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“Wait, they what?” Auburn’s breath caught at the words, and she snapped her head in their direction. Two long strides and she was close enough to feel Varkis’s breath through the filter over his mouth. The Warlock who had previously been speaking to him shied away, more out of confusion than irritation. They had been the one to initially engage the Scribe of Judgement in a history lesson. Auburn had just happened to be walking by at one critical part.
“What did you just say? When did you say the Fallen arrived on Earth?”
He swayed, chortled in that strange grumbling they did before his translator kicked in.
“Be-foooore the bone warriors in-va-ded your moooon, be-foooore your City was strong, but af-ter your colonies were losssst. Af-ter all of you dead things woke.”
“After the Awoken became what they are out here? After we all died in the Collapse?” Her voice was hard, jaw taught and teeth clacking at the strongest annunciations. “After?”
“Yes…”
She took another half step closer, if that was even possible. To his credit Variks did not seem fazed. “And is this the truth?”
“It is what I wit-nessssed as Scribe of House Judgment.”
“How long ago?”
“More than one of your centuriessss, but not ma-ny.”
The anger left her suddenly, like a cascade, only to be replaced by despair. She stumbled back, hand over her brow, her head suddenly hurt. The Warlock tried now to console her, drifting forward, and hovering a hand near her shoulder. She emanated concern. Auburn sort of hated when they did that, she was guilty about making another worry about her, defensive about another able to feel her pain.
“Scout.” She said, without reaching out, not with her hand or the Light. “Scout is it true?”
Her Ghost did not appear. Did not speak. Did not even extend a tendril of emotion through their link. He stayed decidedly mute, encapsulated in his own little bubble within her soul.
“Scout. Get my ship.”
A flicker of acknowledgment at that at least. Dragged along was a twinge of shame. It settled into her gut and became betrayal. She knew what this silence meant. She knew. She had been lied to by the closest friend she had.
Betrayed.
He did not speak to her but knew where she needed to go. Where she always needed to go. And as they flew there she sat in the pilot’s chair and let her eyes droop. She did this with the defiance of a small child, in an argument with a parent, testing to see if they actually cared by specifically putting herself in a painful situation. She drifted off.
When she woke in panic, sounds of gunshots still ringing in her ears, she found them in orbit, hovering a mile above the Cosmodrome. Systems said they had been there a while. Her feelings of betrayal were refreshed with the thought that Scout had not even woken her. If not from the nightmares but because they had arrived.
“Take me down.” She said, and the ship dove. For a brief second she thought about taking the manual controls and never pulling up, just diving straight down, down, into a firey explosion, but death was useless to her as a catharsis. She’d just be right back up, and without a ride back to the tower.
They leveled out and she felt the transmat build around her. Landed on the soft earth, outside the walls. Scout had actually taken the time to drop her here, much closer to her destination, rather than at the formal transmat location. It breached an informal protocol. The pattern all dropships used was in place to avoid any chance of unpiloted ships crashing. All Guardians dropped in the same location, unless on a Vanguard commissioned strike, by unspoken rule. For Scout to ignore that was unprecedented. She didn’t want to think about what message he was trying to send. She didn’t want to love him, not after this.
She strode past the cars, slow deliberate steps. Past the ones she knew and the ones she didn’t recall. Past the skeletons, until she was standing before one.
She pulled off her helmet. Dropped it. It thunked to the ground. He hadn’t caught it. She stared at it for a moment.
“You lied to me.” She said aloud. Scout’s consciousness twitched inside her. “Get out here and talk. This isn’t something you can avoid. Come out and face me.”
And he did. He emerged, angles down, casings low over his eye. He refused to meet her gaze.
“The Fallen didn’t kill me.”
“No.”
“They weren’t even here for another couple centuries.”
“No…”
“So why-” She choked, her emotions building. She sank to the ground, folding onto her knees and leaning forward, hands on the mound of dirt. “So why did you tell me they did?”
“I- I thought I was protecting you from the truth.”
“Oh, really?” She tried to be sarcastic but a sob broke in mid-syllable and disrupted that. She found hot tears coming. “Protecting me huh? By lying to me?”
He still didn’t look at her.
She cried. Heaved. Let all the sobbing come, let the confusion go. It was a long time, a long cry. To his credit, her Ghost stayed. Hovered shamefully with his eye cast down until she was ready. Until the sorrow bled away and there was clarity. Empty, hollow clarity. It showed in her voice and it pained her to hear her own tone.
“Please tell me, Ghost. Tell me what is real and what is not. Tell me what you forced into my head. Are these memories not mine?”
He cringed when she called him Ghost, didn’t even use her nickname. “Most of them are. Few are not…”
“Did you tell me the Devils killed him, killed me, in order to keep me fighting. To make me a mindless soldier, hell bent on vengeance? Is that your purpose? Was that your goal?”
“No, no, I-“
“Are you sure?”
Silence. It unsettled both of them. Even the wind appeared to still.
“For the survival of humanity…” He began.
“Don’t give me that shit!” She shouted. “This is about me, this is about you, hurting me!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, of course you are! What happened to me? What happened to my brother? Was he real?”
“Yes.”
She paused, tried to breathe, tried to contemplate, felt the affirmation over and over in her head. Placed a palm, fingers splayed, on the little mound of dirt and tried to feel the bones buried there through the earth.
“I can’t… I can’t trust you. But- I want to, I choose to trust you right now. I hope you understand how hard that is. I know that we have grown close since the day I was revived. I know you were doing your job. It still hurts, Ghost. It still hurts.”
“I understand.” He said quietly, not above a whisper. She looked up at him. He had not moved when she knelt and now looking up, he was forced to meet her eyes.
“When you did those things, made up these lies, did you never assume we would be friends? Did you ever think you might someday regret it?”
“I should have.” He admitted. “I should have.”
She broke the contact. She looked away, looked down. Stayed quiet, trying to understand. And then she did, and balked so heavily at the thought that she felt tears coming again.
“Here’s the problem.” She said, “I understand why you did it. I truly understand. I probably would have done the same. Why would I care to help humanity when humanity killed me? We’ve seen Selene, I know what that looks like. And I’d be no use as a Guardian like that. So full of hatred. But bend that hatred another way and… I understand. We are too much a match, you and I. I just wish… I don’t know what I wish.”
“What do you remember?” He asked. “Maybe… maybe I can help piece it apart?”
She huffed a laugh, loud, doubtful. “Gunfire. Screaming. Blood. There are bullet casings rusting on the ground here.” She gestured around them at the cars, the skeletons. “More out there than near me, him, the others. That leaves very few conclusions Ghost. It makes me want to cling to your lies.” He cringed at that, visibly. “A Fallen massacre is so much more comforting than the alternative.”
He rotated, unsure of what exactly to say.
“Are the faces of my parents in my head mine? Do you even know what you put in me? Could you see it? Quantify it? Or did you just do it?”
“You were a mold. There were spaces that could be pushed and some that could not. I can’t see them anymore. They are all solid now, you are you, not a mold.”
“If I shoot myself in the head, when you rez me can you take out all the memories that are not mine?”
“I told you, you are not a mold.” His voice had warning now, but a warm kind, pleading, worried. “It will not get you the result you desire.”
She reached for Vestian Dynasty anyway.
“It won’t. Please Auburn.”
She pulled the trigger anyway.
When her eyes opened and she saw only the rusted car and felt the wind she thought maybe it had all been a dream, maybe she was new again, a fresh Guardian, a young Titan full of tightly bound hatred, ready to seek vengeance on the Devils, the Devils who killed her, the Devils who killed him. But Vestian Dynasty and Inmost Light lay at her knees and Mutli-tool was strapped to her back and her armor was large and secure. She didn’t feel naked as she had those first days, those first nights.
But she felt better, yes, she really did. She regretted the action, knew it had pained Scout, she could feel it, but she felt better with the resolve to never do it again. Her mind had found clarity.
“Thank you for bringing me back.”
“I always will.”
It made her uncomfortable, this undying devotion from someone who had just hurt her so badly. But it was true. She did understand. She did know he had meant well.
She tugged at the plating over her left hand. Scout moved towards it, an offering, a question. She held her hand still and allowed him to take the plate and strip off the glove for her. As always after a rez, the mark was back. She cupped that hand, palm up, and rubbed her right thumb in circles over it, gradually working away the grime. She stared down at the earth, the rusted car, the place where there should be two bodies but there was only one. The one that was not hers.
“I still have the blood on my hand. His blood. You can’t fake that can you? That wasn’t your curse.”
“No.”
She spit into it and kept rubbing her palm, circles and circles, until the dried blood was washed away. She sighed.
“Perhaps, Scout, it will be for the best. Any human who killed us back then will be long dead. Time catches up with everyone.”
“Except you.”
“Ha. Yes, except us.” And with that ‘us’ he looked at her and seemed less upset. Seemed hopeful. She smiled to him and beckoned him closer. Cradled him in her hands and held him to her chest, right over her heart. “Maybe… maybe now I can let him go.”
“I hope you can.” He said. “I love you, you know.
“I love you too.” She said.