Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was something to be said for snow. On a whole it was peaceful. Tranquil. Muting the world it blanketed in a pristine iridescent layer of indiscriminate crystals. Each flake held hope within itself, the cyclical nature of infinitesimal design providing life as it phased from one existence to another. No matter its location or season, snow was a constant; whether it was comprised of hydrogen or methane, the cycle repeated itself endlessly as time marched forward.

It was for this reason that Terin hated it so much.

As a paracausal being, time meant nothing to her. Yet, snow still persisted. The cold persisted. She’d had enough cold, enough Darkness.

She never thought she’d miss her days of running around Mercury for Brother Vance. Never thought she’d miss Freehold Station or the Lost Oasis. If she had her way she’d rather crash her sparrow into the Ishtar Cliffs than visit whatever snowy hellscape she’d found herself on. 

Wind whipped violently around Terin in a glacial maelstrom, all feeling in her limbs long lost. Her pulse was far past erratic, her breathing labored to a point she couldn’t catch it. Drawing what little Light she could, she channeled Arc energy into her palm, slamming it against her chest to defibrillate herself.

It had taken her seconds to realize her Ghost was lost to her, moments to understand what that meant. Her Light was limited and would only slow her inevitable death on whatever Traveler-forsaken mountain she was stranded atop. Still, she pushed forward, upward, seeking whatever shelter she could find in hopes of being found.

Temperatures dropped as nightfall quickly approached, tortured gray skies darkening. Without her Ghost, without her Light, she was susceptible to hypothermia, her armor offering little protection against the subfreezing temperatures. She watched the gauges in her HUD slowly fall, her altimeter not rising fast enough.

There was nothing serene or promising of the threat she faced, trying and failing to understand how she’d gone from fiddling with the supposedly dormant Vex gate in the Glassway, having defeated the transcendent hydra, to the bitter tundra of… wherever she was. Her communications had been cut off though it didn’t stop the phantom artificial laugh she could nearly hear coming from her Ghost. “I told you so.” 

Her Ghost had always been a sassy shit.

Had always been right too… she shouldn’t have touched the ominous looking button.

Now Terin was alone.

And dying.

There’d only been one other time she’d felt so close to death since she first rezzed, her beaten and battered body pulling itself form the sewers at the height of the Red War. Even then she’d had her Ghost as company, slowly healing her minor injuries as she made her way to safety. 

Terin could feel her body slowly begin to shut down, her breathing labored as she fell to her hands and knees. She wanted to cry at the fucked irony, that she – The Guardian, would be taken out by snow. Not the Gods she’d slain or the Darkness itself. No. She’d be killed by what used to be her favorite thing.

As her lids grew heavy, her arms and legs unwilling to crawl through the amassing drifts, she thought back to the last time she hadn’t hated winter. She’d been with Cayde, throwing snowballs at Zavala high above his perch on the Tower. A soft smile spread across her face as she let the cold consume her, thankful that her last thoughts were of the man she’d loved so many years before.

Terin never heard the wolves descend.

Chapter Text

"Who is she?"

"We don't know."

Terin was alive, though the ache in her body seemed to disagree. She’d been sat on, blown up, and had Warsats dropped on her yet she’d never felt so ran over. Sound echoed hollowly, wind blowing in the distance. She tried to open her eyes to no avail, the draw of sleep making her lids heavy. Wherever she was, was comfortably warm, her instincts telling her that she was safe. And so, she slept.

"Where's her Ghost?"

"We don't know."

Terin was no longer cold, though the lingering evidence of frostbite and numbness were evident and should have been a cause for concern. Still, she couldn't find it in herself to care as she slipped back under, sleep taking hold once more.

"How did she get here?"

"The wolves."

A warm tongue licked across Terin's cheek, dog breath panting before the mass of fur burrowed in beside her. It took her more time than she'd like to admit to realize that she was, in fact, in a dogpile — a wolf pile. Surrounded by the oversized canines, she slowly defrosted in a fur cocoon, the packs breathing lulling her in and out of sleep. It was the most relaxed she'd been in years.

"We should call the Vanguard."

"Look at her gun."

“Is that—? Call Cayde.”

Terin woke with a start, eyes slowly opening, fully alert some time later. It was night, not that there were any windows where she was at, a large cauldron of fire blazing at the center of the room she lay in. The wolves around her stretched lazily before closing their eyes again, yawning and falling asleep.

"You're awake." A deep voice echoed across the chamber, Terin's eyes snapping to the source of the sound. A man, Titan by the look of it, stepped toward the fire, cerulean eyes blazing with intense curiosity. She took in his armor, familiar golden detailing telling her something she knew couldn't be possible. 

Terin’s eyes adjusted, still heavy with sleep as she took in the not quite right details of wherever she’d found herself.

"You're at the Iron Temple," the man explained.

"The statues…" her voice came out raw, strained as if she’d been screaming. A forbidding sense of dread washed over her as she placed the too-wrong detail: the statues of the nine Iron Lords, the ones that stood in proud memory of Site 6, were missing.

The man stepped toward her, the wolf lying across her lap, raising its head to growl at him. "I would check you for injury, but it seems my wolves don't like that idea," he half joked, glaring at the mountain of fur she was stuck in. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Terin," she answered absently, a pounding headache creeping in as she tried to make sense of things.

"Well, Terin, I'm Lord Radegast."

"No," she exhaled, trying and failing to back away, the slumbering wolf's weight keeping her in place, the man's brows furrowing in confusion as she began to panic. Radegast was dead. Had died centuries before her Ghost had rezzed her for the first time. Lord Saladin had told her the story more than once, of Jolder who sealed the Lords within the chamber to stop the spread of SIVA. Terin had fought and killed Radegast’s abused corpse, SIVA manipulating it like a marionette.

"Has sleeping beauty woken up yet?" Another voice came from the adjacent hallway, familiarity echoing off stone archways.

Relief flooded Terin as she watched the now-famous Lucky Raspberry come into sight, Shiro-4's patchwork yellow cloak sweeping the ground as the Exo made his way across the room. "Shiro!" she called out, her addled mind grateful for something that made sense.

He froze mid-step, fire gleaning off his black chassis. "Have we met?" As quickly as her relief had come, dread set back in, nausea upsetting her empty stomach. "Are Deet or Perun around? She doesn't look… well," he asked Radegast. 

Terin's world went dark at the edges, spinning on its axis before she blacked out.

"Cayde's on his way. Any luck with the wolves?"

"Fellwinter tried to get them to heel. Saladin tried bribing them with food. They won't leave her side."

"Have they ever done this before?"

"No. There's something about her."

The scent of charred meat roused Terin from her sleep, her stomach rumbling, questions of the last time she’d eaten gnawing at her senses. Sitting up, she slowly opened her eyes, finding five sets staring back at her in rapt anticipation. The brilliant cobalt optics in the middle of the group blinked once, hysteria seizing Terin.

It was Cayde.

Cayde-6.

Her very-dead former-lover now stood before her, staring at her as though she'd lost her mind. 

Suddenly it all made sense. Clearly, this was some kind of trick, the Darkness pulling Terin into yet another vision to warn her of some cryptic doom. Of all the faces in the room, only one was alive. The undead Iron Lords and Guardians were obviously some kind of ploy to get her to crack. Another bark of laughter escaped her, uncaring that the Darkness' plan was working.

"Did I say something?" Cayde not-so-quietly asked the man beside him.

Terin doubled over, collapsing on an unbothered wolf as she continued to laugh, tears forming at the corner of her eyes. "Oh, this is good." She turned her face upward, talking to the invisible entities. "Not enough you make me talk to myself , but now you pull this shit? After everything we shared on Europa? Just kill me already and be done with it."

"Sorry?" A soft feminine voice came from the group, Terin turning her head toward the Hunter sporting the same intricate armor as the man claiming to be Radegast.

Terin filtered through her memories landing on a name that fit. "Perun, right? Never had the pleasure. I'm sure the likeness is uncanny. You did hell of a job when you were pretending to be me." Terin's voice, despite its mirth, was laced with bitter sarcasm. 

"Terin," Radegast stepped forward, the wolves growling once more. "We really should check to make sure you didn’t sustain a head injury." The man's worry would have been heartwarming; the concern that lingered behind his eyes fit the characterization she'd been given to a tee.

"I thought you'd be taller. The way Saladin would go on and on about you, you'd think you were nine-foot tall."

"You know Lord Saladin?" he asked.

"Only when he needs something," she answered, dislodging herself from the pack, attempting to stand. "Funny how he wasn't around during the War." 

Cayde's jaw dropped as she stood, the man's face beside him twisting into something akin to rage. 

"Who are you supposed to be?" she asked the Darkness impatiently.

"Andal Brask," he retorted, judgmental eyes appraising her. "Why are you wearing my cloak?"

Dizzy nausea hit her again, causing her to sway on her feet, the wolves beneath her scattering as she fell. Fleeting irony, as fickle as it was, made her laugh once more as she hit her head on the stone floor.

"No signs of contusion or trauma. Whatever it is, it's blocking her Light. "

"Does she even have Light? How do we know she's Risen?"

"She survived one of the worst storms I've ever seen on this peak."

"Luck."

"Doesn't explain the wolves."

"Where's her Ghost then?"

"It's possible it got lost out in the storm."

"Scans aren't bringing up anything. It’s like she doesn't exist ."

"How is it she has an exact copy of my cloak and your Ace?"

"I don't know, but that's my signature on the stock. Remember when I scratched it in using Arc?"

"We need to take her to the Tower."

"No one is going anywhere, storms getting worse."

Terin found herself laying on a cot by the time she woke, stripped of her armor, wrapped in heavy wools. The cold had crept into her bones once more despite the layers of blanketing, frost dancing on the tips of her fingers. A part of her addled mind recognized it for what it was, the Darkness filling the void that her Light had left behind. No longer was it the threat of hypothermia.

Beside her, Lady Efrideet was busily pulling apart her gun and cleaning it, unaware that the Darkness was sinking its claws into Terin, her guns' parts laid out on a crude workbench. "Mystery girl is awake at last," she said, not looking up.

Terin attempted to bring herself to speak but once again found her throat raw, so instead she opted for silence as her teeth began to chatter. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so thoroughly… cold.

“You’ve been out for about three days,” she answered her unspoken question. “Guys were starting to take bets.”

Lady Efrideet sat forward, setting her arming pin down on the workbench, taking a second to study Terin.

"Hungry?" Terin's stomach answered for her, rumbling loudly. "I've got bread, berries, beer, and butter. Not sure where the boys found butter but bless them."

Terin attempted to sit up, failing when her body succumbed to muscle fatigue, all air knocked out of her as if a War Beast had tackled her. Gasping, she clawed at her throat, feeling utterly… human.

Efrideet made a face before standing, grabbing an empty mug to pull open the door. Wind and snow blew in, blowing out the torches and candles that had previously lit the small space. Slamming the door shut half a second later, she used her Solar energy to relight them, handing Terin a mug full of fresh snow. "Pipes are frozen. Will be for months yet."

Wasting no time, Terin dug into the mug, scooping snow onto her fingers to shovel it into her mouth. A near-sob of relief escaped her as it melted, the cool liquid spreading across her tongue to trickle down her throat.

Cautiously studying her, Efrideet sat on the edge of the cot, touching the base of the mug to melt the ice into water. “Radegast said you were Risen. But you have no Ghost?” she asked, watching Terin greedily chug.

Even if she could speak, Terin would be at a loss for answers. She'd been separated from her Ghost before, but she'd always been able to sense it; during the War, against Xol, even as Eramis bound it in Stasis. But now, as she lay so utterly mortal, she couldn’t feel that tether of Light between them, finding a hollow sort of emptiness on the other side.

The fact that the Darkness hadn’t actively been offering her salvation yet again told her that whatever had happened was likely no ploy to drive her mad, but rather that her Ghost’s warning on Europa should have been heeded. Nausea hit her stomach as the cool water refused to settle, her worst fears come to pass: she had no Ghost, no connection to her Light, no--

Terin heaved out onto the floor, barely managing to angle herself as she did so. 

Despite her reservations as to who or what Terin was, Lady Efrideet sat forward, patting her on the back as her body tried to cope with it’s newfound mortality. “I’d like to tell you it’ll be okay but until this storm lets up we can't get you to a healer.”

She groaned, whether it was in acknowledgement or in pain she was unsure, but Efrideet took it as a sign to fetch her more water.

Expending the last of her energy, Terin forced herself to lay back, the edges of her vision going dark as sleep took her under one last time. 

Tevis Larsen was a simple man. He preferred to live in the field, alone, scouting out Fallen raiding parties. He liked rain with his tea and whiskey with his coffee. He did not like being summoned by his idiot friends to abandon his post to climb up a mountain in the middle of a storm.

He hated snow.

Transmatting from the bar at the base of Fellwinter Peak, he was immediately hit with a snowball upon appearing at the entrance to the Iron Temple. "Real nice, asshole," he said flatly, glaring at the blue Exo attempting to hide behind a pillar.

"Aw, you're about as much fun as Andal right now," Cayde said, coming out from cover.

"Brask is a ray of sunshine,” he scoffed, wiping off the already-melting snowball. “The hell are you talking about?" 

"That's why we called you here. Wolves found a chick—"

"I swear if this is another one of Timur's damn conquests—"

"No, no," Cayde shook his head. "Like the actual wolves, four legs, wagging tails — they found a woman. A Guardian. Well, she's Risen at the very least."

"Okay?" Tevis was failing to see what it had to do with him. New Guardian’s were Vanguard business, a job he’d turned down more than once.

"Thing is, we can't get a good read on her," Cayde continued, motioning toward the inner chamber of the temple.

"Whaddya mean?"

"Risen, but no Ghost. Thing is... she feels like you."

"Huh?"

"You know how you pick up on another guy's Light after a while?" Cayde began to explain. "Sense its signature?"

"Sure..."

"Well, she feels like you."

"You talkin' about Void energy?" Tevis asked, understanding that Void was often confusing to pick up on. Titans and Warlocks used it unempirically, able to manifest it early into whatever shape they willed it. As for Hunters, Void was a rare thing found within the dens, ego and gravitas creating a multitude of Gunslingers.

"Maybe?" Cayde shrugged. "There's... more." 

Tevis raised a brow, following his long-time friend into the temple. He was surprised to see the majority of the founding Iron Lords placed around the brazier set dead center of the chamber, each wearing a varying degree of worry and thought on their face.

"What if she's a different class of Guardian?" Perun asked, pacing back and forth. 

"Classes are a construct," Radegast barked. "And Guardians," his eyes landed on Cayde and Tevis, "Are nothing more than a copycat authority."

"Could we not with this argument for the thousandth time?" Andal snapped, Cayde shooting Tevis a look as if to say 'see?'.  "We get it. You started a thing to save humanity from the most corrupt of us. But Imma tell you now, listen to any of Shaxx's poetry, and you fail to see how he kicked all of your asses."

"Larsen," Shiro acknowledged his presence, leaning against the wall as the Guardians and Iron Lords bickered.

"Shiro," he nodded back, pulling his stash of cigarettes from his chest pocket. "Brask."

"Larsen."

"Can we focus?" Radegast snapped. "We need to figure out what to do with Terin."

Tevis lit one of his smaller rolls with his fingers, Solar energy igniting the dried tobacco leaves with ease. The move earned a disgusted look from Perun who had become “too good” for that sort of thing after becoming an Iron Lord.

"Terin?" he repeated the name, looking at Cayde, who simply nodded.

"She has Ace," Andal explained quickly, Tevis not missing the fact that Ace was firmly slung to Cayde's hip. "And my cloak."

"I'm confused," Tevis said, taking a drag, clearly seeing Andal wearing his own cloak.

Perun groaned. "Mutts drug Terin in from out of the storm. She has no Ghost that we know of, yet she seems to have identical copies of Brask's cloak and Cayde's canon."

"Huh," Tevis shrugged, understanding what they were saying, failing to see what it had to do with him.

Andal's eyes narrowed. "Huh? That's all you've got? Not a how or why?"

"Probably bought them off some new vendor in the City," Tevis said, moving toward the fire to take a seat. Reaching into the cargo pocket of his pants, he pulled out a flask, taking a swig before handing it to Shiro behind him.

"It's an exact copy," Andal argued. "Sundance confirmed matches on both items."

Tevis took his flask back for another swig. "Yeah, I've got nothing."

Andal looked from him to Cayde, gesturing dramatically. "Why is he here?" He looked back to Tevis. "Why are you here?"

"The hell crawled up your ass, Brask?"

"Guys?" Perun tried to calm the mounting tension. "Can we focus—?”

“Bite me, Lady,” Andal shot her a look, Radegast sitting a little straighter.

"Cayde called me," Tevis explained, Andal wheeling on the Exo to shoot him a betrayed look. "Don't get mad at him. Clearly, you're pissed about something and can't think straight."

"I'm not—"

"Andal," Cayde said sweetly, his hands up defensively. "Sweetie. Love of my life. You've been pretty upset since we got here. Not telling you you can't have a bad day every now and again, honestly, it’s kind of a relief, just that I don’t get why.”

"Don't do that," he snapped, opening his mouth to speak further before his attention was redirected toward one of the antechambers. Tevis followed his gaze, spotting two women emerging from the hallway. Efrideet he knew, of course, one of the few Hunter’s that had become an Iron Lord without losing touch of who she was. The woman beside her, however… 

Saying that Tevis had been around for a while would be an understatement. As far as he knew, he was the oldest Hunter. There'd been speculation that he was one of the first of the Risen, though he was certain the derelict Lightbearer going by Wu Ming had him by half a century. Andal's proclivity to call him Father Time, despite the two outwardly appearing to be the same age, was typically a sassy form of endearment; not that he was going to begrudge the man a bad day, they all had them.

Yet, as old as he was, as much control as he had over his Light, he'd never felt anything close to what he experienced watching the blonde mystery woman walking side by side with Lady Efrideet. Despite her petite deflated figure, he could tell she was more than fit, the way she carried herself speaking to untold confidence and years of training. A Hunter if he'd ever seen one, she moved with a certain level of intuition that only came with time spent in the wilds. Injured, weakened, and without her Ghost, Tevis could tell that the woman could still put up one hell of a fight.

Something ancient surged within him, a sensation he'd only felt in the dark recesses of the system, an inexplicable magnetic attraction with no name. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, a familiar feeling of being watched putting him on edge causing him to squirm, fingers reflexively dancing with Void energy prepared to strike.

As if sensing his presence, she looked up, her silver-steel gaze meeting his own scrutiny.

Light surged within him, pure and blinding as it consumed him, coursing through his veins as it reached out for her. The world around them disappeared, the Light so brilliant that he had to squint against its raw power, swearing he could feel her heart beat through whatever ancient magic linked them. Forcing himself to breathe, Tevis squeezed his eyes shut, their shared Light snuffed out in an instant.

Instead, when he forced his eyes open, he was met with the violet haze of Void.

"What," Andal growled. "In the hell was that?"