Designed to End

It was her own Light that killed her.

Though that was about all Ghost immediately understood. If pressed for details on what'd just unfolded in front of his wide eye, he'd not have known where to even begin. Maybe Darrow would have. Or Ophiuchus. But not him. To Ghost, it looked as if Arc Light leapt off quivering Void strings; like a badly strummed chord ending in a sudden (and violent) snap. The blowout ripped the small yellow ball Shephard and his Guardian had been tossing back and forth to shreds. Then it fried her nervous system so quickly, there was absolutely nothing he could do.

Not warn her. Not stop it. Nothing. His Guardian collapsed.

"Nicole!" Shephard rushed towards her, with Darrow following at a wary distance, and Ghost— for a shake —wondered why he could pick up so much worry in the Young Wolf's voice. Dying was what Guardians did — a part of the deal.

It's what I'm for.

So why was he worrying his stupid core silly and shooting across the training area so fast one might have thought he had a jump drive stapled to his Ghostly butt?

Shephard got to her first. His knees hit the ground— ground softened by moss and grass pushing through the dirt and gravel, none of which had been here when they'd started —before Ghost finally reached them, his shell around flaring out.

"What happened?" he asked as he pulled his Guardian's limp and very dead body halfway off the ground to prop her against him. She kind of… flopped around.

Ghost ignored the question, along with the crunch of footsteps behind him as Ikora caught up with hurried but collected steps, and shook his shell farther and farther out to push his Light out past it. The Light that held them together, him and his Guardian. That Light that'd fix this.

The Light that'd started this. He tried not to think about that.

"An Arc overcharge," Darrow supplied, right down to the last amp of how much it'd gone over the survivable values — bit like reading tomorrow's temperature estimate to know if your Guardian ought to pack a coat or not. Except said in a hurry and with a tremble in his voice that Ghost couldn't quite place. And he didn't have the time to think about it— to judge if it was worry or excitement —because a thought struck him even as the well of Light expanded and reached for his Guardian's distant spark waiting to be rekindled.

Being him, it all happened very fast; in that moment between moments where nothing really should be able to fit.

I'm about to bring her back.

Again.

Am I allowed to?

They hadn't talked about it, had they? They hadn't really discussed what he ought to do if she died again. Resurrect her? Leave her? Was he, technically, still within those Few Days she'd given him the night after they'd arrived in the City? Had she made up her mind?

Traveler help me, he thought, morosely, and did what he'd been made for. She's going to shout at me again, isn't she?

It's a cold day. A hot night. The suns and moons trade places any way they see fit while Nicole throws a spiked ball made of shame and displaced memories into a vertical pool of swirling, hungry black. Misery-winged moths swarm inside of it, flutter like static trapped in an old TV. The ball pierces her skin, each lob tearing loose skin and flesh. She doesn't stop though. Can't. Won't.

By her feet sleeps the black-coated wolf. Nicole doesn't understand how he fits there, what with how she's aware, deep down, that it's large enough to swallow the suns and moons as they flit across the skies in a never-ending chase.

"Why did you leave me," Helen asks.

Helen.

Nicole's hand tightens around the ball. The spikes are driven in deep.

"I didn't," she lies. When she throws the ball again, she screams as it detaches from her skin. It flies gracelessly and vanishes into the Deep churning inside the black pool and its swarming moths. Helen stares back at her from inside of it, framed by sooty wings. She looks sad. Abandoned. Lovely though, not hundreds of years dead.

"Why did you leave me," she asks again.

The wolf at Nicole's feet shifts. A low, quiet growl sends a shiver up along the soles of her feet.

Something isn't right with Helen. And that's wrong, because Helen? Helen had always had everything right with her from the start, from the first day they'd met, all the way to the last when Nicole hadn't called since she'd been too busy running from the pain. It'd made sense to keep Helen away from all that'd been wrong with her.

But this Helen? The one looking at her? Something isn't right; her features fall to a sharp and age-less despair.

"Why. Did. You. Leave. Me!" she shrieks and now it isn't Helen's voice at all any more, but the screech of metal birds.

"It hurt too much," Nicole calls after the ball as she throws it again. Her words are as hollow as her heart. "I needed it to stop."

The wolf stands. Its shoulders shake with a throaty growl.

"NOW THEY'LL LEAVE YOU!" The voice runs lances made of ice through her skull. "COWARD. COWARD. COWARD!"

While Not-Helen screeches, the wolf leaps forward and into the black, tears Helen deeper and deeper into it until they're both gone. Though the voice still carries out of it, a steady and wailing ring.

Nicole drops the ball to cover her ears, but all that does is slick them with her blood. And when a great hand comes reaching for her from the Deep, its fingers made of interlocked bones forged from red-hot iron, all she can do is watch in terror. It slams into her face and tightens unyielding fingers. She can't scream. She can't run. She can't breathe, not once it pulls her into icy cold waters.

She drowns.

Her body cracks.

Ghost felt a hitch in his Light as it swept over his Guardian. As if it snagged on something — something dreadful that slithered around his core like tendrils seeking a way in. Or maybe he'd imagined that. It was gone again in the fraction of a shake.

"The arrogance," Not-Helen says. She's stopped screaming. And Nicole, for her part, stopped drowning. "To take your choice from you. To bring you back to your pain." Her voice holds a deep, echoing sing-song.

Nicole turns about, but she can't find her. All there is, is that same endless Nothing she's wandered before. How she can be so sure about that she doesn't know. She just… does. Even if this time, the Nothing is crowded with stalks of would-be-corn made of edged and sharp Darkness.

The countless Lights are here though. She sees them floating in the field, hidden behind thin leaves and crooked stems.

Nicole's eyes wander. If this is the same well of Nothing she's been to before, then it ought to be here too. And while her mind uselessly grapples with the fact that she's dead and leaves her reeling, she looks for that one Light that's not like the others. The one she's tethered to; the one calling for her no matter if she's inclined to listen or not.

It takes a while, but eventually, she realizes she won't find it by looking. The would-be-corn is too thick. Though she finds it when she closes her eyes — something she regrets right away, what with her ears aching from how loudly her heart drums the blood into them and how her stomach (does she even have a stomach while dead?) upends itself. She finds it though. Unseen and too far away. She takes a step forward.

As her foot sets down, the first of the Lights suspended in the Nothing chock full of would-be-corn shatters. It screams as it goes.

"I offer peace," Not-Helen says.

Another Light dies, snuffed out just like she will be if she doesn't move. So Nicole runs. The leaves on the would-be-corn don't rustle as she pushes by. They whisper and they cut her as readily as razorblades, slice at her arms and legs and cheeks. The wounds heal. Of course they do. But new ones are plenty and she's never known more pain in her life. Still, she runs until her lungs and legs burn equally much and she has worn time down to mean nothing more but a renewed cycle of cut, bleed, heal — cut, bleed, heal.

Cut~

~Bleed

Heal~

"Peace. Salvation. An End. All you need to do is stop running. Stay with me."

The would-be-corn part and make room for a trampled circle. At the centre of it stands the great wolf, its shoulders hunched and fangs bared. Green eyes lock on her with an awful hunger, while its black fur moves as if it's been made of living shadow. It prowls towards her, a growl rattling its way up its throat. Each lift of a gigantic paw frees moths from underfoot, their tattered wings carrying them upward to be swallowed by the wolf's fur.

Nicole veers off. She bolts around it. Back into the fields, back to be cut and bled and to heal.

Though she always finds the wolf again. Or maybe it finds her. Until, finally, it leaps before she has a chance to blink.

Up until now, it'd never occurred to Ghost if Guardians could choose to come back after they'd been raised the first time. Honesty, he had no idea how Ghosts did what they did — how he did what he did and how embarrassing was that, really? To have a singular purpose and yet have about as much of a clue as an ant if you asked it about the basic concept of physics.

Things fall.

Guardians come back.

But how? Was it all just a matter of repairing her neurones, put pieces back the way they were meant to be? Was he a wrench and she was the… broke down sparrow? The busted gun? And just like with a gun where you'd put the firing pin back so it'd shoot again once you pulled the trigger — she came back the moment he'd reigned that spark.

No hesitation.

All her parts were back in order, after all.

Sort of.

His Guardian began to hyperventilate the moment she'd started breathing again. She also ignored his quiet and hopeful "Guardian?" — right along with Shephard's relieved "Welcome back." All in favour of kicking her legs like all she really wanted was to be far far far away from here. She also promptly socked the Young Wolf in the jaw with what Ghost assumed was a lucky flail of one arm that just so happened to end in a loose fist.

Then— WHUMP —she was gone, pulled from the halfway-cradle of Shephard's arms by a flare of Void light depositing her three and a half meters to the right. She promptly threw up.

Ghost, still stuck in the air exactly where he'd been when he'd rezzed her, shifted his eye to glance at Shephard, who'd pinched his jaw between his fingers and gave it a rub with his thumb. By the look of him, you'd think he'd run into Lord Shaxx's fist, rather than… well… hers. Except he wasn't going to bruise on the outside, judging by the heavily furrowed brow and heartfelt frown.

He looked devastated, alright?

Ghost's shell drooped and he angled himself into a low flight over to his Guardian's side. Ikora was already there, her robes in the dirt where she knelt and a comforting hand placed on his Guardian's heaving shoulder.

Oh this had gone poorly.

At the Speaker's office, down on the ground floor, surrounded by holographic planets and glared at by the Traveler, Nicole stood with her feet planted on the soft carpet and her knees decidedly weak.

"I can still…" She took a shaky breath. "Feel it. The hand. Grabbing me." Gingerly, she reached for her own cheek, but that did nothing to dispel the impression the hand had left. Neither did grinding her teeth or hugging her arms together real tight. Those too carried a phantom pain with them; a faint memory of being cut at a thousand-and-then-some times over.

When she looked up from where she'd been marvelling at her toes, the Speaker's mask staring back at her— all slits for eyes —gave her very little comfort. No, scratch that. It gave her none. So she looked at Ikora instead, who stood with her arms folded by the Speaker's side.

Nope. Not much better there, either. Ikora might as well have been wearing a mask, too, that was how readable her expression was. Sure, maybe there was a wee bit of concern barely touching the surface there, but mostly she looked curious.

It was the same expression she'd worn ever since their training exercise had gone so terribly wrong.

Look at this curious thing, it said. That little mystery with her fascinating visions. Pray tell, what do they mean?

Well.

Frell all of this. She wanted to go home. Except home was a pile of rubble on the other end of the planet (good as) and a temporal anomaly away.

"What do you think?" Ikora asked.

"I'm not sure," the Speaker admitted. "Interpreting visions given by the Traveler hasn't ever been easy, but…"

With his voice trailing off, Nicole sighed and glanced at Ghost. He'd glued himself to her shoulder so closely, the tip of one of his fins sometimes bumped right into her. It was comforting, almost. But it wasn't anywhere near enough.

"…these aren't anything I've seen before. I worry we're looking at more than the Traveler's influence."

A chill gnawed at the warmth under her heart. She winced and uselessly rubbed at her chest while her idle eyes kept… idly wandering, darting every other way while all she wanted to do was not be here.

They wandered until they landed on John. Now there was someone who looked a little like she felt. He'd gone all pale earlier, especially when she'd finally mentioned the wolf traipsing about in her death visions. He hadn't looked at her once since.

"Do you think it has something to do with—" Ikora lowered her voice, even though there was absolutely no one but them in here. "—the dying Guardians? Thematically it'd make sense, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe."

"Think about it." Now Ikora sounded a hint animated, but Nicole certainly didn't want to think about it.

She dropped her eyes away from John and returned to inspecting her boots.

"The dying lights she's seen could be Guardians. Our Guardians, extinguished right here inside the City. It makes sense. We've found no signs of a fight, no struggle at all. No lacerations, no punctures, no physical trauma, full stop. It's as if they simply dropped dead. Like their Light was just—" Nicole heard her clap her hands together. "—snuffed out. And their Ghosts turn up as empty husks with nothing left to recover."

She remembered seeing the poor thing Ikora had been holding a few days ago. It'd looked charred, the colour of shale.

"What if this is what she's being shown by the Traveler? Some warning about what those Guardians see before they die?"

"It's possible," the Speaker said, sounding all thoughtful.

And Nicole kept standing there feeling anxious and miserable and way too ready to just burst into tears. They stung her eyes constantly and her throat was all thick and dry and oh god she was going to start bawling any second now, wasn't she?

Ghost's fin tickled her shoulder. Click-Whirr-Click-Whirr-Whirr his constant presence went.

"We'd like to go," he said all of a sudden, his voice quiet, but carrying a firm tone.

She looked up. He rolled forward a little, faced the Speaker and Ikora with all his handful of weight.

Ikora, for her part, had shed the curiosity and replaced it with worry. "Understandable," she said. "We've talked about this enough for a day."

Forever, you mean. Nicole's lips threatened to start quivering. She also tried to shrug, but that didn't work out too well.

"Will you take her home?"

"Absolutely," Ghost blurted.

"Good. And—" Ikora's brows pinched with another telltale sign of concern. "—keep a watchful eye on her for us?"

"Always."

And that was that for her first try at fitting into the shelf the Traveler had put her into. A shelf that, as it turned out, had come broken to the point of missing a floor.

She'd fallen right on through.

Taffer Notes: Hope you are still enjoying Nicole's journey. I sure have a lot of fun writing it :D