Oh, ashes, ashes, dust to dust
The devil's after both of us
Oh, lay my curses all to rest
Make a mercy out of me

Curses – The Crane Wives

August 31, 2961; Outside of Old Minsk, Old Belarus, Earth

This is how the end began:

Azra had been aiming to drop herself off near Old Minsk to shoot some Fallen and perhaps wander towards the Cosmodrome. She was flying too low. Her fatal misstep wasn't a mistake, exactly- lack of access to the Vanguard Net handicapped her. For one, without the use of public transmat points, she had to physically fly her ship into the lower atmosphere to transmat down. Not a huge problem on the surface- it was standard practice in more remote areas. Not even risky if you were careful about your flight path. But as Azra had no access to the Vanguard's intel, she had no real idea if the areas she was flying through were abandoned or bristling with Fallen artillery.

Being unlucky once was all it took. The projectile was kinetic and flying faster than the speed of sound. She had no warning. There was a jolt, and a screech, and then Spark hit the transmat and Azra was on the surface, stumbling to check her momentum and keep her feet underneath her. The ship exploded spectacularly overhead. Azra took shrapnel to her arm and her leg. She barely even noticed it, already holding out a hand for her Sparrow and throwing herself on.

It was best to clear out real fast. There was no way some Fallen wouldn't come to scavenge from her crash. If she was really unlucky, a Guardian or two would come bumbling in to offer assistance. If she wasn't gone, she was risking a firefight, which would draw even more attention. Backup was a bad thing, these days.

Even as she weaved her bike between the trees, her mind was already four steps ahead. The loss of the ship wasn't very damaging in the material department- Spark kept most of everything in his storage for this exact reason. We are down a blanket, he pointed out mentally. She'd left one on one of the passenger couches when she'd taken a nap earlier in the day.

Almost absentmindedly, she jumped off her Sparrow and dropped into a small ravine to get some cover, splashing in water up to her knees. Spark quickly began transmatting out shrapnel and mending her armor.

She'd have to get within several miles of a ship in orbit to call it. She had a few scattered around, but with the whole Solar system to cover, that left all of her options very far away. One of these days she'd have to go on a few salvage runs to bolster her roster.

But first things first: with no Jumpship, she was vulnerable. She could either hunt down a cache where she'd left a long-range comms beacon and call one, or she could go directly to a ship. Most of the beacons she'd stashed off-world, but there was one on the continent, in Portugal. Other than that, the nearest ship would be the one stationed above the Cosmodrome.

"That ship we were flying was the Cosmodrome one," Spark said.

"Portugal it is, then." They could sus out options for ship-scavenging on the way.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Even without a ship in orbit, the Cosmodrome had been a viable option- certainly there was a junker or two there she could get in working order. But the Cosmodrome had people, and interacting with people meant a chance of being recognized, and that was no bueno.

Besides, it wasn't like she hadn't made a land trip across Europe before.

September 02, 2961; Near Old Vilnius, Old Lithuania, Earth

Azra was being hunted.

She didn't notice anything until two days in. Without warning, a ship roared by overhead, disturbing her small campsite. Jumpships were now things that caused her to scramble for cover. Most of the time it seemed like whoever it was had no idea she was there. After a few tense minutes of waiting she'd be free to go.

This time, from outside her hidey-hole (a ditch beneath a fallen tree): a Sparrow engine. Not obviously receding, either. Distant, but steady. She listened to the sound fade and grow for a while, fidgeting with the hem of her cloak's hood. Whoever it was riding that Sparrow wanted something in the area- back and forth they went in some kind of search pattern. With a lurch in her stomach, she realized that they were looking for her.

She waited for the sound of the engine to get quieter again before slinking back to her campsite and grabbing all of her things. She raked leaves back over the cleared area and did her best to cover the remains of her campfire with dirt. It wouldn't fool an experienced tracker, but it would (hopefully) buy her enough time to slip away. There was a valley about two klicks west- if she could get there without being noticed, the terrain would block the sound of her own Sparrow. Following the stream would dump her out somewhere on the Neman River. She could use that for a more hasty retreat.

She took a second to survey the campsite, looking for any eye-catching mistakes, but then the engine-sound pitched up again, headed back in her direction, and she took her cue to hightail it.

September 19, 2961; Contemplation, Old Portugal, Earth

Azra sighed and settled down sitting with a weariness felt in her bones. She'd been run ragged- literally run into raggedness. Her pursuer was dogged and tricky. And worse, they'd had a jumpship they could use to circle around and cut her off, while she was stuck with her Sparrow.

They'd boxed her in quite expertly. Every time she thought to break away- make a run for the airfields of Old Prague, double back towards the Farm- they'd been there. If only they weren't so subtle. Sometimes it was the sound of Jumpship engines that gave them away, but more often it was just the distant smell of a campfire or a Sparrow-path through the foliage that gave tell that they were in the area. She dared not sprint headlong towards any destination lest she fall into some trap.

It was all she could do to outrun them. But outrun them she had, across Poland and Germany and France. Now here she sat in Portugal, at the edge of the world, with nowhere left to run to. If only Europe went on forever, she mused, staring out at the horizon. We might actually have won.

She had a few options, still. Despite the relentless pursuit, she'd managed to steer herself in the direction she'd wanted to go. Portugal had been her original aim, after all. There was a cache back in the sparse woods that held some vital supplies- among them a long-range comms beacon. She could use it to call a ship from anywhere in the system.

She hadn't sent out the call. There wasn't much point, really. Whoever was chasing her would certainly hear it, too, and in the fifteen or so minutes it would take the Jumpship to fly to her, they'd triangulate her location and finally have her made.

They'd be here soon enough, anyway. And if there was going to be a confrontation, she'd rather have it with some measure of civility. Calling a ship would put a time limit on the interaction. People would get hasty. And hasty people were jumpy and jumpy people shot before asking questions.

She stretched her legs and her back, never once taking her eyes off the moon on the horizon. She was done running, anyway.

He came for her at midnight. She heard the ship, then the Sparrow, but didn't move to leave. Whatever was going on, it would end tonight, here.

Azra knew who it was long before he spoke. Without anything to distract her, she could sense him from half a klick out. She'd hoped on her flight across Europe that it was Veera or Tapio or someone chasing her. Even if they meant to kill her, she'd welcome the sight of a friendly face. But here and now, with the smell of burning sage in her nose, the taste of oversteeped tea on her tongue, she had to admit that this seemed more… fitting.

"So," Shin Malphur said once he was within earshot. "End of the line. In a manner of speaking."

"No more West left to go," Azra mused. Sunset had passed long before she'd gotten to the shoreline. The moon hung directly above them in the sky in a dark parody of high noon. It was full, casting so much light on their surroundings that Azra could make out the whitecaps below.

"You've made yourself real hard to find," Shin drawled. "Until now." There was a question buried there, somewhere.

There were a million ways this conversation could go. Azra hesitated for a moment, but she knew what card she wanted to play. This didn't end with her walking away. She let a sigh through her nose and said the damning words. "I'm tired, Vale."

There was a heartbeat of shocked silence, but Shin Malphur, known in some circles as Dredgen Vale, recovered quickly. "How long-"

"I knew something was up since I first met you," Azra explained, still with her back to him. "Other things had me distracted for a while, but I did my research. Lots of stuff to dig up if you know the right questions to ask and the right people to ask them of."

Shin's Light settled from its shocked perturbations as he took on an air of business. "So." There was a question there, too. Azra wanted to scoff. He'd dropped the pretense of threat. Did he intend to bargain with her?

"I'm not joining your Darkness cult," Azra spat.

Shin didn't seem very upset with her wording. "You have a unique perspective-"

Azra couldn't bear to keep her back to him any longer. She half-turned, getting a foot underneath herself so she could stand quick if she needed to. "I kept my mouth shut as a favor to Cayde, and then Ikora and Zavala made me promise. But that does not mean I approve in any way of what you're doing."

Shin just crossed his arms. "It's important," he said, like they were arguing about resource allocation or ammo caches.

Azra didn't like this conversation in vague hypotheticals. "You're killing good Guardians," she accused. "Murdering them."

"Guardians tempted by the Darkness, corrupted by it," Shin argued back.

"Ones that you tempted and corrupted yourself!" She stood, angry for a moment. Shin Malphur shifted uneasily, hand moving close to his hip in a warning. The moonlight was bright enough to make out his hardened expression.

The sheer hypocrisy of it- how could he tout himself as some paragon of morality, the avenging angel, the Man With the Golden Gun, when on the side he was dealing in Hive Weaponry and Darkness? "Jaren Ward would be disgusted with what you've become," Azra said. Here his boy was, taking more to heart from the monster that had killed his mentor than from the mentor himself.

"Well, maybe that's why Jaren's not around no more to make judgements," Shin said. "He couldn't face the truth. Recognize the threats in front of him. I thought you could, after everythin' you'd been through-"

"Don't talk to me about everything I've been through like you could possibly understand," Azra hissed.

"I can't," Shin said, plain and simple. "That's why we need you." His hand still floated dangerously close to his weapon. It was clear he was offering her a chance. "You don't need to run no more," he said.

Azra couldn't help it. She laughed, long and hard. It didn't sound humorous when the echo bounced back to her. "You think after everything I've been through- you thought I'd say yes?"

Shin shifted, uneasy now. "I misjudged you, it seems-"

"Damn right."

And there it was, clear as day.

Azra reached for her sidearm. Shin reacted automatically as he had been preparing himself to do.

Azra could have moved faster. She could have actually drawn her gun, or pulled the invisibility trick, or warned Spark to play dead so Shin would leave after killing her. She could have hidden herself better or backtracked again to throw him off. She could have not courted his anger, not forced him to draw.

But she didn't. She was tired.

He aimed for the Ghost first.

The Golden Gun was blinding, even with her eyes adjusted for the moon. It would have been stupid, repeating Cayde's mistake of letting her Ghost be out, if she'd had any real intention of coming out of this argument alive. Azra's stomach still lurched when Spark died, her mind screaming out into the void left by his death. The Ghost hadn't been any more shocked than Azra had, but it still left her gutted. He'd been everything. Shin's second shot was just a formality- even if he let her live, somehow, she just couldn't go on without Spark. She wasn't going to see another sunrise.

The moment seemed to stretch on forever, everything caught in slow-motion as her Ghost's shell fell through the air like broken ceramic, as the last of his Light brushed through her like a popping bubble, as Shin slowly, slowly moved his aim, instinct-quick but caught in the moment. It was agony.

Something whispered from the space between atoms, the hole left in her heart, beyond the death guaranteed to her now-

"What do you want?"

Shin's finger pulled on the trigger. Solar Light lanced through the air.

Azra wished for another chance.

And just as the Golden Gunshot reached her chest, she got it.

?

"Cayde!"

Azra stared, dumbfounded, as the burning wreckage fell down the shaft. There was an almost unbearable heat in her chest, worse than the burn of strong whiskey. She struggled to breathe.

"Azra?" Spark asked. "What's wrong?"

For a second, her relief at him being there swamped everything else. He was confused. They were out of sync-

But they were both here. Somehow.

Here was…?

An explosion rocked the catwalk she was standing on. The… whatever that structure was- air treatment?- skidded along the side of the shaft beneath her, sending the whole world swaying.

Spark spoke quickly. "The Prison of Elders. We're here to stop a prison riot. Petra Venj-"

The reality of the situation hit her like a train. A second ago- she'd wished for another chance, here it was. "Get Cayde on the comms. Now."

"I would," Spark said hesitantly, "but-"

There was no time, Azra realized. The ground trembled in a familiar way. There was a shriek like a banshee as metal twisted and tore.

A gout of flames erupted up the shaft, swallowed quickly by a cloud of dust. It was just like last time. She lunged for more stable ground, just as she had then.

"Last time?" Spark said. "What are you talking about?"

The catwalk shook beneath her feet. There was an ominous groan from the scaffolding around her. Another few seconds and it would all come falling down.

Azra knew where she needed to be. She reached for her Ghost, cradling him protectively against her chest, and remembered.

The next step her feet took was not on metal grate, but on broken concrete. Dust was still swirling in the air. The light from Cayde's Ghost was like a will-of-the-wisp in the gloom.

"Azra," Spark exclaimed. They'd both agreed that Stepping like that- like she had at the end of the Red War- was not something they ever wanted to do again. "What's going on? Why did you-"

Azra was already at the concrete slab covering Cayde's body. "Help me get this off," she demanded.

She got her hands underneath it and with Spark's help, managed to shift it. Sundance let out a flash of Light, and then Cayde was helping her push it away.

He was alive- covered in dust, groaning and already complaining about his physical state, but alive. The sense of whiskey and worn leather washed over Azra like the smell of an old friend's shirt. Somewhere, Spark was still freaking out- he trusted Azra implicitly, but he had no idea what was going on.

Cayde, also, had no idea what was going on. His blinked up at her, throat lights glowing in a confused hum. "How'd you get down here so fast?" he asked, curious, almost lackadaisical.

"Questions later," Azra pleaded. "We need to leave." She held out a hand and hauled him to his feet.

"Uh… how?" Cayde asked. Nine sets of familiar eyes looked down on the two Guardians. A chill went up Azra's spine.

"Keep your Ghost close," she warned, pulling her Mythoclast. The shadows writhed with the twisted forms of Scorn. "Just… just don't fuckin' die this time, alright?"

"What do you mean, this time?"

But they were already upon them.

Azra tried. She tried so goddamn hard. There were just too many Scorn. She couldn't stop Cayde from taking hits, she couldn't stop the two of them from getting a bit separated in the chaos. Despite her warnings, Cayde was still joking, fighting flashy and loose, when all Azra wanted to do was get the hell out.

He at least took cover before calling his Ghost out to heal him. At the last second Azra saw him, saw the sightline the Rifleman had set up on him. And that was just- no. She was not doing this all over again. She Stepped for the second time that day, blinking across the room in a millisecond, tackling Cayde to the ground. Sundance, properly spooked, disappeared into the safety of unseen space.

The bullet that had mortalized Cayde last time had not been a proper kinetic slug. Azra knew all of the facts. The Praxics had classified it as a Devourer Bullet; it was similar in kind to that shot from a Weapon of Sorrow. Ontological, paracausal in nature. This one had been specifically crafted and tuned to kill a Ghost. It wouldn't do much to a Guardian.

It didn't take much. Azra took the bullet in the back. Everything went dim, her breath caught in her throat.

And there, again, in the space between her and her Ghost (wider now, with everything she had seen but he hadn't), something whispered.

She knew better than to wish on Ahamkara. After all the stories, after all the pain she'd seen from one errant thought- she was smarter than that. Still, Riven tugged at her heart, rooting out her wants and shaking them free.

Azra wanted Cayde to be safe. She wanted things to be different. She'd die for it.

"Maybe not." The Hunter finished her tea with one long swig and set the cup back on the table. "I'll… think about that. It's a lot easier to forget about other people's hope when you might not see tomorrow yourself."

"Dying is one thing, and for all of my years of service, I'll admit I've never come as close as you have," Devrim said. "But I know this: living is a powerful thing as well."

"Saladin had some saying," Azra murmured. "What was it? Dead hands don't build walls?"

"Precisely."

Death was cheap. She'd do anything- and maybe she was reeling still at the horror of her own final death, at being in a position where that seemed like the best option available to her- to a year of misery and pain before that which still seemed much too real-

She'd do anything. Death was cheap; she'd live for this, too. Cayde stumbled to his feet. Azra didn't.

For a moment, she saw it all with horrible clarity:

Cayde's death had been for a purpose. It had prompted chaos in the City, friction in the Vanguard. It had led to Guardian presence in the Tangled Shore. It had driven Azra's hunt of the Scorn Barons and of Uldren Sov. Cayde's Light-infused gun had allowed Uldren to gather a fragment of the Traveler's shell and use it to unlock the Dreaming City.

There was a different event that would cause all of that- the chaos, the hunt, the Light for unlocking the Dreaming City. Uldren had wished for power, allies. He'd wished for his sister back. Azra had wished to not be the Hunter Vanguard, wished for Cayde's safety.

Here was something that would fix all of that.

June 04, 2960; The Prison of Elders, Reef Space

"What's going on?" was all Spark could ask. Panicked confusion was the only thing he could process. What was happening? Petra had announced the prison break, Azra had squirmed her way out of her satellite security hub, and Cayde had decided to drop a Traveler-damned air conditioning station on the Prison's lower levels-

And then Azra had woken up. Even though she hadn't been asleep, it was just as jarring- thoughts wrenched out of their old tracks; confusion, then understanding, then a desperate urgency. They'd agreed to each other to not push at their Vex-teleportation skills, not even at the risk of their own lives- after the events in the Infinite Forest, they were both too aware of how easy it would be to lose themselves again. Azra had gone there without hesitation and she hadn't even felt guilty.

And then she'd fought like mad, against familiar opponents that Spark had never seen before, with a particular searing urgent dread, like something terrible was going to happen and she knew what it was. And she had. She'd saved Cayde's life, choking on the Darkness meant to break his Ghost, and then-

And then she'd stood, unsteady, and walked. Away from Cayde, towards the airlock where the Barons were making their escape. Spark couldn't feel her. That's what was sending him reeling. She was upright and walking, but it was like she was asleep, or dead.

"Azra!" He shouted, ducking out from behind the pillar, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. A shot whizzed by, screaming and purple-black, missing Spark by a hair's breadth. Cayde's hand shot out from cover and scooped him up. "Didn't she say to stay close?" the Exo hissed.

He joined Sundance for the view from Cayde's shoulder as he peeked around the edge. He was probably still trying to get a shot off on Uldren- better kill him than let him escape. Unfortunately, Azra blocked their sightline of him. She was walking more smoothly, now, stepping over the twisted zombie-Fallen bodies. Her hands were empty, her guns all in their holsters. What was she doing? What was going on? Some trick ploy? But Spark couldn't hear her, no matter how hard he focused, and Azra wasn't tense like she should be- she hadn't even flinched when Spark had almost been shot.

She stepped into the airlock turned just before the doors closed, revealing a shot too late to take on Uldren. The Awoken Prince grinned tauntingly. Azra just looked… blank.

Then the doors shut.