Taffer Notes: Hi :D Hiatus over! Book 2 Part 2 has begun!
I want to thank everyone for sticking with Nicole so far. She's got quite a Life ahead of her and any encouragement from you all help her get through it.
And we're starting Part 2 off with a co-written chapter, where Mav brings John back. I always get unbelievably excited when I get to see what's going on in his head.
Before we get started though, let's have a little recap:
Previously on Hiraeth (snerk)
Nicole, still struggling with her Light, has finally braved a training session with Ikora. It went reasonably well. She learned how to weaponize her anxiety, calling it forward as Void Light and blink about the place, and even how to form a shield capable of bouncing a tennis ball off it. At least until the anxiety turned to joy, releasing a shock of Arc Light, killing her. Pulled back into a world of mysterious visions, Nicole found herself taunted by a dark entity, surrounded by Lights dying all around her, and chased by a green-eyed wolf.
PART 2
Live. Learn. Die.
Operator
Music bubbled from a set of old and worn out speakers. The Winters had kept them in storage, hidden and likely forgotten behind stacks of sealed napkins. His Guardian had knocked them over (the napkins), made a horribly sad noise, and scrambled to put them back while Ghost? Ghost had stared at the speakers and an idea had begun to form. One so enticing, he'd not even noticed the large, fluffy shadow stalking up to him before he'd been expertly batted from the air.
That cat was a menace.
The speakers had been broken and therefore useless, but thankfully Ghost was neither of those things. Well, arguably. It hinged on who you asked and sometimes when you asked. Pose the question to his Guardian after she'd just rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed and still shaky from another horrible dream, and you'd get an entirely different answer than a few hours later when she needed some glimmer counted.
Or, case in point, right after he'd transmatted freshly repaired speakers into strategically picked corners, wired them up and hooked himself in so he could play her anything imaginable from his collection.
He'd been her hero after that. For a while, anyway, or so he liked to think. It was something he clung on to tightly because sometimes he found exactly the right tune; one that made her eyes lose focus, but in a nice kind of way — rather than when she decided to stare at untold terrors unfolding where he couldn't see.
Like the one playing right now. 1972. Jim Croce. Operator.
Ghost wiggled his fins a little bit, turned his attention inwards, and picked up where he'd left of:
Dear Traveler, he told his journal.
Where was I? Oh. Yes.
He inserted a hrrummph.
It's been five days since the Incident at Drumfort, though I got to admit some of those were considerably longer. No, no— not literally longer. Obviously they were all still within the acceptable variation to the twenty-four-hour rotation, so don't worry. No Hive god interfered with Earth rotation and the sun is still going up and going down. It's just that when you're with a fretting Guardian time apparently does things.
Ghost rolled sideways as another Ghost floated by. (Capital G, don't forget). An unbound one, to be precise. It had a saucer and coffee cup perched on its fins.
It stretches. Especially while she frets in absolute silence at the Tower courtyard because she can't make herself go the rest of the way to the Speaker's office.
That'd been two days after the Incident. And what a day it had been! Cloudless, bright blue skies, fresh but warm air — and Guardians everywhere whispering to each other as the Vanguard's statement about a murderer on the loose within the City walls made the rounds; a Guardian murderer.
She makes a really convincing statue, don't you think? You should know. It's you she'd been staring at while she stood by one of those courtyard trees, moving about as much as they do. Or you do. I got worried the pigeons would start showing and sit on her head or something.
He sighed.
Instead, it was the unbound Ghosts that made her move. I mean, not that I'm complaining. They started drawing attention to her, and my Guardian does not like attention. She hates it.
He looked up. Two of those unbound Ghosts from back then hadn't left. They'd followed her and then they'd waited until his Guardian had gone through another long attempt at unraveling her vision (or visions, really) with the Speaker's help. It'd been unsuccessful at best, terrifyingly unsettling at worst. Was it a warning? Was it a prophecy? Was there such a thing as prophecy? she'd asked at some point and the answer had been a firm Potentially, Maybe, I mean we are not ruling it out.
Ghost rolled his eye.
Anyway. Two of those Ghosts followed her when she left the Speaker, came back all the way to the Daily Revive. Your children are clingy.
Now, they carried orders around, got their fins skritched by the Winters', and had their every move tracked by Muffin while her bushy tail swished left and right.
You'd think— And there went the piece and quiet.
"Oh! I know!" Felicia exclaimed loudly— and proudly —as she zipped over to swing once around his Guardian's head. His Guardian who stood behind the counter pouring coffee beans into the grinder.
She paused the pouring to glance at Felicia, who shoved her shell apart in a gesture vaguely resembling a bow.
"Fireteam Cupslinger!"
His Guardian blinked. Once.
Ghost put a pause on his journal and joined them. "A fireteam," he said, "is the designation of a group of Guardians going on missions together. See, Guardians tend not to work alone, there's traditionally three of them since you don't want to be out there alone. Being a Guardian out there is dangerous work and you need someone you can rely on. Someone besides your Ghost, I mean. You can always rely on your Ghost."
"Yep!" said Felicia, wearing the most cheerful of eye-squints he'd ever seen. "Fireteams go fly out into the stars together, do battle together. And as they valiantly fight the servants of Darkness, a bond forms between them; the strongest of bonds that nothing can ever break."
"And carrying cappuccinos around counts too? For the bonding?" his Guardian put in and lifted a finger to count the three Ghosts who'd decided the Revive was as good a place as any to spend their time. One of them— the one who'd flown by him earlier —presented the coffee it's been carrying to a Lightless sitting at one of the outside tables.
"We can't all be heroes!" Felicia twirled once around herself. "Besides, it's not like the three of us can charge into grand battles without Guardians. What'd we do? Buzz around a Hive Knight until it gets all dizzy and needs to sit down? No, no. This will be our battlefield. Retail!"
His Guardian's head leaned to the side ever so slightly and a smile toyed with the idea of tugging her lips up. "A worthy battlefield," she said.
Felicia imitated a shrug. "For now, anyway."
"For now," his Guardian echoed. "Because you'll go out there and look for your Guardian again when you feel ready to. And then you'll find them."
Ghost tilted his entire self by forty-seven degrees. Now then, if that wasn't a Speaker sort of thing to say then he didn't know what was. It'd certainly been something he'd heard before when he'd moaned about still being unbound and he remembered what it'd felt like to hear it.
Good, that was how.
Very good.
Felicia nodded. "Oh. And I'll be Fireteam leader."
His Guardian snorted and returned to pouring the beans into the grinder. "Naturally. So how about you go lead them to buy us another batch of medium roast, five kilo of flour, a kilo of sugar and chocolate and a bottle of vanilla syrup?" She waved the empty bean bag at Felicia, who promptly transferred it into her buffer with a sweep of her transmat beam.
"Right away!" Off she went, boundless in her energy and enthusiasm and leaving his Guardian standing there looking conflicted.
"Feels a little wrong making them do all that work," she said once Felicia had collected her two Fireteam Cupslinger members and zoomed off with them.
Ghost swayed slightly left and right. "It makes them happy."
"Suppose it does, yeah? Always good having something to do." With her shoulders all slouchy, she moseyed over to a shelf loaded down with cups and began sorting them. Re-sorting, really. She regularly turned them from butts up to butts down, like she couldn't settle on which was up or down was best.
Ghost inched a little closer to her. "Who are we talking about now? Fireteam Cupslinger or this here Guardian?"
Her left shoulder jumped in a defensive kind of shrug.
So he shifted gears — a little, anyway. "It's a good name, by the way. Cupslinger! Clever, really, almost like I came up with it."
"Oh, really?"
"Totally. It's like Gunslinger, see? Which is what some Hunters like to call themselves."
She nodded— absent as ever with her mind a muted thing washing up against his neural link —and turned a bunch more cups around. Clink-clink they went. Then she made sure all the handles stuck out straight to the front, which lasted about five seconds before she decided to turn them at a rough forty-five-degree angle instead. It took the front door's old bell sounding its welcoming chime to tear her out of whatever endless labyrinth her mind liked to get lost in, and with her getting pulled out came a brief flare of hope.
Ghost turned around just like she did. A beat later he heard her puff out a defeated sigh as her hope got dashed against the new customer being exactly that; a new customer. Someone who wanted a sandwich and a plain cup of coffee, no sugar, and was out the door again an efficient handful of minutes later.
"You know," Ghost started as he followed her out from behind the counter to go clean up cups left on some tables, "it's generally bad form for a Ghost to try prying thoughts from their Guardian's mind. Rude, really. That's what it is. But sometimes when a Guardian doesn't say what bothers them, Ghosts might feel obligated to try and figure it out so they can help."
She threw him a small scowl. "Ghosts could also just ask."
He recoiled from the look with a mock roll of distress. "They'd like to, but some Guardians get all defensive when they do and then go and sort ceramics all day long."
She huffed and carried the dirty dishes to the sink. The way she yanked the faucet over and whacked the handle to get the water going had him wince with a pang of sympathy for the inanimate object.
"I mean, it's not that hard to figure out." Brave as he was, Ghost stayed close to her, even though that put him into prime smacking distance. "You're waiting for Shephard to come walk in."
She didn't look at him. She did flick soap bubbles and some water at him though. "Not for whatever reason you're thinking."
"You reading my mind now?"
Another huff, one that roughly translated into No. For a little while after that all she did was pay attention to washing and rinsing the dishes, until finally, she stopped, her hands still in the water and her shoulders slumped forward while her head rolled back so she could stare at the ceiling.
"I just feel real horrid for how all that shite at the practice court went down? I socked him, Ghost. You seen it, you been there. I punched him, while all he was trying to do was be nice and help and now I feel horrid and want to apologise. But I can't, 'cause ever since he 's gone and vanished and what can I do? Write him a letter saying how sorry I am? Where I even write it to? And what I put in anyway? How I was being an insensitive cunt going around treating him like he's the big bad wolf while it's really just the mindfuckery the Traveler puts me through that's to blame, not him?" A frustrated groan and some manhandled cups later, and she yanked the faucet again, choking out the water.
Ghost didn't quite know what to say. "I— I mean— I think he'll be fine," he tried. "I know for a fact that he's been punched by things that hit considerably harder than you."
His Guardian stared at him flatly. "My weak wrist is not really the point here."
"I know, I know. Just saying."
Her jaw jumped a little. "But you're right. I mean, why'd he even hang around before anyway? 'Cause he found us out there? That was it, yeah? And then I go and make a show of being ungrateful. It's perfectly reasonable that he'd want nothing to do with me after that.
As much as John would have loved to think the moon was lovely this evening, truth was, it looked the same as always: bleak, colorless, and full of Hive.
The wind whipped by him as he expertly navigated every crag and valley, eyes dead ahead, far ahead, every sense tuned in on everything around him. Ready for an ambush. Ready for anything.
Well, almost anything. Except a certain Guardian in his life, apparently he wasn't ready for that.
Great job with that, John, he told himself, ripping past another corner in perfect timing that still barely let him escape without becoming a splatter on the canyon wall. He could almost feel Darrow wonder why he had to go thrillseeking, especially when he felt sorry for himself.
"Actually," a voice chimed into his helmet, "when do you not feel sorry for yourself, Shephard?"
"We all have our hobbies," John replied brightly, tearing over a slope fast enough to get more than a little air. Anyone else would've left their stomach behind, but as it was he only felt like he'd left Darrow behind somewhere in the rocks.
But he hadn't. Because the moment he slowed to a halt, his Sparrow's roaring engine turning to a throaty hum and finally to silence, Darrow materialized seemingly from thin air to hover near his head.
"The sorrier you feel for yourself," Darrow sniped, "the more insane you behave. In your own… odd quiet-with-strange-comments fashion."
Darrow ranted on about him being an adrenaline junkie, which was absolutely true, while John turned and pulled a massive sniper rifle off the back of his Sparrow, hunkered down behind a boulder, and knelt to see what he could get in his sights.
"…and when you enter full adrenaline junkie mode, you put us both in danger, and it would very much be a shame if everyone's favorite 'Young Wolf' ended up dead – forever – because he had one of his stoic silent temper tantrums and had to go slaughter the Light's enemies to either prove to himself that he isn't a bad person or else make him feel better helping the goodguys or else just because he has some kind of dark violent streak and has to go kill something."
A set of glowing eyes that would have sent anyone into the throes of nightmares appeared down range of John's scope. He fired. A few seconds later, his target's head became little more than black-green splatter.
John frowned thoughtfully, even as he watched the other Hive around turn circles and search for their attacker. Lowering his rifle, John got to his feet and returned to the Sparrow. Meantime, though, Darrow had fallen silent.
"Darrow?" John prompted, honestly a little worried. Darrow rarely ran out of things to say.
But Darrow just hovered there, low behind John's former cover, seeming to stare at nothing. Pensive, no doubt. Shrugging, John climbed back onto the Sparrow and fired it up.
In a quick little flash of light, Darrow appeared right in front of his face, so close John actually winced his head back.
"Hi," he said, casual as ever. "What, you wanna hide for this part?"
"You know this doesn't work on me," Darrow said flatly, his shell shifting to form a perfectly straight line over his eye. "Ghost just called."
"We get a lot of ghost calls," John said coyly as he lowered himself into position against the Sparrow again. "And calls from other Ghosts."
"No. That Ghost. Ghost Ghost. Shephard, please. You know what I'm talking about."
Of course he did. Under his helmet, John silently licked his lips.
"He's wondering why you're avoiding Nicole."
John shifted on his bike.
With a scoff, and halfway in a mutter, Darrow added: "Frankly, so am I. Do you really feel that bad about it? I mean, what do you even feel bad about, exactly? You haven't done anything, John. You've only… helped."
Sucking in a deep breath, John's voice came out quieter than he'd intended – and broke a little at first, pitching up too high until it cracked and he had to get a handle on it again. But he did get a handle on it.
"Darrow, it doesn't feel much like helping when she says she has visions of some, ya know—" and that was where his voice cracked— "giant evil wolf stalking and eating her. Repeatedly." He scowled to himself and ducked his head low where he sat. Darrow gave him a flat stare, so he added, "A black wolf."
"Shephard."
He sulked worse, he knew he did. "With green eyes," he added in a frustrated rasp.
"Shephard."
"What?"
Glancing up again, John saw Darrow fixing him with yet another perfectly flat stare.
"I hate to burst whatever dramatic bubble…"
"You're one to talk about dramatic bubbles, buddy—"
"…you've formed, but you're not actually a wolf and you aren't actually going to eat her."
One of his myriad quirky self-defense mechanisms kicked in without him much thinking about it, and John drawled as if nothing was wrong at all, "I'm not? Are we sure about that? 'Cause she looks real tasty."
"Traveler reform me into some thoughtless mote of light that explodes in a Guardian's hand," Darrow reeled off before blurting in an explosion of his growing exasperation— "You're playing it off again! I've seen this a thousand times but never this bad. Be serious for five minutes!"
With that, he fired up the Sparrow – but he didn't go fast and he didn't go far. Just far enough to round another bend in the canyon, cautious this time. Just far enough to get off and mount up a nearby ridge, climbing up the rocks quickly and quietly without hardly a second thought as to the height or the fall or treacherous handholds or any other form of danger.
A few seconds later, he stood at the top, striding over toward the edge – and watching the Hive beginning to swarm below, having pinpointed the location of the sniper fire.
Exactly like he wanted.
"What d'you want me to say?" he said as he went. "She doesn't want me around. In case you hadn't noticed," John said, sweet yet sour, "I freak her out. I don't like freaking people out, Darrow."
Still near his head, having stayed close by all the while, Darrow grated out a mechanical sigh—
And then John snatched him out of the air. Predictably, Darrow shrieked.
"Will you just go talk to them?" Darrow blurted from John's hand.
John didn't answer. All he did was gaze down at the unsuspecting Hive beneath him, curl his free hand into a fist – and say, "You're gonna want to hide for this part."
Operator, O could ya help me place this call? Ghost hummed to himself, quietly but expertly, while the City murmured its evening background track under a sky layered in thick orange and purple falling away from darkening blue — and while his Guardian threw him a quiet look.
A long, curious look. Especially when he kept singing.
"Hm?" he went eventually while she kept pace with him leading them back to their apartment. Well before nightfall, mind you. The Vanguard had cautioned Guardians not to be out once it'd gotten dark. Not alone, anyway. Did it stop them? No, of course not. But it did stop this Guardian.
"You a fan, huh?"
He shrugged his shell. "It's thematically appropriate."
"The- thematically appropriate. Excuse me, what? What are you on about?"
Giddy almost, Ghost swung around, shimmying backwards while flashing a cheerful squint of his eye at her. She lunged forward, grabbing at him in almost-earnest. He dodged the grab, turned around and zoomed on ahead, snickering quietly all the way back to their rose-covered stairwell.