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There is an empty space where Saint’s favourite bar used to be. There are new buildings growing up around it, leaning into the space, but he knows that it had been there. A Titan bar. Officially of course, there are no divisions between those with the Light and those without, but when a proportion of your population are more or less immortal, with paracausal abilities and a tendency towards recklessness… spaces that are just for them become inevitable.
He remembers when the bar had first opened – just benches and an awning in the open air, a space to socialise after missions with the Pilgrim Guard. He had drunk here with Vell and Wei Ning, Lord Shaxx, and even Rezyl Azzir, back in those earliest days.
How many of those he had known then are still living?
They had told him that the bar had been destroyed in the Red War – Titans had used it as a trap, blown it up to buy time for evacuation. Saint would have done the same in their position, but…
He turns away from the space and begins to walk once more.
Evening is drawing in now, and the streets are crowded with people leaving jobs and finding food, with children playing games and Guardians seeking to spend glimmer. Saint had changed out of his normal distinctive armour into something more nondescript, and now he moves unseen amongst his people. It feels deceitful, but he needs this time alone with his thoughts.
He turns a corner and is confronted with another unfamiliar street. It is a lovely street! There are lanterns hung from poles and the scent of roasting meat and vegetables and spices is thick in the air. And yet he cannot help but feel… disappointed.
No, that is terribly selfish. The City has grown into what he always dreamed it could be! The place that his saviour had shown him all those centuries ago! He is glad to see it.
And yet…
“I do not recognise any of these places,” he says quietly. He can see the Tower in the distance of course, but even that is not the Tower that he remembers. That had also been a victim of the Red War.
“It’s been many years,” Geppetto replies softly. “Perhaps not long for us, for the Ghostless…”
Yes, yes, he knows. Life has not stood still while he was away. Dead. Nor should it.
“I could pull up a map,” Geppetto offers when he does not respond for several moments. “Or I could ask Ikora or Commander Zavala to show you around.”
The idea makes his stomach lurch unpleasantly, a twist of grief and hurt and frustration and–
“No, Geppetto, it is alright,” he promises, trying to keep his tone light so as not to worry her. “They are very busy people. And I– I must learn these streets once more. It is my duty.” This is his city, these are his people. Their joy is his. Even wearing different armour, he can feel the weight of his accolades around his neck.
He can feel her concern, but she lets him continue on his way.
He keeps walking, searching for landmarks in a city that is at once familiar and alien to him. Some he finds – monuments to Six Fronts and Twilight Gap, to the Great Hunt and to the Iron Lords – but others he has less luck with. His favourite mod shop, the tea house where he had liked to take Osiris. So many other places with smaller but more personal memories attached.
Does anything remain that does not commemorate death?
It is full dark by the time he returns to the apartment in the Tower that he has been allowed to use. The City is full of lights that glitter like stars, an expansive network that is larger than he had imagined possible before he had left. He is happy for them, his people. Do they not deserve the best of things after centuries of struggle?
He hesitates as he approaches the door, spotting someone waiting there. He does not recognise them and he is immediately on edge. How many simulations had he walked through where the Vex tried to trick him? How many innocent looking shadows had turned out to be constructs sent to kill him?
How much simpler had things been when he could dismiss everything he saw as Vex trickery?
Three eyes glow green in the dim light. Void curls around his fingers, ready for a fatal blow against this Hive monster that is somehow in the Tower and–
“Saint-14. Osiris asked me to check on you.”
The voice is female, and when they step out from the doorway and the light blinks on, he can see that despite the eyes, they are human. He feels as though he recognises her, though it has been so long and so much is new and…
“I… Osiris is good at sending other people to do what he will not,” he says, and some of the hurt and bitterness seeps into his voice. “I am afraid I do not recognise you, sister.”
She inclines her head. Her hands are clasped around a rock that glows faintly. He does not like it. It sets him on edge.
“It has been many years, and we were not close,” she says, and he hears an echo of the way Osiris speaks in her. Not the same way as Ikora, of a mentor and student, but the way of someone who has seen too much, knows too much, and places too much responsibility upon themselves. “I am Eris Morn.”
Ah! He does know her. A young hunter, a bladedancer. She had been friends with Vell and Wei Ning.
But she is… very different to how he remembers her.
“It is good to see you again!” he says and that is genuine. “It seems sometimes as though everyone who I knew has gone.” An exaggeration when he can go at any time to the courtyard and hear Shaxx shouting, but it feels true all the same.
“It is a strange feeling indeed to return from a long absence and find things changed,” Eris agrees.
“And you say Osiris sent you.”
“He did. He thinks that you may need help in readjusting to the City after so long away.”
Saint snorts at that. “He could have spoken to me himself if he was so concerned, instead of hiding on Mercury.”
Making Saint chase him once again. It is exhausting, and yet Saint knows that he will do it as many times as necessary.
“There is much that weighs on his mind,” Eris says, “and he is still not welcome in the City.”
“He knows that he can send message himself though,” Saint replies. He shakes his head. “But you did not come here to talk about Osiris.” And Saint needs time to think, to process. To find out where the two of them stand with each other after so long. Their last conversations before Osiris had been exiled had been… difficult. “Will you come inside?”
Eris nods. “That would be… pleasant.”
Saint opens the door and steps aside to allow her entry. Honestly, he appreciates the company. It is a very good apartment, nicer than many places he had lived while the City was being built, and better by far than sleeping on the ground in crevices of Vex structures to hide, but it is also… empty. Lonely.
The rooms are unadorned and simply furnished with what had been here when he had arrived. Most of what he had owned had gone to his father when he had been presumed dead, and the Red War had destroyed many of the databanks which they are still attempting to rebuild even now. He hardly wishes to demand they focus on that which is his when there are so many things which are more important. Assuming any of it survived.
As it is, the personal touches are a tea set that he had bought in hopes of company (in hopes that Osiris might visit), a few weapons and pieces of armour, and a sack of birdseed that he has already used half of.
Pigeons, at least, have not changed in his long absence.
Eris stands awkwardly just inside the entrance as though she does not quite know what to do now that she is here. Saint also does not know. He feels as though he has forgotten what it is to exist around other people. The Vex are not good at conversation.
“You may sit down,” he says finally. “Would you like tea?” It sounds stilted and strange, but Eris gives a small smile and goes to perch on the very edge of the armchair, that rock still clasped between her hands.
She watches him, unspeaking, with her strange triple gaze as he boils the kettle and pours tea for them both. He brings it over to the small table and sets a cup in front of her then settles himself on the couch.
Eris regards the cup for a moment and then picks it up, curls her hands around it as though it will warm her entire body. “My thanks.”
Saint nods and takes a sip. It is still scalding but he is an exo, and while there are many similarities between himself and humans, temperature of food has never been something that has bothered him.
“It is strange,” he says quietly, “I have not managed to make it taste like I remember it.” Is it a matter of degraded memory making him forget the true taste? Has he forgotten some minor point of how to make it?
Or is it another thing which has changed while he was away? Climate, soil composition, fermentation time… all can make a difference.
“When I returned from the Hellmouth, I found that many things I had once seen as familiar had become strange to me,” Eris says. She stares down at the cup as though it holds the secrets of the universe. “The world had kept moving as it always had, but I had changed.”
“I do not feel as though I have changed,” Saint replies. He still feels like himself. Older yes, perhaps more tired, but not different. Not as different as Eris Morn. He huffs softly. “But I have not been through Hellmouth and Hive pits like I hear you have done.”
The Hive had been a minor concern to him before he had left. His focus had always been upon the Fallen, and Osiris’ focus on the Vex and Toland’s on the Hive had often seemed like seeking out trouble that they could not afford when the true threat was in front of them. But now? Hearing about the Great Disaster, Crota and Oryx… They are beset on all sides.
“A rock that is worn away by a river is no less changed than a tree struck by lightning, even if the change is more gradual.”
“Ah, you speak like Warlock!” Saint laughs. “No wonder Osiris likes you.”
“We have interests in common,” Eris says, “and friends. We have worked together and I value his council, as I believe he values mine.”
“It is good for him to have more friends. Mercury is a lonely place.” And knowing that Osiris cannot return to the City… he is very familiar with how Osiris can isolate himself. Saint had always been the gregarious one of the two of them.
“As is the City when one returns to find that so much has changed.”
Her tone is not pointed, just matter-of-fact, and yet it strikes as true as any more barbed comment. Saint’s fingers tighten on his cup. “I am glad to be in the City once more,” Saint says. “How can I be lonely when I am surrounded by my people? They bring me warm lavender cookies, and the Vanguard gives me grand apartment to live in. When I walk the streets, people call to me, welcome me as a hero!”
Their joy is his. His joy is theirs.
He remembers the tales he has heard of the Great Disaster, the history that he has read, and there is so much to catch up on! So many things that he had missed. He remembers what had been said about Crota, about that fireteam, nightmares on the moon, the people lost… The guilt wells up, cloying, choking. He had not been there! And now he talks about being received as a hero to one who had suffered far more than him.
“There are many who deserve far more praise than I,” he adds. “And who have far more reason to feel out of place, I am sure.”
“I am coming to learn that emotion is not always subject to reason, and cares little about whether others may be more ‘deserving’ of experiencing those emotions. Displacement will not prevent those emotions from festering like an untended wound.”
Eris does not look at him, but he feels pinned all the same. Has he not seen this himself? Warlords and renegades, the ghost killer and Dredgen Yor. The bitterness and recrimination that had followed Twilight Gap, the break between Shaxx and Lord Saladin.
The wound between himself and Osiris which has yet to heal.
“Many bad things have befallen City since I… I left.” Because he had not been driven out, had not been lost on a mission. He had left to hunt Osiris, and he cannot lie to himself that it was purely out of concern that the Warlock might stir up the Vex. “I should have been here to defend my people.” Not chasing after dreams. “This is not emotion, it is truth.”
His people, his City, his responsibility. He is meant to be a hero, the paragon of everything that a Guardian is meant to be.
“Instead I return after many years and find so many lost. So many empty spaces. And I wonder…”
No, no it is selfish thought. Foolish thought. He is alive through a miracle!
Eris takes a sip from her tea. “I followed Eriana-3 out of love. As she went to face Crota out of love for Wei Ning. Many would say that I should not have gone.” She gives a faint smile. “I said it to myself many times while I was trapped in the Hive pits, and again once I escaped. I should have stayed behind. I should have attempted to dissuade her. I should have remained here to fight for my people.”
He waits for more, for the denouement that must come to her words, but she merely takes another sip of tea.
“I heard of Great Disaster,” he says, “the horror on the moon. If I had been here then…”
Arrogance to believe that he could have changed it perhaps, but he should have been there all the same. He has seen the rolls of the dead and if he could have saved even one of those lives…
“Perhaps you would have changed the tide,” Eris says bluntly but without blame or anger. Saint winces. “Perhaps you would be one more name on the memorials, or another Guardian who survived and bears the scars. Perhaps you would have joined our crusade against Crota and been lost in the pits of Luna as well.”
“Perhaps I would have headbutted Crota hard enough to knock him out of his chitin so every Guardian could see that he is nothing but wiggling of his worm.”
It drags a startled laugh from Eris. The sound is rusty and hoarse as though she has not laughed in a long time.
“I confess, I do wish that I could see that,” she says after her laughter has died down. “There are many different paths that I could have taken, but if I had, the Eris Morn who sits here now would not exist. Neither would the Saint-14 who sits before me.”
“But would you not change things, if you could?” Saint asks. “Fix things. Warn them about Crota, about what was to come?”
Eris inclines her head slightly. “I would try,” she admits, “I dreamed often of it. But others also tried, Osiris among them.”
“His prophecies,” Saint murmurs. Yes, he remembers. Those words which had been part of why he was exiled. He had spoken of dead Hive kings and horrors on the moon. Saint had assumed, as many had, that he had drunk of the same madness as Toland. Now he reads the histories written and sees that his Guardian saviour had fulfilled those prophecies.
Would he have fought to stop Osiris’ exile if he had known? Ah, but that is also what Osiris had said about prophecies – say too much and you risk them being used by the wrong people, or skewing the threads of fate.
“Yes. He has predicted many things that have come to pass. Or that might have come to pass had he not predicted them. And I wonder if, given that knowledge and ability, I might bring about those same events, or worse if I tried to change what has transpired. Or perhaps I would make no difference at all. We are caught in an avalanche, the first rumblings of which began long before we existed.”
“But Osiris had the ability,” Saint points out. “I was… dead. I do not remember it, but I feel the truth of it. I was dead. And then I had never been dead and I emerged from the Infinite Forest. But many… most do not have that chance.”
Only him. Only because of Osiris. It is a strange feeling, to know that something so monumental had been changed, the world shifting around him, because of him. For him.
And so many others, just as worthy, will never have that.
Why does he deserve that chance? Surely his father had deserved it more. Or Vell, Wei Ning, the countless Guardians who died on the moon or in the Red War! So many names and how can he exist knowing that his existence has been placed above theirs?
He shakes his head and stands up suddenly, heads to the kitchen to make more tea because if he does not move then he will scream. Or break.
Can exos who are Guardians suffer from reset syndrome? Perhaps it would be a mercy.
“Then do not waste the chance that you have been given,” Eris says. Her voice is clear as a bell. “Do not regret the life that was hard won. Honour them with it, in whatever form that takes.”
Saint swallows, focuses hard on the kettle as it boils. He does not look at her. “There are too many spaces,” he says quietly. “When Marin died I could grieve. I had been there. I knew that I had done everything I could, and Marin died doing the same. But this? The spaces are too big, too numerous.” He turns to look at Eris. She is still sitting there, hands clasped around the cup, as though she is a statue. “How do you deal with such spaces?”
He fears that they will grow if he does not find a way, grow and grow until they consume him.
Eris takes another sip and then sets the cup down. “I filled them. With vengeance. With guilt and grief, anger enough to consume the Hive many times over. And over time green things grew where the spaces had been and began to leech the poisons away. Hunger for vengeance became a blade that I could hone, rather than a bomb that would destroy me and all those around me.” She gives a delicate shrug. “The spaces will always be marked like the ruins of the Golden Age, but wounds can become scars given enough time.”
Scars. Those he knows. There are some markings on his body that he was risen with, evidence of lives that he cannot remember. Are those previous thirteen lives, and the human life before that, not also spaces that he has had to fill with the purpose of this life?
“The City is built on ghosts, and blood has watered the fields more than once,” he says finally. “And yet we keep building and it is… glorious. It is hope.” Would he rip down the City because it had not saved everyone?
“It is,” Eris agrees. “Our fragile kingdom ringed with spears.”
The words chime familiar, but he cannot place them right now. Probably something that Osiris had said once, or picked up from elsewhere.
“You are very wise, Eris Morn,” he says, and offers her a smile. “Very pragmatic also. Warlocks could learn from you.” Especially one stubborn Warlock in particular.
She smiles back, a small twist of her lips which seems as unpracticed as her laughter, but just as bright.
“Vell always spoke highly of you. It is good to see that his words were true.”
Saint snorts, his smile widening to a grin at the mention of his friend. “Hah! Vell is… was, good friend. But you have caught me when I am maudlin. You will come back for tea again, and then I will be more myself and you can judge properly.”
And it will be good to talk to someone who does not seem to see those deaths as something that happened long enough ago as to already be grown over with vines and grass.
He pours more water for tea and brings over another cup for Eris, though she has not finished with the first. No matter. It was more for something to do that he made it, than out of desire to drink.
“The Guardian came to Luna recently to assist me,” Eris says quietly. “They faced great challenges and revealed some facet of our true enemy.”
“This is… pyramid yes?” He has been briefed, but with so many years to cover… it is difficult to keep it all straight.
Eris nods. “Indeed. But during the course of their work, they helped me personally, and retrieved some things which are… precious.” She reaches into one of her bags and draws something out – a length of interlocking chain rings. They are tarnished, but still hold together. “I believe that Vell would not be averse to me giving you this, though I would like to keep the rest of it.”
She holds the links out to Saint who opens his hand for her to drop it into.
“This is part of his mark,” he says wonderingly. He runs his thumb against the links. “Every link was someone who he saved. Like my accolades.” The ribbons and scraps of fabric that people had given him over the years as thanks for saving them. Vell had added another link to his mark for every life he saved with the Pilgrim Guard.
“I am one of them,” Eris says. “Part of why I live now is because of him. And I will continue living to honour that.”
“He would have liked that, I think,” Saint says. He closes his hand around the links of chain. “Thank you for this. I… I have been alone for a very long time.” Perhaps he should count himself lucky that returning to the City has not gone worse.
“It is easy to tell ourselves that being alone is easier, because no-one can understand. But it is… a hollow way to live.”
Hollow. Yes. Yes, he thinks that is the right word for it.
How long has Osiris been alone for?
“You are very strong. Very wise. I– I miss them. My father. Vell. Marin. All of them. I miss people who are still here but who have had decades of life that I did not see.”
“I miss them too,” Eris says, “I always will.”
Somehow that is more reassuring to hear than any words of comfort.
They sit quietly with their grief for a while, only the clink of teacups to accompany them. It settles something inside of Saint. The spaces are not smaller, but he thinks he can feel the edges of them soften, just a fraction, by sitting here with Eris. He hopes that his presence does the same for her, though he doubts that she needs his help.
Eventually they say their goodbyes, and Saint catches her briefly in a loose embrace that she permits before she squirms out of it like a cat.
Saint closes the door behind her and takes a breath. He has many things to catch up on. And he does not want to do that alone.
The last letter that he had written had been an act of frustration, full of angry words and disappointment and exhaustion. Now he sits to write anew.
Osiris,
I miss you.