Author's Note: I'm still here revising. Don't mind me. But can I just say, revising this story has made me really miss some of the places in Destiny 1… Bungie, can we please go back to the moon?

Duncan did see Bailey again the next day. And the so many of the days after, as often as he was able, until weeks found a way to become months and all of those months stacked up to amount to something more than a year. He'd find excuses to accompany her to the library and to the archives, to the Crucible and along on her patrols. Even those patrols her Vanguard saw fit to assign for her tardiness or on those days she spent too long reading. They returned often to the bar where they first met to sit at the same table where they'd shared their first drink. Duncan took Bailey to the City, to the old Ishtar library on Venus, and to the Reef. He took her everywhere she'd let him.

He was nearing subconscious in his searching, always, for new reasons to see her until it became evident how perfectly the pieces of his life might fit right alongside all the pieces of hers. They were good together; Bailey for all of the ways she found to add a little bit of whimsy to the monotony and the structure of the Hunter's life and Duncan for how deeply, how utterly he cherished her.

He reckoned he'd never been in love before he met Bailey. Not really, anyway. Everything he'd ever known how to feel from before paled in comparison to these new feelings he harbored for this bright, spunky Warlock with a face like an angel but a temper like a Hydra. They weren't as volatile in their relationship as Kellin was in most of his; Duncan was the calm to Bailey's storm, but for every point on which they disagreed, the Hunter always managed to find a way to make things up to his Warlock.

If his love was likened to a storm then Duncan felt for Bailey like a hurricane; all force and spirit and intensity. It was like poetry, though Duncan had never really found a way with words. He couldn't imagine what his life would have amounted to, all his years in the Traveler's service, if he'd never followed after her into the Crucible that fated afternoon. Or if she hadn't wandered down to his Fireteam's bay of the hangar to demand he make good of his promise to buy her a drink.

A lot of things had changed, of course, over the many months he'd gotten to know Bailey. Kellin had been through three ladies before realizing his place was beside Reyka, the Hunter of Bailey's Fireteam. And while out patrolling through the former Ishtar Academy, Amri had found an entirely new sort of Guardian to take under his wing; a Hunter named Ashari, or Ash, as she preferred for them to call her.

They'd lost Karina-16, the other Warlock from Bailey's Fireteam, in the time that passed them all by.

The Tower had extinguished the threat of Crota under Eris Morn's patient watch and had turned their focus on Skolas, Queen Mara Sov's bane who had escaped from her prison in the Reef. Things were far from quiet for Duncan and his Fireteam. Darkness would not so easily be snuffed out, even when faced with the unrelenting power of the Traveler's Light.

Always, there was a shadow.

It was in the beginning of Oryx's rise Duncan first noticed the change in Bailey. It had started as dark circles beneath her eyes and a certain sort of nervous, anxious tension she carried through her shoulders. She seemed to smile less often, only when she knew he was watching her. Bailey grew quiet and more reserved, even when it was just the two of them, her and him. She spent longer hours scouring through the archives and lessened her availability to the Vanguard for standard patrols or an occasional strike.

Duncan would wake in the night and find her still awake long after he'd have expected her in bed. Often, he'd find her sitting at his desk and scribbling careful notes into the margins of old texts with only the dim light of her Ghost as aid. He loved seeing her so passionate and focused on her work, but when he noticed she started growing paler, thinner the Hunter began to worry.

She wouldn't tell him what she was searching for those long hours into the night and when he pressed her for information, she would confess only vague details with a reluctance that burned some place deep within his own heart. He'd gathered it was about the Hive and an old legend she'd overheard in a common space within the archives. There was nothing he could do to help, she promised; eventually she'd figure it all out in her own time.

The Hunter knew she was telling him the truth.

A single glance at the vast expanses of her notes would detail the scattered musings of the young woman's mind; mysterious Hive crystals imbued with power, lost long before the fall of Crota, and an unending list of Warlocks. Everything amounted to the summation of countless hours of research on Hive Wizards and their sorcery. Most of the texts she poured over had belonged to them, ancient Warlocks who had found and lost their light so long before her time. Their names might have been forever lost to the archives if she hadn't been so interested.

Bailey wasn't whispering guarded secrets to herself like Eris Morn, but there remained a silent fear he would never bring himself to voice aloud she might start…

She wouldn't talk to him about it, any of her research, in more than nebulous, unrelating details until eventually her nightmares began. Terrible, savage images which threatened her sleep and caused her to shiver in the night. Bailey eventually opened up when Duncan asked her what she could possible dream about so terrible she would wake suddenly in the middle of the night. He told her he understood the way she chose to bury the burden of her responsibility to protect the Light. He knew it was fear keeping her awake in the night.

When confronted with such compassion as the Hunter had managed, Bailey opened up like she'd been waiting for him to ask these questions all along. The night she first talked about it they'd been asleep in his bed when a terror roused her from her sleep, and him with her. Duncan had whispered to her through the silence, "Tell me wha's wrong, Lady Warlock; s'too early fer ya to be awake already."

He felt her frame, already curled up against his, tense before she tucked her head underneath his chin like she might ignore the question. He folded a strand of silvery hair behind her ear and kissed her temple, marveling at how she could look so lovely when bathed in the dimmest flicker of moonlight. Bailey responded by running her hand across Duncan's chest and brushing his collarbone with her lips.

Shivering for how cold her hands were even with the thin material of his t-shirt separating them, Duncan tilted her chin up with his hand so he could watch her expression when she answered him, asking, "Another nigh'mare?"

"Yes," she whispered, turning away from his hand to bury her face against his neck.

But he'd caught the slightest traces of fear evident in her eyes before she'd managed to look away. Wrapping her up in his arms and pulling the threadbare quilt up and over their heads to keep the rest of the world out, the Hunter kissed her temple again, this time on the opposite side, murmuring, "Tell me abou' it. Migh' help you back to sleep if you share some of the burden with me."

She shivered, and the Hunter warmed his hands with Solar Light. Duncan was careful about the way he warmed her up. He let his left hand fall to rest on her waist, but Bailey only burrowed further into him.

"Bailey?"

"It felt real this time," she sighed. "Like I was looking into the future; it felt like-" and here she paused to wind her fingers through the Hunter's shaggy hair. Her eyes met his and he could still read fear but now anguish had joined the mix. Bailey didn't elaborate any further on what she'd seen.

"Well I hope tha' future you saw still had me in it," he teased, trying to lighten the mood and help her relax. She sighed, and Duncan pressed a gentle kiss behind her ear. When she didn't answer right away, the Hunter laughed, "Well, if I wasn' still there, we'll rewrite the future. I've found ya and nothin's gonna keep me away now."

"I killed you, Duncan," she whispered. Pressing her palm to his cheek as she cradled the side of his face with a tenderness the Hunter recognized was rare to see from her. Bailey's voice shook when she added, "In my dream. It-it didn't feel like an accident. I was-"

"You've killed me plenty before, both as the Voidwalker and the Sunsinger," he smirked, letting his forehead come to rest against hers. "Still 'ave a few of the scars to prove it."

"Duncan, would you be serious?" she pleaded through the silence of the Hunter's bedroom. She had her arms wrapped around him, clinging to him like everything in the entire universe would melt away if she would let go. "This time was different. We weren't in the Crucible. What happens i-if I'm really meant to-"

He kissed her forehead, both of her cheeks, and settled on her lips. Duncan's arms snaked around her waist, and his left hand cradled the nape of her neck like she would break if he let her go. His eyes rested on hers, and he met her with a level gaze; his voice was confident, "It'll be alrig', Bailey. It was jus' a dream."

He'd known she was upset. And he would have liked to say he understood why she'd been so worked up about it, but Duncan had never been one to put too much faith in mystical practices. A dream was a dream, no matter how terrifying things got. If she killed him, even outside of the Crucible, it wasn't something his Ghost couldn't fix.

Before that conversation, he hadn't imagined the nightmares might have been a result of her research; all the fatigue from her late nights coupled with the ominous, dark shades promised from the prophecies of Warlocks with strange names like Alastor and Toland. But as the thought dawned on him, he asked her through the darkness, "These nigh'mares have anything to do with yer, um, research?"

"Yes. Everything."

Feeling her morose tone as though it were a weight against his chest, Duncan squeezed the Warlock's small frame closer to his and sighed, "I love you, Bailey. You know tha', yeah?"

She nodded against his chest. The Hunter felt Bailey's breath catch in her lungs. He could feel that her breath was shaky as she wrapped her fingers around the soft material of his t-shirt sleeve, pulling it tight around his bicep. Her hand tightened to a fist and she clung to the sleeve of his shirt like the force alone could ease all of her troubles.

"You should know I'm ready to listen when you're ready to tell me wha' you're looking for," he whispered. "And I'll help you if I'm able."

She nodded again, this time whispering, "I don't deserve you."

It was a few weeks later the duo found themselves patrolling the Moon with Amri. They were deep in the caverns below the Hellmouth, chasing husk flakes for something Master Rahoul had in the works. It hadn't been a terrible or difficult assignment but it had been necessary to stray rather far from the beaten path. Or, rather further than they might have gone on a normal day to retrieve such simple reward from such common enemies.

Amri was in front, leading the others with quiet footsteps, meant not even to disturb the dark liquid pooling so far beneath the moon's surface. The trio hadn't seen a single Hive enemy in almost an hour or another Guardian in somewhere around two. To say their group was tense would have been a terrible understatement…

Something wasn't right; hadn't been for quite a while.

"Duncan?"

"Yeah?" the Hunter turned to his right, looking up at the Exo with his puzzled expression hidden behind the shaded hood of his helmet. Amri's voice had caught him off guard; the Hunter's mind had been adrift. He'd let his thoughts wander and hadn't been concentrating on where he was being led.

"Where's Bailey?"

"Righ' here-" he stopped midway through the thought. When he turned to his left and looked behind him, he was faced with the terrifying realization the Warlock was no longer with them.

His heart sank at the same time as his stomach began winding itself up in knots. Bailey was missing. She wasn't still following behind him. Duncan tried to remember when he'd last known she was still there, but the stress of knowing he couldn't remember only wound him up more tightly still. On the brink of panic, he managed to collect himself in the last moment.

"She was jus' here," he reasoned, taking a few paces towards the Exo before turning at a sharp angle and starting back in the direction they'd just come from.

"Are you sure?" Amri asked. He had his hand on Duncan's shoulder, holding him in place before he could dart down the corridor they'd just come from. "Just slow down a minute, mate. I know you're worried but the Darkness is heavy this far beneath the surface. It's fogging my sensors and I can tell it's affecting you, too."

And Duncan understood with an immediacy which left him feeling ill at ease Amri hadn't been leading them forward for husk flakes, not recently. He'd been just as lost, just as caught up in the path forward as Duncan had been. As, perhaps, Bailey had been. Both of their minds had been wandering. He knew with a strange sense of certainty they were lost and even worse, they were separated from Bailey.

"Can you remember how long it's been since you last saw her?"

He couldn't.

He couldn't remember anything except how natural it had been to put one foot before the other and follow after Amri. Like he'd been bound to do it. Like an invisible force drawing him deeper into the Hellmouth.

Taking a deep breath to clear his head of worry, Duncan kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot and frowned at the way white grit settled into lines worn into the dark leather. Getting worked up wasn't going to help Bailey but neither, he knew, would wasting time. Summoning his Ghost without a word, Albert whirred to life.

As the familiar white light flickered through the room, casting an eerie shadow in all of the places the Light could not reach, Duncan shivered.

"Guardi-"

"Shh!" Duncan hissed, holding a finger up in front of his helmet, over the place his lips would have been. Careful yet precise, the Hunter placed his hand against the wall of the cave right beside him. He listened to the silence that followed, closing his eyes.

"Guardi-"

"I heard it," Amri muttered, cutting off Albert with a whisper hardly loud enough for Duncan to hear. He'd summoned his Ghost in the time that had passed, and Edward whirred to life beside Albert.

It had been a soft sound, but familiar. The clicking, scraping noise made by a Thrall… A Thrall feasting on the Light.

"Tha' way?" Duncan asked, pointing down the corridor from which they'd come.

"Can't say, mate," Amri kept his voice low, pulling his hand away, so Edward was forced to hover beside his shoulder. "We must move quickly. Before they realize we're here."

Without requiring instruction, Albert and Edward silenced all external communication measures, leaving the Guardians linked to only one another. Duncan drew his hand cannon, watching Amri ready a pulse rifle. Every sound, no matter how subtle, seemed to echo in an endless downward spiral through the empty caverns.

Duncan led the way backward, back the way they had come, back to the surface. He used no words despite the efforts of his Ghost to keep any sound he'd wish to share silent to everything but Amri. The Hunter moved through the empty caverns with a quiet, almost unnerving, sense of precision.

Unsure if it was the Darkness or the extreme feeling of guilt he felt pressing against his chest, the Hunter found it hard to breathe. Sure, he trusted his girl to look after herself, it wasn't like he tagged along everywhere she went, but it had taken Amri snapping him out of the hypnotic trance he'd been under to make him gain awareness of himself again. The only other thing down here to find Bailey was the Darkness.

As soon as the thought entered his mind, Duncan pushed it aside. He would find her. He or Amri would find Bailey first. Before anything bad could happen to her. He continued his search, careful to keep his attention focused and not let his mind wander. When the Guardians reached a fork in the path he hadn't noticed before, on their way down, the Hunter sighed, "Looks like we par' ways here, my friend."

"I don't like the idea," Amri confessed, running one of his gloved hands over the textured surface of the cave wall. But when the shriek of a Hive Wizard cut through the silence from behind them, or possibly in front of them, the Exo pulled back his shoulders and straightened where his spine might have been. The Warlock agreed with haste, "But there isn't much choice."

"If you find 'er, send word," Duncan instructed, checking his hand cannon to be certain it would be ready when he needed it. "We'll mee' in Orbit, once one of us has 'er."

"Good luck, mate," Amri replied. A slight nod of his head was confirmation enough for the Hunter he had agreed.

Duncan took the path leading left while Amri went right. The caverns grew darker the further down he descended. Darker and more silent. There was no sign of the Thrall he could have sworn he'd heard earlier. Just a silence so deep he had no choice but to listen to his own blood rushing through his ears.

For how long he traveled, Duncan was as unsure as he was uncomfortable. He started to doubt whether Bailey could have gone so far on her own. Wouldn't she have turned back? Wasn't she looking for him?

"Eyes up, Guardian," Albert indicated. He was shining a steady beacon of white light down the dark corridor. But on the left, a bleary yellow-green light was emanating from the wall. "What's that?"

When Duncan realized he hadn't remembered when it had become necessary for his Ghost to light their way, his left hand clenched to a fist at his side. He must have been nearing a depth similar to where he'd been earlier with Amri; where the two Guardians had realized they'd lost Bailey. He was struggling to maintain focus.

The clicking, scraping of a hungry Thrall echoed from behind him, just to his right. Before Albert could turn around to illuminate the area they had just moved through, Duncan captured the Ghost in his left hand and, with expert precision, extinguished their only source of light.

The Thrall shrieked, and Duncan wondered if it was louder because there were so many corridors for the noise to echo through or if Albert's most recent adjustment to his hearing hadn't been as in-tune as he'd boasted. Despite the darkness, the Hunter turned on his heel and ran.

He needed to find a place where he could better measure what he was up against. Using his Ghost would be like flashing a beacon to whatever Light hungry creatures were lurking through the shadows but hadn't yet realized he was there. So he ran towards the corridor with the yellow-green light.

He could almost remember a theory he'd overheard in passing, back at the Tower when he'd spent an afternoon the archives with his personal favorite member of the Warlock Order. From one Warlock to another, explaining how she believed the Thrall from deep within the Hellmouth weren't accustomed to Light in any form. Then the other, calling her a fool as he explained all Thrall were drawn to Light in every form. He hoped the female Warlock was right because he needed something better with which to see. Without it, he could not gather a good sense for how many Thrall were following behind him. Or find an adequate place to hide because it seemed entirely possible that was his best option.

Whether it was a correct estimate of the number of enemies following him or just an illusion of the echo, it felt like hundreds of Thrall were shrieking behind him. And Duncan knew better than to risk a standoff so far from the surface. With his luck, the number of his enemy would be closer to three hundred than the mere three he was hoping for.

Sprinting forward, no longer concerned for the noise his boots were making as they splashed through puddles, hurried over rock, and pounded against the ground, Duncan could feel his breathing began to labor. His heart was racing, blood was rushing, but he was almost there.

Just a little further and he would be safe around the corner.

At the exact moment he rounded the corner, a single gunshot rang out over the sound of the Thrall. Duncan felt a sharp pain pierce his right shoulder. He fell over to his side, onto his knees, unsure if he ought to look at whatever had shot him or keep his focus on the collection of Thrall still licking at his heels.

With his left hand clutching at his injured shoulder, the Hunter cringed for the feeling of a, well, a something protruding from his shoulder. He wasn't sure where his mind ought to have been, but he knew it shouldn't have been on the bullet. He crawled away from where the Thrall would be coming from and turned over onto his back. Shuffling backward towards whatever relative safety he assumed from a thing that had just shot him; the Hunter found a mere six Thrall standing over him.

But they didn't approach.

They were moving, writhing in their frustration to have at the defenseless Guardian crawling through the dirt. But still, they didn't approach. All six of the grey creatures stood on the opposite side of the threshold. They seemed to fear whatever it was they found standing over the Hunter.

It wasn't until that moment Duncan thought he maybe ought to feel the same way.

With a slow and nervous apprehension, the Hunter turned to glance over his shoulder. There was a dark figure standing over him and, he frowned for the realization, a menacing looking ebony gun pointed for his gunmetal grey helmet.

The figure was entirely robed in black, silhouetted against an altar of green and yellow crystals which had been carved from floor to ceiling in the massive cavern. Because the light was focused behind the figure, her as a working point of reference, it was impossible to make out whether the robes she wore were black or whether it was a trick of the shadows.

Duncan inhaled a slow breath, feeling his chest shake. He had his left hand outstretched in front of him like it might dissuade the figure standing over him from firing her weapon on him again. But it wasn't until Albert hovered away from his Hunter's grip the Guardian realized he'd never let his Ghost go when he'd turned to run.

A Thrall screamed from behind him, and the Hunter flinched.

"Don't be frightened; they won't come any nearer unless I will them so," a high pitched and eerie voice emanated from the woman's slight figure. Then she followed it with a laugh so piercing Duncan covered where his ears would have been on instinct. It had done very little good. The sound of her laughter penetrated every crevice of the cavern and echoed long past the moment she'd grown silent. So foreign, yet so familiar…

Chancing a nervous glance up at her, Duncan was thankful Albert had turned his Light on this new threat. The Hunter reached forward in disbelief, clutching the tattered ends of a Warlock's robe. Crimson and blue. He hesitated before asking, "Bailey?"

The woman visibly started.

She gasped, dropping the gun to the ground and clutching at her chest with both hands. Bailey fell to her knees in front of Duncan, panting like her breath had been stolen away. He could hear every bit of her fear and regret in her voice when she replied, "Duncan? Oh, Duncan, did I hurt you? Are you alright?"

But before he could even think to reply, the Thrall from the doorway screamed. Whatever had been holding them at the threshold, whether it had been Bailey or whatever spell she'd been under, seemed to have been lifted. Three of the creatures were making tentative progress forward, as though testing whether or not they could cross the threshold.

Duncan pulled the Void grenade off of Bailey's belt and positioned himself between her and the enemies. He tossed the grenade at the ground and watched as two tracers from her Axion Bolt finished off the nearest two Thrall. He felt at his waist for his hand cannon but was unable to locate it.

The third Thrall was getting nearer, sprinting at them now. Duncan threw his field knife into the creature's head, and it fell to the ground with a loud thud.

Behind him, Bailey had picked up her hand cannon and fired three shots at the final three Thrall. Her aim was precise, and their enemies fell.

"Sorry fer stealin' yer grenade," Duncan teased, crawling over to where the Warlock was seated. When she didn't respond right away, he elaborated, "Wasn' sure when I'd have another chance to use an Axion Bolt."

When Bailey didn't laugh, Duncan reached out for her hand which she pulled away from him. She wasn't looking at him, he noted. And she wasn't holding her hand cannon any longer. The ebony gun was lying on the ground in the space between them.

When he watched her pull her arms around herself, and he thought he saw her shoulders shake, he whispered, "C'mere, Lady Warlock. Shh, shh; I go' ya. We're alrigh'."

He didn't wait for her to move closer, Duncan wrapped her up in his arms without another word. When he felt her frame lean into his and realized she'd wrapped her arms around his waist, he let the edge of his helmet click against the top of hers. As he glanced over her shoulder, the Hunter noticed a corpse; a Hive Wizard lying in a pool of blood.

Careful so as not to startle her, the Hunter pulled the Warlock into his lap making certain she wouldn't have to be reminded of what had happened here before they'd found one another. He was starting to realize, he thought, what had had her so on edge. If she'd taken down that Wizard all on her own… He couldn't keep the proud smile from flashing across his face. Pulling her a little closer, he thought, 'Tha's my girl. And here I was runnin' from a few Thrall!'

"This was just how I'd dreamed it," she whispered. Her body was rigid, and she had her fingers wrapped up tight in his cape. Duncan could tell her heart rate was elevated and her breathing was heavy; he always set his sensors to track her vitals alongside his own. She was terrified; all fear and weariness and adrenaline.

"Shh, we're both alrigh' now," he tried to console her, unsure if anything he'd say might help or hinder. Though he didn't know the entire story, he could understand she was upset.

"Duncan, take me home."

"Yeah, of course," he replied, holding onto Bailey just a little bit tighter. Then he summoned his Ghost, murmuring, "Al, you heard the lady!"

"Guardian, if I may," Albert whirred to life at the edge of Duncan's peripherals. He didn't wait to be acknowledged before he pressed on, "I've notified Amri you have located Miss Bailey. But please brace for transmat. We have very little Light so far beneath the surface, but I've got to get us all out of here."

"Hold on, Lady Warlock," Duncan whispered to Bailey, smiling when he felt her grip around his waist tighten. At the last possible moment, he grabbed the hand cannon she'd left on the ground between them.

He might have lost his gun, but Bailey wouldn't be losing hers...