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“ We have lived in the dark before. We will survive again. Until the dawn breaks.”
- Ikora Rey.
“Are you awake, Ikora?”
The Warlock’s good eye stared up at stars veiled by clouds through a hole in the ruined wreckage she and Zavala were staying in. Cold seeped through her bones, sharpening the pain in her recently re-splinted leg that she’d already been awake with for the past several nights. The scars under her bandaged right eye itched constantly, adding to her grievances. It was a miserable combination.
“The answer to that question for at least the past week is almost always going to be yes,” she answered with pointed annoyance, perhaps more sharply than intended.
Zavala sat up, his glowing blue eyes the only frame of reference for his motion in the dark, seemingly realising her predicament. “You’re in pain.”
It sounded more like an observation than a question, but Ikora answered it like one anyway. “Somewhat. Among things.”
The Titan didn’t need clarification on what she meant by that, for the same nightmares plagued him too, hiding behind his eyelids whenever he shut them for sleep. He rolled up one of the spare blankets before shuffling across to Ikora, slipping it gently under her bad leg for extra padding against the hard, unyielding ground beneath them.
“Better?” Zavala asked her softly as he sidled up next to her, resting on his side in order to converse easier. “I know it’s not much, but…”
“Any help is better than nothing.” Ikora nodded gratefully, shivering slightly. She wriggled closer to him for extra warmth, as much her broken leg would allow.
Zavala quickly took the hint, wrapping an arm around her waist, resting his hand on her opposite hip. His nose was almost touching the bandaged side of her face. It was the most intimate they had been since the City fell, and he really, really didn’t want to think about that now when there was nothing either of them could do about it. Not when his body was pressed this close to Ikora’s, and she could feel his every movement.
“I… I want to try and reconnect with Ophiuchus tomorrow,” she breathed, condensation misting into a small cloud above her face as she spoke.
“Ikora, we’ve talked about this.” He reminded her gently. “The Traveler left us. Reconnecting with the Light, with your Ghost, isn’t going to be simple. Targe and I struggle to maintain our connection to the Light even on the best of days, and I’m not injured like you are.”
“But I’m holding you back!” Ikora countered with something resembling her old strength. “I might have lost one eye, Zavala, but I’m not blind! Every day, you return with less and less for us to eat, and how far into the mountains did you have to walk to get it this time? Let’s face it; there’s nothing for us here, and it would be a whole lot easier if I could walk so we could leave this damn place. Admit it!”
Zavala frowned, his gaze falling, unable to look at the Warlock. She glanced his way, desperate to meet his gaze as her anger slowly faded into regret.
“I’m sorry. That was… uncalled for.” She apologised profusely.
“It doesn’t make what you said any less true.” Zavala answered her, a tired sigh escaping his lips. “Things would be a lot easier if we could leave here, and if I were by myself, I would no doubt probably be long gone by now. But… I almost lost you in the debris of the Tower. When I saw it collapse…” He inhaled sharply through his nose, pained by the memory. “I refuse to abandon you. I don’t think I could bear to lose you again.”
Ikora stilled, feeling her heart stop, then start again. Willingly suffering with her so neither had to suffer alone - her in pain as she slowly wasted away, him from the guilt of having an easier life without her - wasn’t something she had previously considered in his reasoning for doing things the way he had, and she felt guilty for it. This couldn’t have been easy for him.
“I’m… I’m glad you came back for me.” She admitted to Zavala in a quiet whisper. “Buried under all that rubble, not knowing if someone was going to find me, all by myself… I have never felt so afraid of death. Not even when Ghaul attacked the City and I fled to Io.”
He nodded, suddenly understanding. “You’re not just worried about holding me back. You’re scared of dying out here.” When she didn’t answer him, Zavala continued, hugging her a little closer, “After all we have been through, you really think I’d let that happen to you?”
Silence fell between them. Ikora slid her hand over Zavala’s arm, squeezing tight. The Titan’s lips twitched into the faint beginnings of a smile, and both relaxed into one another, eyes finally shutting as sleep took them.
For they both knew the answer: he would not.
“What happened up there? When the Tower fell?”
Ikora’s one-eyed stare turned hard as she watched Zavala expertly skinning and gutting the latest batch of hares from their recent outings before tying each to a makeshift spit. She herself was stood, leaning heavily on a scavenged Arc spear for support. It had been a while since she had reconnected with Ophiuchus, but his repair of her broken leg was slow going, and she refused to sit while it was progressing just in case they had to ever relocate quickly. Such situations had already happened more than once during their exodus from the City due to wild animals and Fallen scavengers straying too close to their camps.
“Are you certain you want to hear about such things?” She asked him in return, jaw set, voice weary.
“I asked, didn’t I?” Zavala spared Ikora a brief glance as he strung the last of the skinned hares on the spit, setting it over the fire next to the pot of herbs, water and broth that was bubbling away already. “I can understand if you don’t wish to discuss it, though.”
“It’s not that.” The Warlock shook her head, closing her good eye briefly in pain. “I’ve not really had a chance to process exactly what happened yet.”
“Well,” the former Commander rinsed off his knife and hands with some water from one of their many decanters, before shaking both off in an effort to dry them, “perhaps talking about it might help.”
Ikora massaged her temples gently, feeling a headache brewing, though those had been a near constant ever since she had been blinded in her right eye while her left adjusted to try and cope with the loss. Her unstable connection to the Light and her other injuries did little to help matters as she attempted to dredge those terrifying few moments from the pits of her memories.
“When the first blasts hit the City, I remember taking Kayde to the Hangar and telling Amanda to get him out. I… I don’t even know if they even made it.” She shook her head, exhaling sharply. “One moment, I was watching Hawks evacuate, the next, I was preparing to fight Cabal. Then, there was an almighty shrieking and everything went dark, like something out of a nightmare. That was when I saw her: Dallas-13.”
Zavala’s gaze snapped up towards her, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Dallas-13? You’re sure about that?”
“It was her body, if not her mind, that much I am certain.” Ikora affirmed, resolute. “Her last shred of honour was letting civilians flee past her unharmed. After that, she twirled her flaming knife, turned it straight to ice, and I knew right then that she had come for me. For both of us.”
“You fought her.” Zavala surmised quietly.
“We traded Light and Dark, gun and bow, all the way to the top of the old Tower. I broke her arm; she blinded and stabbed me. In the moment where she thought she had won, I seized the opportunity and brought the Tower down upon our heads. I don’t know if Dallas survived; I certainly had no expectations of doing so.”
“But you did.”
“I did. Then Eris found me. I thought she had come to rescue me. But she only came to reveal a terrible truth to me, one that she hoped would die upon my lips: she was the true mastermind behind the Bombardment, the real Witch Queen, and whatever was left of the Tower, she crumbled around me with her foul magic.”
Ikora sagged even more against the spear that was propping her up, the very act of recalling enough to take the energy from her. Zavala was on his feet instantly, steadying her.
“Easy, easy.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, easing her slowly down to the ground next to him. “I know you don’t like to sit, but you should take a moment.”
She wanted to protest, but Ikora barely had any fight left in her, so just let Zavala take care of her, allowing him to set her down on the ground close to the campfire. He handed her a decanter of water which she gratefully accepted, sipping from it slowly.
“Thank you.” She breathed gently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think that would take so much out of me.”
“No. I’m the one that should be apologising.” Zavala frowned, then pinched his brow. “I should have predicted this would happen…”
Ikora shook her head. There was no way he could have foreseen any of this. Perhaps she could have, but… She stared at the fire, the random patterns swirling within the flame providing a comfort to ease her guilt. “Nobody could have predicted this.”
“I didn’t mean just with you.” The Awoken Titan shook his head. “I meant this whole situation. The Bombardment. Everything.”
Ikora rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. “So did I. We can’t always have all the answers, Zavala.”
“No.” He agreed with her. “But we can be better. We can take it back.”
Warlock shot Titan a look. “With the Traveler gone, our access to our Light diminished, and no idea where everyone fled to… you truly believe that’s something we can do?”
“We take it back or we re-establish ourselves elsewhere. Given how long it took the first time, I don’t believe we have much of a choice.”
Cold mountain winds whipped around Ikora, forcing her to tug the scarf wrapped around her head and face closer to her skin. Ahead of her, the ruins of the Iron Temple loomed, time ravaged statues and weathered doors long past their glory days. Zavala was already inside; she would have been too, had someone not needed to keep watch outside. Plus, he knew what they were looking for and where it was likely to be. She, in all her centuries of living, hadn’t actually visited the Iron Temple once.
The thought was enough to still her. How many times had Lord Saladin descended from this very mountain to bring the glory of the Iron Banner to the Last City? How many times had he returned up here to his ceaseless, lonely vigil? Ikora’s fingers curled tight around her weapons: a makeshift shotgun in her right and the Arc spear in her left that she utilised more for supporting herself than in a fight.
Eventually, Zavala emerged from the vast ruin, and the exhausted expression on his pale, almost gaunt looking face said it all, really. Still, something compelled her to ask the practically rhetorical question anyway. “Nothing?”
“No.” He shook his head, unfolding the turtleneck of the sweater beneath his armour to cover his mouth and nose against the biting breeze. “Shaxx’s old fortress had been a long shot, but here… I thought there would at least be something .”
There was a tightness in Ikora’s throat at the mention of the Warlord’s name. They had been to his old mountain only a few weeks prior and found him there, bleeding and broken among countless bodies, human and non-human alike. Without his Ghost, she and Zavala had been forced to put Shaxx out of his misery, burying him in the courtyard of his former home. He had taken his Sword, she had taken the remaining horn from his helmet, threading it through her Bond as a promise not to bury anymore friends. Neither had spoken about it since, and it would likely remain that way for a long time. Perhaps even forever.
“We’ve been wandering the better part of a decade now, Zavala.” Ikora reminded him quietly. “The chances of us finding any sort of civilisation grow more remote with each passing day.”
“That’s the thing, though.” The Titan glanced back at the open doors of the Temple. “There was nothing in there. I mean, literally nothing. No signs of any recent use, no signs of looting… it’s like we are the first people to have been here since the City fell.”
The Warlock studied him carefully, searching his face with her good eye. “Saladin wouldn’t have left people fleeing the City to fend for themselves. Not without good reason.”
“Or bad reason, as the case may be.” Zavala braced himself by the forearm against one of the pillars leading up to the Iron Temple, shutting his glowing eyes with a pained expression.
Ikora frowned, worry twisting in her gut like a knife. “You think something has happened to him.” It was not a question.
“Think? I fear .” His voice wavered when he answered her, slowly opening his eyes once more. His stare was a thousand yards, stretching past her to the cloudy, moonlit horizon beyond. “He would not let the Temple fall into such a state of disrepair. Not willingly.”
Ikora shouldered her shotgun onto her back, limping across to Zavala. Her right leg, though long healed from being broken during the fall of the City, protested as she moved, but in that moment she did not care. She would gladly suffer a little discomfort if it meant the Titan before her could receive some.
“There’s plenty of reasons why Saladin could be missing from his post. Knowing him, he would have wanted to help somehow than be stuck up here.” Her right hand found Zavala’s left shoulder, and she squeezed lightly there. “Either way, speculating won’t help us find answers, and we aren’t getting any more answers tonight.” Her good eye flicked towards the horizon, towards the rolling clouds rapidly closing in on them. “Looks like we’re in for another storm. A bad one, by the looks of it. We should probably get inside and set up camp before we get buried under several feet of snow.”
Ikora made to move, but Zavala’s hand on hers caught her for a moment. His gaze caught hers, a silent look of gratitude in his eyes. And something else perhaps, fleeting, too quick for her to follow. They both blinked, and it was gone, as was the moment they had shared. The wind whipped harder, shaking them from their reverie.
“After you.” He released her, gesturing forward and, for the first and only time in her life, Ikora walked into the Iron Temple.
As they sealed the vast doors and the campfire was lit, the whole ruin shook with the full force of the tempest raging outside. Zavala found himself restless; Ikora, on the other hand, found a sense of long lost peace as the storm rolled over them, the likes of which she hadn’t known for what seemed like an eternity. It was almost like being in a Stormtrance again as she meditated to the squall’s call.
After a while, Zavala joined her. Their usual evening routine followed shortly after; they ate, they drank, they talked, they slept.
In the end, the storm snowed them in for three days.
Ikora’s remaining eye stared at the molten, charred wood of the dying campfire, the only light in the otherwise pitch-black cave she was in. She eased back slightly against the solid press of warmth against her back; the arm wrapped around her waist and the fingers splayed underneath her shirt against the battle-scarred skin of her stomach all a soothing, comforting presence. And yet…
And yet, the Warlock could not sleep. In a cave with only one entrance and exit, cocooned in the embrace of the one man who had stood through so much with her over the centuries, fathered a child with her, a man who would protect her back always, would sooner give up his own life before he let her suffer again… and he couldn’t help her against the one thing she needed saving from.
Herself .
She tangled her legs with his, letting out a gentle sigh, her keen ears aware of every sound, every movement. Between the spitting crackles of embers, she heard the cadence of Zavala’s breathing change and she stilled her own respiration for a moment, hoping she hadn’t disturbed him.
A warm rush of air hit the back of her neck, raising the tiny hairs there. The fingers on her stomach shift, feather light across her skin. The gesture hadn’t been a sexual one, Ikora knew this, but her touch-starved body did not care, and forced her breath to hitch in response anyway. Her left hand finds his on her abdomen, and she laced her fingers with his, squeezing tight.
“I’m fine, Zavala.” Ikora told the Titan behind her before he could even speak. “Go back to sleep.”
She felt his lips against the juncture between her shoulder and her neck, a soft kiss placed there. “That you beat me to answering my question before I could even pose it speaks more to me than your actual answer,” he murmured against her skin. “Something troubles you.”
Ikora let out a dry, humourless laugh. “I’m a Warlock. Everything troubles me.”
His lips twisted into a frown against her. “You are more than a Warlock, more than your troubles. You’re my partner. Let me help you.”
Ikora sighed, letting silence fill the air. Perhaps, if she didn’t voice her fears, he might drop the subject and go back to sleep. But she had known Zavala for far too long to know that the probability of that happening was practically zero. She wagered she could likely calculate the chances to the exact decimal place at this point, and when the Titan’s nose brushed up against her neck, she knew for certain then that she wasn’t escaping this conversation. Not tonight.
“Did you mean it?” She stretched out her other hand across the soft earth and moss covered rocks beneath them as she finally spoke, slowly curling her fingers against her palm and straightening them back out again idly. “What you said the other night, back in the ruins of the City?”
Zavala shifted behind Ikora, propping himself up a little with his other elbow. “About loving you?”
“About Kayde.”
She sensed the Titan deflate in response to this before she heard him exhale. “About finding him, you mean.”
“It’s been over a hundred years.” Ikora pointed out quietly, her free hand balling into a loose fist before her face. “We’ve not seen another soul that hasn’t tried to kill us in almost as long. Even factoring in Awoken longevity and the fact the Traveler tripled the average person’s lifespan, a century is a long time for anyone to survive in all this. Guardian or not.”
“Amanda would have kept him safe. Saint and Osiris too, if they went with her or somehow caught up with her.” Zavala countered, pulling the Warlock a little closer.
“Assuming they are even alive. We’ve wandered every corner of this Light-forsaken planet for decades. Searched every likely spot. It just feels like…” Ikora ground her teeth together, cutting herself off with a noise of frustration.
“Say it.” Zavala uttered softly.
“It feels like… we are just lying to ourselves, and that we are the only people left here on Earth.”
She felt the former Commander rest his chin against her shoulder. “Perhaps we are.”
Ikora blinked in surprise, shifting so she could sit up and face Zavala properly. Her good eye searched his luminous pair for clarification.
“That doesn’t mean we are alone, though.” He told her sincerely. “Maybe some people made it off world. Took shelter from the storm elsewhere.”
“You think Eris and her forces would have allowed that?”
“Perhaps they didn’t know. We were able to sneak past a whole naval blockade of Red Legion ships back in the Red War. A small evacuation force might have been able to fly under their radar.”
Ikora shifted her hand from her stomach to cup Zavala’s cheek, a wry chuckle escaping her. “Heh, you always did know what to say to me, didn’t you? To keep my hopes up.” She leant in for a moment, briefly capturing his lips with her own. “But… we shouldn’t lie to ourselves about our chances.”
“Until we know for certain,” he bowed his forehead gently to hers, “I choose to believe he is out there.”
Ikora’s lips twitched into a slight smile. “In that case, I choose to believe that you believe.”
They kissed again, before settling back down into the warm embrace they had started off in, except this time the Warlock’s arm looped around Zavala’s at her waist, her hand resting on his wrist.
“Ikora?” His deep voice hummed tiredly by her ear.
“Hm?”
“I just want you to know, for the record… I meant it when I told you that I love you, too.”
“I know.” She swatted back with a hand, playfully striking Zavala on the shoulder; this was going to be a conversation for another night. “I love you as well, but we should both try to get some rest while we can.”
Ikora heard him murmur something incomprehensible before his breathing settled into its normal, familiar sleeping rhythm. Her own eyes soon shut, and she joined him in dreaming shortly after.
Ikora stared upwards, glassy eyed at the setting sun, the brilliant sky almost as scarlet as the warm liquid oozing between her gloved fingers from the wound between her lower ribs. Her breaths come shallow, each harder and more painful than the one before it. Ophiuchus lay broken at her feet, his shattered shell sparking. His sacrifice had allowed her one final, unhindered use of her great power, and she had seized it to terrible effect, touching the Void in a way she had never known before, razing the battlefield upon which she fought until nothing remained. But if her calm, quiet Ghost had thought to save her, then… well, his sacrifice had very much been in vain. She knew she would not survive past this evening.
But it was done. It was over. The fabled Elizabeth Bray had come back. They had led the charge against the Dark Alliance. Eramis had been shattered, Caiatl had been crushed and Xivu Arath and Savathûn had been slain like their brother Oryx before them. Ana Bray, Dallas-13, Eris Morn… every snake that had ever betrayed and could threaten them was dead. Dark Guardians still existed, but they were scattered, fighting among themselves, with little hope of regrouping. The cost had been high, but… they had won.
… They had won . A slow breath escaped the Warlock. Was this really their victory?
A cough on her blindside startled her for a moment, and she is forced to fully turn her head to the right before she can see the source: a charred heap of armour close by to her.
Zavala . The Titan is just as broken and bloodied as she herself is, without a doubt Ghostless too, with wounds like that.
“We… we did it.” Ikora exhaled, grimacing with pain. Her jubilence at the situation was weighed down heavily by tiredness.
“That… we did.” He agreed with her, struggling to catch his breath. He reached forward with an arm, fingers gripping the ashen dirt, pulling himself forward awkwardly so he could be close to her in their final moments. “And now… humanity rebuilds once again. A pity we won’t live long enough to see it.”
Warlock reached for Titan, weakly curling her fingers around his. “We had our time, Zavala.” She gave him a tired smile. “And I don’t regret any of it.”
Zavala chuckled at that, only for it to turn into a wheezing cough. “Nothing? Seriously?”
“Well… perhaps all the times we fought. And never actually finding our son. But… other than that, no. Not really. What about… what about you?”
“Probably… not telling you that I… loved you sooner.”
Ikora laughed, though it quickly turned into a groan of pain. “Urgh, damn it, Zavala. Don’t make me laugh…”
“Anything for that smile.” He raised a bloodied hand to her face, cupping her cheek delicately. “In… all seriousness, though. I should have… told you how I felt, the day Kayde was born. We would have raised him… together, as a proper family.”
“A proper family?” Ikora raised an eyebrow at Zavala, incredulous. “We’re… warriors. What would have even… qualified as such?”
“Who… knows.” He admitted softly to her. “But that’s the point. We could have... decided that. Decided what that meant for us. Perhaps… we still would have been leaders of the Last City. Or maybe… we would have retired. Lived our lives in a new age of peace. Perhaps I’d have…” The Titan trailed off, wistful for a moment.
The Warlock nudged him. “You’d have what?”
“Maybe… I’d have asked you to marry me.”
Ikora released the breath she didn’t know she had been holding in a shuddered gasp of surprise. Her free hand shifted to grip his on her face, her eyes glistening with extra moisture that she tried and failed to blink away.
“And perhaps,” she whispered, barely choking back her emotions, “I’d have said yes.”
Their lips met. Ikora could taste blood, both his and her own, and dirt, but she did not care. They parted, and she leaned up against him, resting comfortably in Zavala’s arms. For once, she was at peace.
“I love you, Ikora. With all my heart.”
“I love you too, Zavala. Until we meet again in the Sky, and every moment after.”
She heard his breathing slow. Her own, too. Just before Ikora shut her eyes one final time, a shimmering, dark skinned figure came into view. He crouched before them, brilliance radiating around him like an angel of death, glowing, icy blue eyes regarding both Guardians carefully.
“Long have you wandered this world. Mother. Father.” The man’s voice was sweet, almost songlike in tone as he softly spoke. “But it is time I brought you both home, where you belong.”
Ikora reached a crimson stained hand forwards, and had a vague impression of Zavala doing the same. The man leaned towards them with both of his, and the moment their fingers touched, the world erupted into a pure white radiance.
Somewhere, sometime, Ikora awoke with a half caught breath. Zavala was softly snoring behind her, very much alive. Her ears could make out the faint sounds of an infant breathing in a cradle nearby. Outside the window, the healed Traveler hung like a softly glowing beacon in the night. The City was still bustling with life. The moon had yet to set; the sun had yet to rise.
She settled back down. All was as it should be. The darkness was just the evening, a natural part of the day, and not of a future that had yet to come to pass.
And, hopefully, it would remain so.