She answered with a radiant smile, the same one that dazzled him even now after so many years since he'd last seen it. "In the flesh- my, does it feel good to be able to say that again."

Looking over him, she seemingly noticed his injuries all at once. "Oh my- just a moment, I'm so sorry …"

Waving an arm at him, arcs of whatever quantum energy had generated her body bonded to his own, and he tensed up for a moment before realizing that the pain was gone. After the arcs evanesced, he looked down at his hand to see that it was no longer broken and mangled, and other injuries like his impaled forearm and various bruises were gone as well.

He stared at her unbelievingly as she seemed to brush the event off as a completely casual experience. Twirling ever so slightly with an air of excitement, Sara flaunted her form off. "I tried to go for something that you'd recognize, something that seemed normal- or at least as normal as can be, considering the circumstances."

She'd achieved the opposite effect, since the sweater and jeans looked ridiculously out of place in their present location, but he wasn't going to be the one to point it out to her.

Off to the side, Reynard finally seemed to have regained his voice and spoke in amazement, "S-Sara?"

She turned towards him with an expression of disgust, one that he didn't seem to notice. "I can't believe it's you- I mean, not that I would have recognized you since I never saw you as a human, but I mean- wow. I never thought-"

"You," she growled darkly, and began to march towards him with presumably sinister intentions in her footsteps.

He came to realize that she was not happy to see him, and he began to back away cautiously. "Sara, wait- I don't know what you think you're doing, but I can assure you-"

"Coward," she spat, narrowing her eyes as more lightning and energy began to spark and crackle around her body. "So many years … so many lives you've destroyed, so much pain you've wrought unto the world!"

He shrank back from her accusations, intent on putting distance between himself and her. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of room atop the Citadel, and he found himself backed against the sheer cliff of the structure's ledge.

"Amelia tried to save you," she continued menacingly, "Ash tried to save you- and only now do you finally see the error of your ways, when death is upon you." She raised a fist, blue light swirling in her palm as she prepared to hurl it at the Exo. "Well, it's far too late for redemption, Messenger-"

Matt stepped in front of the Warlock, shielding him from her.

In an instant, the energy in her hand dissipated. "Matt, what do you think you're doing?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"There's no need for this," he reasoned, his voice calm. "He's not a threat-"

"No need? Not a threat?" she scoffed. "Do you have any idea how long he's been doing this? How many times he's tortured you by ending humanity as we know it, and resetting the cycle?"

His mouth tightened, and he gave a small backwards glance at Reynard behind him. "No, I don't. But that hardly matters anym-"

"We're talking about thousands upon thousands of cycles here. You don't even want to know how long exactly he's been doing this- or how long he would have been doing it if he didn't stop time from progressing every reset! It's a good thing I've finally managed to break his sadistic sequence."

"How are you even here at all?" he asked her, genuinely nonplussed at the situation. "How is this possible?"

She paused in her tirade against Reynard, and closed her eyes. Holding her arms above her head, her veins began to glow bright blue as whatever power she now held coursed through them. Behind her, the singularity began to glow once more seemingly at her command. Turning around to look at it, she waved an arm at it and they watched as a bolt of blue light streaked into it and seemingly disappeared.

In response, the singularity emitted a pulsing shockwave which knocked them off their feet and onto their backs. Scrambling up to regain a defensive posture, Matt looked around in bewilderment. "What the hell was that?!"

"It's what made any of this possible," she muttered quietly, spinning back to face him directly again. "It's how I made it possible."

He shook his head ever so slightly. "I … I don't understand."

"What's happening now is, always has been, and always will be a constant across this timeline … because I have made it so." She tilted her head with another smile, just as innocent and jubilant as he remembered.

This was his best friend, the woman he'd loved since he was a kid … and she was right here, thousands of years after she'd died in his arms. He should have been feeling ecstatic, should have been positively overwhelmed with joy.

So why wasn't he?

She could tell that he still didn't grasp what she was talking about, and her face took on a patient countenance. Flexing her right hand, she angled it towards him and bathed him in a beam of blinding light. He felt his body become stiff and rigid whilst also feeling like something was being torn away from his very essence-

"AAHH!"

Seraph's terrified shriek alarmed him greatly, and he looked to see his Ghost flying into Sara's hand, pulled from within him almost effortlessly by her.

The beam faded, and he fell back to the floor with control once more over his body. Immediately, he lifted his head to look at Sara and the Ghost. "Seraph!"

Sara held the polygonal AI gingerly. "Don't worry, I have no intention of hurting her. I just need to show you …"

With one finger, she stroked the Ghost and everything faded to white.

…

Another dead end. At this rate, she was never going to find a Guardian. Or, at least not the kind that she was looking for.

Ceasing to scan the skeleton in front of her, the Ghost turned away and hovered over to another area. She wanted to make sure that she covered every possible area before giving up and heading back to the City. The last resurrection had been a decade ago, everyone believed that they'd run out of souls to bring back; it had just been too long since the collapse, and light's energy decayed over time.

But she was willing to check these outskirts in one final bid to find what she was looking for. Not many Ghosts ventured beyond the wall, mostly due to the Fallen pirates that liked to roam the location for salvage and scrap. If there was any place she'd find a soul that hadn't been revived yet, it was going to be here.

As time wore on, however, she was losing both hope and her enthusiasm. If her search continued to yield no results, she'd be forced to fly back to the City and select a Guardian from the ranks of the volunteers. That wasn't to say there was anything wrong with volunteers; she just didn't find them to be ideal Guardians, considering how powerful the ones that were resurrected from beyond the grave tended to be-

She stopped, and looked out in the distance at an old highway system with a plethora of rotting, rusting cars atop it. She could have sworn she'd seen something out of the corner of her optics, something bright and-

There! A small flash of … something. Some kind of blue light that appeared for only a second, and then vanished once more. Something about it was … intriguing, and she found herself drawn to investigate it.

Could this be a trap? Certainly, the Fallen were always coming up with new, crafty ways to trap their prey. But if her instincts were right, and she passed up the chance …

Throwing caution to the wind, she acted on her intuition and ventured over to it.

The scene ahead of the Ghost was that of tragedy, of panic. An old highway from the Golden Age, still packed and blocked with the cars of those who had attempted to escape the Collapse, the end of civilization. As she flew closer, she could see that some still contained skeletons within them …

Unfortunately, it looked like there wasn't much to see here. Quite a few skeletons, but none had nearly enough internal light to be revived. With an exasperated sigh, she turned to leave, planning to head back to the wall. With some luck she'd be able to evade the Fallen pirates, and manage not to be humiliated when she returned without an accompanying Guardian-

Suddenly, she felt something. It was a warm feeling, as though she'd suddenly floated into a ray of sunshine. She aimed her eye at the ground, and her sensors overloaded. The body and bones had completely disappeared from years of erosion and decomposition, but a soul's presence was still there, burning bright with light.

This was the break she'd been hoping for. The Ghost prepared to perform a revival, full of excitement. She couldn't help but feel that the two of them were destined for greatness.

…

Matt blinked rapidly as his vision swam and his surroundings slowly came back into view. Behind him, Reynard appeared to be experiencing the same stunned feeling as Sara looked upon both of them from afar. Once he'd gotten his bearings, he looked at her to watch as she released Seraph, and the Ghost hastily flew back over to him for safety.

"You see, this worm here was right about one thing," she explained, shooting daggers at the Exo before returning her attention to the Hunter. "It was awfully coincidental how of all the people to be revived, the one who would come to destroy his plans was none other than you, his rival from thousands of years past."

He could hardly believe what he was hearing. "You … you mean … ?"

"What I just did a few minutes ago with the timeline?" she said, gesturing to the singularity behind her, "That was how all of this has come to be. I spread myself across time, inserting myself wherever I was needed to … guide things along. And now that I control the timeline, I see everything."

She pointed a finger at him. "I was the one who lead Seraph to find your soul, and resurrect you as a Guardian. I crushed the memory crystal in my hand at the Tower, and gave Ash back to you because it wasn't time for my return yet. I was the one who saved you in the abyss of Crota's throne world, when you'd just about given up. I gave Ash her visions of the mountain peak, and made her remember me at the Clovis Bray facility! I assisted Aria in hunting Skolas, here at this very Citadel!"

Sara indicated the large space around them before placing her hands in her jacket pockets. "Everything that you've done, everything that has ever happened since you rose from the dead has lead to this point … because of me."

His mind was reeling, he felt like he was going to be sick. Sara … was the reason he was a Guardian? Was the entire reason for his second chance at life at all?

"Matt?" asked Seraph worriedly as she looked up at him. "Just breathe … are you alright?

"So because this happened in the future," he began, ignoring his Ghost as he tried desperately to put the pieces together, "you guaranteed it by influencing the past? Isn't that a-"

"A paradox," she agreed, "but a self-sustaining one. A circle has no beginning or end, it simply is- but that doesn't make it any less logical."

He sank to one knee sheerly out of the shock and adrenaline coursing through his system. All of this information was so much to handle and process, and so quickly-

"Hey."

He looked up from his position on the ground as he felt a hand gently set itself on his shoulder. Sara was kneeling next to him, comfortingly reassuring him in his moment of weakness. Reynard watched them without any reaction, as he was completely unsure of how to proceed from this point.

His mind soaked up the likeness of her face; those bright blue eyes of hers, still shining like they'd done even while she'd slowly died in the hospital … that black hair of hers that she'd always insisted on keeping short just because she liked being different …

She beamed at him. "It's alright. Everything's going to be alright."

He just- he had to, after so long without her-

He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, one which she eagerly reciprocated. They stayed there for a few moments, no sound other than the humming of the singularity and the each other's hushed breath in the the other's ear. He buried his head into her shoulder, a few stray tears falling onto the fabric of her jacket though she didn't have the slightest care. He felt her run her fingers through his hair much like she'd done in their first life, something they'd joked about from time to time.

Finally, she separated from him and smiled. "I'm here now. It's time to set everything right, love."

Love …

A rush of emotion suddenly surged through him- shame, at having forgotten his family so quickly. Scorch, Dawn, Eager, Aria, and …

He watched her stand up and walk back towards the singularity, leaving him and Reynard to their own devices. He looked at the Exo who stared back at him with a vacant expression upon his metallic features.

The Exo …

Ash was not Sara, but she had come from Sara. That could also go both ways; Ash was absolutely her own person … but was Sara a small part of that person?

"So I get that you made everything happen up until this point," he called out to her, "but how did this point even happen at all? How did you get control over the timeline in the first place?"

"Chronosynthesis," she called back, almost nonchalantly.

"What does that mean?"

She faced him, shrugging casually. "Basically, the future me- one of the iterations of myself I sent out into the timeline- instructed Ash on how to break the Messenger's cycle. It told her how to move her mind through the connection that SIVA creates with all those it infects, and find the Vex that were directly tied to the time-gates sustaining the singularity."

Sara gestured at the aforementioned orb, still hovering and pulsating in the air. "Once she interfaced directly with the singularity, she became one with the timeline- but that had some side-effects that I didn't warn her about. Namely, the fact that control over the timeline is a two way street, a doubled edged sword if you will; while the timeline does open itself to you, you also become open to it. That interaction allowed me, a previous incarnation of Ash's mind, to return from beyond."

Shuffling her feet slightly, she looked down as her demeanor became slightly awkward and apologetic. "However, there was a bit of an issue trying to rectify two people existing as one mind, so … I, uh, took control for myself. It's not a big deal, don't worry. I'm fine."

Looking back up at him, she saw that he was staring at her silently and mouth slightly open. "Are you alright?"

It's not a big deal, don't worry. I'm fine.

She didn't even seem slightly concerned about what happened to Ash, or even what had happened to the rest of his family. He turned to look at their Perfected forms, still waiting for orders that would never come, now that Sara had control of time itself.

"What about the others?"

She nodded understandingly at his concern. "Those aren't anything but husks now. Ash's body is even less so, because her mind transferred to the singularity and became mine." She reached out and patted him on the back encouragingly. "Don't worry; like I said, I'm going to set everything right."

"Even Ash?"

"Especially Ash."

He breathed a sigh of relief, his worries assuaged. "Sara, I- I don't know how to thank you for this."

She laughed. "Oh please, like you have to thank me. Being together with you again is more than enough."

Her language confused him for a moment. "Being together-?"

"If anything," she continued, blind to his uncertainty, "I should be thanking you for handling this so well. I thought it'd be more difficult to explain everything."

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "Well, you know. I know you formed some … attachments, but I'm glad to see that you understand what truly matters. I was worried that you'd-"

He held up a hand to stop her. "Before we move on, I think you need to clarify what exactly it is that I understand, because I'm feeling a little lost right now."

She stared at him blankly. "That none of this is of any consequence, and I can put things to how they were always meant to be?"

His hand lowered as his heartbeat began to pick up pace. "I thought you said you were setting things right?"

"I am setting things right-"

He cut her off. "I mean, I thought you were going to fix this? Bring everyone back, set everything to the way it was before Reynard created the loop?"

She blinked rapidly, clearly surprised at his interpretation of her meaning. "What? No, of course not! Don't you get it? I have complete and utter sovereignty over time! This is bigger than any of them, I can make things right once and for all!"

Sara looked up at the singularity, and the energy that arced around it. "There are only two things that matter now that I have control; you, and me. I'm going to give us the life that we never got to have … the one that was stolen from us."

His blood froze cold at her hidden meaning. "So, what are you doing?"

"To kill a weed, you have to dig out its roots; and all of humanity's problems, ours included, stem from a single event in human history that changed us forever."

Green eyes met blue ones, their gazes locking as she revealed her intent.

"I'm going to destroy the disease at its source; the Traveler."

A/N: feed me those reviews pls, i live off of your tears