Hello dear readers! Welcome to the third installment of Tale of the Phantom: Phantom Pains. Thank you all for joining me on this adventure. Buckle in my friends, because this book is full of things you never saw coming and so much angst you won't know what to do with it.
Enjoy!

Recommend listen: The Evening Fog by Twelve Titan Music.


Prologue

She always knew someday, somehow, that she'd die. Not just die and revive like she'd done too many times to count thanks to the Light and her Ghost, but really die that final death. Most Guardians must come to terms with that, and every Hunter knows it will happen. After all, being who they were - frontier master, spies, scouts of the unknown - they were the ones most likely to never come back. Tevis had died doing just that. Skylar had come to terms with that sometime after Crota—she wasn't sure quiet when, but she had. Maybe it had been after the Red War when she'd almost kicked the bucket twice. Maybe it's been when she was in the Infinite Forest and she found a timeline where she'd died. Or was it when Xul had whispered in her ear on Mars? She didn't know when, but she had. She'd always known that she'd die out on a mission someday, not just her but everyone she loved and cared for.

She'd just… she'd always thought she'd go first.

Not Cayde.

Not when he'd always beaten her in combat. Not when he was smarter than people thought and just acted like he didn't get it. He'd always been stronger than her, pulled himself out of everything that should have destroyed him mentally and physically. He'd pulled her out of shit more times then she could count too. So how could she have thought he'd ever be the one to go first, given his safe spot in the City? Given his unending luck.

No. Not possible. Never him.

Yet… his ragged coughs and sparking wounds told her otherwise.

Sundance was gone. Skylar had felt the little Ghost die in a wave of escaping Light, and no matter how much she wished Sterling could help, he couldn't. One Ghost for every Guardian, and they could only heal that Guardian. Sterling could do nothing and Skylar… all she could do was watch and stroke his face as she rested his head on her legs. Every breath he sucked in sounded like it hurt and even though she knew – knew it wouldn't help, she still pressed a hand against the gaping tear in his chest, where the black fluid that was exo blood poured between the spaces in her fingers, sparks snapping at her. There was nothing she could do.

She wondered if this was what it had felt like for him when he'd held her on that roof during the Red War. Held her like he could keep her tethered to this reality.

She was certainly doing that now. The tears that trailed down her face wouldn't stop, unhindered by the helmet she'd thrown off now that they were alone. One splashed onto his metal check and slid to the side, drawing his haggard attention again.

"H-hey st-op that-t," he shuddered, his hand twitching at his side, half lifting before it smashed to the ground again. "This isn-t your fault, S-ky. Th-is is on me." He breathed out in a heavy gasping sound, more sparks jumping from his chest, Sterling chirping as he hovered closer. Anger flashed through her, heavy and wet with grief, but still there.

"I'm your partner. You were supposed to wait! Stupid… I can't..." Her fingers curled slightly on the side of his face as she shook her head. "Please… don't leave me here." She knew he would. She was amazed he was even still there with the amount of damage there was. Even if there was an Exo medic right there it was unlikely they could help.

Something touched her cheek, and with her gaze so focused on his eyes - his comet-colored eyes - she nearly jumped out of her skin. Leather clad fingers wiped at a line of saltwater, shivering with the effort as it did so. She reached a hand up and covered it, pressing her face into his palm more.

"I'll never-r leav-ve you Skyla. Even-n after the s-un di-" A ragged jerking cough bit his all too common words to her but different. A goodbye. She tried to smile, but it failed miserably so instead brushed her thumb under one of his eyes.

"I love you," she whispered back, "I will always love you." It felt like she was being strangled with each word, but she had to tell him one more time. At least one more time. "Even after every comet in the sky falls." He would always be her comet, always.

Fingers twitched under her hand, a tremor running through them hard enough to make it difficult to hold onto the appendage. But she did – she held on like her own life depended on it.

"Make m-me proud, Sky – Live – and Neve-r regret anything. If the Tr-aveler is kind then-" Another cough and Sky makes herself not look away when blood sprinkles her face. It seems to disorient him because Skylar never gets the rest of that sentence, instead he changes topics like he's drunk out of his mind. "Tel-l the guys… tell them that the V-vanguard was the best bet I… I ever lost..." His hand went still, the tremor gone, and Skylar flinched as it slipped away from her own, landing with a thud onto the battered ground, the sound reverting through her.

She stared, completely and utterly frozen.

No. No, no, no – PLEASE. Please move, speak, breathe, ANYTHING. Not yet… she wasn't – she wasn't ready for this.

She never would be.

His eyes, unlit and cooling, stared up at her in a way that wrenched the sob she'd held back from her chest. Leaning forward, she gathered him up and pulled him closer into her lap, clenching her hands into his soaked, reinforced hoodie. The same hoodie she'd been dancing around in that morning. She'd made him chase her around the rooms they shared to get it back, and he'd been laughing.

Laughing.

She'd never hear that again.

"Cayde..." She didn't expect an answer, knew she'd never get one, but still tried over and over again, even as the Queen's Wrath came running into the room and froze. She'd lost Tevis. Then Winter and Tristan. Then Will and Cassidy. Now this… Why couldn't she save anyone she cared about? She was a god slayer, but now a hero made lame and useless every time it mattered.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, didn't care to do either. Two years. They'd had two years together. Too short, but long enough to have always expected him to be there. She didn't know how to process that. Didn't know what the world was supposed to look like without him in it. She didn't even realize she was screaming, the sound unrecognizable to her own ears till her throat started to burn. Skylar didn't bother to try and muffle it either. Instead, she pressed her face against the less broken side of his own and cried harder than she ever had in her five years of life. Something was breaking, something important had been ripped from her and her howling cries were the only way she could express that pain, even a little.

Cayde.

The man she loved was dead.

The bright comet that had always led her home was gone.