Well as a child, I mostly spoke inside my head
I had conversations with the clouds, the dogs, the dead
And they thought me broken, that my tongue was coated lead
But I just couldn't make my words make sense to them
If you only listen with your ears, I can't get in

The Mute – Radical Face


Tevis was a… strange person. Confident, powerful, yet quiet and prickly. He was a notorious figure among Hunters, earning grudging respect from the older ones and avid awe from the younger. Yet he didn't seek glory or recognition.

There was certainly an air of mystery about the fellow. Perhaps his connection with the Void was a part of it, but his cageyness didn't help much. He had a weird wavelength. He'd say one thing and mean three other things. Sometimes he wouldn't say anything at all, like his eyes could talk. Really, it was a wonder he was a member of a pack at all. He seemed the loner type. Didn't like chatter. Didn't like questions.

Well, really, he didn't like dumb questions, which was understandable. The issue was Tevis seemed to consider a lot of questions dumb. He said he didn't like his time wasted and he had better things to do than to walk idiots through basic logic. Azra had told him that sounded Warlock-like, and he'd shot her an icy glare and told her about how class divisions were only important when you let them be.

So he could be a bit of an ass. He did get pestered a lot. He had the celebrity status of being one of the most powerful and accomplished Nighstalkers alive. On top of Nightstalking being a notoriously tricky art, his Dark Age pedigree made him the go-to guy for asking advice on a dozen topics ranging from the Dusk Bow to Rasputin to the Dust Giants. Azra herself had to avoid some bothering about the whole Arcstrider thing, which gave her some sympathy to his issues. A topic which might be curious at first got really old when you spent half your time talking about it.

Perhaps that was why he got along so well with his pack. They were already on his level, so to speak. No asking why the Golden Gun was Golden or why we call the Fallen the Fallen or 'how can I make my grenades faster'. Cayde still asked plenty of dumb questions, but that was more for the entertainment value of Tevis' barbs than anything else, and he took the casual insults well.

Azra quickly learned the rule with Tevis was think before you speak. Think long and hard. Only ask for his help when you actually need it.

It could feel incredibly vulnerable, coming to him with a legitimate issue or failing, a metaphorical chink in your armor. He usually was so snide and cutting. But Azra had also learned his paradoxical softer side. Come to him with your guard down and show him your loss, he wouldn't hesitate to help. The key was the difference between 'help my gun is jammed' and 'I cannot for the life of me get this open, could you try?'

So Azra was nervous, but not too nervous, when she decided to ask for help with the Bow. She'd tried, hard. Spent a long time mulling it over. Asked around for help from other sources first. But a lot of Nightstalkers were too busy, or had egos the size of Old New York, or weren't sure they could help.

And if he said no, well, she'd just go back to doing her thing.


July 14, 2872, 10:43

They were sitting in the Crew's camp. Azra had become a semi-regular figure around, between all the pre-ops briefings and the post-ops crashes. It was nice. Quiet in the way the City never was, even when Cayde was being his loud self. This current iteration of the camp was sheltered in a thick stand of pines on the slope of some minor mountain in a landscape littered with minor mountains. They were smack dab in the middle of no-man's land- not even the Fallen had claimed territory here.

Cayde and Shiro had just left on a run, Andal wasn't back from his thing yet. It was just Tevis and Azra for the moment. The Arcstrider drew a breath, fingers fidgeting on the hem of her cloak, and asked, "Tevis, would you help me with Nightstalking? If you've got nothing else going on?"

Tevis asked the question she knew he'd ask: "Why do you want to learn?"

So, her answer: "Well I'm often out on my own, and sometimes I get in a bit over my head, and a little bit of a head start via tether would help a lot."

Tevis didn't even look up. He pulled out a thin knife and began picking the dirt from beneath his fingernails. "That's not really it. Try again."

That was… unexpected. Azra found herself flat-footed, metaphorically speaking. Which was dumb, because one should always expect the unexpected when trading wits with Tevis. "Uh… because I can do the Gun and the Staff, so the next logical step is the Bow?"

He tsked and shook his head. "Strike, again. Think about it. I know you're holding something back. Give it some thought, come back when you actually know."

"Wait. Wait. It's just…"

He looked up at her with that way he had. Like he knew everything about you. Like he was waiting for you to come to a conclusion he already understood. Maybe he did. He'd seen a lot.

Azra stopped to think. The answers she gave were both real, but they were logic and surface-level. Too easy. The real driving desire she hadn't put to words. She'd have to try. "I walk around, and I feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, but there's still something missing. And I sit there at night and everything is still, and I know there's something there that I can't reach. And it's saying something that I want to hear, but I don't know how to listen. I've tried. I know you want people to try before they bug you, but the more I focus, the sharper the edge gets and maybe the cutting is a way of listening, but it might just be pain for pain's sake and… and,"

She took a deep breath, paused, and gathered her thoughts. "And I want to walk my own path, I know how important that is, but I don't see a path. I don't know how to walk it." She held her hands out in a pleading gesture.

That seemed to do it. Tevis paused his fingernail-cleaning to peer at her through narrowed eyes. "And you're not afraid of the Void?"

She wanted to say pssh, no, but Tevis appeared to have little patience today for thoughtless answers. So she thought before she spoke. "I die, a lot. I guess I'm learning. But I've never found anything there that was… wrong. It's just another part of the universe."

Tevis hesitated a moment, then pushed himself to his feet, groaning like an old tree in the wind. "Alright."

"Huh?"

He did a few brief stretches. "I'll show you the ropes. But not here." The Nightstalker strode off down the forest slope. Azra looked at Spark, gave a shrug, and followed.

"Andal," Tevis growled into his comms, "Me 'n Azra are doing some Void things. Call if you need anything."


A fifteen-minute sparrow ride later and they were in the heart of some small town (long-abandoned, of course). There weren't any buildings above two stories. Not a single pane of glass remained unbroken, and the street was torn up and overgrown with moss.

Tevis finally stopped walking. He surveyed the surroundings, grumbling to himself. "Alright, this'll do. Always helps to have a little ruin around when doing Void things."

Azra nodded. "Thanks in advance. There's not a ton of Nightstalkers who're willing to help."

Tevis grunted and flipped a chunk of asphalt over with his foot. "Feh. Not a lot of Hunters can make a connection with the Void. Never stops them from trying."

"I can't promise anything other than trying," Azra half-joked.

He squinted at her, looking her up and down. Then he shrugged. "You're having troubles, you said." Sometimes with Tevis, it was what he didn't say. He didn't say 'you're hopeless'. He didn't offer any affirmations, but he was still standing there.

Azra sighed and shifted her weight. "Every time I think I have it, it slips through my fingers. It's there, in a way I can't describe, but I can't touch it. It's driving me insane. Arc and Solar come when I call, but with Void, there's nothing there when I pick up the line."

Tevis grunted, bit off a ragged bit of fingernail. "Well there's your problem: It's the Void. It's beyond death. It's nothing. You're driving yourself crazy because you're looking at something that is the opposite of looking. It's not that there isn't any path, it's that the path isn't."

Azra chewed the inside of her lip. The crazy-talk made more sense than she was comfortable admitting. She wondered just how long Tevis had been teaching this.

"Listen, blood, and listen good." He grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face down the street. "Accept the fact that you're gonna die someday. You're gonna go down and never, ever get back up again. To some extent, you can control when it happens and how. But even if you spend your whole life fighting it, death comes for everyone. If you can find the humility to accept that, you can find the humility to use it.

"People say it changes your Light." He snorted. "Nah. The Void is always there. You just learn to find it. And I won't say there aren't people out there who wished they never opened their eyes. But you keep your respect, keep yourself humble, and you won't have a problem. You talk sometimes about how Arc can hurt you if you aren't careful. Same thing here. Same thing with the Golden Gun, though you'll have to pull a few fingernails before Cayde'll admit you can burn yourself."

Azra grinned. "The first time I tried to shoot it, I exploded. So yeah."

Tevis chuckled. "There you go. But our goal is gonna be that you don't get hurt. So be warned. Void can be creepy. Reaching into it can bring up some unpleasant memories and visions. Just remember that it can't hurt you if you don't let it. Don't engage. Deny. The point is to make your enemy feel that pain, not yourself."

Azra nodded, focus pulling her features into a frown.

"Concentrate, now. Void is nothing. So you gotta take something and make it not. Give a little bit. Make some space. If you can't define the absence of everything, find the absence of something. You can't see anything but the contrast. So you gotta make room for it to fill."

She only knew how to make herself bigger, not cut herself down. Size is relative, she reminded herself. If she couldn't shrink, the world could grow.

There was a knife's edge in her throat that was hard to swallow around. And that was it, maybe. She was trying to hold on to something that needed her to let go. Like that funny paper trap Aaron Temitope had put on her fingers once. You pushed to pull. You had to hold knives by the blade to throw them. Take the harm and cast it away elsewhere. She needed to let go of the rope and just… fall.

Tevis' voice reached her as if from a great distance. "Take aim before you pull the bow. Look at something and know it, so you know the space it will leave behind. Then take that emptiness you've made and fill it with that thing's life."

There it was in her hands, ill-defined and flickering. But it was there. Power hissed in her veins. The shadows seemed to leap out, but rising to her defense instead of threatening her. Her fingertips tingled.

The bow wasn't hungry, exactly. Hunger required some sort of consciousness, some sense of desire. It was just empty. Like the light part of a scale, a hollow bowl. Potential.

And that was where it went wrong. Because her mind went from potential to imbalance and possibility and charge and current and suddenly there was lighting burning its way through her right arm, locking her muscles so tight her bones creaked and her nerves screamed. It was like grabbing a live wire.

Her second instinct was to relax, but that only made the world shimmer and dim as pins-and-needles rushed over her skin. The pricks were like synapses firing in the dark, thousands of stars flaring bright in novae only to collapse. Her face was numb, her hands were numb, except for the sharp electrical bites of pain.

She tried to shove the Void away, let the Arc have her instead, but it clung to her. It held on tight to her right wrist like a manacle, making her tendons pop.

No, that wasn't the Void, that was Tevis. Tevis with a bloody smile carved across his neck. Tevis drowning in deep, cold water. Tevis deathly pale and bled out. Tevis trampled, Tevis crushed, stabbed, shot, frozen…


Azra stubbornly ignored the flashes of maroon and swathes of black that haunted her peripheral vision. If more of her friends were dead… well-


She screwed shut her eyes and turned her head away.

"Listen. You listening, blood? Follow my voice. Death is just a door. You've walked it a hundred times before." He sounded urgent. Azra was having a hard time focusing.

The issue was, wielding the Void would electrocute her. Directing Arc would drown her. She'd marshaled too much strength to her side and now she was watching it all tear itself apart with violent gravities and electromagnetic instability.

A burning hand grabbed the back of her head. "Don't fight it, you idiot. You can't win."

The hand was pain- both of them were, scorching her skin where they touched. Everything hurt: the heat, the Arc making her jaw clench and her arm spasm, the cold ache settled now deep in her bones. Tears prickled in the corners of her eyes. It was like the world was made of razors. Something heavy dragged at her spirit, whispering to her just relax, let go.

She knew better than to surrender. But she couldn't fight it. She breathed, the action of her lungs filling and deflating strangely… hollow.

Deny it, then, said the other half of her soul. It floated beside her. No fear. You'll be alright. Trust me.

So she took the Light, all of it, and shoved it away, strangled it, smothered it. Stalemate, then; she couldn't wield it, but it wouldn't overpower her. With one last jolt in her chest, the Arc died its death like normal. Void washed over her like cold water, but she put her shoulder to it and whispered no, and suddenly she found she could feel the air on her face again. Tevis' fingernails were dug deep into her wrist. She could move.


She pulled back, opened her eyes, and saw him: dead, dead and gone, forgotten dust. The sun was a lifeless husk above them, devoid of warmth or light. The ground was frosted infertile rock and dirt. Wind whistled through the stones. It was an empty, lonely sound for an empty, lonely world. In her heart, Azra knew that this was it. Everything was gone. Everything. Not even so much as a blade of grass still lived. Much less Tevis. Much less the Traveler, or the City, or even her.


She blinked, hard, and the scene changed. She stood on a bloody field, surrounded by corpses. The sky was dark. The only source of light was the dim glow of the Traveler and the City burning in the distance. Guardians littered the ground along with Fallen remains. Death seemed to hang present in the air.

But she'd already been through this, once. She'd faced this and came out stronger. Azra let out a long sigh, eyes tracking the horizon for enemies (of course there were none, they were all dead). Then she turned her gaze downwards and made herself look. She looked for a long while. Miles-4, Aldur Neiss, Ana Bray… but among them, Lord Shaxx, Wei Ning, Osiris, Alaia Ruse, the Crew… everyone.

And standing there, with the Void still clinging to her skin like a sheet of ice, she accepted it. Everyone was going to die, eventually. She couldn't fight that. She could fight for their happiness, for their lifespans, but no matter how hard she worked, she could not prevent them from dying. All she could say was tomorrow, not today.

That fact was stronger than she was. But some stubborn part of her refused to let it beat her. She nodded at the bodies on the ground, accepted their deaths, and turned a blind eye towards that tomorrow.


Tevis stood, uncharacteristic concern in his eyes. The sun above was hidden by a thick layer of clouds. The wind tugged at her cape and sent fallen leaves skittering over the pavement of the street. Grass grew up between cracks in the asphalt. Azra had almost forgotten what the color green looked like. But the grass was green. Tevis' eyes were green.

Air rushed up her throat and she realized she was either going to laugh or sob.

She chose laughter. The sound was meaningless at first, like old echoes, but when she drew her next breath, she felt grounded and real, more real than the fear. Hysterics were crushed by joy and freedom and she laughed at their deaths, too. The Void in her bones whispered you are stronger than everything. Spark beside her whispered I'm always here with you. Until the end.

Tevis was unsettled before her. "Laughing isn't usually a good sign."

Azra wiped the tears from her face. "This explains… a lot. Sorry. It's funny."

"You're not going crazy Warlock on me?"

"I don't think I'd know if I were."

"Then shoot."

Azra hadn't realized the Bow was still in her hand. She studied its smooth curves with new eyes. Strong and subtle. She nocked inevitability on the string, aimed for a rusted car at the end of the street, and pulled.


TYPE: GUARDIAN CUSTOMS PROJECT
PARTIES: Two [2]. One [1] Guardian-type, Class Hunter [u.1]; One [1] Guardian-type, Class Hunter [u.2]
ASSOCIATIONS: Dark Ages; Jax, Azra; Larsen, Tevis; Six Fronts; Twilight Gap
CUSTOMS ASSOCIATIONS: Arc; Death, Final; Void
/AUDIO UNAVAILABLE/
/TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS.../

[u.1:0.1]: What went wrong back there?

[u.2:0.1]: I accidentally threw Arc into the mix. I was thinking Void is positive potential. Which, to be fair, it is, but that's the wrong viewpoint.

[u.1:0.2]: I don't know what you mean.

[u.2:0.2]: Arc is the space between Solar, negative potential, and Void, positive potential. Storm and calm. Movement between one and the other. You told me to fill an empty positive space with the living negative energy. I was thinking too much Arc-wise.

[u.1:0.3]: Funny. I've always thought Void is the space between Solar and Arc. Between stubbornness and flexibility.

[u.2:0.3]: No wonder the Warlocks babble so much, if all they do is think in circles all day.

[u.1:0.4]: Still. Always a wonder how much people can learn from an element that is mystery.

[u.2:0.4]: It's real good at giving perspective.

[u.1:0.5]: You said it explained a lot.

[u.2:0.5]: About you, why you are who you are. If you see so many people gone. Perspective.

[silence]

[silence]

[u.2:0.6]: I mean, you've seen the Dark Ages. Six Fronts. And me… there's a difference between theoretical knowledge and seeing something with your own two eyes. Guess I'm still dealing with the people I've lost.

[u.1:0.6]: Twilight Gap must have been hard on you.

[u.2:0.7]: Twilight Gap was horrible.

[u.2:0.8]: I didn't know where anyone was. If anyone was okay. Every time I stopped to even catch my breath, I'd wonder, is Shiro dying right now? Is Cayde? Has the City fallen?

[u.1:0.7]: We thought we were doing you a kindness by leaving you behind. Things got tough out there.

[u.2:0.9]: I ended up out there anyway.

[u.1:0.8]: That wasn't the plan. We knew it'd be touch-and-go. Didn't want to put you through that if there was a probably-safe place you could be instead.

[u.2:1.0]: Why did you guys go out, then?

[u.1:0.9]: There was work to be done. Unsafe work.

[u.2:1.1]: There are many things more important to me than my safety.

[u.1:1.0]: Of course, you've got resurrective immortality. Death is cheap.

[u.2:1.2]: Than my existence, then. I think the Gap made me realize that. There are things I really, really don't want to see gone.

[beat]

[u.1:1.1]: Everything dies, Azra. Everything goes away eventually.

[u.2:1.3]: And that's what I need to accept, for this. My death? Sure, fine, I've looked that in the eye before. But the people I know? Bit harder to deal with.

[u.1:1.2]: Most people seem content to worry themselves with their own motives and their own lives.

[u.2:1.4]: Someone I respect told me once that we're not here for our own sake. There's a lot more I care about than just me and my feelings.

[u.1:1.3]: Hm.

[u.2:1.5]: I wouldn't be who I am without all of you. You now that, right?

[u.1:1.4]: Some things are better left unsaid.

[beat]

[u.1:1.5]: This isn't one of them. I know I can be unapproachable sometimes. But thanks.

[u.2:1.6]: You're… welcome?

[u.1:1.6]: So kid.

[u.2:1.7]: Yeah?

[u.1:1.7]: Final part of the lesson. People aren't mind readers. You've got your perspective now. If you find yourself at some revelations… don't be afraid to speak them. You know how precious life is. Don't waste too much of it in the dark.

[u.2:1.8]: Thanks, Tevis.

[u.1:1.8]: Now, tradition dictates that you buy me lunch. Call your ship. I want Bibimbap.


July 14, 2872, 14:11

The camp was empty, save for the lone figure of the Crew's leader perched on a flat stone. The space had been cleared of debris and stray guns. A tidy stack of wood sat next to the banked coals of the campfire. The Gunslinger balanced a pad of paper on his knees as he scratched at it with a dented old pen.

Azra approached with a stride that was somewhere between an amble and a trudge. "Hey, Andal."

He looked up from his work and smiled warmly. "Oh, hey. How'd your Nightstalker lesson go?"

Azra shrugged. "Okay. Well, actually, horribly, but… okay."

"Sounds like a typical Tevis lesson. 'In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow' and all that."

"What?"

Andal set his pen down and patted the rock next to him. "Old quote from who knows where. But you look like a Guardian with something on their mind."

Azra sat. "Why do you bother with the pen-and-paper thing anyway? Paper's not common. Holograms can't get lost or wet."

"Do you remember how to write?" Andal asked in reply.

Oh, something new. Every now and then Azra still ran into unknown territory. "Uh… yes? Maybe?"

He flipped to a fresh page in the pad and handed her the writing implement.

Pen went to paper and lingered there for a breath. Then some ancient scrap of muscle memory guided her hand. Azra Jax, she wrote in angular script. She studied the words, admiring the sharp back-and-forth of the 'z', the little curls on the ends of the 'a's, the uneven 'x'. "Huh. I guess I do."

Andal tapped the page. "Writing it down always makes it more real. There's just something about holding the pen. More solid."

I am not a rookie anymore, she wrote. Apparently she had a tendency to write stubby lowercase 'i's. She went back over it, bolder.

Andal held out a hand for his pad back. Azra passed it. He paused for a moment, but instead of flipping back to his previous work, he scratched his own writing onto the line beneath hers. You are barely four years old, he wrote.

She took the pad back. I survived Twilight Gap, she scrawled. The lowercase g looked more like an s. She ran over the right side of its loop again, completing it, before moving on. More so than other people my 'age'. I've earned experience.

True, he wrote, you work hard. You practice. What's this about?

He passed the pad back, but Azra only stared at it for a minute, trying to collect her thoughts and shape them.

I don't mean to sound petulant, she inscribed, slowly, deliberately, but on missions you won't ask my input, when you do for the others. I know it's because I am new and I would defer to you anyway, but it makes it feel as if my observations have no merit. I don't feel entitled, but-

She stared at the paper, at a loss. Her feelings were too complicated for letters to hold.

Andal gently teased the pad from her grip and finished her thought with deliberate strokes. You deserve more regard than I've given you.

"You're right," he said aloud, startling her a bit. The corner of his mouth was pulled back in wry acceptance. "You've definitely earned your keep. You've proved you can hold your own with us. With Guardians, age doesn't always match experience and ability. I… apologize. For not remembering that."

Azra nodded, and they sat in silence for a moment. Andal began sketching a little Traveler in the blank space left on the page. Dark cracks on bottom, unblemished shell on top. A tiny human figure and the dot of its Ghost looked up, dwarfed by the sphere.

Azra broke the silence first. "The worst part about the Gap was not knowing whether you guys were alive or not," she said.

Andal's grip on the pen tightened and the sketching stopped. After a moment, he began again, drawing a small hill for the ink-Guardian to stand on. "The worst part about the Gap was knowing you were dead and that my decision lead to your death," he admitted.


"Fall back, Azra. Get yourself to the rally point," Andal commanded.

"But-"

"You're too new. Your fights will come. But you'll die out there if you go."

"But-"

"Go."


Azra was shocked. "When the wall fell? I survived. I'm fine," she said.

Andal stopped and stared at his (ink-stained) hands. "But if you hadn't survived, it would have been my fault. Because I wanted to keep you safe, rather than bring you along."

"My fault too," she rebutted. "I could have listened to you and fought my way back to the rally point after. But I didn't."

He turned his focus back to her. His dark eyes were full of… something. Pride? "It's so easy to just think of you as that lost Kinderguardian we dragged along to that lab in Portugal. But that's not right, is it?"

Azra, unsettled now, turned her attention to her own hands. Thanks to the Light, they bore no scars or scrapes. Her fingers were long, her fingernails ragged. She should trim them sometime. "I don't want to be overconfident-"

"Underconfidence can be just as harmful," Andal said. He gently tore their conversation page from its bindings and folded it. "It's probably too easy, if the Crew is your benchmark. We're pretty great. But don't sell yourself short, Jax." He took the compact square and tossed it into the banked coals before them. It smoldered and browned for a second before bursting into flames. Azra watched as the words turned to ash.

"…Okay," she agreed. Andal slung a warm arm around her shoulders. With his other hand, he flipped back the page and continued scrawling his notes.

"So," he began, writing and speaking different words at the same time (to Azra's amazement), "I've heard rumors about this Devils Splicer Priest named Dokris causing a stir up in Old Russia. You were just in the Plaguelands, what's the scuttlebutt?"