Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re not brave. You’ve simply forgotten the fear of death.”

She fell.

She didn’t know for how long. Too far. Without her ghost, without light. Her mind retreated long before the ground met her in its hard embrace. A bad trip. Visions. Hallucinations, perhaps. If she landed, she didn’t recall.

Until she opened her eyes.

Sasha awoke feeling like she’d been run over by a sparrow, movement inspiring a certain agony that immobilized her. She tried to call her Ghost for a damage report, but he didn’t respond. Left to her own devices, she ran an assessment the only way she knew how, by flexing each joint one at a time and filing each into categories such as “strained,” “sprained,” and “broken.” Her lungs felt bruised to hell, possibly due to cracked ribs, her left shoulder was out of its socket, her left knee had swollen up so much it strained against the confines of her armor, and she couldn’t flex her right wrist. Each breath rattled in and out like fresh hell, knives stabbing her chest.

After an undetermined amount of time, she managed to roll to her side, blinking against her darkening vision and squinting through beaded moisture on her helmet. Around her, the city burned, most of the city block she occupied reduced to rubble.

She slowly, achingly sat up. The cavalry wasn’t coming. She was the cavalry. She found herself left two options. The easier of the two would be to lie down and finish dying.

Sasha wasn’t that easy to kill, Ghost or no Ghost.

Lip curled, she got her right hand under her, adjusted her legs, and put weight against her battered extremities. A whimper peeled from her lips and a wave of dizziness hit her like a titan, but she managed to keep her feet under her, lift her eyes to her perimeter, and ran an assessment.

Cabal occupied the city. Not far off, she saw a unit march across an overpass double-time, unaware of the sitting duck beneath them. She scuttled instinctively back until they were gone, breathing sharply through her nose.

“Un-fucking-believable.”

If--no, when --she survived this, heads would roll. She would extract payment in blood. Cabal had long since been a thorn in her side, but this was no longer tolerable. They had torn apart her city and crushed countless lives within. Gaul would rue the day he didn’t make sure she was well and truly dead before tossing her aside.

Immobilizing her left arm as best she could, she staggered forward, unclear on her trajectory, other than she had to get moving. Find shelter. Find a weapon. Find out if anybody else was alive. Her focused rage got one foot achingly in front of the other. She channeled what little energy she could summon into motion. What the hell did she have to lose anymore? The Cabal destroyed the tower, occupied the city, and tore away the traveler from its power. They took everything.

She passed under the twisted scrap of a ship and toward a tunnel that promised shelter, but held up when she heard the familiar crackle of a voice and squinted against a sudden beam of light.

Ghost .

Not just any, but her Ghost.

A sob tore from her aching chest and she crumpled sideways, no longer to bear her own weight. Her old friend spotted her, zipping forward with a cry of relief. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m not so easily disposed of,” she hissed.

He began a scan, compiling a comprehensive list of her injuries. She didn’t go over it. The list was long and they were short on time.

“Cliffnotes version, please.”

“You looked better after the Aksis finished stomping on you.”

“Ouch. Harsh.”

“I can heal some of this...but I can’t resurrect you. Not since…” He didn’t have to say it.

“It’s okay, babe. I’m going to get us out of this,” she swore, taking the little bot in her hand and hobbling to the underpass directly ahead of them where they had a bit of privacy. “You run a patch, and I’ll do what I do best.”

“Kick ass? Or was it chew bubblegum?”

Her lips twisted in a grim facade of a smile. “Something like that.”

Healing took time and energy, but she didn’t do her Ghost the dishonor of asking if he was up for the task. Her swelling reduced over the next hour and they managed to get her shoulder and a few other little joints back into place. Sasha was still a mess, but functional. 

Resting gave her enough energy to focus outward. She began worrying about friends, wondering whether they came out alive. She had to steel her heart and her nerves, choking down the fear for the people she loved. They were some of the best damn warriors she’d ever known. If anyone had a chance in hell of walking away from the tower alive, it was that group of assholes.

Then again, half of them also had hero complexes. They would have loved to go down fighting in a blaze of glory.

“We have to get moving.”

She was armed with a single hand cannon, but no ammo. She couldn’t say where the rest of her weapons had scattered. She was still bruised to shit and limping along at half-speed, but the city would fill with Cabal until it collapsed under their collective weight. If they wanted to slip the perimeter, sooner was better than later.

“Are you sure you’re up to it? You’re still in bad shape.”

“We’re behind enemy lines this time. We have to go, preferably before we get caught.”

He seemed to sag a little, his light dim. “You’re right. Just, try not to strain anything else for a while. And definitely don't die.”

Her Ghost ducked behind her shoulder while she tested out her range of motion and got moving. They ducked patrols all the way out of the city, but the Cabal wouldn’t know subtle if it flanked them in tactical camo and stole the turtle shell right off their back. They were easily avoided, and Sasha was a Hunter. If she didn’t want to be seen, she wasn’t seen, even with malfunctioning tech from her light’s absence and broken armor from the fall.

“Fuck me. My ship was in that fucking hangar,” she suddenly seethed.

“Oh...darn.”

Ghost had never been fond of her ship, often referring to it as the “milk crate with wings.” She didn’t care. It had been a clunky eyesore, but it was her clunky eyesore. She added it to the list of things the Cabal had to answer for.

She finally broke out of the last tunnel and into a broad stretch of wilderness. She hated the feeling of open skies, like a Cabal ship would swoop down at any moment to pick her off. The open spaces might be faster for travel, but she hugged whatever rocks and trees she could find. Heat scanners would grab her up faster than eyes, but she couldn’t break from cover. It went against every bone in her body.

“Scan for beacons. We can’t be the only ones to make it out. We have no food and no water. We won’t get far without either.”

“Got one! One of the emergency frequencies is putting out rendezvous points for planet evacuations. Gathering coordinates now.”

Sasha squared herself up and doggedly marched forward, empty pistol in one hand, knife in the other. “Let’s go. Hopefully they have some bullets for me.”

The first night was pure hell. Sasha couldn’t sleep, too afraid to close her eyes and risk being ambushed. She found other worries to keep her company. Worries about friends. Worries about innocents. Worries about her Ghost and the Traveler and how much ground she had to cover with virtually no supplies.

“You should sleep, Sash. You need your energy,” the Ghost fretted.

She shivered, pulling her cloak tightly around her body to ward away the plummet in temperature. “I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again,” she whispered.

“That's what I like about you--your unfailing optimism.”

She almost smiled, but her mouth appeared to be broken, because a sob came out instead.

Hunger clawed at her belly, making its way to the forefront of her problems. Sasha swayed as she walked, delirious with exhaustion.

One foot. Then the other. Left. Right. Left again. Over and over at the urging of her Ghost.

“The source of the signal is close. We’re practically on top of it.”

“Can’t be. There’d be scouts. They would have set a perimeter,” she griped.

Left again. Right again. Left again. To the rocky ledge overlooking a short drop.

And on top of a massacre.

Sasha’s hands flew to her mouth, her exhaustion evaporating and leaving her with cold, stark reality. A dozen or so guardians littered the ground beneath her, sprawled out where they fell, a thin layer of snow covering the bloodstains.

“They’re gone,” her Ghost uttered. “They had no chance without their powers.”

Blinking tears, she found herself caught in a web of uncertainty. Not a place she was well familiar with. How did one honor the dead? What would they have preferred?

“Do I...do I bury them?”

Her ghost flitted about, returning to her side and hugging close. “The ground is frozen. Besides, we need to move on. The signal is still going. The Cabal might circle back, hoping it will attract more. Like us.”

“One minute. They have food. And I should at least gather names…”

“There will be time for remembering the dead later. We need to keep moving. Please, Sasha.”

Normally, she the practical one. No nonsense, no frills, no sentimentality. She sucked in a breath, clenched back her tears, and nodded curtly.

“Right. Of course you’re right.”

She hardened her raw heart against the death and did what she had to do to survive. They were gone. She wasn’t. The best thing she could do for them was make sure the Cabal paid and paid dearly. She opened a crate of protein bars and stuffed them into a scavenged pack. She filled her canteen with the filtered water jugs and liberated ammo off several of the corpses, promising them that she would put it to good use.

“That could be us,” Ghost whispered as she took one last look over her shoulder at the bodies left behind. “Sasha, if you die...I can’t resurrect you.”

As if she needed reminding.

“Good thing I’m damn hard to kill then.”

“It’s that falcon again.”

“It’s not that falcon again. It’s a falcon. This place must just have falcons.”

“I don’t know. It looks like the same falcon.”

Sasha squinted out at it suspiciously. “Maybe it’s my spirit animal. Kind of like in my vision quest earlier--”

“Hallucination.”

“Vision quest.”

If he could, she imagined Ghost would have rolled his eyes.

“Anyway,” she continued. “You’re right about seeing a ton of falcons. Or maybe the same falcon over and over again. We should name it. If it’s going to be my spirit animal, it might as well go by a proper moniker.”

“You never named me,” the bot objected.

She paused, considering that with an arched brow. “But...you’re Ghost. My Ghost. Do you not like that name?”

“All of the other Ghosts are also called Ghost.”

“Well, if you wanted a name, you should have asked for one.”

“The falcon didn’t have to ask.”

Sasha paused, huffing and puffing from their hike through the mountains, gazing out of the awe-inspiring, snow-capped landscape beyond. “It’s my spirit animal, not a falcon. I’m going to name it Moxie.”

“Moxie? Why Moxie?”

“Because, babe, it’s what you and I have buckets of. We’re very moxie, you and I. It’s why we’re survivors. What do you think?”

The hawk took off from its perch and flapped away. Her Ghost made a noise, something between a snort and a giggle. “I don’t think it liked your name.”

She gestured to the way up ahead, diverting the attention away from her potentially failed spirit animal. “Our path is disappearing. You think I can make that jump?”

“Ten glimmer says you can’t.”

“You’re on.”

Sasha took a running start at the gap in her path and leapt, forgetting entirely that her jump abilities vanished with her light. She missed. Entirely.

And fell again.

“Oh look, somebody left a perfectly good Guardian lying around. Things must be worse than I thought.”

Sasha blinked against unfocused eyes, vaguely aware she was sprawled out on her back atop a pile of rubble. “My condition is up for debate. A perfectly good guardian wouldn't have missed that jump.” Did she just slur? She was in worse shape than she thought.

A hand reached down, grabbing her arm and propelling her to her feet. She nodded grimly, leaving the massacre of the city unspoken. The woman assisting her wore a wool poncho and shiny weaponry. Interesting face tats. She wasn't alone, either. Behind her, a group gathered, checking weapons and supplies, throwing gear into several parked ships and shuttles. Sasha's stomach clenched in palpable relief.

“You look a little rough around the edges. You okay?” the woman asked.

“I'm…” She didn't know. She could barely stand she was so tired. In the last week, she didn't know if she got ten hours of sleep total. She'd done nothing but move.

“What do you need?”

She shook off the stench of smoke and blood that seemed lodged in her nose since the tower got bombed. “I'd kill for a shower. Feather bed. Three course meal topped with a giant cheesecake.”

“It look like anyone one of us has had a shower lately?” she scoffed.

“So is that a yes on the cheesecake?”

Smirking, she began walking back toward the ships. Raising her voice, she shouted out to the rest of them, “Load it up, people, we have to move! Wheels off the ground in ten, and if you're not in the bird, you're left behind!”

“Wait! Where are you all going?” her Ghost cried as they hustled to keep up with the woman's long strides.

“Far. As far as possible. We're figuring out specifics on the go.”

“Good enough for me. I'm Sasha, if it matters,” she said.

“Hawthorne. Welcome aboard.”

The woman jutted her arm up in the air, but before Sasha could discern if she had an unusual greeting practice or just wanted everyone to get a peek at her armpit, a falcon swooped down and secured itself to her raised fist.

“Spirit animal,” she whispered.

“And this is Louis. Best pilot we have.” She turned again to go.

“Better name than Moxie,” Ghost muttered in her ear.

“Not even. My name is way cooler.” She snatched Ghost out of the air. “Now don't get lost.”

She found space on one an evac shuttle with other armed civilians, but she was the only Guardian among them. She buckled herself in and tipped her head back against the bulkhead, exhaling in relief. The familiar drum of the engine and soft chattering of voices lulled her in ways unexpected. Sasha usually valued quiet and privacy, but after being isolated in the wilderness for so long, terrified she may never see people ever again, being surrounded made for an unexpected security blanket.

“I’ll keep this watch,” her Ghost promised, floating next to her ear.

“Wake me when we get to there.”

“I’ve got you.”

And he did. He always did.

Chapter Text

Sasha flipped a knife in her hand, testing its counterbalance and her reflexes. She’d gone and retrieved her light, as impossible as it sounded. Now, she sat atop a decaying building deep in the EDZ overlooking the corpses of Fallen and Cabal. A pile of weapons arranged by accuracy and effectiveness fanned out next to her. Her armory had been destroyed with her ship at the Tower. Forced to start from scratch, she killed and looted the dead, putting together a makeshift arsenal to carry her through the coming war.

But the knife felt good in her hands. Familiar. Welcome. Just like the light.

“Hawthorne wants to know if you’re returning to the Farm before dark,” her Ghost whirred at her elbow.

She caught the knife by the blade, paused, and keyed her comm. “I’m busy, Hawthorne.”

“Gutting Fallen, I know. Devrim has been keeping me posted. If you’re not coming back and all you have on your to-do list is aimless slaughter, you mind checking something out for me?”

She checked her ammo reserves. “Sounds suspiciously like you need an errand girl.”

“I need an errand girl who knows how to give Fallen shotgun colonoscopies. You that girl?”

“Not really my style, but my shotgun surgeon is still MIA, so I guess I’ll have to do. What do you need?”

“Reports of the Fallen having shot down an aircraft near you came in. We’re now receiving an SOS beacon. I need someone to head out and check for survivors before there aren’t any left. Odds are high that it was a transport of refugees.”

As if she needed to be reminded. She sheathed her knife and selected weapons to take with her. She didn’t have a proper sniper rifle yet, so she opted for a scout rifle with a decent scope, an auto rifle for when things got sticky, and a grenade launcher. It all felt wrong. Sasha was, by habit, a creature of absolute precision, but she had to adapt if she wanted to win.

“Uploading the general location of the crash to your map,” Ghost informed her.

“Consider it handled, Hawthorne. I’ll check back when I find the crash site.”

“And when you get done with that, maybe get some sleep. Devrim says you look like shit.”

Sasha arranged her shabby little arsenal for ease of access and disengaged the comm. “I can sleep when I'm dead,” she muttered.

“She's right, you know. You're going on forty hours. Maybe just a teensy little nap…” her Ghost prompted.

“Sleep is for the weak.”

She jumped down from the building, hitting her booster at the last second to soften the fall to the mulch covered lawn. The EDZ smelled like rotting leaves and fog. She hadn't decided if she liked it or hated it. It reminded her of a tomb, but was at least fresher than a Hive ship.

“I miss my Sparrow,” she whined as she hoofed it over the hilly, uneven terrain.

“I miss Orion.”

His statement landed like a punch to the gut. She sucked in a breath and quit moving. It was the first time either of them said his name out loud since the Tower's fall.

“What I mean is, he always had a good effect on your attitude. He was glass half full. I didn't mean…”

“It's fine. Well find him. And…”

She wasn't ready to verbally commit to any other names. Every time she closed her eyes she imagined them among the dead. Riddled with bullets. Buried under rubble. Burned beyond recognition. Her friends. Her family .

“We'll find them, Sash. They're too stubborn to die. They're the only ones willing to be in a fireteam with you, and that, I think, says everything you need to know,” her Ghost urged.

She sucked her fear and grief back into herself. “When we find Orion, I'm telling him how you took his place as the most chipper fireteam member. He'll be so proud he'll vomit rainbows.”

She trudged on, dirt and leaves clinging to her battered combat boots.

“I still miss my Sparrow,” she muttered after a few minutes.

“I give you the eternal ray of sunshine, people, Guardian Sasha.” Her Ghost played a sound clip of applause until she swatted at him.

They quieted when they heard the unmistakable popping of gunfire. Sasha picked up the pace, swinging her scout rifle into her hands and veering off the road that headed down into the lowlands, instinct driving her uphill to the nearest high ground.

Finally, she broke through the treeline on top of a smoking shuttle surrounded by Fallen. Three Guardians held the line, two others dead or dying on the ground, with civilians behind them keeping their heads down.

Sasha lamented her lack of a sniper rifle.

But the grenade launcher had some merit. Swinging it forward, she lobbed three shells into the thick of the assault and let them deal with the shrapnel while she picked off those in the back. They panicked, suddenly divided between two fronts.

“I…” Sasha muttered as she steadied her scout rifle and emptied her clip bullet-by-bullet, “...am…” Their numbers dwindled, but she heard the whir of engines overhead. “...the headshot…” Her ammo supplies ran dry, leaving her with an auto rifle she detested on basic principle. “...queen.”

“You're empty,” her Ghost warned as a second batch of Fallen reinforcements airdropped onto the carnage below them. “And I think our friends down there are low, too.”

“Let's put on a show, then.”

Using her boosters, Sasha leaped down the hill into the middle of the Fallen to join the fray, taking a couple of bullets with her armor and risking some minor damage to get in close and personal. Then, a bullet slammed perfectly dead-center of her helmet, cracking it's face. It threw her off balance for a moment, snatching her breath, but she recovered with a pulse of energy.

Arc bolts crackled around her as she summoned her new weapon. She missed the elegance of her blades, but fell into the same trance-like state as her eyes unfocused and she turned the staff into a whirlwind of chaos. Bodies dropped, burned from the inside out with every touch. Dregs, Vandals, and Captains crumpled into smoking heaps, leaving nothing but bits and pieces by the time her energy ran it's course and she came back to her own mind.

When she finally stilled, she removed her damaged helmet with a scowl, checking out the shattered face plate and tossing it aside, again lamenting the loss of her entire armory. Strands of her short, brown hair stuck to the sweat on her neck and face.

“You have got to be shitting me. What will it take for your punk ass to finally die?” a voice drawled from behind her.

Sasha froze, heart clawing to her throat in a failed evacuation attempt, blocking her ability to breathe. An exo in tattered, scorch-marked robes shoved a hand cannon back into  its holster, hip jutting out where she planted a fist. She was worse for wear, but her posture indicated plenty of leftover piss and vinegar.

“Nola-9. I'm surprised it didn't take you longer to get here. Are you telling me you didn't drag your entire library across the continent on your back?”

“Digital files, babe. It's the way of the future.”

“Could have fooled me, given how many times you pulled crusty old books from your dress to stick your nose into.”

“It's a robe.”

“It's a dress.”

They hovered closer, their Ghosts circling each other and sharing scans. Behind them, the remaining Guardians and civilians watched with thinly veiled apprehension. Finally, when Sasha could shit-talk no more, she grabbed her old friend in and wrestled her close. Nola flew against her, metal arms locking her in a fierce embrace. Exos didn't make for comfortable huggers, but she was so goddamn relieved to see her she might never let go.

Was she crying? Why were her cheeks wet?

“They sent you to the flagship. I couldn't get to the evac shuttles in time, or I'd have backed you up. When we lost our light, I knew you were dead,” Nola ground out.

They reluctantly parted.

“Aw, I made the fleshbag cry,” her friend crooned.

She swiped her cheeks furiously. “I got nose-to-nose with the assfire who orchestrated this whole thing. He's one scary motherfucker, Nol. Snatched my light and booted me off the edge of his ship.”

“Fuck me sideways. How'd you survive? Your light...I saw you...not blade dancing, but…”

Nodding, she spread her arms. “Nola, I shit you not, I had a vision quest.”

“A vision what?”

“Oh, here we go again,” her Ghost muttered.

Ignoring him, she launched into her story. “I was given a vision. I followed the path here to that big shard thing. It had a sliver of light left in it, and it gave it to me. As far as anyone knows, I'm the only Guardian left with any light.”

The exo exchanged a look over her shoulder with the others, face scrunching. “Oh, I hate you so much right now. Don't give me your sad eyes, either. It won't work.”

“We'll figure out how to get your light back, too. I promise.”

“And what am I supposed to do until then? Stay out of the fight?”

Sasha didn't blame her for her ire. She'd been in the same position a few days ago, not to mention, salty was Nola’s default setting.

“You could learn to snipe like me.”

“Not possible. I can science the shit out of sniping, but I can't calibrate for natural instinct. And don't fucking glow. I can't stand you right now. Stop smiling. I'm so fucking jealous of your light. Why you? Why you ? And if you say the words 'vision quest,’ I will end you.”

She cocked her head, eyebrow raised. “Don't hate me for it. I just followed the signs.”

“I can hate you as much as I damn well please, fleshbag.”

She never thought Nola’s attitude would ever make her feel this good. She spread her arms again. “You sound like you need some lovin’.”

“Don’t you dare hug me again.”

She laughed, so relieved to have part of her fireteam intact.

Nola asked, voice still sour, “Any word on Orion?”

Her laughter died, the wind leaving her lungs all at once. She shook her head.

“Shit, Sash.”

She couldn't think about it yet. Instead, she nodded her chin toward the smoking scrap heap that had once been a ship. “You are not telling me you flew this jankity POS all the way from the Tower. No wonder you broke down.”

“I didn't break down. I was shot down!” the exo fumed. “And I have more refugees waiting for pickup. We heard the signals about some place called the Farm. This was supposed to be recon.”

Smirking, she keyed her comm. “Hawthorne, I need evac for two Guardians, six civvies, and one washed up genius in a dress.”

Nola-9 punched her shoulder. Hard. “I'm really glad you're alive, Sasha,” she grumbled.

They always joked that Nola was the brains, Sasha was the guns, and Orion was the muscle. It was how they worked. It was why they worked.

“I want to go with you, I do,” Nola said as they took pop shots at Cabal from the top of a decaying building in the heart of Trostland, several days after her arrival in the EDZ. “But I can't throw myself face first into danger anymore. I need to apply my strengths…” She paused, digging for the right word.

Sasha took a shot. Missed. “Smartly,” she supplied with a grunt.

“Your aim is off.”

“The goddamn scope is off,” she snapped.

“'Smartly’ is not a word.”

“It's what you wanted to say.” She sat back, setting her gun in her lap and fiddling with the crappy scope to balance it.

Nola sighed, propping her rifle next to her. “Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm not the best pilot here.”

She couldn't.

“I know where pockets of refugees are and I can get to them and get them back out. It's familiar territory and it's something I'm good at. I’m needed here more.”

Sasha planned on following a transmission they received from Zavala. He claimed he was gathering a resistance on Titan. If he planned on striking back, it only made sense to put the one Guardian with light on the front lines.

Except she'd never taken on the front lines before. Usually it was Nola and Orion charging in the forefront with her aiming a rifle over their shoulders, softening up their targets and circumventing flanking attempts. And on the rare occasion they had to sit back and she had to charge, they had her six. Every time.

“You want a pep talk? I'll give you a pep talk. Don't ever, ever, ever tell Orion that I did this, but if it gets your ass in your ship and off to save our collected asses, I will suck it up and throw down some inspirational fucking words.”

“What would be the point of getting whatever you think is a pep talk if I couldn't laugh with Orion about it?”

Nola shook her head, pulling off a scope from a rifle and passing it over to her. “Try this one. You know you'll be fine on your own.”

“Wait, are we starting? Let me record it.”

She groaned. “You're the worst, Sasha. Screw your pep talk.”

Laughing, she tossed her old scope at Nola and hooked on the other onto her scout rifle to calibrate. “Fine. If you won’t give me one, I have double the reason to track down Orion.”

“I’d check Mars.”

“Mars?”

“Lots of Cabal on Mars. If Orion is mobile, and fifty glimmer says he found a ride, one way or another, he’d go to the place where he could smash as many Cabal as he can get his hands on. Mars. He’s probably there now, punching their spines apart.”

It wasn’t actually a terrible theory. With the Guardians lightless and scattered, he would see it as permission to go do whatever the fuck he wanted, which more than likely meant exacting revenge on the Cabal. Unable to assault the city directly, and possibly without knowledge of what a pain in the ass they were in the EDZ, he might have legitimately gone to Mars.

“It’s a pitiful day when it’s up to me to keep hope alive,” Nola grumbled, then added quickly. “Don’t tell him I said that. He’ll start calling me ‘Sadbot’ again and I’ll have to punch him.

It wasn't usually advisable to punch a titan, but Nola was formidable for a warlock. She took shit from no one, although she had a weak spot for Orion, much as she pretended otherwise. Sasha found herself fighting a smile, clapping her friend on the arm.

“My lips are sealed. I have to find him first, anyway. WIth any luck, he’ll hear Zavala’s call and show up on Titan, already armed and ready to go.” She raised the gun back to her shoulder and peered through the scope, stilling her body and counting her breaths, a Cabal’s head squared in her crosshairs. Fired. Watched the bulky bastard crumple.

“I think you’re set.”

Sasha lowered the gun back down, lips pinched. “I still don’t have my fireteam.”

“You have your light.”

If she pressed it, Nola might seriously reconsider staying behind and flying rescue missions, so she backed off before she hit unprecedented brat levels. She was a Guardian. A Hunter. She supposedly worked best alone.

But maybe she’d gotten used to the company.

“I’m headed back before it gets dark. You coming?” Nola asked, standing.

“No. I’m leaving first thing in the morning. I won’t sleep anyway. Might as well have something to shoot as long as I’m twitchy.”

“Hey, Sash?”

She pitched a look up at her, eyebrows raised.

“Wreck shit out there.”

They knocked fists quickly and the exo took off, leaving Sasha by herself on the perch.

Sasha watched the sunrise with her Ghost, both of them tracking a falcon as it soared above the treeline. They’d spent most of the night following dropships and making hell for reinforcements entering the EDZ. She paused for a short break before heading back toward Trostland to memorize the rays of sun lighting up the forest while her fingers fidgeted with the broken clasp of a boot.

“You wish you were staying with Nola-9?”

She shrugged. “Let it never be said I'm not a creature of habit.”

“Predictable, some might argue,” Ghost teased.

She swatted at him, but he floated just out of reach.

“Staying would be easy. The EDZ is the closest thing to familiar territory I have and Nola and I have been together since day one. I’ve never had a big adventure without her.” She paused, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Scratch that. I’ve only had one big adventure without her.” The first one Orion dragged her into, and after the fact, Sasha insisted she was never leaving Nola-9 behind again. They ought to have someone responsible along so they didn’t end up in another Phogath situation unprepared.

She almost smiled, pointing her gaze back out to the sunrise.

“Staying sounds boring,” her Ghost mused after a small lapse. “And we’re not boring, are we? I thought we were moxie. Buckets of moxie. Dare I get into alliteration and suggest we are mountains of moxie?”

“Monumental mountains of moxie.”

“Monumental mountains of monstrous moxie.”

“Mesmerizing monumental mountains of monstrous moxie.”

“Mesmerizing monumental mountains of monstrous mean moxie.”

Sasha threw up her hands. “I give. You win.”

“Damn. I still had ‘mayhem’ to use.”

She hopped to her feet, brushing pine needles off her armor and praying her broken boot held together a bit longer. “Come on. Let’s go get breakfast then hit the skies.”

“Breakfast? We’re in the middle of the dead zone. Where do you expect to find breakfast?”

“Just follow the gunshots,” she suggested, making her way back toward the crumbling city buried in the forest.

Sasha only knew of one place in the middle of the chaos consistently stocked. Not that Devrim Kay was prone to sharing--ever--but she was pretty sure she could apply enough pressure to get a cuppa out of it. She heavily suspected that he also squirreled away baked goods up in that tower. It was unclear where he acquired said baked goods, but she could have sworn she smelled them on more than one occasion.

Devrim was up early, rifle cracking the still morning open. It sounded like somebody decided to make an early assault his position. Her suspicions confirmed when the church came into view. The grounds were crawling with Cabal, their forward march interrupted by Devrim’s lethal aim and a lone Titan flanking them to divide their line, switching between spitting fire with an auto rifle and lining up shots with a hand cannon.

Sasha popped off a few shots to give the enemy three sides to worry about, fracturing their front enough for the other two to commit significant damage.

“How sad for them,” her Ghost mused as she took the opportunity of mayhem to leap past the front line and slip into the church. “An entire legion cut down by three people. Their superiors are going to shit biscuits.”

She laughed and took the makeshift stairs up to the top of the steeple. “They swiped our light when they should have taken our bullets instead.”

Much to her delight, Devrim had been in the middle of morning tea when the charge began. The delicate china tea set rattled every time he fired his rifle and, much to her delight, he had a little plate of scones to round out breakfast. She knew he had a pastry supply.

She quietly poured herself a cup and snagged a scone to keep her company while he cleaned up the rest of the section, wondering if any of the assaults had ever gotten past the front doors of the church.

Finally, he leaned back, reloading and then propping the rifle against the wall.

“You better be careful,” she said around a mouthful of scone. “Next time they come, they'll come with rockets.”

He jumped visibly, hand flying to his chest.

“Take it easy. You don't want to give the old man a heart attack,” Ghost warned.

Devrim fumed, his accent coming on thick. “ Old ! Hardly, pup. I have well-honed experience.”

“And the silver to prove it.” She sipped her tea. “Ah. A gentleman of fine taste, confirmed at last. Nola owes me fifty glimmer.”

“How did you even get up here without me noticing? And that tea is a Darjeeling de Triomphe! The price I paid for it's acquisition would make your hair curl.” He snatched a scone to bite into, chewing furiously.

“How do you think I'd look with curly hair?”

Ghost swirled his shell around in amusement. “You know, I bet it would suit you. Maybe if you grew your hair out a little longer…”

“What are you doing here, Sasha? Other than thieving my tea?”

“Nothing else. I literally only came for your tea.”

“Clearly a worthy endeavor,” Ghost added with a sniff. “It being a Darjeeling de Triomphe and all.”“

And who has been smuggling you scones? I honestly thought you'd be more of a crumpet fan, but maybe the scone pairs better with the Darjeeling?”

Devrim frowned, ruffled and annoyed. “I thought you were headed off planet. Abandoning us.”

“Hardly. Hawthorne needs to get a pin in that flair for drama. The city was hardly a prison, and I am not abandoning you.” She took a sip of tea and set it firmly back in it's saucer. “Because I'm coming back, and I'll be hauling along the cavalry with me.”

He barked a sad laugh. “The cavalry is divided, love.”

“And I plan on putting it back together. Actually, now that you mention it, I could use one more thing before I go. Do you have any duct tape on you?”

He jerked a sleeve into place and blustered impressively. “Duct tape! How crass.”

“Yeah, I don't have time for standards.” She rolled her eyes. “But I do have time for more scones.”

He slid the plate away from her reach. Fixing her with a glare, he dug into a bin of odds and ends off in the corner until he came up with a half-used roll of duct tape and tossed it her direction. She caught it one handed and set her teacup and saucer aside.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs alerted them to another visitor. Devrim deftly tossed a sheet over the tea and scones while Sasha picked the end of the tape clear and sealed it against her boot, winding it around her calf to make up for the broken clasp. Devrim tsked disapprovingly.

“It's called improvising,” she snapped.

“I suppose that's your plan on that cavalry? ‘Improvising’ it together?”

The Titan from the battle below stepped across the threshold to join them. She also wore battered, scavenged armor. She was a bit shorter and slighter than most Titans, but Sasha knew better than assume she lacked strength because of it.

She turned back to Devrim. “Look, we know for a fact that Zavala is out there gathering forces. He'll do better than improvise. I can guaran-fucking-tee that.”

The Titan removed her helmet, full lips parted in shock. She was Awoken, skin a pretty shade of teal, eyes fiery, and hair bright orange, shaved on the sides with a half a handspan of growout in the middle, most of it sticking out at off angles after being trapped under the helmet.

“You've heard from Zavala?” she gasped.

Sasha's Ghost helpfully played the message while she wobbled a hand in the air. “It's pre-recorded and being pumped through the system on loop, but it's the first lead we've got.”

“Why weren't the rest of us told?”

She and Devrim exchanged a look. Hawthorne would be pissed. “It's not being deliberately withheld,” she began slowly. “But I think Hawthorne is afraid of us mobilizing and abandoning the refugee crisis if it gets out.” Before the Awoken could fly off in outrage, she added, “I disagree, which is why I'm headed there today.”

She tossed a bag of shard pieces at Devrim and squared up to Sasha. “Cool. Make room on your fireteam. I'm coming, too.”

Hesitating, she cast a veiled look to her Ghost. “I can't say I don't want the company, but you're...vulnerable. And I have no idea what kind of shitshow we'll be running into.”

She planted her fists, hip jutting out. “Look, I know all you Hunters relish your rep as jerkass loners, but suck it up buttercup, because If you're headed into the fire, I'm coming along.”

“I like her,” Ghost whispered in her ear.

“You got a name?”

“You can call me Cassi.”

“I'm Sasha.”

“Yeah,” she grunted. “I know. Everybody knows. You got your light back.”

Sasha wondered how long it had been since she reveled in her rep as a jerkass loner. She might be the worst Hunter in the system. “Okay, you're in.”

Chapter Text

Sasha had hold of a steel pillar, smacking her helmet into it repeatedly until a scuff mark scratched its way dead-center on her forehead. She would have added a few kicks, but her boots were already being held together with duct tape and prayers, so she thought better of purposefully abusing them.

“Hey, woah, the fuck! I thought we had a job to do,” Cassi cried, throwing an arm around her shoulders and pulling her off the pillar. “Also, I think this section is sinking, so we should probably move.”

“Right! Because of course it’s sinking, and of course the entire station is overrun with Hive, and of course Zavala hasn’t actually assembled anything remotely resembling a resistance!” she exploded, throwing her arms out. “Which means I have to go in and I have to clear out the station and I have to start this all from scratch and I just want a fucking nap.”

“I told you that you should have slept on the flight,” her Ghost complained.

Cassi grabbed her armor by the shoulder and jerked her close. “You were the one who told me that you didn’t know what the shitshow we were running headlong into was going to look like. Well, this is the shitshow. It looks like a sinking ship infested with Hive. Now, I’ve only got one life left to live, and I’m not going to waste it babysitting your whining ass because you were too pathetic to get the job done.”

Ghost cackled gleefully. “Oh, she’s brutal. I really like her.”

Squaring herself up, she accepted her fate of digging the sinking station out of the Hive’s grasp. That didn’t mean she had to be happy about it, so she put on a show of scowling until it occurred to her that nobody could see her face through her helmet. She had never been the team leader before. Nola-9 had been her brains since they got started. She would just have to channel her inner exo super-genius, center herself, and put a gun against the skulls of the nattering, doubting voices in her head until they pissed themselves and shut up.

“Okay, we need a battle plan. This is probably going to go against both of our instincts, but the fact of the matter is, I can afford to die, you can’t. I hope this comes off as a stupid question, but do you own a gun with a scope?”

She couldn’t see Cassi’s expression, but she heard the doubt in her voice as she said, “I’m more effective as, like, a battering ram.” She punctuated her statement by smacking her fist into her hand.

“As as much as I’d love to hammer you at the Hive, like I just said three seconds ago, I can afford to die, you can’t. Which means I’m going to be charging up front and you’re going to back me up. You can’t just hit things until you die, have your ghost bring you back, and keep hitting.” She shoved her scout rifle at her as a part of her died on the inside. “You’re going to have to learn how to aim. Try your best not to hit me. If they get past me, and given the Hive’s tendency to use quantity over quality, that’s likely, fall back and let me deal with it once my Ghost revives me. Don’t put yourself in any unnecessary danger.”

Cassi took the scout rifle with some skepticism, then pulled her hand cannon off her back and passed it over. “Here. It’s got shit accuracy at any range, so I won’t be able to use it over your shoulder. It’ll take the head off of a knight, though. Rip through two or three thrall at a time.”

“I’d kill to get my hands back on my Bad Juju,” she sighed, strapping the holster to her hip. “Practically the only gun I ever needed other than my sniper.”

“Here. Give me your grenade launcher. You’ll blow yourself up using it close quarters.” She passed over her sword in exchange. “I hate what the Cabal have forced us to stoop to. I’m a tank, not support.”

“If you two are finished trading, this facility is sinking,” Cassi’s ghost warned, flitting about anxiously.

They headed up to the platform to make their way toward stable ground. Heaving waves shoved at the station section they occupied, tilting it dangerously as old, abandoned containers scraped to and fro, nearly piling on top of them on more than one occasion. Sasha navigated them nimbly, giving her new partner ample time to adjust accordingly from a few paces back. The connecting bridges between station sections had long since fallen away, providing a small gap to jump across toward safety.

“Ten glimmer says you miss this one, too,” her Ghost sang.

“Oh, shush, you.”

She paused at the edge to grab hold of Cassi to float them over together. Without her light, she was restricted to average jumping abilities. Sasha prayed the rest of the station was more intact, because facilitating every single jump was going to put them both in a cranky mood after about two or three.

They traversed rickety catwalks to more stable platforms and finally encountered the first signs of a serious Hive infestation. Sasha dove in head first, much as she absolutely despised getting up-close and personal with the disgusting, flaking monstrosities. At first, it didn’t seem so bad. Cassi’s aim wasn’t terrible, but she quit softening up targets about halfway through their first firefight, leaving Sasha out to dry for a few minutes where she frantically fended off a swarm. She stowed the hand cannon for the firing capacity of an auto rifle--even if it made her lip curl in an instinctive sneer to stoop to using it.

When the final creature crumbled to dust and she was left sweating and shaking with empty guns and crusty knives, she turned to figure out what the hell happened to her partner, half of her afriad that she’d somehow been flanked and jumped during the fight.

Instead, the Titan leaned over the side of the rail, helmet off, mid-heave as she vomited heavily into the rolling waves below them.

“Sorry,” she gasped, wiping her mouth. “I’m so sorry. It’s just the waves keep making this thing move and my stomach started heaving and the Hive always smell like the inside of a thousand year old crypt. I just fucking lost it. It won’t happen again. I got this.”

“Seasick. You’re seasick. Oh, for the love of…”

“No. I’ve got this.” Greener in the face than normal, she nevertheless straightened up and nodded firmly.

Then doubled over and promptly retched over the rail again.

“Take a minute. The Hive aren’t going anywhere. We’ll start up our murder-spree once you bottom out and have nothing left.”

“I do better in zero-G than I do on water,” she admitted weakly.

Not surprising, considering she was Awoken.

Sasha sat down against the central pillar of the platform and leaned her head back, exhaling slowly. “Take your time. I’ll work on a nap until you’re ready.”

“I seriously worry about your ability to sleep better in the middle of battle than anywhere else,” her Ghost muttered. “I might start playing you sound clips of Omnigul like a lullaby.”

She snorted, kicking her legs out and resting her hand on her hand cannon. “Don’t you even dare.”

Too busy dry-heaving over the edge of the platform, Cassi didn’t supply an opinion.

“No. Hell no.”

“Yeah, I’m with you on this one. Not happening.”

“Guardians!” Zavala snapped through their comms. “Get your asses in that room and destroy those breeding scas.”

“Ugh. I just threw up in my mouth a little. Please never say the words ‘breeding sacs’ ever again,” Sasha begged, peering around at the yellow, goo-filled pods attached to the interior walls and ceiling of the room.

Cassi stood back, arms folded mutinously. “I don’t suppose you packed a flame thrower?”

“Must have forgotten it.”

“Well, don’t worry, I’ve got your back while you clear it out. I will support the shit out of you from just outside the doorway.”

“Oh, no, no, no. You’ve been itching for action. Well, here it is. Grab a shotgun and get to work.”

“You were the one who wanted to lead the charge while I covered you.”

She glared. Hard. Then thrust out a fist. “We’ll settle this like civilized people. Rock-paper-scissors. Two out of three. Loser has to clear breeding sacs.”

The Titan hesitated briefly, then stuck out her fist.

A few rounds later, grumbling vehemently under her breath, Cassi grabbed the shotgun and stomped into the room to blow apart the yellow pods.

They sat on a storage container overlooking the secured part of the station. They were scheduled to set out at first light to turn on the generators, but until then, they took a well deserved break, resting to recharge and eat. Cassi stuck to basic foods, still a little queasy.

“So, what do you know about Deputy Commander Sloane?” Sasha asked, wrapping more duct tape around her disintegrating boots. She was glad to have kept the rest of the roll Devrim gave her.

“I’ve always liked her. She’s results driven. Cares about what shit gets done, less concerned about the process. Personal motto runes something along the lines of, ‘by any means necessary.’ Probably a good thing she works for us. If she ever goes rogue, we’ll all be in trouble.” Nibbling the corners off crackers, she focused more on cleaning her weapons, stripping a new pulse rifle down to parts.

Sasha smiled, reminded of her own fireteam. Nola-9 held about the same philosophy. She would go full anarchy if nobody kept her in check. It was why they needed Orion so desperately to balance them out. He supplied a sense of personal integrity that kept them all in check. Nola cared about winning. Orion cared about winning right.

Her smile faded quickly. She missed Nola. She worried frantically about Orion. She could do nothing about either.

“So. You were on the flagship when Gaul stole our light,” Cassi remarked casually, eyes fixed on the pieces of pulse rifle scattered out in front of her.

She hooked her arms around her knees and nodded. “Yep. Front row seat to him mastering the Traveler and destroying everything I ever believed in. Not really my definition of fun. Then he kicked me off the edge of his ship. Literally.”

“And then what?”

“Freefall into the city.” She squinted. “That part’s a little hazy, though. I don't remember much beyond his boot.”

“A freefall into the city from that height should have killed you. This, coming from the dumbass who can't seem to time up boosters after long drops and has splattered at the base of cliffs and tunnels on more than one occasion.”

“She's genuinely awful at hitting soft landings,” Cassi’s Ghost confirmed.

Smile making a faint return, she spread her hands. “I honestly don't know. I might have bounced off a few ships or buildings or something. Woke up broken to shit, but alive. Ghost was nearby, searching for me. We'd gotten separated in the fall.”

The piece of station they were on rocked gently under the force of the waves. Cassi clamped a hand over her mouth, body tensing as she resisted the urge to heave.

“All right. We can't stay like this. Come on,” Sasha sighed, hopping to her feet.

The Awoken eyed her defiantly. “I'm fine. I'm not going back.”

“I'm not saying you go back, I'm saying we push forward. Let's go get the lights on and secure the station, then we can hopefully get off planet and do something on stable ground where you won't lose your guts every two minutes.”

She stared at her like she was nuts. “It's full dark, the station is crawling with Hive, and…” She caught Sasha's sarcastic expression, hopping to her feet. “And I like it. I'm in.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Let's go.” She keyed her comm. “Hey, Sloane. Cassi here is seasick and I'm an insomniac, so we're going to go ahead and chase after generators instead of sitting out the night.”

“Happy to hear it. Let me know when you're close or you run into trouble.”

“Where has Zavala been stashing her?” She mused as she checked her weapons. “If I said that to him, he'd reply with an incomprehensible word salad of duty and morality.”

She hated to admit it, but if Zavala’s identity crisis might be working in their favor with Sloane holding things together while he got his ducks in a row. She only wished she had Orion around to give him an excellent speech about the will to protect making a Guardian who they are, not the Traveler. She couldn't string words together coherently enough for an inspiring sermon like that.

“You have people still missing?” she asked as they headed out across the dark platform.

Cassi shrugged. “Some missing, some dead. I have a few acquaintances back at the Farm. I'm glad they're okay.”

“Close friends? Fireteam members?”

“I have a clan. Had a clan. Two confirmed dead, eight missing.” Her voice turned curt, tone hardening. “Anyway, their best chance, wherever they are, is if we turn the tide on this war. Drive out the Red Legion. Reclaim the Traveler.”

Sasha nodded tersely, unable to commit to her voice. Cassi had it right. If they wanted to give their friends their best chances, they had to charge the tide.

“What about you?”

“I had a tight-knit fireteam. One is on earth running ships for evac missions. She's an ace pilot. Thought her skills were better put to use there. We haven't heard from the other. I don't even know if he was supposed to be at the Tower when it was attacked or not.”

They trekked along quietly for a minute.

“Those assholes owe us so much for stressing us out,” Cassi finally grumped.

“We should start a tab on them. Sue for emotional damages.”

They crossed a catwalk between platforms, exiting the perimeter Sloane and her people set up into Hive-controlled territory. They did a quick sweep of the area and pressed forward.

“So, would you prefer to fight Hive or Taken?” Cassi asked.

“Ugh. Why do you make me pick? None of the above. I just want a snack and a vacation.”

“You wouldn’t know how to take a vacation,” her Ghost interjected dryly.

“I...could learn.”

The trajectory of their conversation cut off when they were ambushed by a swarm of thrall, followed shortly by acolytes, and then knights.

“Got it!” Cassi bellowed, charging into the fight.

Before she could call her back to get into formation, the Titan had herself surrounded. Cursing, cussing, and aiming for skulls, Sasha frantically backed her up, only too aware that her companion was vulnerable. As per usual, the Hive hit with numbers, attempting to overwhelm them before they could put up a solid retaliation. She fought her way to her partner’s side to dig her out and give her an opportunity to fall back.

“What part of stay back and run support don’t you understand?” she roared as she reloaded her hand cannon.

“It sucks back there. This is way more fun.”

“Fun? You’re going to give me a heart attack!”

The words barely left her mouth when a knight stepped past their perimeter, stuck their boomer against Cassi point-blank, and fired. Her body flew back, ragdolling ass-over-teakettle a few times before sliding to a crunching, immobile heap.

“Fuck!”

Sasha loved standing back and popping off headshots at her leisure and left the up-front shotgunning to Orion. However, she had to admit, it was the most effective way to dealing with multiple enemies face-to-face. The shotgun shredded dessicated flesh and piled bodies at her feet. When she ran the chamber dry, she switched to the hand cannon and finished off the group.

When the last body crumpled, she turned back to Cassi, sending out a prayer that she was still alive. Her Ghost zipped around her, scanner in motion.

“Is she okay?”

“Alive. Knocked out. I’m healing as fast as I can. That shot busted right through her armor,” he replied shortly.

“Get her awake so I can tell her how much of an idiot she is!”

“You’ll have to wait in line.”

She reloaded her weapons to keep her hands busy and then paced. She practically wore a hole through the deck before Cassi groaned and began rousing. Each breath hissed in and out for a few minutes before her Ghost got her pain levels under control.

“Last time I ever drink tequila on an empty stomach,” she groaned at last, tossing her helmet off.

“You aren’t hungover, you dipshit, you got shot!” She marched over to loom. Sasha wasn’t terribly tall, so she rarely had the opportunity to tower over anyone unless they were already on the ground. “What did I say about hanging back and covering me? What did I say about you not. Being. Disposable. ”

She twirled her hands in exasperation. “Yeah, okay, mum.”

“This isn’t funny. You could legitimately die. From now on, you keep your ass behind the line, or I will do this myself. I’d rather go it alone than lose another fireteam member.”

The Titan sat up, cradling her head for a moment. “You’d think getting shot might clear up some of the nausea, but I think it made worse.”

“If I had hands, I’d smack you,” her Ghost snapped, still hard at work healing. “You can’t change in anymore. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“It would have been fine if…”

“We could just leave,” Sasha’s Ghost interrupted thoughtfully. “I mean, she’s not going to be mobile for a few more minutes at least. We could get a decent head start. She’d have no choice but to fall back to Sloane’s perimeter.”

“Don’t you dare!” Cassi shrilled.

Sasha stabbed her finger toward the deck. “Then you do what I say and at least pretend you have a sense of self-preservation.”

She set a defiant jaw, but relented after a minute, lowering her luminous orange eyes toward the deck. “Have it your way, then, Captain. No more rushing into the thick.”

“Good.” Exhaling noisily, she stormed over to the rail to stare out at the rolling waves and catch her breath. Her Ghost flitted next to her shoulder.

“Hey.” Cassi sat up slowly, prodding her damaged armor. “You still got that roll of duct tape?”

Chapter Text

No light. Fractured fleet. Dangerous weapon pointed at the sun.

The information Sasha and Cassi got their hands on provided little encouragement. Win or fail, Gaul held their entire system hostage and none of them were getting out alive.

On the bright side, it gave them nothing left to lose.

Sasha found Zavala an hour after their meeting to go over the Almighty. He overlooked repairs as engineers and mechanics worked to turn limping ships back into a war fleet. She hopped up on the container next to where he stood observing, unable to think of a time when the commander ever looked anything resembling defeated. She’d faced horrors beyond imagine, but she could always count on his composure, even long after Cayde and Ikora gave into apprehension.

She wordlessly passed him a flask.

“Where did you get this?” he rumbled, taking it and smelling the contents, nose wrinkling.

“Liberated it from Amanda’s secret stash. It’s her own engine room moonshine. It’ll strip paint.”

Her warning came too late as he coughed over the sip he attempted. “That...is vile.”

She reclaimed the flask and took a measured swig, hissing out a breath as it burned its way down. “There’s an anecdote in here somewhere about begging and choosing. Sort of like your reliance on me.”

He flashed her what she would have liked to describe as a sassy side-eye, but really came off as too tired to care. “I trust you to do this. Your record speaks for itself.”

“What do you think of Cassi running backup for me? She’s one of yours.”

“She’s young and she’s brash…”

“Young and brash. Two words I’m sure you’re more familiar using on me,” she teased.

He fixed her sternly and restarted, “She’s young and she’s brash, but she’s driven and competent and tenacious. You’re lucky to have her along. If you can keep her in check.”

“Wrangling my fireteam isn’t my usual, but I’ll make it work.” Taking another drink--liquid courage--she finally got up the nerve to ask the real question she came over to address. “I was wondering if I could ask you something.”

His body tensed slightly and he lowered his eyes to the deck. “Orion.”

“Do you even know if he was at the Tower during the attack?”

“He was.”

Her heart plunged to her stomach. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I lost contact with him shortly before you showed up. He was supposed to be on his way to meet Amanda to be flown to the flagship to disable its shields.  When he disappeared and you showed up, you became Plan B.”

“Then he still had his light for a couple of hours after he disappeared off comms. Even if he ran into trouble, his Ghost would be able to resurrect him.”

“Whatever happened to him, he never made it to the rendezvous and I didn’t hear from him at any point until I evacuated. If he ran into trouble, it must have been significant. You know what he’s like, especially when he has a goal in front of him, when the pressure is on.”

Sasha did know. She took another swig from the flask, unable to trust her voice.

“I’m surprised Nola-9 isn’t here with you. You two were always inseparable,” he remarked in the silence that followed.

“She’s doing what she thinks is right.”

He stared ahead, posture rigid. “I feel lost without my fireteam.”

“Me too.” She capped the flask and set it down on the crate beside her, reaching out and clapping Zavala’s pauldron. “Hey, but I’ve got Cassi, and you’ve got me. I’ll go get your fireteam back together. I’ve got a lead on Cayde to start with and everything.”

He turned to her as she hopped down, expression somber. “Our fate is in your hands, Sasha.”

Rocking backwards, she fired a finger-gun and a wink at him. “Good thing I’m really fucking awesome then. I’ll get us back on track, Z. I’ve got it covered.”

The bravado might be a smokescreen for her crippled confidence, but she would bullshit until the very end to keep hope alive. She didn’t have Orion’s heart, but she could pretend, just like she didn’t have Nola’s leadership and brains, but she would fake it until she made it.

“That’s...eerie. I never thought we'd see Zavala so defeated,” her Ghost murmured as they headed back to gather Cassie so they could get going.

“The sooner we get Cayde and Ikora, the sooner he'll get over his little identity crisis and back to normal. Besides, I have my own identity crisis to handle. Reporting directly to Titans makes me itchy. I need Cayde-6 as badly as Zavala does. He’ll take all this shit in stride, with a smile. That, and he adores me. I make all the Hunters look good. What's my ego going to do without him?”

“Shrink down small enough to fit inside your helmet again?”

Rolling her eyes, she triggered her comm. “Cass? You ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

“I was ready the minute we landed. We heading to a supposedly empty rock we got that signal on?”

“Weird as it sounds, a supposedly empty rock seems like the the most logical place to find Cayde. Let's go see what we've got.”

“All right. I'll meet you at the hangar.”

Sasha paused at the corridor leading to the docking bay to pause and breathe. Then, while she had a minute, she recorded a message to send to earth while she was off hunting her misplaced leader.

“Nola, it's me. Zavala says Orion was at the Tower when the attack went down and he was supposed to meet Amanda for a ride up to the flagship before I showed up, but he never made the rendezvous and disappeared off comms. That would have been about an hour or two before Gaul stole our light. There's a chance he made it out. Anyway, I'm off to what is looks to be an empty rock in the middle of nowhere on a wild goose chase. Three guesses for who I'm after. I'll be in touch. Stay safe.”

“Transmitting to Earth now,” Ghost announced.

She took a steadying breath, eyes closed. Grounded herself. “Okay. Let's roll.”

“So, what we have determined is that an AI experiencing extreme solitude will develop a pessimistic alter ego and that Cayde is trapped in a Vex time warp.” Cassi gazed around the landscape with a small shake of her head. “I mean, it's better than Titan, but how do we get Cayde out of the loop and what do we do when sketchy-Failsafe overthrows good-Failsafe and double-crosses us?”

“We’ve also determined that this place has Vex milk,” Sasha offered helpfully, squinting through the sniper scope and making last minute adjustments to the calibration, then handed it over. “And that you need precision training.”

“Shouldn't we be double-timing it to get Cayde out of the loop?”

“He's fine. He'll hang tight for a few more hours.”

“I'm sure he's super grateful you have your priorities in order.”

“He'll cope. Now focus. You're going to have to actually look at your target if you want to shoot it.”

Sighing, Cassi adjusted the gun and leaned into the scope.

“You have a north-northeast wind of eighteen kilometers per hour,” her ghost informed her.

The Titan grumbled about wind speed applications for punching enemies instead of shooting them, but she made her adjustments accordingly.

“Just wait until you're so far away you have to take planet curvature into account,” Sasha snorted.

To her, it all made sense. The bullet’s flight path was a puzzle. Wind direction and speed. Bullet velocity. Distance. Angle. The micro-adjustments each shot requires in order to hit. Movement of her target. The point of maximum damage, different for each race to take into consideration. Lining up the perfect shot took patience and cleverness. It took dedication.

Cassi squeezed off three successive bullets, missing the first two and winging a vex with the third.

Dedication might be a tall order. Sasha would settle for competence.

“You’re going to waste all of our sniper rounds.”

“Good. Then we can go do something else.”

“You’re probably going to be aiming that scope over my shoulder soon, so untwist your panties and settled down. Get it right. I don’t want you to accidentally shoot me in the back when it counts.”

“You’ll just come back,” she grumbled, leaning back into the gun with wretched posture.

She resisted the urge to snatch the rifle back to demonstrate how to operate it again. “I try to keep my death count down. It’s not exactly comfortable or painless.”

“It makes my job easier. All I have to do is hack and make wisecracks,” her Ghost chimed in.

“Both jobs you crush.”

“Thanks, Sash.”

It was usually at this point she wished her Ghost had a fist she could bump. She was pretty sure Cassi rolled her eyes hard enough to crack her skull behind her helmet. Smirking, she leaned into her own scope to scout out enemies below. So far, the centaur seemed primarily populated by Vex, but she didn’t get her hopes off that nothing else nefarious and well-armed had found its way to the rock. She couldn’t wait to hear Cayde’s explanation as to why he traveled this far out. She wondered if it was warmind-y.

“See the Vex just to the left of the thing that looks like a boob? See if you can’t hit it on the first try.” Before she could fire, she added, “The sooner you get this, the sooner we get to go do other things. So don’t try any fuckery. Just take your time.”

Sighing, the Titan did as instructed and carefully lined up the shot. She didn't quite get the bullet dead-center, but she ripped apart half of the Vex anyway.

“Good. Keep aiming for body shots. Maybe you can upgrade to headshots with some practice.”

“Or you could give me a rocket launcher. I won't miss with those.”

“Not with me sitting in the line of fire. You're support now. Deal.”

They kept at it until their ammo reserves ran low and they were forced to move on. They packed up their weapons and headed out into the terraformed wilds of Nessus to track down their missing Cayde unit and get him back onto stable ground.

“You must have been good,” Cassi commented as they hiked, following the signal Failsafe provided. “Keeping your team alive, I mean. In the support role. I never really thought about how much I appreciated having a solid sniper over my shoulder. Someone to thin things out while I tank up the middle.”

“My whole team was good. Orion up front, Nola right behind him to make sure he didn't get overwhelmed, and me hanging back, making sure their asses didn't get flanked.”

“I heard you had tea with the queen once.”

Sasha barked a laugh. “I had an audience with the queen once. And she terrified the living fuck out of me. And I one hundred percent believe she's not dead.”

“The Dreadnaught fucked her fleet. Like, bent it over Saturn and plowed it. Her ship was disintegrated.”

She shrugged, popping off a few shots from her pulse rifle to clear out a small Vex patrol up ahead. “I know. I saw the aftermath. I was one of the first boots on the ground on the Dreadnaught after it made itself at home. I just don't think Mara Sov is that easily disposed of. She's brought an entire Fallen House to heel. The woman's a force of nature.”

Her companion flicked her a dubious expression. “Sounds like you've got a raging boner for her.”

“Oh, I would have let her do truly vile things to me if she had only asked,” she admitted with a longing sigh.

“A hundred glimmer says she's dead.”

“You are so on.”

They shook quickly on it, creating a small hill that overlooked another small patrol of Vex about sixty meters out. Cassi stopped her, swinging her scout rifle forward, dropping to a kneel and taking careful aim through the scope. She was slow, but accurate. They tolerated a few return rounds, but the patrol didn't pose a huge threat. Sasha stood back and let her partner work it out, ready to jump in if things got hairy. When nothing remained but twitching, sparking limbs and twisted metal frames, they progressed on.

“How are things progressing?” a female, automated voice inquired through the comms. Then, in a dry, deadpan, added, “Like, you guys are super slow at this. It's taking forever.”

“Working on it, Failsafe. It's not like Cayde is going anywhere. Figuratively speaking.”

“Do you suppose at some point down the road we'll get to look back on this time where we had to reverse roles fondly and laugh?” the Titan mused. “Because if we got to play to our strengths, we'd have this rock stripped of Vex and Cayde safe and sound already.”

Sasha snorted. “We’d also have Gaul by the balls and freed the Traveler.”

They both sighed longingly and trudged onward. They had an exo to free from nonlinear displacement the Solar system to save from space turtles. Failsafe had a point. They were going super slow. They needed to start getting some momentum going.

Freeing Cayde-6 from his displacement loop didn't take much. A bit of hiking, some elbow grease, and the liberal expenditure of ammunition. Once they got him back on stable footing, they had to swoop in for a quick rescue from some poaching Fallen, but other than that, it was mostly business as usual. Failsafe updated her crew logs to make Sasha captain of the Exodus Black--which sounded suspiciously more like a pirate ship, than a colonist ship--and Cassi an executive officer.

“Great. I always wondered what being an Ex-O would be like. Dammit, where is an exo to use that joke on when I need one?” the Titan complained.

“Hopefully up ahead. Cayde? Your shining prince and white steed are here!” she shouted as they made their way through the broken hull to Failsafe’s inexplicably functional reactor core.

She spotted his Ghost peeking out at her and Cayde urgently shoving it out of sight. She waved the inert teleporter.

“I also brought you a present. Also, debrief, cliffnotes version, I have my light back, Zavala is starting an army, and I'm going to punch Gaul in the wiener next time I see him.” She sat down heavily on a piece of fallen siding, kicking out her legs with a long sigh and removing her helmet.

He crossed to the Vex teleporter and picked it up for a critical examination. “Man am I glad to see you two. Aleksandra. Cassiopeia.”

“Don't call me that,” they both shot back simultaneously.

He smirked in his usual way. “So you found your way back to the light. It's not that I'm jealous or nothin’...”

She snorted. “Yeah right. Everyone is jealous. It's the price of my current fame. What's with the teleporter?”

“What do you think? Get up close and personal with Gaul. Put a bullet in his head. Then, maybe, eat a sandwich.”

“I like that plan. I'm looking forward to a rematch with that asshole and I’d kill for a solid BLT.”

He knelt over the teleporter and began fidgeting. Sasha didn't try to stop him. If he got sucked into another portal, she'd pull him right back out to start over. She liked the idea of skipping half of the battlefield to teleport into Gaul’s command center to assassinate him. If Cayde could get her close, she would be the first to hop through.

“So where are Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum? I didn't think you'd ever trade them in for a different model, especially a hair trigger like Cassiopeia.”

“Seriously. Stop calling me that,” Cassi growled.

Sasha knew better than to wring compliance out of him with their preferred names. Cayde was master-class at finding buttons to push and then hammering them until they broke.

“Nola-9 is running refugee rescue missions on Earth. Orion is MIA. Cassi stepped up, so it's us now.”

He quieted and stilled for a moment, eyes fixed on the teleporter. “That's rough, kid. I mean, kudos to Cass for jumping on board, but Nola ditching out and Orion gone? That's…”

“How's the teleporter coming?” she interrupted, cutting off their trip down a lane filled with feels.

He got the hint, sidling away from serious discussions. “Gotta work out a few kinks. Fun fact about the Vex tech: it's not as intuitive as you would think.”

“We've got more bad news,” her Ghost chimed in. “We found out that Gaul has a super-weapon pointed at our sun. Whether he gets what he wants here or not, he won't leave anything for survivors.”

“So what you're saying is you need a timely rescue with the aid of some hijacked Vex tech?” He seemed to be wrestling more with the teleporter than making it do much, but Sasha didn't have a prayer of understanding it, so she let him do his thing.

“It might take a little more than that, but it's the idea,” she agreed, then added. “Zavala is working on a plan. He said he needs you.”

“Yes, well, Zavala always says he has a plan, but sometimes he--”

Cayde froze.

She watched his circuits misfire a few times. She casually picked dirt from one of her armor joints with the tip of one of her knives, waiting for it to process. Just over her shoulder, Cassi watched on with thinly concealed amusement.

“Wait.” He cranked out a turn back toward her, brandishing the folded teleporter emphatically. “ Zavala said he needs me? And you heard those exact words come out of his mouth?”

“We had a heart-to-heart. It was very touching,” she implied with suggestive eyebrows.

“Please tell me you recorded it!”

She grinned, shoving her knife away. “You'll have to take my word for it.”

“Any witnesses? Any at all? Ikora, at least?”

Her face dropped again. “No word from Ikora yet. I just sort of assume she's huddled up in her evil laboratory somewhere plotting revenge.”

“Io,” he murmured. “It's where she'd go for answers.”

She nodded, standing wearily and stretching her arms above her head. “I guess I'm going to Io then.”

“Maybe get some sleep at some point? You starting to look a little Hive-y around the edges,” Cayde suggested.

“Speak for yourself, hypocrite.” She knew his insomnia rivaled her own, even on a good day.

“I'm just saying, maybe your Ghost is slacking. Can he heal away the bags?”

“Fuck you, Cayde.”

He grinned, heading toward the exit, pointing to Cassi on his way by. “And hey, you. Welcome to the A-team. Aleksandra’s my favorite. She’s also my best. The shit she gets into...you’re guaranteed a wild ride.”

“Stop calling me that!” Sasha shouted after him.

He disappeared with a chuckle.

A light pulsed gently behind her. “Hello, Captain. I’m very glad you’re aboard.” A pause. The automated voice flattened. “Not that glad.” The voice switched again, lilting. “I am very lonely.”

“You’re going to be swarming with Guardians once I get our light figured out. We’ve got a lot of terrain here to map and grab back from the Vex. They’ll keep you company. Got wild tales, all of them.” She smiled, checking over her weapons and the armor that tried so desperately to fall apart, in spite of the valiant attempts of duct tape patches. “When we had our light, when death couldn’t stop us, we all collected stories of the stupid things we tried.”

“I will look forward to hearing their experiences!” the AI chimed.

Cassi dragged her hands through her orange hair, also smiling. “You’ll have so many Guardians in your bones you’ll start to get annoyed with them. Something to look forward to.” Casting a nod to Sasha, she said, “So, Io?”

“Yeah. You want to catch some shut-eye before we go?”

“You plan on sleeping?”

“I plan on closing my eyes and being real still for a little while. It’s like the same thing, right?”

They settled down in the safety of Failsafe’s final domain for a quick nap before heading to Io. Sasha took the time to update Zavala and the Farm on her progress. As far as places to sleep went, it wasn’t terribly rough. Failsafe kept the Fallen out, so they didn’t have to worry about getting shot at any point. There weren’t many soft surfaces, but that was nothing new to a couple of Guardians, who spent the majority of their time spelunking in ruins and wilds.

“No news from Nola-9,” Ghost informed her softly. Not far away, Cassi already snored. “Mostly just run-of-the-mill stuff from Zavala.”

Dropping her arm over her eyes, she muttered an acknowledgement and filed it away for later. She did, genuinely, try to close her eyes to sleep, listening to her companion’s deep breathing and envying the way she drifted off so quickly. Sasha would be lucky to cycle through a single REM before she got restless and twitchy. She was already restless and twitchy. How did normal people do it? Shut their eyes until sleep swallowed them?

Sasha tried to roll herself up in her cloak like a burrito, hoping the pressure and warmth would trick her into a false sense of security, but mostly, she ended up looking ridiculous. Ghost was kind enough not to laugh loudly enough to disrupt Cassi’s nap.

Chapter Text

“This is just getting depressing,” Cassi grumbled as they hiked.

“At least Ikora didn’t get stuck in a displacement field. We didn’t even get shot at trying to find her. I call that a solid win.” Jumping on top of a pile of small boulders, Sasha peered around the muted landscape, dusk settling in and the temperature dropping. “But I could do without the identity crises. I appreciate Cayde’s simplicity. Get Vex timey-wimey thing, teleport to Gaul, headshot, sandwich. No time for existential crisis.”

“Do you believe he isn’t having one?”

She grinned, skidding down from the rocks back to the road. “No. I think there’s a lot more to Cayde than he lets on, but I don’t think tying his identity to the light is one of them. The others don’t know who they are if they aren’t Guardians. He’s already something more, so the loss doesn’t hit him as hard.”  

Orion used to laugh at her conspiracy theories. Nola-9 refrained from commentating, perhaps waiting to extrapolate more data before drawing conclusions, but Orion always got a kick out of them.

“Something more?” Cassi struck a pose, hands on hips. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just a theory I’ve been working on for a while. Either way, whether he’s having an existential crisis like Zavala and Ikora, he won’t let either of us see it. He’s a shit drinking buddy. Too good at deflection. Master of redirection. I’ve never gotten his guard down and I doubt I ever will. Ghost, are we close?” she asked in exasperation, hooking into an abrupt subject change. They’d been hiking for an hour. She missed her Sparrow.

“We’re only about a kilometer out now.”

“When we get there, let me do the talking. I haven’t had a whole lot of exposure to Asher Mir, but he’s a handful. He’ll want us to run errands. Some of them might be relevant to our interests, but I guarantee not all of them will be. Remember the rule of thumb, never work for free. If he wants anything done, and we will end up doing it, I’ll make sure we get compensated.”

“Who exactly is he?”

Sasha spotted a band of Taken on a cliff above them, but they didn’t appear to notice or have any interest in two roaming Guardians, so she let them be. They’d be a pain in the ass anyway with the more advantageous position. Keeping tight to the cliff face to avoid detection, she moved along quickly.

“Some call him scientist, some call him crackpot. Take your pick.”

“So...he’s a Warlock.”

“He is the epitome of all Warlocks. Ikora can’t even stand him.”

“Wow. That’s special,” she whistled.

On the rare occasions where their paths crossed, Sasha and Orion sent Nola-9 to deal with Asher Mir. She was smarter than he thought he was and she was brutal. Watching them spar was as good as any sport and usually involved a lot of in-depth betting. Nola didn’t hold back anything, unconstrained by any sense of modesty or politeness. Hell hath no fury like an impatient, overly sarcastic, genius exo with zero filter. Orion still owed her a mod for her Bad Juju from their last batch of betting. Not that she owned her Bad Juju anymore. Not that he was even still alive.

Sasha stopped dead, unable to believe the thought even crossed her mind, much less so brazenly.

“What’s up?” Cassi asked, pulling up short a few paces ahead.

“My trail of thought. It’s nothing. Let’s get this over with. The sooner we deal with whatever Asher has in store for us, the sooner we can get back to Earth and snatch our Traveler back. Or at least back to Titan where we have Sloane and all of her sanity. Hell, I’d take Nessus and Failsafe.”

“Failsafe is funny. I kind of like her.”

“To be honest, quality time with the emotionally fractured AI is actually on my to-do list when this is all over. We could have brunch in her reactor core.”

“Brunch.” She laughed curtly. “Yeah. We’ll do brunch with Failsafe once we defeat Gaul and restore the light. I’ve never been a ‘brunch’ person, you know.”

“You’ll get to broaden your horizons.”

They spent a few minutes debating the perfect brunch menu as they closed the distance between themselves and Asher's research station. He had the sense to tuck himself out of visual range of the valley in a crack behind some boulders. He had a tent erected with a jumble of equipment she couldn't identify. Another Awoken with a bright magenta mohawk and Warlock robes seemed to be taking measurements of Asher's robotic arm.

“Hey, Asher,” she said on approach.

“Don't 'Hey, Asher,’ me, young lady. I'm in the middle of something important.” To the other Awoken, he said, “Enter that data precisely , Assistant. You do recall what 'precise’ means, don't you?”

The so-called assistant rolled his luminous gold eyes so hard it was a miracle his skull didn't crack.

Sasha elected to hurry things along. “What’ve you got for us?”

“Ikora tells me that Commander...somebody...has a plan to attack the so-called Almighty. A plan unsupported by any data!”

Behind him, both the magenta haired Awoken and his Ghost turned sharply. “Zavala has a plan? There's going to be a retaliation?”

“Stay focused, you! Get back to data entry!” Asher barked.

She started getting a pinprick headache squarely between her eyes. “Yes. Retaliation is going down. You said you had some thoughts on how to keep it from becoming a clusterfuck? I'm on a tight schedule, so keep it below three syllable words, please.”

The scientist glared, clicking his eerie, metallic fingers. He moved on tartly. “There are remnants of an old interplanetary defense network system here--”

“Warmind. He means warmind,” his assistant translated with a sigh.

“Shut up! You're extrapolating unconfirmed data for unnecessary oversimplification!”

He got on a roll, though, bright eyes flaring excitedly. “You want to use the warmind to assess the Almighty. You're going to harness the tech here to help them make a plan. Shit. That's damn near altruistic coming from you.”

Asher blustered. “You have duties to attend! This conversation is not of your concern, Assistant.”

“I can help. I know this moon. I've been crawling over every inch of it gathering data points for him for six months now. I know where you can find what you're looking for.”

“You already have your time scheduled to precision.”

“What's my name?” the Awoken asked sharply.

For the first time, Asher faltered. “This conversation is irrelevant!”

“What's my name, Asher? I've been working for you for half a year. You have one of the most brilliant memories of any single sentient being, or so you keep telling me. So, what is my name?”

“C...a...leb?”

His eyes narrowed. “Caelum. My name is...oh, fuck this. I quit.” He turned to Sasha and Cassi. “I'm going to be more use to you than I ever was to him. Can I tag along?”

“And what am I supposed to do? I will not squander valuable data opportunities!” Asher shrilled.

Sasha held up a hand to shut him up, eyes fixed on the Awoken. “Can you shoot?”

“This rock is crawling with Taken, and now Red Legion. I haven't survived this long because of my charming personality.”

A third member for her fireteam didn't sound half-bad, and if he knew Io, she could definitely use him. Not to mention, she wasn't cruel. Leaving him in Asher's clutches was borderline inhumane.

“All right, you're in.” Before Asher could collapse a sphincter, she added, “I'll run research for you when I have time, within reason. But I'll require compensation. You're always on the cutting edge. So whatever you have. Weapons. Mods. Armor. It goes to me.”

His lip curled. “You want compensation after poaching my research assistant?”

“Don't flatter yourself. You ran him off like you did to all the rest.” She motioned for her two companions. “Let's go.”

They left briskly, marching away with purpose until they were far out of earshot.

“I'm Sasha, by the way. And this is Cassi.”

He exhaled, grabbing the back of his neck with both hands and stretching in relief. “You don't know how long it's been since I was part of a proper fireteam. A single month with Asher feels like a decade. He started with five of us. Five! I was the last one who didn't walk out.”

She cut out half a laugh. “I don't envy you a single second. But anyway, this fireteam is anything but typical. I have my light, you two don't. So I'm running tank while you two back me up.”

“I'm better at range anyway. I like to pick areas clean from a distance before going in.”

“Perfect! You can teach Cass how that works. She's terrible at aiming.”

She innocently examined one of her gloves. “I happen to prefer punching over precision.”

Chuckling, Caelum cast Sasha a reassure gesture. “I’ve got this. I put up with Asher for half a year. I think I can teach a Titan how to aim.”

She looked between her new fireteam members, a small ache blooming in her chest. “Okay. So, what’s first? How do we find the vault?”

“Oh, that part’s easy. The Red Legion drove a giant-ass drill into it. On accident, or so it appears.” At her expression, he threw up his hands. “You can’t make this shit up. But anyway, they stuck a base on top of it, so we just have to get into the base and drop under the drill into the vault. Easy.”

If he expected either of them to raise objection to how “easy” any of that would be, he would be disappointed. They merely shrugged, checking their ammo stores and marching forward. They had a job to do. They could quibble about difficulty levels after they got it done.

They returned to Earth after keying the warmind and discovering that the Almighty was too intrinsically tied to their sun to blow it up without dooming the system. With Zavala, Ikora, and Cayde all under one barn roof--the symbolism not lost to Sasha--they put their heads together and came up with their next step. It didn’t surprise her that they wanted her to steal a ship from a Cabal base--a base she and her new fireteam shortly overlooked from the peak of a nearby hill, squinting through scopes to get a feel for what they were up against.

“Has anyone ever stopped to wonder if Zavala, Ikora, and Cayde know how batshit crazy they sound sometimes?” Caelum wondered, sitting back and scrubbing his hands over the back of his neck. “Like, I get that our options are limited, but they’re asking a pretty tall order with the whole ‘sneak past an entire Cabal regiment and steal one of their ships to fly up to their giant sun-destroyer and politely knock on the door’ plot.”

Sasha leaned back from her scope as well, resisting the urge to start claiming headshots with her newly acquired sniper rifle. Her boots might still be held together with duct tape, but she finally upgraded some of her guns to workable models. While she didn’t have many opportunities to use the sniper rifle, it calmed some of her tics just having it around.

“‘Tall’ is about the only way they order when it comes to me.” She shrugged, leaning back against the stump behind her and surveying the landscape. “After the Vault of Glass, everything just sort of seems...business as usual?”

“How very cavalier of you,” Cassi drawled, unimpressed.

“You had to be there.”

“I’m sure. So are we doing this or what?”

She reminded herself to be patient. “We aren’t going to have an abundance of shots with this. If they realize what shenanigans we have in mind, they’re going to tighten security. We either need to get through in one, or we come back with an army, and we’re trying to reserve the army for the assault on the City.”

The warlock on her other side bent back down to his scope. “Give me a day, maybe two. I can get a sense of their patterns and design an assault that will squeeze us through the cracks in their defenses.”

“Can you really?”

He shrugged. “Strategy is a hobby.”

“We could have used him ages ago,” her Ghost muttered in her ear. “Nola’s a brainiac, but her plan B’s tend to be better than her plan A’s.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that.”

“What are we supposed to do for a whole day?” Cassi whined, slumping back.

“What can we do to help, Cae?”

He didn’t move from his scope. “I don’t know. Shut up and don’t bother me?”

“Cool. I’ll take Cassi out shooting, maybe thin out some of the opposition elsewhere in the EDZ and tag some headshots under her belt. Don’t forget to set up perimeter pins and check in every couple of hours.”

“You got it, boss.”

The Titan seemed torn between complaining about being forced to learn more precision and being grateful she didn’t have to sit there for an entire day of surveillance. They left Caelum to his business, creeping back the way they came and getting a pickup from their ship as soon as they were out of range of Cabal scanners.

“Maybe we can go scam Devrim out of some tea,” she suggested.

“If we run into any dregs, can I at least punch those ? They’re squishy and break super easily.”

“Fine,” she sighed. “If we find dregs, you can punch them. But only if they aren’t backed up by any knights. Vandals only.”

“Deal.”

“So what happens if the plan fails?”

Sasha glanced up at Cassie, laying a card on the growing stack between them. They sat on top of an old, decrepit mill, ignoring a small firefight going on between Fallen and Cabal a half a mile away, willing to let them shoot at each other to their heart’s content. They played a few more cards before she conjured up a reply. Contingency plans were usually Nola-9’s prerogative. In all honesty, since the options tended to be success or complete annihilation, she hadn’t let herself worry about it.

“I don’t know.” She took the pile, straightened her cards in her hand, and started a new round. “We keep at it until something works or we die. As per fucking usual.”

They stacked more cards between them.

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“That’s why I’m not in charge. Cayde or one of the others tells me where to go and what to do, so I go there and do it.”

“You’re just a soldier, then?” she scoffed, taking the pile.

“We all have our talents.” She let her gaze wander out where bullets flew between the Cabal and Fallen. “I get shit done. Maybe it’s why the light chose me while the rest of you remain dark. It knows I’ll do the job, by any means necessary. If the plan falls apart, somebody will figure out a new one, and I’ll go do that instead. Or maybe I’ll have to improvise. It wouldn’t be the first time. Whatever the case, I’ll make it work. It’s what I’m good at.”

“It’s your move,” Cassi prompted.

She set down a card from her deck on top of the newly growing pile. Another low card. She swore Cassi had to be cheating. Her deck dwindled while the Titan’s only grew. There was probably a metaphor somewhere in there.

“Hey, so when the assault begins, do you want to be up with me trying to disable the Almighty, or do you want to be part of the ground crew assaulting the City?”

“I mean,” she began, focused on the cards between them, “if I’m not up top with you, who’s going to be there to watch your back? Caelum?”

“He’s got the same choice to make as you. I can sneak on board and get the job done if you want to be part of the City force.”

“What, alone? Don’t be stupid. There’s no way I’m letting you hog all that glory.” She set down a high card and swiped the deck again. “Besides. You’ve already had one fireteam ditch out on you. I wouldn’t want to give you a complex by doing the same.”

Sasha wrinkled her nose at her and laid down the last few cards of her dwindling deck until she ran out of moves to play and Cassi claimed the stack with a cry of triumph. Turning her attention out to the valley below them, she took stock of the battle through the scope of one of her guns, counting dead and live bodies.

“Hey Ghost. What’s the word from Caelum?”

Her Ghost paused, shell whirling a few times, before he replied, “He and his Ghost are assembling data packets to be analyzed. They are really quite thorough in their investigations. It’ll probably be another six or seven hours before they’re satisfied with the quality of their conclusions.”

“You’re using big words. They’re rubbing off on you,” she warned.

He seemed to swell indignantly. “I was repeating what his Ghost told me. With some paraphrasing. But mostly verbatim. Blame them.”

She reached out and poked him. “Six or seven hours to kill? What should we do?”

“You should sleep,” her Ghost grumped.

Cassi snorted. “Can't argue that. I don't know how you function half as well as you do. I wonder what all you could accomplish with a solid eight hours under your belt.”

“I’d probably end up becoming the villain of this story and enslave the whole system. Maybe we're better off never knowing.”

The Titan reached out and shoved her. “You need to check your ego. You give yourself way too much credit.”

“You don't think I could raise an army and take over?”

“I think you're so sleep deprived you're half-delusional. Let's head back to the farm for a couple of hours. Once we steal that ship, it'll be a hard burn to the end.”

She made a good point, and Sasha tried to listen to her teammates when they told her she needed to take a break. It took a few arguments with Nola and Orion back in the day, but she learned that being part of a team meant trusting them.

“Ghost…?”

“Almost thirty hours.”

“Fine. Let's go, then.”

They called their ships and flew the distance from the EDZ to the Farm, dropping in just before sunset as things wound down. New housing had sprouted up to support the refugees and Guardians flooding in. Somebody had organized a community garden and livestock, breathing new life into the Farm’s original purpose. They headed toward the barracks where any Guardian could claim a cot and crash for a few hours, Sasha talking herself up to actually sleeping.

She almost got to the door when a body intercepted her. “You’re here! Perfect.” Nola-9’s luminescent eyes fixed onto her as she wrapped her fingers around her upper arm. “We need you right now. Something weird just happened.”

“Uh-uh! Wait!” Cassi cried, jumping to intercept them. “I just got her to agree to get a few hours of sleep. Can’t it wait?”

The exo hesitated with a groan, mouth parted slightly as she seemed to exhale in exasperation. “Look, kid, I feel for you, I really do, as I’ve spent half of my Guardian life arguing that Sasha needs more sleep, but she needs to hear what I just heard.”

“Uh-fucking-believable.”

Sasha let Nola tow her toward the barn. “What’s this about?”

“You’ll see. I just picked up a couple of refugees outside the City walls. You need to hear their story.”

“We have an assault to make in, like, six hours. If you don’t get some sleep before then…” Cassi growled, hurrying to keep pace.

“Start packing in coffee with you wherever you go. If she starts lagging mid-mission and you can’t hunker down for a power nap, a jolt of caffeine will buy you time.”

“She should come with a handler’s guide.”

“Hey!” Sasha objected. “Can you bond over my faults not in front of my face? I swear, I’ll get some sleep the second Nola shows me what she wants to show me. Happy?”

Toward the back of the barn, under the glow of lanterns, a small group huddled, scarfing down field rations like it was the first square meal they’d seen in weeks. They looked haggard and haunted, but otherwise intact. They were civilians and a single Guardian, all with makeshift patches sewn into their clothes of a symbol she didn’t recognize. Others approached to listen, too, including Cayde, Ikora, Zavala, and Hawthorne.

“Everyone, this is Gyyr-3,” Nola introduced, indicating to the Guardian who watched over the rest while they ate. “Gyyr led this group out from inside the City yesterday at 0300 hours. They placed a distress beacon, which I picked up at 1600 hours. I want you to tell them what you told me.”

The exo stood, adjusting his fraying cape. “Things are ugly inside the City, but there are pockets of survivors. Guardians left behind have been organizing groups of civilians into an armed militia, hiding, and occasionally creating counter-strikes, stealing supplies, or upsetting communications. Our goal is the safety and survival of anyone who got trapped. We call ourselves the SASHAs--”

“I’m sorry, the what, now?” Cayde interrupted, cutting a hand through the air and pointing a look toward Sasha.

“It’s...well. It’s sort of a joke. I don’t know who came up with it. SASHA stands for Sexy Ass Stealth Hunting Assailants. We focus on guerilla warfare tactics. I think it started out just ‘Stealth Hunting Assailants” and some smartass tacked on the first bit.”

They all looked to Sasha.

“Coincidence?” she offered.

Gyyr looked blankly between them all. “What coincidence?”

“My name is Sasha.” Now she understood why Nola pulled her in for this meeting.

“Huh. Weird.”

“What Guardians are leading this counter-strike?” Ikora asked.

Gyyr rattled off a dozen names, some of them familiar, but none of them any of her particular friends. “I didn’t know everybody, though. Like I said, everyone works in pockets. If we gather too many people in one place, we inevitably get discovered. I only knew the other SASHA groups directly adjacent to me, but I know those in charge have been searching for ways to get refugees out for a while now. My group was an experimental run. We can’t get communications up, so I was supposed to sneak back in if all went well to report in. If not, they’re moving to other contingency plans.”

Cayde sidled up next to Sasha. “Could just be somebody’s funny idea for a name.”

“Is it arrogant to think it might be Orion’s idea of being clever?”

“I can see it,” Nola-9 muttered on her other side. “If he’s leading a group of stealth warriors--basically Hunters--he’d totally find it funny to name them after you.”

Both of their Ghosts made sarcastic noises of agreement.

She gnawed the tip of her thumb, wondering if it was worth the risk of permitting herself to hope he was out there.

“We need to make contact with these SASHA groups. We can establish secure communications and coordinate with them when we make our assault on the City,” Zavala said.

Gyyr squared his shoulders up as best he could, in spite of his bone-deep weariness. “I can get back in the way I got out.”

“No.”

They all turned toward Sasha.

She lowered her thumb from her mouth. “I’ll do it.”

“Sasha, we have the Cabal base to assault…” Cassi began just over her shoulder.

“The Cabal base will keep. Sneaking in and out of the City going to be precarious enough. We don’t need to risk a Guardian with no light. I can get this done in under twenty-four hours, and if I run into trouble along the way, the Cabal can’t keep me down. Not to mention, I have my light, and therefor, my active camo. I’m your best chance at establishing communications without being seen.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Cayde declared cheerfully.

Ikora shot him a glare. “Not so fast. She has other priorities.”

“As the only Guardian with light, I’m pretty sure ‘do everything’ is currently part of my job description.”

Cassi grumpily took Ikora’s side. “Caelum is waiting at the base.”

“Then have him fall back to the Farm once he gathers all pertinent information. I don’t plan on letting this delay us long, but I have to go.” She had to see for herself the SASHAs were a coincidence or deliberate. She would go crazy wondering otherwise.

Cassi folded her arms. “Fine. I’m going with you.”

“Afraid not, this time. This requires some actual stealth.”

“Then will you at least sleep for a few hours before you go? Please?”

She looked between her gathered peers while they waited for her to make the call. It felt odd to have even Ikora and Zavala listen to her. “Give me five hours to get some shut-eye. Then give me whatever communicator you want them to have, make sure it’s got a kick-ass encryption, and I’ll make the hand delivery myself. Any other objections?”

When none of them had any, Gyyr offered to give her a map of his routs. Hawthorne, who had remained largely out of the conversation, added her own secret ways in and out of the City to her maps, in case she needed a contingency plan or two.

“It has to be him, right?” her Ghost fretted in her ear while she marched back to the barracks alongside Nola, stomach cramping and mind buzzing.

She unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “I feel like I’m setting myself for disappointment by hoping. Optimism was always Orion’s purview.”

Nola nudged her shoulder. “Don’t ever tell him I said this, but I miss his stupid sunshine attitude. Get him back for us, Sash.”

“If he’s in there, I’ll find him. I promise.”

Chapter Text

Returning to the city proved more difficult than Sasha imagined. Not that the Cabal offered any resistance--a lone Hunter could sneak into almost anywhere incognito--but the emotional toll stopped her in her tracks. She stood just outside a crack in the wall barely big enough for an adult human to squeeze through, flashbacks of her last trek through the city dancing across the forefront of her mind. Losing her light, falling from the command ship. She could see a corner of the Traveler, dark and dormant, still smell the smoke and ash from burning homes.

Her Ghost flitted by her elbow, quiet, possibly equally wrapped up in unpleasant memories. They stood at the precipice until they were ready.

“It's weird being back,” she admitted with a shaky laugh.

“It is. Strange to think how close we came to death the last time, something I'm supposed to be able to keep from happening.”

“They come into our house…” Her nostrils flared.

“I'll never forget what you said. 'I’ll get us out of this.’ And all I could think was how useless I was at the time. Sentient garbage. You had to fight, vulnerable, while all I could do was watch on the sidelines with some remediary healing.” Ghost shivered in his shell. “I hated that feeling. I hate that all of the other Ghosts still feel it.”

She reached out, fingers brushing his edges. “Hey, don't give yourself so little credit. You talked me through about every step that day long after I wanted to give up. We're a team, light or no.”

He made a noise as if clearing his throat. “If we get any more sentimental, I'm going to cry, and then you'll cry, and we'll both be a mess. Shall we?”

Sasha squeezed through the crack, every sense on high alert until she reached the other side. This side of town hadn't been hit hard, the streets eerily empty, but not reduced to rubble. She hugged the corners and shadows, eyes glued to her scanners. She stumbled over her first patrol about eight blocks in, a group of Cabal ambling through with weapons and war beasts. She lowered into a crouch and stilled to keep from showing up on their scanners.

“Only six of them…” she muttered, tempted.

“Not our mission.”

She would have preferred to take them out from a high point anyway, although her arc staff could demolish them before they even knew what hit them.

Once the patrol passed on by, she headed north along the wall, Ghost keeping track of landmarks Gyyr mapped out for them. They stumbled across more signs of the Cabal occupation as they went. Charred corpses, demolished buildings, graffiti painted on the walls with the names of the dead and missing. Her insides twisted as she imagined life over the last couple of weeks for survivors scraping by on the inside, avoiding patrols and fighting if they were able. Hunted. Hunting. Her job was to prevent civilians from ever seeing the ugly sides of their world.

The SASHAs had their own system of symbols worked out for each other, so she kept an eye out for their correspondence marking walls, streets, and signs. Finally, deep in the heart of a Cabal occupied finance district, she dropped to the lower levels of a parking garage. The person Gyyr was supposed to be meeting should already be there and set up. She let out a quick whistle, the note stating several things about her. Friendly. In the SASHA club.

A quick whistle responded.

“Southeast corner, next to the catering truck,” her Ghost whispered.

She headed that way as two civilians sporting SASHA patches on their clothes stepped out, guns relaxed, but both of them tense. She held up a soothing hand.

“Gyyr made it out. They sent me to report in for him. I come bearing good news and gifts.”

The two let out twin exhales of relief. “It worked then? He found help?”

“Boy, did he.” She grinned between them, although they couldn't see it through her helmet. “My name is Sasha.” Then, she added something she'd always wanted to say. “Take me to your leader.”

A Warlock named Pollux ran the section of town Sasha ended up in. SASHA bases were constantly on the move, or else risked eventual discovery. They currently holed up in an attic above a Golden Age novelty store amidst a collection of antique junk, with snipers at each window and lookouts in the store and on the roof. They were a little worse for wear, pretty thin, and in need of showers, but they were armed and angry.

Sasha dumped her pack down. “First thing, I've got field rations to keep you on your feet, and second, encrypted communicators that will put you in touch with other arms of SASHA…”

“That's a weird statement to say out loud,” Ghost muttered in her ear.

She ignored him. “As well as the Farm. We're currently putting together an assault on the City to take out Gaul and reclaim what's ours. We figured you'd want in.”

Pollux gazed back at her with haunted pale eyes in a sunken frame. They had played each other in Crucible matches before. He'd always seemed so robust, so energetic. “Just like that? When do we move?”

“As I understand, Zavala is in charge of coordinating you for when we begin, but we're not quite ready. We need you to hold on just a little bit longer. We still need to shut down one of their superweapons. If we don't do that first, we all die.”

“Hold out for how long? We're barely making it as it is!”

Somebody behind him shushed him. Apologetically, she added, “We have to be quiet or the war beasts will hear and alert the nearest Cabal patrol.”

“We are moving as fast as we can,” Sasha promised.

“We've lost three branches of SASHA and all of the civilians they protected this week alone. We can't hold out much longer. The Red Legion is getting good at flushing us out. We've had to change up our communication code twice. Nobody's even on the same page anymore. I'm positive there are still factions using old codes, and I'm not even sure I'm on the most current.”

She pressed the communicator into his hand. “This cannot be traced or hacked. We're going to disperse them to as many surviving groups as we can. I need you to assemble anyone who can get across enemy lines to run messages to take them.”

He gulped, nodding and shoving a hand into his shaggy, pale blue hair. “You're right. We'll get it done. We have to.”

She gave him a minute to assemble his team. They ran messages back and forth all the time, but it was dangerous. Messengers didn't always make it back.

“Hey, do you know who first started organizing this whole operation? Who came up with the SASHA acronym?” she asked as she passed around communicators to be delivered, keeping plenty for herself to pass along the most dangerous routes his people no longer risked, cutting them off from other factions.

“Just rumors,” Pollux sighed. “We were already surviving out here on the fringe when they found us and recruited us.”

“I'm looking for a Titan named Orion.”

“I know Orion. We ran a couple of missions together back in the day. If he's in the City, he's in a different quadrant.”

She nodded.

“You don't think the SASHA name is a coincidence?”

“Sexy Ass Stealth Hunting Assailants is a terrible acronym and you know it.”

He shrugged, seeming too tired to smile despite a flicker of amusement. “You're going to search for him?”

“I have more communicators to deliver. Might as well do some investigating while I'm in the neighborhood.”

“I hope you find him. Somebody deserves some good news in this clusterfuck.” He nodded to her. “Take care out there, Sasha.”

  “You, too, Pollux.”

They visited two more branches of SASHA, hand-delivering hope and a link to the outside resistance with each one. They very quickly discovered one of the bigger problems as they coordinated with the other SASHAs receiving communicators. Nobody had access to the SASHA branches to the west of the tower for over a week. Messengers that went out never came back, so they quit sending them. The Red Legion had put up a line of defense, severing contact and isolating regions of the city.

“We could sneak out of the City and go around to the other side of the wall,” Ghost suggested as they sat in a meeting with Zavala, Hawthorne, and the SASHA leads with transmitters so far. A trio of Guardians ran one of the bigger groups they now hunkered with, looking as haggard as everyone she had come across so far.

“I have a few ways in over there,” Hawthorne sighed. “But none of them are particularly accessible.”

Sasha scowled. “And it would burn more time. I'll get across from here.”

“We can make a distraction near the dead zone border, draw them away and give you a shot,” the Hunter sitting across from her offered. “Give you the best chance of making it.”

“While Sasha is doing that, I want to talk about coordinating supply drops,” Holliday’s voice chimed in. “Ain't nobody should have to go into battle on an empty stomach with no bullets in their guns. Lord willin’ and the creek don't rise, Cayde will have jury-rigged some stealth tech for my ship that I can squeeze behind enemy lines with.”

“Working on it!” Cayde shouted ambiguously.

Pollux replied, his voice bolstered for the first time, “We'll work on figuring out drop points for you we can get in and out of without Cabal interference.”

They ended the meeting, promising updates soon.

An Exo Hunter sitting across from Sasha scrubbed a hand down her face. “I wish we had this kind of communication capacity a week ago. We've done the best we could, but shit, I forgot what it was like to just call someone and get a full debrief. The Red Legion used to lock on our signals within minutes, so we had to go full dark within a few days of the Tower's fall. And without any of our Ghosts running at full capacity, so many of them so shocked by being severed from the Traveler’s light…”

“Hey, it's going to be full dark soon. We need to get set up for that diversion,” one of the civilians chimed in. “We’ve been sitting on a cache of fireworks. We can put on a baller light show and lure in every Cabal in a ten block radius. Long fuses, and we give ourselves time to beat a retreat.”

Sasha loved how much grit some of the civvies had responded to the occupation with. Not all of the Guardians were recovering quickly being cut off from the Traveler. She knew plenty back on the Farm who weren't cleared for active duty due to the shock of the abandonment. Out here, with no time or space to recover, they had it worse than ever. The civilians had stepped up to take charge of their own survival. They couldn't afford to wait for leadership to get it's shit together.

“Can anyone get me as close as you dare to the crossover?”

“I can,” a skinny teenager, her wiry hair shaved back almost to nonexistence, stepped forward. “I'm the best runner, other than the Hunters. I can get you the closest.”

“Got a name?”

“Just call me Lu.”

“Okay. You guys get the light show prepped, Lu, you get me over to the border. I'll go as soon as I see fireworks.”

“Good to have a plan again,” the Exo Hunter purred, jumping to her feet.

A resounding echo of agreement followed on her heels. They split off to their tasks, Sasha slipping out stealthily into the night alongside the teenager. Lu’s complexion and natural agility lent her to blending silently into shadows. When she stopped, Sasha could hardly make her out in the darkness.

“Wish I had this all along,” the girl muttered as they consulted Sasha’s scanner for enemies, hunkered down over a shattered overpass, waiting for fireworks. “Although the Cabal walk around like rhinos, so they're not hard to spot.”

“You're good at this. You'd make a stellar Hunter.”

Lu cracked her half a grin. “I'd just have to die first.”

“No Ghosts around to wake you up right anyway. Besides, you're young. Need a few more years to ripen.”

“Do you remember how old you were when you died? Anything about your past?”

She shrugged. “It's kind of like a hazy memory, you know? Like, I remember glimpses. Images. Nothing specific. Even my name is kind of a guess.”

“A guess? How so?”

“I had a data chip in my pocket when I was resurrected. It was corroded, mostly unsalvageable, but Ghost was able to pull a couple of images from it, a couple of pictures of me and another woman, tagged with two names. I figured I had a fifty/fifty shot and went with Aleksandra, not that I particularly liked it, so I shortened it to Sasha after a couple of weeks.”

“What was the other name?”

“Olga.”

“Oh. Damn. You took the better deal.”

“I mean, it was at least only two syllables. It wouldn't have been so bad. And nobody would accidentally make your acronym into OLGA, so I'd have a better idea on whether it was a coincidence or not.”

Far off, they heard a loud whistle, then a pop, then a series of crackles as the night sky bloomed with color.

“I think that's my cue. Take care, Lu. I'll see you on the other side.”

“Good luck almost-Olga!”

She took off into the night, vaulting the shell of a burned out vehicles and jumping the vertical climb of a makeshift barrier the Cabal used to separate sections of the city. She took the next few blocks at a print, using a single smoke bomb to disappear into when she tripped into prowling pack of war beasts that didn't show up on her scanner. The smoke bomb kicked off her tactical camo, offering her a chance to get around a corner and use her jump rockets to cut through the second floor of an apartment building, squeezing out the other side.

“Angle south,” her Ghost advised. “There's a tunnel just ahead. We can stop and regroup.”

“Got it.”

The tunnel he directed her to was more of a culvert, too small for a Cabal to fit through, although the war beasts wouldn’t have any trouble. She had to crouch to keep from scraping her helmet on the ceiling. Pausing to catch her breath, she checked her map readout to get an idea of where she was. Since the SASHA camps moved so often and the intell they had was all over a week old, she knew she would have to search the old fashioned way, which would take time and patience, especially if their codes had changed again.

She opened up her mic to the main line. “Okay, guys, I’m well behind enemy lines. Thanks for the assist back there with the fireworks. I ran into a pack of war beasts, but they weren’t difficult to vault past. The rest of the way was wide and clear.”

“That’s my girl,” Cayde bragged smugly.

Her Ghost muttered, “Of course he takes credit.”

“I’m going to use the night to my advantage and do some recon while the Red Legion are all snuggled up in their turtle shells.”

“Go get ‘em.”

She cut the transmission and pulled up her map schematic, zooming in on the section of the City she occupied. “Let’s take it block-by-block. Wherever they are, they’re probably burrowed in deep.”

They planned their route around the last known intell of the groups operating in the area and set out to search for clues. They found plenty of old signs and symbols. Where they had been. Where they were going. Dead-end trails of breadcrumbs. She ducked several patrols, disappearing into alleys and through windows whenever a group of Cabal rolled through. A couple of war beasts discovered her, one that attacked her from the back, which she gutted quietly and dragged behind a nearby dumpster to hide. The other ran off to nark on her. She ended up chasing it down--the damn thing was fast!--and using her Shadowshot to anchor it so it could be killed. She then found an abandoned restaurant to hole up in while her light recharged, unwilling to head out on her own without a backup plan.

A little after dawn, Sasha found her first evidence of survivors on the west end of the City. Unfortunately, she appeared to be a few days too late. She cranked up the filters on her helmet, else she would end up retching over the stink. Seventeen corpses, two Guardians, fifteen civilians, were strewn over a three block radius. Her boots crunched over ammo casings, although most weapons had been either picked up or scavenged since the battle.

“These poor people. Did they even stand a chance?” Ghost uttered.

She picked her way over to the fallen Titan and flipped her over, discovering the SASHA symbol painted on the side of her helmet. She took a scan of her and the other Guardian for records and moved on, quietly reporting her findings to the brass. Somebody, somewhere, would have started a list their names could be added to.

Chapter Text

The people surviving in the City clearly had no time or resources to deal with their dead. Sasha came across the makeshift graves near evening, shoving her way into the huge, walk-in freezer of a butcher shop where meat had been long since cleared. Evidence of people holing up scattered from corner to corner--food wrappers, empty toilet paper rolls, rags smelling of gun oil, a lost pair of socks. To the back, three bodies had been laid out and covered with tarps, filling the room with the stench of rancid meat. The names of the dead had been written above their heads directly onto the wall. Sasha sent the names and moved on to the church next door, climbing up to the bell tower where she had a decent vantage point.

“I’m actually kind of encouraged they’re this hard to find. If they made it easy, we’d probably stumble across more bodies,” she sighed, adjusting her scope and peering down through it at the empty streets.

Ghost preened. “Look at you being so glass-half-full!”

She shot him a glare, then bent back to her scope.

Both of them perked when they heard the unmistakable crackle of gunfire to the northwest of them. Grabbing her rifle, she sidled around to the other end of the belltower and set up to look through as pops and booms split the night air.

“I can’t get a visual. Too many buildings in the way, but I doubt the Cabal are shooting at shadows. Let’s go.”

Hooking off the side of the tower, she hit her boosters and shot over to the next roof over, crossing it in a sprint, and leaping to an open awning, and from there to a ledge to run along, following the sounds of battle.

When she came across the scene, Phalanxes penned in a group of civilians, led by a few armed individuals, with Gladiators and Legionarys running up behind them, planning on crushing the people between. A Titan and a Hunter, lightless, threw themselves between the charging Cabal and the innocents, weapons hot, but with the ranks closing in, they would slowly crush under the heel of the Red Legion.

Taking up a position on a nearby roof, Sasha swung her scout rifle forward and started firing on the Phalanxes from behind, where they were vulnerable. Two shots to the head to bust their helmets, then a third to finish them off. Bodies started to crumple. She created confusion and gaps of dying Cabal for civilians to squeeze through and run. Two Centurions leapt into the fray, combating the Guardians that held off the pack, allowing several Gladiators to slip by.

Standing, closing the distance between herself and the battle as she strode down the roofline, she continued laying down cover fire and drew off a Red Legion unit to chase her down. They hurtled in close, so she switched to her auto rifle and made them regret turning on her, tossing a grenade into their midst.

Below, the street mostly cleared except for the Guardians and three armed civilians making a stand to give their people more time to run. They managed to kill one Centurion, coordinating their attacks, but a fresh Red Legion unit turned into the street to back up their comrades, offering an overwhelming force to those left behind.

“That’s Orion.”

“What?” She almost missed her shot, startled by her Ghost’s astonished voice.

“That’s Orion! That’s the helmet he wore while you two took on Oryx. It’s got the gash in the back where he almost got decapitated.”

She paused, swinging her scope momentarily to him. “Holy shit.”

Just as the recognition clicked, he motioned to the others. The civilians broke off, sprinting away, leaving only him and the Hunter behind to hold the line.

“What the hell is he…?” She let out a scream of rage when he motioned for the Hunter to also leave. “Noble, mother fucking, martyr-mongering son of a bitch!”

His armor took more than a few hard hits, but Orion was used to putting his body on the line. He knew how to take a bullet and maximize his close-quarters impacts. Stowing her guns, Sasha jumped from the rooftop onto the street, running at a full sprint toward the battle, tearing past the fleeing Hunter going the opposite direction. She caught the brief, confused look in the woman’s posture as she sprinted by.

Holding her arm out, summoning her arc staff, she lunged past Orion at the nearest Centurion, centering her initial force of energy on him and frying him from organs outward. Kicking off, she swept the staff in a deadly whirl, throwing arc energy at anything that moved and falling into her typical trance as she danced, killing the other Centurion and using the train reactions to bowl over the weaker Cabal. When she finally faded back into herself, she stood among a stack of smoldering corpses. Gun raised, Orion picked off the stragglers, and then the street fell silent.

Doubling over, he clutched his side where a smoking break in his armor indicated bigger trouble underneath, his Ghost popping out to patch the damage just enough to get him mobile. “We’ve got to go. Reinforcements won’t be long. Come on.” Turning, he limped off the way his group had all fled.

Shaking with rage, she followed along silently. If she spoke, she’d give away her identity, and probably start yelling at him at the same time. He’d be shocked, she’d be pissed, and it wasn’t an argument they could afford to burn through in the middle of the street with an army of Cabal breathing down their necks.

They ran a few blocks before he turned into an alley, and then into a building, leading confidently down a set of narrow stairs to the back into a basement, and then through a rubble-surrounded hole into the basement of the building adjacent and back up again. As they went, he paused to occasionally swipe a pen over hand-written marks on the walls.

Up on the street-level, they crossed through an abandoned hotel, darted across the street, through a tall gate into a greenhouse and nursery, and finally into a giant shed in the back where stacks of bagged fertilizer had been made into makeshift furniture and tools sorted for potential weapons. About twenty sweaty, frightened, gaunt faces stared back at her.

“You made it!” The hunter raced up and threw her arms around him, knocking him back a step. “Oh my god, are you hurt?”

He shoved her off. “Fine. Just a scratch.” Instead, he turned to Sasha, pulling off his helmet. He looked painfully thin, probably because he passed off any rations he could get away with to others in his group. His green mohawk had grown out on the sides and his cat-eye yellow eyes were sunken and dim, the corners pinched with pain. “Who are you? How do you have your light? Where did you even come from? You’re not SASHA.”

She snapped the latches on her helmet and ripped it off, rearing back and throwing it at him with the full force of her strength. It clipped his shoulder and skidded away between stacks of fertilizer. “The fuck I’m not!” she bellowed. “What the fuck did you think you were doing back there? Going to die in a blaze of glory?”

More than one person pulled a gun on her, but she ignored them, her light firmly intact.

“S...Sasha!” he gasped, falling back with a hand flying to his chest. “No. You can’t. I saw you die.”

“Trying to join me on the other side, fuckwad? Whatever you saw, you saw wrong!”

Raising his voice, he cried back, “I saw you get thrown off the side of the flagship right after we had our light torn away! How his this...how are you...your light…” he stammered out, eyes filling as he looked her over, hands partially raised.

“I’ve been worried sick about you, you stupid son of a bitch. How could you even think to sacrifice yourself like that? What will it take to get you to be selfish for one goddamn minute of your life!”

“ How do you have your light back ?” he pressed, grabbing her shoulders, but resisting the urge to shake her.

The other Hunter shoved between them, knocking Sasha back a step and putting her body between them. “Both of you, shut up! Unless you want to burn this safehouse five minutes after we’ve been here. This area is going to be crawling with war beasts. Now, quietly, what the fuck is going on?”

Visibly shaking, overwhelmed with relief and terror and hope, Sasha turned and stormed out of the shed. She turned into a greenhouse draped with brown plants, dying untended. They provided enough blocking to make her visibility nearly impossible from the outside while she caught her breath and sorted through her emotions.

The door behind her needed oil. It creaked when it opened, Orion limping inside, hand scrubbing the back of his neck. He stumped over to a wooden bench and sat, dragging his dark green hair back with his hands and exhaling slowly. “I’ll give you one thing, you do love a dramatic entrance.”

She choked on her laugh, casting a look down her shoulder at him. “So you saw me fall from the flagship, huh?”

“I watched you drop all the way. I watched you bounce. I saw you laying there in a broken heap, unmoving.”

“Yeah, and where were you when all of this went down? Zavala said you disappeared off comms.”

He perked. “Zavala? He’s out there? What...what are you doing here, anyway?”

Sighing, she turned, leaning against the table of dead, potted flowers behind her and folding her arms. “Why don’t I start from the beginning? Starting with the flagship, ending with how and why I’m here today.”

“Can we cut to the middle so you can answer one thing before I go crazy? Is Nola alive?”

She nodded. “Yeah. She made it out. She’s good. She’ll kill me if you ever tell her I told you this, but she’s been sick with worry about you.”

He exhaled in relief. “Good. I mean, not that she was worried. I’m actually kind of flattered. But it’s good that she’s good. You know what I mean.” He nodded firmly to himself. “Okay. Go from the beginning.”

She told her story in its entirety. Her fall into the City. The vision. Waking up broken and alone. Finding her Ghost. Finding the Farm. The shard blessing her with what little light it had to give. Going after Zavala, Cayde, and Ikora. Scraping together whatever and whoever she could to build a solid resistance. She mentioned Cassi and Caelum in the footnotes, reassuring him she hadn’t had to go full lone-wolf to get things done. Finally, she got to Nola picking up the refugees out of the City and learning about the pockets of resistance within and what they had planned for them.

Finally, she reached the part in her story where she found him. “Then, you start sending your people on, and stay behind to die, and I realize that you’re going to get yourself murdered fifty yards away from me and I was going to have to kick your ass.”

She’d moved to the bench next to him during her story where they’d locked their fingers together between them.

“You’re one to talk about having a hero complex,” he scoffed. “You’re single-handedly trying to save humanity.”

“Not single-handed! Weren’t you listening? I dragged Zavala, Cayde, Ikora, and literally everybody else I could find together so I didn’t have to do it alone.”

“And yet, you’re the only person with light, and the only person who can finish this. Classic Sasha.” He smiled sidelong at her, but the smile faded too quickly. “I couldn’t believe you were dead. Even though I saw it, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve spent the last three weeks telling myself over and over and over again that you’re gone and I need to get over it.”

“Fuck that. I hope you don’t ever get over my violent demise in three goddamn weeks. Now, about your little SASHA rebellion going on here…”

“Right. My turn.” He took a deep breath, eyes fixed outward. “So the attack on the tower happened. Zavala wanted me to head to the flagship and try to take out its shields so we could mount a counter-attack. I...uh...didn’t make it.”

“That part I know.”

He grimaced. “Ran into a Colossus. He got the upper hand on me, clocked me pretty good and knocked me out cold. Tossed my ass right off the side of the tower. I came to on the ground, every bone in my body broken, my armor and equipment and guns all smashed to shit, and my Ghost frantically putting my sorry ass back together again. Got comms partially working. I could hear, but I couldn’t transmit. That’s how I knew you were up there. I ended up salvaging a scope and watching for signs of you, or the shields going down, whatever. Then, my Ghost just dropped. Silenced. Lightless. I passed out for maybe a minute, and when I came to, I grabbed my scope to get a good look at the traveler, but what I saw was you dangling off the edge of that goddamn ship and a Cabal standing over you. I watched him boot you off. Saw you clip a ship on your way down, ragdoll. I had made my way to a rooftop, so I had a pretty good vantage at that point.” Everything in him hollowed, from his voice to his eyes to his face, seeming to deaden as  he relived the memory. “I saw you bounce, Sash. I saw you land and just lay there. I knew there was no way. Nobody could survive that. I'd just made the exact same fall, and the only reason I was still standing was because I had my light at the time.,”

She gripped his hand tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“I was going to go check for certain, but the city was burning. People were dying. There were still lives I could save. I convinced myself it was what you would have wanted me to do.”

“Yeah, maybe, if I had actually been dead.”

He cleared his throat, pressing on. “You know who came to help during that time? New Monarchy, Dead Orbit, and Future War Cult. They have a bunch of resources, so they ran civilian evacuations. I helped get people to pickup points to get them out. When the ships couldn’t get past the Red Cabal blockade, there were still so many left, so I helped them hide instead. After a few days, they started hunting survivors in earnest, which was when it became necessary to develop pockets of militia who could push back and protect the innocents who couldn’t take up arms for themselves. So me and a few others spread out and gave everyone we could find crash courses in survival. Since we were surviving by sneaking, by being unseen and fighting dirty, I kept calling it ‘pulling a Sasha.’ You’re the best Hunter I know, so I wanted them to embody your skills. Somebody turned it into that stupid acronym at some point and our name was born. I felt...I hoped...it was honoring your memory. Seeing you fall, seeing you die, it broke something in me. I lost my way for a while. I thought, maybe embodying what you always were would help me keep a part of you.”

Before she could be too touched by sentimentality, she snorted a laugh into her hand. “Unbelievable,” she gasped out, smothering her laughter as best she could. “Look at us. Look how ridiculous you and I are. I’ve spent the last three weeks playing the part of a tank, throwing myself head first into battle, using all of the skills I’ve picked up from watching you, and you’re out here doing the same exact thing pretending to be me! If that’s not poetic irony, I don’t know what the fuck is,” she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes.

After a moment, the shadows on his face gave way to a luminous smile. While his laugh was tinged with exhaustion, she saw the genuine mirth in his eyes. She slumped her head against his shoulder, hanging onto his bulky arm, and pulled out one of the little comm units she had been passing around, keying it on.

“Hey, is Nola-9 there?”

After a moment, her friend answered, “What’s up?”

“Guess who I found?”

“Alive or dead?”

“Trying to die. I intervened on his behalf. And then yelled at him and threw my helmet at him.”

“Good!” she huffed. “Is he there? Orion?”

“Here, Nola,” he replied sheepishly.

“Finally. I don’t want to have to train a another new Titan to not suck in battle. Sasha’s having a hell of a time wrangling hers and I want none of it.”

His grin widened. “It’s really good to hear your voice, Nol.”

She made a dismissive noise. “Save your sentimentality for Sasha. Just keep yourself alive and safe, or we’re going to have a serious problem. Now, I’m busy. Goodbye.”

“Aw, she really did miss me,” he crooned.

“She'll deny it to the end of days, but yeah, she did.”

They were reflective for a moment. Their Ghosts hovered between them, side-by-side, possibly exchanging information and catching up.

After a minute, Sasha asked, “I know you're answer before I ask, but is there any way I can convince you to come with me when I go? I could use a friend for everything that comes next.”

His mouth twisted upward and he shook his head. “I'm needed here. We need to evacuate as many non-combatants as we can and gear up for the City assault. I can't leave them. I won't. Not after everything I've been through to get them this far.”

“I know,” she sighed.

“Besides, it sounds like you've got friends. Cassi. Caelum. They sound like good people to have in a storm.”

“I mean, aside from Cassi not being able to hit the broadside of a barn from three feet away…”

He scoffed and nudged her shoulder. “She's there, putting her life on the line, doing exactly what needs to get done. I can't wait to meet her and thank her for watching your back.”

She felt a sense of groundedness at his unfailing optimism, a settling of her spirit she had been missing since the Tower’s fall.

“When was the last time you slept? Your racoon eye shadows are about to dense enough to start their own orbit.”

She pulled back and punched his arm. “Oh yeah? When was the last time you ate? Because you look like you're going to blow away with the next gentle gust of wind.”

“Food’s been tight…”

“And you've been giving your rations away.”

His pallid skin flushed as he avoided her eyes.

She dug into what stores of field rations she had on her, slapping a protein bar against his broad chest. “You eat. I'll power nap. Deal?”

He took the protein bar, unwrapping it and starting in. Mouth full, he said, “Your turn.”

“Fine. Take this and touch bases with the other SASHA teams and the Farm.” She slapped the comm device into his hand, shoving him to make space on the bench to stretch out. “Now shoo.”

“I should probably go explain everything to my people anyway.” He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “They all think you're a raving lunatic.”

“Not inaccurate,” his Ghost sniggered.

Sasha flipped her hood low over her eyes. “Damn straight.”

She never slept easily, especially when there was a job to finish, hating to be left out of any of the conversations. This time, she barely closed her eyes before it claimed her, sucking her into its velvety embrace. Just knowing her team was alive and there was a plan seemed to be enough to lull her after nonstop weeks of fighting and worrying.

Sasha woke up after six full hours of sleep, feeling like a blessed miracle. She worked some stiffness out of her joints and mopped a line of drool from her chin. After checking the time, she felt a pang of guilt. She could have gotten a lot done in those six hours she spent sleeping, but she knew if anyone, even her Ghost, heard her say that out loud, they would take the opportunity to smack her.

Letting herself out of the greenhouse, she crossed back to the shed and slipped inside, where she found Orion's group collectively surrounding map of the City stretched out on a table made of fertilizer bags, discussing plans, contingencies, and roles of each person who would be leaving the safehouse. They were planning non-combatant evacs from the City, having coordinated with the Farm while she was asleep. They orchestrated every person's role, down to what order they would walk in.

Sasha crept between Orion and the Hunter, scanning the map layout, impressed with the level of detail they plotted for to maximize their odds of survival.

“Man, you guys don’t fuck around with chance.”

Both of them jumped visibly, hands going to weapons.

“Didn’t I give you a bell to wear last Christmas?” he complained.

“Oh, I’m sure the Red Legion would love it if I wore a bell.”

Her eyes drifted to the other Hunter, who she didn’t really get a good look at last time. She had the delicate, ethereal, drop-dead stunning features only the Awoken could achieve, and even then, seemed to exist in a league of her own. Her hair was pale pink, her skin porcelain, hardly tinted, her eyes an eerie white, with rose petal lips and a nose that had clearly never been broken. But, she was a Hunter and had survived this long in hostile territory without her light, so she couldn’t be all face.

“Hi. Sorry about the...uh...ranting. And throwing things. It’s been an emotional day. I’m Sasha.” She extended a hand.

“Ariel.”

Orion cleared his throat. “We got the full debrief from Zavala and were put into contact with the other...well...SASHA groups.”

“Don’t act embarrassed now. I love that name. It’s a good name.”

“Anyway, we’re going to lead our non-combatants out in small teams. If Holliday has success with supply drops, we can consider doing air evacs, but supplies takes priority, and if she’s discovered, that’s that.”

Back at the map, Ariel gestured to several marked junctions. “We have other SASHA groups that need to be brought in. These are their marker points. It should tell us which safe house they’re in and how to get there.”

“Great. Teach me how to read the map and I’ll get on it.”

Orion shook his head. “Not this time, Sash. Ariel will take care of it. You’re being ordered out of the City. We can take it from here.”

She opened her mouth to protest, wanting to finish out what she began, but she found herself biting it back. She had other priorities and had to trust they could get the job done. If Orion said he could do it, he could do it.

“Okay.”

He didn't look convinced. “Okay? Just like that? Do-it-all-herself-Sasha?”

“You're the one constantly telling me to be more reliant on others and, to be honest, I'm tired. I've been nonstop since the Tower went down. So yeah. Go do your thing and I'll go unplug the superweapon pointed at our sun.”

Orion’s Ghost blatantly scanned her.

“Hey!” she protested.

Her Ghost agreed in a huff  “Not cool.”

“Just checking to make sure she isn't running a fever.”

She scowled, folding her arms. “This isn't about me, it's about winning. Let's get our City back.”

Orion cocked half a grin at her. “Ariel is going to escort you so she can see the exit point herself for when we start evacuating people. All we have is a description from Hawthorne and a point on the map. The blocks along wall are pretty well guarded, so we tend to avoid exploring them.”

She unloaded her extra comm devices and field rations onto the table. “This is everything I have left.”

“We'll make good use out of it. Thanks, Sash. For coming for us. I kept telling them we wouldn't be left behind.” She expected a hug, but instead Orion grabbed a shotgun from behind the makeshift table and passed it toward her. “If you're going to embrace your inner Titan.”

She narrowed her eyes and backed up a step. “No. I don't do shotguns.”

“Aren’t you all about efficiency? Shotguns are efficient in close quarters. The headshots are beautiful.”

“But I hate them.”

“It’s my lucky shotgun.”

“That jankety piece of garbage? It looks like it's about to fall apart.”

“I found it shortly after...after I watched you fall. It's dependable, if a little worse for wear.”

His Ghost made a noise. “Like you, Sash.”

She flipped it off.

Orion shoved the gun into her hands. “Take it with you. Stay safe.”

“I'm not the one who won't come back.

“I just can't lose you twice.”

Coming from anybody else, she'd have rolled her and called them out for being a cornball, but Orion long since burned away that cynicism. He said what he meant. Always.

“Come here,” she sighed, opening her arms to him. “I will take your stupid shotgun and personally shove it up Ghaul’s sphincter.”

He wrapped her in his bulky embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I know you will. The light knew what it was doing when it chose you. You're unstoppable.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. She had missed the unshakable faith that got them through every dark tunnel and unachievable victory.

The hug lingered a little long past comfort until she awkwardly patted Orion’s pauldrons and started squirming backward, mouth twisting wryly. “If you don't let me go, your friends here are going to start gossiping.”

He set his forehead against hers, exhaling shakily. “They can talk.”

“I can't wait to get my genuine Orion pre-battle pep talk. Make it a good one, okay?”

He reluctantly released her. “You can bet on that. Just...be careful.”

She tilted her head, studying the shadows on his face. He'd never promoted caution. Orion was reckless, the first one into the fray. He was constantly dragging them along if they took too long on a plan. Now, here he was planning evacs in excruciating detail and pleading her to be careful.

“You're different,” she accused.

“So are you.”

“Grab a beer when this is all over?”

“Wouldn't miss it.”

She stowed the crusty shotgun, retrieved her helmet, and headed out before she found a reason to stay. She had a job to do. Ariel peeled off and followed on her heels to escort her out of the city.

Sasha and Ariel sat in the back of a charred van waiting for a patrol to pass a few blocks away to make it through the final stretch to the wall. They checked weapons and gear, then sat to impatiently wait. Sasha bridged her new shotgun across her lap and checked it over for reasons to make it jam or misfire. It needed a proper cleaning, maybe a few little updates so it operated smoothly. She would have Cassi look it over when she got back to the Farm.

Ariel leaned back from the window, sighing. She glanced at Sasha, then away, then back to her.

“What?”

The woman jumped slightly. “What?”

“You're staring. What?”

“Nothing.”

She shrugged and bent back to the shotgun, fidgeting with the sensitivity of the trigger. Ariel fixed her gaze out the window for almost a full minute, then flicked it back to Sasha.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Seriously?”

Ariel kicked a leg out and propped her arm on it. “Okay, fine. I've just hearing about you nonstop for almost a month and now you're here. And you're alive.”

“Well, take a long look, get it out of your system. Anything I can answer? Help dissolve some of the mystery?”

“Well, there is…I mean, I kind of suspected...but there really is a thing between you and Orion, huh?”

She perked, smacking her Ghost before he could chime in. “Thing? There's no thing. We've been in a fireteam forever. We're family.”

Both Ariel and Ariel’s Ghost laughed at her, quickly covering it up lest the Cabal hear and zone in on them.

“Cut it out. There is no thing. We are...thingless,” she grumped.

“He was devastated that you were dead. He has been inconsolable for weeks.”

“Of course he has! He'd be just as crushed if it was Nola who took a header off that flagship,” she protested.

“Yeah, uh-huh, sure he would,” she snorted.

“He's my best friend.”

Ariel cocked her head sympathy. “Oh, honey.”

“Can we focus here? I have a City to escape, a superweapon to disable, and a war to win. I don't have time for this sentimental nonsense. I'm glad Orion is alive and okay, but I'm a little busy at the moment,” she huffed indignantly. Nola-9 was going to break a circuit laughing at this.

“Hey, I'm just picking up the signals. And girl, he's signaling.”

“No, he isn't. Orion always tells me exactly what he's feeling. If he were hot in his nethers for me, he'd mention it. Right, Ghost?”

“Um…”

“Come on,” Ariel pressed. “'I can't lose you, Sasha.’ 'I missed you, Sasha.’ ‘I named an entire rebellion after you to honor you, Sasha.’ How much more transparent does he need to be?”

“He's grateful I'm alive. Can we drop it?”

The other Hunter held up her hands in surrender.

“You know…” Ghost began.

“Zip it.”

She desperately checked her scanner for signs of Cabal, grateful when it appeared the patrol had moved on. Stowing the ragtag shotgun, she emerged from the charred van and started walking, leaving it to the other Hunter to catch up. They hugged the sides of buildings, ducking around abandoned vehicles and under awnings to keep a low profile. She scanned rooftops for the glare of scopes, not so worried about herself, but unwilling to have to break the news to Orion that his friend got her brains blown out by a Psion sniper.

When they reached the wall, they started searching for the marker Hawthorne told them about, creeping along stealthily until they found the old bus station. They vaulted the chain link fence with the “Keep Out” signs and found the back door that was chained shut, but the chain had enough slack in it to squeeze through. On the other side, they followed the footsteps in the dust down to a basement where they found the tunnel somebody at sometime had carved out.

“I’ll let you know what the other end looks like.”

“Hey.” Ariel nodded to her. “Thanks. For coming for us.”

“Don’t mention it.” She turned to go, but paused, hanging back. “Keep an eye out for him for me? Like, don’t let him do anything stupid. No bullshit heroics. I know he’s bullheaded and stuck up his own self-righteous ass, but do what you can to spare him from his own nobility.”

She cut out a short laugh. “Yeah. I’ll do my best.”

Sasha lifted a hand in farewell and took off down the tunnel, Ghost lighting her way. The tunnel ran long, at least a half a mile before she saw light at the other end. She stopped to keep her helmet from scraping the roof.

“You know, Nola-9 has done nothing but tease Orion about carrying a torch for you since he joined the team.”

She groaned, wondering what she had to do to kill the topic. “Then why have I never noticed?”

“Because she only does it behind your back.”

“Then how come you know?”

“Because both of their Ghosts are terrible gossips.”

She paused, stopping to stare at her Ghost. “Why are you telling me this now?”

If he had shoulders, he would have shrugged. “He only has the one life to live now. Time isn't on our side anymore.”

Sasha strode forward. “Yeah, seriously, which is why I need to focus on getting us out of this mess and he needs to focus on his group of survivors.”

“So, you’re saying you won’t entertain it?”

She groaned, reaching the end of the tunnel and running a scan of the perimeter beyond before climbing out of the tunnel and stretching her crimped back. “I’m saying I’m busy.” After doing a quick recon of the area, Sasha opened her comms up to talk with Ariel and the other SASHA teams waiting on her word. “The exit to the tunnel is clear. Decent cover. As far as evac points go, Hawthorne was right about this one. Transmitting images now. You are good to go on getting people out.” She switched her frequency over to the Farm. “Heading back now to collect my team and get on stealing a Cabal cruiser. See you in a few hours.”

“You want to hike out a ways before we call the ship?” Ghost asked.

She considered it for a moment, tilting her head from side-to-side. “Much as I’d love to flash ‘em, better keep the evac point on the DL. At least we won’t have to walk as far as we did the last time we left the City.”

“And at least it isn’t snowing this time.”

“No spirit animal this time to lead the way, either.”

“Guess we’ll have to figure it out ourselves this time.”

Sasha pitched one last look over her shoulder at the wall and towering skyline behind it, making the silent promise to get it back, one way or another, by any means necessary. Any other distractions would just have to wait. She had a job to do.

Chapter Text

They sat on the hill overlooking the Cabal base, right back where they started.

“Okay, Caelum. Give it to me. What are we looking at.”

He opened a map schematic. “So Cassi and I went ahead and grounded the carrier while you were away. A few other Guardian teams have been running light missions in the area to provide distractions, giving them something to focus on instead of an impending all-out assault. Just a little bit of misdirection. Zavala has that covered. As for us, I have our entry point. We’re going to be stealing Thumos the Unbroken’s ship. He head’s the Blood Guard. But first, we need his keycodes, which means we’re going to have to gain an audience with him and talk him into handing them over.”

“Traveler preserve us from the dramatic names of our enemies,” she snorted, scanning across the area of occupation.

“Some of Hawthorne’s people got tangled with the Blood Guard while you were between Titan and Io. It didn’t go well,” he continued.

“All right. So we get in, we steal his keys, we jack his ride, we throw a hail mary to the end. Simple.”

“We just have to force our way in and take the command deck where Thumos is. There’s no clever way to sneak on board that I can see. Unfortunately, this is a smash mission, not stealth,” he sighed. “So what we’re going to do is zip on board and bypass their entire first layer of security on Sparrows while a group of Guardians makes a mock-assault as a diversion. The forces out here won’t chase us in, busy keeping them out.”

“That would be me,” Nola-9 declared over comms. “Your diversion is en route. Give us a few minutes to get set up. I’ll cue you when the coast is clear.”

“Okay. Like, don’t die, please?” Sasha requested sweetly.

“You taking a fucking piss? Like I’d do something so stupid. I’m not Orion for chrissake,” the exo scoffed. “Besides, we have a City to sack. You’re going to have to beat me to Ghaul to shove a rocket launcher down his facehole.”

“Ha! You can have whatever leftovers I leave behind after I’m through with him.”

“Fifty glimmer to whoever gets there first.”

“Oh come on, Nola, don’t make me embarrass you. You trundle slower than a Colossus. A race is just...mean.”

“Get fucked, fleshbag.”

Beside her, Caelum tilted his head to the side. “Damn. The Tower falls, and rivalries still don’t die.”“

Rivalry? What are you talking about. That’s my best friend.” She keyed the comm again. “Hey, Nola, if we make it out of this, I’m totally hugging you again.”

“Will you cry, too?”

“Count on it.”

“Ugh.”

She pitched a grin over to her companions. “She’s a total marshmallow.”

They waited a few more minutes up on the hill while Nola’s team of Guardians positioned themselves for the fake assault. They only had to keep the Cabal busy long enough to prioritize holding the perimeter over backing up teams inside the ship. They shouldn’t take heavy casualties, but Sasha nevertheless fretted. Without their light, even this safe of a mission posed a huge risk. People would die for her forward progress, which twisted her guts more than she ever thought possible.

Looking over at Cassi, then to Caelum, she said with alarming seriousness. “You two could still stay behind.”

They both looked at her like she’d grown another head.

“We aren’t going any places fun and you two have one life each. It’s not too late. I can do this mission alone. There’s no need to risk your lives.”

“Hey Sasha, I think you’re great, but kindly fuck off,” Cassi grumped. “I’m seeing this through.”

Caelum waved her off. “Don’t look at me. You can’t do everything by yourself, and your moral support is clearly on another job.” He waved in the vague direction of Nola-9’s forces. “Besides, you might want the guy along who has an almost complete schematic of the inside of that carrier. I didn’t just sit on my ass while you were off running heroics in the City.”

“How did you put it together?”

“I tagged a bunch of Cabal with a tracking isotope. They spent a few days running errands back and forth and I spent a few days putting together a workable map of the interior. I also have my suspicions about a possible affair going on between a Colossus and a Phalanx. They met in the weirdest places off the beaten path…”

“Ew, ew, ew! Now it’s in my brain!” Cassi cried, throwing her hands up to her helmet.

“They could be organizing a coup d’etat,” Sasha suggested. “Wouldn’t that be fun? Power upheaval in the middle of our assault?”

He shrugged. “Could be. It is the Cabal, after all. But I’m a romantic.”

The comm interrupted them with Nola-9’s voice. “Okay, we’re in position. Making our move in two minutes. You guys ready?”

“Good to go. Stay safe out there.”

“Up yours, Sasha. I’ll do what I want.” A pause. “But good luck up there. You’ve got this.”

“I don’t know what I would do without her,” she remarked to her teammates.

Caelum hopped on his sparrow. “Do you want us to verbally abuse you, too? Would that help?”

“It wouldn’t feel right. From Nola, I know it comes from a place of love.” She also mounted her sparrow, checking her guns one last time.

Cassi got on the stolen Pike she brought with her. “Let’s go jack us a ride.”

“About time,” she muttered as all three engines flared to life. “First the the Blood Guard, then the Almighty, then Ghaul. Let’s go.”

Sasha wedged herself between two pipes and started a laborious vertical climb in the bowels of the carrier. Behind her, Cassi had even more trouble in her bulky armor, requiring a few shoves from behind from Caelum.

“You'd think the Cabal would have bigger access tunnels,” Sasha huffed, turning around at the top to grab Cassi’s hand and pull her through.

Caelum’s voice came muffled down the pipes. “The Scions must manage the plumbing.”

Cassi wriggled through up to Sasha’s level, Caelum following shortly behind. They paused to catch their breaths before tackling the next vertical climb. They almost reached their exit point, which would hopefully put them on a straight path to Thumos. They all looked forward to Cabal-sized corridors again. She wondered what they would do if they ever encountered an enemy with an average height of two feet.

“Do you guys ever get, like, mid-mission munchies?” Cassi asked.

Sasha, bent over her boot to flatten the duct tape back into place, made a noise. “Every damn time. I swear, we get about to the midpoint and suddenly I'm ravenous. Usually when someone is shooting at us.”

“You'd think with all the adrenaline and blood going to our extremities, not our guts, hunger wouldn't be an issue.”

“You guys get hungry? I don't think I've ever wanted to eat during a mission, even a multi-day one. After, sure. I eat everything in sight, but never during,” Caelum disagreed.

“We don't have time to stop for snacks!” her Ghost cried when she reached for a protein bar.

“Come on. Just a little pick-me-up. We should always make room for midway snacks. We need to keep our energy up.”

Cassi nodded vigorously. “Agreed. It's not like anyone is in visible range to take shots at us if we dehelmet.”

“This ship is crawling with Cabal hunting us. We can't stop for a picnic,” Caelum huffed.

“Somebody has spent too much time hanging out with Asher Mir.”

Sasha nodded. “Seems like it.”

He folded his arms and seemed to roll his eyes, looking away. Both of them took another minute to consider an impromptu snack time when they decided to press on. If they got caught in maintenance accesses, their lives would probably turn out short and brutal. They had too many people relying on them to make this work. There would be no second chances.

They started back up the maintenance tunnel one more level. As long as Caelum’s map was accurate, they would just bypass one of the major checkpoints.

“So once this is over. And I mean, we hijack the ship, disable the Almighty, and then decapitate Ghaul and shit down his neckhole, you want to grab some sandwiches and do that brunch we were talking about with Failsafe?”

“First of all, hard yes. Second, you're making me hungrier. Please stop saying the word ‘sandwiches.’”

“I still can't believe you two think about food when we might get bulldozed by a Phalanx around every corner.”

She snorted, reaching the vent that would deliver them out. “You're invited to brunch too, Cae. It's going to be great. There's an emotionally damaged AI we promised.”

“Sure. If it gets you two to focus a little harder right now, I'm in for brunch later.”

“Man, you get tense during missions,” Cassi muttered.

Sasha keyed her comm. “Hey, Orion, Nola. We're planning brunch for when this is all over. Nessus. Next to Failsafe’s core. You two in?”

“We may all die in the next twenty-four hours and you're planning brunch ?” Nola-9 complained.

Orion chimed in  cheerfully. “It’s optimistic. I like it. Count me in.”

“You two are insane.”

“But you'll be there…?” she prompted.

“Fine. If we survive, I'll brunch or whatever.”

“Awesome. And if we die, you can tell me 'I told you so.’”

“Don't think I won't,” Nola threatened. “Now get off comms and do your job.”

Sasha braced her hands on the walls and kicked out the vent, dropping right down into a pack of war beasts.

“Son of a--” She started knifing, hoping to keep her noise level do so as not to draw attention. “These things are so goddamn annoying!”

“Fess up, you totally want one as a pet,” Cassi laughed, jumping down and squashing one under her weight.

“I...yes. Yes I do.”

Caelum joined them, firing off a silenced sidearm to brains the last few. “I wonder now if they could be domesticated…”

She took point up the hall, gun raised and ready for the next ambush. “Maybe your new project now that you've given up Asher’s research.”

“Guardians, the Hanger is directly ahead of you through these next doors,” her Ghost warned, cutting off any further speculation.

“Roger that. Amanda, are you ready to unload on these asshats?”

Holliday's voice crackled with glee. “Am I ever! Standing by and ready to roll.”

Sasha pulled out her shotgun and checked to make sure it was loaded. “Heading in now. We'll see you in a minute.”“

Maybe, when I have time, I’ll dissect a few specimens to get an idea of their anatomy and consider obtaining a breeding pair,” Caelum mused. “The Farm has plenty of space, at least. I should be able to create a sufficient pen for them.”

“Just remember, you encouraged this,” Cassi muttered to Sasha.

“Me? You brought it up!”

“Yeah, as a joke. When we have little beast pups gnawing on our boots, I want you to remember when you suggested he make it a project.”

They stood just outside the hangar doors, waiting for Sasha’s Ghost to hack their way inside.

“Yeah, but you were also right. I totally do want one as a pet.”

The doors slid open, spitting them into the hangar filled to the brim with Cabal and ending their conversation, as the priority to get the blast doors down for Amanda Holliday to rain hell inside. She thought Caelum fought a little distracted, probably daydreaming about the logistics of his new, potential project.

The Cabal, in Sasha’s humble opinion, seemed to have delusions of grandeur across the board. Their command centers tended to look more like throne rooms with big chairs and unnecessary ornamentation. Thumos the Unbroken kept an elite guard at his side, giving them something hard and heavy to smash their faces against before they could get to the big turtle himself. Or, more aptly, something for Sasha to smash her face against while the other two danced out of reach and tried to soften the targets up from afar.

Her ghost revived her twice from death before backup arrived, giving her something else to distract her while taking out the guard. She really wasn’t suited for up-close combat, much as she tried. Her armor was too weak, she was too slow.

“Sasha!”

She crawled behind cover after a hasty resurrection, glancing back to her companions where they laid down cover fire from a safe distance, reading the increasing frustration in Cassi’s posture.

“Just a few more passes. Keep hammering them,” she commanded.

“They’re the ones hammering you! Let me--”

Sasha racked her shotgun. “No. Keep your ass back there. Take focus on the reinforcements that just rolled in.”

“You’ve only got seven rounds for that thing.”

“I can count, Cassi,” she growled. “Now would be a really good time for you to get some headshots.”

“Screw this.” She stowed her pulse rifle, swapping it for an auto rifle, leaping around the pillar she sheltered behind and fired into the guards.

“Cassi, no!”

“I’ve got her covered! Take out Thumos!” Caelum shouted.

“Fucksakes!” They were supposed to be covering her, not leaving her to the wolves.

The shotgun kicked like a mule and pulled up and left, but it packed a hell of a punch. She used it to break through one of the guard’s armor, then swung a handgun up to drive an entire clip into his chest. Before he went down, he stuck his rifle up under her broken armor and shot her with a blast that ripped apart her sternum and ribcage.

Dying sucked. It was usually pretty violent, painful, and never graceful. Her Ghost patiently put her back together, but by the time the blackness faded from the edges of her eyes and her ears quit ringing, she saw Thumos plant his humongous, elephant-sized foot in the middle of Cassi’s chest and aim a cannon at her head, ignoring the pinging bullets from Caelum’s gun.

Instinct snapped Sasha’s flaming, light-powered golden gun into her hand, firing off three successive shots into the Cabal’s chest. It staggered him and broke his shields and made him bleed. For most of Sasha’s enemies, a single blast fried them to crispy bits. Three shots should have reduced him to scrap. Instead, he merely shrugged her off and sneered.

“Sasha, close your eyes!”

She didn’t question Caelum’s shout, throwing an arm up over her face a second before the flashbang went off. She gave it a three count, then dropped her arm, raised her shotgun, and found Thumos trying to rub the vision back into his eyes. She aimed for his head, unloaded the rest of her clip, switched back to her hand cannon, and unloaded that clip, and finally to her auto rifle, when she had torn through enough of his armor that her bullets dug into thick hide. Behind her, Caelum defended Cassi from a fresh onslaught of reinforcements.

Sasha took more than a few blasts from enemies surrounding them, bruising, battering, and cutting her up, but Thumos fell, shaking the floor as he went. His men, shocked by their indestructible leader's demise, put in a tactical retreat.

Limping toward a data console, she set Ghost to hack it. “Lock down their communications. Make sure they can't report this.” She turned back to her companions, Cassi at least sitting up, her Ghost running frantic patches.

“Hey, you got him!” the Titan cried cheerfully.

“What did I say about keeping your ass back on the line?” she bellowed.

“You were getting your shit wrecked. You're welcome.”

“I can take it! You can't. I needed backup, not heroics! It doesn't matter how many times they blow me apart, I come back. We still have battles ahead of us. If you want to kill yourself for glory, do it then, not here where it doesn't matter.”

“We would have spent a month chipping away that big asshole. I did us a favor. Sped things up,” she argued.

Sasha wanted to smack her, but her Ghost hadn't finished mending her wounds and armor. “We don't need to rush. Time doesn't benefit us if we're dead. What’s worse is that Caelum had to break his cover to cover you! You know what? You're a danger. I can't worry about you going off half-cocked when it counts. Go back to the Farm.”

Cassi struggled to her feet. “What? No! I'm already here. I'm finishing this.”

“I can't trust you!”

“I’ve had your back almost since day one!” Cassi struggled to get her tone under control. “Fine. If you want, I'll stay back. I'll let yourself get blown apart over and over again. But I'm not leaving this mission.”

“Sasha,” her Ghost piped up. “I have the passcodes.”

“I'm not leaving,” she repeated.

Sasha turned and stormed to the other side of the room to catch her breath. Ghost trailed after her, opening his scanner to start patching her wounds and knit as much of her armor together as he could. On the other side of the room, she saw Caelum launch into a lecture to the petulant Titan.

“To be fair, she did shorten up that battle,” Ghost muttered.

“Don't you fucking start. How bad is it?”

“It'll hold. Might want to put more tape on the boots, though.”

Glancing back at her fireteam, lowering her voice, she said, “Open a private channel to Cayde.”

After a moment, the exo’s voice patched through. “Hey, champ, how's everyone's favorite Guardian?”

“We need to talk about your little teleporter and the final battle coming up.”

“I thought we'd already planned that to death. We have contingencies on contingencies. I had to write myself a list just to keep track of them all.”

“Well, it needs a tweak.”

“Why are you talking to me? Ikora is our master strategist. I'm just here to look pretty.”

She grinned. “Because you're the only one who will go along with a mutiny. Now, about your teleporter…”

“Well, yeah, okay. What did you have in mind?”

Chapter Text

None of them could say they had ever hijacked a Cabal ship before, and they all had the basics of piloting, but left most of the crazy stunts to others. They stood in the cockpit of the bulky ship, staring at the controls designed for something more the size of a rhinoceros, tripping over who would actually get to fly the thing.

“Why the hell doesn’t he have a scion pilot?” Cassi grumbled, kicking the edge of the console. “They all have scion pilots.”

“Maybe Thumos was more of the ‘hands-on’ type. It can’t be that difficult to figure out. Ghost?”

All of their Ghosts ran scans to crack the computers and figure out the layout. They already determined that the Cabal didn’t run pre-set flight paths. All vehicles had to be manually operated. It cut down on remote hijacking.

“It won’t be difficult, although I don’t recommend sitting in the chair. You won’t be able to reach some of the controls,” Caelum’s Ghost advised.

“Yeah, no shit.” Sasha looked between her two companions, then thrust out her fist. “Okay, we settle this like gentlemen. Rock-paper-scissors. Loser has to fly.”

Their mics crackled. “You want a real pilot?” Nola-9 drawled impatiently. “I can be there in twenty.”

“We’ll handle it. This is my heroic adventure. Butt out.”

“Whatever. You’ll wish you had me when you crash.”

“You have another part of the uprising to lead. Go. Be noble elsewhere.” She smiled anyway, wishing she could have taken her friend up on her offer. Then, back to the others, “Okay. Let’s settle this.”

It took a few rounds due to ties, but in the end, Caelum ended up in the pilot’s chair while Cassi organized her weapons and Sasha sat down to adjust the duct tape on her boots. One more hard battle and they would disintegrate. She would seriously have to look at replacing them when this was all over.

“I’ve grown kind of fond of those stupid things. We should build them a proper shrine if we survive this,” her Ghost mused. “Their current structural integrity is so decayed they shouldn’t even be able to support your weight without imploding.”

“Think they can last one more battle?”

“I didn’t think they would last the last three, so what do I know?”

She strapped down the last strip of duct tape on her roll, tossing the empty tube over her shoulder. “Well, that’s the last of that, so they’ll have to carry me through, or I’ll be going barefoot.”

“Wouldn’t that be a site? Marching up to Ghaul, barefoot, toting that jankety shotgun Orion gave you.”

She covered the shotgun, as if muffling his voice. “Shh, don’t give it a complex. This shit is all I have.”

Cassi peered over at her where she diligently cleaned her guns. “Did...did you just cover your shotgun’s ears?”

Caelum twisted back to see them. “Shotguns have ears?”

She waved them both off. “We’ve got bigger things to focus on than speculation about shotgun anatomy. Cassi, you want a snack before we get going? This might be our last chance. Caelum?”

He shook his head. “I’ll eat when it’s over.”

“Gimme,” Cassi said, catching the protein bar Sasha tossed at her one-handed. “I swear, if we survive this, all I want is a proper steak.”

“Still struggling with the idea that your ‘bigger things to focus on’ includes snacks.” Caelum danced around the flight console getting them through the atmosphere, apparently figuring out the internal inertia dampeners so they didn’t all get thrown to the back of the ship. “Nobody ever mentions your absurd priorities in the retells of how you defeated Oryx or survived the Vault of Glass.”

“Which is a real shame,” Sasha confessed. “Because the real stories are hilarious. Everyone only ever focuses on bravery and glory.”

“Let’s also note that you were one of six people who achieved those things. Your constant shit talking takes a footnote to your collective, actual accomplishments,” her Ghost suggested.

“Only because your shittalking always outpaces mine.”

He made a smug, affirmative noise.

Caelum cut off their tangent before they could start recounting old one-liners spoken at the worst possible moments on their various adventures. “Getting up to speed now. Should take us a little over two hours to reach the Almighty. I’m going to grab a power nap. Proximity alerts should go off if anything approaches.”

Sasha dug out another protein bar to fuel up.

“So,” Cassi said, reassembling her rifle. “What are some of the true stories of the fireteam nobody shuts up about?”

“Well, we learned the hard way that stealing Fallen armor and disguising ourselves is not the most efficient way to sneak on board a Ketch. Not my plan, for the record,” she added hastily. “However, because of that, I made sure I have a working knowledge Eliksni, so the next time we try subterfuge, we can at least reply to basic queries.”

She laughed into her hand. “Tell me everything.”

“So this plan actually came out of the great mind of one of my old friends, Veto-4…”

The Almighty earned its name in spades. Usually Sasha thought the Cabal had the tendency toward the dramatic. Of course, these were the closest translations, but nothing of theirs tended to translate to anything that suggested any level of mediocrity. She had always assumed they were compensating for something.

“Damn. This thing is huge.” Caelum checked the stats of their landing, including temperature readouts. “And hot. I can’t believe they can even park it this close to a star. I wonder what kind of heat deflection technology they have in order to maintain orbit…”

“Yeah. Huge and hot. Like my dick. Let’s move,” Cassi grumped.

Sasha, also sweating in her suit, motioned them on to meet the boarding party that deployed to meet them. She expected a hard push to system operations. Even with space turtles as thick as the Cabal, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out their intentions and throw down every level of security to keep them from finishing their mission.

She kicked off the first encounter with a flair of her own dramatic, summoning her arc staff to cut through the first wave and give them a head start on board. She wanted to get out of the heat and into a temperature controlled environment or they were going to fry off her duct tape.

“I wonder what the dimensions of this thing is,” Caelum mused as they shot their way past their greeting party and headed for the nearest airlock.

The Titan shook her head. “Really? That’s the thing you’re wondering right now?”

“You know. For science,” he replied sheepishly.

Sasha pushed them both along. “My duct tape is going to crisp up like bacon. Bacon won’t hold my boots together. Move!”

They made it to the ship’s interior, which, while not cool, at least maintained livable temperatures. They followed directions supplied by their Ghosts until they hit the tunnel they were supposed to use to get to the heart of the ship and found it blocked by a giant rock, possibly a cave-in. On a high tech spaceship.

“Only the fucking Cabal would put a giant rock in a piece of of their own machinery,” she snarled.

“I bet we can get the grinders moving and clear this out,” her Ghost offered.

Caelum looked around eerily. “You think they did this on purpose? To sabotage our progress?”

That made as much sense as anything she could come up with. “Let’s just get to this before I sweat so much I squirt out of my battle suit.”

“Thanks for that imagery, Boss,” Cassi drawled.

“The perks of following me behind enemy lines.”

What the found out about the “rocks” unnerved her even more. The Cabal were strip-mining Mercury for fuel. They were actually in a mineral processor, said minerals stolen from the innermost planet of the system. Her body went cold with renewed fury.

“Not in my fucking town,” she growled, turning on the grinders to clear out the tunnel. “Prepare for incoming, but stay out of my way. I'm going to rip them so many new assholes…”

The other two did as they were supposed to and watched her back until they cleared the room and the mineral processor and were able to progress forward. She hoped she finally put the fear of god into them about standing back while she did all of the heavy lifting, but they were still only dealing with grunts. She would see how well they held the lines once they encountered a more substantial enemy.

“How are things going dirtside?” she asked via comms as they progressed into the tunnels, Mercury’s rocks crunching underfoot.

“All teams are almost in position,” Zavala reported.

“Good. We’re on track to disabling the weapon. Hang tight.”

“We’re ready to go on your signal.”

“Copy that. See you on the other side, Z.”

“Good luck up there.”

They pressed forward. Thankfully, the Red Legion seemed to have lost track of them, since the only opposition they encountered actually seemed surprised to be shot at. She hoped they took them down quickly enough they were unable to report their whereabouts and bring down reinforcements.

“Uh...we’ve got a problem,” her Ghost announced as they pushed forward.

“What now?”

“The only way to get to where we want to go is to…”

The door in front of them whirred open. The only reason Sasha’s eyes didn’t burn out of their sockets was from the intense UV protection on her helmet.

“...go out there.”

The heat stabilizers in her suit cranked up to max and she could feel her duct tape sizzling around her boots. Barefoot was not an option out on the Almighty’s deck.

“No way around?” she asked sourly, squinting out into the brightness.

“Better hurry. I’ve marked the door you want on your map. I wouldn’t suggest dawdling.”

She turned back to her team. “So this is going to suck, but we’re going to run for it. Shoot if you’ve gotta shoot, but try not to get pinned down. Keep going for the door. Whoever gets there first clears whatever is on the other side and then covers the others. Any questions?”

They shook their heads grimly.

“Okay. Stick to the shadows if you can. Go!”

They finally did something that Sasha was actually good at. They ran, jumping from cover to cover, pausing only to clear enough of a path to squeeze through. She kind of felt bad for any Cabal who was stationed out in the heat and radiation. She wasn’t sure if killing them was needlessly cruel for getting shitposted outside, or a mercy.

Between the suns blinding rays, the intense heat and radiation, and bullets pinging against her armor and around her, she honestly had her doubts whether they would make it all the way without coming through looking like they’d been battered and deep fried. The light stung her eyes, even with the tint on her helmet darkened all the way.

The door on the other side turned out to be heavily guarded, so Sasha called her light and dealt with them with deadly efficiency, sending cracks of arc to burn them from the inside out and throwing them bodily out of the way. When the door was clear, she turned and popped off any of the Red Legion who didn’t give up and put in for early retirement while Cassi and Caelum rushed past her through the door. Finally, they closed it and sank back, out of breath.

“Let’s not do that again,” Cassi huffed, doubled over on her knees.

“Sounds like you need a bit more cardio on the daily,” she teased.

“And a lot less sun. That shit almost ate right through my shielding.”

Kneeling, Sasha checked her boots. Her duct tape was a little crispy, but holding. She would have to send a letter of gratitude to the manufacturer when this was all over.

Down planetside, the resistance leaders got their people in position and one-by-one dropped into radio silence to keep from tipping off the Red Legion, leaving Sasha’s team on their own. They either waited to start the attack or a mass evacuation, depending on her success.

“You’re still my favorite,” Cayde reminded her before he signed off.

“Damn right I am,” she muttered, more to herself than anything. “Damn right I am.”

“Uh-uh.”

“This is the way to where we’re going!”

“Or, it’s the way to certain doom. Why don’t you jump in and find out first?”

“I will, but only because I’m the only one who can survive certain doom. Not that it is. Ghost says so.”

“I don’t give a fuck what Ghost says, I’m not stepping into that thing!”

Sasha and Cassi had it out--again--in front of the tubes of energy running directly to the weapon core, where, she didn’t need to add, they needed to go. She wasn’t sure exactly what they had been using the tubes for, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t public transit. Not that it mattered. It was the fastest way to reach their destination and she was going in it, whether her team followed or not.

“I don’t have time for this. Turn around if you want.”

Saluting them both, she jumped into the tube, curling her arms and legs in to keep anything from getting clipped off. The momentum seized her and flung her down the tube. She could see the sun to her right, enormous, beautiful, and dangerous, ready to fry her to bits if she stayed out too long. Ahead of her, a long, straight passage to the weapon’s core. Maybe this was a way of sending fuel? There had been a grinder in the previous room and rubble. Caelum probably had a better understanding of the way the Almighty functioned.

“No! I don’t like this! I don’t like this at all! Let me off! Let me off right now!” Cassi shrieked through her comms.

“I shoved her through,” Caelum told her over the racket the Titan made.

“Good man.”

Leaning back, arms folded over her chest, feet outstretched, she prayed they weren’t being sent into a giant kiln to be smashed, liquified, and turned into fuel.

She landed on the other side in a roll, but came up unscathed and in another part of the ship. The tub spat Cassi out next, who rolled and lay on her back, out of breath from screaming, and then Caelum, who rolled and landed on his feet, much like Sasha had.

“That wasn’t so bad.” He brushed off his robes.

Cassi rolled onto her side to sit up. “I hate you both.”

“You signed up for this mission. Now come on, and weapon’s hot. Everybody’s waiting on us.”

Grumbling, the Titan checked her weapons and nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Sasha seemed to always end up in positions where running for her life was the only option. Using interceptors, they had destroyed the weapon’s generators, but they needed to disrupt the core itself. She’d sent her team on ahead to the evac point, since someone had to go on foot and it didn’t take a whole team to jam a fusion cell into an electron reservoir.

Which meant a timely sprint to the waiting ship, praying her boots stayed together long enough for her to make it.

Not that it mattered.

They’d disabled the Almighty. It couldn’t take their sun with it. The attack could commence. Whether or not she got off the ship before it blew, her people could start fighting back in earnest.

“Run!” her Ghost hollered as she grinned wildly to the inside of her helmet.

“Sasha, we’ve got less than two minutes before we need to be clear of this area.

Her arms pumped, her boots cracking under each footfall. Or maybe that was her imagination. Or maybe her laughter. She wished she’d had time to drop down and take a piss on the Almighty’s floor. She’d effectively marooned it, so she supposed she could come back and do it later.

“One minute,” Caelum warned.

She sprinted down the Almighty’s spine while explosions ripped her section of the ship apart. Heat railed against her armor, taking down her shields, aided by shrapnel and concussions of each blast. Finally, up ahead, against the brightness of the sun’s radiance, she made out the dark lump that was Thumos’s ship, her team already aboard.

“Faster!” Cassi shrilled through comms.

She launched aboard with a scream. Hands grappled her inside and the doors slammed shut, cutting out the brightness and heat. The ship rocketed up and out of the blast radius. The entire Almighty didn’t go up, but the unstable portion of the weapon did a good job attempting it.

“We’ll finish off the rest of it later, right?” she asked, dumping off her helmet and falling back with a laugh.

Her Ghost made a noise that might have been a grunt. “Provided we get through the part that comes next.”

Sweat matted her dark hair to her head and soaked into her undershirt beneath her armor. She keyed her comm. “Zavala. The Almighty is down. Start your attack.”

“Heading back to Earth double-time. We wouldn’t want to miss any of the fun down there,” Caelum announced from the bridge.

Cassi sat across from her, also sweating profusely, passing her a water bottle. “Better hydrate. I don’t know about you, but I’m soupy in here.”

“Yeah. I’ve got sweat literally everywhere. What do you think Cabal showers look like?”

“Have you smelled them? What makes you think they know what a shower is?”

“Good point,” she sighed, draining the water bottle. She clambered to her feet. “Oh well. The day isn’t over yet. My skivvies wouldn’t even have time to dry before we made it back to the City.”

“Fair enough. How’re the boots.”

She glanced down at them. “Still kicking. I guess if sun exposure at that range wasn’t going to kill them, nothing will.”

Cassi chuckled. “Kind of like you, Boss.”

She grinned. “Yeah. I guess so. Thanks for backing me up there, Cass. Even if you did need an underwear change after our ride to the weapon core.”

She rolled her luminous orange eyes. “I’m never going to live that one down, am I?”

“You wish.”

Chapter Text

Sasha, Cassi, and Caelum listened to the assault on the city over comms as they neared on their approach. They would be late to the party, but the main assault teams had run into plenty of trouble. Cayde was the only one to make it to the rendezvous without a hitch while the others rerouted. He grappled on his own with incoming Cabal, bouncing grumpily between shooting and making his Vex machine work.

“The cavalry is on its way. We're boots on the ground in five,” Sasha promised as they entered atmo and started their descent.

“Faster would be better!” Cayde yelped.

“Alright, team.” She swept a look between her two partners. “The second we hit the City, we rush a straight shot down the middle. I want to stop for nothing. No sightseeing, no pictures with celebrities, no drinks on the waterfront. We go in, we go hard, and we don't stop until we're ass-deep in Cayde’s time warp thingymajiggy.”

“I think it's more of a time/space warp thingymajiggy,” Caelum interjected.

She continued, ignoring him. “We're the last to arrive to this party, so hopefully the others have softened the Red Legion up a little. We're speedrunning the mofo, so I hope you're both brushed up on your cardio. This is for all the beans, so if you've got any last dirty tricks up your sleeve, now's the time to whip 'em out.”

The warlock warned, “ETA thirty seconds.”

“Let's go make Ghaul cry.”

The air battle managed to break up some of the blockade getting into the City, so while they didn't drop directly on top of Cayde, they only had about six city blocks to go to get to him, which was easier said than done with a fleet of Cabal and intermittent force fields blocking their path.

They put in a hard burn to break past the lines, sprinting through hales of bullets to make up for lost time. Sasha worried that the Cabal they left alive would go on to kill civilians and lightless Guardians. She knew the best thing she could do was finish the job and kill Ghaul. She knew she would help them more by cutting off the head of the snake. Yet her gut clenched and her palms sweat as she imagined any one of the soldiers they passed turning around and murdering one of her friends.

They moved from the streets onto the buildings, hopping rooftop to rooftop, climbing higher, leaping ledges, and taking out any hapless Red Legion that tried to get in their way.

“Did you stop to take a leak? Where are you?” Cayde demanded frantically.

“We're close. Hold your shit together, man.”

“With what? They shot off my arm !”

“Then use it to beat them off with!”

Cassi, breathless from running and climbing, asked, “Was that double-entendre intentional?”

“Shittalking Cayde is a craft I've spent years honing. Of course it was intentional.”

They made it to a rooftop garden to jump to the next building over. The gap wouldn't be a problem for her, but the other two would have to go around and find a shorter gap, probably from the building adjacent. Sasha saw the opportunity for what it was.

“I'm going to go on ahead. You guys will just have to catch up.”

“If you run into trouble, don't do anything stupid,” Cassi shouted after her.

Taking a running start, she cleared the gap with a roll on impact and raced around to the south end of the building where a group of Cabal were planted in her way. She summoned her golden gun to burn them out without slowing down, taking the final rooftop jump to the rendezvous point where Cayde-6, Zavala, and Ikora made their last push against the onslaught of Cabal on top of them. They were all a hot mess, but they were alive.

“We can't make the jump. You and your team are going to have to go alone,” Ikora warned, bleeding and breathless.

Zavala picked his head up to glance behind her. “Speaking of, where are they?”

“I ran on ahead. Cayde, you remember what we talked about?”

He got the gate going and charged it up. “You're sure about that? You're absolutely one hundred percent certain that's how you want to do this?”

Out of the loop, Ikora rightfully tensed. “Do what?”

Sasha nodded grimly. “Nobody else is going to die getting this done. Buy me as much time as you can.”

“Buy you time for what ?” the warlock yelled, drawing herself up.

“Go be a hero, kid. I've got your six,” he promised.

They bumped fists with his remaining arm and Sasha leaped through the displacement gate, praying the mad exo had worked out all of the kinks. All of the air sucked out of her lungs and then she landed, disoriented for a moment before getting her bearings. She'd been dumped out in a Cabal ship. So far so good.

Voices buzzed at her through the comms.

“Cayde, what did you do?”

“Aleksandra tweaked the plan. It was her idea.”

“We're here now. Let us through the gate,” Cassi gasped, out of breath.

“No can do, I'm afraid. She's going this one alone.”

“Why the hell does that mean? Sasha? Sasha!”

“Sorry, guys, but light wielding Guardians only beyond this point,” she declared, making her way into the ship.

“You can't do this one your own! You can't fight him without backup!”

Caelum took the more tactical approach. “Cayde, open the gate! You're not seriously going to let her do this on her own, are you? This is too important to let her call this big of a shot.”

“It's what I would do,” he argued.

Ikora weighed in. “Cayde, she needs backup!”

Another voice buzzed through the comm. Orion. “Sasha did what now?”

Ignoring the ongoing chatter, Sasha focused on getting through Ghaul’s command ship to the head turtle himself. The portal dumped her out pretty close, but she had a few rooms to fight through. Her Ghost still had the ship's schematic stored from their first journey through the ship. From the battle they lost. From the moment they lost their light and everything changed.

“Nobody likes your plan,” Ghost remarked as she stepped onto the elevator that would deliver her up.

“Everyone's a critic.”

“Maybe they have a point.”

“This battle would kill all of them. I can't trust Cassi to keep her ass in line and Caelum’s solid, but his heart is in science, not battle. I'll get their light back and they can be mad at me forever if they want, as long as they're alive to be mad.”

“Orion and and Nola are pretty pissed, too. They're making their way up to the rendezvous point to join the argument.”

She didn't expect Cayde to outlast them all, but she could at least get a head start in whittling down Ghaul’s armor and strength.

“You know, even my ability to resurrect you is finite. There may come a point where I can't bring you back.”

“Then we spend our last breath bringing that bastard down to where the others can finish him off. Are you in this, Ghost?”

He made a noise. “You're damn right I'm in it.”

She racked her shotgun. The shotgun Orion had given her. The elevator delivered her to the top deck where Ghaul waited. The ship had parked itself at the foot of the Traveler, which loomed above red, livid, angry. She had never seen it so close, had never seen its light so corrupted. Her heart gave an involuntary yank.

She didn't have long to wait, as Gaul appeared dramatically from a spiral of red flames on the far side of the ship, closest to the Traveler.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Ghost remarked blandly.

“Five glimmer says he follows it up with something even more needlessly dramatic.”

He took her bet. “Five glimmer says he cuts to the chase and shoots you.”

Up ahead of them, the hulking Cabal declared, “Fitting your Traveler would send you to face me once more.”

“Ha! He's monologuing,” she muttered with a smirk as he launched into a lengthy soliloquy concerning his self-appointed title.

“Damn it. What's the plan, Sash?”

“I'd start shooting, cut off this snore-fest, but I want to yell at him first.”

“You want to yell at him?”

“After the shit we've been through to get here? Yes. I'm going to yell at him.” Throwing her shoulders back, she strode forward.

Up ahead, he roared, “I am Ghaul! And I have become legend.”

“Well listen up, legend. You come into my house. You kill my family. You take my light. You have conquered nothing. The light does not belong to you. It will never belong to you. You have the Traveler in a noose and yet it still chose me. It doesn't want you, Ghaul, and you will never be worthy.”

She wasn’t finished by a long shot, having planned about an hour long soliloquy for this, but Ghaul cut her off, firing on her before she could find her stride. It was incredibly rude, considering she had waited out his speech. He launched into the air and started throwing flaming swords at her.

“He is not using light powered solar abilities! Please tell me he doesn't actually have a grip on the light!” she cried, launching into a roll and skidding behind cover.

The top deck had plenty of protrusions, as well as a lower deck that tunneled underneath, so she had some breathing room to dart around. The flaming swords did complicate matters.

He switched from solar axes to regular rockets, which was more of a minor improvement. She opted for her scout rifle, ducking around her pillar to squeeze off a few shots and test his armor resilience. She didn't get the chance, distracted by the psions charging her position.

“That coward called for backup!”

“Cheap bastard,” her Ghost agreed.

In the background, a cacophony of voices rose to demand Cayde open the gate and let them through to back her up. She was a little distracted, but she swore he yawned at them. They should had all made bets on how long it would take Ikora to pull a gun on him.

“Okay, so this is going to be a little harder than I thought. Let's stay out of sight and thin the crowd then unload on the big guy.”

“Sasha, let us back you up!” Cassi pleaded.

Ignoring her, she skidded behind another projection and peeked out to pop off as many headshots as she could swing.

“Shoot better, not more,” she muttered, sliding back under cover to let her shields recharge.

She kept moving, kept shooting. Ghaul charged after her, flushing her out of cover after cover, draining her shields faster than she could put bullets into him. He pinned her between his guns and a flood of Red Legion soldiers and finally tore through her armor and arteries, leaving her a wretched bloody mess on the deck.

Her hearing came back tinny at first as she blinked her unfocused eyes, her Ghost resurrecting her as quickly as he could.

“...stay down!” Ghaul finished yelling triumphantly, standing over her.

Sasha raised her shotgun and blasted him square between the legs. She scuttled away, still getting her breath back.

“What's his armor integrity at, you think?”

“Maybe seventy-five percent?”

Not good enough. She growled as she reloaded. “Cayde, this guy is tearing me up.”

“You want me to send the cavalry?”

“Did you not hear me?” She raised her voice and enunciated. “This. Guy. Is. Tearing. Me . Up. If you let them through, he will steamroll them. Keep that gate closed until I say otherwise. Do not let them talk you into opening it.”

“Isn’t this just fun?” he drawled. “Go get ‘im, hero.”

Using tactics she was most familiar with, she darted around the ship from cover to cover, taking out enemies and popping shots at Ghaul when opportunities presented themselves, but even playing it safe, she found herself overwhelmed on more than one occasion. She squeezed through their bullets more times than she probably ought to have, but they managed to get several kill shots on her. Her Ghost dutifully pulled her ass back together each time. She never paused for breath. Never stopped shooting. If she failed, Cayde had no reason to stop her friends from charging through.

Ghaul disappeared briefly, giving her some reprieve from his flaming swords, only to reappear with balls of void energy to throw at her. Sasha had smashed her face into plenty of them before during heated bouts in the Crucible. She didn’t like it then, she didn’t like it now.

“Did this asshole snatch all of our powers? How unoriginal,” she huffed, careful not to get caught out in the open.

Ghost made a harumph of agreement. “Void surges are so last season.”

“You’re still spouting one liners! Focus, woman!” Cassi shrilled over comms.

As if she needed to be reminded. Peeking out at Ghaul, she summoned her golden gun and put every bullet into his skull. By rights, he should have died, but his armor remained intact and he threw more void at her. She scuttled to find better cover, stumbling when the sole of her boot popped off.

“Shit. Shit. Ghost, can you put it back?”

“Put it back with what? That thing’s been threatening to fall apart for weeks now!”

She huddled behind a barrier, trying to keep the rest of the boot from disintegrating under her fingers. As she fiddled, the other one began literally falling apart around her foot. Her trusty boots, more duct tape than anything, were finally failing her.

“They could have picked a better time.” Yanking at the clasps, she tossed them both off. “Fuck it. I’ll do this barefoot.”

“Did she just say barefoot?” Nola-9 wondered over comms.

Caelum groaned. “The sun exposure from the Almighty must have worn away their final integrity.”

Ignoring the commentary, she checked her weapons and bolted for a geyser of light that would recharge her golden gun another time, a small token from the traveler to give her an edge in the fight. The ship’s hull slapped against the soles of her bare feet, warm to the touch. She fired off a few cover shots to keep the Red Legion off her ass, but didn’t see Gaul until he was already on top of her, his entire body crackling with arc energy.

“Sasha, watch out!”

Ghost’s warning came too late. Ghaul grabbed her arm and slammed her down to the deck, his meaty hand pinning her across her chest as she squirmed under his grasp.

“One of these times, you won’t come back,” he breathed in her face, throwing his weight against her. She felt her ribs begin to pop, pain lancing through her chest as har armor caved under the pressure and crushed her torso. “I will burn the light out of you if I have to. Now stay down.”

Energy ripped through her, liquefying her organs beneath her shattered skeleton. He meant to destroy her, to break her so thoroughly, inside and out, that her Ghost would have nothing to put back together. Guardians died sometimes. Even their light couldn’t last forever. Hers had all been borrowed time anyway.

The last thing she remembered after that was hearing Ghaul’s deep, triumphant laughter as the darkness swallowed her again.

“Sasha? Sasha, wake up! Please, you have to.”

She blinked against the sparkles in her eyelids. “Five more minutes.”

“In five minutes, everyone will be dead!”

She focused blearily in on her Ghost as he ran patches, mending her body and armor simultaneously. “Who?”

“ Everyone ! They all came piling through! Fresh Red Legion reinforcements just landed and Ghaul is hammering them with flaming swords and rockets. You need to stop him. He’s going to defeat them with brute force at this point.”

She barely managed to sit up, her sand-filled head wobbling dangerously. “Well, that’s just tacky.”

“Go!” he pleaded.

Dragging her rifle over to herself, she sat up on her knees and peered down the scope. Nobody paid attention to her, the battle focused away. The Red Legion all had their backs to her. Aiming for the head, she squeezed the trigger against a series of empty clips. Lowering the gun, she patted herself down for ammo, finding all of her reserves dry. She tried again with her hand cannon, once again clicking on empty.

“We don’t have time for this!”

She squinted over to where here people held the line of the defense. The last line of defense. If they broke, Ghaul would rip the city apart finding the last of the survivors, and he had some wonky light powers to back him.

She grabbed her last gun, the shotgun Orion made her take with her. “One shell left.” She blinked sweat out of her eyes and shook her foggy head. “Better make it a good one.”

“Ghaul’s armor integrity is near failing. You’re going to have to get close to make the shot count, but you might be able to break past the plating on the back of his neck. All of those headshots have nearly taken his helmet entirely out.”

Shaking her head one last time, she took a few deep breaths and bounced on the balls of her bare feet. Up ahead, Ghaul tore past the shelter her friends huddled behind, scattering them. She broke into a sprint. Sasha’s speed had always been her asset in close-combat. Outpacing her opponents kept her alive on more than one occasion. Now, she charged full tilt into danger, bare sleep smacking the deck, breaking past a barrier of Red Legion who had no idea they should have been watching their backs in case the Guardian back there rose from the dead one last time.

She jumped, boosting onto Ghaul’s back and grabbing a pauldron for balance. Jamming the shotgun barrel between the juncture of his head and neck, she squeezed the trigger. He roared, flailing and grabbing at her, but too inflexible in his bulky turtle armor to actually reach her. Tossing the empty shotgun aside, she exchanged it for her boot knife, carving it into the hole she created and burying it deep, hacking and sawing whatever flesh it could reach.

She jumped free as the Cabal toppled, rolling into a graceless skid and coming to a stop on her back. Bullets flew around her, but she didn’t have the strength to try to join back in. She’d contented herself to die in the middle of battle when a hand grabbed the back of her cloak’s hood and dragged her clear of the battle.

“After that big, damn lecture about not martyring myself, you go and pull this shit? Sasha, you will be the death of me. And where the hell are your shoes?”

She could only laugh as Orion stood over her, providing cover fire from the remaining Red Legion.

“This isn’t funny!”

“Is he dead?”

“He better be! He---oh. What the fuck is that?”

Sasha raised her head as the stolen light from Ghaul released into the air, transforming into a mirage of the man he once was, facing the Traveler and delivering final insults. Or something along those lines. A bright, white blast stung her eyes before she could fully comprehend what she was seeing. The light consumed everything, every inch of the flagship and city below.

When the glow faded, leaving spots in her eyes, she heard Orion gasp at her side. “My light,” he uttered.

Moments later, a stern voice demanded, “Is she still alive? Because if she is, I’m going to kill her!”

“You must be Cassi,” Orion demurred. “We didn’t get the chance to meet before. I’m Orion.”

“Yeah? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Likewise. You’ve been watching her back since the city fell.”

“It’s a tough job. It’s all yours if you want it back. I’m retiring.”

Throwing an arm over her eyes, Sasha muttered, “Gossip about me after I pass out again.”

A booted toe nudged her shoulder. “Hey, I scavenged your boots. I thought we could frame them.”

She peeked up at Nola. “Are you going to yell at me, too?”

“Ha! Like I have the time for that. You need to check that ego, fleshbag.”

“Why, when I have a friend like you to do it for me?”

She plopped down to the ground next to her. “You made an all right call. Was it the best call? No clue. We may have been able to help. We may have distracted him enough to let you do your job more efficiently, or maybe we would have all died and distracted you from getting the job done. Doesn't matter now. You wrangled out a win. You killed Ghaul, freed the traveler, and restored our light. I didn't know if any of those things were possible, and you did all of them.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a compliment.”

“Then you're even stupider than you look, fleshbag, because it was a compliment. But then again, why am I surprised? You've always had to do everything yourself. You always take on more than you can handle and still somehow get it done.”

“Business as usual.” She let out a little, hysterical laugh. “I need a nap.”

“I don't think I've ever heard you say that.”

Hooking her fingers under her helmet clasps, she popped it off and tossed it aside, her hair matter to her face and neck with sweat, most of it leftover from disabling the Almighty. She squinted up at Cayde as he dropped into a crouch next to her, looking as gleeful and pleased as ever.

“You fought Ghaul solo, barefoot. That's so cool. You are always my favorite.”

“Thanks for keeping that gate closed.”

He leaned in close. “Between you and me, I would have opened it after you'd been in there for like two minutes, but I couldn't get the energy catch to ignite. But good going, champ! You're the best!”

She let her head drop back to the deck, unable, as always, to tell exactly how serious Cayde was at any given time.

Eventually her friends hauled her to her feet and escorted her off of the flagship back to the city where Guardians and civilians continued cleaning up the remains of the Red Legion. Orion brought them to a safehouse where they could lay low, most of them breaking off to go help with the final pushback to reclaim the city. She hunkered down and fell asleep to the lullaby of bullets and rockets.

Sasha sat on top of a rocky ledge, peering through her scope, counting heartbeats while she slowly followed a dreg. She squeezed the trigger. The dreg’s head exploded. She racked the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge and reaching for a new shell.

Somebody pressed it into her palm, eliciting a squeak and a lurch as she reached for her sidearm. Orion fell back with a laugh, holding up his hands in surrender before she could shoot him.

“What the hell? Ghost, where did I put that bell this asshole got me? I'm going to make him wear it from now on.”

“I told you I had to up my sneak game while I was running lightless in the City.”

She clutched her chest while her heartbeat found a regular rhythm. Her Ghost cackled near her elbow. “Lightless in the City would make a great band name.”

“Don't you start.” To Orion, she asked, “Everybody make it?”

“Fancy hats and all. Although, Nola’s idea of a fancy hat is wearing a headdress made out of Vex parts, but I decided not to comment.”

She snorted, adjusting the veil on her own fancy hat. “She would.”

Stowing her weapons, she hopped down from her ledge behind Orion and past the hull debris to Failsafe’s core. They had all dressed up for the occasion, as promised, with fancy hats and dapper vests, dresses, shiny boots, and whatever other finery they could scavenge together. It had been three weeks since the fall of the Red Legion, two weeks since they reopened the Tower to house all remaining Guardians, and a few days since they were all back to business as usual. She had assembled her team for the brunch they promised Failsafe.

They'd rigged up a table made out of Exodus Black scrap and seats and each brought a breakfast dish to share, except for Nola-9, the only exo of the group, who didn't eat and instead supplied the music. Few people knew about her secret talent, but she slayed at the piano. She set up a portable keyboard for the brunch.

Cassi and Caelum both showed up, Cassi looking grumpy, Caelum chatting animatedly with Failsafe. Orion had invited his friend Ariel, too, who made herself right at home in the group trading barbs with Nola like she'd been doing it all her life.

They assembled around the table, set up right next to Failsafe, with a clatter of silverware and chatter as they set into the meal.

“This brunch thing is so dumb. Some of the most elite warriors in the system, all wearing stupid hats and chowing down on bird ova,” Nola cackled as she watched on. “Can we do this every week? I want to see what other getups you idiots have stashed in your closets.”

“I would like that very much!” Failsafe chimed, then added, deadpan, “Seeing you guys look dumb is, like, the highlight of my week.”

“We can call ourselves the Breakfast Club,” Cassi suggested.

Ariel wrinkled her petite nose. “Or we could not.”

“Actually,” Sasha said, pulling in their attention, “I was thinking, if you guys felt the same, that we could make our group official. I put in a Clan application yesterday. I want you all to be a part of it.”

Failsafe gasped. “Even me?”

“Especially you.”

“I'm in.” Cassi beat them all to the punch. “You guys, historically, have the best adventures. I want that. And if you ditch me again, I'll shoot your bare little toes off.”

“Ha! With your aim?” she shot back.

Orion nodded before they could launch into too big of an argument. “Of course I'm in. I wouldn't be anywhere else.”

“And me, although if you name is something stupid like the Breakfast Club, I'm out,” Nola declared.

Caelum also weighed in. “Well, I was going to pick up another load of research, but the idea of going back to Asher makes me physically ill. I'm in. I can work on my war beast domestication project on the side…”

That left Ariel, who tossed her pink hair. “You all need some class and I lost my entire fireteam when the Tower fell. So yeah. Count me in.”

“So what do we call ourselves?” Caelum asked.

Nola jumped in with the first suggestion. “Sexy Ass Stealth Hunting Assailants.”

“Who came up with that acronym anyway?” Sasha groaned.

“It was Jordie, remember Orion? He got killed like a week after, but that stupid name already caught on.” Ariel’s pretty smile twisted ruefully. “Stupid bastard always had a wisecrack.”

Sasha raised her coffee. “To Jordie, and his genuinely terrible acronyms.”

They toasted him, then went back to debating names. Eventually Sasha left them to it, stepping out for some fresh air outside the core. She leaned against a piece of debris overlooking the bones of the Exodus Black. The shadows shifted, sunlight and day-night cycles not quite the same as on a planet or moon. Still, the Centaur had its charm and beauty. She had to give the Vex one thing, they did a hell of a job terraforming into something appealing.

Occasionally, bouts of laughter drifted out to her from the Exodus Black core, but she enjoyed the solitude removed from it. She liked those assholes, but she didn’t need to be a part of every joke ever uttered.

Orion joined her eventually, passing her a tin cup. “Nola brought tequila. They've progressed to drunkenly debating the name.”

He had mixed it with orange juice. She took a sip and let it settle before asking, “What's in the lead?”

“The favorites seem to be the Barefoot Battalion and Failsafe’s Minion Brigade.”

“It's a shame. I hoped Sexy Ass Stealth Hunting Assailants would still be in the running.”

“I think Cassi put the kibosh on it. She's got quite the complex about you.”

“What can I say? Titans find me inexplicably irresistible. It leaves them confused and weird.”

He fought a grin, leaning his elbows against the rail overlooking the Exodus Black scrapyard. “Is that right? You think I'm confused and weird?”

“Ariel does. Same with her Ghost. And my Ghost. Nola’s Ghost. Apparently Nola herself.”

“Well, they're all mislead. Weird, I can't argue. But not confused. Cassi’s confused. She follows you around like the most reluctant duckling on the planet.”

She snorted. “Lucky for all of us, I get to quit making the plans and leading the charge. Maybe she'll mellow out once somebody else starts calling the shots. Smooth subject change, by the way. So, you're not confused?”

Orion chuckled. “I know how I feel about you, Sash. I've always known how I felt about you. Hell, so has Nola. And her Ghost. And your Ghost. And apparently Ariel and her Ghost. The only one who never noticed was you, you dip.” He nudged her with his broad shoulder.

She scowled sidelong at him. “You never said anything!”

“I've told you I love you like five times.”

“No, you haven't!”

He regarded her flatly.

She thought back to hundreds of conversations held over the past four five years. She did recall specific instances now that he mentioned it. Moments she brushed off. Laughed off. She scowled harder, but more toward herself.

“Crap.”

He laughed openly at her.

“This isn't funny! Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?” she fumed.

“I have what I want, Sasha. Who else would halt a top priority assault against an evil megalomaniac to personally traverse the Cabal occupied City on the off chance I might be alive?”

She sighed and tipped her head to the side, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Sorry I suck.”

He continued battling against the smile creeping to his face. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. You’ve given Nola a metric fuckton of material to torture me with over the years.”

“She totally owes me.”

Their Ghosts hovered next to each other to Sasha’s right. Orion’s commented to hers, “Slowest. Burn. Ever.”

“You think they’ll kiss sometime in the next decade?”

“I hope so. I have glimmer riding on this.”

Sasha nudged Orion. “You want to go back in, get smashed, and rejoin the name debate before I accidentally kill one of these punks?”

“Definitely. I’m throwing in for Barefoot Battalion. What about you?”

They linked hands on their way back in to Failsafe’s core.

“I’m going to see if I can get SASHA back in the running.”

The team toasted them on their return, all of them deep in their cups and demanding the two of them get on their level, Nola cackling gleefully over her piano as she pounded out a sloppy wedding anthem on her keyboard. Sasha looked around in satisfaction at her weird, ragrag little family and their gossiping Ghosts and the emotionally unstable AI they felt obligated to include. Her grip tightened on Orion’s hand. Whatever came for them next, she would fuck it up just as hard as she did Ghaul, barefoot  and alone, if need be. These assholes were hers.