Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The commotion outside shook up the entirety of The Spider’s safehouse was all the warning the Crow needed. The crash of a suddenly abandoned sparrow tossed against the side of the rock they were buried in, the indistinct yelling, the stomping of armored boots made of bright pink metal on the ground…

“Where is he!?!” came her enraged cries from the entrance hall. “WHERE IS HE!? I will strangle him to death, and then Glint can bring him back so I can strangle him again!”

“Now, now,” spoke up a feminine EXO voice firmly, “you heard what Osiris said. Don't take your grievances out on a corpse.”

“These are new grievances!”

Crow ducked just as shots from an auto rifle rang out. Bullets crashed into the back wall where his head used to be, debris littering the workbench. Damn it. And he had just cleaned up in here, too.

It was like clockwork now. She must have killed him a least a few dozen times before he got the timing right.

And while he was well aware he had died and been brought back by the Light, like any other Lightbearer, being referred to as a “corpse” was still unnerving.

“Stop blowin' holes in my house, Sunshine!” the Spider yelled from the other room.

Chaos. Crow’s peaceful afternoon working on lure mods, minding his own business, bothered by no one, gone in an instant.

The Warlock tsked between her teeth when she realized her shot missed. “Hey, that wasn’t fair. Stand up straight and let me kill you properly!”

“I’d rather you not,” Crow replied, wiping the bits of wall off his equipment. He was getting rather sick of dying every three days, and his back wall was starting to suffer a bit.

“That was still a great shot, though!” Glint added cheerfully, bouncing around Crow’s shoulders. “But, aahhh, yes, please stop trying to kill my Guardian. It’s very inconvenient trying to bring him back so much. Very draining.”

Not helpful. Also, he wasn’t a Guardian. Not officially.

The Warlock Guardian slammed the lure down at his feet. Green liquid oozed from various pours, and it made squelching noises as though struggling to stay alive. Such as what happened when the lure fused with Wrathborn spires. Crow had politely asked the Guardians to dispose of these when they were finished, but of course Icarus would bring this back to spite him. And now he had to figure out how to get the stains off the floor. Of all the illicit goods the Spider smuggled throughout the system, cleaning supplies were not on the list.

Meanwhile, Glint kept talking, oblivious to the darkening atmosphere as it bobbed happily up and down. “We are so glad you made it back safe and sound! See, Crow? See? I told you they would be fine, that everything would work out! And you were so worried!”

“I was not worried,” Crow retorted, waving him away.

The Warlock’s helmet dematerialized in a rain of silver, her gold eyes glaring at him like twin suns. The luminous silver marks on her gray face glowed brighter with her fury beneath her black hair. She was Awoken, like himself.

Glint, in its never-fading optimism, had once pointed out that working with another Awoken might make things a bit easier.

It didn’t.

And it really didn’t help that she, well, she looked like him. From the black hair, which was an extremely rare color for an Awoken, to the very same white markings on her face. Her hair parted in the opposite direction, however. It was like he was looking at his own mirror image, if not for a couple other, erm, obvious differences between them.

“Icarus, how about you not kill him every time we come here?” The Titan finally came into the room, and the heavy armor covering her massive metal frame practically took up the entire doorway. Her robotic voice shuddered with an exasperated sigh. “No one else understands the Wrathborn like he does.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Icarus grumbled, not taking glowering gaze off him.

This was not the first time Crow had some unsavory run-ins with Guardians ever since he woke up from the clutches of death as a Lightbearer, with no memory of his past life other than this overwhelming, unfathomable guilt that sat heavily on his chest. Those few run-ins taught Crow the hard way that 1) he was literally immortal and 2) he was not welcomed as a Guardian. So he worked for the Spider — Lightbearer and nameless outcast.

And out of all the Guardians he had encountered, Icarus was the most hostile.

Her Titan teammate, Atara-7, was a bit more receptive, and even treated him a little warmly sometimes — for an EXO. The Titan’s levelheaded perspective made dealing with Icarus’s explosive fury a bit more bearable.

They were here because the Spider had offered his “little bird” an opportunity for redemption.

A new enemy had emerged. The Wrathborn. Creatures that had become sick and twisted by the poison of Xivu Arath, the Hive God of War. Osiris had been investigating them while on Earth’s moon, Luna, where most of the Hive made their nest deep inside the small white rock many millennia ago. Eris Morn, whose job was to monitor the Hive’s movements, happened to have an outcast Guardian working for her, and whom she recommended to Osiris by name: Icarus. And Icarus’s friend, Atara-7, had arrived to help.

At the same time, the disease had spread to the Fallen raiders on the Tangled Shore, and their senseless violence disrupted the Spider’s underground Glimmer flow. So the Spider sent out his “little bird” to Luna as his personal envoy.

“It’s almost too perfect, like destiny,” the Spider had purred, voice like rolling gravel from his throat. “Work with these Guardians to get rid of the Wrathborn. Business becomes good again, and you...” He chuckled, insect-like mouth clicking, “you get to make the Guardians like you. Maybe they’ll even let you in the Vanguard after this. I hear there is a vacancy in the Vanguard of the Hunter variety." 

He had laughed then. Low and cruel. Whatever private joke he just made went right over the Hunter’s head, intentionally. Crow didn’t expect anything else. He was just another one of the Spider’s assets, something to be used and then discarded once that usefulness had come to an end.

Atara-7 and Icarus. Nice names. Names given to them by the Vanguard, names with meaning. Not the names of animals based on rumor and unfavorable characteristic. A crow was typically regarded as an omen of death; their group, a murder. Given his circumstances, the name didn't please him at all, but what else was there?

Crow had met these Guardians on Luna a few months ago when he had to rescue Osiris from himself — again. The Ghostless Guardian seemed to forget that once he was dead, that was it, and therefore did whatever he wanted. Immortality was a hard habit to break, Crow supposed. Even he was used to dying countless times by this point, from floating in the void to ending up at the wrong end of a Guardian’s sniper rifle. Or in this case, a certain Warlock's fury. 

Crow had barely said his own name when Icarus shot him in the head.

He could not remember the first time he died, but Crow certainly remembered that one and all the ones before. It had not been a pleasant feeling being but a ball of Light encased in his ghost’s protective sphere until his body regenerated. When he revived, Osiris was scolding Icarus about firing upon allies, and Icarus had shot back that that thing was no ally of theirs.

Which had kinda hurt, actually.

“Sooooo, I take it the hunt went well?” Glint noticed that its efforts to lighten the mood were not working, and it did what it could to keep the silence from becoming suffocating.

Icarus’s ghost, Fox, poked out and shuddered with a whir. “Oh, you have no idea,” it groaned.

“What was that even?” Icarus growled at Crow, and pointed to the lure with a sharp finger. “Did you set us up!?”

Crow briefly closed his eyes. Happy thoughts. Like Glint was always telling him, just go to his happy place and let it all blow over like one of Europa’s frequent snowstorms. “I have no idea what you — “

“Don’t play innocent, that was the worst thing I ever had to deal with in my entire life, and I’ve had to wade through Vex milk!”

“You’re not supposed to wade through Vex milk.”

“Whatever, we almost died!” A pause. “A lot.”

“Icarus,” Atara-7 spoke up, “I doubt he has any control over these things.”

“Do we know what he’s really putting in those mods, though?” Icarus fired back.

Crow snapped. “Yes, I took what little hours of the day I have on top of answering to the Spider’s every whim to finagle these mods in the hopes of luring a strong enough Wrathborn to kill you personally, you whom I don’t even know.”

“Crow!” Glint beeped in alarm. “Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!”

Hard to find your happy place when the Spider was just outside your door inside this miserable rock on a “planet” that was really just a bunch of asteroids held together by steel wire and wooden planks. Hard to find your happy place when everyone despised your existence for reasons you would never know. Hard to find your happy place when you felt like a massive piece of your soul was missing and left you to wander aimlessly only half-alive. 

“Miss Sunshine here getting her ass kicked by a Wrathborn is a happy thought,” Crow muttered just loud enough for Icarus to hear.

“I will kill you!” she hissed viciously.

Hard to find your happy place when a pyromaniac of a Warlock was taking her personal issues out on you. Crow crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve already done so thirty-seven times in the past two months. Aren’t you bored of it? Or are close-range headshots the only thing you are capable of?”

He suddenly hit his open palm with his fist in revelation. “OH! That’s probably why you were barely able to defeat a Wrathborn during only your second hunt! Maybe try not getting up their faces next time, Warlock. Isn’t distance supposed to be the discipline of your class?”

“Crow, pleeeease…” Glint whispered. “This is getting out of hand.” 

“Excuse me?” Her voice even cracked. Her hands shook at her sides. “Atara, gimme my gun, I’m gonna shoot him.”

Atara-7 had several things to point out as she patted Icarus on the head. “You are carrying your weapons already. Don’t you dare fire Two-Tails in here or we all die, and if you kill me, I will break your arms. The Spider will throw us out if you keep shooting up the place.”

“Damn right I will!” The Spider shouted from next door.

“And Osiris will scold you,” Atara-7 finished.  “Again. You are on probation, remember?”

Icarus turned away with a huff but didn’t say anything else. Only Atara-7 knew how to handle her.

“Please, please stop shooting my Lightbearer,” Glint pleaded with agonized flickers, bobbing close to Icarus. “I don’t think bringing him back so much is good for his mentality.”

“Or ours,” Fox added. “Or we end up like Bubblegum.”

A faint robotic giggle came from somewhere within Atara-7’s Light. And that was enough for the EXO. “Okay, enough fooling around, we all have a mission and not a lot of time to do it,”she said, and gently prodded Icarus to the side. “Let' settle down and prepare these lures for the next hunt, and then we’ll be on our way.” 

“Right,” Icarus and Crow both replied at the exact same time, voices matching almost uncannily. Icarus glared at him. Atara-7 sighed.

“You could be nicer to him, you know,” Atara-7 chided as the two Guardians left the Spider’s lair. “He is a Lightbearer now, and, like us, not the person he used to be.”

“I know,” Icarus huffed. “I can’t help it. Whenever I see his stupid face, I just want to shoot it. It’s worse that he’s so… so…” She struggled, gesturing wildly back at the lair’s entrance. “…nice, now.” The helmet made it impossible to see, but Atara-7 knew Icarus scowled under there.

“He has been purified by the Light,” the EXO Titan said. “And if we are to complete this mission, we all need to work together regardless of what’s happened in a dead past.”

“She’s telling you to grow up!” Bubblegum piped up cheerfully, peeking up from behind Atara-7’s shoulder. It was a bright thing, colored a bubble pop pink with cogs that ended in razor sharp points.

Icarus growled in her throat.

“It’s not that we don’t understand your feelings,” Fox added, bobbing by her ear. It hesitated a little bit. “A lot of things happened back in the Dreaming City. A lot of unpleasant things.”

“Traumatizing things,” Bubblegum added in an ominous octave.

“Shhh!” Atara-7 waved her ghost away.

“And Uldren was a horrible, antagonizing jerk to us ever since we met him all those years ago,” Fox continued.

“Exactly!” Icarus exclaimed. “This is payback!”

Atara-7 reached out and patted the shorter Warlock on her head, always the most effective way to calm her fiery spirit down. “Except that isn’t Uldren in there, little sun,” she said softly. The EXO’s metal face was incapable of smiling even if her helmet wasn’t on, but the gentle warmth radiated from her voice all the same.

“Passing up a friendship is like folding your first hand before it has the chance to improve. Both require risk, skill, and more than a bit of luck.”

Icarus went still. “Cayde-6 used to say that when we first starting working with him,” she said quietly. “He was so friendly the moment I met him, and I’m not even a Hunter.”

“We are all Guardians, he would remind us,” Atara-7 continued. “He would also say that the only game that matters is the one you are currently playing, not the one that has already been decided. Uldren was executed. Cayde has been avenged. And you…”

She paused, and then patted the Warlock’s head, hand heavy and awkward. “You’ll be fine.”

Icarus raised an eyebrow.

Atara-7 quickly recovered. “At any rate, Cayde always put the mission first, even, well, especially if it meant doing something unconventional and breaking all the rules. He would want all of us to get along and move forward. I'm sure thirty-seven headshots is more than satisfactory.”

“I suppose,” Icarus sighed, glaring back at the entrance to the Spider’s lair.

“Think on it. In the meantime, I’m heading back to the Tower.” Atara-7 stared at Icarus for a moment, as if hesitating. “Do you… need anything?”

“We can get you some more upgrade modules!” Bubblegum offered. “Snacks? Coffee? A shiny new sniper rifle?”

“I cannot afford that,” Atara-7 snapped at it.

The Warlock shifted her weight, uncomfortable. After two years, you’d think she would be used to this question by now. “No,” she finally replied. “I think I’m good. I’ll just go back to Luna. Eris might have something for me, and I can charge the lure in the meantime. Lots of Hive energy to harvest.” 

Atara-7 nodded. “Alright. I’ll meet you on Luna, then.”

Icarus stood there long after her companion returned to her ship orbiting the Tangled Shore. The Shore was actually rather quiet today despite the presence of Wrathborn. The fog gently rolled in, taking on a purple hue from the approaching dusk. It was actually kind of pretty here, in its own way. 

“You okay?” Fox asked softly, with a gentle nudge of her head. It’s orange knobs, like the color of a red fox, clinked against her helmet.

“Yeah,” she replied cheerfully, taking a deep breath and throwing her shoulders back. “Luna is more fun, anyway. And Eris has been great. She’s such an interesting person. Atara thinks she’s creepy, with all the dark eye goop, but I like her a lot.”

“But you’re still here on the Shore,” Fox countered.

Icarus kicked a small rock, sending it rolling down the hill with a stream of dust trailing behind it like a tiny comet. She didn’t move much more than that. Didn’t ask Fox to transport her back to her ship in orbit, notably enough. 

“I know why.” The ghost’s voice took on a bit of a teasing note.

“No, you don’t!” Icarus shot back much too quickly.

“Uh-huh.” Fox nudged her again. “Go on. Atara will be proud. And Cayde, too.”

Crow groaned with exasperation when those stomping footsteps of a pissy Warlock headed in the direction of his workshop again. “Oh! Icarus is back already?” Glint remarked, cogs turning quizzically.

“She probably forgot something and will blame me for it,” Crow replied darkly. “Where’s the Phillips-head?”

“Over there.”

Crow prepared himself to duck again as he continued fiddling with the lure mod. But the shot never came. Those were definitely Warlock boots he had heard. Confused, he turned around, wondering if someone else had found the Spider’s lair. As far as he knew, Atara-7 and Icarus were the only Guardians the Spider tolerated. Ironically enough, this made the Shore the safest place for Crow to be.

No, that was definitely Icarus standing there. “Hi, Icarus!” Glint greeted, bouncing happily. “You came back so fast!”

“Do you need something?” Crow asked cooly. That Icarus would be halfway across the Sol system before realizing she actually needed the correct lure mod that she failed to pick up in the first place was something she had done a few times. Only Atara-7 was not here to mediate things between them this time. More specifically, to keep Icarus on her leash. He braced himself. Anything was possible with this pulsing star of a girl threatening to go supernova at any moment.

Icarus only stood there, arms crossed over her magenta chestplate, glaring as the air between them grew heavy and unbearable. “What is it?” Crow repeated, sharper than he intended, but he was going to suffocate if the silence became any thicker.

He wouldn’t exactly call the look in her eyes hatred. It felt… much more complicated than that.

Fox appeared from the Warlock’s shoulder. Crow didn’t relax, but at least Fox was here. Surprisingly, given Icarus’s chaotic nature, her ghost was somewhat reasonable.

Icarus looked away, turning her glare to his bed instead. Or rather, the table with the aluminium blanket he called a bed because it was all he had here. The Spider wasn’t exactly what one would call a generous host.

Why wasn’t she saying anything?

“Come on, Icarus,” Fox encouraged gently, booping her cheek with a fire-orange cog. “It’s okay. Let’s take a page from Cayde-6’s book and play the hand we’ve been dealt.”

Cayde-6?

Hearing that name made his stomach drop. It was a name he had heard before these past two years whenever he crossed paths with other Guardians despite his efforts to avoid them.

Icarus muttered something. Crow thought it was directed at him, but she spoke so softly that he didn’t hear her.

“What?”

“Icarus,” Fox pleaded.

She suddenly whipped her head at him, and her arms dropped straight down her sides. “I’M SORRY!!!” she screamed in a cracked voice. Her gray face tinged with a red hue and glowing from an emotion that could only be described as pure embarrassment. “Don’t make me say it again, or I’ll... I'll take it back!”

She whirled around on the heels of her boots, her arms stuck to her sides as she marched out of the workshop stiff as a board.

Crow could have said a lot of things in response. A lot of sarcastic things. Like how she didn’t need to say it like she trying to pull out her own teeth. Or it was about damn time she fixed that massive chip on her shoulder.

But words didn’t come. He just stood there, completely and utterly stunned. The screwdriver dropped from his hand and clanged loudly on the floor. Even Glint was completely silent.

“Ahhhh, so glad to finally clear the air,” Fox declared with relief. It turned toward Crow and Glint, bobbing in little circles. “I know she takes some getting used to. Not very many people give her a chance because she’s so intense. It’s… a work in progress. But she’s really a good person, and a great Guardian! You’ll see!”

“I think she’s kinda fun,” Glint said in bright agreement. “When she’s not killing my Guardian.”

Crow still hadn’t recovered. Seriously, what the fuck just happened?

But the air did feel lighter in here. Normally, Icarus’s mood haunted this place long after she had left. Her apology, awkward as it was, felt genuine. 

Fox disappeared in a swirl of silver Light, returning to its Guardian.

“See!?” Glint cried excitedly, sending showers of Light sparks in all directions. “I told you! I told you things would finally look up for us!”

Crow finally managed to snap back to life. Nearly tripping over himself, Crow suddenly rushed out of the workshop, his helmet materializing beneath his hood. He ignored the Spider’s amused chuckle as he ran through the entrance tunnel after the Warlock. “Wait!” he called. “Icarus, wait, I’m — !”

He skidded to a stop outside of the lair, dust exploding from his boots. The Shore was silent and still, the fog undisturbed. Icarus was gone.

His golden eyes stared up into a foggy sea of stars where she would have gone into orbit. “I’m sorry, too,” he said softly.

He knew it now. He knew it as clearly as he knew his place in the Spider’s lair.

When he first met her, and Icarus shot him upon seeing him, Crow thought it was more of the same with all his other encounters with Guardians. He could not have been more wrong. A new wave of guilt had come over him when he was revived from her headshot, a guilt that dug much, much deeper along with this horrifying sense of loss that tore into his soul. If he still had one. This guilt was not associated with any other Guardian, not even Atara-7.

Icarus’s grudge toward him was a personal one, unique in the way it haunted him down to his bones.

Crow shivered, standing there alone on the Tangled Shore as the fog and dark shadows of dusk grew around him, not wanting to think about what he — what that monster — must have done to her.

Chapter Text

Nothing stayed a secret for very long in the Tower.

They may have been intended to be soulless killing machines, Risen with the Light’s seal of approval when it really came down to it, but Guardians were still people and still possessed all the failings of people. They grew restless with everyday meaningless tasks, grew bored of the constant killing now that the threat of mortality was removed. Even being able to murder each other as a form of “training” in the Crucible and Gambit didn’t always satisfy.

So the Guardians spiced up their daily lives with the one thing that was more thrilling than barging into a Fallen Kell’s ketch with only a basic hand cannon and a can-do attitude: gossip.

Two years ago, the main comms had been abuzz with all kinds of rumors, speculations, conspiracy theories, and even downright lies to shake things up. Uldren Sov’s death, in particular, had blown up the commlinks for the following months, mostly because no one knew exactly how he died, or even if he was really dead at all.

But alongside his death had been another deeply disturbing bit of news: a Guardian had been exiled to the Earth's Moon. On “probation”, as the Vanguard had put it. A fireteam was killed. No, several fireteams. Entire raid teams, even! Their Ghosts wiped out by Darkness. And this Guardian had been the cause.

Perhaps they had defected to the Awoken Prince’s side and turned on the Traveler... out of sympathy? Oh, oh! Maybe this Guardian and the Prince were actually lovers! A dark story of forbidden romance and betrayal. The drama! The tragedy! Movie when?

Others doubted this heavily; probation was simply not a severe enough punishment for something that extreme. Or ridiculous.

Also, no Guardian had died in the Dreaming City. All the raid teams that stormed the place had come back completely intact with no damage to their Ghosts... even if they also couldn’t recollect what exactly had happened. Most who were asked to serve the delicious tea didn’t want to talk about it at all, dismissing the events like a bad dream you can barely remember but you can feel wrapped around your neck all the same.

Icarus was never mentioned by name. Atara-7 couldn’t be more grateful for that. By sheer luck and the Vanguard’s attempts to shut down any conversation involving the Dreaming City, no one knew who the banished Guardian was. And with the typical Guardian back-and-forthing like ping pong balls all over the Sol system, it was impossible to tell for sure. Plenty of Guardians made rare appearances in the Tower for their own reasons.

But now, rumors that a Guardian who looked a little too much like Uldren Sov for anyone to be comfortable with was the lastest on the celestial grapevine. All those conspiracies and theories and speculations and lies came rushing back like a virtual communication tsunami. Voices of Guardians rang with the excitement of hunting this new Lightbearer down and seeing for themselves if the stories were true.

“Did you hear!? Did you hear!?” one female human Hunter with a particularly high-pitched voice exclaimed, bouncing up and down with her dyed pink pigtails bobbing atop her head of dark roots. “Uldren Sov is back!”

An EXO Hunter with a dark green frame blinked at her from across their table with shining yellow eyes. “Who?”

“The guy who killed the Hunter Vanguard two years ago!”

“Who?”

Pigtails sighed with exasperation. “Draco!”

“What?” the EXO shot back with a shrug. “We were dead then. Who cares?”

Another male Hunter, an Awoken, raised an eyebrow that disappeared under his bangs of silver-blond hair. “He also tried to commit genocide against his own people from what I hear. My people.”

“It’s all over the comms!”

“Well, then won’t the Vanguard take care of it?” the EXO pointed out. “We’re just newbies. What exactly are we supposed to do?”

“Yeah,” a Ghost with a plain shell suddenly piped up from the EXO’s shoulder. “You three still need to get used to patrolling the Cosmodrome, much less take on a ruthless genocidal maniac.”

“Didn’t some Guardian take on a Vex Gatelord when they were just starting out?” the female Hunter asked. “It was six years ago, I think, and they just tore into the Black Garden like it was nothing.”

Icarus.

Atara-7 tried not to make a habit of eavesdropping. She was simply here to pick up some fresh coffee grounds for Icarus from the Tower Café. Say hello to Khavi and his family who owned the place. Yet, she couldn’t stop listening in on such an animated conversation, and her gut tightened. Even more so when they brought up one of Icarus’s earliest accomplishments.

Six years ago, Icarus’s first significant assignment issued by the Vanguard itself was to visit with the Awoken Queen Mara as an emissary of the Last City. Out of sheer nerves, she had begged Atara-7 to accompany her. When they came back to the Tower, they had destroyed a Vex Gatelord and opened the way to the Black Garden, something that, as far as anyone knew, had never been accomplished before since Prince Uldren first attempted it. Zavala and Ikora both had scolded them soundly for it; after all, Icarus was only to be an emissary and Atara-7 wasn't supposed to be there in the first place! The sheer insanity of it for such young Guardians, challenging a Vex Gatelord of all things, put them on the radar. And on Cayde-6’s radar, in particular.

And it was all downhill from there.

"Here's your order, Atara," Khavi said cheerfully as he handed her a bag of fresh grounds. "Tell Icarus I said 'hi' and the family hopes to see her soon. ...Hey, is something wrong?" 

Atara-7 shook her head, realizing she had spaced out for a moment then. "Everything's just fine. She'll be very happy with this." 

"Awesome."

Ever since the Dreaming City, the Tower had taken on a rather unpleasant atmosphere shifting it from the once familiar source of comfort Atara-7 used to call home. Now she couldn’t bear to be here any longer than she had to. She hated to think like this, it was so selfish, but she couldn’t help but be glad Icarus was on probation, forced to stay on the Moon and therefore not allowed in the Tower.

“We can at least go see if it’s really him,” the pink-haired Hunter insisted. “Come on! Come on!”

“Don’t.”

Atara-7 didn’t know why she spoke. While she talked more these days, it was often only to Icarus and a few select others. She still preferred to keep her silence.

But she spoke all the same, and all three Hunters stared at her with wide eyes. Atara-7 was very tall, even by EXO standards, and her Titan armor made her massive frame even more so. And she never removed her helmet which made her all the more menacing to those who had never seen her before.

“Don’t what?” Pink Pigtails challenged, but her blue eyes wouldn’t look directly at her.

“Sharkbait!” Draco the EXO warned.

“I’d listen to your friend if I were you.” Bubblegum materialized by Atara-7’s shoulder and giggled, bright pink and covered in razor points. “Sharkbait.”

“We are Guardians,” Atara-7 continued. “We don’t hunt each other down like animals. Save that for the Crucible. Or the Gambit, if that is your taste.”

“See?” Draco the EXO hissed to his companions in a sharp whisper.

It was the Awoken Hunter who looked directly at her, then, his lilac eyes flashing a dangerous purple. “Uldren Sov nearly destroyed my people!” he exclaimed. “He was going to kill all the Awoken!”

“You are a Guardian,” Atara-7 emphasized. “Your duty is to the City now. You have no obligation to the Reef anymore.”

Newbies. All passion, no experience. Someone was putting these children up to this. And the two soft-skinned humans looked young, too. No older than early twenties when they both died. And judging by the EXO’s demeanor and frame size, his story must not have been that much different. Tragic.

Sharkbait and the Awoken male glanced at each other nervously. From behind their shoulders peeked their Ghosts with plain Tower shells.

“New blood!” Bubblegum declared cheerfully, and the three brand new Guardians cringed at the insidious way its razor points rotated toward them.

“I’m Kale, this is Sharkbait,” the Awoken Hunter said when he recovered. “This guy’s Draco-4. And we’re not that new. We were reborn this past summer.”

Still new, but Atara-7 kept that thought to herself. “Uldren Sov was executed two years ago,” she pointed out, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Everything he’s done has already been accounted for and therefore not of your concern for someone who wasn’t around at the time.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I said!” Draco-4 nodded vigorously. “You guys, this has nothing to do with us.”

“But you were there?” Sharkbait accused and actually did have the guts to look Atara-7 in the eyes this time.

Two years since that awful day. Two years since Atara-7 started speaking. And she, apparently, had a lot of things to say.

Atara-7 froze the human Hunter with a long, cold stare that could be felt even with her helmet on. “Yes.”

She didn’t like the direction this conversation was going, but she liked even less the idea of Guardians gleefully hunting other Guardians outside of training exercises. Especially newly born Lightbearers who were even younger than the Crow and knew even less what it meant to be a Guardian.

Technically, Guardians were not required to have any standards. They were chosen by the Light for a reason. So long as they did what was required of them, namely protecting the Traveler, then they were permitted to do as they saw fit. Even Zavala, the Vanguard Commander, could only do so much as far as order was concerned. The Guardians were not military. They did not have any military structure. The Vanguard mostly existed because, well, there needed to be some form of consistency. Many Guardians did follow Zavala’s standards, Atara-7 included, especially when she had been reborn six years ago.

Atara-7 needed those standards. It’s what kept her together.

But these days, the Vanguard was losing trust, and many more Guardians were realizing that they didn’t have to be held accountable for anything. And the influence of the Drifter was not helping matters any.

“Wait, you were there!?”

Suddenly, all three young Guardians nearly knocked over their own drinks as they leaned forward over their table, staring up at Atara-7 with eyes wide and expectant. Atara-7 stepped back in surprise.

“You know what happened in the Dreaming City then!” Sharkbait exclaimed with a wide grin.

Atara-7 held her hands up in protest because other Guardians in the café were turning their heads toward her.

“Is it true that entire Raid teams were wiped out in one blow from Darkness?”

“Was there really a gross monster with a billion eyes that tried to eat everyone?”

“Is Uldren Sov really as handsome as they say he is?”

The other two Hunters gawked at Sharkbait. “Seriously!?” Kale exclaimed. “That’s why you wanna hunt down this guy?”

Sharkbait’s face glowed with a sheepish blush. “What? A girl has to get some eye-candy every now and again.”

Atara-7 relaxed a little. There was a still a bright-eyed innocence to these new Guardians as they bickered over Sharkbait’s ridiculously superficial intentions. The Drifter’s influence hadn’t corrupted these kids entirely. Seriously, how could Commander Zavala allow someone like that in the Tower, Lightbearer or no? Much less allow him to be “unofficially” in charge of the Hunters?

“We should go,” Bubblegum suggested in a soft whisper by her ear. “We’re getting very popular all of a sudden, like Cinderella at the ball. They won’t stop looking at us.”

Atara-7 glanced around the room from the corners of her eyes. She didn’t see them so much as feel them. The other Guardians were apparently taking this conversation way more seriously than the misguided new bloods. Some of the armor they adorned was older and far more elaborate in design, indicating veteran status.

Time to leave.

Atara-7 brushed past the table of the new Guardians and went outside toward the docks. She had wanted to stop by Amanda’s real quick to say hello and perhaps pick up some upgrades for her Sparrow, but now she wanted out of here as soon as possible.

“Wait, wait!”

“Oh no,” Bubblegum groaned. “They’ve imprinted on you.”

The three new Hunter Guardians chased after Atara-7 like a trio of baby ducklings. “Take us with you!” Sharkbait cried with a wave of her hand.

“Yeah, you seem so cool!” Draco-4 added. “You could teach us so much!”

“I’m a Titan,” Atara-7 threw over her shoulder, refusing to slow down. She had no idea where she was going now, other than she hoped to lose these kids in the Tower stairwells and find somewhere quiet so Bubblegum could take her back to orbit. “I don’t know anything about being a Hunter.”

“But you gotta have a Hunter on your fireteam, right?” Kale pointed out, gasping for breath. He was clearly not the runner of the group.

“No.”

“Oh, so you need a Hunter!” Draco-4 remarked.

“And lucky for you, you have three now!” Sharkbait added happily.

Atara-7 stopped so fast, the three Hunters nearly slammed into her, boots skidding in the snow and sending white dust floating into the air as they knocked into each other. She whirled around, towering over the trio, her electronic white eyes blazing through the slits of her helmet. The three shrank back against each other in the snow, staring up at her, clearly terrified but also… awestruck. Like they were facing a god.

She sighed, exasperated. There was no point in frightening the children, they would probably only be that much more encouraged. “You three clearly still need more training,” she said, her voice its usual mix of quiet and firm, a tone not to be argued with. “The missions I go on are far beyond your level. And right now, it's strictly Vanguard business. Go prove yourselves in the Crucible. I’ll be back to check in with Lord Shaxx on your progress if I have a mind to.”

The three jumped to their feet, brushing the snow off their basic armor, trying to look presentable. “Yes, ma’am!” all three said, standing at attention.

Hmm. Maybe there was hope for the new bloods yet.

Bubblegum cleared its throat as if it had one. Atara-7 glanced up. Some of those veteran Guardians had drifted out of the café, and they made no effort to hide that they were looking directly at her. She nodded at the three new Hunters, who hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, and then had Bubblegum take her back to orbit.

“So cool,” Draco-4 whispered as they watched Atara-7 disappear in sparks of silver Light. His insides glowed warmly as if he were blushing. The other two Hunters, obviously blushing, nodded in agreement. "So cool."

In the safety of her ship in orbit, Atara-7 still couldn’t bring herself to relax. Not until Icarus was back by her side. And she worried about the Crow. A lot. She had heard stories in the Tower ever since Uldren Sov had been executed in the Dreaming City. Unsavory things. Things that were unbecoming of a Guardian.

They wanted to hunt him. Hunt down the Guardian they believed to be Uldren Sov back from the grave. They weren’t even there when Cayde-6 had died, been murdered, and yet they wanted to hunt him as if they had earned the right to do so.

Darkness was creeping into the Tower. With the Speaker gone and the Traveler silent, with a new black Pyramid dominating the bleak Beyond of Jupiter's moon Europa, Darkness had found a new way in. A more subtle way. A soft whisper beneath your skin disguised as a reasonable thought and sense of honor.

Sometimes the Darkness was not always literal. Atara-7 witnessed this for herself two years ago. In a pair of golden eyes that had gone crazed with the sweet temptations of false ideals.

Those same golden eyes filled with sorrow and absolute loss and glanced at her with shy relief whenever she stepped in to defend him.

Eyes that reminded her. Of back then. Before everything. Eyes that looked to her for protection.

She wasn’t going to fail those eyes. Not this time.

“What do you think that was all about?” Bubblegum asked.

Atara-7 shrugged as she punched in the coordinates to Earth’s moon on the console. Thankfully, it will be a short trip. “Just kids looking for an actual leader,” she said. “I doubt the Drifter gives them much useful guidance.”

Bubblegum snorted. “Your hate for the Drifter is almost cute.”

Atara-7 came the closest to scowling with her face an EXO ever had. The absolute disgust and disdain she had for the Drifter was enough to make her start emoting. “That man goes against everything Commander Zavala stands for,” she snarled.

“True.” Bubblegum bobbed with a nod. “But that’s not what I’m asking. I’m not that concerned about those kids, they seem like a nice bunch, actually. But those other Guardians…”

They will find Crow. And one of them was going to go too far and kill Glint along with him. Bubblegum didn’t need to say as much. Between the two of them, it never had to.

Fox restored Icarus’s body before the dust from the blast of the Two-Tailed Fox’s double rockets had cleared. The Warlock was even still coughing, though her lungs had been completely renewed and dust-free. The habits of mortality.

“I think you really need to start taking Crow’s advice about distance,” Fox pointed out.

“There’s no way I was going to let that stupid Knight dodge my rockets,” Icarus shot back.

“Two-Tails has a tracking mod.”

Icarus waved her Ghost away. “Whatever. It’s dead, and so is everything else in this room, and that’s what’s important.”

Hive architecture was actually pretty in its own unnerving way. It reminded Icarus of the ancient Gothic buildings from centuries before the Golden Age even began. There was a theory that the Hive had been on Luna even back then, and that very architecture was what had influenced their own.

The Hive fascinated Icarus. Unlike the reality-altering Vex and the Ether infused technology of the Fallen, the Hive had magic. True, pure magic even more so than the Awoken. There was another theory too, that the Hive had once been a race of beautiful beings before fleeing to an ancient planet known as the Fundament and offering themselves to the Worm Gods. Now they were forever altered by dark magic and the worms that festered inside their bodies.

Killing them was a mercy.

“How’s the lure charge?” Icarus asked.

“Two stored so far,” Fox reported. “Only one more to go.”

“Cool. That gives us a little more fun time.”

Fox groaned. “Whenever you say fun time, I get scared.”

With a shit-eating grin, Icarus reloaded Two-Tails and set off deeper into the Scarlet Keep with her faithful rocket launcher strapped to her back. Though she more often used her auto and sniper rifles, the Two-Tailed Fox was her true tool of the trade. It finished the job quickly whenever a particularly powerful enemy, like the Knights, showed up.

Unfortunately, she had a bad habit of firing the thing at close range and thus taking her along with it. Fox didn’t like that she still did that so deep down here with Atara-7 not around and the Darkness next to suffocating.

“If we can hunt down another one of Xivu Arath’s Priestesses, it’ll be a good day.” Icarus stepped carefully over a particularly goopy puddle of worms, heading for a gaping hole just behind a set of golden stairs. The sharp juxtaposition of the beautiful gothic architecture and disgusting parasitic filth that squirmed and squelched over the columns as if alive was too jarring to be real. That instead of taking stairs or a magic elevator like such architecture suggested should be possible, Icarus had to climb down a hole like a worm herself to get to the Hive.

“I don’t like this,” Fox finally said, unable to keep silent. “We should wait for Atara.”

“She’s busy in the Tower,” Icarus pointed out. “Besides, by the time she gets here, we’ll be all done. And maybe we’ll learn more about the Wrathborn while we're here.”

“I… guess.”

There really wasn’t much else Fox could do besides sigh and go with her. It was never a good idea for a Ghost to be too far away from their Guardian for very long. Resurrection wasn’t the perfect miracle of Light everyone thought it was, and even impossible under certain circumstances.

The consequences of Death still lingered. In a fluid reality, Death was the one certainty even among the immortal. Eternal stagnation could not exist in a reality based on change.

Icarus climbed down into the hole like it was not a big disgusting deal at all. She waded through the ankle-deep river that flowed out toward a massive cavern, passing by dead worm larvae floating over the dark surface. “Be careful not to let those things touch you,” Fox warned.

“I know, I know,” Icarus replied, scooting one away with the point of her sniper rifle.

You would think a sunshine Warlock who specialized in fire magic would abhor being within the deep dark of the Moon. But Icarus found the Moon to be a quiet, calming place. And when she wasn’t hunting down Hive, she would often find a spot in Archer’s Line and watch the Earth drift by, reminding her with its sapphire glow what she was really doing out here. Luna was the first line of defense against the Hive invading the last living planet in the Sol system.

For all their magic, the Hive were not as intelligent as the Fallen, Cabal, or Vex and predictable on an almost boring level. It was nice to go shoot things up without having to spend too much mental energy on strategy.

Fox was not a fan of this attitude. It was greatly concerning how its Guardian had become more and more reckless over the years. Icarus used to be careful, actually, especially in the beginning. Didn’t die nearly as often as the other new bloods who had been reborn alongside her six years ago. Nowadays, it was like she didn’t care. Like she had forgotten. The habits of immortality. 

Icarus set up by a large bolder, holding Widow’s Bite still in her arms. Carefully and methodically, she sniped several Acolytes guarding the cavern. Once the first shot rang out, blowing off the head of one and sending its worm dead to the ground, the others scattered to hide behind towering columns dark with filth.

For all her carelessness at times, the Warlock was still far more patient than these Acolytes. A few poked their heads out to see if the sniper had gone. Bam! Bam! Bam! Three perfect shots. Three headless Acolytes and three squirming, dying worms denied of their hosts. The remaining Acolyte fled in terror, and she immediately put it down with a bullet in its retreating back.

A Knight came into the room. A Revenant.

And the thing about Revenants was that they were not so easily fooled as lesser Knights and even lesser Acolytes. The shot to the Acolyte’s back gave her position away. With a roar that shook the cavern, the Revenant Knight fired its Boomer in her direction. It didn’t have to know where she was exactly. The devastating splash damage from those Arc bolts would more than make up for any poor aim.

“We’re pinned down!” Fox cried as the ground shook again and again. Between a huge wall and the Arc bolts splashing on the other side of her, Icarus had very little wiggle room. The vibration alone from the ferocity of the splash damage chipped away at her shield’s defenses. Her ears rang.

“The damage will be significant, but you need to move,” Fox warned. Its voice sounded so, so far away.

“That’s what he wants me to do,” Icarus shot back. “If he flushes me out, I’m done for.”

“Now you care about dying!?”

“I thought you wanted me to care!”

Even though she was shouting at her Ghost from the top of her lungs over the sound of Arc explosions, it was like talking underwater, hard to hear and harder to breathe.

Icarus leapt out from behind the rock, Two-Tails in her hands. One direct shot from an Arc bolt tore her shield to nothing. Her helmet’s HUD filled with red, alarms blaring in her brain. It knocked her backward, her limbs immediately going numb, but not before she fired off her rocket launcher at the same time in a blind shot.

Two rockets raced each other in wild directions. One slammed into the ceiling, filling the air in a shower of moon rocks. The other exploded at least ten feet to the Knight's left. The sight of the incoming rockets was enough for the Knight to throw up a magical dark wall as a shield which granted it complete immunity for a short time.

Usually ten seconds.

Which was all the time Icarus needed.

When the shield disappeared, there came a gleam of light from a sniper scope across the cavern. The last thing the Knight heard was the sharp sting of Widow’s Bite before a perfectly-aimed bullet blew its head off in a shower of dark blood, rusted armor, and green bits. Like squashing a bug. Its worm screeched as it was thrown from the host body and writhed wildly on the ground before finally dying.

Fox had managed to heal the paralysis out of Icarus’s limbs enough for her to even pull this off, but it still had to restore the rest of her body from the massive electric damage she had just taken. “I feel weird... kinda... euphoric,” Icarus remarked, licking drool from the corner of her mouth. Her heart wouldn’t stop racing.

“You just took thousands of volts to the face,” Fox pointed out. “You’re probably gonna feel funny for a while.”

“A Priestess must be close if a Revenant is wandering around,” Icarus said, reloading her weapons. “My Dawnblade is almost charged, too. This should be really quick.”

Fox was about to respond, most likely protest, when a call came in through its shell. “Icarus,” Atara-7’s voice spoke up. “Where are you?”

“In the Scarlet Keep,” Icarus replied, her golden eyes brightening under her helmet at the most welcome sound of the EXO’s soft voice. “You’re just in time! We’re about to go after a Priestess!”

“No. I need you back at the Shore. Now.”

“What? Why?”

“I’ll explain on the way.”

Icarus placed her hands on her hips even though Atara-7 could not see her displeasure. “Does this have to do with Crow?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Uuuuuuggggghhhhh.”

“Be sweet. He needs our help.”

“Okay, okay. When you put it like that...”

Icarus glanced back toward the dark cavern and the chambers gilded with gold and disgust beyond. She would much rather deal with the Darkness lurking in there than go back to the Tangled Shore. Her apology to Crow hadn’t been the most graceful, and now she was too embarrassed to face him again. It was enough to make her consider even becoming a Priestess herself.

Did the Hive ever feel embarrassed? Probably not.

Her eyes narrowed, squinting.

There was something out there, standing on the other side of the cavern. White, but it was much too small to be a type of Thrall. In fact, it looked like a child, a very small child. It stood so very still, staring directly at her from far, far away with a face she couldn't make out at all.

Icarus closed her eyes and shook her head, because even though she was sure she saw a child, that didn’t make any lick of sense. A child had no business being on Luna at all, much less this far into the Scarlet Keep.

When she opened her eyes, the child was gone. Yup, she was definitely seeing things. Maybe one of those Phantoms Eris was always yelling at. Perhaps she was spending too much time with the Hive, after all. Even the terraformed Moon still had too much helium in the atmosphere these days thanks to deterioration and neglect, and even with the helmet filters, that could get to you after a while. Did funny things to your head.

“Icarus?” Fox asked, concerned.

“I’m okay,” she assured it with a gentle pat on its fire-orange shell. “C’mon, let’s get back to the ship.”

Locked onto her ship, Fox transported them back to orbit in a rain of silver, leaving the Hive — and this icy feeling of being watched with close interest by the Darkness itself — behind.

Chapter Text

“Too slow!” The Spider slammed all four of his hands down upon the dead Walker head he used as his throne, and the room shook from the force of it. The two Fallen guards jumped. Crow flinched. Atara-7 and Icarus, used to dealing with Lord Saladin, didn’t move. The Spider was not nearly as scary as the stiff-assed Iron Lord.

The Spider’s gravel voice rolled like a landslide as he rasped, “How long has it been now!? Two Luna cycles!? And you’ve only succeeded in destroying two Wrathborn!?! A docked Ketch was attacked by those violent creatures a few days ago. The entire crew slaughtered! And where were the Guardians at the time, the Light-bearers chosen by the Traveler, so they say, to, hmmm I don’t know, protect the rest of us unworthy beings?”

“Baron, the Wrathborn have proven to be far more powerful than we initially anticipated,” Crow interjected, stepping forward. “If we can have just a little more time — “

“HA!” The Spider barked a laugh, then glared with all four eyes at the Crow. “And you!”

His gut wrenched. When did this suddenly become about him?

The Spider’s eyes gleamed a sneer. “Never had these old eyes of mine beheld something so pathetic. How utterly wretched you’ve become. It doesn’t surprise me that you would be incapable of making cryptolith lures which can charge reliably quickly.”

Crow had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming at the Spider that the lures were this way because he had extremely limited resources.  The Spider’s secret stores had given him the transmitter he needed to even begin this project, but there was only so much a transmitter could do if everything built around it was barely more than useless scrap metal.

The Spider turned his Eliksni sneer back to the Guardians. “And you two are no better. Where are they? Where are the mighty Guardians who tore through the Scorn Barons during your little… manhunt?”

The Baron of the Tangled Shore sat back and chuckled. That inside joke of his again. The Guardians still didn't say anything, which surprised Crow. He thought Icarus at the very least would be firing off some snarky comment by now. Given that they were Guardians, they could get away with a lot more than he ever could.

“I don’t like this, Crow,” Glint whispered, also noticing the pair’s uncharacteristic silence. Not to mention, the Spider wouldn’t stop glancing at Crow’s way with a gaze that was nothing short of predatory.

“Thankfully for the three of you, I have worked out a deal with the Vanguard that should prove beneficial for all of us,” the Spider said in a soft voice that made no one in that room want to think about what the Vanguard had to give up to get back on the Spider’s good side. There was nothing the Vanguard wouldn’t sacrifice for the “greater good”. It was their biggest praise and their biggest criticism.

“In exchange for their most generous offering, I will hand over the services of my little bird to the Vanguard during these hunts. You two will take him with you. A Hunter for your fireteam. Congratulations.”

The two Eliksni guards clapped with their small hands, the ones not holding their Arc-blades. Then one guard handed the Spider a thick tray, and the other a set of tools.

“Bring me your Ghosts, please,” the Spider purred as he settled the metal tray on his lap and laid out the tiny, unrecognizable tools.

“No!” Crow exclaimed, the word tearing out of his tightening chest before he could stop it.

The Spider slowly turned his head toward the suddenly panicked Hunter, eyes grinning. “Do you wish to speak, little bird?”

“Please,” Crow begged before Glint could interject. “You already took Glint. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

The Spider stared at Crow for a long moment. Too long. Then he sighed with a wheezing gasp. “Y’know, you’re right. It should be enough. … But I’m not willing to take that chance. Your Ghosts. Now. Or you can tell the Vanguard that the deal is off.”

Atara-7 and Icarus glanced at each other before sending Fox and Bubblegum forward. “Hey, is anyone else getting a really bad feeling about this?” Bubblegum asked cheerfully as it floated toward the Spider. “No? Just me?”

Then the Spider snatched them tightly out of the air, one for each pair of hands. “Bad feeling!” Bubblegum shrieked, its voice taking on an extremely distorted pitch. “Very bad feeling!”

“Icarus!” Fox exclaimed, voice also taking on that strange pitch of terror. “What’s going on!?”

Atara-7 gripped Icarus’s shoulder, her fingers digging deep, keeping the Warlock from rushing forward to rescue her beloved Ghost. “Bear with it,” the Titan whispered.

Pinning the Ghosts down on the tray with two hands, the Spider tore into their shells with these tools, the light reflecting off the shiny metal with a sinister gleam. Both Ghosts went limp and silent when tiny needles sent shocks into their systems. Icarus clutched at her chest as if she that shock herself. Atara-7 remained very, very still. Crow hung his head, his hood covering his face.

The room grew silent except for the clicking of tools as the Spider went to work modifying their Ghosts. Time passed by in a slow stretch of agony.

When it was done, the Spider just let the paralyzed Ghosts roll from the tray onto the floor, bouncing violently. Icarus shook herself out of Atara-7’s grasp and scrambled forward, scooping her Ghost up into her hands. “Fox!” she exclaimed. “Fox, say something! Please!” Atara-7 gently picked up Bubblegum, careful not to cut her gloves on its razor-sharp points. Crow could only stand there and helplessly watch in absolute misery.

“Atara,” Bubblegum whirred, its Light so alarmingly dim. “I feel so sleepy.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered to it, cradling it close.

The Spider put his tools away like a mechanic who had just finished the day’s work on Sparrow repairs and handed the tray to the expectant guard. “Tell the Vanguard I accept their terms,” he rasped. “First, I had a Guardian. Now I have a full fireteam in my employment.”

“What did you do to them!?” Icarus cried, no longer able to maintain a respectful silence.

The Spider waved her away. “Oh, relax little Sunshine. I merely made some necessary modifications to your Ghosts. Same as I did with Crow’s. Think of it as a welcome gift to the Spider family.”

“It’s a bomb,” Crow spoke up sharply through gritted teeth, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “He put a bomb in your Ghosts. Just like the one he put in Glint. To make us behave.” He spat out the last word like it poisoned his tongue.

“You put WHAT in my Ghost!?!” Icarus screamed at the Spider. Truth be told, no small part of Crow hoped that that rage of hers would have her leap at the Spider to slice off his head with her powerful Dawnblade. And he was rather disappointed when she didn’t.

Fox blinked weakly, it’s light so very, shockingly dim. “Icarus,” it whispered, its robotic voice even more so as if it didn’t have the energy to sound more organic. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

Icarus dropped to her knees and began to cry. Tears rolled down her blue-gray cheeks as heartwrenching sobs shook from her trembling body as she held Fox close to her. Crow swallowed hard, suddenly very sick.

“Now, now, it’s not as terrible as he’s making it out to be,” the Spider cut in. And there was a softness to the Eliksni’s tone that Crow did not recognize at all. Oh, sure, the Spider was really good at pretending he actually cared. How many times had Crow fallen for his cruel mockery of concern in the beginning because that false sense of security was just too good to pass up those early dark days? He knew better now. 

And yet… the Spider sounded believably remorseful.

The dead Walker head groaned and creaked as the Spider’s massive body heavily lifted down to the floor. Icarus’s heart-wrenching sobs echoed throughout the lair. The guards kept glancing uncomfortably at each other, weight shifting between their feet as they fidgeted with their spears.

Both Crow and Atara-7 tensed up when the Spider knelt down and gently lifted Icarus’s chin with a thick sharp finger. A terrifying thought shot through Crow that the Spider was going to tear her head off or something for crying so much. With her Ghost so weakened, it would be a while before she could be brought back. And also just not something Crow wanted to see.

That terrifying thought was followed by a sudden, shocking feeling that he needed to protect Icarus. That nothing would be more satisfying than killing everything in this room for daring to hurt her this way. In fact, he may have done this very thing if the intensity and strangeness of it didn’t freeze him in place with surprise.

“Oh, Sunshine,” the Spider said very softly. “As long as you do as I say, your Ghost will be all right. And I only have one simple request of you: to clear the Shore, and this universe, of the Wrathborn. I’ll even remove the bomb once this… unpleasantness is finally over with. It’s nothing personal. But this is business, and we’ve been working together for a long time. You know how these things go, don’t you?”

Icarus sniffled and nodded, fresh tears running down her face. Crow’s fingers lingered close to his knife. If the Spider didn’t move that hand from her face, the Hunter was going to remove it for him.

But the Spider did move his hand to pat Icarus on the head, much like how Atara-7 did to calm her. Only his three-fingered hand was much heavier and brought little comfort. “There’s a good girl,” the Spider said with a soft chuckle. As if he were talking to a beloved child. “Chin up. Can’t very well get those Wrathborn with that deadly Widow’s Bite of yours if those pretty gold eyes are filled with tears.”

He snapped the fingers of one of his lower hands. A guard quickly rushed forward with a box of tissues. Crow wasn’t sure what infuriated him more: that the Spider handed Icarus a tissue like an empathetic caretaker or personal therapist and not some insectoid space mob boss, or that tissues had been available on the Tangled Shore this entire fucking time.

Icarus hiccuped loudly and blew wetly into her tissue. “Th-thank you,” she sniffled through an unpleasantly filled nose. The Spider handed her another tissue. Then three more.

With a nod, the Spider stood to his feet. For a moment, he just stood there, as if he wasn’t sure what the fuck just happened or what had come over him. Then his four eyes caught the Crow’s murderous glare, and all four narrowed back at him in a mirrored expression. “Something bothering you, little bird?” the Eliksni purred, his voice back its characteristic nastiness.

There truly was nothing he could do. “N-no, Baron,” Crow finally said, lowering his gaze. Cowed again. His opportunity to protect Icarus, the first steps to making their relationship less antagonizing, was gone. He never felt more disgusted with himself.

Was his old self this cowardly?

Crow never wanted to know that guy, not after all he had been through. Icarus may go overboard, but there was a sharp pain in her eyes that validated her actions. Even the way Atara-7 looked at him, for all her reservations, it was as if she wasn’t sure how to feel about him at all. And that’s why it wasn’t until after thirty-seven of his deaths did she interfere to keep Icarus from making it thirty-eight.

And yet.

That guy.

That guy wouldn’t have hesitated to put a bullet between the Spider’s four eyes. It would’ve been so, so easy. As easy as breathing.

“Now, I have business I must attend to, so I will leave you to yours.” The Spider snapped his fingers again, and the two guards followed him toward the entrance tunnel. Atara-7 and Crow watched him go, but Icarus still stayed crouched on the ground. “Hmmm, let’s see…" the Spider mused aloud. "Ah, yes. A Crow, a Magpie, and a Rook. My three little birds.”

He was almost out of the main room when he turned around as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Oh, but be careful not to fiddle with those Ghost shells, like say, try to pry them open. Otherwise…” And he lifted one hand and spread his three fingers in an explosive gesture. “Poof. And that will, unfortunately, be your own fault.”

The room went silent as the Spider’s uneven gait faded away from the lair, except for Icarus’s quiet sobs.

Atara-7 released a heavy breath as if she had been holding the air in her lungs this whole time. “Okay, Icarus, you can stop now,” she said. “He’s gone.”

To Crow’s shock, Icarus shot up to her feet as if she hadn’t been sobbing her eyes out for the past ten minutes. Her face wasn’t even wet or puffy! No redness in her eyes. She grinned. “How was it?”

“I think you laid it on a little thick,” Atara-7 replied dryly.

Icarus beamed at Crow. “Lord Shaxx used to put on stage plays; rehearsals were every Thursday evening at six. Here.” She tossed something, and Crow caught it with one hand mostly by pure reflex. He was still too stunned to understand what just happened. He opened his hand, and there was a small white bottle with a blue label nestled in his palm.

“Oh?” Glint remarked, peering at the bottle. “Pure organic saline solution and mineral oil.”

“Eyedrops!?” Crow squeaked in complete disbelief.

Icarus looked positively proud of herself. “See, Atara? Crow fell for it, too. Ah, my acting skills haven’t gotten too stale these past two years.”

Crow threw up his hands, shaking his head. “Wait, hold on, back up. Did… what… was all that fake!?”

Atara-7 and Icarus glanced at each other. “Wellll, the bomb thing was real enough,” Icarus admitted, scratching the side of her cheek. She still had Fox cradled in the crook of her elbow. “And that was pretty rough to watch. Didn’t realize someone could just… rip open a Ghost like that.”

By now, Fox and Bubblegum were starting to recover a bit more. Fox floated out of Icarus’s arm, but it wobbled, like a bird with a broken wing, carrying a weight that should not be there. “I don’t think the bomb interferes with my ability to bring you back,” Fox said quietly. “It feels weird, but my functions seem to be operating normally.”

“You get used to it after a while,” Glint pointed out helpfully.

“That’s… reassuring,” Fox groaned.

“I could just end it all now and save us the anxiety,” Bubblegum said in that still strangely distorted voice.

“Shush,” Atara-7 said, gently poking its monocular eye which was still much too dim for comfort. Bubblegum giggled.

“Can we go back to the part where you two explain to me what the hell going on?” Crow didn’t mean to sound so peevish, his tone much sharper than he intended, but this was too much. He never had this much happen to him in less than a week.

These past two months working for the Spider — these past two years he’d been alive, really — nothing much really happened in the whole of it all.

Aside from the occasional beating from a Guardian who happened to see his face, or the murdering spree the Spider would send him on under threat of blowing up Glint, most of his days were very uneventful. The Spider was a piece of work, but at least Crow was often left alone to work on lure mods and other menial assignments. There was a quiet contentment in that.

He had woken up this morning thinking it would be more of the same. Now he was suddenly told to get the fuck off the Tangled Shore with his new fireteam. To finally be the Guardian he was meant to be when he had been reborn.

Something that he wanted so, so bad for so long. The longing of it would keep him up at night. So bad that he didn’t dare wrap his mind around this being an actual possibility. 

Icarus crossed her arms over her chest, frowning at him. “What do you think? We got your butt out of this dump, that’s what happened. Thank Atara. It was all her idea.”

“And then Icarus decided to, as she put it, spice things up by turning on the waterworks,” Fox added.

“Hey, Variks told us that Eliksni are more instinctively caretakers and nurturers than fighters,” Icarus pointed out. “Highly susceptible to crying. So the next time Spider threatens you, just let the tears flow. You saw what happened earlier. It’s almost like magic.”

That’s why the Spider had sounded truly remorseful. That’s why the guards had been extremely uncomfortable with the whole scene.

“Though crying at the drop of a hat is extremely difficult,” Icarus added thoughtfully. “Lord Shaxx used to get frustrated with us unable to cry for scenes a lot. Eyedrops help. So you can keep that bottle if you want.” She blushed a little with a shrug. “Just in case, y’know.”

Crow’s thoughts were racing at a mile a second. His breath shortened. If Icarus came prepared to manipulate the Spider with fake crying, then these two Guardians knew everything that went down ten minutes ago ahead of time.

Crow turned his gaze to Atara-7. You could see the exact moment when the realization hit him, when his golden eyes went from narrowed calculation to widened understanding in a blink of his long lashes. “You mean… the Vanguard… they didn’t put you two up to this? There was no deal with the Spider?”

“Yes, there was a deal,” Atara-7 replied softly.

All of a sudden, Bubblegum started laughing. Despite the wobble of its glide, it flitted around the room with sparkling glee. “I altered Atara-7’s voice on a call with the Spider to make her sound like Zavala. She set all this up herself, offering us up as collateral.” The Ghost giggled. “Zavala is gonna be so mad when he finds out.”

“Ghosts can do that?” Glint gasped.

“Oh, I can do a lot of things, summer child.”

“I like to pretend to be the Drifter from time to time,” Fox added, bobbing excitedly. “It’s fun!”

Crow could barely take it. He balled his hands so tightly, one of them almost made the bottle of eyedrops nestled in his palm burst. “But why!?” he cried. “Why would you two — !?”

“Oh, come on,” Icarus interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Atara and I have dealt with the Spider before. There was no way he was gonna let you go with us otherwise.”

“Always let the Spider believe he has the upper hand,” Atara-7 added. “That’s how you win against him.”

Crow started shaking. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t understand why. He utterly could not wrap his mind around their reasoning. “You… you did this for me?”

“Mostly for the Wrathborn,” Icarus replied. Atara-7 sharply elbowed her shoulder. “Ow. Okay, and also because of you.”

He exploded.

Emotions raw and pure poured out of him like a collapsing dam. “You didn’t have to do this!” His voice cracked under the crushing pressure. This was the loudest he had ever spoken since being reborn, and his vocal cords strained with agony. A vein in his neck throbbed.

“Crow,” Glint spoke up gently.

“Why!? Why would you do this!? That’s crazy! You two are crazy!” His words were coming out in such a rush, he couldn’t catch his breath. “I did something to you. I know I did. I feel it. And yet, you two would still do this! I don’t get it, I don’t get it at all! You are risking your lives, your actual lives, for... for what!? It’s so insane! Why!? WHY!?”

Guilt overcame him in suffocating waves. Their Ghosts… just like Glint… because of him… !

“Ow!”

A sudden sharp pain snapped him back to his senses. Icarus lowered her hand after flicking his forehead.

“Why do you think, dummy?” she huffed as he tried to rub the sting away with his palm. The Warlock whose face closely resembled his own for once didn’t look annoyed or impatient or a thousand other negative things whenever those eyes of the same shade of gold regarded him. Instead, she looked sympathetic. Despite insulting him just now.

She spoke with a gentleness he had never heard before. “We’re Guardians. Risking everything for others is what we do. Atara and I need you to hunt the Wrathborn because, well…” She sighed deeply. “We actually can’t do this without you, okay. We took so long with the other Wrathborn because we don’t know what we’re doing at all. We need you on the field with us. And you need to be free of the Spider… at least in some way.”

She clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. “So it’s a win-win.”

“Exactly,” Atara-7 added with a nod.

“And as far as the bombs go,” Icarus continued, and she smirked with a haughty lift of her chin, “we’ve been in worse situations.”

“We actually haven’t,” Fox pointed out.

“Whatever. We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Fox sighed. “Cross the bridge. The saying is ‘cross the bridge’. Whenever you burn things, it usually just makes the situation worse.”

Atara-7 barked a laugh, which wasn’t like her, and yet she couldn’t keep it in. She turned her face away, hiding her mouth behind her hand even though she wore her helmet, and her metallic face was incapable of smiling.

“Hey, at least I get the job done!” Icarus protested hotly, hands on her hips. "I'm just very efficient!" 

“It’s your rate of efficiency that worries me,” Fox replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it’ll be a miracle if you can kill something without killing the rest of us in the process,” Bubblegum interjected. “But I don’t mind it. It’s fun!”

Atara-7’s shoulders shook as she struggled to contain herself.

The surge of emotions running through Crow’s trembling body gave way to another emotion. A warmth that he rarely felt these days. This emotion didn’t burst outward in a powerful wave. Instead, it trickled from between his teeth and stretched the corners of his mouth just enough in a soft, amused chuckle.

Icarus scratched the side of her cheek. “I’ll let that slide, because it seems to make these two Debby Downers actually smile for once.”

“You’re too kind,” Atara-7 snorted from behind her hand.

“So what do we do now with our new freedom?” Glint asked. “Limited as it may be. Still better than what we did have, that’s for sure.” Crow nodded in agreement. They would take what they could get.

“Well, that’s up to our fireteam leader,” Atara-7 said, and both she and Icarus looked pointedly at Crow with their hands clasped behind their backs like the conspiring pair of troublemakers they were.

It took him a moment.

“Huh? Me!?” Crow took a step back, his golden eyes nearly bursting out of his skull with surprise. Could this day stop trying to make him die of shock every thirty seconds? “I… I’m not a leader! I… I don’t know anything about being a Guardian! I-I-I-I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time!”

“You know more than we do,” Icarus pointed out dryly. “Didn’t I just say we literally can’t do this without you?”

“You are the one who is tracking the Wrathborn’s movements,” Atara-7 added while Icarus nodded along. “You are the one who knows more about them than anyone else. So we will follow you wherever you need us to be. Making you the fireteam leader makes the most sense.”

Crow stood there completely speechless, his face growing hot. This morning, he had been a worthless Lightbearer with only Glint for company. Now, he had a fireteam; a fireteam who depended on him.

“I won’t let you down,” he promised. Then he took a deep breath, getting himself into the mindset of this whole lead Guardian thing. “Um… how many lure charges do you have?” That sounded like a good place to start.

“Two.”

“Only two!?”

Okay, so even the starting point wasn’t that great.

Icarus glared. “Hey, there’s only so much energy I can get from the Hive, y’know.”

“I’m afraid this is also my fault,” Atara-7 cut in. “I’ve… been rather busy with another obligation and haven’t helped Icarus as much as I should.”

“Secret obligations…” Bubblegum sang.

“Shush, please.”

Crow held up his hands with a sigh. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Two should be enough for the Shore, for now. If we want the Spider to ease off our backs, I suggest we take care of them first. The happier he is, the less likely he’ll find a way to punish us out of frustration. After that, I… “

He trailed off, his gut twisting with anxiety. Should he? But what choice did he have? Atara-7 and Icarus both tilted their heads at him at his sudden and obvious hesitation.

“…I, uh, I have another workshop we can go to,” he finished quietly. “And we can make that like our base of operations of sorts.”

Glint jumped with surprise. “Crow, are you sure?” it asked, incredulous.

He nodded. “Yes, and, if we find better resources, I can maybe improve these lures enough to increase their charge rate and storage capacity.” He scratched at his arm, fingers nervous. “And with improved lures, we can hunt the Wrathborn faster. And the faster we can get those bombs out of your Ghosts.”

Your Ghosts. Not our Ghosts.

Because Crow wasn’t about to fool himself here. Or anyone else in the room.

Atara-7 and Icarus glanced at each other again. Oh. Crow realized that whenever they did that, they were actually having a silent conversation between them. They truly must have been working together a long time, and he wondered if he would work with them enough to be a part of that conversation one day.

“Sounds great,” Atara-7 said to Crow with a nod. “Let’s head out, then.”

Once the trio left the lair, Atara-7 and Icarus summoned their Sparrows and jumped on. But Crow stood where he was. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling subconscious and stupid as his two new teammates waited for him to take the lead. “I don’t have one of those,” he admitted over the humming sound of the vehicles floating a foot off the ground and stirring up the rocks and dust.

Atara-7 blinked. “You don’t have a Sparrow?”

“How the heck did you manage to find Osiris on the Moon without a Sparrow!?” Icarus cried.

“…I walked?”

“HA!” Bubblegum laughed from Atara-7’s shoulder.

“He did!” Glint insisted, bobbing with emphasis. “It was a very long walk, and we had to fight lots of Hive. But he did it! And I’m very proud of him!”

“Well, he can’t just walk through the Tangled Shore,” Icarus pointed out, “he’ll fall off an asteroid. Seriously, how do you not have a Sparrow?”

“Icarus,” Fox spoke up quietly from her shoulder, “Sparrows can only be obtained from the Tower.”

Yeah. That.

“Here.” Atara-7 summoned one of her other Sparrows, a sleek black and gold model Icarus had not seen in a long, long time. “I apologize that it’s an older model, but it should keep up well.”

It was a little unnerving riding on something that didn’t quite touch the ground, and the Sparrow wavered a little from his shifting weight when Crow climbed onto the seat and tried to get his balance.

“Careful,” Icarus said. “Sparrows are very sensitive because you have to use your body to steer.”

“Got it.” Once Crow managed to get comfortable, he gave Atara-7 a warm smile. “Thank you. I will be sure to return this to you in good condition.”

Atara-7 shook her head. “A Guardian needs a Sparrow. Keep it,” she said. “That Sparrow served me well during our battles with the Vex on Venus. May it serve you just as well.”

Crow was so touched by this gesture, he almost fell off when the Sparrow shook beneath him. He clung to it to keep it still. “Th-thank you very much!” His silver marks glowed, the Awoken version of a fierce blush.

Three Sparrows roared over asteroids and the gaping bottomless chasms between toward the coordinates where they could lure in their latest prey. Sharp turns well-timed with their own weight kept them from careening into space, which there was a lot of considering the Tangled Shore truly was just a bunch of asteroids held together by steel cables and wooden planks.

“We truly do appreciate having you here, Crow,” Atara-7 said through their Ghosts so that they could converse over the deafening roar of triple engines. “These things usually require fireteams of three.”

“How long have you two been without a third?” Crow asked.

“Never needed one,” Icarus replied, her voice glowing with pride. “Atara-7 and I have been dual-teaming it since the beginning.”

“Also, Icarus has a tendency to scare any potentials away,” Fox cut in.

“No one asked — AAAAAAAAACCCCK!”

All three Ghosts erupted with Icraus’s scream as she took her turn too wide and went right over the side of an asteroid into the foggy purple void that surrounded the Shore. Her sparrow exploded into nothing as her body was flung wildly into oblivion and then vanished.

“Icarus!” Crow cried, and attempted to turn his Sparrow around to… help her? In some way?

But the Titan didn’t slow down at all. “She’ll catch up, this happens all the time,” Atara-7 said, and Crow heard the shrug in her voice. “Which proves her Ghost’s point. Icarus is like a pulsing red star, you know, and not a lot of people want to deal with the inevitable supernova.” 

Crow’s mouth twitched a grin. “Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Noticed what?” Icarus’s voice demanded through Glint’s shell. “Oh, and I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.”

Chapter Text

“Do you know what a cosmic imprint is, child?”

“I… uh, no. Not really, Your Grace.”

“All things in this reality are created by stardust. From the infinite galaxies to the most fleeting thought. All that exists is intricately connected. Light. Darkness. Everything in between. We Awoken understand this better than anyone.”

“Because of the Distributary?”

“This universe also started out as a singularity. Our people merely had the privilege of experiencing the beginning of all things first-hand. When you open your eyes from the dream of individualism and see how all things are not merely connected, but sewn through each other and intertwined together, then you realize that nothing that exists is ever so easily erased.”

“I did feel kinda weird when I first came here. Like… this place is so familiar to me. Like… I’ve finally come back home. But it’s not home anymore. Even though I don’t know why, I know it’s not the same.”

“All memories are shared with at least one other. Chance meetings become seeds, and relationships born of those seeds take root and grow into bonds that vine their way through the garden of Fate which spans across all space and time. That is what is called a cosmic imprint. And for someone like you, it is a rather troublesome thing, isn’t it?”

“How can something be so cool looking and so gross at the same time?” Icarus asked, staring up, up, up at the Cryptolith towering above them.

“Right?” Crow added, also staring.

Just like the Hive architecture on the Moon, the spire was pretty in a horrifying way. Gothic, majestic, but also a living thing that writhed and struggled as if protesting its own existence. Squelching noises squeezed from within the gaping pores that glowed a bright green. The shell pushed outward in various places, as if something inside was trying to break free.

“These were seeds once,” Crow explained. “Planted many, many ages ago. Now Xivu Arath has activated them, and their roots spread her poison.”

“She sounds like she really sucks,” Icarus remarked.

He snorted. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

“Oh, look at you two getting along,” Bubblegum teased as Atara-7 shoved the lure into the base of the Cryptolith. “How cute.”

“Don’t what you’re talking about,” Icarus shot back, and then punched Crow’s shoulder for good measure.

“Ow!”

“Sorry, my fist slipped.”

“Focus, you two,” Atara-7 warned as the lure sent a bolt of energy through the Cryptolith. The air filled with creepy soft whispers, gentle curses and sweet temptations licking at their ears. All three Guardians shivered despite themselves.

“This feeling… it’s kinda similar, y’know?” Bubblegum whispered cryptically to Atara-7. The Titan’s fists clenched, suddenly very cold. She didn’t acknowledge her Ghost’s words, and honestly, she didn’t have to. Bubblegum had learned long ago how to interpret the language of her silence, which often spoke more than her newfound words ever could. So he disappeared within her body as the other two did the same to their respective Lightbearers. Battles were no place for Little Lights.

A burst of green light exploded near the Cryptolith. A massive Servitor appeared from the surge of wrathful energy. “Holy — !” Icarus cried. She crouched behind a metal barrier on the balcony of an abandoned shack. She and Atara-7 may have hunted down two Wrathborn bosses already, but a Servitor of that size was something they had never encountered before. The air shook with its low mechanical growls, echoing all the way through her stomach. An unnatural greenish glow poured from the cracks in its shell, much like the Cryptolith, as if its very being was trying to escape the confines of its own body. 

It didn’t help that the fireteam was already unnerved by the soft whispering around them. The temptation to listen closely and make out the words because surely they were trying to tell you something important was how Xivu Arath’s poison got to you.

Dregs and Vandals poured in from behind the Servitor, each set of four eyes glowing that same squeamish green. Icarus steadied Widow’s Bite against her shoulder and took out the Vandal snipers hiding on the rooftops of the surrounding comm shacks. Crow blinked throughout the field, taking out a group of Wretches one by one, sending them into disarray before they could reach Atara-7. Meanwhile, the Titan’s machine-gun rattled deafeningly as its bullets sprayed into the Servitor’s defenses, staggering the mechanical sphere and sending the battlefield into immediate auditory chaos.

“This is definitely easier with Crow here,” Fox remarked softly to his Lightbearer.

“Concentrating here,” Icarus shot back. A sharp sting of Widow’s Bite, and another Vandal head exploded into a spray of Ether with a satisfying pop. The snipers eliminated, she then turned her attention to the foot grunts swarming in from all directions once they realized they had lost the advantage of range.

Her Ghost was right, though. When it had only been her and Atara-7 for the longest time, Icarus had to worry about both long-range and close-quarters combat. Which involved Atara-7 dying a lot, and Icarus having to run around in a circle like a crazy person so that enemies would be far too distracted to notice the Titan rezzing back to life. It was far from the most efficient way to take on an army, but it usually worked in the end.

Having Crow here took away a lot of burden.

“Well, our job up here is done,” Icarus said as she stowed Widow’s Bite away.

The Servitor staggered again. Atara-7’s relentless assault cut off its Ether chains that granted temporary immunity to the Fallen grunts protecting it. An opening!

“Atara, I’m coming down on these bastards like a golden god!”

“Duck,” Atara-7 said to Crow, and then bodyslammed them both through the doorway of a shack before he could ask questions. They hit the metal floor just as her shield sprang up in a burst of Light in front of them. Pain shot through Crow's shoulder at the hard landing and the weight of the Titan on top of him.

Icarus spun high into the air and brandished Dawnblade in an explosion of blinding sunlight. Fire rained upon the panicking Fallen with each sleep of her flaming sword as she glided down like divine punishment, vaporizing them with righteous fury. A Captain appeared only to have her shield torn right through with one hit, and her body was dust the next.

Crow watched it all from the safety beneath Atara-7’s frame. After this past year under the Spider’s service, tucked safely away from all other Guardians, he had forgotten how powerful their super abilities could be. He had used his own, once, at least he thought it was his super, but he hadn’t really touched on it since. It never sat right with him to use it whenever the Spider sent him on those special missions.

Reinforcements would show up soon enough, but for now the area had been mostly cleared except for the few stragglers who managed to escape Dawnblade’s firestorm. Those stragglers were quick to fall prey to Crow’s hungry blade, while Atara-7 reloaded her machine gun to continue her assault on the Servitor. Its shell cracked more and more, and its dying low-frequency cries reverberated through the pit of their stomachs.

“Icarus, this is taking too long!” Atara-7 exclaimed through their Ghosts.

“Got it!”

As more reinforcements swarmed in to answer the call of the Cryptolith, Icarus lifted Two-Tailed Fox in position.

A cloaked Marauder headed right for her. Crow could see the blazing green wrath of its four eyes, something the cloak could not hide. It would take too long to snipe it from here. By the time he switched to his combat bow, the Marauder would have staggered Icarus from making the shot, if not worse.

He acted on instinct. He blinked across the field in an instant, appearing next to a surprised Marauder as he swung his blade toward its vulnerable throat. Surprised Icarus, too, for he heard her yell out.

At least, he thought he heard her yell.

In that next instant, his ears popped as he, the Marauder, and Icarus exploded violently from the impact of Two-Tails’ first rocket. Its second rocket now had a clear path to the Servitor and slammed into it with maximum damage. The Servitor quickly vanished, on the run with its critical wounds, and the rest of the Wrathborn vanished with it.

Atara-7 stared at the two Ghosts holding the Lights of their Guardians over their bodies that had now become a pile of goopy ashes. She sighed. “You want me to help revive them?” Bubblegum asked.

A small, petty part of Atara-7 wanted to leave them be for a little while and make them think about their life decisions, but a hunt was underway and time was of the essence. She nodded to Bubblegum as she grabbed the traces of the Servitor’s energy that would help them follow it back to wherever it was hiding.

The two Awoken had barely been revived when the bickering started.

“What the heck was that!?”

“A Marauder almost got you!”

“I was aware of it, I don’t need you protecting me or whatever weird idea you got going on in your head!”

“If that Marauder had staggered you, you would have missed your shot! Or killed you before you had a chance to make it at all."

“So your answer was to have me kill all three of us!?”

Crow smirked. “You still hurt it, didn’t you? Once the three of us were out of the way, your second shot was perfect.”

"Both would have been perfect if you'd just mind your own business!" 

“Enough, you two,” Atara-7 cut in. “Mistakes happen. We shake them off and move on. Now let’s go. We need to finish off  our prey before it has a chance to heal its wounds.”

Being the one who could see the trail, Atara-7 led the way while the other two followed close behind and thankfully did not say another word the entire ride.

They chased the Servitor to a ravine toward the edge of the Shore where life grew in a kind of wild chaos far from the ancient, abandoned settlements by the Spider's lair. One shot was all it took to end its artificial life for good this time. For the moment, all was calm as the Guardians switched out their weapons for something more practical, waiting for their real prey to show up. The ravine was narrow, and the Fallen Wrathborn would attack in overwhelming numbers. A straightforward fight was the only way out of this. A weapon like the Two-Tailed Fox had no place here. Not unless the plan was for Icarus to kill the entire party.

Dying still came with its own issues even when immortal. Time was still a dominating factor, and resurrection took time proportional to the severity of damage done while also factoring in the amount of Light available. And the nasty nature of the Cryptoliths didn’t allow for much Light. It would take a while for them to come back, and they could not afford a while. Once a Wrathborn was hunted, it needed to be put down quickly before it could spread its poison to others.

“Savek is her name,” Crow said softly.

“Friend of yours?” Icarus asked as she tested the sharpness of her sword.

“Not really. She was part of a salvage team I would escort sometimes. A Dreg.”

The Warlock raised an eyebrow. “We’re fighting a Dreg?”

Crow chuckled, but it was a dark, unamused sound. “Trust me, she’s not a mere Dreg anymore. You saw with that Servitor. And the Shank you hunted earlier. How big these damn things get. Savek is now more akin to an Archon than a Dreg.”

“Geez.”

“You’ve worked with Fallen a lot?” Atara-7 asked.

“Eliksni,” Crow corrected. He sighed. “Much as I hate the Spider, his House isn’t as violent like the raiders in the EDZ. Like Spider, the Eliksni of the Shore prefer negotiation and cooperation to outright violence. Then the Cryptoliths started showing up. Savek and her team were one of the first to find them. Watching such an earnest person become this…”

Crow trailed off. “I couldn’t do anything for her. When I tried, she escaped despite my efforts. I thought maybe there was a way to save them. But there’s not. Once Xivu Arath’s poison infects you, once a person is too far gone and no longer who they used to be, sometimes the only salvation is to be put down like a rabid animal. It’s so undignified.”

Atara-7 and Icarus glanced at each other, very uncomfortable. The air grew so awkward, that Crow could feel it creep over his shoulders. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make things weird,” he said, misunderstanding entirely.

“Oooooh, it’s definitely not you,” Icarus said, then winced when Atara-7 elbowed her sharply.

Suddenly, a deafening roar boomed through the air and shook the ground beneath them. Birds scattered from the trees in a cloud of panic on translucent wings. “She’s here!” Crow exclaimed.

Waves of Fallen grunts poured into the ravine like a murderous flood. It reminded Icarus too much of the Hive. Fallen raiders might have an enthusiastic thirst for battle, but there was still coordination in their tactics. Even the lowest Dregs took care to maintain cover and often moved together to protect each other. Here, there was no strategy, no sense of self-preservation. Just violent hate to exterminate the creatures of Light standing before them. Some of them tripped and rolled over each other, teeth snapping at teeth, and claws tearing their supposed allies to shreds. They didn’t care who they fought. They didn’t care if they died in the process.

Just like the Hive.

It was horrifying to see. Undignified.

Atara-7 summoned her shield, while Icarus created a pool of Light beneath their feet to strengthen the power of their weapons. Two solar grenades launched over the shield, exploding into miniature twin suns that vaporized most of the front line. The tide stopped for a single moment, blinded by tiny stars. Two auto rifles and a submachine gun poked out from behind the shield and rained into their approaching enemy in a storm of bullets. The air filled with bullet spray, blood, body parts, and dying screams.

The Titan’s shield would not last for very long. It was vital to take out as many of these grunts as possible as quickly as possible. More Dregs tripped over each other and turned their wrath on one another instead. Some Vandals tore into the bodies of their kin that had been slain already, cloth and flesh clinging to their teeth.

The shield faded away. The Guardians stood with their backs together as the tide hit. Three blades gleamed with deadly sharpness in the permanent dusklight of the Shore. Two swords sparked with Arc energy. One held the glow of the Hive. They moved together in a dance, slowly pushing outward away from each other in three directions. Bodies fell beneath those terrible blades.

Then, their stomachs lurched at the low-frequency sound of mechanical growls. Servitors! Two appeared in pools of green energy, not nearly as large as the one they had killed earlier, but still swelling out of their cracked shells all the same. Shanks surrounded them in tight protection.

“Wait for it,” Crow said, Glint relaying his message to the other Guardians. “Stay focused.” His enormous black sword, a relic of Crota, stolen from the hands of a now-dead Revenant Knight, sliced three Vandals in neat halves. Dregs swarmed over the bodies before the spray of blood hit the ground, greedily consuming the bodies.

“These stupid Shanks have solar shields!” Icarus exclaimed breathlessly. “My sword can barely make a dent!”

“Just keep pushing.”

They didn’t have to wait much longer. Another roar shook the air, so close that the asteroid they stood upon actually rocked in the void and nearly knocked all creatures off their feet.

Savek burst through the trees, knocking them away in a shower of leaves, roots, and birds. She was no longer the size of an Archon. Now, she was almost twice the size of a Kell from the energy that fed her, more effective than Ether, and far more violent. When she roared again, they saw her helmet had actually fused to her skull and formed a mouth of its own. Rows and rows of razor teeth flashed from that awful maw. The air grew thick with the stench of death.

“Damn you, Xivu Arath,” Crow whispered through teeth gritted in grief.

“Focus, Crow,” Atara-7 said gently. “Remember, that’s not Savek anymore.”

Four poison-green eyes glared down at them. Her rage had a particular focus that the grunts lacked, for she stared directly at the three Guardians with unfathomable hatred. She didn’t carry a gun. There probably wasn’t one large enough for her to hold, so her claws, permanently stained dark, would suffice. Her toothy lips curled in what looked like a sneer, green dribbling from her jowls. In a movement fast as lightning for something so large, Savek snatched up a screaming Vandal from the tide. It slashed and bite at her hand to no avail, struggling as she put the pitiful thing in her mouth. Blood sprayed as she crunched down.

“Fuck, oh fuck, they really are eating each other,” Icarus groaned like she was trying not to throw up.

“Now, Icarus!” Crow cried, snapping her back to attention. “Now!”

Icarus immediately rushed forward in a burst of sunlight. Her fiery Dawnblade cut through the swarm like warm butter, decimating the Shanks with their solar shields in an instant. The Servitors had no time to make their allies immune with strings of corrupted Ether. Dawnblade stabbed through one’s eye and sent it spinning from the overwhelming damage. Icarus instantly leapt away to the other as the first Servitor exploded into a pool of wrathful poison. Crow skidded into the pool right behind her.

The problem with fighting Wrathborn was that they could only be destroyed by their own poison.

Crow’s mind filled with whispers. He felt something stir inside him, something that had been asleep for a while.

Kill, a voice inside him hissed seductively. Kill them all, all of them. Make it hurt a lot.

Crow tried to shut out the voice. Tried to keep his mind on his one purpose. The poison burned as it seeped into his spirit, corrupting him from the inside out. Black tendrils danced over his cheeks. His vision darkened.

“Hey,” Glint said softly from within his Light. “I’m right here. It’s okay. You got this.”

The Light within him converted to a golden glow. His gun blazed with the fire of the sun. With his super activated, he only had a few shots. One shot instantly destroyed Savek's shield. Each shot after landed their mark against Savek’s head, her most vulnerable spot. Savek staggered as golden bullets tore through the helmet that had fused with her skull. Her roar of pain shook the asteroid again. The cables that held it to the Shore creaked, started to unravel and threatened to snap.

“You did it! Get out of there!” Glint cried.

Crow ran before the poison could corrupt him further, and his Light worked to purge the rest of it out of his system.

“Did we get her?” Icarus asked, having returned to cutting down what grunts she could. Her sword had lost its charge, so she had returned to her auto rifle.

Savek stood up, growling like an earthquake. Half of her skull had been blown in, covered in dark blood and green light, but she managed to steady herself. She screamed, wild with rage and pain. Her suffering had to have been immense.

“She’s begging us to end this,” Crow said softly.

“Up the ravine, both of you,” Atara-7 commanded. Her tone was not be argued with, but Icarus hesitated.

“Atara, what are you — ?”

“DO IT!”

The two Awoken immediately scrambled up the ravine, punching away snarling Dregs that tried to stop them. “You better not do something stupid, Atara!” Icarus cried as she took Crow’s hand and let him hoist her up.

“Forgive me,” Atara-7 whispered. They were words meant for her alone, so Bubblegum did not relay the message.

“You’re really doing this,” Bubblegum said, voice strangely apprehensive.

“Yes.”

The Darkness was quick to overtake her. Her body chilled to pure frost and then she burst forth out of her cocoon. When Atara-7 first started training with Darkness, it used to be a struggle for control. Now they worked in harmonious tandem, driven by the mutual goal to destroy.

Atara-7 slammed her fist into the ground. Spires of glacial darkness shot up from the cracks she made and speared through the swarm, shattering them into millions of fragments. The spears sewed their way across the ground and into Savek as the EXO Titan punched the ground again and again. One last punch to the ground sent a particularly massive spear of Dark ice piercing through Savek’s chest and out of her back, pinning her in place. Frost engulfed her entire body in an instant, not caring how massive she was.

Icarus and Crow watched with shock, neither of them moving or speaking.

Atara-7 ran up the spear, so in tune with the Darkness she wielded that the ice did not feel slippery at all. She leapt into the air, and smashed her fist into Savek’s face in one massive final punch. Savek shattered, and her body showered down in a billion delicate pieces.

“What was that?” Crow breathed. He couldn’t fathom what he had just witnessed.

“Stasis,” Icarus explained. “A form of Darkness.”

He stared at her a moment in complete disbelief. “I’m sorry, did you say that we Guardians — Lightbearers — we can use Darkness?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a new thing.” Icarus huffed, hands on her hips. “Atara promised she wouldn’t use it anymore,” she added with emphasis, her voice dripping with dramatic disappointment.

“It is the strongest weapon we have,” Atara-7 pointed out as she joined the other two up the ravine.

“And isn’t that the issue?”

Before the Titan could answer, the ground began to shake again. “I thought she was dead!” Icarus cried. She fell back against Crow as the three of them were thrown off balance.

“She is!” Atara-7 exclaimed.

The shaking grew and grew, vibrating through their feet like their very insides were blending into soup. Deep, deep cracks split from the spears of Stasis like black veins and spread rapidly throughout the asteroid.

“Uh, did we just break the asteroid?” Crow asked.

“Let’s not stick around and find out,” Atara-7 said, and the three hopped on their sparrows. They rushed away just as the ravine started collapsing in on itself as the asteroid lost its shape. Caught by the shore’s artificial gravity well, the asteroid broke apart and split into the void far below. Any Warthborn that had managed to somehow survive Atara-7's glacial quake fell into oblivion. Metal cables snapped from all sides, whipping outward from suddenly released tension. The three Guardians raced to another asteroid before they were pulled into the void as well.

The asteroid connected to the one that collapsed, now having suddenly lost weight, dipped downward at an angle that was becoming more and more dangerously vertical as the sparrows raced up the rock.

“Fuck, nonononono NO!!!” Crow cried out as he started to rapidly lose momentum. His Sparrow was an older model and not built for this kind of driving. He was losing to gravity very quickly, feeling the Sparrow fall beneath him, feeling his body suspend in space.

Atara-7 and Icarus immediately swung back around. They each grabbed one of Crow’s arms before he was lost to the void and hauled him upward between them. With a nimble leap using Icarus for renewed momentum, Crow managed to jump behind Atara-7 so he wouldn’t be ripped apart, his arms wrapped tight around her shoulders.

More cables snapped as this asteroid was now too heavy to be held much longer. With a deafening groan and sharp cracks, this rock also fell victim to the void in various pieces consisting of rocks, trees, and debris. In the end, several asteroids that had been carefully constructed around the ravine were lost before the weight had finally shifted back to equilibrium.

The three Guardians finally stopped on a hill, breathing hard with exertion.

“So, I consider that to be a success,” Icarus remarked happily as they looked over at the missing chunk of the Shore. A few more rocks tumbled into the void below, and she frowned. “I don’t think anyone can take this way to the karaoke bar anymore, though. Should we leave a sign?”

“That would be the considerate thing to do,” Crow agreed.

Atara-7 blinked a moment. “With what though?” she asked, because it wasn’t like they carried around sign-making supplies.

“I have a linear fusion rifle in here somewhere,” Icarus offered. “That might work.”

So they found a massive piece of driftwood and hung it on a tree using some rusty nails lying around. Like most of the Reef, the Shore was littered with all kinds of random junk. Too bad paint wasn’t one of them. Therefore, they had to rely on Icarus’s linear fusion rifle to burn words onto the wood.

Danger! Do Not Cros

“You only put one ’s’,” Crow pointed out dryly.

“Shut up, I ran out of room!”

“Can Eliksni even read English?” Atara-7 asked.

“Some can,” Crow replied. “But it’s rather limited. Mostly Captains.”

Icarus shrugged as she put her rifle away. “Whatever, the sign is straightforward enough, I think.”

There was a loud groan in the distance, and then a tree from an asteroid across from them fell through the hole in the Shore into the foggy void, roots and all. Straightforward indeed.

They decided to rest for the night. The fight with Savek had depleted a lot of their resources and energy. And they needed come to terms with what they had witnessed before they could continue forward.

The poison was becoming stronger. The Fallen Wrathborn were turning into the Hive, if not worse, wild with rage, even cannibalizing each other for energy.

Crow sat by himself on a log and tended to the fire. Icarus had pulled Atara-7 off to the side, away from earshot. He couldn’t help glancing at them every now and again as they discussed something that was clearly not his business. It didn’t look like an argument, but it was no less passionate. Their Ghosts bobbed around them as if trying to mediate the situation.

“I didn’t know Guardians could use Darkness,” Glint said softly. “After I found you, I kinda stopped keeping up with what was going on in the Tower.” The little Ghost sighed. “I dunno, it doesn’t feel right. We're supposed to be beings of Light.”

“That Darkness saved us, though,” Crow admitted. He poked at an ember, sending sparks into the air. The fire crackled happily.

Atara-7 was the first to return to the fire. She sat down across from Crow, and the flames bathed her helmet in a bright orange glow. Even though they were supposed to relax, far from any enemies or otherwise, she did not remove her helmet.

“Everything okay?” Crow asked in a quiet voice. He approached the question with caution, not entirely sure where the boundary between trusted ally and convenient tagalong had been drawn. He liked these two well enough, but he had no idea where exactly he stood with them.

“She is unhappy with me,” Atara-7 said. “Which I understand. Stasis is… difficult. And though Icarus doesn’t seem like it, she’s actually the type who worries a lot. So, I promised her I wouldn’t use it anymore.”

“She basically lied to her,” Bubblegum clarified.

“Oh,” Crow and Glint both replied in quiet voices.

“We would have lost without it, however,” Atara-7 continued, her voice taking on a determined edge. “You will learn soon enough, Crow, that things are far less black and white than any of us were led to believe. It doesn’t matter how we win, so long as we win.”

Then the Titan stood up and brushed the dust off her purple tunic. “I’m going to find some more firewood,” she said, and walked away into the dark, Bubblegum trailing behind her.

Icarus finally came back to the camp then, her arms wrapped around herself.

“Hungry?” Crow asked, knowing better than to pry into whatever she was thinking about. “I can whip up something real quick.”

She snapped out of whatever thought she was lost in and fixed him with this glare like she suddenly wanted to shove him into the fire. Then her gaze softened as if she realized this was Crow she was looking at, and her eyes lowered toward her feet. “Yeah. I can eat. Thanks.”

With a small smile, Crow rummaged around in his bag. “Great! I have rations, some tastier rations, and the house special: Rations!” He grinned at her, but Icarus only sighed and plopped down next to him. She placed her chin in her hands and just kept staring at the fire.

Crow’s grin faded. He wasn’t very good at lightening up dark situations. “Atara told me,” he said. “You’re worried about her — “

“Don’t.”

“Sorry.”

Icarus sighed after an awkward moment. “No, it’s… it’s fine. It’s just a bit more complicated than that.” She picked at a blade of grass by her boot and tossed it into the fire. “I understand where Atara’s coming from. But…” She trailed off and visibly shuddered. Fox tenderly nuzzled her cheek.

Crow’s hands twitched. Should he, like, hug her or something? That’s what friends do to make each other feel better, right? Wait, were they even friends? If he only knew where he stood! 

“I’ve seen what the Darkness does to someone.” Icarus spoke very, very softly and hugged her knees. “His intentions were good. Pure, even. But it didn’t matter. He still turned into a monster. Because the Darkness doesn’t care about your intentions. So, in the end, we couldn’t save him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to Atara. If anything happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do. I don't even know how I could go on.”

The silence seemed to stretch into eternity. It only broke when one of the logs snapped apart in a shower of embers with a sharp crack.

“I’m so sorry,” Crow said. He wasn’t sure why. It just felt needed to be said.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you. So you have nothing to apologize for.”

Crow knew this was heading into dangerous territory. Yet, he couldn’t stop himself from pressing for details.

“Did you… care about him?” He felt his face heat up a little, and the tops of his ears burned.

“I didn’t think he deserved to go like that, if that’s what you mean,” Icarus replied with a snort. “It was very undignified.”

“Icarus,” Fox warned.

“He got swallowed up by a giant butt-worm with tentacles.”

“Pardon!?” Crow and Glint exclaimed.

“Yeah, it was some shit.”

“You’re making that up!” Crow accused when he recovered.

“I am not. It had a literal asshole of a mouth and slurped him right up like reverse di — “

"Icarus!" Fox cried.

“I’m not gonna fall for that, you liar!” Crow snapped at the same time.

Icarus leaned close to the Awoken Hunter. “Slurp slurp sluuuuuuuuuuurp,” she teased as he tried to scramble away in disgust.

“Do I... want to know what’s going on here?” Atara-7 asked, holding an armful of firewood.

“Oh, look, they are getting along again,” Bubblegum chirped. “So disgusting.”

“Also, Icarus, stop telling everyone there was a butt-worm,” Atara-7 continued with a shake of her head as she carefully set down the firewood.

“So you were lying,” Crow huffed at Icarus, who stuck out her tongue at him.

Then Atara-7 added with a slight smile in her voice, “It wasn’t a butt-worm.”

Crow didn’t dare press for any more details, not with the wicked way Icarus was looking at him. He regretted prying at all now.

The three Guardians ate their rations next to the fire and enjoyed the stars they could see through the thin purple fog. Crickets chirped softly from the bushes. Another tree fell into the hole. They were quiet again, but this time it was a pleasant, warm quiet from a good day’s work.

Do you know what a cosmic imprint is, child?

Quietly, Icarus began to hum a soft melody almost completely under her breath. A few notes later, Crow joined her. Neither of them realized they were perfectly synced as if this was an entirely unconscious action.

Atara-7 took a bite of her ration bar and watched those two in silent contemplation.

Chapter Text

Luna, Earth’s moon - Six years ago

The thing about being reborn with no memories was that it just left room for new memories to happily fill the void in your head.

She didn’t remember much from her past life, much like any other Guardian, but she had enough bits and pieces to know that it hadn’t ended pleasantly. She was an EXO, human mind, metal body. There was no way that had been a happy end.

And another thing about memories was that even if the specific events and circumstances had been wiped away, the feelings — the trauma — remained.

She didn’t talk when she was reborn. “Eyes up, Guardian!” The first words she heard when she woke up in the Cosmodrome, but she couldn’t bring herself to even ask what had happened to her. When her Ghost brought her through the Wall to find an abandoned ship that would take them to this Tower, she had gone along because it felt like something she should do. "Fresh from the grave," had been the comment. A husk. A dead thing. Empty. She was fine with that. 

She hadn’t said a word to her Ghost, whom she would eventually name Bubblegum, that entire time.

“Oh, hey, a New Light!”

The male EXO Hunter was cheerful on an almost annoying level. His face was not capable of grinning, but she could see the smile plainly. “A Titan, huh? Well, I do have mad respect for people who believe the solution to problems is punchin’ things. Sometimes, you just gotta do things the easy way, amirite?”

She didn’t respond. “She doesn’t talk much,” Bubblegum said to the Hunter Vanguard. “But I'm pretty sure she agrees. Punching things is definitely a lot easier than anything else.”

“Tha’s alright. You shoulda seen me when I started kickin' again. Some people prefer action to words. Look at Ikora and Zavala. They love their meetings and discussions. Me? I prefer my gun to do the talkin’.”

“You sure do talk a lot for someone who prefers the gun to talk,” Bubblegum remarked, and the Hunter laughed. His core glowed a warm gold from his core, radiating through his eyes and mouth.

“Yer right, yer right!” he replied. “Oh, if I only I had tears, I would cry from the irony.”

She shifted her weight a little. She wasn’t sure what to make of this EXO who laughed like the world was doing just fine. Having fought through an entire army of Fallen to get here, it didn’t take her long to understand that the world she had been reborn into was in bad shape. Not that she cared much at the moment, but the fighting gave her a bit of purpose, and purpose kept her empty mind from wandering too far in search of fulfilment.

The Hunter reached up to pat her shoulder. His hand almost didn’t quite make it considering she was nearly a full foot taller than he was.

“Titan or no, you come to ol’ Cayde-6 if you’re havin’ a difficult time adjusting. I know a few tricks that make things a bit easier. Oh! And the best noodle shop in the city!” He stepped back from her, musing. “Have you got a name, miss?”

“I haven’t named her yet.”

His mouth made a sound akin to clicking one’s tongue as he shook his head. “Little Lights these days are slackin’," he muttered with disappointment.

Bubblegum whirred in sparks of Light, taken aback. “We had to literally fight our way here through the Cosmodrome! I haven’t had time to think of a fitting name! I guess I could bring her back to Zavala to name her -- "

"Travler above, NO!" Cayde-6 exclaimed, aghast, then whipped his head at her with pleading eyes. "Trust me, kid, he'll name you somethin' dumb. Like Punchy. Or Bigfoot. Or Sparky."

"Why Sparky?" Bubblegum asked.

"Because it's dumb! No, it is clearly up to me to complete this mission." He tapped the metal plate of his chin as he regarded the large EXO Titan before him. “How about… Atara?”

She blinked with surprise.

“Atara?” Bubblegum echoed. "It's very pretty -- " 

“Yeah!”

“But isn't that the name for the Sparrow racing team?”

Cayde-6 coughed despite not having actual lungs. “Whatever, it’s pretty! And their Sparrows are pretty, too! How about it? Do you like it?”

She considered for a moment and then nodded. The name was feminine but still held a strong ring to it. She liked that a lot, actually.

“Great! So much more personal than ‘Guardian’, yeah? And we got alotta Guardians runnin’ around here so things can get confusing quickly. What’s your reset number?”

“Six," Bubblegum said.

He jumped back a little. “Wow, the same as mine! Well, at least yer not on Banshee’s level.” He stuck his hand out. “A pleasure to meet ya, Atara-6. A big ol’ gal like you is gonna make a wonderful Guardian. Let’s work hard together and punch the Darkness back to whence it came! Or however Shaxx would put it. Great one-liners, very weird guy." 

Cayde-6 was the first person who hadn’t shied away from Atara-6’s size. She was tall for an EXO, standing at almost seven feet if you didn’t count the antennae on the sides of her head that served as her ears. She had noticed immediately from the stares of others, especially the more typically-sized EXOs that she was an anomaly. In fact, if not for her Ghost, she had almost been fired upon by security when she tried to enter the Tower because they thought she was an enemy.

The rest of the Vanguard, Ikora and Zavala, had been polite enough even though they, too, were quite taken aback by her size and refusal to speak. Then they immediately turned their attention to other matters much more important than getting to know a New Light. Only Cayde-6 had greeted her like this. She would learn later that he had known a thing or two about oddities and not being understood and disastrous first impressions.

A few weeks later, after cutting her teeth in the Cosmodrome with the other New Lights, Atara-6 received an assignment on the Moon. Her first off-world assignment. “It’s a low-pressure patrol mission, Guardian,” Zavala said through her Ghost as she headed for Earth’s only natural satellite. “It will help you get used to how we run things away from home. There is some troubling Hive activity near the Hellmouth. I’d like for you to investigate and then report your findings back to Ikora. Time is of the essence. There is no need to venture too deep into the Hellmouth.”

Atara-6 wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the Hive again so she was glad this was more an investigation than anything else. They had been bad enough in the Cosmodrome. Apparently, the Moon was infested with more of the horrifying worm abominations.

At least, just like the Fallen, the Hive were easy enough to punch. The small battle she had to endure in the Hellmouth wasn't as bad as she had anticipated. When a group of Thrall swarmed her massive frame, she threw them off her in an explosion of Void energy. A Void bubble that formed around her vaporized several of the little bastards in the process. Then she leapt out of her protective bubble to slam her fist into the ground and send more Thralls flying.

Ah. Perhaps she had chosen such a large EXO model precisely for this situation. She felt strong, powerful, even invincible. It was invigorating, even ecstatic, to feel virtually untouchable. The Thrall who had been thrown recovered and charged her again, but she had space now to prepare and felled them all easily with her hand cannon.

She liked hand cannons. For such small weapons, they packed a lot of power, and turned out she was really skilled with them. Thankfully, Banshee-44 had a few in his armory big enough to actually fit in her hand.

A roar shook the ground and nearly knocked her off-balance when a Knight stomped from behind a moon rock. Hive corpses were crushed under its massive feet in a disgusting crunch that sent slime and worms spilling over the otherwise immaculate white surface of the Moon. Even compared to her own height, the Knight was still so much bigger.

“Move!” Bubblegum cried.

The Knight fired its Boomer cannon into the air. At first, Atara-6 was confused that it hadn’t bothered firing directly at her.

That confusion did not last long.

With a loud explosion, the Arc bolt made a graceful arch in the starlit sky down toward her. Atara-6 dodged, but the bolt’s splash damage tore into her shield. Another Arc bolt fired at her. And another.

Well, this was rather irritating.

“You have a sniper rifle, don’t you?” Bubblegum asked.

Not really. Atara-6 didn’t take well to sniper rifles. She could use them, but she didn’t like hiding out of sight and firing from long-range. A straightforward fight was more of her nature.

“You can’t fight that thing directly!” Bubblegum warned, accurately sensing her intention. The Ghost had picked up on all the nonverbal ways Atara-6 made her thoughts known these past few weeks. 

The EXO Titan smirked and then ran out from behind her protective boulder. Despite her size, she was incredibly nimble, her legs long and powerful, able to turn her body at the sharpest point. Her fist glowed with Void energy. One solid hit was all she needed.

The Knight suddenly exploded. Atara-6 flew backwards and slammed into a boulder that crumbled underneath her weight. She scrambled to regain her balance, knocking rocks and moondust off her body. The Knight stood there no longer. In its place was a pile of steaming nastiness and a dying worm.

“Hell yeah, I got him!” a chipper feminine voice from above cried with proud glee.

“Okay, but a grenade launcher is still risky,” another voice answered, masculine and sensible with a robotic edge akin to Bubblegum’s. “Remember, we are fighting in very tight spaces. Hive architecture is based on tunnel systems and ancient Gothic architecture. Very high ceilings, not very wide.”

“Yeah, yeah. Heeeeeeey, you down there!”

Atara-6 couldn’t escape. Another Guardian jumped down in front of her. The robes of a Warlock, dusty from moon rock, fluttered around her legs. “How was that?” she asked, plopping her hands on her hips in a haughty way, jutting out her chin. Her helmet hid her face, but Atara-6 could vividly imagine a shit-eating grin judging by the tone. “Pretty effin’ cool, right? You’re welcome by the way. I saw ya in trouble, and I just had to help! That’s what we Guardians do, yeah?”

Oh, goody. A talker.

Atara-6 absolutely preferred it when people went out of their way to avoid her. 

“Thank you very much for the assist," Bubblegum said cheerfully as Atara-6 walked away. “She says ‘thanks’, too. But I think we have a handle on things now.”

“Whoa, hey, where are you going?” the Warlock cried when she realized the Titan was leaving. She jumped high in the air and landed in front of Atara-6. Warlocks and their annoying gliding ability. Atara-6 scowled.

“You shouldn’t go into the Hellmouth by yourself,” the Warlock continued matter-of-factly.

“You do it all the time,” her Ghost shot back, popping out from her pack beneath her robes, his words blunt but logical. He had a bright orange shell, like fire.

“Yeah, but I’ve been doing this for a few months now. This chick looks new. What’s your name, anyway? I’m Icarus! Nice to meet you!”

She stuck out her hand. Like Cayde-6, she didn’t seem in the slightest bit fazed at Atara-6’s height and silence.

“Her name’s Atara-6! It's a pleasure to meet you!” Bubblegum squirmed a little uncomfortably as the Titan just stared down at her. “Ahhhh, she doesn’t talk much.” He glided down a little toward Icarus and whispered, "She's really, really shy. She just doesn't want people to know that." 

Atara-6 growled at him.

“She can shoot, that’s all I care about,” Icarus replied with a shrug. “How ‘bout it? Let’s team up!”

Oh no. Nope. Atara-6 wasn’t doing this. She liked being alone. She preferred being alone. So she brushed past Icarus with a sharp grunt, heading toward the entrance of the Hellmouth Hive fortress.

“Hey!”

“Go away!” Bubblegum called back sharply, voice weirdly distorted. Then he added, cheerfully, “That’s what she’s saying anyway. I personally don't mind, but she's the boss here. So mind your own business. Okay? Okay!"

"There's something wrong with that Ghost," the other Ghost muttered, but his Warlock ignored him as she charged ahead.

“I have to go in there, too!” Icarus pointed out, happily following Atara-6 inside. “So we’re gonna be going after the same enemies.”

Atara-6 wheeled on her, glaring. “Then why do you want to team up!?” Bubblegum exclaimed wildly. "You both make good points, though." 

“For friendship!” Icarus exclaimed happily, catching them off guard. Either she was incredibly oblivious, or she truly was unbothered by Atara-6 and her strange Ghost. “For fun! For the adventure and the memories!”

Memories.

Atara-6 had been doing well without those, and she had every intention to keep doing so. She turned on her heel and entered the keep, and Bubblegum didn’t respond for her this time.

The Warlock didn't say anything else, thankfully, but she tailed the pair the entire time. Oh, Atara-6 tried to lose her, she really did. She pointedly ignored her as she focused on shooting down Thrall fodder and Acolytes determined to prove themselves to the Hive lords they served. And in between battles, she would suddenly take off at a run, looping around tunnels and double-backing and turning her direction at the last second.

But the Warlock was always right behind her. Sometimes, she showed up in places before Atara-6 did, which was rather terrifying, truth be told. During the more chaotic battles, when there seemed to be too many Hive, a sharp shot of a sniper rifle quickly took out Knights and Acolytes hovering behind columns for safety before Atara-6 could be overwhelmed.

“Soooo not to be the bearer of bad news or anything,” Bubblegum eventually said cheerfully, "but I think we're lost, Atara. Oh, yeah. Hopelessly lost." Atara-6 stood with her hands on her knees, Hive bodies littered around her. She panted heavily. Technically, she did not need air at all or had actual lungs, but her digital brain had been meticulously programmed to respond to exertion as naturally as any human.

“I know the way.”

Atara-6 sighed.

Icarus stood in front of her, hands behind her back. There was just no shaking her off, and Bubblegum was right. They were hopelessly lost. They were too deep underground for his radar to work properly. And the tunnel system had been designed with a kind of wild system understood only by madness. Or by a Warlock who had been waffling around down here for months.

Naturally, Icarus knew this fortress inside and out. She had been reborn several months ago, and the majority of that time had been spent in the Hellmouth or somewhere else on Luna. Her work on the Hive was spectacular. Ikora had praised her several times back in the Tower, and that was when Atara-6 realized this was the same Icarus she had been hearing about whenever she had to visit the Warlock Vanguard. Atara-6 supposed she was the one who was encroaching on someone else's territory. 

Icarus reached up and took off her helmet. A risky move considering the amount of helium in the air. A pretty face with slate-blue skin and faint white markings smiled warmly at her. Her eyes glowed in the low light as golden as the sun. The bangs of her black hair parted to the left side of her head. An Awoken like Zavala. The Titan Vanguard once remarked how more and more Awoken were being revived as Guardians during one of her earlier briefings.

Atara-6 straightened, standing at her full height, towering over the much smaller Warlock. She stuck her hand out. “Atara-6,” she said. It felt strange to talk, and it wasn’t something she was about to get used to any time soon. “Thank you for saving my life.”

Icarus gave her a wide, charming grin as she shook the Titan’s hand with shimmering enthusiasm. “Don’t mention it. It’s what we Guardians do.”

Europa, Jupiter’s moon - Three months ago

Technically, only Atara-7 had been the one assigned to intercept the emergency transmission coming from Europa. Her assumption at the time was that she was the one closest to Jupiter’s moon so it was only logical she would be the one to go. Later, thinking back on it, she wasn’t so sure if that had really been the case.

Considering the one sending out the S.O.S on a wide-range open channel where anything with ears can hear him was Variks the Loyal, it was a strange coincidence indeed. The last surviving member of the Fallen House of Judgement, Variks had been the one responsible for the breakout at the Prison of Elders two years ago. The prison breakout Atara-7 and Icarus had been assigned to quell as part of Cayde-6's fireteam. 

Atara-7 wasn’t sure how she felt about this assignment. Surely, the coincidence was not lost on Zavala when he briefed her. Even so, she set the coordinates in her ship’s navigation panel in a direct path to Europa. Then she summoned Bubblegum to call Icarus.

“Get to Europa,” she said the moment Icarus answered with her usual enthusiastic greeting.

“Fuck, just die already!" Icarus snapped, and Atara-7 heard the blade of her sword crunching through chitin flesh and a splash of liquid. “Sorry, Thrall all over the place. They seem to be getting more and more excited about something.”

“You can’t leave?”

“I wouldn’t mind the break. Eris is busy with a guest, so she probably won’t miss me for a while. Other than the Thrall being annoying, the Pyramid isn't doing anything.”

“A guest?”

“Osiris is here.”

“What!?” Bubblegum exclaimed with gasp. “…who’s that?”

“The legendary Warlock,” Atara-7 explained.

Bubblegum's cogs rotated to and fro as he calculated her words and searched through his data. “Wait, that bird guy we helped on Mercury years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t he kind of a nut job?”

Atara-7 gently poked his eye. “Shhh. Icarus, why is Osiris there?”

“Oh, I dunno. He and Eris just kinda went off by themselves.” More crunching chitin flesh, moist splattering, and vicious, dying screams. “My job is mostly to keep an eye on the Pyramid here, so they’re probably not talking about that. Hey, get off me! I told you I'm not interested!" Another crunch. "Why do you need me on Europa?”

When Atara-7 explained the situation, Icarus went unusually quiet for a moment. As in she had stopped talking, but the background noise still rang with battle. “Variks, huh?” she finally said.

“Yes.”

More wordless silence. More thrusting, slicing, tearing, and screaming.

“So we gonna beat him up or something?”

Atara-7 snorted. “No. I don’t think that’s what this is for. He sounded… desperate in his message. He might truly need help.”

“He’s not exactly a popular guy all things considering.” Icarus sighed, the background noise having finally subsided into silence. The blade scraped against the moon dust as Icarus wiped it clean on the ground. “Alright, I’m on my way.”

The two Guardians didn’t know what to expect when they arrived on Europa about an hour later. It felt so weird that they were here specifically to help out the very person who started the horrible events of two years ago. Considering he had been in hiding ever since with no one able to find him, for him to reach out like this on an open channel that anyone with a hobby radio could pick up had to be due to some extremely serious circumstances.

A new Kell who had turned away from the Fallen's dependency on Ether in favor of actual Darkness could be considered an extremely serious circumstance.

Atara-7 did not like being here. Something about this place, these buildings that had been emptied and abandoned for centuries, made her start to feel uneasy. It was an uneasiness that bubbled into nausea bit by bit with each second.

“You can use Darkness as a weapon?” Icarus asked as she freed Variks from the crystal he had been trapped in. Eramis had long since escaped, but the bodies of dead Fallen she left behind littered the roof of this abandoned recreational building. The metallic corpse of a dead Brig smoked in the corner. “Like, the Darkness Darkness,” Icarus emphasized. The crystal, Darkness in the form of something tangible, finally shattered in a shower of frost. Variks staggered a bit but otherwise looked mostly unharmed if you ignored that his lower right arm had been ripped right of its socket.

“Yes,” Variks replied in a harsh voice. He spoke slowly, trying to get his vocal cords and mouth to form human speech with every word. He shook the feeling back into his legs, first one foot then the other, while hanging onto his staff for support. “Variks doesn’t understand chitchitchitchit how Eramis managed to do it, chitchitchit. She was supposed to unite the Eliksni. Europa was supposed to be our haven.”

“I thought Fallen hated the cold,” Atara-7 remarked.

“Eliksni.” Variks corrected. “We are called Eliksni. Yes, the cold is very difficult for our kind to endure. But the thermal caves beneath all the snow and ice are pleasant and beautiful chitchitchit filled with the water-air that will allow us to nurture pups. We have not had pups in so long chitchitchit. The stress of our current lives chitchitchitchit makes mating difficult.”

He bowed low, his single lower arm wrapping around his waist and an upper arm crossing his chest. “Variks thanks you for the rescue, Guardians, chitchitchit. I know that this does not answer for what happened chitchitchit but if you follow Variks, you will receive much information to send back to your Vanguard on this matter. I humbly request that you save your judgment of Variks until Eramis is no longer a threat.”

The two Guardians glanced at each other, and Icarus stepped forward. “Hang on, you actually recognize us?”

Variks made another chittering sound, soft from his throat, and she realized he was laughing. “Variks remembers, yes. The tall EXO, taller than tall. And the Warlock with the haunting voice. Chitchitchit.”

Icarus never heard her voice, or any other part of her, described as haunting before. Loud. Annoying. Assertive. But not haunting. She glanced at Atara-7 again, who shrugged.

“And your smell.”

“Our what?”

Another chittering laugh. “Eliksni have excellent smell-sight. The most reliable of senses chitchitchit for one's smell never truly changes.”

“Awkwwwaaard,” Bubblegum sang from Atara-7’s shoulder.

“Come. With Variks indoors chitchitchit.”

The old Eliksni wobbled on still shaky legs into the building. Judging by the space and counters, this had once been a recreational center of sorts. Dead communications relays probably brought in transmissions of a more entertaining nature than mission-oriented. Icarus stopped at the doorway when she realized that Atara-7 was not following. The Titan remained outside, staring out at something toward the horizon.

“Hey, Atara! You coming in?”

She didn’t answer.

Fox materialized into the air. “Atara!” he called out.

Then they both yelled at the same time, “ATARA!!!”

“Hm? What?” Atara-7 snapped out of her daze, staring at Icarus and Fox.

Icarus clicked her tongue. “Since when are you such a space case?” Her tone was teasing, but there was a note of concern just beneath. Atara-7 never spaced out like that. In fact, she was usually the one trying to make Icarus pay attention to what was happening.

Atara-7 shook her head, placing one hand on the side of her helmet as if trying to hold her ear. That couldn’t be good, and Icarus’s half-grin faded entirely. “Hey — “ she began.

“There’s something I need to do.”

Icarus did a double-take. “Huh? Now?”

Atara-7 approached her, then reached out and patted her on top of her helmet. Her glove made dull thumps against the frosted metal. “Sorry,” she said with a sheepish tilt of her head. “But it’s really important. I won’t be gone long.”

“Then take me with you,” Icarus said as if there was no other option.

The Titan shook her head. “No. You need to get the information Variks has back to the Vanguard as soon as possible. This Eramis sounds like she needs to be neutralized without delay.”

“But whatever it is you’re running off to can’t wait,” Icarus pointed out dryly.

“I won’t be gone long,” Atara-7 assured her. “And it might give us more insight into this Eramis situation.” She bent down a little, tilting her head even more. “Please?”

The Warlock huffed. “Only because you’re being weirdly cute right now.”

“I learned it from you,” Atara-7 replied dryly, but her core glowed with a soft lilac warmth.

Icarus blushed a little when the EXO poked her helmet where her nose would be. “Okay, well, hurry up," she mumbled in an obvious pout. "Be back soon, or I’ll get mad. I’m timing you!”

“Very well. I will be quick.” Her Sparrow had already materialized next to her, and in a few short seconds, she was already far, far from the building. Her Sparrow arched high over a deep chasm and quickly disappeared toward the distance.

The Warlock sighed deeply. She wondered if maybe there hadn’t been anything after all, and Atara-7 simply couldn’t deal with Variks right now. Icarus could understand that completely; she also wasn’t exactly emotionally prepared for this particular confrontation.

Variks had been the one who set Uldren Sov free from the Prison of Elders two years ago. And then Uldren turned around and killed Cayde-6. The fireteam had gotten separated in the chaos of the outbreak. By the time Atara-7 and Icarus had caught up to Uldren, it had already been done. Cayde-6 lay still forever, and the Awoken Prince had slipped out of their grasp. 

She would never, ever forget the way that single golden eye looked right at her from beneath the dark hood of his cloak. An eye that burned into her with sadistic glee. A gaze that clearly said You're next. 

Icarus had a clear shot with her sniper. But that single eye had frozen her entirely with absolute terror. 

Icarus unconsciously reached up to gingerly touch her neck. Darkness danced at the edges of her vision.

“You okay?” Fox asked softly. "Icarus, your blood pressure is rising." 

As far as Icarus was concerned, Variks was responsible. If he hadn’t set Uldren free in the first place…

“Icarus. Icarus.”

She snapped back to the present. Her fist uncurled at her side. Behind her helmet, the tiny tendrils of black licking at her cheeks faded back into her starlit skin.

Fox floated in front of her and nuzzled her face. “I know it’s difficult,” he said tenderly. “But we have bigger concerns right now. Variks will answer for what he’s done soon enough. Let's just focus on stopping Eramis from forming that army of Darkness.”

“Assuming Variks is even telling the truth,” Icarus muttered.

“Maybe. But I don't think so. We’ll just approach this with caution. Think of how many lives we'll save if he's telling the truth. Okay, partner?”

Icarus touched one of his cogs with her finger. “Okay.”

Variks looked up in surprise when Icarus stepped inside by herself. “Where is the large one, chitchitchit?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

“She had something else to take care of, but she’ll be back soon,” Icarus replied. It was fortunate that the impossible cold of Europa required that she keep her helmet on. She couldn’t even bring herself to fake a smile right now even for diplomacy’s sake. She hoped her voice sounded cheerful enough at least.

Fox touched her hand, reminding her to just keep things focused on the situation. She was a Guardian. Right now, she needed to be one more than anything.

Variks looked at her expectantly.

She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s chat.”

Europa, Jupiter’s Moon, the Beyond  - Same Day

Bubblegum remained unusually quiet as Atara-7’s Sparrow blazed through the smooth expanse of Europa known as the Beyond. Unlike the Castalia Macula region where terraforming had created mountains and chasms, the rest of Europa’s surface was a naturally smooth ice crust. The moon was considered to be one of the smoothest celestial objects in the system, and the crust was laced with deep red lineae from Jupiter's punishing gravitational pull. 

And a different kind of pull deep within her could not be ignored. Even as she was talking to Icarus, Atara-7 ached to get away from there as fast as possible. She had hardly been able to hear the Warlock’s protests over the whispers in her head.

“We’ve been waiting for you. We can give you the strength you so desperately seek.”

Judging by her usual attitude, Icarus had not heard those whispering voices, their words meant for Atara-7 alone. Whatever they were. But when they spoke about the strength she longed for, it sparked something within her. And she had to find out what it was. Immediately. 

How could anyone else know? How could anything else know?

“I… I don’t like this,” Bubblegum said as the Sparrow went closer and closer to wherever it was they were going. He didn’t speak in his usual chipper optimism or deadpan sarcasm sprinkled with sadism. He spoke with a dread that was very unlike him.

He sounded scared.

“It’s alright,” Atara-7 replied quietly, reassuringly. “I won’t let anything happen.” She wasn't so caught up in herself that she would ignore the fact her Ghost was displaying fear for the first time since her rebirth.

“This isn’t right, Atara,” Bubblegum pressed, and the desperation growing in his voice shook her. “I don’t feel right. I feel… something… inside… it’s inside… !!!!”

Atara-7 slammed the Sparrow to a stop, ice and snow flying from the power of its rear thrusters in a wide arch as she whipped sideways. Bubblegum had materialized in front of her, and his cogs whirred in an erratic way, like a pair of invisible hands were trying to pry him apart. His eye glitched in flashing blue pixels as he jerked in one direction then the other, trying to shake the unseen thing off him. His shell plates rubbed together in a sharp, struggling grind.

“We know.”

The voice wasn’t the usual distortion of his more sardonic, impish side. There was nothing robotic or artificial about it. The voice spoke with liquid smoothness, the words flowing over her nanocircuits responsible for auditory preception like black ink.

“We know what happened in the Dreaming City. A terrible tragedy. You didn’t have the strength to stop it. And even now she suffers because of your weakness.”

Atara-7 gripped her Sparrow so hard, the metal began to crack.

Bubblegum glided down closer to her, his eye with its horrific glitch and the way his cogs twisted and turned against each other with unnatural stiffness making her sick with anxiety. “That thankless Light makes you do its bidding again and again, and when you needed it most, it failed you. It failed you because it isn’t strong enough. And you, in turn, failed her.”

The words were harsh, but the voice was so gentle, so understanding, so forgiving. Inky fingers brushed against her artificial heart with the promise of comfort that was so very real.

She could see it. She could see it so clearly. The Dreaming City. The bodies. Ghosts littering the pearlescent floor, Little Lights snuffed out like birthday candles. And in the epicenter of it all, Icarus lying there so very, very still.

“We won’t fail you. We will make you strong. Wield our power, become our vessel, and you will never fail again. She will be safe. Forever.”

Icarus’s body had felt so shockingly, horribly light in her arms. And as she held the dead, truly dead Warlock close, a name had come to her.

An itch stirred in the back of head. Inside her head.

What was that name?

It had repeated over and over and over and over in her mind as she clung to that awfully tiny, awfully lifeless body sitting there surrounded by the heads of dead EXOs.

“Become our vessel, and you will never have to remember again.”

Atara-7’s head snapped up. “Do you mean that?” she asked. Demanded. Her words frigid sharp. “Do you truly mean that?”

She could feel the inky smile upon her heart.

“Find us.”

Bubblegum gasped loudly. His eye blinked back to normal. “Atara! Atara, that wasn’t me!” he cried. Then a pause as he considered a moment. “Unless I have really gone off the deep end this time. Wait, was that there before?”

Atara-7 followed his gaze toward the horizon where something impossibly massive stood. Atara-7 squinted. It was so far away, it was barely visible in Europa’s white sky. But there was no way for anything to be that large. She thought it resembled a spear or spire of some sort, but it grew wider and wider when you lowered your gaze toward its base.

“That’s a Pyramid!” Bubblegum exclaimed. “Oh! Ohhhh, this is bad. Bad bad bad bad!!!”

Atara-7 yanked on the throttle of her Sparrow, thrusters splashing snow in all directions. “Hey, Atara, I think we’re heading in the wrong direction,” Bubblegum pointed out. “We’re supposed to be going away from the big scary Triangle of Darkness. Yeah, Darkness. What we’re fighting, remember? Although our deaths will no doubt be magnificent, and if that's what you really want, just know that I can’t bring you back from that!”

The Titan didn’t respond. She kept all her focus on going forward as fast as possible. 

In the distance, yet still much closer than the Pyramid, a crystal made of pure darkness materialized in the air. The pull in her heart grew into a desperate yearning. The hum caused a pleasant vibration beneath her frame within the wire skeletal structure that held her body together.

A building came into view. It was a small structure, could only hold a few people. It was new and not at all abandoned like the one she had left Icarus behind in. Light poured from within its windows. A bonfire crackled pleasantly from the center of a circle of benches. A radio crackled on a table. And nearby the tiny hut stood a familiar figure. Atara-7 knew this person before she even saw them. Somehow, it just made sense that person would be here. 

Atara-7’s Sparrow slowed to a gentle stop as she pulled up to the camp. For a moment, she and the EXO Stranger regarded each other. 

“About time, Guardian,” the Stranger greeted, her voice containing a warmth that her lack of expression could not. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up after all.”

The Tangled Shore - Present

Atara-7 didn’t dream much. EXOs technically didn’t need sleep, but they were programmed to do so, anyway. In fact, they were programmed with all kinds of quaint rituals and habits that made them feel just as human as they were when they had been, well, human.

Dreaming was one of those programs.

Like any other living creature, EXO brains picked up stimuli throughout the day and then processed all of it during the dreaming phase of sleep. Interestingly enough, implementing the dreaming program in later EXO models had been key to fixing a lot of issues when it came to fusing human consciousness to a nonhuman body. Dreaming, not just sleeping, was necessary for all living things to have, organic or no; once the EXOs were programmed to sleep and to dream, the ability for the human brain to process having a nonhuman body improved significantly.

Dreaming is the brain’s way to make sense out of everything. Even if the dreams themselves are a nonsensical mashup of stimuli that haven’t been compartmentalized yet.

And like a lot of humans, Atara-7 didn’t always remember her dreams. Undoubtedly for the best.

Icarus and Crow were not at camp. She frowned a bit, her lip plates closing tight together. “They scampered off somewhere,” Bubblegum explained. “Seriously, it’s like having two gremlins to chase after. Or a pair of raccoons.”

“Where did they go?” Atara-7 asked curiously. She hoped Icarus wasn't planning on killing Crow for the thirty-ninth time. No, thirty-eighth, that last death had been an accident and technically Crow's own fault.

The nice thing about not being flesh and bone anymore was that she didn’t feel groggy or have a croaky voice in the morning.

“They said something about breakfast," Bubblegum said. "Fresh food would be great! But I'm not sure where -- " 

An explosion shook the trees in a shower of frightened birds, and Atara-7’s head whipped in that direction.

“Oh, there they are!” Bubblegum exclaimed with a happy bounce.

Atara-7 sighed. Even if she was incapable of waking up tired, it was still too damn early in the morning for this.

Ten minutes later, as Atara-7 packed away the last of her camping equipment, two Sparrows hummed into the clearing. “For real, you have never hunted before, ever?” Crow was saying as the two hopped to the ground.

“You think there are animals on the Moon?” Icarus shot back.

“I’ve only been to the Moon once, and I wasn’t looking for animals at the time.”

“I killed it, didn’t I?”

“You blew it up! Even if the meat hadn’t been blasted to tiny pieces, it would’ve been too charred to eat.”

Icarus blew a raspberry. “What do you even know, anyway?”

“I’m a Hunter!” Crow practically wheezed with exasperation. “That’s what I do! I hunt things!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You know, I will say that Crow has been so much livelier these days ever since he met you two,” Glint remarked as he glided toward Atara-7 and Bubblegum. “They’ve been fighting for a solid twenty minutes now. That's the most Crow's ever talked!”

“How have you not blown yourself up by now?” Bubblegum groaned as the bickering between the two Awoken continued.

“What?” Glint laughed. “Nah, I think it’s actually very endearing. Look at them, they just grow closer and closer every day. Like brother and sister. Speaking of, they really do look alike, don’t they? You know, I sometimes wonder about that. The resemblance is almost scary. They are like each other’s mirror image. Wouldn’t that be so neat? If they actually were — “

Fox flew at Glint so suddenly that he nearly knocked the other Ghost clear out of the air. “Listen, Glint,” he said, cogs spinning. “If we’re all going to be a team, there’s going to be some rules. We all already have the rule not to mention He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-By-His-True-Name around Crow. Despite how much my Guardian likes to toe that line. But we don’t mention him for Icarus’s sake, too.”

The back of Glint’s cogs turned quizzically. “Really?”

“Icarus has an extremely complicated background with him — his past self, I mean,” Atara-7 explained softly. The two Awoken had managed to stop bickering and were now in the middle of cooking whatever it was they had managed to catch. Icarus glanced up from what Crow was doing and waved at Atara-7. The Titan waved back.

“Fresh breakfast for once!” Icarus called.

“Barely enough for three people,” Crow grunted.

“Shush!” Icarus shoved his shoulder with just enough force to make his balance wobble dangerously.

“Please don’t push our Hunter into the fire,” Atara-7 said as she made her way toward them.

Glint considered for a moment as he watched the Titan help them with breakfast. “I guess that does explain her initial hostility toward him,” he said.

“Honestly, we don’t really know the depth of the complication,” Fox admitted. “Six years ago, Icarus was sent to the Reef as an emissary for the Vanguard. That’s when she met him.”

“He was a real piece work back then,” Bubblegum added. “Not as sweet and cuddly as he is now.”

“I gathered that,” Glint muttered, although it seemed like hearing an actual confirmation from those who actually knew Crow’s past self reaffirmed his worst fears. That Uldren Sov had been the worst kind of person. 

“It’s more than that, I’m afraid,” Fox said. He paused a moment, then figured at the very least Glint should know what was happening here.

“You don’t know how to cook, either?” Crow’s incredulous tone carried over the campsite.

“I don’t need to eat,” Atara-7 pointed out as if that was the most obvious conclusion.

Crow buried his face in his hands. “Atara. Atara, why? Icarus, I get, she’s practically useless… “

“HEY!”

“But you… Atara, I trusted you so much.”

Glint looked at the other two Ghosts with a feeling of absolute dread. 

Fox took a deep breath. “Six years ago, when Icarus was an emissary and met the Queensbrother — “

“He tried to kill her,” Bubblegum interjected, yanking the bandaid right off the wound. “And he stole Fox so that she wouldn’t be revived. It was all pretty melodramatic, really.” 

Glint jumped back in a shudder of sparks. “But… but why!? I had a feeling that guy was horrible but that sounds so…” He trailed off into quiet disbelief.

Fox’s shell twitched slightly in a shrug. “That’s the thing. We don’t why. He kinda had a reputation of hating Guardians already, but his behavior seemed so much more personal. It... it may even have to do with her past life." 

"Icarus is Reefborn, y'know," Bubblegum pointed out. "So it's not impossible if they had a connection from back then."

Fox lifted in the air a bit as if he had something to add... but he paused, hesitating. Then he lowered again as if changing his mind. The other two Ghosts peered at him curiously. "Just... just try to keep the conversation from heading in that direction as much as possible, okay?”

Glint looked back over at the three Guardians. They had finally figured out breakfast and were munching on the cooked meat. “This is really good!” Icarus remarked with surprise.

Crow’s chest puffed out with pride. “I make great wild Shore hare, thank you.”

“Needs more salt though,” she added, deflating him.

Atara-7 kicked her ankle and said warmly, “It’s perfect.” 

Glint would give anything to make sure that scene never changed. “Okay,” he agreed. “I promise.”

The Tower - Same Day

The Tower was crowded to near bursting more so than usual. The Iron Banner had returned, and Guardians rushed around the Bazaar in preparation. Gear was upgraded and modified. Weapons switched out for something more effective against Lightbearers. Vendors talked nonstop over negotiations of their wares. The exchange of glimmer and materials for goods flowed like rapids in the river of commerce. The Iron Banner was more than just a celebration, but a boost for the Last City’s economy.

Lord Saladin stood by the registration table, assessing Guardians with hard dark eyes as they arrived to prove their merit against each other. Some of the New Lights were more curious than anything else. Those he tried to encourage to join and test their strength, but his rough manner of speaking intimidated these tiny seeds more than anything else.

"You need to be gentler," his apprentice pointed out with an amused laugh. 

"If these New Lights can't handle my voice, they won't be able to handle what's waiting for them out there," Saladin grunted back. But the next New Light who came by, he tried to be a bit more... sensitive. He even smiled upon suggestion. And that exchange went just as well as the previous ones, if not even worse. He glared at his apprentice, who was struggling with laughter.

Saladin’s apprentice. Another reason why so many more Guardians than usual crowded around the Iron Banner.

Their Hunter armor was made of dazzling silver and a black deeper than the Void. A pure white cloak, possessing an intricately designed wolf’s head in the form of an ancient Celtic knot, cascaded from their shoulders all the way down to their black boots. But the most impressive was their helmet. The face, shaped like the front-facing silhouette of a wolf’s head, was a deep crimson shade. 

Only one Guardian wore that helmet. Only one Guardian had the right to wear that helmet.

After a three-year absence, the Young Wolf had finally returned to the Tower.