Chapter 5: Across the Void
While the Fireteam had once again brought back valuable information that would aid the City in finding out what the Fallen were up to, Cayde-6 punished Tikva again because, while she'd found Xander's head, she hadn't actually repaired the Bounty Tracker, and its absence had nearly started a riot. The City Frames could not spare any Frames to replace him, and so bounties had been temporarily suspended. In response, for the past few hours, Tikva and her Ghost had been made to clean up the debris left behind by the melee while engineers in Tower Hangar scrambled to repair Xander.
On the roof of the Postmaster's building alone, Tikva found banana peels; torn up dirt and grass; half-eaten protein bars; spent ammunition casings (and thankfully, no gunpowder to go with it); a whole pile of strange coins; and even a set of legendary boots. It made Tikva chuckle to think of the poor Guardian, probably a Titan by the looks of the very wide and hollowed out greaves needed to accommodate a Titan's bulky legs, who was now going around barefoot. Why had he needed to throw his boots at someone, and how did they end up on the roof? The world would probably never know.
Her Ghost looked on at Tikva, utterly helpless to say anything, knowing she wasn't enjoying this and firmly resisting the temptation to lecture her at the moment.
But what the Ghost didn't know as Tikva gave a wistful glance at some other Guardians who were having a carefree game of soccer was that another indeterminable feeling was rising in the pit of her stomach. To even think about it made her muscles ache and operate like wet noodles operated by a sleepy puppeteer as she mechanically gathered up detritus.
Then the fan, once a source of profound joy for her, sharply exhaled and pushed her off onto a patch of warm mud, along with the strange coins.
"What are you looking at?" Xur growled to other confused Guardians as he stepped over the prone Guardian to gather up the coins with a greedy laugh, then disappeared just as quickly.
Mud and dust turned her short and already brown hair into an even darker brown pile of clay that was drying itself into pottery on her head. Her cape was dragged down by the goop. In every groove and crevice of her armor it seeped in and irritated the mesh shielding her skin from the outside world. Tikva then used what little strength she had left to push herself up from the muck before any pitying Guardians could offer their assistance, and then ran to the nearest corner that didn't have anyone in it, which was an out of the way balcony next to the Tower Hangar
Tikva collapsed into a pile of purple and red leaves blown over from the trees in the Tower by strong winds earlier this morning. They'd collected themselves into a small rut where grates collected rain water into the gutter. Now, her muddy tears fell through those tiny holes and hid themselves inside the still embrace of the rain water, as the leaves stuck to her face.
Her Ghost felt several pounds heavier when it left Tikva's armor and floated away. But it steeled its chassis for what it knew it had to do. As much as it felt distanced from Tikva's thoughts by events and feelings it could never truly understand, her little light knew just who might be able to help her.
"Calore?"
The Exo stood by the Tower Outfitter's closed shop, silently perusing the empty store and the capes, swaying in the gentle breeze on the metal trees lining the walls. It was a rainbow of cosmetic mer.
"Calore?!"
Still no response.
"At least talk to her, Calore-14!" said the other person with an impatient tone.
"Dakar," the Titan at last said, his boots thudding hard as he slowly pivoted to face his Awoken friend. "You've been on my Fireteam for a very, very long time. Do you really think that your cheap trick of addressing me by my full name will get me to forgive her?"
"Like I was saying, at least hear her out," Dakar said.
"I appreciate your sentiment because I know you are close with her. But why would I listen to anything she has to say? So she can tell me I'm a cold, uncaring r- machine again?" Calore growled. "Does she even know how I have had to feel every single time I brought you, her, and Tikva onto the front lines? And let's not forget the dozens of times I've seen people I've cared about torn apart.
"But for your sake, I never let the terror that courses through my circuits- which feel just as much pain and sorrow as any organic heart, I might add- rise to the surface. I have to be the single, unshakeable center of this Fireteam, or else all is lost. Do you understand what that's like? How it felt when she disobeyed me like that? Or how, when I lost you, then found you again, and then was told you were reassigned to a new Fireteam, I- I was destroyed in a way that hurt more than any bullet?"
Dakar stood there in stunned silence as the rest of the rant died within the Titan's voice processor, leaning on his sniper rifle to keep from toppling over. He'd known in the past that Exos were sensitive to being called machines or especially robots, as the term robot they were just as sentient as any human or Awoken, but seeing Calore, famous for being detached and calm, erupt like a volcano was mind-boggling.
"Oh, and do not breathe a single word of this to anyone," Calore fumed, nearly crushing his pulse rifle with his bare hands.
"I understand," the Hunter sighed, laying a reassuring hand on Calore-14's shoulder.
"As do I," emerged a familiar voice from a blue face framed by mournful and drooping purple hair as she hugged her brother.
"What are you doing here, Ayiana?" Calore asked.
"Letting you know that I am ready to accept any punishment that you have planned me for my insubordination," the Awoken said and bowed her head.
"Please be as lenient as possible. She as only trying to help me. If anything, it's my own stupid fault for letting myself get captured and putting everyone in danger," Dakar replied.
"I suppose you heard all of that," Calore said, not addressing Dakar's point and making a swallowing motion even though he didn't need to eat, or possess saliva. "Was that all?"
"No. You're not a r- well, you know," Ayiana said. "You don't always show it, but like you said, you care a great deal about us. I should never have doubted that for a second. I let my emotions carry me away, as I tend to do. That won't happen again."
"I wouldn't say that you should keep your emotions buried to the extent that I do, as I don't think it's possible for organic life forms such as yourself not to be overcome with emotion from time to time. Just be more mindful of your safety- if not for your sake, then, then for mine," Calore replied.
As Ayiana hugged Calore, Dakar, who was happy that his sister wasn't going to be punished, joined the group hug.
"OK, that's enough emotion for one day," Calore chuckled and broke them up.
"There you are, Ayiana," said a feminine computerized echo in the hallway of Tower North.
"What is it?" Ayiana asked the Ghost.
The machine's white appendages were wildly flinging themselves far from the equally white core, bound by a blue mist that ballooned the Ghost's size out to that of a soccer ball as it frantically cried, "Come quickly! Tikva needs your help!"
All three Guardians ran down the hallway as fast as they could and out into Tower Watch to try and find where their friend was.
At the same time, the Speaker was falling asleep on top of a pile of his drawings of planets, comets, and other astronomical bodies. This was one of the rare chances he had to escape all the demands made of him by Guardians, factions, janitors, and everyone in between.
"Sir?" his loyal Ghost inquired. "You have an incoming message from Petra Venj."
"Huh, er, wha? Um...read it out to me," the Speaker replied as he pulled himself back from unconsciousness and slipped his mask back onto the proper place on his head.
"She told me that it was better if she relayed it to you in person."
In person? Not that the Speaker minded seeing Petra in person. After all, she'd become a good friend of his ever since she first started establishing tentative relations between The Last City and The Reef. However, she usually delivered messages (and his clandestine letters) without speaking of the contents in front of him. So what message was so important that its contents had to be presented in such a direct manner? He contemplated this as he began to tidy up his cluttered desk as best he could.
"There's no need for that. This isn't a formal diplomatic visit," a female said to him while she ascended the stairs to his office.
The voice sounded familiar, but not like Petra. The Speaker was, for the first time in a long time, very, very confused.
Then a robe was pulled back, and the mystery was solved in seconds. White hair spilled out over a soft purple face that was now bisected by an equally familiar smirk from darker purple lips, and brilliant blue eyes stared deep into the Speaker's own, sending everything that needed to be said through his heart, his tingling skin, and his weakening legs.
As he rose from his chair, he rubbed his lover's shoulders through her armor. She seized his hand from off of her shoulder, not to push it away, but to enfold it warmly and firmly within her own.
"Formal visit or not...I still appreciate it," the Speaker smiled behind the enigma of his mask as she drew him inextricably into his bedchambers.
"My Queen," he whispered to himself when the door closed behind the both of them.
When the Guardians and the Ghost finally found Tikva, still covered in leaves and mud and still rocking back and forth and sobbing to herself in the gutter, Calore found himself inadequate to address the task at hand and apologized as he excused himself. Dakar wanted to help, but with a single press on his shoulder Ayiana communicated what she needed to do, and Dakar and Tikva's Ghost both obliged.
"Hey," the Warlock said in as soothing a tone as she could.
"Ayiana?" Tikva wondered, her eyes bleary with sorrow.
Then when she recognized her friend, the human curled into an even tighter fetal position and demanded, "Go away."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"N-n-no," Tikva finally conceded, secretly appreciating that Ayiana was willing to help her up into a sitting position and tenderly wipe some of the caked mud off of her cheek.
"Tikva, please, I'm your friend and Fireteam squadmate. Tell me, what's wrong?" the Awoken woman asked after she cleared enough mud off of her
Tikva tried to form words, but her tongue was not her friend as she beheld Ayiana's face. It almost glowed in the moonlight, the fainter light from the Traveler, and the lights of the City below. On top of that her silky purple hair had an ethereal glow of its own.
"Nothing."
In the face of Ayiana's withering skepticism, the young and nervous woman changed her story. "I- I just- I feel like a failure on today's mission again. I almost got us all killed."
"You could not be more mistaken. You didn't get us killed," Ayiana firmly replied. "In fact, you did pretty much the opposite of killing us. You, Tikva, are a strong and courageous Hunter who saved me, Calore, and also my brother. You have no idea how grateful I am for all you've done."
Tikva sighed as she realized that the game was up. "I'm not really upset about that."
"I figured."
"Don't get me wrong, it feels good to do something right for a change," Tikva sighed. "But, when I was dead...in- in the Darkness Zone...it was like I couldn't breathe again. Only it was my whole soul that couldn't breathe, if that makes any sense, and it was squeezing me tighter and tighter, even though I didn't have a body to squeeze any more. There were so many voices yelling and weeping, I was falling forever, it smelled rancid, I was lost for what seemed like centuries, cut off from you..."
She cried into Ayiana's soft neck now, but the Warlock didn't seem to mind that it was slightly muddy.
"And then all of a sudden," Tikva continued when she composed herself, "I was in front of the warmest fire I've ever felt and could see again, breathe, walk, and feel again. I think that was when you got me out. If you guys hadn't done that, I think I'd still be trapped in there, and I'd be nothing but a scream."
"That 'there' you're describing," Ayiana said. "That's the Void. I believe that's where the Darkness lives, and where it keeps the souls of all the billions of people its armies killed in the Collapse, and all the Guardians it consumes."
"Oh, by the Traveler," Tikva cried. "That's horrible."
"Listen to me," Ayiana replied and steadied her friend's shoulders before she could sob again.
She wasn't quite sure how to comfort Tikva since no one she knew had ever been sucked that far into the Void, so she started saying the first thing that came to her mind. "I, all Warlocks really, can sense the Void all around us."
"So you feel like I did...all the time?"
"Not as intensely, but sometimes it..." Ayiana said.
She was about to say, "Shows up in my nightmares and breathes down my neck when I'm awake, and sometimes the only relief I can get is going to the Tower Library," but realized that would be a bit much for her clearly shaken friend.
"Look, never mind. The point is, even if you had been taken, I would go across the Void to rescue you. It's only been done a few times before, but I can do it, I know it. And don't worry about getting replaced once Dakar is fit for combat; I'd force them to allow four people on our Fireteam. So no matter what happens, I'll never leave you behind."
Tikva didn't say outright that she was worried about that, but it seemed like Ayiana was attuned to the deepest thoughts and even fears of any person's heart, and so had a keen sense of just what would make anyone feel better.
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," the Hunter smiled.
"See, there you go. You don't need to cry when I'm here," Ayiana replied and kissed her cheek where a tear was rolling down. Tikva could have sworn her Awoken friend also whispered, "You look so beautiful when you're smiling" as her cheek heated up.
"What I do want you worrying about," Ayiana added after enjoying a moment of dead air, "is getting yourself cleaned up. To the showers with you. And if I'm being honest, with me as well. I'm starting to smell myself in this armor."
"But I was really starting to like my persona of Leaf Monster! Rrrargh!" Tikva cried, standing up just then and pinning Ayiana on her back before getting as much mud as possible on her friend's armor with an evil laugh.
"I'm serious!" Ayiana laughed as mud and leaves were smeared on her face and she had to spit some of it. She was just glad the Tikva she'd come to know was back.
"Oh, OK, fine," Tikva said while pretending to roll her eyes as Ayiana led her to the showers.
It had started with a thank you note. A very formal, handwritten letter of appreciation from one head of state to the other for the Queen's help in giving the Guardians the information they needed to destroy the Black Garden and stop the Vex from taking over the entire Solar System. Then he received a very courteous reply from her, and he thought that, considering the isolationist nature of the Reef, that would be the end of most communication between the two settlements.
But then Petra Venj established an emissary in the City and brought with her plenty of questions asked by the Queen herself about what life was like there. The Speaker endeavored to answer her questions and supplied some of his, and so it went for a few more months with Petra as the intermediary in their correspondence.
Then, with a heavy heart, Petra had informed him that Skolas had led the Fallen House of Wolves to betray the Queen and were leading a bloody uprising against the Reef (that would, in time, balloon into a campaign that devastated the other Fallen Houses and shattered Vex control over the Vault of Glass). The first thing the Speaker had done, without any thought about how this would benefit the City, was to sneak onto the Reef in Guardian armor to check in on the woman who had grown to be somewhat of a friend to him.
He'd found her sitting on a throne that had still some of its edges caked in Fallen blood, surrounded the dead and the dying and circled by an angry brother that was rounding up Crows to hunt down the Wolves. Then, only suspecting he was a Guardian in Titan armor, she'd let him have a private audience with her.
That was when he revealed that he was the Speaker of the Last City, the Voice of the Traveler.
She'd admonished him to go, that it wasn't safe for him to be here.
He'd told her that he only wanted to make sure she was OK.
She'd lashed out at him at first, demanding to know why it was his business how she was feeling, but when he didn't react poorly like she'd expected him to, the Queen caved. She told the Speaker her anger at the Wolves who had returned her generosity towards them with rebellion, how many of her dearest friends and subjects had paid for it with their lives, and her own doubts that she could possibly handle this on her own.
The Speaker, a man who was so composed in his writing and (from what Petra told her) in person, surprised her by telling her that he'd been through the same thing. When the Earth, the last bastion of the United Solar States, fell to the Fallen and the Traveler sacrificed itself in an explosion of pure Light to stop the Darkness at the Battle of Ten Thousand Suns, it appointed him, a mere human clerk in the Tower, as the Speaker.
Then, just months after the Darkness retreated and he'd taken on this awesome responsibility, Dead Orbit, the Future War Cult, and the New Monarchy began a power struggle against each other and himself over the last scraps of human civilization called the Faction Wars. He'd felt just how she was feeling now, he told her, and it had almost cost him every Guardian he had to bring an end to the infighting and build a Consensus to fight the Darkness.
She'd sat there astounded that he could relate to her in such a way, and he'd briefly noticed how she was trying her hardest to make herself composed and serene, like her face had been. He also knew what it was like to have to put on a mask, in every sense of the phrase. Then she'd wondered if it would be possible for the Guardians to help track down and capture (not kill, she emphasized) Skolas.
He at last said it would be his honor to be able to repay her. After all, when the Fallen united and attacked the City again at the Battle of Twilight Gap twenty years ago, when she'd first taken the throne, she'd intervened and broke the power of the Wolves, helping along with Lord Shaxx to turn the tide and save the City once more. It was only right.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she'd kissed him and for the first time since he'd lost his wife in battle against the armies of the Darkness all those centuries ago, the Speaker felt something other than the terrible burden he'd carried for eons. And now he had someone to share it with.
The Speaker smiled and stroked her hair as she lay on top of him, sleeping soundly while possessively hugging him to her chest in a way that he found cute, like her lover would slip away for good if she didn't hang on tight. But he had no intention of doing so.
"Hello, Alex," she whispered into his pale yet strong neck as she began to wake up from the hour long cat nap she'd needed after her long journey and...exercise.
"Hello, Mara. Did you have a nice nap?" he whispered back and kissed her. She nodded.
He loved how they could be so informal with each other. They were the only two people who both knew each other's names and would be so bold as to say them to each other. And in so many different contexts, to put it mildly. When in each other's company, they could just be Alex and Mara, two ordinary people with no titles to bear and no expectations or demands to be met.
"Is something on your mind?" Mara wondered.
"How did you guess?" Alex muttered softly into her hair. Mara smirked at this.
"Yes, I do have something on my mind. I am overjoyed that you decided to come here, but why did you, when the political ramifications if anyone found out are astronomical?"
"Why did you come to the Reef so many times before, when you took just as much of a risk crossing dangerous space to see me?"
"Because...because...every time I'm with you, Mara, my heart is finally at peace."
"You have your answer, then. I feel the same way." Mara then sighed as she looked up at him. "And I could tell from your letter that you were pained to not be able to visit me while dealing with this Causeway issue. I realized then that I had been unfair to you all this time when you've been so patient with me."
"You haven't been, but nonetheless, as I said, I am glad you arrived," Alex replied. "As much fun as I've had tonight, we should probably get you back to the Reef as soon as possible..."
"You mean before my brother finds out? Let me worry about Uldren. Besides, I've sent him and his Crows on an urgent mission to track down one of the remaining Wolves. He won't be back for at least a day or two. Of course, yes, I do need to get back to the Reef, but not for a few hours."
"That's good."
He was about to ask what she wanted to do, but he soon gained a pretty clear idea of what that might be when she traced a finger on his collar bone and gave a wry grin. It looked like her nap had been refreshing after all.
One of these days, he hoped that an alliance could be forged between the City and the Reef, not only for the benefit and mutual protection of their two nations against the Darkness, but so that he could be with her and go on proper romantic outings without any cloak and dagger. The fact that she'd, at his suggestion, opened the Reef to the Guardians and that the Guardians had helped the Reef defeat the Wolves had made things easier for them both, but it also had provoked the Reef's nobles, so she couldn't do anything more drastic without assuaging them first.
But for now, he was perfectly content to hold her and be hers in any way that she wished.
Especially right now...
"Oh goodness, that feels soooo much better," Tikva groaned in the communal showers as the hot water sprayed from the ceiling, seeped through her hair, and the mud and dust that caked her body was banished to the floor where it quickly was sucked down the drain. Meanwhile her Ghost was cleaning her armor in a different room.
"Tell me about it," Ayiana said, spreading soap suds all over her body to get rid of built up sweat and grease. "Wait a minute, you still have plenty of mud on you!"
"Wait, do I?" the Hunter wondered as she dug her nails down into the scalp to try to claw any mud out from off the top of her head, then bent over and shook her head directly in the stream.
"Oh, my bad!" Tikva gasped after she accidentally got little droplets of muddy water directly on Ayiana's face. Then she made up for it by wiping it off of her blue face gently with her hands.
"That's OK. I think you got most of it. Just these last tiny bits here-" Ayiana said and brushed off some mud that was stuck behind Tikva's ears, but they simply landed on Tikva's shoulders and arms.
Ayiana brushed those off and then declared, "All set" and turned off the water.
Tikva jumped a little when Ayiana did that, as though microscopic grenades had gone off up and down her spine. She wasn't nervous at all, as she'd showered communally with all the other non-Exo Guardians (Exos went to oil baths in the Tower Hangar to be cleaned). She was being swept up by a cyclone of warmth, excitement, and something else that she couldn't put her finger on.
"Thanks," Tikva barely managed not to stammer. "I'll see you tomorrow." Then they parted ways with a smile on both their parts and Tikva hurriedly got back into her armor and went to her quarters, eager to get to sleep after a long, frightening, and confusing day.
Dakar was sitting on some boxes on a staircase in Tower Watch, knees pulled up to his chest, watching the spaceships go by as they left behind white contrails that sliced across the glowing face of the Traveler. Even that was exhausting now, though, and he plopped on his back, limbs sprawled everywhere.
"Hey," Calore said. "I was wondering where you were."
"Is...what's her name? For some reason I forget her name. Shoot," the Hunter grunted.
"Tikva? Yes, she's alright. And it's fine- you just met her, after all," Calore replied. Then the Titan frowned at his human friend. "Penny for your thoughts, I believe the human expression goes?"
"I just, I know that I have to go back into the Crucible before I can go back into the field, especially after what I went through," Dakar said. "And I also know that Ayiana has promised to see me as often as she can. But it just isn't the same, you know what I mean?"
The two of them had almost been completely inseparable from the moment they revived until now. They knew each other so well that by now they could carry on entire conversations just with a few silent nods and body language. They'd been there to revive each other in almost every battle, comforted each other when during his breakups with his girlfriends and boyfriends or hers with her girlfriends Now he was unmoored from his anchor and cast adrift.
Calore laid a whirring artificial hand around Dakar's shoulders, then shook his prone body for a second and said, "I know exactly what you mean. Fortunately, you can get used to the disjointing that comes with every transition to a new Fireteam without any of them having died first."
"Yeah, there is that, at least," Dakar said.
"You know what Ayiana told me ages ago that she always wanted for us to do if any one of us ever moved to a different Fireteam?" Calore thought out loud.
"What's that?"
"A going away party in the City."
"Oh, she proposed this?"
"Yep," Exo coughed out in his stilted attempt to say the human vernacular word and not sound so stiff ALL the time. "A few friends of mine have suggested some interesting places to go to in better parts of the City. What do you think?"
"You don't have to do that on my account," Dakar said. Especially since he secretly and perhaps selfishly hoped that this would not be goodbye forever, and that the new girl would be transferred elsewhere
"Even if Ayiana doesn't insist on it (and she probably will), then I will myself," Calore said. "Get some rest, Dakar. We're going to not be killing things for once."
"Yay!" Dakar said weakly before passing out on the boxes. Calore just chuckled to himself, slinging the young and drained Hunter over his shoulders and bringing him back to their quarters.