When death hid within life...

"It wasn't the first explosion I had ever run from, I'll have you know. But it wasn't at all as fun as I remember it being. Probably because of Silverhawk."

They were running when Petra's transmission came in. Uldren almost tripped and fell on his face when he heard the Fallen swear she yelled, but Silverhawk was too busy laughing her butt off to even notice the message. She was laughing so hard, she kept stumbling as they fled the growing explosion.

Silverhawk had planted explosives on the Ketch on her way out, and with ech one that went off, the explosion of flame and metal continued, forcing them to leave the Nighthawk behind, likely to be blow up or crushed. She owes me a ship, that stupid, irresponsible- a new thought cut him off.

He lunged forwards and grabbed her arm, forcing her back.

"Did you get the disease!?" he demanded. There was nothing more important! If she had desposed of the Ketch without grabbing a sample, and they failed to locate the "official" cure, then that sample would be his sister's only chance for survival."Or were you so out of control, you blew that up, too?"

"Well excuuuuuse me, princess!" she huffed indignantly. "I'll have you know I have an excelent amount of control when it comes to blowing things up!"

A large chuink of metal landed right where she had been running moments before, punctuating her sentance. She turned to look at it almost casually.

"What the?" another chunk of metal landed nearby, and the both looked up, gulping. Debrise was raining from the sky, flames trailing after it.

"I know you don't like improvised plans much but, uhh...WIIIIIIIIIING IIIIIIIT!" Silverhawk screamed, bolting for the jungles below, where Martin could be seen frantically waving his arms about as he ran like a chicken with it's head cut off.

Uldren took off after her, diving and zigging and zagging as debrise fell all around them, mentally screaming every curse word he knew of in every language he knew.

"Now, I won't give you all the details about what happened when we got into the jungle, so I'll just sum it up for you."

When they finally made it to the tree line, panting and gasping, Martin let out his girlish scream, pointing to a spot just above them. Uldren looked up to see a massive chunk of the Ketch falling down towards them.

"Get deeper into the forest!" he yelled, shoving Silverhawk in front of him. She grabbed Martin by the back of his robes as she lurched forwards, dragging the Warlock after her with a yelp. Uldren followed them, the two Guardians agonizingly slow, the danger seeming slow as well, yet fast and impending at the same time. It was like time itself had gone mad.

"We got to the tree line, but the debris pushed us further in..."

Martin yelped and protested as branches hit his head and legs, and as Silverhawk dragged him over a low log. Uldren resisted the urge to scream, to make his voice heard one last time before it was silenced. Perhaps that was why people screamed before they died violent deaths?

Suddenly, they burst out into a clearing, all three of them tripping on a cluster of vines and falling to the ground. A loud, booming crash came from behind, and they all covered their heads, coughing as dust was thrown up into the air. For how long they had lain there, utterly silent and waiting to see if the forest would collapse on them, he didn't know; but eventually, Martin spoke up, voice squeaky and terrified.

"Is it safe to look now?" he whispered. Slowly, they all lifted their heads and twisted to look behind them.

"We managed to avoid getting crushed somehow..."

"I think so." Silverhawk said in a "matter-of-fact" tone of voice. She jumped to her feet nimbly, and brushed the dirt off her shoulders.

"Well, as far as improvised plans go, that was a fair win, I'd say!" Silverhawk chirped. She slid the Deathening off of her shoulder, dropping it in front of Martin, and she re-adjusted the straps on the Sparky-Sparky Boom-Boom Stick, which she had hastily strapped to her back after doing her air guitar photo.

"'A fair win'?" Uldren exclaimed furiously. "You nearly got us all killed! If this is really how you two normally operate, then I fail to see how exactly you're both alive by this point!"

"Well, technically speaking, I've already died once, so that renders your sight redundant either way." Silverhawk said cheekily. Something in Uldren's brain went click at her words, and remembered immediately their meeting at Variks' tent.

"I thought you said you were raised together?" he accused. It couldn't be both, could it? It was too small a possibility that they could have both been brought back as Guardians, if they had known each other before dying...

"We w-" she broke off, frowning. He raised an eyebrow at her suspicious, an then she jumped backwards with a yelp, tripping and falling on her back with a huff. Looking down to see what she had tripped over, he saw vines-dark green, speckled with yellow-wrapping themselves around her legs. he felt something brush his foot, and at the same time, Martin screamed again.

He tried to stomp down on the vine, but it only snapped up his leg faster, like a snake striking, and he lost his balance. Another vine coiled around his other foot in mid-air, his shoulder smarting as he hit the ground with a thump. Vines were coiling up Martin's arms and legs, and even wrapping them around his torso. Uldren felt more of the plants do the same thing to him. he opened his mouth, to say or do what, he would never know, because that's when one of the vines wrapped itself over his mouth like a gag.

The two ghosts floated around panickedly, Westley yammering on about trying to contact Petra, though he seemed to be in too much of a state to actually say anything.

"I wish I had thumbs!" Wheatly exclaimed in his usual monotone, flying around the Warlock's head in terrified circles.

"But then we had an encounter with the local plant life."

Suddenly, the vines wrapping around Silverhawk shrivled, blackened. The black spread along their lengths, al the way to wherever they may have come from, and the Huntress broke free, pulling the dead vines off of her, and throwing one of her gloves to the ground. She pulled the other one off hastily, and then began to pull at the vines around Martin's torso; well, much less pulling than she was touching. She gave the vines on his neck a careful tap, and then rushed over to Uldren just as he felt more plants wrap around his neck before constricting tightly.

He wasn't sure which was more shocking or worrying- the vines around his neck, or the fact that the ones on Martin started shriveling the moment Silverhawk touched them. She grabbed hold of the vines somewhere beyond his vision, and he felt the ones around his neck grow stiff, and ripped his arms free of more blackened vines to rip them away. Almost immediately, Silverhawk jumped back, holding up her hands as if they were covered in some sort of burning poison. For he knew they very well could be.

"It wasn't anything we couldn't handle, though."

Uldren stumbled to his feet, gasping, Martin looking up at the Huntress with a mix of worry and relief on his face. Silverhawk's expression was as unreadable as it ever was, her glasses and hat hiding her face from all that looked on it. Under normal circumstances, Uldren would probably be celebrating that he had come out of that one alive; but he was far from grateful. He was actually afraid. What was it that his girl could do?

"You have ten seconds to explain what the *********(it was that word in Fallen again, he deemed it quite appropriate for this situation) that was, or I swear I will shoot you without a second thought." he demanded, still catching his breath.

Silverhawk looked down at the ground lowering her hands and muttering something he didn't catch.

"What?" he pressed. She looked up at him frustratedly, ripping her glasses off. If the past three days hadn't been weird, he would have described this revealing action to be "shell-shocking" as least, and "impossible" at the most.

"I'm a mutt, okay!" she said, looking at him hopelessly. Her face was all human, like one would expect. But her eyes...they were unmistakably the eyes of an awoken, glowing sky blue and seeming to pierce the air itself as she looked at him. He gawked at her.

She's half awoken!? But that's impossible! Humans and awoken were similar in many ways; but a bipedal physical appearance was where the similarities ended. Genetically, a hybrid was impossible. But here was one now, standing in front of him; an impossible girl with impossible eyes, and an impossible skill that she STILL HAD YET TO EXPLAIN. He put one hand on his hand cannon. When next she spoke, it was softly, the quietest he had ever heard her.

"I'm a mutt, and Certech thought I was perfect, alright. They thought I was perfect, so they did...things to me. Things that make me like this; that make me kill whatever I touch." she looked down at her hands again, and then back at him pleadingly. "You can't tell anyone! I wasn't lying when I said there are Certech scientist in the Tower as Guardians. If they were to figure out I was alive, they'd...well, you don't want to know, but it wouldn't be a happy ending!"

"And why shouldn't I tell anyone?" he spat. "You're some kind of...monster. A thing. Why should I oblige to anything you ask me to do?"

"Because that "thing", just saved you life. Twice." Martin said pointedly, from where he had picked himself up out of the dirt to stand behind Silverhawk. "You owe her."

"Silverhawk managed to re-focus on Solar energy before things got too out of hand..."

"I know, our ghosts know; even the Vanguard and the Speaker know, and they've never had anything against her being a Guardian. It's just the other Guardians who can't know." he explained shakily. "Certech were the ones who killed Heather, during the Collapse. You owe her enough to keep her secret."

"I can speak for myself, Martin." Silverhawk told her friend quietly.

"But I'm right, aren't I? Aren't I?" he enforced vehemently. "He owes you twice. Isn't that enough to pay for a secret? Wouldn't it be dishonorable, if he told people, when he owes you?"

Uldren glared at them. He hated that they were right; he hated even more that he couldn't shoot Silverhawk here and now. But Martin had struck at his pride; his honor. After this idiotic "plan" had gone out of control, it was clear to him now that he had no power over these two nit-wits. If he didn't have power, than his honor was all he had. And if he told people, and then those more honor-bound people found out he had owed Silverhawk, he wouldn't have that honor; with these two, or with any other Guardian.

It would tear relations between the Last City and the Reef to the point of war. War for the technology that both civilizations agreed to let the other study, war for the places and information that both the Crows and the Guardians went to and gathered, and, quite possibly; war, over which side would get to have the human weapon known as Silverhawk. Or was it, half-human?

"Fine." he spat. He glared at them furiously, and took his hand off his gun. "But if I ever see your faces at the Reef again after this, I will shoot on sight."

"Seems a bit rude, doesn't it?" Martin dared. He ducked a little further behind Silverhawk(which was almost comical, considering he towered over her) as Uldren sneered at him nastily.

"No." he turned around and started back into the forest." We will no longer be allies. I'm sure I could come up with a viable excuse for putting a bullet in your head."

"...and it was over in seconds."

He barely heard what Silverhawk said next; to be honest, he couldn't-and wouldn't-care less. He whacked a large leaf out of his way, but kept looking at the ground, searching for more of the deadly vines that seemed to have a mind of their own. Vaguely the thought came to him, that if more vine did attack, Silverhawk could just touch them and they could continue on their merry way. Then the thought came to him, that if she had touched him during her "rescue" back in the clearing, he would be as dead and shriveled as those vines.

He stopped dead in his tracks, the full gravity of what he had just agreed to finally hitting him. I chose to keep a killer a secret. What if she was secretly a mass-murderer? With all that cheer and charm to cover it up, it would make for a perfect mask for which to hide the murderer with. What if all this idiocy, all this foolishness, all this "life-debt" stuff, was just to keep him quite so that they could keep killing?

Then why haven't they killed me yet? The answer came to him almost immediately; Silverhawk had known he had been lying to her when he had told his story, about why he had split away from them? Perhaps she and Martin thought this meant he knew something? Something they could use? Something about Certech, perhaps? If they were the ones who gave Silverhawk her "deathtouch", perhaps the two of them were looking for a way to boost her power somehow? To make her even more unstoppable.

If they think I know something, I have to keep them thinking that way; at least until I can get a secure line to Petra. He had made a deal with death itself. And death was alive. How did one go about fighting living death? Because that's what she is. He thought, fear shuttering down his spine. She is death.

"They shriveled and burned before the fire."

TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

300 years previously...

A little girl ran through the wire fence gate, and out into the night-lit forest. Ten minutes ago, she had been sitting in her cell, thinking about her family again, and then the door had opened. And for the first time, nobody came through it. But words had appeared on the holographic pad next to the door. Three words: Follow the River.

And then the lights outside the door had started to flicker. At first, she could hardly believe it. Were the lights beckoning to her? If they were, was it to death, or to freedom? She would be content with either one. Or was the electrical systems just glitching out, like they always did when the Fallen passed overhead?

The lights had flickered again, and slowly, she had risen, and made her way over to the door. The guards lay on the floor, their earpieces sparking. The lights up above her had flickered once more, and then the lights at the end of the hall had flickered. She looked back at the holo-pad, and the words had flashed across it once more; "Follow the River." But that time, those words had been followed by two more words, ones she hadn't heard in almost five years; "Heather Chancellor."

The twelve-year-old had followed the flickering light, passing unconscious guards all along the way, their earpieces sizzling. The excitement within her, the hope that burned inside her for the first time in years; it was almost too much to bear. She wanted to scream to the world that she was almost free, that soon she would taste wind on her lips and fill her head with birdsong, that she would drown herself in moonlight and bask in the glory of the rising sun.

That she would finally grieve her brother and parents, without the Certech guards snapping at her or hitting her and yelling at her to be quite. She would shed tears again, like she did silently every day and every night; but these would be free tears, and she would be silent no longer. She would scream and weep and sob and wail to the stars themselves, and there was nobody that could possibly stop her.

She had come to a large room, following the river of flickering lights, with two large doors at one end of it. The lights above the doors flickered, and then the keypad gave a beep.

And then the doors had opened.

And she had seen moonlight billowing over darkness, scented the wilderness beyond the wire gates, heard the whispering of the wind through the forest. The chill of winter bit into her skin, her thin, stark-white blouse and capris offering little protection against the freezing cold. The painfully undersized sandals on her feet dug into her skin now, as she rushed past the gate, which had opened itself in the same way the doors of the main entrance had.

She gasped for breath as she ran, bordering on sobbing or laughing the glee of freedom to the sky. Her stark-white hair, a result of the pain rooms she was pushed into frequently, glowed eerily in the moonlight, flowing out behind her messily. She ran and ran and ran, as far away from the Certech place as possible.

She came upon a clearing, with a frozen-over river just beyond it, and she collapsed to her knees, exhausted and overwhelmed by the outside world. So exhausted was she, kneeling and gasping for air, that she failed to notice the figure in the shadows behind her, knife flashing in the moonlight. His fellow guardsmen had fallen all around him, but he had been quick to take his earpiece off when he realized it was the source of the problem for his fellows.

And now, it was only him left, to kill death itself before it could reach the outside world. The trail of blackened plant life had been easy enough to follow, and even now, he could see the withered fronds of frost-battling ferns just beneath the girl, the green leaves never completing their campaign against the winter ice. He swiftly rushed up behind her, and pushed the knife into her back.

She let out a strangled scream, and he pulled it out, and reached around, plunging it into her stomach. She screamed more, and began to thrash, her bare, deadly arms flailing. Over and over, he pulled the blade in and out, until she lay there, barley breathing, blood pooling around her, staining her clothes red, scarlet trailing from her mouth.

It was nothing but pain, pain pain, like the pain rooms but worse; with the pain rooms, it was like something was crawling inside of her through her skin itself, and then the agony would fade after a piercing pain in her arm. But this was never-ending agony, and she was so weak, she couldn't even muster up a scream anymore.

She thought she could hear a voice now; soft, yet strong...like Nate's. Was her big brother here? Was he coming to save her again? She tried to speak, to call out his name, but all she could produce was a strangled wimper.

Her murderer picked her up by the ankle and dragged her to the frozen river. With a heave, he flung her body out onto the ice, which shattered immediately, sending her plunging into the shockingly ice depths. The agony faded alongside the sting of the water, and she was engulfed by blackness. Her body settled onto the riverbed.

The river dried up. The river shrunk. Winter turned to darkness. The bones faded with the weather. A ghost would one day find them by chance, the victim of an ancient crime.

But all she knew as she died, was one thing;

She was free.


"D" is for "depressing". Okay, so for those of you who skipped the gory part, the point after Uldren finds out Silverhawk's secret is a flashback to the night Silverhawk was murdered. Lets get some sympathy for our favorite Hunter, alright?

Basically, "The River" hacked the facility she was being kept in, and led her to freedom, only for a guard(the only one who hadn't been knocked out) to find her out in the woods bordering the facility. He kills her, and throws her in a frozen river to dispose of the body.

For those of you who think this power is really OP, Silverhawk never uses it. And she most certainly notinvincible(broken leg, got murdered...she iskillable). For those of you who read the gory part and want to know what the pain room was, it was basically, in my head, the room they injected her with radiation in. I won't say more than that; it could be an explainable I want to save for a later story about her.

But yeah; Silverhawk's half awoken, just about impossible, and she kills everything she touches.

Basically, she's Peril from Wings of Fire, except technically Peril wasn't half Rainwing because of Darkstalker's scroll, she's genetically possible but should've been killed, and she burns everything she touches to a scorching, blazing crisp. And she's not as cheerful without that mind-control necklace of Chameleon's on. For those of you not familiar with Wings of Fire...just pretend this paragraph doesn't exist.

But she was inspired by Peril, and a little by Rogue, from X-Men; but mostly Peril. I haven't done anything X-Men related in quite a while.

Anyway, depending on whether or not I got my AoS obsession in full swing by the time this is posted, I might not be updating for a while; I'm thinking it's time I started working on A Tale of Grandeur for a little while, but mostly I've been itching to write something for All The Strange, Strange Creatures; a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine crossover with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., if anyone wants to know. A Tale of Grandeur is one of my Wings of Fire fics, allabout my fav Rainwing Queen(other than Glory, of course).

But, I've also been offered by Amberstar of Thunderclan to help her re-write a few chapters of herStar trek fic, Siblings. She's overhauling a few of the early chapters, polishing and re-writing some others, and she needs a little help with that to get it done, because bout half of part one of her fic got deleted somehow.

And you guys know what the worst part about the new Destiny update was? Amberstar broke my Xbox. She's already repaid me in full(with ice cream, and the permission to post some of the death one-shots I made for her characters*laughs evilly*), but I have to wait until Sunday until I can play again. The damage is fixable, but I'm too busy to make time for it until Saturday(by busy, I mean "writing fanfiction and wasting time")

Order and Chaos - Qui Iudicant: You sir, speak my language. And thank you for that marvelouslyinsidious idea; I actually think that Silverhawk dreamsabout blowing up a Cabal warship*drools*. And I blame auto-correct for most of those typos; I once published a chapter where it had the word "cheese cracker" instead of "lip-smackingly(delicious)". And I feel the EXACT. SAME. WAY. About STUPID Fanfic mobile! Sometimes all I have is a 3DS to my name, and I'm desperately overdo for an update, and all I can do is WISH that I could access doc manager and write a little! Fanfic Mobile is as much of a jerk as Uldren; convenient for some things(like shooting stuff) but terrible at everything else(IE, social contact, entertainment factor, self-esteem booster, cheerleader, etc.). *Sniffs* I want to write, but all I can do is stare a my favorites list and hope one updates.

And THANK YOU for leaving a review! *bows sloppily*

My inspiration levels are replenishing already! By the way, does anyone know exactly how long ago the Battle of Twilight Gap was, as of the beginning of the game? I kind of threw half the lore out the window because I was unsatisfied with it, but Twilight Gap's exact placement on the destiny timeline would be very helpful to know. I kind of get a feel of vaguely how long ago it happened(somewhere between ten to twenty years)because we know Zavala was just an itsy-bitsy little noobie Guardian around that time, but seeing as everyone appears to be ageless(Cayde, I get; he's a robot, there's no telling how old he is)...well, you see my dilemma.

I've thrown that ageless-ness thing out the window as well; just because human lifespan tripled back then, that doesn't mean it's still like that now. In fact, between the darkness and every other un-foreseeable factor involved with the apocalypse, combined with the fact that they're half in the Dark Ages(the medieval one), I'm pretty sure the average human lifespan is shorter than it used to be at this point.

Next time: Another spaceship fight, Uldren gets bit by a cat, someone develops a crush, and *dung, dung*Dawn of the third day: Twenty-Four Hours Remaining. How will Petra react when she learns that Uldren's baldness was a lie?

Cheers!^^