'Cause you've got blood on your hands
And I know it's mine, I just need more time
So get off your low, let's dance like we used to

Unfinished Business – White Lies

March 14, 2961; The Keep of Voices, The Dreaming City, Reef Space

The walls shone in the faint illumination, a subtle, glassy iridescence. Little motes of fairly-light floated about serenely. For all of the life and greenery, the stillness of this place seemed less like a calm pond and more like the vastness between the stars. Azra felt a faint sense of vertigo, like she was drifting.

Azra supposed she had been here before. Eight months ago, Savathûn had used her to Curse this place. But despite that, even after running ops for missions in the Dreaming City, even after pouring over maps and scouting reports, watching video feeds, the place was unfamiliar to her. She hadn't dared come here in person. The benefits had never seemed worth the risk, not even in exile. But she could no longer go through life with the proverbial swords of new Curses hanging above her head. She needed to be sure.

No, she couldn't need to be sure. Desperation was a very dangerous thing around an Ahamkara, even a dead one. Azra had settled herself before transmatting down, breathing the Void until her curiosity drowned beneath its unending patience.

There was a presence here, even though all that was left of the Ahamkara was a glassy black heart. (She wondered briefly what the Techeuns had done with the body- was Riven's massive skull sitting in a back room somewhere?) A sense of something touched the Light, winding through the columns, between the planes of reality. It regarded her with a hungry curiosity. A voice echoed, both in the air and in Azra's brain. It sounded like Devrim Kay. "What brings you here, little one?"

Ah, yes. Ahamkara could shapeshift. It made sense it would be trying to get to her by using familiar forms. "Just dropping by," Azra answered lightly. (Lies. Nobody could 'just drop by' the Keep of Voices- it was locked up tighter than a Vanguard weapons vault. But if she was focused on lying, she wasn't focused on how disturbing it was to hear Devrim's voice say things that obviously weren't Devrim's words.)

This time, Ikora's tone rang through the space. "It's curious you came to me now. And curious you didn't come to me sooner." Azra felt the scrutiny like a physical sensation, a pressure on her skin. She couldn't take Ikora's presence- not even a façade of Ikora's presence- without her hackles raising a little.

She decided to just ignore the voice. Better than letting Riven tempt her into some errant Wish. Perhaps Azra could just be here, dropping by on a whim- if she could convince herself. "I've been turning this over in my head," Azra mused. "You heard me. In the City, and in Portugal, and in the Prison of Elders. When I wasn't thinking about you, when I wasn't even really wishing for anything." If Ahamkara could hear half-formed wants across the ocean of space, they'd be insanely powerful. The Guardians would never have been able to kill a single one of them, much less drive them to the edge of extinction. Something suspicious had been going on- something that reeked of irony. "Somebody asked for that," Azra decided. But who? And when?

The voice changed to that of Veera's, achingly familiar but just a bit too sweet. Azra could almost imagine her face, green eyes shining in eagerness. "Ahh," the voice said. "You came seeking answers."

"I didn't come seeking anything," Azra said.

That was a good way to frame it. Ahamkara fed off of desire- of wanting the world to be a different way than it was, of wanting things incompletely, without knowing or realizing the totality of them. There was a key difference, however small, in wanting Riven to not listen to her, and in not wanting Riven to listen to her. The former led to a number of solutions, each with their own consequences. The latter called for no solutions at all.

That was the trick she was trying to pull here- how to undo this? Not to just change its effect, not to take what had been done and alter it, but to unmake the root cause? To nullify it? The temptation was there to ensure this would never happen again- to bulwark herself against the tragedy she'd seen, to take the sword of everything she'd endured and wield it, fully; to perform surgery on a future she could predict now better than anyone else in the system.

But Azra had played far too many games of cards to forget that you could only use the hand that you were dealt. Unless you were cheating, of course- and perhaps that's what a Wish was, in this metaphor. But however long you could sit there and wish that Spades was trump instead of Diamonds, you couldn't change the rules. The rules were what made the game even worth playing- elsewise you may as well sit down at a table and throw pieces of blank paper at each other.

Azra knew temptation. And she was really good now at realizing how unhelpful it was. To change the future would be to invalidate it. To guarantee nobody would turn on her would make faithfulness not mean anything.

"I didn't even need to be here to do this," Azra said. It was funny. Hilarious, actually-

Tevis stood, uncharacteristic concern in his eyes. The sun above was hidden by a thick layer of clouds. The wind tugged at her cape and sent fallen leaves skittering over the pavement of the street. Grass grew up between cracks in the asphalt. Azra had almost forgotten what the color green looked like. But the grass was green. Tevis' eyes were green.

Air rushed up her throat and she realized she was either going to laugh or sob.

She chose laughter. The sound was meaningless at first, like old echoes, but when she drew her next breath, she felt grounded and real, more real than the fear. Hysterics were crushed by joy and freedom and she laughed at their deaths, too. The Void in her bones whispered you are stronger than everything. Spark beside her whispered I'm always here with you. Until the end.

As Azra laughed, an apparition appeared. It wasn't real- Azra's Lightsense told her as much. It wasn't really Veera- or even something taking the form of Veera. It was a wisp, a trick of the fairy-lights, painted from her own memories.

A desperate play from a desperate creature. That, too, was funny.

"There is much you desire," the fake Veera purred. "We are fate-bonded, you and I. We could do so much together."

"Fate?" Azra scoffed. "You- you really think I give two shits about fate?" This was like gearing up for a Crucible match only to realize the opposing team was all Kinderguardians. She'd been psyching herself up for hours and the answer was to not be psyched up. The only dangers here were ones she would make for herself. "How about… I don't need anything from you," Azra said. "And I don't know why I'm even here. You're an idiot." Trying to tempt her with talk about destiny? With an apparition of Veera, of all people?

Not-Veera's face contorted in rage and the air rung like a bell. "You-"

Azra interrupted. "Whatcha gonna do? You're dead." Dead and powerless, because Azra had decided it so. If perception was everything to the Ahamkara- if the way you looked at reality could be used to alter the reality itself- she had absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You couldn't force someone else to cheat at cards.

The apparition looked at her, eyes glittering. "You think yourself clever," Veera's voice said coldly.

Azra shrugged and signaled Spark for a transmat. "I think I'm going to get back to my life now." She could stay and posture with Riven longer, but there wasn't much point if she didn't give it one.

March 15, 2961; The Last City, Earth

Azra returned to the City giddy and exhausted. There was still so much to take care of. Her to-do list seemed to grow every time she looked at it. She still had to talk to Veera. Talk to Osiris. Check in on all of her scattered caches. Meet with Petra Venj. Investigate the Dreaming City Curse. Track down Eris Morn. There were dozens of smaller issues: updates to her weapons and armor, snapshots of the Vex Network to take, supplies to restock-

Shiro found her in one of the fancier conference rooms, holographic displays covered with equipment lists and maps, a mug of tea long gone cold on the table. The Exo took in the chaos with a skeptical optic. "You seem busy," he rasped.

Azra sheepishly cleared a space so he could sit. "There's so much to catch up on," she explained. "So much that needs to get done- and things I never got to do."

"It's been four days," Shiro said. There was a hint of exasperation about him. Azra, belatedly, realized that she was doing it again: she was trying to get out in front of the storm, taking on a hundred tasks and then running herself into the ground carrying them out. She'd done it after the Vault, after the Red War- after basically anything big, she'd work herself to the bone just trying to wrap things up as quickly as possible. And here, as always, was Shiro to scold her into taking care of herself.

Shiro didn't sit, instead bracing his hands on the back of a conference chair. He flicked absentmindedly through a few of the files. Azra guiltily began gathering up the data pads. Shiro hummed, then redirected his attention back up to her. "You look like you could use a nice, simple patrol away from everything," he said.

When was the last time Azra had even been on patrol?

March 16, 2961; Chattahoochee River, Old American Empire, Earth

The scheduled route followed a river. They went by Sparrow, taking their time, doing their best to maneuver around fallen trees and sharp bends. Every town they came to they got off, did a quick sweep to gauge any Fallen activity, then got back on their Sparrows and continued on downriver. It was uncomplicated in a way that things hadn't been in a long time. It was just her, the river, her bike, the occasional Fallen raiding party, and Shiro.

They made camp on the bank of the river. The water had eaten away the loose, loamy soil, leaving a nice little bluff with a decent view. This wasn't a particularly vital or dangerous mission, so they were afforded the luxury of a small campfire. It never got too cold in this part of the world, but they still bundled themselves into bed early to sleep off the chilly night.

Shiro, as always, got up early to watch the sun rise. Azra found herself sitting with him, eyes tracing patterns in the fog still clinging to the water. Sometime today they'd hit Old Atlanta, which was sure to produce a few firefights as they encouraged House Dusk to abandon whatever mischief they'd gotten up to in the city. It'd be another full day and a half after that before they reach the Gulf of Mexico and the end of their route. Azra sat, relieved to be thinking about today and tomorrow instead of the tangled obligations that lay beyond.

The tops of the trees were just touched with golden light when Shiro spoke. "So," he said conversationally. "How did I die in the alternate timeline?"

Azra's head jerked up involuntarily. They had pointedly not been talking about the whole mess. Obviously Shiro had still been putting thought into it. Azra scrunched her eyebrows at him, an unspoken question. How did you know? She hadn't spoken about it.

He did a half-chuckle and shrugged. "It's not hard to figure out. The first thing you did after seeing Cayde was ask him if I was alive."

Azra swallowed the lump in her throat. Overhead, a cardinal was calling, laying claim to the day. It sang like there was nothing in the world to be afraid of.

"Insurrection Prime," Azra finally said.

"Oh," Shiro said, sounding only mildly surprised. "Cayde did run ops for that. It makes sense it would have turned out differently…"

The feed ended. Azra sat and watched it, waiting for it to pick back up as Shiro was rezzed, but part of her already knew.

"That's it, then?" she said. Her own voice sounded far away in her ears. Everything was odd, like she was watching someone else speak, merely a passive observer.

"I am… sorry," Veera said stiltedly. She might as well have been in another room.

The seconds stretched impossibly long. The logical fact was, Shiro was gone. His Ghost had been damaged by a Fallen sniper and then obliterated by that giant Brig they'd sent to wreck the City. It seemed like such a cop-out.

"I'm sorry," Shiro said. "That's really crass of me. It wasn't your fault- the Kell's Scourge was a real threat. It's not like Cayde did anything you couldn't have- it was just different."

"I didn't run ops," Azra said. "I was on bounty and strike assignment duty. I didn't even know you were on that mission until Veera showed up afterwards…"

"Who ran ops, then?" Shiro asked.

"Zavala."

Shiro hummed in dissatisfaction. "Seems like you'd be the better choice for that, seeing how you speak Eliksni and all."

"I was pretty much excluded from command decisions at that point," Azra explained.

Shiro looked at her, and… it wasn't in judgement. It wasn't in 'how bad did you mess up', it was in 'what the hell were they thinking'. He trusted in her in such an automatic, instinctual way. After all this time.

Azra found a stick and chucked it, watching it tumble down, punching a small hole in the mist before splashing into the river. "I was Cursed, you know," Azra said. "I think it… twisted how everyone looked at me. Zavala was already so frustrated with Cayde sneaking out, he took it out on me when Cayde died. And he got even more strict. Treated me like I'd take any opportunity to desert or blow of my duties." Her voice dropped. "He wouldn't even give me time off to bury you, afterwards. I had to sneak out."

Normally, Spark would pick up where she left off. But he hadn't been there, and he was unsure, so the silence stretched.

Eventually, Azra found the words. "Ikora was grieving. She blamed me for it all. I think she liked to watch me suffer. She was always so cold, so smug."

"And me?" Shiro asked. Azra looked over, and Shiro's expression was intense.

"You were just so busy," Azra said quietly. "You were never around when I needed you. You promised me we'd fix the whole thing, find a way out, but then you just… left. I mean, I didn't make it easy to be around me, but you just… gave up."

"And nobody noticed," Shiro said flatly. "Nobody thought-"

"It wasn't all at once," Azra said. "And it's not like people wouldn't have been upset, right? But they just... never got over it. They never moved on. It just kept getting worse."

"Your Dreaming City wasn't Cursed," Spark rationalized. "The last Ahamkara was dead- people weren't going to be worried about Wishes. Nobody would have been looking for it." People had let it happen because they didn't think there was anything to stop.

"I'll look," Shiro swore quietly, fiercely. His hands were balled fists in his lap, his normally calm Light vibrating with fury. "I can't change what happened then. But this time, I'll be watching. We'll catch it." He said it with the conviction of someone who had no choice but to be right.

And that… that unraveled a knot of anxiety Azra didn't even realize she was holding. Shiro looked back at her, and it wasn't the distant, stoic figure she'd grown used to- it was just Shiro. Her brother, the one she'd known since she was first Raised. Who taught her to speak Eliksni, who'd colluded with her on pranks, who'd been a steadfast supporter through the years.

Azra made a poor effort of hiding her expression. Shiro scooted over until their shoulders were pressed together, knocking his head against hers. Azra leaned on him as they watched the morning light play out on the canopy.

"I feel so stupid," Azra confessed. "Sitting here all torn up about something that never really happened. It's not real anymore."

"It's real to you, isn't it?" Shiro asked.

"No-one will remember this a hundred years from now. It's a temporary problem. Not worth aching over. I can deal."

Azra threw her stone with feeling. It bounced seven times. "Bullshit."

"What?"

"Just 'cause something ends, doesn't mean it wasn't worth anything. Everything ends." She studied the Bladedancer beside her, the set of his shoulders, his feet in the sand. "...And I don't like to see you suffer in silence. If it's a privacy thing, I get it, but… talking helps. You'd do it for me."

"But it's like… how can I be mad at Ikora and Zavala, when they didn't even do anything this time around? It wasn't even really their fault last time, either." It was a useless emotion- worse than useless, actually, if it drove them apart. Azra hated useless things.

"You've gone through some shit," Shiro said. "You can't just snap your fingers and forget about it."

"I can't blame them," Azra said. "They were Cursed. I was Cursed. Yeah, stuff happened to me, but it didn't happen to them, not this time."

"The point of an apology isn't to assign blame," Shiro scolded. "It's to make things better. Whether I meant to hurt you or not, you were hurt. And I'm telling you it's not going to happen again. It's not." He pulled back, taking Azra by the shoulders. "I swear it."

The last time he'd promised her something like that, he'd let her down. Azra figured she should have learned better than to just trust people at this point- but it was Shiro. Shiro. She'd damn herself a million times for him and never once be able to regret it.

Azra could feel Spark processing this. Even if they were still repairing their mental link, he knew how she thought better than anyone. "I think you don't want to be upset at Ikora and Zavala because you don't think they'll apologize," the Ghost said.

That… that was real. "It's like I don't know them anymore," Azra said. "They both… I was already hurt. I don't know if I can-"

"You don't have to forgive them," Shiro said.

It would be so much better if she could just not care. She'd prefer if she didn't need an apology, if she could just move on. It'd be safer. It'd be terrible if they didn't care, but it would be equally terrible if they did. it still wouldn't fix things. "But if they ask, and I can't-"

"They owe you some damn time. At the very least," Shiro said. "And you don't have to forgive them. It's not about them."

"But what if they're not sorry?" Azra asked.

Shiro pulled a knife from his belt, spinning it easily between his fingers. "Maybe I'll make them sorry."

Azra snorted.

March 19, 2961; The Last City, Earth

Veera hadn't expected anything to happen while she was away. That was why she took up a rotation in the Dreaming City in the first place- things were getting boring back on Earth, and she felt frustrated by the lack of progress on any of her projects. (In hindsight, if she had wanted to relieve that frustration, she shouldn't have spent her efforts in a place that reset itself every three weeks).

But once she was back in Inner System Space, she was bombarded with a series of messages. Azra had woken up, suddenly, distraught, and although she was safe, Ikora's letters had a deep sense of worry in them. Cayde had a few rambling notes of his own, all jumbled and full of alarming details.

Azra hadn't tried to message Veera yet. (She tried not to be hurt by that. Logically, the Hunter had a lot of lose ends to tie up, and Veera would not have gotten the messages before now anyway). Veera still hesitated a long minute before sending the first message herself.

Message Log AJV2950

19_03_2961

16:25

V: I will be back in the Last City in approximately one hour.

AJ: Got it.

Veera stared at the message the entire ride back. Lucky for her, it did not actually take an hour to fly from the Reef to Earth. But once she got to the City, there were reports to turn in, files to send off to the respective Archives, and loot to stash in her vault. It was sufficient distraction. Veera figured she likely had time to shower and change her clothes still before Azra would come looking for her.

But she opened the door to her apartment and Azra was just there, sitting on the bed. She must have picked the lock. Veera found herself utterly unprepared. Looking at a message on a screen was one thing. Walking into a room and having her there was another. It was so painfully her- her once-vacant eyes were filled with an unreadable intensity. She looked fresh off of the road- there were still burrs in her cloak, dirt worked into the creases of her armor. She smelled like woodsmoke and old Ether. It was every bit of Azra that Veera had been missing these past months.

Veera reached for her, but Azra tensed. The Arcstrider's shoulders were up, the expression on her face looking almost sad. "I'm sorry," she said.

"You are sorry?" Veera said incredulously. "I am sorry."

"Can't we both be sorry?" Azra asked. She was still hunched. Was she apologizing for the flinch? For her absence? She should know Veera would blame her for neither.

Instead of the bed, Veera sat at her desk, turning the chair so they could face each other comfortably.

"Devrim… ah, relayed your message," Azra said as the Warlock rearranged the furniture. She wasn't making eye contact. "I… I'm not sure I really deserve it."

"What… Azra, this is my fault," Veera said. Azra had been gone because of her, her decisions, her actions. If they had waited in the Dreaming City- if they had captured Azra, brought her back where whatever affecting her could be studied, they might have actually freed her from her imprisonment.

"This is so much going on here you don't know about," Azra said. "It's not your fault."

"But I killed you," Veera exclaimed. "We should have waited. If we'd had you and your Ghost in the same place- we could have fixed this. But I was not strong enough- I thought resurrection might solve things, and I was desperate-"

"Sounds like you had your reasons and were working with limited information," Azra said wryly.

"You have been comatose for eight months!"

"That wasn't because of you," Azra sighed.

Veera paused. There were bags under Azra's eyes. Her hair was far scruffier than she usually let it get. She looked, despite the eight months' vacation her consciousness had taken, exhausted.

"Veera," the Arcstrider said hesitantly. She reached out and took Veera's hand in her own. "You've been blaming yourself because the person you hurt wasn't around to blame you." She finally looked up to meet Veera's eyes, and her face was set in resolution. "Well, now I'm here and I'm telling you: it was not your fault."

"What happened?" Veera asked. "You were kidnapped, and mind-controlled, it appeared. You were gone. And when we tried to free you from it, you did not come back."

"I don't have all of the answers," Azra said tiredly. There was a pause. "I… you can hug me now."

Veera did not have to be told twice. She moved from her chair to sit beside Azra on the bed and wrapped her arms around the Hunter.

Azra even hugged her back.

They stayed like that from a bit. It was nice to just be with each other. Uncomplicated, despite the circumstances. It had always been easy to be with Azra.

"Veera?" the Hunter asked, half-muffled by Veera's robes.

"Yes?"

"Let's say… hypothetically," Azra began, pulling back. She had her thinking face on, the one that made her look vaguely disappointed. "In the Prison of Elders, if I hadn't been kidnapped. And instead Cayde-6 died."

"Hypothetically?" Veera asked.

Azra nodded. "Let's say I became the new Hunter Vanguard. That I had to send you off on that Raid without me."

"Who would you have sent in your place?" Veera asked. They had taken Cayde. But if he would have been dead, who would have filled Azra's spot on the team?

"Quantis Rhee?" Azra said. "She's a good Nightstalker. But anyway, I wanted to ask you… if that had happened, hypothetically. When you went to face Riven, what would you have wished for?"

Veera got the feeling that this was not hypothetical. Azra's curiosity was much too sharp for this to be a work of fancy. And it made too much sense. Azra had been too frantic on the recordings Veera had seen- too aware of the trap that had been laid for them. Too desperate for things to not have gone catastrophically wrong, somewhere. Somewhen.

She still considered the question in earnest. She imagined standing before the Ahamkara with Cayde-6 dead, with a stranger in Azra's place. She imagined leaving Azra behind as they pushed on to this new adventure.

"How sad did you look when you sent us off?" Veera asked.

"Pretty miserable," Azra admitted, a bit of a grimace on her face.

Veera thought about that. "I suppose…" she huffed a kind of half-sigh, half- laugh in realization. She knew what she would have been thinking about. "I know you do not really go on raids because you want to- I suppose Atheon, perhaps, but Crota? Oryx? The Splicers?" She shook her head, remembering how serious Azra had always been, how tense. "I knew you came with us from a sense of duty, not from genuine excitement. And then, finally, there was a raid you were not going to come on. But now you were only staying behind from a sense of duty. I suppose I was thinking about the irony. No matter if you come with us or not, you still are not getting what you want."

Azra's expression was clear. "That's it."

"That is what?'

Azra nodded to herself, voice suddenly sure. "That's the answer."