A/N: Hello again, all.
To say that Mortality has been successful is a gross understatement. I can't begin to express my thanks to all of you who read, reviewed, followed and favorited this story so far, and just from the first chapter! I won't lie, I've been going through some pretty hard times lately, and it helps immensely to see how much support this story has gotten alone.
Again, I want to thank each and every one of you who continue to read this story,
See you on the other side~
Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own Destiny. The copyright goes to Bungie and Activision.
Phae's mind was clouded as she stormed off to a bay at the lowest level of the flight deck, which housed her personal ship, or what was left of it, anyway. Everything she wanted to scream and vent at the arrogant Titan flooded her thoughts. Irresponsible. She wanted to rip him a new one, but it wasn't worth it. Idiotic. Disrespectful. He was just another narcissistic Guardian caught up in his ego trip, like there was something special about him, like he was superior to everyone else.
In a deliberate act to clear her mind of the negativity, Phae stopped and shook her head to rid herself of the anger. She took deep breaths, rubbed her temples, pinched the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and thumb, even counted to 10 to further attempt to calm down, to no avail. For whatever reason, Roarke's blatant disregard for the safety of others just stuck in her side like a thorn.
"Guardians…" she sneered under her breath. Phae gave up on putting the scorn aside through sheer force of will and continued on to her ship. Maybe distracting herself would help where persistence failed. Rounding the final corner to her personal hangar brought the greatest vex to Phae's very existence in sight: a broken, battered Phaeton Class long-range jump ship.
The engineer paused in the massive doorway, slumped against the polished steel frame and sighed, contemplating. The ship was nowhere near being space-worthy yet. The primary turbines were both shot, the cockpit was separated into two pieces for the time being, nearly half of the starboard wing was sheared clean off and sitting in mangled scrap on the floor, not to mention all of the internal damage. The hull itself was warped and disfigured to the point that jacks and lifts couldn't equally balance the weight, so Phae simply let the beaten vessel lie on the bare deck.
There are answers in here somewhere dammit… Phae thought to herself as she chewed her thumbnail in agitation. It was a project nearly seven years in the making, and still she had barely made any progress, shedding no light on an already confusing situation. With a sigh, she pushed off the wall and slowly approached the pile of scrap. She tentatively reached out and ran her fingers along the burn residue and scarred metal. I'll figure you out one of these days. Phae hopped through a large cut in the hull, landing her between the pilot seat and the control panel, which was inactive and coated in a thick layer of dust from neglect.
Phae sank heavily into the cushioned seat, sighing as she tried to relax into the familiar cockpit of her ship. The dust knocked loose from her arrival hung in the air, clinging to her hair and clothes. She closed her eyes and sat there, doing nothing. The silence did wonders to ease the storm of her mind, but that didn't last long as a pair of footsteps echoed through the open cut in the hull above her.
"Are you seriously going to make me do this?" Roarke's voice carried from outside the ship.
"Someone has to be your voice of reason, and I'm already stuck with you, so yes, I am," responded his Ghost with a tone of reluctance.
The wrinkle on her forehead returned as Phae immediately angered at the all-too-familiar voice of Roarke. Why now? she thought, opting to stay in her seat and wait for him to leave.
"Hello?" Roarke yelled, instantly receiving his own echo from the edges of the cubic room. Phae cringed as it bounced around inside the ship. "Are you sure she's even here?"
"Let's see. The ship registered under her name is here. I'm reading vital signs inside said ship. Oh, and the secondary chief mechanic said she spends most of her free time down here! Yes, I'm sure, Guardian," Roarke's Ghost responded with an increasingly heavy amount of sarcasm, the glowing blue eye rolling within its apparatus.
Stupid Ghost! Phae stood from her seat and grabbed a wrench from the floor before hopping out through the breach. "Go away!" she bellowed as she hurled the cast-iron tool sloppily in Roarke's direction.
"Whoa!" Roarke yelped as he jumped to his left, narrowly avoiding the haphazardly thrown tool. "What the fuck, lady!?"
"You almost killed me once today, so I thought I'd return the favor," Phae answered in a cold, flat tone as she stalked toward him. An electric, ethereal film of energy slid over her skin as her anger nearly boiled over, but to her credit, Phae restrained herself. "Now what do you want, Guardian?"
"I came here to try and apologize for earlier!" Roarke growled back. He noticed the layer of energy playing across Phae's body, but chose to ignore it as he yanked off his helmet to glare at her with bright blue eyes. "But if you're going to start being a bitch before I can even try, then maybe I should just forget the whole fucking notion!"
It took every ounce of willpower not to just pick up the Titan and hurl him out of the hangar. Phae had to clench both fists hard enough to draw blood from her fingernails to do so, but it was better than losing her temper and reducing a Guardian to a pool of particles for his Ghost to reassemble. With that thought, Phae simmered down to a cold burn and turned her gaze to the Ghost which hovered just at the edge of her periphery and sighed. She turned and slowly retreated to her broken ship. "What ever did you see in him, little Ghost…?" she asked, defeated.
"I've asked myself that very question, many times. The closest thing I have to an answer, is that he's quite good at scaring away the Darkness," the Ghost sighed, swiveling to gaze his cerulean light directly on Roarke. "Though, that seems to be about it."
"Hey!" Roarke rebutted indignantly. "Standing right here!"
"Yes, yes you are," Phae mocked, "why are you still here? Just leave me be." She stood next to the battered vessel and gently laid a hand on the surface, her back still turned to Roarke.
"Fine! Fuck you!" Roarke threw his hands up. He began to turn on his heel and walk away, but then came to a sudden stop. He turned around so suddenly it looked more like a jerking seizure than human movement. "You know what? No! What the fuck is your problem, huh? Why do you act like I'm the bad guy, when you're a Guardian hiding out in the fucking Tower when there are literally billions of things out there that want everyone in the City dead!? Yeah, I was using a reactor I didn't know anything about! Back in my day, we didn't have long-distance space travel, so fucking sue me for not understanding the advanced mechanics of a ship that can hit warp! I'm not gonna let you get on a fucking soap box and chew my ass like bubble-gum when you aren't doing anything but being a coward!"
The air around them fell into a dangerously heated silence. Roarke glared at her, his jaw squared, and waited for tears and a sloppy retort. But, that was it, the straw the broke the camel's back. Something snapped inside Phae's mind, there was no holding back at this point. "A coward? A fucking COWARD?!"
She spun on her heel and repeated her march to the Guardian, this time each step welcomed more and more Void energy to wrap and swirl around her being, until she began to heat the very deck under each footprint. She very nearly clutched Roarke's skull with one hand, tempted to burn through it with enough energy to melt steel, but stopped just inches from doing the deed. Instead, she reeled back and punched him square in the jaw.
"Who gave you the right to judge me, huh?! What makes you think I wanted this life?! What about you: your run-of-the-mill Guardian with a fucking chip on his shoulder, thinks he's better than everyone, thinks he's something special, thinks he's hot shit just because he's good at knocking heads. Do you have any idea how insane that is? How ridiculous it is to have absolutely zero sense of self-preservation?! Have you ever thought that just maybe, as crazy as it sounds to a mighty, fucking hero like yourself, that I don't feel like dying?!" Before Roarke even had a chance to address her barrage of questions, she plucked his Ghost from the air and held it before him. "Do you have any fucking clue what this is for?! It's a piece of the Traveler, and it thought you worthy enough to fight for mankind. It is not a ticket to act like a God damn lunatic and call it heroism!" she barked, and threw Roarke's own Ghost at him. To her slight dismay, the levitating orb skewed and corrected its course, avoiding the Titan entirely.
"Who has to act like a lunatic!? I duck when I'm shot at just like every other Guardian out there! You're the one who's too chickenshit to even try and fight! Guess what, princess!? I don't wanna die either! It fucking hurts. A lot. But if me going out there and getting blown to pieces can keep the people in that city down there," Roarke roared as he flung his right hand towards a window overlooking the Last City, "from dying in their own back yards, I'm going to fucking do it!"
"My God, is your brain as dense as your helmet?!" Phae asked, cooling ever-so-slightly. "You actually have the luxury of dying, but not being buried. You have a Ghost responsible for bringing you back from the dead."
The acidic remark on the tip of Roarke's tongue vanished as he processed exactly what Phae was saying, his fierce scowl weakening into a look of confusion, "Are you telling me, you….don't?" He quickly replayed all of the events of the day, noting time after time where he should have seen a Ghost floating near her, but didn't.
"No… When I was reborn, there was no Ghost in sight. To this day, I still don't know why, but I am a Guardian." With her resolve returning to its lava-lamp like state, Phae let go of the anger, and returned to the doubt that plagued her very existence. "I'm still looking for answers," she added, turning her attention to the broken Phaeton Class ship.'
Roarke felt the last of his own rage dissipate, a loud sigh escaping his lips. 'I can't stay pissed off at her.. She's not a bitchy coward. She's.. normal. Well, close to anyhow. Admittedly still kind of a bitch, though.' The Titan sighed again, scratching at the short crew cut atop his head before finally letting his hands drop to his side. "You know, it's not going to be easy to get clues if you never leave home," he spoke up, his voice softer, almost gentle now.
"That would be the case, if the odd occurrences stopped there. I was reborn on this ship, a Guardian's ship, with no Ghost."
Roarke simply raised an eyebrow in response, hoping the mechanic would say something truly odd. "And?"
"With no transmat…" his Ghost added, the realization finally hitting the orb.
Phae pointed to the Ghost without turning her gaze from the ship, "There it is, there's the rub. The reason I can't leave home yet."
"Makes sense," Roarke nodded, his hand absently stroking his chin as he looked from Phae to the ship. "What do you need to fix it?"
A dry, heavy laugh escaped Phae's mouth. "What don't I need? Look at it! I'm not even sure I have anything to find in there, mostly because there's nowhere else to start." She paused and chewed on her lip. "I've been throwing everything at it for years now, and haven't learned a thing."
"How about a helping hand then?" Roarke offered. He chuckled at the incredulous look on Phae's face, flashing her a grin. "I might not know much about modern tech. But I've got a group I run with and we go all over. You could tell us what you need and we can try to find it for you."
"Are you kidding? I would never trust someone, let alone a Titan, to find something so important," Phae proclaimed, finally turning her attention back to the other Guardian to find an expression of rejection on Roarke's face. "Which is why I'm going with you."
Roarke's dejected face shifted into a look of chastised mirth, "Alright, if you think you can handle it."
"Friends, or in this case, partners of a sort, typically know each other's names," Ghost cut in, earning a facepalm from his Guardian.
"Shit, that's right. We were so busy with our pissing match we never went through the introduction! My name is Roarke. Used to have another to go with it, but last I looked, all my family died a long time ago," he said, extending his gauntlet-encompassed right hand to shake.
Accepting his gesture of goodwill, Phae shook Roarke's hand and introduced herself. "I go by Phae." A few seconds passed before Roarke froze and he nearly broke out laughing, earning Phae's curiosity. "What?"
"So… you named yourself after your ship?" he asked, barely containing his laughter.
Phae could practically feel the vein begin to pulse in her forehead. "Silence…"