On the third day of Destiny 2,
My true love gave to me:
Three visits made!
He knew.
Those words were thought with more vitriol and sorrow than could be expressed out loud.
He knew.
To say Cayde was angry would be an understatement. The understatement of the century.
He knew.
He screamed and sent his fist into a tree. The equivalent of an i-beam hitting the wood at terminal velocity, that was how much damage he did; how much damage an Exo was capable of doing. He'd done the same thing to Zavala not half an hour ago. Why?
Because he'd known.
"I tried." the Hunter Vanguard whispered. He looked at his feet so he wouldn't have to look that name in the face. "I looked for so long, I tried to find him, I tried to."
Zavala wasn't a Hunter. He didn't understand-would never understand-what it meant to loose a knife-brother. What it meant to take up that painful cloak-oath, the fulfillment of which broke you just as much as the loss. What it meant to carry a red stripe on your armor. His was located on the back, beneath his cloak, alone the spine.
Because that was where the blade had gone through. That was what he'd witness the day of the Vanguard Dare, the day his knife-brother died. The scene was ingrained in his memory like the name carved into his arm with a number tagged to it. That was how Andal Brask died; shock blade through the spine, into the chest cavity, collapsing his lungs and bleeding him out while his Ghost lay crushed on the ground nearby. That was what Taniks did to him. That was why the Fallen merc had to die... by Cayde's knife. By Cayde's gun. By Cayde's Light, by every weapon he possessed.
Taniks' life was his to take. Taniks' blood was his right, and his alone, and any Hunter, even the new ones, could tell you that. But not a Titan. Not a Warlock; the tale of the previous Hunter Vanguard's demise was less known among them. Which was why when Zavala found out about Taniks, when the Reef contacted him, he sent a team of Titans in to put the merc down. No Hunters. A hunter would have known what it meant, a Hunter would have stopped them, called him, Cayde, and told him.
The Hunter Vanguard wasn't allowed outside the Tower.
Zavala had known. He'd known, he'd knew how long Cayde had been looking, how long he'd been dreaming of the day he could come to this spot, right here, and say truthfully... 'It's over. He's dead. You and your Ghost... get back to those wilds up there. No more worrying.'
He forced himself to look at the grave. Andal's name was carved graciously into the tan marble, the Hunter crest standing out bold and black above it.
"I'm sorry." he shuddered, sinking to his knees. 30 years of guilt, 30 years of hunting for Taniks, wasted. Wasted by the Titan Vanguard. Never again would he be able to look Zavala in the eye.
There were bridges you couldn't unburn.
He was made of metal, but right now he felt number than ever before. His boots crunched on frosted grass and fallen leaves, and if he were still Human, his throat would've tightened at the sight of the fresh grave nearby. Not particularly close to Andal's, but not too far away they couldn't be associated with one another. He looked between the two, then shut his eyes, head lowered.
"Well, well, well. Look at the two of ya'." He exclaimed, spreading his arms. "It's like we've got the old team back together again. All we need is Shiro and we're good to go."
He paced in front of Andal's grave.
"Yeah, 'cept it's not that funny, Tevis. That's why I'm ignoring your headstone for now, I'm mad at you." he shot a glare at the dark headstone, marked with the symbol of the Nightstalkers. "I mean... Vex, really? You stepped through a Vex gate, without telling anyone, and you conveniently left your Ghost on the other side? Your Ghost who died because you abandoned him? I mean what the heck where you thinking!?"
He looked down at Andal's grave, as if begging for answers from his long-dead friend.
"You've been around for so long." he said quietly, voice tight. "So, so long. We all knew you were tired, we all knew you were done. We all knew you had a deathwish... but why did you have to choose now?"
He took a deep breath, trying to shake the fresh grief off his shoulders. He was loosing a lot of scouts, recently. Too many, and it was all because of the Taken. He strode away, back to the Tower, but not before casting one last look at where Tevis had been buried.
"You were the only person I could think of who might be able to get in and out of the Hellmouth without incident. You were my first option for infiltrating that Dreadnought. You could've done all that, even without stealth tech; that was just how you worked." He cleared his throat, and turned away. "Dammit, Tev, you were my master plan. Why'd you go and throw it all away?"
He'd never gotten the expression 'shooting yourself in the foot'. If the goal was to get as far away from the battlefield as possible, why make it harder to walk? Certainly, they didn't expect the medics to do all the work; they could get killed, and then everybody would be in trouble!
Cayde wasn't sure if he'd shot himself in the foot. If he had, he'd been downright clumsy, or he'd done it in the daze that came after the Traveler went out. Dazes lead to poor decision-making, and a Hunter never shot themselves in the foot, not even in their most cowardly moments; agility was their name, and one couldn't run away if they blew their foot off.
He thought he remembered something about a trap... had he stepped on a mine or something? He still wasn't sure. All he knew was that after comms went down, after the battle was lost, after his powers failed him, he'd stumbled and crawled with great effort, with his comatose Ghost clutched tight to his chest, to here. With a sigh of something resembling relief, he let himself relax against the tree. He looked up at the smoke rising from the City, the Cabal ships raining fire on any who tried to escape.
Stupid space turtles.
"Hey, guys. Long time, no see." he grunted. The weakness and disorientation he'd felt when the cage became active was wearing off. He was an Exo... he kept going. He wished he could say the same for his poor Ghost...
"Look... I've never been generous, with either of you." Clovis Bray had taken his ability to cry long ago. That didn't mean he couldn't feel pain; the physical pain of being beaten half to death, of missing a foot, or the emotional pain that came with saying goodbye... probably for good. "You know, I've always though of this as a place were you were both still around. Like... a little bar I could go to, to forget my problems. I drank memories until I was hungover, and I try, I try so hard to carve your names into my mind as deeply as they're carved into that stone... Because I'm afraid, Andal. I'm afraid, Tevis... I'm... I'm afraid I might forget, you know."
A tremor pass through the ground. Or was that just him shaking.
"I'm afraid of the next reset." he admitted, voice a hoarse whisper. What Exo wasn't afraid? Who wasn't afraid to forget? "And I think it's coming soon. I... I can feel it. I'm going to need it soon, the next decade, I'll start hurting and the only cure will be to forget. To reset. To get a new number, and when I do... and when I do... will any of the fragments that come through my dreams remind me why I wear this cloak? Will any of them tell me how my scouts presented me with a Dusk Bow's Light and a broken knife? Will I know why I wear two red stripes on my armor?"
Would he remember their faces? Would he remember Tevis' sly ways, his sleight of hand? Would he remember Andal's laughing, his skill with a gun? Would he even remember how they died? Would he even remember to be angry at Zavala for not telling him about Taniks?
Would he even remember himself?
"I suppose one of you would tell me you'd, say, kick my butt until I remembered you. The other one of you... well, Tev, you'd probably shove an arrow in my knee and tell me 'remember that, new blood'." he liked to think his Tevis impression was top-of-the-line. "I, uh, I have no idea what to do, now though. I guess, technically speaking, I'm free... but the City is down. No-one ever told us what to do if that happened. You guys reckon there's something out there that can help?"
He looked up at the sky; all lightning and smog. Ikora's Stormcallers had been so excited about tonight; they were going to have some sort of 'Lightning meditation ritual' on the Travelers Walk. He wasn't so sure those Stormcallers had survived the initial barrage the Tower was hit with.
"I reckon, somewhere out there, someone has something we can steal... something really good at killing cabal... maybe just as good at fixing catatonic Ghosts." With a pained grunt, he struggled to stand. In hindsight, he probably looked a bit ridiculous, dragging a useless, twisted mass of metal around as a leg. Looking up at the tree, he reached up, gripped a thick branch firmly with both hands, and snapped it off, splinters raining down on him. It took him twenty minutes of snapping and tying the wood together with parachord, but by the end he had a makeshift crutch fit for a Hunter.
Now far more mobile than he had been, Cayde made his way into the wilderness. At the edge of the dark, rain beating down on him, he looked back. The wall was collapsing. He knew, deep in his heart, that by the next time he was here, if he ever came back, these graves would be buried beneath the rubble. There would be nothing left.
Nothing but a cloak, a bow, and two red stripes.
Because really, I think there would have been at least some kind of falling out between Cayde and Zavala for this. And yes, if you look closely at a scene in some trailer footage, Cayde is missing a leg, though it's uncertain exactly how that happened.
I'd like to say his incendiary grenade bounced off a teammate and blew up in his face, but this wasn't the crucible.
Furious Titaness- Glad to hear it!
jsm1978-Thankfully, since I got some of these ready early, I had more time to make bigger chapters than for Rise of Iron or Andromeda. I wanted to keep things with Devrim and Hawthorne short, though, because it's too early to asume too much about their characters' personalities.
Look up to tomorrow!
Read and REVIEW!
