Note: This was supposed to be a one-shot, and then I was like 'oh this is getting long, I'll split it into two parts' and now there's two parts and it's not even over. Why do I do this to myself?
Every inhale I take, swallows the ocean whole, and I am one
With the hurricane, tall as the tide that laps with a rabid tongue
With every exhale, I break you down with a fury, I lay the hills undone
Like a dog gone untamed, bellowing out a river from my lungs
Notos – The Oh Hellos
?
Jove awoke disoriented. Had the fire gone out? He tried to sit up, only to find himself tangled in the blankets.
"Shush," a voice said. There was a hand on his shoulder. "We're hiding from the Fallen. You and your friends got caught in the crossfire yesterday. It's still about four hours until dawn."
The day's events came rushing back. Azra was crouched over him. "I'm sorry, we have to move," she said urgently.
"The Fallen found us?" Jove began frantically worming his way out of the sleeping bag. Azra's Ghost transmatted it away. The sudden shock of cold air brought Jove the rest of the way to consciousness.
"No," she said. "The wind's changed."
"The wind? What?"
She was frowning. "It doesn't storm around here, but… it's going to. Smell that." She took a deep inhale through her nose. Jove did the same. He thought he could smell the difference. "I don't know where all this moisture is coming from, but it's going to rain. We're in danger of a flash flood. Not a pleasant way to die."
"So, we're…"
"Still hiding from the Fallen." Azra brushed off her hands and stood up. "But we need higher ground."
Jove had finally managed to get to his feet. "How long do we have?"
"Honestly?" Azra tilted her head again, peeing up at the sky. "I have no idea."
That wasn't comforting.
The wind slowly got more violent as Azra and Jove picked their way through the trees. Azra didn't slow pace for a second, even as Jove stumbled on rocks and tree roots he couldn't see. She just hauled him upright and set off again.
The rain hit all at once. It was just windy one moment, then there was a peal of thunder. The first raindrops began to hit a few seconds after that. A minute later, they were in a deluge. Jove was immediately soaked down to the bone. Azra never faltered, forging on. She was just a blur in Jove's vision.
He stumbled after her, scared of being left behind. He was very disoriented. He quickly lost track of time in the endless rain and wind. Had it been minutes? An hour? "We need to stop!" Jove shouted over the downpour.
"There's some kind of structure a klick uphill! Just fifteen minutes!" Azra shouted back.
"I'm wet!"
"Can't get any more wet!"
But the dangers of the storm were making themselves known. The trees weren't used to this kind of weather, Jove supposed. Leaves and sticks were whipped through the air by the high winds. The ground was slick. Thunder boomed overhead. He had to bend double sometimes to keep from being pushed off his path from the force of the wind and rain.
Azra pulled them up short of a clearing, pointing through the rain. Jove could barely make out the pale shape of a broken-down building through the torrent. It was at least a hundred meters away across the open space.
Jove's fingers tingled with excitement. He was very ready to be out of this wet, windy hellscape. The clouds rumbled in agreement.
"We'll have to make a run for it," Azra said through gritted teeth. "The clearing goes all the way around. No cover."
The hairs on Jove's arms were standing on end. Anticipation? "Let's go, then! No use in waiting, right?"
"… Right," the Hunter muttered. "It's just… something's got me-"
A crack of lightning made both her and Jove jump. The Warlock didn't need any more encouragement to go.
He thought the rain couldn't be any worse, but without tree cover it came down almost painfully hard. His legs pumped, his breath whooshed, the hairs on the back of his neck raised-
There was something blinding, and earth-shattering noise-
The next thing Jove was aware of was pain.
Not the calm of death or the comfort of life unhurt, but the messy reality in between- living, but hurt. Dying, but not yet dead.
Someone was yelling.
"Jove! Jove! You have to stop!"
He didn't know how to stop, how to start. There was just the pain, the undeniable, unignorable pain and the force of the rain driving into his back.
The pain was energy, he realized. He could hear the crackling, in a detached way. All of his normal senses dimmed in comparison to this new experience. It was just power, overwhelming him, forcing everything else away in its endless tide.
There were hands on him, on his shoulders. How they didn't disintegrate, how the very ground beneath his knees didn't evaporate under the force of this power, he didn't know. Everything should be ash.
"Breathe," the voice commanded. "If you hold your breath you're going to pass out. Breathe."
Jove tried, he really did. His mortal lungs didn't want to obey. He coughed.
"God dammit." The hands grabbed him by the armpits. "I have the worst luck I swear to God, why does this always happen to me, everything has to go bottoms-up during a fucking once-in-a-century thunderstorm deep in the middle of a Fallen turf war-"
The voice kept going. It was something comfortable to follow, a rambling train of thought that never quite reached a conclusion. Jove realized he was being dragged over uneven ground.
Then they were inside. The crackling electricity seemed so much louder out of the rain. Jove curled up on himself.
"Jove, you- OW!" The hands disappeared. "You need to calm down. Breathe steady."
He was crying. Sobbing, more like it, great gasps of air that filled his lungs too much but the crushing in-between of holding his breath seemed so much like death.
"Where the fuck is your Ghost? Sharps? Sharps!"
"Right here," Sharps said. "I… I don't know what to do."
"He's going to burn himself out, or drive himself crazy, or… I don't know!" Hadn't that already happened? The crazy part. He was so, so small, and at the same time so vast, so removed- this couldn't be sanity.
His Ghost spoke more. "If I could help, I would! This- I've never seen this before from him! Can't you do anything?"
"I'm not a Warlock! How am I supposed to-"
A tense moment of silence.
"I'm a Guardian. And nobody knows the Arc like I do. I can- I can try, right?"
Jove couldn't sense her presence. He couldn't see her, or even really feel the hand she put on his back. But he could hear her, so when she asked something to that effect- the words floated away but their meaning was left, Jove tried to nod.
"I'm trying to help you, alright? You need to relax." Relax? How could he? If he stopped fighting for a moment, he'd be swept away, drowned, incinerated, swallowed up. It was all he could do just to keep his grip. His inevitable doom was roiling towards him like the flash flood Azra had promised, but it wasn't here yet, if he could beat this...
"Listen, this… isn't something you can fight. It's not like if you fight it, you'll lose, it's… fighting it doesn't work. If you could stop it and hold it, it wouldn't be Arc." Was this Arc, then? His Ghost had spoken of it before, but it was nothing like he'd described. Electricity surged through him and he felt so thin, so used up compared to it.
"Breathe. Alright? Let's just do that for right now. Breathe. In. Out." Jove gulped at the air like a dying man. He tried to slow his breath, but that left him gasping in, holding, and coughing out. Pain in his lungs made it though the screaming voice of the power. He was going to die. He was going to die for real.
"Smooooth," the Guardian's voice drawled. "Like… no, okay, like filling up a cooking pot. You can't splash it in. You gotta pour. Iiiiiiiiiin." Jove tried. He had no idea if there was improvement.
"And pour it out just as slow. Oooouuuut. Iiiiiiiin. Oouut. Like that. With me. In. Out."
The electricity, the Arc, boiled up around him. He gasped. The whipcrack of the Hunter's voice held him down. "Don't stop. In. Out. Jove, you're trying to hold on. You can't hold on. Let it go." He couldn't. He just couldn't. If he plunged himself into the power now, he'd never come back.
"We found you by a river. You ever stood in one? Gone swimming?" He had, he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't feel his lips. The Hunter just rambled on. "You're out in the main channel now, kid, and you can't stand up. I don't think- you're not equipped to swim, yet. So you gotta let go of the current. Take a step towards shore." What was shore in this metaphor? And how was he supposed to go there? How was that supposed to help?
"Focus on me, alright? And keep breathing. And think about that cooking pot, maybe. You don't need to fill it up as full. Maybe only two-thirds, yeah? In. Out. Flatten out your hands. Palms on the floor." Jove fumbled and found his fingers. He uncurled them from the fists they'd been in.
"Good!" She sounded genuinely excited. "Keep breathing. Can you feel your elbows?" A hand touched his right one, which he let bend. "Focus on me. On here."
He grasped what she was trying to do with sudden clarity. The crackling power was dimmer in his mind now. Shifting his attention away from it didn't make it rise up to drown him, it made it buzz weaker. Like how every step towards the riverbank would make it easier to stand.
He focused every ounce of will he had towards unclenching his jaw and relaxing his shoulders, and instead of the Arc overwhelming him, it faded away. He opened his eyes and saw dirt-encrusted tiles. The dirt was turning into mud where he dripped rainwater on it. Everything was lit by a glow too blueish to be his Ghost's flashlight.
He turned his head up and looked at the Hunter. Her eyes were that exact unnerving shade of blue-white. It seemed to wipe all expression from her face, turning her into some shining-eyed alien statue.
"There you go," she soothed, still looking not quite human. "Just relax. You're safe. Kind of."
Jove forced himself to sit. Sparks still played up and down his arms. He could barely feel them. He pushed the Arc further away and they died.
The glow faded, too, and the woman slumped in relief against the opposite wall. She looked… well, like a mess. She was sopping wet, hair sticking up in clumps, face absolutely haggard now it wasn't washed in neon light. "You scared me," she said, sounding suddenly weak.
"You saved my life," Jove croaked. "Twice. You've saved my life twice now."
An unidentifiable expression moved across her features. "Don't get all… all reverent about it," she protested. "We're not out of this yet. There's a million ways to die before sunrise."
There was a minute of silence. Jove's breathing was too loud in his ears. He tried to distract himself by taking in his surroundings.
The two Guardians were in a partially-collapsed hallway. One wall leaned against the other, leaving not quite enough room to stand at the tallest end. The tiles used to be white at one point. You could see the original finish glimmering through the dust and dirt where there were drag marks. The place was dry, though, and warm enough that Jove wasn't shivering. One end of the hallway was open to the elements. The other lead off into darkness.
The Hunter was so hesitant it was funny. "You… good? Doing alright?" She sounded afraid, like he'd shatter at the lightest touch.
"I don't know," Jove answered truthfully.
There was a longer silence. Jove tried, he really did, but he couldn't stop the tears from welling in his eyes. He'd been so scared. Radomir would know what to say, Alekto would fuss over him, but neither of them were here. He'd almost died, gone right over the edge, and was there anyone even around to care about it?
He expected sass from the Hunter, maybe some brusque dismissal, but she was gentle. "Are you the type that wants me to ignore this, or…" she trailed off awkwardly.
"I-" Jove started. He should say yes. But he couldn't.
"Alright," the Hunter said blandly. Her tone brokered no argument. She stood up, dusted herself off, and for a horrible second Jove thought she was going to walk out into the rain and leave him-
But she just shuffled across the hallway and moved to sit beside the Warlock, close enough to touch. "You're gonna be fine," she soothed. "Nothing's gonna happen to you."
(It fell flat. It seemed she was a terrible liar.)
"You don't know," Jove said. He hated how wobbly his voice was.
"I don't know a lot about Stormcallers," she admitted. "As far as I understand, they're usually old? They're a lot less common than Voidwalkers or Sunsingers. I don't think I've ever heard of a Kinderguardian calling Arc storms."
Like that made him feel any better. "I'm just a weirdo, then," he said bitterly.
"I know how that feels," she said. "I really do."
"You're not weird," Jove protested. She was competent and keen-eyed and in control of everything. Everything he thought a Guardian was supposed to be. "You… you're so-"
"I'm the only Arcstrider currently living," she explained. "Never met another, probably never will. Every other Hunter looks at the Arc differently than I do. Always been that way. I'm very weird."
She held out her hands and lightning played in them. "Nobody's ever going to quite get me, you know?" Jove heard the wistfulness in her tone. Her face was pensive in the Arc-light. "It's all new. I've had to learn everything on my own."
She clenched her fists and the sparks died instantly. "That made me strong," she said, with steel in her voice this time. She looked straight at Jove, and he could see the fire in her eyes. "It's a good thing. And this… this is a good thing, too."
"I don't want to be different," Jove protested. He just wanted to go home. To have a home.
She shook her head. "Our differences make us stronger in the whole. That's what sets us apart from the Fallen and the Vex and all the rest of them. When we are different, even when that difference might be considered a weakness, we celebrate it. Or at least we don't try to smother it."
She frowned. "At least most of the time."
"You don't say that like it's true," Jove muttered.
"I can't promise you it'll be perfect," she said. "I can't promise you anything. I can't promise, even, that both of us will live through the night. It might suck. But what I can say is that this," she took his hand, thumbs pressing into his palm so hard he could feel the Arc in his bones, "Everything good sucks once in a while. This is an opportunity. Take it, waste it, whatever. I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. But this is not a curse."
And Jove believed her. She had such conviction. His Ghost appeared to rest on his shoulder, a silent affirmation that he'd always have someone on his side.
Outside, the rain stopped.
Azra looked utterly stupefied. It was funny- she went from tired, but determined and warm, to eye-bulging confusion in a heartbeat.
She scrambled for the gaping hole in the wall. Jove followed.
Together, the two of them stood under the open sky. The grass was wet, and though the sound of rainfall still pattered in the trees, no drops fell on Jove's upturned face.
The wind tossed the branches this way and that, then stilled. The clouds dissipated above them. Jove saw a star peek through, then two, then suddenly he was staring up at the scattered constellations and the black infinity between them.
"If the storm was weird," the Hunter muttered, "I don't have words for this."
"I'm sorry, I haven't seen it rain, really- is that not how it always happens?" Jove asked.
"No," Azra said. "Very no. It should take hours for something like that to clear up." She reached upwards, cupping her hand like she could catch the stars between her fingers.
"Why did it happen, then? How did it happen?" Jove's mind was racing, trying to piece together the puzzle.
"I have some guesses," Azra muttered. "But it's nothing good. Must be why House Winter is so interested in this area."
"Could we track it?" Jove asked. "Find the epicenter. Is it just the side effect of something else? Or maybe it's terraforming equipment gone haywire, or-"
Azra interrupted. "We're not chasing that."
Jove had the lead of excitement now. Imagine if they could bring down storms like that on the Fallen whenever the wanted. "This could be life-changing! This technology could be really important."
"Yeah, but we'd die," she said casually. "We need to move. This is the only solid cover in twenty kilometers."
"So we should stay here in case the storm comes back," Jove said.
"So we need to leave, because if I were looking for a group of Guardians, and I knew a bad storm had just happened, this would be the first place I'd look." She held out a hand for her Ghost. The small machine projected a dim map into the air, which the Hunter proceeded to scowl at.
"We're going to have to," she muttered to the still air. "If they're looking for us- yeah, but that's a big gamble. We shook them, but they were after us."
"Who are you talking to?" Jove ventured to ask.
"My Ghost." She put her hand down and the small machine disappeared. "The only way we'd be safe here is if they've given up the search, more concerned with whatever it is they're fighting over. House Winter, I'd take that bet, but Devils is trying to defend the area and they'd be on the lookout for sure. If not for us than for raiding parties. So no question, we have to move."
"But if it starts raining again…" If this was the only good cover for miles, they would be stuck out in the storm again.
"Planning on it," Azra said. "So we move fast. And we get the heck out of here before they catch up."
The Sparrow reappeared in a flash of light. The Hunter flicked a few buttons on the display. "The night's cracked anyway. We're booking it straight north. Only chance is to hit the cover of the mountains. The foliage is thick enough there to hide our heat. Hopefully far enough away to get out of whatever weather madness is happening here. Then we find the Indus, wait 'till it's daybreak, then take it south to our rendezvous."
She tossed Jove the extra helmet, finally making eye contact. "Coming with?"
TYPE: LIVE COMBAT FEED
PARTIES: Two [2]. One [1] Guardian-type, Class Warlock, designate Jove [j]; One [1] Guardian-type, Class Hunter, designate Azra Jax [aj]
ASSOCIATIONS: Jax, Azra; Jove; Kabul Exclusion Zone; the Last City; Stormcallers
/AUDIO UNAVAILABLE/
/TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS.../
[j:01]: I have another question.
[aj:01]: Shoot.
[j:02]: How did you know I was a Warlock?
[aj:02]: It's really tempting to make jokes, here.
[j:03]: I'm confused enough as it is.
[aj:03]: Fine. Your friend Alekto told me. Even if she hadn't, I could smell it on you.
[j:04]: Warlocks smell like things?
[aj:04]: Not literally. It's a metaphor. For like… instinct. All the little things you don't pick up with your normal senses. You hold yourself like a Warlock.
[j:05]: And how do Warlocks hold themselves?
[aj:05]: Like the Light's never going to let you down. Like the ground is always going to be stable. Drenched in confidence.
[j:06]: I wouldn't say I'm confident.
[aj:06]: It's the little things. I'm not sure how else to explain.
[j:07]: I'm not sure if I can tell what about you is you being a Hunter and what is you being an experienced Guardian.
[aj:07]: I'm not sure where to start with that.
[j:08]: Can you tell right away when someone's Raised what they'll be?
[aj:08]: Sometimes. Could with me.
[j:09]: I can't imagine you being Risen for the first time.
[aj:09]: [Laughter]
[j:10]: What makes you a Hunter though, and me a Warlock?
[aj:10]: What makes you you and me me?
[j:11]: Am I supposed to have an answer for that? I don't know.
[aj:11]: Well, that's it. Nobody knows.
[j:12]: You're lying.
[aj:12]: What?
[j:13]: You're an absolutely horrific liar. You know. Or you think you know.
[Silence]
[aj:13]: You're an insightful one.
[j:14]: I… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be that pushy.
[aj:14]: Seems only fair.
[aj:15]: You got all the obvious things, like Hunters live in the wilds, Warlocks like libraries, Hunters… well, hunt, poke our noses into things, Warlocks research and go after things deliberately.
[aj:16]: But those are all actions. Things that you do. They're not things that you are. That's the important bit.
[j:15]: Explain?
[aj:17]: Well, out here at least, to live… not just survive, you understand, but to live, you can't just do things. You gotta be things. Shooting quick only works once. Being a quick shot is more dependable.
[j:16]: I'm afraid I don't understand.
[aj:18]: Like you. You're curious, right? It makes you ask questions. But it's not the questions who you are, and it ain't the questions that'll lead you through the tough times. It's the curiosity. You can't focus on the actions, just the habits that spawn them. That's the only thing that'll hold up under pressure.
[j:17]: So your logic is that you are a Hunter… because you're a Hunter.
[aj:19]: When you put it like that…
[j:18]: Is it all just stereotype, then? Is nothing fundamental? What happens to those who blur the boundaries?
[aj:20]: It's not concrete like that, Jove. I'm a Hunter because I decided I was. I wanted to be this. I'm sure if I sat down and mediated and studied, I could pull a Stormtrance. But I don't want to.
[aj:21]: And you don't want to get the experience necessary to pull a Staff. Or the Blades, as it were.
[j:19]: How do you know I don't?
[aj:22]: Tonight? It's been nothing. There is little peace out here.
[j:20]: You don't sound happy about that.
[aj:23]: I'll live for the excitement, but sometimes I want to go a few weeks without being blown up or stabbed.
[j:21]: How do you know that you're supposed to be out here?
[aj:24]: The person I have to be to live in the City... she feels fake. It feels untrue to everything else I've learned about this world. Those habits feel unnatural, they always have. And even if I could choose, if I could shut off those parts of my brain that don't let me fit in… how could I want to, after seeing this?
[Silence]
[j:22]: They're just stars to me.
[aj:25]: Maybe that's the difference. 'Cause like, Traveler, is there anything more precious?
[j:23]: I can think of a few things.
[Silence]
[j:24]: Are you okay?
[aj:26]: Yeah. Get your sleep. Sunrise is in ninety minutes.
