Those who drift away from the shore often find themselves lost and alone in the waves
Drifter is many things and has many titles: rogue lightbearer, creator of Gambit, Dredgen, and very, very old. He had lost track over the centuries the exact number of years he had been alive. Well, resurrected. As far know he was aware the only Guardians that could possibly be older than him was Lord Saladin and Lady Efrideet. Then again they only spoke of the warlord's fall from power, and Drifter had seen their rise from ashes. It was not often when the Drifter felt this age-the little light ever bright by his side kept his body in its prime. Oh, but how he ever felt in now. The ache in he found in every movement, The pain in his lower back from resting on the railing to long, the throbbing in his feet from standing all day, the gravelly texture to his throat from commentating, and an exhaustion that seemed to go beyond that of a hard day's work.
With the combination of soul shaking nightmares and caffeine deliberately consumed to keep them at bay, sleep was out of the question. The bags under his eyes may be heavy enough to make Emperor Callus blush, but in no way were they a match for his highly trained eyelids. No, he would not sleep. Rest however, rest sounded nice. A little moment to just be alone sounded perfect. No Gambit to oversee, no Guardians whining about their unfortunate engram, no primevals on the loose, just him and the quiet. Besides, it was night and most Guardians were either out on patrol or asleep in their beds.
With the decision justified in his mind Drifter moved away from the red railing platform and moved next to the bank he had set up in the Tower. Black tendrils danced like fire from the base of the glass and a pillar of light stood ever fading in the center. He crouched down to its base, his knees making it very aware they protested this action, and revealed a small control pad. Scrolling through a few menus he eventually found the transmat controls he had installed in it and punched in the coordinates to his pride and joy. He swiftly followed it, instructing his ghost to take them away.
The Derelict was an old ship, older than him even, but it was invaluable. Through it he was able to escape the reach of the Traveler and venture into the stars. He left behind the world ravaged and baren by the collapse for an endless universe. He fled from fearful tribes of humans who would hunt him as a monster and became a survivor none could compare to. Many had walked this ship before, friends, enemies, and even a lover or two. He had once had a crew aboard with him, all of them pitching in to keep it in tip top shape. Now, he was alone. Alive, but utterly alone.
Time had changed everything: Earth now held a bastion of civilization, the risen were now heralded as heroes, the Traveler had reawoken, the Darkness had been pushed back. But where the people as a whole had prospered, he had lost: His crew was dead, all of his friends had died, his ghost now shunned him, the truth was so painful now that all he ever bring himself to speak was deceit.
He walked the halls of the ship to where he had made the captain's quarters. The room was fairly sizable, fully stocked with a bathroom, kitchen, workspace, bed, and dining table. The metal grates of the floor were replaced with dirty, but beautiful carpets scavenged from here and there. The Drifter stopped just passed the entrance and carefully removed his boots, placing them besides the entrance. As he continued in the room he removed more of his outfit until only his pants and green undershirt remained. He placed each article of clothing, cloth of fabric, and weapon in there respective places in his room. Scratching his now freed black hair he looked about the room and found his eyes falling upon the kitchen. Typically he only ever ate from the Tower's mess hall to keep hunger at bay, but cooking was relaxing and he still enjoyed the taste of food.
Moving quickly, he opened various drawers and cupboards, not finding a single scrap. He cursed softly and contemplated simply not eating, but he decided against it. His body protested his refusal to rest, and he knew without food it would only get worse. The Drifter moved back to the entrance of his cabin, retrieving his shoes, and had his ghost take him back down to the surface. The red eyed machine made a gesture of discontent at having to transmit the Guardian again after just getting back.
Once back in the Tower, he walked through its many plaza's and corridors until he came upon a set of elevators. He called one up, and proceed to sit on a nearby bench to wait. After a minute of waiting the door finally opened and two figures stood in it. The two of them walked briskly passed, both donned in a blue uniform and hat, most likely the night shift. As quickly as its previous occupants exited Drifter entered. The elevator was utilitarian, no decoration or design at all, simply four metal walls with a series of buttons near the door. Drifter pressed the one leading to the ground floor. As the elevator went down, he found himself occasionally slowed in his journey by other passengers also wishing to descend.
Drifter glanced around all of these people and found himself in quiet reflection. None of these people likely knew what he was, with no armor or ghost to be seen he looked nothing like a risen except for his scars. His ego slightly itched at his mind, telling him to summon his ghost so the crowded elevator would look upon him with awe, respect, and shower him with praise. The people of the city looked up to the risen, or Guardians as they called them. It was so different from the days of yore, when the resurrected dead were looked upon with abject fear and horror. That look of fear would probably still paint their faces if they knew what he had done. Drifter, in a rare moment, thanked the cosmos that his deeds did not paint his skin aside from his scars.
The elevator ride came to a final stop at the ground level, it's white walls and floors had decorations depicting various risen triumphs of insignia. The crowd departed and scattered about, most of them leaving the entrance to the Tower into a parking lot. At this moment, Drifter had a realization: he had no clue how to get to a shopping district. A scowl painted his face, cursing his lack of foresight. He looked about the ground floor of the Tower and found a desk in the center of it. Stationed in it, an exo receptionist donned in a blue robe was silently typing away at a terminal. He walked up to the desk and cleared his throat to get the receptionist's attention.
"Hey there partner, now this may sound a little weird but could you point me to-" The Drifter began, a smooth confidence coating his gravelly voice before he found himself interrupted
"-You are a Guardian I take it?" The exo had a very heavy robotic tone to it's synthesized voice.
The Drifter gawked- very few people had the bravado to talk over him and it threw him off briefly. "What-uhh, yes I am. What gave it away?"
"You looked out of place with the rest of the crowd in the elevator given your lack a uniform. The only group in the Tower with clothes like yours are Guardians wanting to explore the city. Now then, I'm going to go on a limb and say you were going to ask for help in some manner when it comes to navigating yourself around this place" The exo spoke in an analytical and manner of fact tone, which made sense. Working where the Vanguard had relocated the exo had needed to be straight to the point so he could help the various authorities or VIPs when they decided to pay a visit.
The Drifter composed himself quickly and responded with his usual facade of cool. "Spot on. Now then, what I'm looking for is a place where I can get some grub. Don't want no restaurants or what-like, I'm looking for ingredients to cook."
The Exo reached into a nearby drawer and pulled out a small white earpiece and extended it to Drifter. "This is a phonto, it's got a built in holo projector to it that's connected extranet and doubles as a communication device. Vanguard gives us these to loan out to Guardians so they can explore the city. I'm going to need you to give this back when your done with it, it's got transmat coordinates in..."
Over the next 15 minutes the Exo, Qin-8 as the Drifter had come to learn, educated Drifter on how to operate the device and how to navigate through the city with it. Drifter thanked him for the device, and promised to return it. He quickly exited the Tower into the parking lot, where the bright lights of the city and the sounds of nearby traffic filled his senses. He found himself musing over the city. Every vehicle hastily transported about it's passengers, so unlike in the early dark age where most of his travel was done on foot. Once upon a time the sound of a vehicle terrified him, often preluding a group of nomads or bandits coming by to kill and raid him for what little materials he had. All the flashing lights reminded him of machines on the brink of malfunction. Such lights were once a preamble to a heating unit malfunctioning and exploding, killing him then leaving him to die again of the cold.
Drifter snapped out of his revelry opened up the phonto's menu, opening maps and web browsers to find nearby locations offering up the goods he was searching for. Faster than he thought he found an unexpectedly close bazaar offering fresh ingredients. With his destination in mind Drifter hailed an automated cab and input his destination to the controls. The drive took a total of about ten minutes. In that time the Drifter found himself looking in awe at the city, the expanse and grandness of it all was a visual overload. Even in sections where ruin and rubble was still being cleared he saw hordes of people milling about. There was so much and so many people.
The cab pulled off to the side and dropped him off at the bazaar. Drifter exited the vehicle after inputting an appropriate amount of glimmer to pay for the transaction. Looking at the bazaar was like looking into the city, an endless expanse of people milling about despite the late hour and colorful adverts painting the walkway. Every stall had multiple staff, all working together to make transactions with many customers simultaneously all while maintaining their product.
As the Drifter walked about and purchased his ingredients the reflective thoughts so plaguing his tired mind today resurfaced. There were so many people scattered about the bazaar, so unlike when he walked the Earth last. In the dark ages the largest groups were tribes consisting of at max a few hundred members. Never could a crowd like this be found, a lack of resources making it hard to care for such high numbers. Drifter looked about each person he crossed and thought about them. They all probably had friends and family at home, people that cared for them. Who did the Drifter have?
Drifter paid for his groceries, the glimmer he had accumulated from his adventures finding a home in the hands of others. With his goods in hand Drifter quickly navigated to a nearby alley and transmatted back to his ship. Due to safety reasons transmatting was not allowed inside the city with few exceptions, but right now he did not care. All the people constantly surrounding him filled his heart with anxiety and panic. There were too many sights, too many sounds, too many people. He needed to leave and get back to the Derelict.
His thoughts raced in an anxiety rushed state, jumbled and never completing themselves. Drifter tried to walk back to his quarters but found himself slowing down and crouching eventually needing to stop. Panic overrode his mind and he found himself almost paralyzed by his own thoughts. He stayed there for what felt like hours, not moving and hyperventilating all while his mind fell into a panic attack.
When he finally got his bearings back the Drifter stood to his feet and finished the walk to his quarters. Once inside he again discarded his boots. Moving with a foriegn but practiced ease the Drifter put away his goods in their respective cupboards and fridge space. He donned on a large apron he once bought on a bet he lost and set about making his meal. It was such a basic task to his mind. This was not his first foray into cooking. He had always had a natural talent for cooking. His body maintained a trained grace while performing the deed, and it was so easy to him. He wondered if he had been a chef in his previous life?
The meal was simple but good, a vegetable soup with rice and a large grilled pork chop served with a glass of apple cider. It brought him such pride to create the food. The vegetable soup despite it's simple parts had a subtle complexity to its taste. Pork chops were infamous for being dry when cooked but the one that found itself upon his plate was moist and bursting with flavor. Even the rice was delicious, light, fluffy, and seasoned with a small bit of butter. The apple cider, while out of place, was a drink of choice for the Drifter, apples were a delicacy to him and to have one distilled into a drink was heaven.
He looked about the room, eager to share his pride with his crew, but there were none, not anymore. The confident smile was whisked away from the Drifter's face for a somber expression. There had been on one for quite some time, the last one had been Orin and she had all but disappeared. Everyone he had when he was alive had either died before his eyes, or just up and left. He had no one. The Drifter was a con man, a master of underhanded deals and politics. He was so good he was able to play the Shadows of Yor like a goddamn fiddle. But of all of the alliances he had, the partners he made, he had no trust among them. With no trust to be found in his life the Drifter found himself alone.
He set about eating his meal, now with less joy in his heart than mere moments ago. As he ate, memories began to surface in his mind. Drifter remembered times when hunger so pained his stomach and body that all he could do was die, be resurrected, and die, be resurrected…a vicious cycle. The thought of death brought his mind to a dark place. Death at the hands of others he could cope. Being shot in the back by a vandel was merely an occupational hazard. Having a thrall claw out your eyes was bound to happen when you were dealing with the Thorn. A Cabal ripping a man in half was normal. None of the ways that he had been killed ever fazed him, it was the cruel hands of nature that left him terrified.
Nature was the one to blame when you could not eat because no food would grow. The cold, which had frozen him to death more times than he cared to count, was a part of nature. It was uncaring, it was cruel. So many times the Drifter had died, and so many times it had been because nature did not nurture him. His ghost may have made it so his body was forever in its prime, and that his mind always had its faculties, but it was never enough. It did not matter that he had killed hundreds of Taken, thousands of Cabal, hundreds of thousands of Fallen, or even millions of Hive. He could always be killed by the negligent hand of nature. He was weak.
Drifter finished his meal. He put away his leftovers with a movement more akin the machines of the Vex than the joyful grace he had when he started. His mind was elsewhere, deep in a dark abyss of sadness, too mournful to think of the tasks in front of him. When he finished, Drifter moved back to the table with a refilled glass of cider, this time mixed with a dose of alcohol saved for times like this.
The Drifter drank as he wallowed in sadness over the poor circumstances of his resurrected life. He had lived longer than any other Guardian, he might even be the oldest creature in the Sol system with Riven now gone. His long life had made him see so much, and feel even more. He had loved and lost beyond what any widow could claim. The starvation he had experienced was greater than any city-born street rat could have imagined. The cold had frozen him so much not even the dead awoken in the belt of Saturn would understand. He had been boiled and baked alive by stars on distant planets. He had so many friends and had lost even more.
Drifter had lost so much, and the Drifter was utterly alone.
It was all too much, he tried to stop them but tears began to stream down his face. It started as a quiet sniffle but grew into a raw and ugly wail of pain. The more he tried to bottle up the pain the more he sobbed. There was so much pain and hurt in his heart and it was all pouring out now, the dam had broken and he could not fix it now. He cried for his dead friends, his lost happiness, his shattered and broken trust. The Drifter cried for himself. As he wept, he felt his loneliness become accentuated. If only he had someone to talk to, someone to share his pain, but he had no one.
All of a sudden he felt a tap on his hand. Startled, Drifter looked at to what it was. There above his hand, was a machine with a single red eye and a black shell with brown and green decorations. It was his ghost. The red light stayed floating next to the hand it had touched for a moment before moving closer. It hovered in front of his face, staring at him, emotionless. It looked away from him, adopting a mournful look.
"I'm sorry."
The Drifter's ghost was not one of many words, yet it told more lies than him. In this moment however, it spoke with a brutal honesty. It was shocking. She put him through so much, it was her choice that allowed him to live again, and she was apologizing for it.
She went to speak again but the Drifter shushed her. Gently, he grabbed her in his hand. The tears were still flowing from his eyes, but he had managed to contain his wails. Drifter moved the two of them to his bed. He got under his blanket and laid on his side. He placed the ghost in the crook of his neck, her shell was uncomfortable, but what it represented was more important. He was not alone.
Next morning, Drifter woke up with an imprint on his neck of where the little red light had slept with him.
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