Note: Content Warning: Major Character Death
The only peace I have ever known
Is the peace I made with you
I won't move but I can't stay here
So what the hell am I supposed to do?
Easier – The Crane Wives
July 10, 2960; The Last City, Earth
There was a party. Azra hated parties. She probably hated this party more than any other party that had ever existed.
The tone was rather subdued. The aftershocks of Cayde's death still rocked the Tower. Azra wasn't helping things by refusing to do anything but glower in the corner. Shiro stood with her, but they didn't talk much. They didn't really need to. Instead, they watched the people come and go.
Zavala and Ikora were centerpieces, gracefully greeting the guests that approached them, casting the occasional glance over at Azra. They probably weren't too thrilled about the gloomy vibes that the new Hunter Vanguard was putting out, but they'd just have to deal. They could make her take the Vanguard chair, but they couldn't make her pretend to like it.
Plenty of people came up to talk to Azra, too, but she didn't exactly project a welcoming air. The few friends she had in the room would make eye contact and give an understanding nod, perhaps come to stand quietly with her for a moment or bring her a few hors devours if she ran low. It was more awkward than anything else- Azra didn't know what to do with the sudden deference everyone was giving her.
It was the more clueless ones that got on her nerves, mostly. They'd come up wanting something, to brush stardom, to maintain their good standing with the Vanguard, sometimes even from a genuine sense of compassion- Azra would accept their condolences mechanically, like a Sparrow grinding stuck between gears, and then refuse to answer their small talk with anything more than single syllables.
It wasn't long until she and Shiro were left to sulk in the corner in peace. The silence stretched on as they mutually judged the people around them, the circumstances, the future.
"God, I hate parties," Azra finally said.
"Cayde's was more fun," Shiro admitted. "He had a parade." From anyone else, bringing up that topic so casually would be a slap to the face. But she and Shiro could reminisce safely with each other. They both understood.
"Parade sounds right up his alley," Azra admitted. Confetti, adoring crowds, being the center of attention...
"He was putting up his persona hard," Shiro said. "Andal wasn't even dead two weeks at that point. He ever tell you he was the one that found the body?"
"Yeah," Azra said. "I asked."
Shiro re-settled his stance, leaning harder on the other foot. "Wasn't a fun time." The comparisons were almost too obvious to draw now. "We'll get through this."
"Hey, it's a party! What's got you so down?"
Azra frowned, sizing up the new Vanguard trio in front of her. "My bad feelings about this are only getting worse."
He elbowed her in the ribs. "Hey, look at this as an opportunity. We got a guy on the inside now. We could make a nice little fortune off of this. Prime intel, the best gigs. Andal's not above nepotism."
"And in a few years he'll Dare some other poor sap to take his place, and we'll be back on the road again," Azra said. Her voice was all disbelief. Her eyes were bitter.
"Alright," Azra said, not meaning it one bit.
Moving in was more difficult than Azra had thought it would be. The gear she usually kept at Camp fit into her vault easily enough, sure. It was the cleaning out that was the hard part. She walked into Cayde's room and it was messy. There were cards and papers and datapads everywhere. She got rid of the old reports without a second thought, consolidated what files she could, but the personal effects…
She couldn't bring herself to throw them out just yet. They were organized into boxes and shoved in the back of the closet. Even after vacuuming and scrubbing and changing the sheets, the room still smelled like him.
It wasn't just the physical space. With access to the Vanguard Command Network came access to the database- the general sections were maintained, but the Hunter Vanguard had a private partition that was now under her jurisdiction, as it had once been under Cayde's (and Andal's, before him).
Azra saw them everywhere in the systems. All of the filenames for Io had been changed- they now read Ayooo_Pat_Map or Scan_Requests_Ayooo_YEAR. She found Cayde's extensive list of People To Not Put On Patrol Together (and his even more extensive list of People To Try And Set Up Together). Tallulah Fairwind's Ghost had started a Guide to the Feeding and Care of the Hunter Vanguard- each subsequent Vanguard's Ghost had given updates or funny little anecdotes. Charin and Sundance's entries gave Spark a sharp pang of his own grief.
It was too much. Azra took a snapshot of the database as it was, then reset it to its base template. She stared at it for a long time- a fresh slate, she thought to herself. (A petty act of destruction, seeking vengeance against the office.)
Then she got to work. She updated all of the maps, adding in ones the official Vanguard archive didn't have- defunct Fallen dens, an incomplete survey of Crota's Throne World, dozens of baren icy objects in the Kuiper Belt that nobody really cared about. She revived the old list of People To Not Put On Patrol Together and added a few of her own observations.
Then she sat back and looked at it all again like she was surveying a freshly-built camp. Spark was rooting through his own personal files, looking for anything else that might be of use.
He found something, something that made him sad. A second later, he uploaded a plain text document. It hadn't been updated in almost a year. Azra opened it in curiosity.
Of all the inventions Humanity has made, the dry-erase board really is the most remarkable.
Oh. It was the list of bad jokes she'd kept for Andal. She'd started it before the Vault. She always worried Andal would get bored sitting alone all day and resolved to keep a cache of corny humor for the off times. She still added to it on occasion.
Spark shuffled through the old Vanguard Hunter database and pulled up another file- a list of bad jokes Andal had kept. There were plenty in there she'd sent him, but he'd made a subsection for new ones to send back to her.
Azra looked back at the old database and saw it- the home Andal had made for himself, away from all of them. The home Cayde had made. The silly filenames Andal had made as a secret joke- the ones that Cayde had kept. The ridiculously overcomplicated patrol scheduling system- clearly a work of Andal's genius. The giant 'MISC' folder Cayde had thrown all of his documents in- because of course he knew where they were, even if he had to root around for twenty minutes to actually find them, telling him to clean up just made him stubborn.
There was more than just the two of them- Ainsel Leagh had started a tally of Consensus topics (they really liked talking about infrastructure repair, it seemed). Kauko Swiftriver apparently had a hand for drawing- there were caricatures of almost every Tower figure of his time. Caliban-8 had left a series of images- first a few snapshots of a ceiling somewhere, then a progression of half-melted knives sprouting out of the center beam until the thing bristled like a porcupine. There were dozens of edits and compilations of clips pulled straight from the Vanguard Feed. There were lists of ideas for Dares and plausible excuses to get out of obligations. There was a trove of reviews for the various eateries in the City.
It was a dozen voices calling out from the void of the past, saying I was here. I mattered. I wasn't just another cog in the machine. You aren't, either.
Azra reinstated the old database, then went about re-doing her map updates and additions.
She sat and looked at it again. It was… better. Not right. Not even good- there was still too much of them in it, it hurt her heart to look at. But it was better.
July 16, 2960; The Last City, Earth
Azra unrolled the map with confident motions and weighed down the corners to keep it from curling back up. She never was a big fan of indoors, but it did come with the perk of being able to handle data physically. She could keep as many paper maps as she wanted and they would never get dirty or wet.
This map had never seen the light of the Vanguard War Room before. This map had never seen the eyes of Guardians before, even. It had taken some wheedling, but eventually Petra Venj agreed they couldn't send people into a raid operation blind to their terrain.
"What is that?" Ikora Rey asked. She drifted over, smooth demeanor unable to hide her curiosity.
"This is a map of the Dreaming City," Azra said. "Petra's asked us to send in a raid team."
"For what?" Ikora asked. "This is the first I'm hearing of this-"
"Oh geez, I wonder what that meeting I scheduled for fifteen minutes from now is about," Azra said in monotone.
Ikora gave her an unimpressed look, so Azra turned down the sarcasm. "Long story short: Taken Ahamkara."
Sharp alarm pierced the air. "Where?"
Azra traced a finger past the Spine of Keres to a structure labeled the Keep of Voices. "I'd expect heavy Taken presence, if not Scorn. Three of the Queen's Techeuns were Taken as well. They may pose a threat."
"This would be a dangerous operation," Ikora warned. "Ahamkara were- are dangerous enough without the influence of the Darkness. They caused many Guardian deaths before they were hunted to extinction." She paused to reconsider. "Near extinction."
"I know," Azra said. She may not have been alive for it, but she knew her history. "Tallulah Fairwind was killed by one, remember?"
"I can't believe the Awoken have been keeping one in secret this whole time," Ikora lamented. "Killing it won't be easy."
Azra smiled grimly. "I know just the people for the job."
July 19, 2960; The Last City, Earth
"I wish you could come with us."
Azra made a pained expression. "Don't say that," she chastised. "This is hard enough as it is." She straightened Veera's robes again- she'd done that three times in the past five minutes.
"You trust us," Veera said.
"I do," Azra replied.
"Quantis Rhee is a very accomplished Hunter."
"She is."
"Everything will be fine," Veera asserted.
Azra paused but didn't disagree. "I'm still gonna worry," she said quietly.
Veera's heart ached. Azra had practically led their raid on the Vault of Glass, but after that? She'd thrown herself at Crota and Oryx and SIVA and Ghaul out of a sense of duty rather than a genuine urge to be involved. For the entire time Veera had known her, she really only fought for the sake of other people. Even now, when she wasn't fighting, she was still making sacrifices for the greater good, lending her talents to the public, helping. When would she be free to act in her own interests? When would the universe listen to what she wanted?
Veera could do nothing but hug her and promise that she'd be safe. It wasn't enough, she knew.
Azra sat in impotent frustration. There was satisfaction, as Fireteam Dauntless cured Kalli and Shuro Chi, but it was vicarious. They weren't her victories; she was stuck in this stupid room in this stupid chair, fiddling with the stupid comms system. She couldn't even run ops properly; the Taken interference was so great she couldn't get any messages through. The feed was distorted and grainy, but she was riveted on it anyway.
They were succeeding without her. But every time someone had a close call she could only grit her teeth and hold her breath. If she were there, she could call out a warning, or shoot the threat, or at least help them back to their feet after a rez. Here, she sat in her chair and wrestled with the fact that she couldn't be there for them.
She wouldn't be there for them. For a while, if not forever. If this job didn't kill her, like it had killed Andal and Cayde. Like it had killed Tallulah Fairwind and Alaia Ruse and practically everyone who'd ever been in her position.
Azra didn't want to die as the Hunter Vanguard. She didn't even want to be the Hunter Vanguard.
Surely Cayde didn't want you to suffer, Spark whispered gently.
He knew how important this job is, Azra thought back. Andal knew it, too. Enough to give us up for it. Cayde suffered for it. Why not me?
…I don't like it, Spark said. But… I guess I understand.
Self-sacrificing, both of them. But now wasn't the time for this conversation. Her attention stayed welded to the feed as her former team worked their way through the cracked streets and overgrown gardens of the Dreaming City. But the displeasure stayed in the back of her mind, a tiny voice crying out that this was wrong, this shouldn't be happening, this couldn't be real.
Veera had lied. Things did not go fine.
They almost did. They were so close. Under the Techeuns' instruction they'd killed Morgeth and unlocked the Keep of Voices. They'd even killed Riven herself without too much of a hangup. All they had to do now was deliver the Ahamkara's Heart to were the Techeuns were waiting to bind it. It should have been easy.
Veera grabbed it and ran with it, out of the Ahamkara's very gullet. Outside the Darkness screamed, howling voices seeping through from the Ascendant Plane. The Taken were everywhere. The Heart produced a bubble of safety, but it was small and growing even smaller by the time Veera reached the Ahamkara's mouth. The Warlock jumped down anyway, announcing her intentions to push through.
The Heart hit the floor, but Veera never did. The feed was so full of interference and Axion Bolts, Azra couldn't make out exactly what had happened. Only Veera's voice on the comms kept her from panicking. She was alive, wherever she'd been teleported.
Tapio Llyr picked up the ball instead, and they began a mad sort of relay race through the Keep. Periodically whoever was carrying the Heart would vanish from the feed and someone else would scoop up the glassy mass of Darkness. The Taken were numerous but easy to dispatch; the real threat was the screaming Darkness outside. But the group kept close together and nobody was left behind.
Azra knew something was wrong when they reached the Vault. Quantis Rhee disappeared, leaving only Sylas-4 to carry the ball the rest of the way. Azra mentally sized up the distance yet to go against Sylas's usual running speed and grit her teeth. If it was her, sure, she'd make it no problem. But Sylas was a Titan and had styled himself more for defense and endurance than speed. He jumped down the elevator and Azra could see the bubble shrinking as he fell.
"Sylas!" Azra called out. Her grip on the table was so strong- something broke. She didn't even notice. She saw him struggle, saw the Darkness closing in around him, him alone in the cavernous room- his feet touched the floor and he staggered, but he was so close-
He struggled on, baring his shoulder forward as if fighting against the wind. The Darkness encroached further. Azra knew with a sickening feeling in her gut that he wasn't going to be fast enough. His footsteps were slow and heavy, his breath agonized on the feed.
But he was so close. The bubble shrank. A foot of space. Six inches. Three. Two. But still he was yards away. He stumbled on the stairs and the bubble was gone. He screamed in agony.
Then he screamed in defiance. With herculean effort, he stood, pushed himself up the last few stairs, and slammed the heart into receptacle where the Witches were waiting.
The rest of Fireteam Dauntless appeared, pulled from the orb. There was a lightshow as the Techeuns chanted, feedback on the audio, everyone shouting confusedly at each other. Azra's eyes were glued on Sylas-4's prone form. He didn't move. His Ghost didn't come out to hover over him.
The light and noise stopped. "It is done," Kalli announced. "There is much work left to do- we will meet you on the other side."
Then the witches were gone and the feedback cut. Everyone collectively held their breath- Azra included. It was like all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
"Sylas?" Veera asked, quiet and scared. But Sylas didn't stir. His Ghost didn't appear. Wahida moved to kneel next to him.
Azra was struck cold by a revelation- Sylas was dead. Right now. She'd been watching like the feed was live, but with the transmission and decoding it was actually on a delay. Sylas had been dead for almost half an hour.
There was nothing to do.