garden is like a thick wool blanket and, despite knowing it's foolish, she flicks back her head gear. The air is stale and harsh and she can tell the oxygen quality isn't great, but she doesn't care. She reaches down and presses back Strike's mask, suddenly desperate to see his face, to make sure it's really him beneath all the leather and metal.
His skin is white and gray, a mask of death, and a primal sound tears from her throat as she turns his face toward hers, pressing her forehead to his, rocking back and forth. She barely remembers what her death felt like but she thinks it felt something like this.
"You son of a bitch," she rails. "How could you do this to me? How could you leave me after everything after I-"
She can't say it, she won't. Nothing in the world could make her.
There's a puff of air on her lips and she pulls back to watch his eyes crack open. There's a spark of hope and she crushes it, refuses to entertain it, because if she allows it to grow it will tear her up from the inside out.
"I-I'm touched," he croaks, his words barely more than a whisper. "I didn't think… you cared."
"Shut up," she half sobs, "shut the fuck up. I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry for that day on Mars and for not apologizing afterward. I'm sorry for not acting like I cared, because I do, I care too god damn much and it scares me. God, Ryan, I'm so fucking scared. I can't do this without you, I can't, I-"
He's smiling and he's managed to reach up a hand to cup the side of her face.
"I was a goner that first day of training," he says, eyes hazy and distant, and she can't tell if he is lost in memory or slipping away, and her hands clutch desperately at his arm, keeping his gloved hand firmly against her cheek like a lifeline. "Y-you punched me, remember? Hurt like a bitch…"
She sniffles and forces a smile because he'd want her to. He is always trying to get her to smile or laugh at his stupid jokes.
"You told everyone I had nice tits," she says and fuck, her chest hurts; hurts like they share a wound and it's her life blood staining the ruins of an alien planet.
His lips tremble up into a smirk and it is so god damn unfair that he's done this to them, he should have just let her fall apart, because this is so much worse.
"Well… I wasn't wrong," he mutters before his eyes slide shut.
They don't open again.
The Dreadnaught is a piece of shit, as far as murderous death ships go, anyway.
"All clear, Ray," she says, kicking aside the head of a Hive Knight as she follows the hallway her Ghost has marked out for her.
"Alright," he replies, voice crackly and distant, "keep pushing forward," the sound of gunfire. "I'll meet you at the Bridge."
"Copy that," she says and hoists her rifle over her shoulder. The walls echo with her steps and every shadow seems like a threat, but she's in a pretty damn good mood, despite the impending doom of the Solar System -again.
Things had started to get quiet and she hates quiet.
She picks her way silently through the ship, careful, observant, prepared, until she falls through a space in the floor that magically disappears. Caught off guard, she doesn't have time to brace herself, and crashes to the floor several yards below.
"Fuck," she bellows as a stomach lurching pain radiates from her ankle to her spine. The world spins and she almost doesn't hear the tell-tale skittering in the darkness.
Her heart lurches up into her throat as she scrambles backward, groping for her rifle and finding nothing but mud and dirt. Seriously, the place was a total dump.
She keys her mic, to call for help, but only gets static.
"Shit, shit, shit," she chants and calls lightening to her fingertips.
A herd of Thrall's stare back at her, teeth glistening with promise.
"I'll go for help!" her Ghost says and shoots off like a bullet.
Help isn't going to come fast e-fucking-nough, she knows that much.
The Thralls race toward her and she channels everything she's got into the blast of electricity that jettisons from her hands. It works pretty well, actually -incinerating a dozen of the monsters and wounding a dozen or so more- but it's not good enough, and she's pretty sure there's another Knight looming in the back ground.
Damnit, she really doesn't want to die in some alien shit hole.
Fortunately, she spots her gun and lurches toward it, hopping frantically on her one good foot. Her fingers grasp cold metal as something slams into her side and rolls her through the air like a ragdoll. She manages to keep hold of her rifle though, and repays the favor by firing half a magazine into the Thrall's face.
It looks much better afterward.
The ground rumbles, and the Knight decides to officially join the party. It's a miracle that she manages to dodge the first blast of plasma and it leaves her panting and trembling in the dirty, her arms refusing to cooperate with her. She's pretty sure the fucking thing is smiling at her, or maybe that's just how her mind likes to envision the moment as a grenade all but pops it's head off like a wine cork.
"Fear not, my fair maiden," a voice anoints. "I shall save you."
Strike is at her side a moment later, guns out and hip cocked at a mocking angle as more Thrall pour in. He reaches down to help her up, giving her his shoulder to lean on.
"Took you fucking long enough," she growls, and reloads her gun.
"Such a foul mouth you have there, princess, do you kiss your mother with it?"
"No, but you can kiss my ass."
"Don't threaten me with a good time," he drawls and shoots a Thrall square in the face.
"You two are adorable," her Ghost says dryly. "But can we please get out of here."
"I don't know," Ryan says, shooting another Thrall in the crotch. "I was just starting to like this place, but, if you insist. Mind if I borrow your rocket launcher, princess?"
"Be my guest," she says, smiling like an idiot despite the room full of murderous aliens.
Ryan kneels. "Cover me?"
She holds her rifle at the ready. "Always."