A/N:
So, somehow I messed up and while I wrote it, I didn't post Chapter 39. I was reading back over and realized I was missing a whole chapter which made a sudden jump between 39 and 40 that didn't make sense. I've gone back and fixed it.
The proper Chapter 39 is now in. What was chapter 39 is now 40, this one is now 41, and the new chapter I am working on right now and will get up hopefully today will be 42.
Please go back and reread chapter 39, it will make things make a lot more sense.
Sorry about that.
"You're hurting her, you know," Gen said, breaking a silence that had gone on for nearly an hour. Min, who'd all but forgotten he was there, looked up at the Exo from over the top of the book.
Tomorrow morning the invasion of the moon was planned. She and Gen had been in the Archives all day, reading everything they could find about Crota, the Hive, the Ascendent Realm, and Sword Logic. Her head was swimming with it all.
"What? Who?" she asked dumbly.
"Kalina," he said, setting his own book down. "She's not going to ask you. She's not going to push, so I will. What happened in St. Petersburg? What did you see that you don't think you can tell us?"
"It's not mine to-"
"I know, you've said," he told her. "But it is, Min. It is yours to tell. It was your past life, right? It's as much yours to tell as it is anyone's. I'm not asking you to announce it to everyone on loudspeaker, but whatever it is, it's bothering you. You haven't looked Kalina in the eyes once since you woke up again."
Min lay her own book down and sat back a little, looking distant. Lev looked at Gen, then drifted a little closer to her. "Min, remember, you're not that person," he urged gently. "You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Is that it?" Gen asked. "You did something shameful in that life? What, you found out you were a mass murderer? Throttled hookers in your spare time? Dared to have a family, relationships? Romantic relationships? It's dead and gone, Min. Whatever it is, Kalina's not going to care-"
"Would you care?" Min asked him. Gen regarded her a moment then asked, with faint amusement.
"Would I care if you throttled hookers? Or are we talking about your love life?"
She ignored his attempt at levity, rubbing a hand over her face. "Would you care if what I experienced wasn't so dead and gone as all that? If I knew something about your past life, would you want to know?"
"Is that it?" Gen asked, leaning forward intently. "Did you know Kalina in that life too?"
"No," she said flatly. "I didn't know Kalina. I'm asking if you want to know who you were in that past life?"
Now his brows lifted in clear surprise. "Did you know me?"
"Would you want to know if I did?"
"Yes! I have been offing myself in more and more inventive ways just to get a glimpse of that life. I haven't done more than that because we're really not supposed to, but hell yes I would want to know! I don't know if Kalina would want the same, but you can't let that-"
"I'm not talking about Kalina," she said. "I'm talking about you, Gen. I knew you."
"Tell me! How did we know each other? What was I like? What happened that made me…" here, the Exo gestured at his relative Exo-ness.
"I don't know what happened to make you an Exo," Min said. "I only saw a day."
"But I was there? You're sure?"
"Pretty sure. You were…not much like you are now, but there are little gestures, little unconscious inflections, I guess. And the name…I'm pretty sure it was you."
"What was my name?"
"Yevgeny."
He rolled this around in his mind visibly for a moment, tasting it, feeling it out. "It doesn't ring a bell, but I don't know if it would. Was that the one you called Denosovich?"
"You were one of my unit," she said with a nod. "You were a lot less reserved than you are now. You were a bit of a…not a cad, that's not the right word. A bit crass?"
"Huh."
"Your sole drive- at least from what I can remember- was to get into Veta's pants. But she wouldn't have you."
He barked a laugh. "Well isn't that an irony!"
"What?"
"Exos don't have sex drives," he said. "We don't have…well, let's just say that our Exo bodies are not exactly identical to human bodies in the fun happy-time department. Whoever did this to us- if it was truly a who- they at least had the decency to take away our sex drives so that we wouldn't be miserable trying to satisfy urges we literally couldn't any more. We were friends?"
"Yes," she said. "Good friends."
"And I…I mean, he, never…I mean-"
"No," she said, giving him a half smirk. "No, he never tried to get into my pants, Gen."
"You know nothing more about him?"
"Not really. Like I said, I really only remember a single day. There are vague impressions before that- I knew for example that you'd been trying to get with Veta for months. I know we had been friends for a while, but I couldn't tell you when we met or what unit we were assigned to or any of that. I don't know if you had family-…I don't even know if I had family. I don't think I did."
Her brows knit again, troubled. He reached out and put his hand over hers. "It's all right," he said. "Well, I don't know if I was really this Yevgeny or not, but he sounds like he was fun to know, at least, right? And…Kalina?"
"I told you, I didn't know her. At least not that I saw in my…whatever the hell that was."
"No," he said patiently, "But there is something there that you don't want to tell her, all the same."
"Like I said, it's not all so dead and gone," she said.
"Min, if this were any other time and place, I would say it doesn't matter," Gen said. "Tell her, don't tell her…there would be time for you to get this set in your head, for you two to work whatever this is out. But we go to the moon tomorrow. You're going into the Ascendent Realm. I don't need to tell you it's already killing her that you're going into that place alone; it's killing me too. I don't need to tell you that no matter how many damned books we read today on the subject, you're going into that place with your eyes all but closed, so feebly armed that you may as well be naked. I don't need to tell you the chances of you coming out again-"
"Are non-existent," she said softly. "No, you don't need to tell me."
"Do you really want to leave things with Kal this way?"
"I don't want to leave Kal at all," Min said. "I don't want to do this."
"We know you don't, Min," Lev said. "But I also know that what you told the Vanguard is the truth. You don't want to do it, but you will. Because it needs to be done. And you don't want any other Guardians to die because you failed to act."
Min said nothing, and after a moment Gen closed his book, then took hers and closed it as well. He got to his feet, and took her hand. She rose as well, following him wordlessly as they left the Archive.
They found Kalina in the Hall with nearly a dozen other Guardians. From the abundance of cloaks, they were nearly all Hunters. Cayde was there as well, which wasn't a surprise. What did surprise Min a little bit was that Saladin Forge was there, and Shiro, and that Awoken man with the green hair and the drawl who had helped her up after she'd decided to go playing in SIVA and had been doused.
Cayde saw them coming first, and opened his arms wide. "Speak of the devil!"
Every single face in the hall turned as one and looked at her, and Min felt her steps falter.
"Uh…" Lev said softly from over her right shoulder.
"For everyone who hasn't met her yet," Cayde said, stepping through the crowd and clapping Min hard on the shoulder, drawing her forward. "This is Minerva."
One of the Hunter's folded her arms. "She looks just like any other Titan to me."
"You didn't see her smash into a Servitor like she was breaking a china plate," the green-haired Awoken man said.
"I've seen other Titans smash into Servitors like they were breaking plates," the first Hunter replied dryly.
"What, were you expecting her to have HERO tattooed on her forehead? C'mon," Cayde said.
"So? Show us something, Titan," the skeptical Hunter said. Kalina pushed past her with an irritated look.
"She doesn't have to prove anything to you, Aisha," she said as she did.
"That's right," Cayde said. "She's saving it all for Crota anyway. Right Min?"
"Uh…"
"Right!" He clapped her shoulder hard.
"All I'm saying is if she expects us to follow her to the moon, she should give us a reason beyond being able to smash into servitors."
"She doesn't expect you to follow her to the moon," Cayde said. "I expect you to follow me to the moon, to help take down the Hive."
The Hunter, Aisha, narrowed her eyes a bit thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Fine. I do like killing Hive, so might as well. I just hope you're right about her."
"As if I could ever be wrong," he said with a snort, as if it was the most ludicrous concept anyone had ever put forth in the history of everything. He stepped away from Min and toward the others again, clapping his hands once. "So, who's in, beyond Aisha?"
As the Hunters closed in again to discuss the next day, Kalina looked over at Min. "You ok? I'm sorry, he shouldn't have done that to you."
"It's fine," Min said, then nodded toward the others. "Saladin?"
"Yeah, he's coming tomorrow too," Kalina said. "I think he's farming for a few more Wolves as well. Word is spreading kind of like wildfire. There's some like Aisha that are a little more hesitant, and of course a lot of Guardians are just flat out refusing, but if I had to guess I'm betting there's going to be three or four hundred of us storming the Hive tomorrow. I just hope it's enough. I thought you two were in the Archives studying up on Crota?"
"We were," Gen said. "Our eyes were crossing a little bit. I figure we're pretty much as ready as we can be for something like this and begged for a break."
Min looked at him, but Kalina snorted. "You begged for a break? From reading books? Yeah, I don't buy that. What are-"
"I wonder if Ikora's got final numbers on the Warlocks that are coming," he said, as if she hadn't spoken. "I should go check in. I'll see you two later."
They watched him walk out of the Hall and Kalina shook her head. "Min, what's really going on?"
"We should talk," Min said, her eyes momentarily going to the gaggle of Hunters again before she headed for the door as well. Kalina fell into step beside her, and as they left the Hall and headed for the lift Kalina tried to break the mood in her usual way.
"You're not divorcing me are you?" she asked. "If so we need a good custody arrangement for Gen, and to let him know we both still love him. I don't want to pull him out of his school, either."
Despite herself, and despite the insecurity she could hear behind Kalina's joke, Min smiled a little. "I'm not divorcing you."
"Oh! Good. That's good."
"We'd have to be married first anyway."
"Hey, slow down tiger! I'm not sure I'm ready to be tied down to one Titan!"
Min pulled the blanket blocking the door to the Den aside, and after an uncertain look, Kalina ducked into her refuge. Min followed her, closing the door softly behind her.
"Lev-"
"Incognito, I know," he said, but before he vanished, he bobbed a bit closer to her ear and whispered. "She'll understand."
As the two Ghosts vanished, Kalina looked hesitantly at Minerva. "You're not angry with me over something, are you?" she asked in a low, solemn voice. Min blinked at her.
"What? No, Kalina. I'm not angry with you."
"That's good to know," she said with a bit of relief, but only a bit. "Do you think that I'm going to be angry with you over something? Something to do with that vision you had?"
Min looked at her, and Kalina shook her head. "I'm not a Warlock but I can put two and two together. You saw something you don't want me to know. Remembered something. Didn't you?"
"It's…complicated."
"Min, c'mon," Kalina reached out and took her hand, drawing her over to the largest sofa again. "I don't care what happened, in that life. I know I've said it before but I mean it, Min. I don't care who you might have been or what might have happened. It's not you. You are a Guardian. Your life started when you woke up with Lev outside that rusty old Cosmodrome. I mean-"
"Kalina, it's not that simple," Minerva said. "It would be if that life was really gone but it's not. It keeps showing up, over and over again, and I don't just mean these flashbacks I've been having."
"Then what do you mean?" Kalina asked. "What did you remember?"
"I know what's behind the panic attacks," she said slowly. "You remember what I said, about the pub that night? In the vision I had when I-"
"When you scared the living crap out of me by blowing the top of your head off without warning? Yeah, I remember," Kalina said.
"I went back there. Whatever it was that knocked me out in St. Petersburg, I went back there. Picked up almost exactly where I'd left off. I was in the pub, with my friends. We were on leave for Arrival. That redhead at the bar…"
She looked away, toward the dark vid screen where they had watched and laughed over dozens of PT movies. "We talked all night. I lost track of time, and when the pub closed-"
"You shagged her silly?" Kalina asked, then laughed as Min looked at her in surprise. "So what? I told you. Every Guardian out there, including me, has a whole entire former life we don't recall. Family, friends, kids, lovers, relationships. Is that why you've been so closed off? You think I'll be mad or jealous about some past lover you had centuries ago in some other life? She's long dead and buried, Mini. That life is long dead and whhhyy are you looking at me like that?"
"That's just it, Kalina," Min said glumly. "That's what I mean. That life just keeps showing back up. That woman in the bar- she died the next day. She drowned, in a freezing cold river. A river I jumped in to save her from. I got to her, but she was in a panic, fought me and…in the end I couldn't save her. In the end I nearly died too. That's what's behind the panic attacks. That's why I feel so cold when they happen, why I feel like if I breathe I'm going to die."
She ducked her head a little, unable to look at the Awoken again. "That's why it happened in the corridor when she reached out to me, why I was so afraid of her touching me. Because she reached out to me in the water the same way, and I nearly died-…"
"What are you saying, Min," Kalina's voice was low, hard to read. "What are you-…are you saying what I think you're saying? That redhead in the bar-?"
Min closed her eyes and nodded slowly. "The redhead in the bar was Eris Morn."
