What if those words were never said?
What if it's all inside my head?
Would it be easier if I could just forget?
What if I didn't run away?
Could it be any other way?
Would it be wrong if I decided I should stay?

Blind – Rise Against

March 21, 2961; Appalachian Dead Zone, Earth

It always astounded Azra, when she looked at it, just how many caches she had. She didn't put all that much in most of them- just a few ammo synths, a backup gun or two, some food. Nothing she would miss if it got stolen or destroyed. It was useful to have them scattered about. So many times she'd run low on something and the extra bit of armor or a blanket spared her a lot of pain or a trip back to the City.

But when she set herself a task like 'check up on all of my caches' and pulled up a list of coordinates, it boggled the mind. No wonder she never got bored back in the day. It would take her a literal month to get to all of them.

She ended up settling for just checking her caches in the Americas. It was still a meaty task, one that had her rolling up her sleeves and stretching her muscles in anticipation. The conversations in the past few days had left her feeling overwhelmed, more than eager to run away from society and the concerned faces of Cayde and Veera. Just her, the Wilds, and her Ghost.

Her Ghost, who was increasingly unsettled. His edginess poked at Azra like a stray metal shaving in her sock. He was working through something major, even as he helpfully pulled up coordinates and notes and arranged transmats. He didn't comment on it, so Azra politely ignored the feeling. She couldn't tell exactly what he was thinking about (prodding at their connection left that part of her mind feeling like burnt fingertips), but she could feel the thoughts churning. It wasn't unexpected when he announced, suddenly, "We need to talk."

Azra straightened from her current cache, feeling it for a moment in her back. She scanned the woods around them. Her eyes eventually settled on her Ghost. He was stock-still on his lifters, anxious but resolute. "Of course," she said.

Spark was hesitant. "Can we… go somewhere?"

Also not entirely unexpected. These thoughts felt heavy, like clay mud weighing down her boots. Azra did her best to stow her apprehension, to stay neutral. He was already so nervous. "You have someplace in mind?" she asked lightly.

March 21, 2961; Contemplation, Old Portugal, Earth

It was serious, then, if they were here.

Her cliff was the same as it always was. There small cairn of local stone Azra had made to commemorate the site of her first Rising, and a larger one of foreign rocks made to honor her assumed death in the Vault of Glass. Azra was a bit scared it would be different now to her. The last time she'd stood here, she'd faced down Shin Malphur, and she'd let him kill her. She shuddered at the thought: the moon high in the sky in a dark parody of noon, the certainty in Shin's eyes, the frustrated, helpless weakness in her hands.

But, for now, with the Sun clear and bright, the present held more power than the past. A few seabirds circled the sky above. The wind spoke of nothing but pleasant weather.

Azra sat back from the edge a bit, on a crumbling stone. She wanted the feeling of solid ground underneath her feet. Spark wandered around, still sorting his thoughts. Azra let the white noise of the waves wash aside her dark memories.

Spark eventually committed himself, spinning back toward Azra and elevating himself to look her in the eye. Azra took a nervous breath- and then let it out, the tension draining. This was Spark. No matter how uncertain the circumstances, she could never be afraid of him.

Spark was still unsteady, a recognition of future unpleasantness ringing from him. It tasted sharp and bitter, like the medicine they gave out for radiation poisoning. "You can talk," Azra said quietly. "Whatever it is, I'll listen."

Spark sighed, letting go of the fear himself. "I know… I'm not your Spark," he said.

Azra's gut reaction was rejection- of course he was. He had to be. The most horrible moments of Azra's life had been those last few, watching his shell splinter, watching the pieces fall, the sudden lack of his existence like a screaming hole in reality. She could not do that again. It was just a paradigm she could not accept. "Of course you are," she said. "What-"

"I'm not the one you remember," Spark interrupted. "If- if we're talking about timelines, he was… alternate. You might have jumped back, but he didn't. He died."

A traitorous thought in the back of Azra's mind had been whispering much the same thing, but she'd ignored it. She didn't want it to be true. She didn't know if she could handle it being true. She could not untangle him into two identities in her mind, to hold one close while mourning the other.

"I know it's upsetting," he said. "I can tell that." His shell was ticking back and forth, full of nervous energy and frustration. "But I can't tell what you're thinking. I should be able to."

Azra tried to reach out to him mentally. But there was that same soreness, a feeling like sand grinding in the gears of a Sparrow, and she flinched back. "We're getting better," she protested. It sounded weak, even in her ears. He'd had eight months without her, and she had over a year of memories he couldn't recall. Yes, they were improving, but who could say they'd ever get back to where they were?

"Azra," Spark said sadly. "I'm just… I'm facing reality, here. We've been broken. And we might heal, but… we can't be right. If and until then."

"You're still my Ghost," Azra said.

"I promised I'd be there for you. Always." His voice lowered. "But I haven't been there for you. You've been through this… you've been through hell, again. Without me. Someone was there, but it wasn't me. I don't remember it."

"You're here now," Azra said. "That's what matters." Where was he going with this? This was a middle-of-the-night feelings conversation, held in quiet tones under cover of darkness. Not a let's-go-to-the-Cliff-and-talk-about-important-things conversation.

"I want to remember," Spark announced. "The Curse, and the Vanguard gig, and the Exile. From my perspective, not yours."

Azra's stomach dropped. The way he said it was not it would be nice if I could remember. It was I have an idea about how to remember. And the way he was looking at her now, guilt and boldness held together, it wasn't something she was going to be happy with. Azra herself wanted to protest with the impossibility of it, but she immediately had ideas herself.

But she also had a gut-wrenching fear. "Gods, Spark." It was hell, torture, plain and simple, and he wanted to live through it? To carry it with him the rest of his life? To mess around with time, again, not to save Humanity, but to… what? Punish himself?

"I know what's important to me," Spark said. "This is important. I want this. It doesn't have to be him, the last time around, or me, now. It can be both. I can make it work."

"I would never ask you to do that," Azra said weakly. "Never." Not in a hundred thousand years. Not in eternity. She knew eternity, she wore it in her bones. She wouldn't even consider asking him to suffer, or to risk himself for her. For her feelings.

"I didn't think you would," Spark answered. "I'm not doing this because I think it's what you want. It's what I want. I want to be able to be there for you. Like I used to be. Like I'm supposed to."

"You're already enough," Azra said. "Of course you're enough. I don't want this if it's going to hurt you. You don't need this."

"Don't I?" Spark asked. Azra wanted to scream at him. He didn't. They could get through this. They would get through this.

"Something planned this," Spark said. "Savathûn, Riven, something did. They separated us. They made us weaker. Tell me- if we had been on the same page in the Prison of Elders, would they have been able to take you from me? If you hadn't been alone. Would it have worked?"

Azra didn't know.

"This was intentional," Spark reminded her. "Of you being here without me, of me being here without you. We're weaker. If there's one thing that can beat a Hive God of Deceit, isn't it togetherness? Honesty? Commitment?"

Azra reached out to hold him in her hands. Spark stayed obligingly still as she cradled him to her chest, trembling.

She'd do it. She couldn't not- not when he looked her in the eyes and told her that this was what he wanted. He was his own person, and she had absolutely no right to interfere in his choices about his own existence.

"I've made my decision," Spark said gently.

"I know," Azra said. "I just wish you'd included me in making it." His mind was made up before he'd wanted to talk. He was a wall. And Traveler, could she really look him straight-on and tell him no?

It didn't help that his logic made so much sense. Azra had held many of the same concerns, in the privacy of her own head. She'd just been hoping for a way forward that didn't endanger anyone. "I don't want to lose you," she murmured. Her voice quavered, her hands shook.

"We'll be careful," Spark assured her. "We won't do anything we aren't a hundred percent sure will work." He freed himself from her grasp gently, floating back up to eye-level. "I know… I know this is something I have no right to ask you to do."

Azra couldn't make eye contact, but she shook her head. "You… you're everything to me," she said. "I can't… I can't lose you." Not again. "But I also can't… if this is what you want. I can't decide this for you." She sighed, slumping in defeat. "I just wish you didn't feel like you have to," she murmured. "You're already so much more than enough."

"This isn't just personal," Spark said. "It's strategic." Azra knew he believed it. She didn't know if she herself was convinced.

She just held him close again, feeling his subtle vibrations, his soft Light, treasuring him and mourning him at the same time.

"You're not going to lose me," he said. Azra nodded, afraid that she already had.

March 23, 2961; The Last City, Earth

Ikora Rey, for the second time in two weeks, found herself in the basement of the East Stacks of the City Archives.

It wasn't a literature source she was looking for, it was a Hunter. They seemed to have a propensity to loiter in this one room, though Ikora could not fathom why. Hunters were not well-known for their love of technical documents or journal articles on thaumaturgy, which were the main occupants of this part of the stacks.

She pushed open the door to find Azra Jax already looking her in the eye. The Hunter's thoughts, normally half-inscrutable (thanks to a close neural link with her Ghost), were plain and clear for the moment, laid bare. She'd sensed Ikora Rey coming down the stairs, recognized her by her Light (cherries sweet and overripe, sour lemon, crackling like thin autumn ice), had known it was her before she'd touched the door.

Her guard was up already, hackles raised. There was a tang of fear in her thoughts, one that made Ikora's heart squeeze in her chest.

"Is this room… important?" Ikora asked. She didn't want to intrude if it was. "I found Cayde-6 here not two weeks ago-"

"No," the Hunter replied, curt. It wasn't special, it was un-special. Unremarkable. Some place secluded and safe, where you went when you didn't want people barging in on you.

Ikora felt the Hunter's sense of crossed privacy and withdrew a bit, mentally. Azra had expressed in the past that she didn't care Ikora could read her mind, but it seemed they weren't on the same standing they used to be with each other.

"I was hoping we could talk," Ikora said. She approached the table Azra was seated at. The Hunter didn't move, but Ikora felt her hackles rise further, like a prickling in the air. There was a data pad in her hands that she gripped with white-knuckled tension before she deliberately made herself relax.

"I have nothing to give you," Azra said. She turned the screen off on the data pad and laid it on the table with a soft clack. There was finality in her voice, and resignation. Her posture spoke of an unbearable exhaustion. She had something to give, once. She just had no more.

"It's not for me," Ikora bargained. "It's for Cayde-6. And Zavala."

Azra did not answer for that, staring at the bank screen.

Ikora elected to keep explaining. "Please. You are probably the only other person who knows both of them as well as I do. Or better than I do."

"They aren't talking," Azra stated.

"I don't even know why," Ikora said. "They had an argument. They've had arguments before, but they always blew over. But it's been months now, and they're both so stubborn."

"What do you want," Azra said sharply.

"I just want your perspective. You spent months working with Zavala, in this alternate timeline of yours. And Cayde might be my friend, but he's your brother."

"You want them to stop arguing?" Azra asked.

"They can't even be in the same room together," Ikora said. "It's going to cause problems sooner or later. But I don't think Zavala even knows why they're fighting. Has Cayde explained any of it to you?"

"I can guess," Azra said, still tight-lipped. "I'm not sure there's really any fixing it. I mean, yeah, you could patch up the surface problem, maybe, but the real issue here isn't going to be so easy."

Ikora took it as a small victory, at least, that the Hunter was talking. She did catch a shade of obligation in her thoughts- Azra did want to help.

"They're both being pretty unreasonable about it," Ikora conceded.

Azra's eyes left the data pad, finally, to look at Ikora. There was a sharpness in them. "I don't think Cayde's being unreasonable," she said bluntly.

"I think at this point, if he just apologized, Zavala would accept it," Ikora said.

"I don't think Cayde should apologize," Azra clarified.

"They should at least try to work things out," Ikora said. "The argument is personal, but the stakes here are much higher. Zavala will understand that."

"Ikora," Azra said, sounding pained. "Do you want to know? Really?" She folded a leg up under herself, slouching, trying to find some physical comfort to buffer the emotional tension.

"I do," Ikora said. "That's why I'm here."

Azra shook her head, as if giving up. "If your solution is for Cayde to just be better, it's not going to work. He can apologize all he wants, and Zavala can apologize, but if you want Cayde to just get along in the Vanguard position, you're wanting him to be someone else."

Ikora considered this. "He has been the Vanguard for over two decades. I don't understand what's different now. Why this argument is causing breakage when the Red War didn't."

"Listen, Ikora," Azra said, shifting again in her chair. "You- you, being Warlocks- there's been two Warlock Vanguards. Same thing for the Titans. And both Saint-14 and Osiris were alive when they left. They got to choose to leave. There's ten plaques out in that courtyard for me. Ten."

"Nine," Ikora corrected automatically.

"Eleven, there might as well be," Azra mused. She drew her data pad a few inches closer to herself, setting it square with the table. "If there's a character flaw that makes Cayde unsuited for this job, it's one we all shared. Even Tallulah Fairwind. Even Andal."

"Cayde has been doing better recently," Ikora said. "With more freedom. If it's tension from the work environment, surely there are accommodations that could be made…"

She trailed off. Azra was staring at her. No, glaring, with narrowed eyes and a sense of anger in her thoughts. "You're not listening," the Hunter accused.

"I'm listening," Ikora protested.

"You're doing Warlock listening," Azra explained. "You question everything. Pick at the seams. You come and ask me to explain and now you're making me defend myself."

"I'm trying to understand what is real and what isn't," Ikora said soothingly.

"You argue and you test-"

"-To build a solid framework," Ikora interrupted. "To make sure the conclusions we draw are real and trustworthy."

"Hunter listening is…" Azra shifted again, shoulders still rigid. "You don't know unless you were there. And the teller tries to speak their truth, and the listener tries to understand it." She looked up, making eye contact, and Ikora saw frustration and hurt. "You want to know why Cayde's so upset, but you don't think he should be upset in the first place. And you sit here and argue with me like just because you don't understand, it's not real."

"I just want answers," Ikora said.

But Azra had already made a decision. She stood up, scooping the data pad off the table.

Ikora remained sitting. "Please," she said. "I'm sorry. I-" She looked down at her clasped hands, noting the tension in her own posture. "I didn't quite consider how emotional this must be for you." The argument must have something to do with what happened at the Prison of Elders and the Tangled Shore.

"I'm going to spend hours trying to hammer this through your skull, and then you're going to go tell Zavala and he's still not going to believe you," Azra said. She moved back to the bookshelf on the wall, sliding her data pad in next to a hundred other identical ones.

"I do want to help," Ikora said. "Things can't go on like they have been."

"If Zavala wants to fix things, maybe he can fucking figure it out himself," Azra said. "Let him go ask around. If you want me to tell you how to convince Cayde to make up, I can't. Cayde has every right to be angry."

"You're angry, too," Ikora said. "But-"

She stopped her words when the Hunter turned to glare at her again. There was such a complex stew of emotions clouding her thoughts, Ikora couldn't see through them all. Azra was angry. Angry at Zavala. Angry at Ikora. Angry at herself. And hurt. And sad, and guilty, and helpless and tired. A hurricane raged inside her.

Ikora didn't want to leave things like this. "Could we still… get tea later, maybe?" she asked.

Azra looked at her. Incredulously. "I have nothing to give you," she repeated. Ikora saw herself though Azra's eyes, colored by a cold memory- a shrewd intelligence turned distant and calculating, a sharp wit wielded as razor blades, every soft bit of trust gained now viewed as a weakness, a place to jab and a new angle to twist the knife.

"You don't have to give me anything," Ikora said. "We could just… talk. Like we used to."

"Because this has been so fun," Azra said dryly.

"Unless you rather I call you," Ikora reasoned. "I think face-to-face is more productive-"

"Why won't you let me end this conversation?" Azra asked suddenly. She wanted this to be over. She stood by the bookshelf, too tense to stay but refusing to leave out of pride.

"You're my friend," Ikora argued.

"I said I'm not ready to forgive you," Azra said.

"I want to try," Ikora replied. "Let me earn forgiveness if I must."

"I'm asking you to leave," Azra said. "You're really going to come in here, interrupt my reading, and bully me until I run away?"

"I'm not bullying you."

"Ikora Rey," Azra said formally. She did that, when her temper was poked, Ikora remembered. Pulled up a more structured way of speaking and acting in an attempt to keep her tongue from running wild. "I am not the one that came into this room and started demanding things."

"You expected me to just give up? After all these years?" Ikora asked. "You were hurt. You thought I would just let it go and not try and fix it?"

Azra narrowed her eyes again. "I expected you, maybe, to try and understand my feelings. Instead of seeing me as an argument you could win."

That made Ikora halt in her mental tracks. Azra had been hurt, even if Ikora technically hadn't been the one to do it. And she deserved to hear an apology, even if she wasn't ready to accept it. Wasn't that what Ikora was trying to do? Apologize? Say things won't be the way they were? I won't abandon you again?

But maybe Ikora had been so focused on saving the friendship that she'd failed to see past it to the friend. And here Azra was practically screaming at her, I'm uncomfortable. I don't want to talk to you right now. Ikora was bullying her, stepping on the boundaries she was trying to set in an attempt to convince her she cared.

Azra took Ikora's stunned silence as an opportunity to leave. She pushed her chair in while her Ghost floated over to the archive terminal, probably to shut down whatever search program they'd opened to find their text.

Ikora realized she'd never sought an answer to the first question she'd asked herself when she entered the room- why was Azra here? She didn't read novels for fun, much less dry academic works. She was researching something for a purpose.

Azra paused halfway to the door. Her mind must have been making much the same observations Ikora's was, because she turned back to regard the Warlock coldly. "You're going to pull that back out and try and figure out what I was reading," Azra accused.

Ikora didn't say anything. But she knew the answer- these problems- Cayde and Zavala arguing, Azra's anger, the Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City- they were all tied together. To pull on the thread of one was to begin to unwind the other, and understanding what Azra was doing could be important.

"You weren't even going to ask me first," Azra stated. "Not even a 'Hey Azra, what were you reading?'"

"Would you have told me?" Ikora asked.

The answer was so obviously no. But given what she'd been through, maybe the opportunity to say no was the most important thing to Azra.

Ikora turned the hard truth to try and find a softer angle, but saw none. And Azra deserved no more lies. "I wouldn't have asked," Ikora admitted.

The Hunter, with a poker-straight face, walked back over to the bookshelf, reached out an arm, and swept the entire shelf of data pads onto the ground. They tumbled with a symphony of clatters onto the thin carpet. It would take an hour for an archivist Frame to reorganize them all.

Ikora sat, a bit stunned at this act of personal, petty vandalism. Azra stepped neatly over the fallen data pads, feeling childish, feeling giddy, but mostly still angry.

The last thought Ikora caught from her as she yanked open the door was a sense of vindication.